On 13/10/2021 10:55, clamky@hotmail.com wrote:
> clamky@hotmail.com writes:
>
>> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>>
>>> On 12/10/2021 19:21, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>
> [..]
>
>>
>> CGP Grey[1] has some videos describing several different voting systems,
>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cgp+voting&t=ffab&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos
>>
>> For me the videos were entertaining and educational at the same time.
>
> [1] Was supposed to contain some attempted humor regarding an American
> (CGP Grey) moving to UK to take the space left behind by en-masse
> Scottish migration to .no
>

Hey, I might be carrying a few extra kilos, but I'm not /that/ massive!

I'll have a little look at the videos later on.

David Brown wrote:
> It looks like much of the world uses some kind of proportional
> representation (there are several kinds).
>
> The UK has the old first-past-the-post system for British members of
> parliament, but in Scotland the Scottish parliament uses proportional
> representation (AFAIK - being an ex-pat, I don't vote there).
>
> Norway has proportional representation. (I think Terje explained it
> already somewhere. I can't vote in the national elections here, as I am
> not a citizen as yet. I have to prove I can speak Norwegian before
> they'll give me citizenship. I've been fairly fluent for nearly 25
> years, but I have to have it documented!)

What you forgot to mention is that we have really universal voting
rights in local elections: Anyone registered in the district (i.e.
living there according to Folkeregisteret) can also vote since they
presumbly care about local matters. Citizenship does not matter.
>
>>
>> Clearly I did not know about the Polish system.  Thanks for explaining
>> it.  It does seem complex, but avoids the problems pointed out in
>> Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.  Unfortunately, the US suffers from
>> having its system set in stone long before Arrow pointed out the
>> problems.  :-(
>>
>
> The US is famous for taking election corruption to the extremes of legal
> possibilities. They don't have the honest corruption of some countries,
> by jailing or assassinating your political enemies, but they have great
> imagination for legal but contemptible and unethical tricks such as
> Gerrymandering, passing laws to restrict or encourage groups of voters
> that are likely to support whoever is currently in power, their
> ridiculous voter registration system, and so on.

Or like my daughter having given up on ever being allowed to register to
vote in the state she was born (Utah): They keep on circular filing her
application each time she tries, presumably because it would be more
paper work than they like, or (less generous interpretation) because
they assume anyone living in Norway will vote Democrat.
>
> The British system is more civilised - they stick firmly to the system
> that was picked long ago, when Britain still had a right to the
> adjective "Great", with no regard to how the control of the country
> differs from the popular vote. And most people vote for whoever Rupert
> Murdoch's newspapers tell them to vote.
>
> (Not that I am at all cynical...)

The question is "are you cinical enough?".

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:

> On 13/10/2021 10:55, clamky@hotmail.com wrote:
>> clamky@hotmail.com writes:
>>
>>> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 12/10/2021 19:21, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>>> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>>
>> [..]
>>
>>>
>>> CGP Grey[1] has some videos describing several different voting systems,
>>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cgp+voting&t=ffab&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos
>>>
>>> For me the videos were entertaining and educational at the same time.
>>
>> [1] Was supposed to contain some attempted humor regarding an American
>> (CGP Grey) moving to UK to take the space left behind by en-masse
>> Scottish migration to .no
>>
>
> Hey, I might be carrying a few extra kilos, but I'm not /that/ massive!

;)

>
> I'll have a little look at the videos later on.

It the mean time i'll watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined Great Britain

a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.

On 13/10/2021 14:19, clamky@hotmail.com wrote:
> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>
>> On 13/10/2021 10:55, clamky@hotmail.com wrote:
>>> clamky@hotmail.com writes:
>>>
>>>> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On 12/10/2021 19:21, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>>>> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>>>
>>> [..]
>>>
>>>>
>>>> CGP Grey[1] has some videos describing several different voting systems,
>>>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cgp+voting&t=ffab&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos
>>>>
>>>> For me the videos were entertaining and educational at the same time.
>>>
>>> [1] Was supposed to contain some attempted humor regarding an American
>>> (CGP Grey) moving to UK to take the space left behind by en-masse
>>> Scottish migration to .no
>>>
>>
>> Hey, I might be carrying a few extra kilos, but I'm not /that/ massive!
>
> ;)
>
>>
>> I'll have a little look at the videos later on.
>
> It the mean time i'll watch:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined Great Britain
>
> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
>

You'll have to watch <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10> first.

