Everyone who hasn't been following LJ News assiduously, please read and consider acting on gerald_duck's post here!

DH just came in with a little puzzle, which some of you might like.

int m = 3;
printf ("%d %d %d", m++, m++, m++);

Prints (with gcc)? Guess and check :-)

[My real name] has just discovered the joy of "Hide all posts by [annoying distant colleague]" on her Facebook feed.

Lib Dems entering government with the Tories will be "like vegetarians who've got jobs at McDonald's - they'll be chewed up and spat out", Labour MP Stephen Pound tells Sky News.
Err... how many vegetarian McDonald's employees does this happen to per year, approximately?

From one MarcJohnson on a BBC comment thread:
Need For Change!!! A Simple Fair Solution. Voting in the Commons so that each party's MP's vote is weighted according to their proportion of the popular vote. So if ALL the Conservative MPs voted their combined vote would be weighted to equal 36%, Labour 29% and Lib Dems 23%. Keeps local representation while representing the national will. Extreme parties such as BNP who do not win a single seat would be unrepresented unlike regular PR options.
What obvious flaw with this scheme am I missing? I suppose it has some weird potential, e.g., suppose that as a result of this 15% of people overall voted Green, but they still only won one seat by FPTP, you'd end up with one immensely powerful MP subjected to an endless stream of bribery attempts... and you'd have to decide what happens if a sitting MP changes party...

If the electorate cannot be trusted(!) to vote the way they tell opinion pollsters they will, apparently out of inertia, what chance they'd actually vote for PR? I think if I were DC I might feel that agreeing to a referendum on PR, in which I'd campaign hard against it, was not so great a risk; and if he offered it, surely Nick Clegg could not refuse. So: referendum on PR, which results in a reaffirmation of FPTP, and then immediately another election that produces a Con majority?

ETA: actually, I suppose the explanation could simply lie in the number of "I'm definitely going to vote, but I haven't decided who for"s, which was high even at the end - I think I heard 25% even? Suppose those people overwhelmingly didn't vote LibDem (say, because CleggMania was such that anyone who felt like voting LD had already decided to do so). Actually, that in itself is enough to explain the difference between the 27-28% the final polls showed and the 22-23% they actually got.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

Quote of the day, from one General McMaster: “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

Very interesting, and rather encouraging, I thought. And not to exclude my non-UK friends, is there any equivalent in the US?
http://www.democracyclub.org.uk/

Some of the big issues are frankly beyond my competence to judge: as a mathematician I have too much experience of counter-intuitive results; I know that intuition about issues too large for proof is an unreliable guide. Smaller issues can be easier to be sure about. This kind of ideology-before-evidence, IMHO, is why we don't want a majority Tory government:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-cameron-is-concealing-his-inner-bush-1958432.html

Electoral reform is one of the big issues where I have strong intuition that may, yet, be wrong. However, I see the advent of a more representative electoral system as the best way to push politicians into taking notice of evidence when they make policy: you have a better chance of convincing members of other parties that your evidence is correct than that your ideology is. I'm with this letter: May 2010 offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape politics for the better. It must be seized.

A Joke Making the Rounds in Iceland Today

Britain: Iceland are you crazy?!? Why did you send us volcanic ash ? Our airspace has shut down.

Iceland: What ? That's what you asked for isn't it ?

Britain: NO! We said cash! Cash you dyslexic idiot. CASH!

Iceland: Woooops...

----------------------------------------------------------

To the British and Dutch Governments: There is no C in the Icelandic alphabet, so when you ask for Cash, all you get is ...

Link to source