Humodour

And I take it you missed how what I (and Boo) was saying has nothing to do with that. FPTP can result in relatively popular candidates not getting a seat and therefore skewed parliamentary majorities, but unlike some other undemocratic bull****, it will not result in gravely impopular politicians getting "elected", ever. Apparently, some people believe Gordy is the bestamest PM, evar. That's freedom of opinion for ya. Ah, I see. Wals made it sound like you were talking about prop rep in general, not closed lists. Coalitions are bad because big parties are willing to compromise on important issues if that's what it'll take for them to keep power for themselves -- this is what places political dwarves in a position of strength that doesn't correspond to popular support. However, coalition governments formed by large parties in Germany have worked well for some time, so coalitions aren't necessarily bad. The problem comes when the people don't punish the party they voted for forming a coalition with a small party whose stated goals and policies are at odds with their own. Leaders in a democracy are, for good or ill, a very accurate reflection of the quality of the electorate. Well said. Coalitions CAN be bad, but they CAN be good. To exclusively portray coalitions as bad is ill logic. Further, it's kind of like the argument against democracy... how does it go? "Democracy is the worst kind of government, except for all the others." Don't like coalitions? What's the alternative - that a party without a majority or mandate - elected by a minority - forms government to represent the majority? And I don't mean coalition as "both parties get cabinet members" here - it could simply be the acknowledgement between two parties that one should form government and hence the other won't block supply and such.

Also, Mao was (I've said this numerous times before) one of the largest mass-murderers in history. He puts Hitler and Stalin to shame. People supporting this is not a good thing. Indeed.

I wish this board had a reputation system, because I'd rep this post up.

As opposed to the other election loser (Conservatives) ruling with a minority of the people's vote (about 36%)? That's democracy alright. At least the LibDems and Labour collectively make up a majority of the vote share (50% or so), if not seats due to FPTP quirks. Argue that the LibDems should form coalition with the conservatives all you want, but please Morgoth, don't be so obviously stupid as to argue that coalitions are bad, because that implies that a single party should try to govern without the support of the majority of voters.

But as you can clearly see (since the UK is FPTP, and so is Canada), this issue has nothing to do with prop rep in particular. What? We just had it explained by Numbers and Boo* that severing the direct connection between voter and individual as with pure prop rep creates perfect conditions for corruption. I'm not saying we can't have corruption here, but FPTP means at the end of teh day that anyone, including the prime minister, can be removed by a local movement of a few thousand people. I take it all three of you missed the posts earlier in this thread where myself and (I believe) Zoraptor pointed out that prop rep in no way requires group voting tickets. Sigh.

But as you can clearly see (since the UK is FPTP, and so is Canada), this issue has nothing to do with prop rep in particular. The Conservatives can try to govern as a minority, as they do in Canada (with reasonable success). Uhg.

****, Mao was one of the vilest individuals to walk this earth.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68788 http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/01/23/213...of-Wikileaksorg http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/06/182...yptomes-Account http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/08/19/20...ommunity-Unrest http://www.paypalsucks.com/ http://www.paypalwarning.com/

I agree with the sentiment. Paypal is shocking.

Upon reflection, and in view of all the facts about Uniloc, I will tentatively scrounge up the money to buy AP (and if I'm going to buy the game after all I might as well support Obsidian as much as possible and pre-order). Edit: I should clarify that I find this DRM scheme acceptable only due to the promise of a patch to remove it. That said, if this DRM were any more restrictive I would simply wait for the patch to buy it.

Good. What about Mendalson? Because collectively they had less of a poor showing than the third significant party, hence represent more of (and indeed the majority, possibly with one or two small parties) of voters. Could you explain to me how it could make any kind of sense for the third significant party to form government instead without the support of anyone else? It wouldn't. I'd prefer a LibDem-Conservative coalition for at least one term (depending on how the Conservatives perform) too, but not to the extent that I'd start blaming democracy if it didn't happen.

You seriously didn't see that coming?

All seats now declared. (The election in one constituency was postponed until the end of this month) Conservative 306 Labour 258 Liberal Democrat 57 Democratic Unionist Party 8 Scottish National Party 6 Sinn Fein 5 Plaid Cymru 3 Social Democratic & Labour Party 3 Green 1 Alliance Party 1

Curiously enough that could be one the reasons why neanderthals lost to sapiens. It was really painful and potentially lethal for neanderthal women to give birth. You'd have to think that'd be a pretty simple selective pressure toward smaller heads, though, so I dunno about that... I mean Neanderthals existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Way more than enough time to adapt to something like that.

It's worth noting that Neanderthals had larger brains than us.

Considering Neanderthals are named after Neandertal where they were first discovered, yeah, what's up with those crazies?! http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/spelling.html

Obama will veto it if it passes, based on his past stances and what I've been reading.

It blurs the species line a bit, too.

Chimpanzees seem to get sad and mourn their dead the same way humans do according to two seperate studies published recently: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/04...h-reaction.html Study 1: the death of an elderly female Study 2: mothers responding to the deaths of their babies It's sad.

Two fascinate studies on chimps. The first one shows how chimps have culture, or social knowledge, and it's different between groups. It's interesting because all the other variables are controlled (e.g. genetic difference): http://www.physorg.com/news175435694.html The other one is a study which demonstrates that chimps shown a video of another chimp making a tool to solve a problem they were previously unable to go on to construct the tool themselves to solve the problem: http://www.physorg.com/news165682373.html And the third demonstrates some intelligent chimps refining and making better tools for harvesting termites to eat (delicious!) - using a brush rather than a basic straw (both constructed from plants): http://www.physorg.com/news155372626.html Bloody fascinating.

The interesting thing is that this basically means Greece will go into depression if you think about it. Ouch.

Scientists have basically finished mapping the Neanderthal genome, and comparative analysis with human and chimpanzee DNA shows that those who left Africa interbred with the Neanderthals - so the ancestors of Europeans, Asians, and Islanders. There's not much difference apparently. Our DNA DNA didn't change much from Africans because of it - and this sentence is meant in both the functional sense and the quantitative sense. http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id...ing_with_humans http://www.physorg.com/news192374283.html Such interbreeding is not surprising considering that the ancestors of humans kept breeding with the ancestors of chimps for roughly a million years after diverging, while Neanderthals only diverged from humans 200 to 400 or so hundred thousand years ago. Worth the full read.

Yes it will. There's only about 1,000 votes margin. I hate to be a downer, but the only way your vote really makes a difference is if the final margin is either 0 or 1. I vote regularly, but it's really more about ceremonial civic participation than it is about the ridiculously small odds (even in close races) that my vote wil determine the winner. Suppose everybody thought this way and did not vote?

Yes, because obviously you all can understand finnish perfectly? Oh snap. But then again... In Google Translate we trust.