On 13/10/2021 14:17, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> David Brown wrote:
>> It looks like much of the world uses some kind of proportional
>> representation (there are several kinds).
>>
>> The UK has the old first-past-the-post system for British members of
>> parliament, but in Scotland the Scottish parliament uses proportional
>> representation (AFAIK - being an ex-pat, I don't vote there).
>>
>> Norway has proportional representation.  (I think Terje explained it
>> already somewhere.  I can't vote in the national elections here, as I am
>> not a citizen as yet.  I have to prove I can speak Norwegian before
>> they'll give me citizenship.  I've been fairly fluent for nearly 25
>> years, but I have to have it documented!)
>
> What you forgot to mention is that we have really universal voting
> rights in local elections: Anyone registered in the district (i.e.
> living there according to Folkeregisteret) can also vote since they
> presumbly care about local matters. Citizenship does not matter.

I can't remember off-hand if there are other requirements (such as
having a permanent residence permit rather than just temporarily living
here). But yes, I can (and do) vote in local elections. And you can be
a national MP even if you can't vote in the national elections. I think
that as a permanently settled non-citizen, the I believe the only things
I can't do are vote in the national elections, represent the country as
a diplomat (people familiar with some of my Usenet posts probably think
that's a good thing!), and go above a certain rank in the Norwegian
military.

>>
>>>
>>> Clearly I did not know about the Polish system.  Thanks for explaining
>>> it.  It does seem complex, but avoids the problems pointed out in
>>> Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.  Unfortunately, the US suffers from
>>> having its system set in stone long before Arrow pointed out the
>>> problems.  :-(
>>>
>>
>> The US is famous for taking election corruption to the extremes of legal
>> possibilities.  They don't have the honest corruption of some countries,
>> by jailing or assassinating your political enemies, but they have great
>> imagination for legal but contemptible and unethical tricks such as
>> Gerrymandering, passing laws to restrict or encourage groups of voters
>> that are likely to support whoever is currently in power, their
>> ridiculous voter registration system, and so on.
>
> Or like my daughter having given up on ever being allowed to register to
> vote in the state she was born (Utah): They keep on circular filing her
> application each time she tries, presumably because it would be more
> paper work than they like, or (less generous interpretation) because
> they assume anyone living in Norway will vote Democrat.

I'm just surprised to hear Utah allows women to vote at all...

>>
>> The British system is more civilised - they stick firmly to the system
>> that was picked long ago, when Britain still had a right to the
>> adjective "Great", with no regard to how the control of the country
>> differs from the popular vote.  And most people vote for whoever Rupert
>> Murdoch's newspapers tell them to vote.
>>
>> (Not that I am at all cynical...)
>
> The question is "are you cinical enough?".
>
> Terje
>

From Wikipedia:

"""
There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the
indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference
and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in
tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless
animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath
modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a
good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth
reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish
between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those
who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those
unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them.
"""

That's the original term "cynic", rather than the modern usage, but
while I am happy to eat in public and occasionally doze in a bath, I
think I am cynical enough already :-)

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> schrieb:
> Thomas Koenig wrote:
>> Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> schrieb:
>>
>>> I agree with that, more or less, but you didn't respond to my post which
>>> was how a liter of gasoline or diesel require so much electricity to
>>> refine it that you can more or less bypass the refinery and the ICE
>>> pollution and instead use the electricity in an EV.
>>
>> This is so implausible as to be almost ludicrous.
>
> I googled "how much electricity does it take to produce a liter of
> gasoline?" and the top of the search page was the following statement:
>
> About 238,000,000 results (0.68 seconds)
> You take an average of 5 kilowatt hours to refine gasoline,

How much gasoline? A liter? A cubic meter? A ton? A gallon?

Hmm... I just found some more on that claim. Seems Elon Musk
was the source, and he has been known to be hyperbolic, and
also to troll people on occasion (like very often).

Here's a thermodynamic analysis of that claim:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-exactly-how-much-electricity-does-take-produce-gallon-paul-martin

Basically, a little less than 20% of the thermal energy content
from raw crude to gasoline is used for distillation. Musk claims
that this can power an electric car, neatly sidestepping the
thermodynamic efficiencies involved. Seems like he's ignoring
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, at least.

Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> schrieb:

> The most obvious example is that they have declared they are
> going to stamp out (non-existent) postal voting fraud by
> introducing the need for photo id at the polling booth.
> It should take you several nanoseconds to work out which
> party that would benefit.

In Germany, you either need to show your voting card (which you
get sent via mail), or you show your photo ID. Works very well
if you have register of citizens.

Apart from the recent voting fiasco in Berlin (which they should
really overturn, that was so blatant) it is working rather well.

clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:

> It the mean time i'll watch:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined Great Britain
>
> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.

