2010 Travelogue

I’m not usually very good with taking heaps of pictures and distributing them. But lets give it a go shall we, and lo and behold, here is an attempt to bore you. I maintain that this is a better medium than that other popular website since I don’t want to give all the details of my private life to some loser that dropped out of that small liberal arts college up the river.

Notre Dame, with Siene in foreground

Paris je t’aime. Is starting with a picture of a canonical landmark considered good form?

At the Louvre

This is a picture of all the bloody tourists doing what every tourist wants to do and take a picture of the Mona Lisa. It is at this point in the exposition that I am tempted to try to insert a dirty joke, but will refrain from doing so out of respect of those who haven’t seen the Mona Lisa.

Venus de Milo

This is also at the Louvre. Unfortunately it didn’t come in gummy form.

The Indian Ocean

My most local beach. The texture of the sand, the surf, really makes me feel back home.

Yes these pictures are being shown in chronological order

Lagrange, Laplace et al. I had no idea before visiting that these greats are venerated on this most famous of landmarks.

WTF mate?

Seen in Den Haag.

a church (duh)

Europe seems replete with splendid churches. This particular specimen was found in Den Bosch, which I visited as it is apparently a more “dutchee” town, and is the home of the lovely dessert, the Bossche Bol, which I strongly recommend.

Brugge, Belgium

More precisely this picture was taken from the top of the tower in the centre of town. Brugge is a quaint and beautiful town, complete with cobblestone-lined streets, delicious Belgian chocolate and a large population of tourists.

Foucault's Pendulum

mmm, science. In the Pantheon.

My office at Stanford

Yes this is a slide rule. Clearly if I want to be at the forefront of mathematical research, then I need access to all the cutting edge computational machinery that mankind has developed. (At the time of writing, I do not have a computer in said office).

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for your attention, and I’ll appear on your RSS reader again when next something interesting happens.

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On the 2010 WA Senate Election Results

Firstly, all data here is taken from the AEC website.

Now I am not a fan of above the line voting, and to put it bluntly, if someone isn’t going to think enough about who they want to vote for to vote below the line, then their vote doesn’t deserve to count. So with this as a starting point, lets take a look at what the results would look like if only below the line votes were counted.

Rachel Sierwart of the Greens is now way out in front, with more than two quotas, with the first Liberal and Labor candidates each just short of a quota.

(name, party, votes, percent of below the line votes)
SIEWERT, Rachel The Greens 11694 30.96
CORMANN, Mathias Liberal 5215 13.81
EVANS, Chris Australian Labor Party 4692 12.42
MARTIN, Justine Australian Sex Party 2360 6.25
McCOURT, John The Nationals 1727 4.57
YOUNG, Trevor Christian Democratic Party 1436 3.8
CUNNINGHAM, Christine The Greens 855 2.26
ROSE, Linda Family First 758 2.01
YOUNG, Paul James Australian Democrats 613 1.62
PEAKE, Paul Shooters and Fishers 597 1.58
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GOODLAD, John 10 0.03.

Now unfortunately we don’t have the information available to us to compute a proper distribution of preferences based on these results – all we know is that Rachel Siewart would get re-elected (as happened in the real thing). In the absence of any other method available, I went to Anotony Green’s senate calculator and entered the percentage of below the line votes that each candidate received to produce a result. This calculator distributes preferences as if every vote was an above the line ticket vote.

And for the results, the following candidates would be elected:

1 Rachel SIEWERT Australian Greens
2 Mathias CORMANN Liberal Party
3 Chris EVANS Australian Labor Party
4 Kado MUIR Australian Greens
5 Trevor YOUNG Christian Democratic Party
6 Justine MARTIN Australian Sex Party

Wow! What an incredibly more awesome result than the 3 Liberal/2 Labor/1 Green that the election produced. If only …

To finish on a sadder note, the number of below the line votes (37773) was less than the number of informal votes (40490).