Robot Apple Monkey Blog » Posterous

No, Really, Every Vote Counts

Admin Monkey — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:48:26 +0000

It seems to me that this election, more than any other, is generating a lot of “screw 'em both” noise. It's possible that this is just thanks to the miracle of the Internet, giving every opinion air (oh hai!), but it does seem like more and more people are disillusioned with the state of our two party system.

Ultimately, however, this election is a two horse race. When you get down to the electorate level, you end up with a mix of one and two horse races, with a very rare few seats where there are more than two candidates with any chance of winning. To many, this state of affairs seems to incite depression, especially since voting for a minor party is often seen as futile. The standard reply, which I wholeheartedly support, is that every vote counts. You only need to see the solid group of seats with a 2PP margin of <0.5% to see how crucial a small number of votes can be, and there's no reason to think that can't apply to minor parties as well. Thanks to full preferential voting, the outcome of a seat could change drastically based on the battle between second and third.

Take an imaginary seat that could well exist in inner city Sydney or Melbourne. This seat is typically Labor, by a comfortable margin over the Liberals, but has a high Green vote and sentiment.

Disillusioned ALP voter votes Green as a protest, but puts ALP second and LIB last.
Green voter goes Green, and picks the lesser of two “evils” by putting ALP 2, LIB 3
Liberal voter puts LIB 1 and then GRN 2, ALP 3 to minimise Labor's chances of keeping the seats they need for Government.

Now, if the first preference counts knock the Greens out of the running, we have our “standard” situation where it is ALP vs LIB and the bulk of Green votes have ALP second and the 2PP takes its standard shape.

But consider for a minute that enough “protest votes” are cast to put the ALP and the Greens in the top two, and knock the Libs down to third. Such a circumstance would likely involve the ALP primary taking a large hit, potentially bringing it to the point where any Liberal voters that preferences the Greens above Labor could see the Greens take the seat.

Every election, at some point towards the end of the campaign, the major parties trot out the line “Don't risk a protest vote”, for this exact reason. Given the high voter dissatisfaction with the two major parties, this election seems to be the perfect time to “risk it”.

Yes, the “risk” is that there will not be a clear majority government, and this means that there might have to be some compromise, and some moderation of some of the crazy “policies” that have come out of this campaign. If you don't think the current two-party system is working, this is one way to shake it up a bit (if seats actually change hands).

This is a fairly specific and, at this election, rare scenario, however. If we step back and take a more cynical view towards the effect of protest votes, there's still a few handy benefits to voting for a minor party.

Firstly, there's the money. Each candidate who polls over 4% of the primary vote gets some coin for each vote they receive. Money is a necessity of campaigning and indeed running a political party (or any organisation), so “more” is often better.

Secondly, gradual change is generally easier to accept and sustain in the long term. In the seat of Sydney, for example, the Greens would require a swing of over 6% towards them to take second place over the Libs and have any chance at winning the seat. While it's possible, it would likely be seen as an aberration, and there would be a lot of pressure on the Greens to “perform” in order for them to keep those numbers at the next election. But a swing of 2-3% would not register as abnormal, but would serve to increase the credibility of the Greens at the next election. When trying to change the mindset of a large population, be it the almost 100,000 in an electorate or the over 20 million in the nation, the easiest way is to do it slowly. Even if your minor party vote doesn't help your chosen party win a seat this election, that party has now increased their legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate.

So if you're one of the many people disillusioned by the two major parties, and you see a glimmer of promise in a minor party, put them at the top of your list on Saturday.

p.s. On a slightly different note, remember that although you have to give a preference to every name on the ballot paper, your vote will never, ever get to whoever you put last – that is your one and only guaranteed “anti-vote”.

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Directly Elected…

Admin Monkey — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:44:10 +0000

So Australia has a new Prime Minister today in Julia Gillard. Much
like the NSW State Government, the process went something like this:

Bad poll > panic > factional warlords organise spill > new leader.

Just like in NSW, this situation is closely followed by cries of “We
didn’t elect this Prime Minister”. Julia Gillard even referenced this
herself in her press conference after her caucus installation.

This was then followed by the more politically educated talking about
the Westminster system, and how we vote for our local member / party
representative, and that the majority party chooses their leader, and
thus the PM, in their own fashion.

The problem with this argument is that it’s only technically true.
This is how the system is designed and how, on occasions like this, it
works. But it is NOT how election campaigns are fought, and it’s not
how the general public perceives the political system. It is a
lamentable lack of civic education, but like it or not, until the
political parties behave otherwise, or the general political education
level of voters is increased, it is how the system will be interpreted
in the mainstream.

Aiming to expand knowledge is an honourable cause. Informing people of
how the system is designed and (on paper) works, is a noble fight. But
throwing ones hands up in exasperation at all “we didn’t elect Julia”,
or berating Gillard for her up-front disarming of the issue, only
serves to vent and does little to change perceptions.

So next time someone complains about not having “elected our PM”,
inform them of the actual system, but don’t berate them for simply
learning by the example of the major parties.