430 million years ago, England collided with Scotland.

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:

> On 13/10/2021 14:19, clamky@hotmail.com wrote:
>> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>>
>>> On 13/10/2021 10:55, clamky@hotmail.com wrote:
>>>> clamky@hotmail.com writes:
>>>>
>>>>> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/10/2021 19:21, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>>>>> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [..]
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> CGP Grey[1] has some videos describing several different voting systems,
>>>>> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cgp+voting&t=ffab&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos
>>>>>
>>>>> For me the videos were entertaining and educational at the same time.
>>>>
>>>> [1] Was supposed to contain some attempted humor regarding an American
>>>> (CGP Grey) moving to UK to take the space left behind by en-masse
>>>> Scottish migration to .no
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hey, I might be carrying a few extra kilos, but I'm not /that/ massive!
>>
>> ;)
>>
>>>
>>> I'll have a little look at the videos later on.
>>
>> It the mean time i'll watch:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined
>> Great Britain
>>
>> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
>> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
>>
>
> You'll have to watch <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10> first.

Truth be told i've seen them both in the past, my health predicament
makes me forget some stuff and makes life both miserable and fresh and
entertaining.

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:

> clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
>
>> It the mean time i'll watch:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined
>> Great Britain
>>
>> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
>> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
>
> 430 million years ago, England collided with Scotland.

Not sure how to interpret that. Was Wales nervously smoking nearby while
the collision was happening?

Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
> > Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> >> On 10/10/2021 12:02 AM, BGB wrote:
> >>
> >>> Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
> >>> US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
> >>> was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
> >>> prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.
> >>
> >> I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
> >> the leader directly. They are Parliamentary systems where the people
> >> vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
> >> the people choose the leader. I do believe the local elections are
> >> "first past the post".
> >
> > AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation".
>
> Is that true? I was basing my understanding of parliamentary systems on
> the UK and Canada, which I at least thought use first past the
> post/winner take all for the elections for their parliementary
> elections. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about their systems can
> chime in. (John Savard or David Brown respectively. Or others.)

You are looking at English zone where countries follow British tradition...
> Clearly I did not know about the Polish system. Thanks for explaining
> it. It does seem complex, but avoids the problems pointed out in
> Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Unfortunately, the US suffers from
> having its system set in stone long before Arrow pointed out the
> problems. :-(

Arrow's theorem is a mathematical law. I like the following
formulation: given multiple voters and multiple choice there
combinations of preferences so that there is no way to choose
result in way which will satisfy majority. That is, whatever
choice is made majority will prefer different choice (of course
the catch is that if you try to switch to different choice,
then new majority will form preffering yet another choice).

I do not think that proportional system really helps for
trouble caused by Arrow's theorem. Rather democracy works
well when voters have common preferences. When there are
split proferences, then minority empowerd by voting laws
can force its views on majority (and ATM in Poland this
is done in quite aggresive way).

> > My impressing is that original idea of D'Hooft rule was
> > to apply it in scale of country, then it would produce
> > reasonably accurate representation of voter preferences
> > to parties.
>
> I am unfamiliar with the D'Hooft rule, and the only references to
> D'Hooft I can find are about quantum physics. :-( Can you help me learn
> more?
As already mentioned in other posts I should have written D'Hondt..

> > As above, with threshold and districts
> > of order of 15% of voters are without representation and
> > next 10% gets tiny representation. OTOH big parties
> > end up with higher proportion of places than votes.
> >
> > Disadvantages are that party system with threshold means
> > that there are no independent candidates. Also,
> > candidates are strongly connected to party and only
> > weakly to voters in their district: personally unpopular
> > candidate has basically warranted place in parlament
> > when allocated to district where party is strong and
> > party does not provide enough alternative candidates.
> > On voter side, D'Hooft rule means that voter looks
> > more at party membership and less at personal qualites
> > of candidate.
> >
> > Anyway, this system is quite different than "first past
> > the post".
>
> Yes. Do you end up with party coalitions required required to get
> things done?

We get coalitions. If you look at details it is not clear
if Poland ever had single party government. Media say that
current government is PIS government, but in fact in 2015
they had coalition with two small parties that otherwise
would be excluded by 5% threshold. In 2019 we had slightly
different coalition setup. Currently there is minority
government that need to form coalitions to pass bills.
Concerning works done, new bills get passed and our laws
are constantly changing. But it is not clear it this is
really work done, important problems are unresolved.
In a sense most "work done" is in last 6 years, where
we had clear governing majority. But this is work towards
dismantling demokracy...

