Monday, March 26, 2012

Latest Pirate Party Electoral Win: Saarland

Congratulations to the Pirate Party in Germany, for yet another win in a state government election.

This time, the PiratenPartei won 7.4% of the vote, making it over the 5% threshold required to enter parliament. They have been allocated 4 seats in the parliament.

The tally for the Pirate Party now stands at:

  1. 2 MEPs (Pembers of the European Parliament)
  2. 19 state parliament seats
  3. 169 city/municipal council seats

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Australia: A Place to Be

A patriot is "a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion."

Well I love Aussie Rules football, meat pies, the "proper" Australian-style pizza, preferential voting, the wealth and, of course, many of the people I know in Australia. But that doesn't mean that if things got bad enough here, I wouldn't pack up, go to Equatorial Guinea and start speaking Fang if I thought that the Equatoguinean way of life and system of government were significantly better, with no hope of Australia's improving.

So I guess I'm a bad patriot.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Once Bitten, Twice Ambiguous

Apple has sure learned a lesson since the launch of the iPhone 4S. That lesson is that the public are both pedantic and self-deluded.