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“Fixing” iOS4 Auto-Correct

Admin Monkey — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:50:03 +0000

Just a couple of quick things for (finally) getting the iPhone to recognise some of the more colourful words in the English language:

Settings > Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New keyboard… > English (UK). Doesn't appear to change the layout at all, but stops the autocorrect from trying to put a 'z' in where an 's' should be.
Settings > Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New keyboard… > Chinese – Simplified (Pinyin). Once you've put this, or certain other keyboards (appears to be ones that use different characters), you will then see a new option under Settings > Keyboards called … wait for it … Edit User Dictionary…

Finally, my iPhone can realise the glory of a correctly spelled fuck.

Props to user modular747 on the Apple Support forums for the (crazy) steps required for Edit User Dictionary.

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Blast from the past …

Admin Monkey — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:24:34 +0000

I really should be throwing out old rubbish, but I find myself occasionally picking something up and looking at it.

Like this excerpt from a diary entry dated 5th of July, 2000:

My new computer is giving me the shits. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. The fact that the printer port isn’t working shits me because I can’t get my Zip drive to work, which means I can’t get stuff off zip disks onto my new computer. This would be fine if I could get the null modem connection between my new and old computers to work, but that isn’t working either, so at present the only thing that I can do to transfer documents is HyperTerminal, which is incredibly slow and dodge.

Zip disks? Null modem? HyperTerminal? Holy shit!

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How to Recycle Angels

Admin Monkey — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:45:48 +0000

http://www.howtodestroyangels.com

So apparently Trent got married and made a “new” band with his wife and producer. The sound is more than a little familiar, but Mariqueen Maandig has a good singing voice on her.

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Dance little piggy!

Admin Monkey — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:41:37 +0000

The rest of the article is a good read (if you're not already ready to stab your eyes out with a rusty spoon at the thought of another iPhone 4G prototype story), but this quote is why I read the Macalope …

You know what they say about trying to teach a pig to dance, right? It wastes your time and makes the pig implement a Microsoft-only corporate standard for enterprise-level software delivered solely on Dell hardware.

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Music to lose yourself in

Admin Monkey — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:46:52 +0000

Bear McCreary's score for BSG is truly awesome music. More times than I can remember I've put it on as simple background music while I get some work done, and then suddenly realised it's half an hour later, and I've done nothing but listen with my eyes closed.

Of course, Gaeta's Lament is not solely a McCreary creation, but it's an awesome step out of this world and into the Season 4 soundtrack.

Closing my eyes again now.

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Home Time (not for me)

Admin Monkey — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:06:18 +0000

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Dealing With Forum Trolls

Admin Monkey — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:41:21 +0000

I had to repost these collected responses from Ghostcrawler (Greg Street), the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. Good answer to common problems faced with dealing with trolls, particularly in the official WoW forums.

There is no law in this world that you can’t make a point and be rude at the same time, and most people seem to embrace this.

Nope, there is no law, but I will likely ignore it.

We’re willing to take the risk that some amazing gem of design genius might be lost inside a ranting or whining post. If you want us to take your feedback seriously, communicate the way grown men and women communicate in civil society. We’re not asking for something unreasonable here. :)

You seem to live in a 60′s sitcom. You dont seem aware that the average person curses every 3 words in everyday life, and thats considered normal by most, not rude.

I make full use of the entirety of the English language myself. You should probably tone it down here since this is a relatively public place and profanity understandably offends some people. But really that’s not what I meant.

The anonymity of the Internet has fostered a culture where being ridiculously over the top with your communication is pretty typical. We’re just asking you not to do it here. If it helps, imagine you’re in a meeting room with all of the WoW designers and you have 30 seconds to make your point. Are you going to waste it on whining, you-hate-my-class, you-don’t-play-the-game stuff? Or are you going to try to make an intelligent point that the designers will actually listen to and hopefully take under advisement?

If you’ve ever seen a court of law or a government debate, those discussions can get pretty heated, but the participants generally try to maintain a modicum of respect for each other. They want to focus on the legal and / or logical strength of the argument and not the color of the delivery.

In writing, you are generally supposed to show restraint in your use of adjectives and adverbs. Yes, they are necessary in specific situations, but if you overuse them, you risk bloating, confusing or derailing the actual point you’re trying to make. The same is true of a forum post. Don’t dress it up with junk, which around these parts is typically QQ. Speak plainly. There was a recent thread whose thesis was “Blizzard lies and here’s an idea I had for a spell.” The mistake there sort of speaks for itself.

Collected from the forums via WoW Insider.

Why “tweetblasts” don’t really bother me.

Admin Monkey — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:31:42 +0000

With the recent Macheist promotion, it's unsurprising that there's been a wave of "tweetblasts" concerning Macheist, and then the predictable complaints about the "spam" on twitter. Is it really that bad?

Of the people you follow on twitter, how many of them delight, entertain or inform you with every tweet? The Macheist tweetblast is one tweet, then it's gone. Yes, this can be exacerbated by having multiple people on your twitter feed post the same message, but that happens so often on Twitter with the latest viral video, meme or photo of a speedo-clad politician.

At the end of the day, it's one tweet, easily ignored (or in my case, one tweet lost in the stream). And maybe, one day, I'll see something that I might be interested in, just like every other time someone I follow posts a link.

Of course, that said, I don't post the links myself on my main twitter account. I have a second account for sending out things like that, because I know that many people don't like that style of tweet, and, well, sometimes I try not to be a dick. But I have no issue with people posting them, and if I unfollow you, it's nothing to do with a tweetblast, it's probably personal. :P

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