--
Waldek Hebisch

On Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 10:44:13 AM UTC-5, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> cla...@hotmail.com <cla...@hotmail.com> schrieb:
> > It the mean time i'll watch:
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined Great Britain
> >
> > a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
> > Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
> 430 million years ago, England collided with Scotland.
<
England has yet to recover............

On 13/10/21 16:42, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> schrieb:
>
>> The most obvious example is that they have declared they are
>> going to stamp out (non-existent) postal voting fraud by
>> introducing the need for photo id at the polling booth.
>> It should take you several nanoseconds to work out which
>> party that would benefit.
>
> In Germany, you either need to show your voting card (which you
> get sent via mail), or you show your photo ID. Works very well
> if you have register of citizens.
>
> Apart from the recent voting fiasco in Berlin (which they should
> really overturn, that was so blatant) it is working rather well.

We don't have a register of citizens or photo id; only
Johnny Foreigner needs those, because they can't trust
each other to act as gentlemen. Cough [1]

The nearest are passports (which not everybody has) and
driving licences. But my driving licence doesn't have a
photo, and won't unless I either move house or reach 70yo.

At the polling booth, you merely have to give your name
and address, without proof. They prefer it if you show
your polling card, but it isn't necessary.

[1] until 5 years ago, I was content that we had only
an "unwritten constitution", i.e. a set of procedures
that had worked in the past. Now I'm not so sure :(

On 10/13/2021 12:36 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 12/10/2021 19:21, Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>>> Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 10/10/2021 12:02 AM, BGB wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as
>>>>> the
>>>>> US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
>>>>> was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
>>>>> prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.
>>>>
>>>> I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
>>>> the leader directly.  They are Parliamentary systems where the people
>>>> vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
>>>> the people choose the leader.  I do believe the local elections are
>>>> "first past the post".
>>>
>>> AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation".
>>
>> Is that true? I was basing my understanding of parliamentary systems on
>> the UK and Canada, which I at least thought use first past the
>> post/winner take all for the elections for their parliementary
>> elections. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about their systems can
>> chime in. (John Savard or David Brown respectively.  Or others.)
>
> I know nothing about Canada here. But we can always look to Wikipedia :-)
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation>

Yes. I had come across that very article.

> It looks like much of the world uses some kind of proportional
> representation (there are several kinds).
>
> The UK has the old first-past-the-post system for British members of
> parliament, but in Scotland the Scottish parliament uses proportional
> representation (AFAIK - being an ex-pat, I don't vote there).

Yes. My observation was correct for the sample I was using (UK and
Canada), but the sample was terribly incomplete and quite biased. :-(

I am continuing to research the subject, relative advantages and
disadvantages of various systems, etc. Lots of new stuff to learn. :-)

>
> Norway has proportional representation. (I think Terje explained it
> already somewhere. I can't vote in the national elections here, as I am
> not a citizen as yet. I have to prove I can speak Norwegian before
> they'll give me citizenship. I've been fairly fluent for nearly 25
> years, but I have to have it documented!)
>
>>
>> Clearly I did not know about the Polish system.  Thanks for explaining
>> it.  It does seem complex, but avoids the problems pointed out in
>> Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.  Unfortunately, the US suffers from
>> having its system set in stone long before Arrow pointed out the
>> problems.  :-(
>>
>
> The US is famous for taking election corruption to the extremes of legal
> possibilities.

I can't speak to the fame, but clearly in the last 4 years we have
regressed. Prior to that, we had a long period of slow progress. It
seems that the Republicans realize that the long term voter trend is
against them, and are reacting by trying to use at least questionable,
and perhaps unconstitutional methods to hang on to their power.

> They don't have the honest corruption of some countries,
> by jailing or assassinating your political enemies, but they have great
> imagination for legal but contemptible and unethical tricks such as
> Gerrymandering, passing laws to restrict or encourage groups of voters
> that are likely to support whoever is currently in power, their
> ridiculous voter registration system, and so on.

Agreed. But I hope we will revert to the trend of say the 1960s till
the 2010s of slowly removing those problems. Time will tell. But note
that these are not a necessar result of first past the post voting, as
Canada seems not to have them.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>
>> clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
>>
>>> It the mean time i'll watch:
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined
>>> Great Britain
>>>
>>> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
>>> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
>>
>> 430 million years ago, England collided with Scotland.
>
> Not sure how to interpret that. Was Wales nervously smoking nearby while
> the collision was happening?

It was a geological collision - since then, the two parts have been
joined. (You'll find that in the Geology of Great Britain article
on wikipedia, under Silurian period. The years given there are
between 425 and 400 megayears, but I got the quote above from a
book and liked it).

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:

> clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>
>>> clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
>>>
>>>> It the mean time i'll watch:
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined
>>>> Great Britain
>>>>
>>>> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
>>>> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
>>>
>>> 430 million years ago, England collided with Scotland.
>>
>> Not sure how to interpret that. Was Wales nervously smoking nearby while
>> the collision was happening?
>
> It was a geological collision - since then, the two parts have been
> joined. (You'll find that in the Geology of Great Britain article
> on wikipedia, under Silurian period. The years given there are
> between 425 and 400 megayears, but I got the quote above from a
> book and liked it).

England in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Great_Britain links
to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England so my nitpicking stands.

On 10/13/2021 9:47 AM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
> Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
>> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>>> Stephen Fuld <sfuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 10/10/2021 12:02 AM, BGB wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
>>>>> US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
>>>>> was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
>>>>> prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.
>>>>
>>>> I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
>>>> the leader directly. They are Parliamentary systems where the people
>>>> vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
>>>> the people choose the leader. I do believe the local elections are
>>>> "first past the post".
>>>
>>> AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation".
>>
>> Is that true? I was basing my understanding of parliamentary systems on
>> the UK and Canada, which I at least thought use first past the
>> post/winner take all for the elections for their parliementary
>> elections. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about their systems can
>> chime in. (John Savard or David Brown respectively. Or others.)
>
> You are looking at English zone where countries follow British tradition...
>
>> Clearly I did not know about the Polish system. Thanks for explaining
>> it. It does seem complex, but avoids the problems pointed out in
>> Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Unfortunately, the US suffers from
>> having its system set in stone long before Arrow pointed out the
>> problems. :-(
>
> Arrow's theorem is a mathematical law. I like the following
> formulation: given multiple voters and multiple choice there
> combinations of preferences so that there is no way to choose
> result in way which will satisfy majority. That is, whatever
> choice is made majority will prefer different choice (of course
> the catch is that if you try to switch to different choice,
> then new majority will form preffering yet another choice).
>
> I do not think that proportional system really helps for
> trouble caused by Arrow's theorem.

I think the key is that Arrow's theorem doesn't apply when there are
more than one winner in each district. You described multi member
districts, which AFAIK is the key.

> Rather democracy works
> well when voters have common preferences. When there are
> split proferences, then minority empowerd by voting laws
> can force its views on majority (and ATM in Poland this
> is done in quite aggresive way).
>
>>> My impressing is that original idea of D'Hooft rule was
>>> to apply it in scale of country, then it would produce
>>> reasonably accurate representation of voter preferences
>>> to parties.
>>
>> I am unfamiliar with the D'Hooft rule, and the only references to
>> D'Hooft I can find are about quantum physics. :-( Can you help me learn
>> more?
>
> As already mentioned in other posts I should have written D'Hondt..

Got it. I am currently working my way through where that leads. Thanks
again for leading me to this subject.

snip

>>> Anyway, this system is quite different than "first past
>>> the post".
>>
>> Yes. Do you end up with party coalitions required required to get
>> things done?
>
> We get coalitions. If you look at details it is not clear
> if Poland ever had single party government. Media say that
> current government is PIS government, but in fact in 2015
> they had coalition with two small parties that otherwise
> would be excluded by 5% threshold. In 2019 we had slightly
> different coalition setup. Currently there is minority
> government that need to form coalitions to pass bills.
> Concerning works done, new bills get passed and our laws
> are constantly changing. But it is not clear it this is
> really work done, important problems are unresolved.
> In a sense most "work done" is in last 6 years, where
> we had clear governing majority. But this is work towards
> dismantling demokracy...

Interesting. Thanks again.

--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

On Tuesday, October 12, 2021 at 11:21:05 AM UTC-6, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 10/10/2021 5:52 PM, anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:

> > AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation".
>
> Is that true? I was basing my understanding of parliamentary systems on
> the UK and Canada, which I at least thought use first past the
> post/winner take all for the elections for their parliementary
> elections. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about their systems can
> chime in. (John Savard or David Brown respectively. Or others.)

Canada is definitely first past the post, but by "most countries" he could
well have been thinking about many quite different countries in another
part of the world.

John Savard

On 13 Oct 2021, David Brown wrote
(in article <sk62aq$nv1$1@dont-email.me>):
....
> It looks like much of the world uses some kind of proportional
> representation (there are several kinds).
>
> The UK has the old first-past-the-post system for British members of
> parliament, but in Scotland the Scottish parliament uses proportional
> representation (AFAIK - being an ex-pat, I don't vote there).

We do indeed, using the Additional Member System, rather like Germany.

> The British system is more civilised ...
> And most people vote for whoever Rupert Murdoch's newspapers tell them to vote.

Not in Scotland.
Most of us don't even vote for the BBC's preferred party.

--
Bill Findlay

On 13/10/2021 19:30, Tom Gardner wrote:
> On 13/10/21 16:42, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> schrieb:
>>
>>> The most obvious example is that they have declared they are
>>> going to stamp out (non-existent) postal voting fraud by
>>> introducing the need for photo id at the polling booth.
>>> It should take you several nanoseconds to work out which
>>> party that would benefit.
>>
>> In Germany, you either need to show your voting card (which you
>> get sent via mail), or you show your photo ID.  Works very well
>> if you have register of citizens.
>>
>> Apart from the recent voting fiasco in Berlin (which they should
>> really overturn, that was so blatant) it is working rather well.
>
> We don't have a register of citizens or photo id; only
> Johnny Foreigner needs those, because they can't trust
> each other to act as gentlemen. Cough [1]
>
> The nearest are passports (which not everybody has) and
> driving licences. But my driving licence doesn't have a
> photo, and won't unless I either move house or reach 70yo.
>
> At the polling booth, you merely have to give your name
> and address, without proof. They prefer it if you show
> your polling card, but it isn't necessary.
>
> [1] until 5 years ago, I was content that we had only
> an "unwritten constitution", i.e. a set of procedures
> that had worked in the past. Now I'm not so sure :(
>

The UK /does/ have a written constitution. It's just that, unlike most
countries, it is not all written in one place - it is a combination of a
vast number of laws, from different eras and different places, which
some laws for Scotland and some for the rest of the UK. I don't know if
that's much better than an /unwritten/ constitution!

On 13/10/2021 19:34, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>
>>> clamky@hotmail.com <clamky@hotmail.com> schrieb:
>>>
>>>> It the mean time i'll watch:
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3HnMLq8m9U - How Scotland Joined
>>>> Great Britain
>>>>
>>>> a funny title given that Great Britain is an island and
>>>> Scotland "joined it" by the virtue of existing.
>>>
>>> 430 million years ago, England collided with Scotland.
>>
>> Not sure how to interpret that. Was Wales nervously smoking nearby while
>> the collision was happening?
>
> It was a geological collision - since then, the two parts have been
> joined. (You'll find that in the Geology of Great Britain article
> on wikipedia, under Silurian period. The years given there are
> between 425 and 400 megayears, but I got the quote above from a
> book and liked it).
>

The Silurian period - that's when the lizards ruled the earth, right?
And some would say they still do on that lump that crashed into Scotland...

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
>The Silurian period - that's when the lizards ruled the earth, right?

Wrong, as can be easily seen on
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fish_evolution.png>

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>>and you will also have EU-wide calm periods. One or two weeks
>>>is not uncommon, this is the feared "Dunkelflaute" (dark wind lull).
>>
>> Citation needed. Looking at
>><https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressekonferenzen/DE/2018/PK_06_03_2018/pressemitteilung_20180306.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4>,
>> it says that there are 0.2 cases per year with low (<10% rated power)
>> over 48hours across the whole of EU; but that relates to the PV and
>> Wind installations of 2018; with better distribution of such
>> installations, I expect the number of such cases to become smaller.
>
>Look at
>
>https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&interval=month&year=2017&month=01
>
>between the 16th and the 25th of 2017, for the energy production
>in Germany. Existing wind turbines were at around 5% of their
>nominal capacity.

I see that this is data about Germany, not the EU, and that there was
much more solar power production in that time span than in the weeks
before 2017-01-16, and that the time span you picked is more than four
years ago, which does not speak for a high frequency of such events.

>Statistical bromides like what the DWD presented there

Another word learned. But if you want to counter that with
statistical alarmism, you need better data than what you presented.

>Wind turbines are not such a safe technology either, look at
>
>https://www.halternerzeitung.de/haltern/eingestuerztes-windrad-in-haltern-experte-sieht-zwei-moegliche-ursachen-w1683177-p-3000348499/

This tells that the tower of a wind turbine collapsed (no people were
harmed), and contains some speculation of possible causes.

It seems that you grasp at all kinds of straws to make wind power look
bad. Two months ago you blamed the fires in Greece on people wanting
to build wind turbines, pointing to a tabloid newspaper as source (I
made a critique of the newspaper article, it's headline and your claim
in <2021Aug9.122049@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
<2021Aug10.094644@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>, but just in short: The
author of the piece cited one person who made such a claim without
presenting any evidence; the tabloid made a headline that says 'Greeks
report: "<claim>"'; and you then wrote: '<claim>, as claimed in
<link>').

>>>I've run a few calculations a few years back. If you wanted to
>>>bridge two week's electricity demand in winter of Germany alone,
>>>you would have to lift Lake Constance by 200 m. Lake Constance
>>>has around 1/6 of the annual rainfall on Germany, so any reasonable
>>>amount of hydro storage is going to involve geoengineering on
>>>a scale that nobody has even dreamt of up to now.
>>
>> If you add up the various reserviors of hydro dams, you will find that
>> we have made a lot of geo-engineering in the last century.
>
>Simply not on that scale, off by a factor of several orders
>of magnitude.

Here's Lake Constance compared to some artificial reservoirs:

Volume Lake/
m^3 Reservoir
48,000M Lake Constance
132,000M Lake Nasser (Aswan Dam)
32,236M Lake Mead (Hoover Dam)
30,001M Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam)
39,300M Three Gorges Dam
29,000M Itaipu Reservoir (Itaipu Dam)
74,000M Millenium Reservoir (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam)
48,700M Atatuerk Reservoir (Atatuerk Dam)
57,300M Kuybyshev Reservoir (Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station)
135,000M Guri Reservoir (Guri Dam)

Unprecedented? Several orders of magnitude?

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>

On Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 5:18:39 PM UTC+3, Anton Ertl wrote:
> Thomas Koenig <tko...@netcologne.de> writes:
> >Anton Ertl <an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
> >> Thomas Koenig <tko...@netcologne.de> writes:
> >>>and you will also have EU-wide calm periods. One or two weeks
> >>>is not uncommon, this is the feared "Dunkelflaute" (dark wind lull).
> >>
> >> Citation needed. Looking at
> >><https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressekonferenzen/DE/2018/PK_06_03_2018/pressemitteilung_20180306.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4>,
> >> it says that there are 0.2 cases per year with low (<10% rated power)
> >> over 48hours across the whole of EU; but that relates to the PV and
> >> Wind installations of 2018; with better distribution of such
> >> installations, I expect the number of such cases to become smaller.
> >
> >Look at
> >
> >https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&interval=month&year=2017&month=01
> >
> >between the 16th and the 25th of 2017, for the energy production
> >in Germany. Existing wind turbines were at around 5% of their
> >nominal capacity.
>
> I see that this is data about Germany, not the EU, and that there was
> much more solar power production in that time span than in the weeks
> before 2017-01-16, and that the time span you picked is more than four
> years ago, which does not speak for a high frequency of such events.
>
> >Statistical bromides like what the DWD presented there
>
> Another word learned. But if you want to counter that with
> statistical alarmism, you need better data than what you presented.
>
> >Wind turbines are not such a safe technology either, look at
> >
> >https://www.halternerzeitung.de/haltern/eingestuerztes-windrad-in-haltern-experte-sieht-zwei-moegliche-ursachen-w1683177-p-3000348499/
>
> This tells that the tower of a wind turbine collapsed (no people were
> harmed), and contains some speculation of possible causes.
>
> It seems that you grasp at all kinds of straws to make wind power look
> bad. Two months ago you blamed the fires in Greece on people wanting
> to build wind turbines, pointing to a tabloid newspaper as source (I
> made a critique of the newspaper article, it's headline and your claim
> in <2021Aug...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
> <2021Aug1...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>, but just in short: The
> author of the piece cited one person who made such a claim without
> presenting any evidence; the tabloid made a headline that says 'Greeks
> report: "<claim>"'; and you then wrote: '<claim>, as claimed in
> <link>').
>
> >>>I've run a few calculations a few years back. If you wanted to
> >>>bridge two week's electricity demand in winter of Germany alone,
> >>>you would have to lift Lake Constance by 200 m. Lake Constance
> >>>has around 1/6 of the annual rainfall on Germany, so any reasonable
> >>>amount of hydro storage is going to involve geoengineering on
> >>>a scale that nobody has even dreamt of up to now.
> >>
> >> If you add up the various reserviors of hydro dams, you will find that
> >> we have made a lot of geo-engineering in the last century.
> >
> >Simply not on that scale, off by a factor of several orders
> >of magnitude.
>
> Here's Lake Constance compared to some artificial reservoirs:
>
> Volume Lake/
> m^3 Reservoir
> 48,000M Lake Constance
> 132,000M Lake Nasser (Aswan Dam)
> 32,236M Lake Mead (Hoover Dam)
> 30,001M Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam)
> 39,300M Three Gorges Dam
> 29,000M Itaipu Reservoir (Itaipu Dam)
> 74,000M Millenium Reservoir (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam)
> 48,700M Atatuerk Reservoir (Atatuerk Dam)
> 57,300M Kuybyshev Reservoir (Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station)
> 135,000M Guri Reservoir (Guri Dam)
>

You forgot top2, Lake Kariba and Bratsk Reservoir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir#List_of_reservoirs_by_volume

> Unprecedented? Several orders of magnitude?
> - anton
> --
> 'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
> Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7...@googlegroups.com>

Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:
>>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>>>>and you will also have EU-wide calm periods. One or two weeks
>>>>is not uncommon, this is the feared "Dunkelflaute" (dark wind lull).
>>>
>>> Citation needed. Looking at
>>><https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressekonferenzen/DE/2018/PK_06_03_2018/pressemitteilung_20180306.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4>,
>>> it says that there are 0.2 cases per year with low (<10% rated power)
>>> over 48hours across the whole of EU; but that relates to the PV and
>>> Wind installations of 2018; with better distribution of such
>>> installations, I expect the number of such cases to become smaller.
>>
>>Look at
>>
>>https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&interval=month&year=2017&month=01
>>
>>between the 16th and the 25th of 2017, for the energy production
>>in Germany. Existing wind turbines were at around 5% of their
>>nominal capacity.
>
> I see that this is data about Germany, not the EU, and that there was
> much more solar power production in that time span than in the weeks
> before 2017-01-16, and that the time span you picked is more than four
> years ago, which does not speak for a high frequency of such events.

Not sure if you would minda total crash of the electricity supply
every five years or so, with industry going down. No heating,
because modern heaters depend on electricity. Water pipes freezing,
all that sort of stuff. And for a looong time, because there will
not be much power before or after, either.

However, it probably would not affect all of the EU. Poland is already
installing phase shift transformers to decouple itself from the wild
swings in frequency that Germny sends over, so they might get off
lightly.

This winter will be a good test how well the "renewable" energies
work. I don't see why people complain about rising energy prices
- they voted in the politicians who made the decisions that led
to this.

>
>>Statistical bromides like what the DWD presented there
>
> Another word learned. But if you want to counter that with
> statistical alarmism, you need better data than what you presented.
>
>>Wind turbines are not such a safe technology either, look at
>>
>>https://www.halternerzeitung.de/haltern/eingestuerztes-windrad-in-haltern-experte-sieht-zwei-moegliche-ursachen-w1683177-p-3000348499/
>
> This tells that the tower of a wind turbine collapsed (no people were
> harmed), and contains some speculation of possible causes.

They were lucky, not 12 hours later the initiation ceremony was
to be held. Next time, maybe not so lucky.

Lack of official inspections is one thing there.

>>>>I've run a few calculations a few years back. If you wanted to
>>>>bridge two week's electricity demand in winter of Germany alone,
>>>>you would have to lift Lake Constance by 200 m. Lake Constance
>>>>has around 1/6 of the annual rainfall on Germany, so any reasonable
>>>>amount of hydro storage is going to involve geoengineering on
>>>>a scale that nobody has even dreamt of up to now.
>>>
>>> If you add up the various reserviors of hydro dams, you will find that
>>> we have made a lot of geo-engineering in the last century.
>>
>>Simply not on that scale, off by a factor of several orders
>>of magnitude.
>
> Here's Lake Constance compared to some artificial reservoirs:
>
> Volume Lake/
> m^3 Reservoir
> 48,000M Lake Constance
> 132,000M Lake Nasser (Aswan Dam)

Last time I looked at a map, that was in Egypt. The have this
convenient thing called "Nile valley" there. Not sure where
you want to put this in Europe. Do you have a suggestion?
Maybe you don't like Innsbruck, we can flood that valley?

> 32,236M Lake Mead (Hoover Dam)
> 30,001M Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam)
> 39,300M Three Gorges Dam
> 29,000M Itaipu Reservoir (Itaipu Dam)
> 74,000M Millenium Reservoir (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam)
> 48,700M Atatuerk Reservoir (Atatuerk Dam)
> 57,300M Kuybyshev Reservoir (Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station)
> 135,000M Guri Reservoir (Guri Dam)
>
> Unprecedented? Several orders of magnitude?

If we lack convenient gorges, yes.