Voting in the Australian Federal Election 2010

Hey all! I am very excited today.  Guess what?
I'm going to vote today, YAY!!!
Yes I actually am that excited, I am in no way being ironic, I love politics and voting actually excites me.  I understand this is a bit odd and I don't expect others to feel as excited about it as I do.  I also have some strong opinions about voting that I don't expect others to share.  For example I believe that voting is a responsibility not a right and if you don't vote you aren't being a productive member of society.  I also believe that everyone should read the constitution of the country they live in, and I don't want to hear you talk about your rights unless you've read it.  But I understand that not everyone is interested in politics and until I become Ruler of the Universe you can all go on your merry way doing whatever you want.

I would like to clear up a couple of misconceptions I've heard about voting in Australia though.

Update: I voted!

• If you don't know how to vote I strongly recommend you do this easy, interactive sample vote on the Australian Electoral Commission's website (warning the audio starts automatically).
• You must attend a polling station on election day and get your name crossed of the electoral roll, and you must put your ballot in the box, if you can't and you have a legitimate reason I believe you can let them know when you get your fine why you couldn't vote.  Or just pay the fine its about $50.
• DO NOT DONKEY VOTE! A donkey vote is numbering the boxes straight down 1-5 because you don't care or don't know the candidates, a donkey vote is a valid vote and you may find yourself accidentally electing someone you can't stand.  If you genuinely don't know or don't care cast an informal vote, you can leave it blank, you can write a 1,000 word essay on why voting is for pussies, just don't donkey vote.
• Informal votes ARE NOT automatically counted towards the sitting member in your area, I have heard this on several occasions and it is not true at all.  Informal votes do not count towards the tally of any candidate they are only counted to try to make sure the number of people crossed of the electoral roll and number ballots are equal.
• Ignore Mark Latham.  This is good advice in general but I'm specifically talking about his suggestion that you cast a blank vote because the two major parties aren't worth electing.  This is not going to send the politicians a message, if you don't vote other people will and one of the major parties will still come to power.  A more effective way of sending a message to the major parties is to vote for an independent candidate or a minor party.  If enough people do they may win some seats and be able to change things.  Even if they aren't elected parties are given money based on their performance in the election, so the move votes minor parties get the more federal money they receive and the better they will perform in the next election.  Casting a blank ballot does NOTHING to further the political dialogue in Australia.
• You do not have to vote if you are overseas but you can at your local consulate or embassy.  I'm going to do this today and I'll let you know how it goes.
• Your vote is secret, no one will know who you voted for unless you tell them.  Australia was the first country in the World to enact the secret ballot so yay for us!

A New Dark Age?

Any good writing on history will include a mention of what sources the author had available and what sources are missing or destroyed.  History has been plagued by these lost sources. 

An accurate portrayal of Robin Hood?

Were Robin Hood, King Arthur or Jesus real people? Composites of a few people? Entirely made up? Historians have no real idea because no definitive sources.  There are sources written afterwards, sources that contradict each other, sources written by people with clear agendas to make these people seem like heroes or villains.
One of the first things many family or friends did upon the death of a person was to burn any documents that could prove embarrassing to their memory.  Anne Frank's father edited her diaries before publishing them, luckily he kept the original manuscript and a complete version was published in 1950 but thousands and thousands of documents weren't that lucky.
Many documents simply don't survive the ravages of time, I just finished reading a book about the search of the Northwest Passage which ended with a description of the search for Franklin's lost expedition which cost over a hundred men their lives.  We still know very little about his last trip because the documents didn't survive, ship's logs were meticulously written and usually guarded by captains with their lives however in the end Franklin's were destroyed by weather, or perhaps were given to Inuit children as toys.

I could go on and on but I haven't mentioned the actual reason I started writing this.  It is something that I wonder about occasionally.  We have so much information floating around, some of it important, some of it utterly banal.  You may think this would be a boon for the historians of the future but maybe not so much.  Lets say you had put a touching letter to your grandchild on a floppy disk and buried it in a time capsule so they could read it on their wedding day, would they be able to open it? Would they even know what it was? 
One of the reasons we call the Dark Ages the Dark Ages is because we know so little about that time, we picture it as a backwards time where people were poor and miserable and dirty but they fact is we don't know what their lives were really like.  A lot of people were illiterate and a lot of what was written down is missing.

What will the historians of the future know about us? What will the have access to? What will survive? What judgments will they make about us with the information they have? I wonder if a future historian will pour over my twitters and try to make sense of what the world was like? God help them.

Step Up 4, Dancin' on a Train

I went to see Step Up 3D with friends today and it was a great film.  By great I mean terrible but I love shitty dance movies. One thing about the film struck me as particularly ridiculous (and there was a lot of ridiculous to pick from), towards the end of the film the girl (who's Australian by the way, in the movie she's American but has been living in London for a few years, this isn't relevant to the plot I think they just put it in so they wouldn't have to explain why her American accent was a bit off), tells the guy that the could go anywhere "even California." She says it in a way like California is this strange foreign land, that they'll have to smuggle themselves across the country from New York where the movie is set.

Later on in the film it becomes clear why she thinks getting from the West Coast to the East Coast in 2010 is the same as getting from East Berlin to West Berlin in 1974.  As the major dance battle is about to start she tells the guy that he should give up the battle and come with her to California, she has a train ticket.  This sent my group into hysterics.  A train? To California? From New York? In 2010? What the hell is this girl on?

Of course I had to come home and look it up.  Now they never say in the movie where in California they are going but they talk about film school so I'm assuming its LA.  She leaves from Grand Central Station in NYC which is not where Amtrak leaves from but I have no clue how else she would get to California on a train I'm assuming she was going to get a local train from Grand Central to Penn Station which according to Google would take 12 minutes and she'd still have to walk and since all her friends came to see her off I don't know why they just didn't start at Penn Station since they were coming in from Brooklyn.

So to get the train from New York to Los Angeles little miss whatever her name is is looking at a lowest price of $248 at a trip taking 67hrs and 37min, but it could cost her as much as 90+hrs.  As someone who's spent 27hrs on an Amtrak train I can tell you the coach seats are pretty comfotable they recline pretty far and if you get a window you have a lot of room.  But trains never run on time, if you break down (and you will) it takes hours for repairs and if the toilet breaks (which it will) there will be no bathroom in your car, which is probably a good thing if you've ever used a train bathroom but when you stop you will be able to get out but you won't have time to go to the bathroom.  Unless like this girl does you have to change trains, and wait a few hours, you can either hang out in the train station for 8hrs or lug your bags around Chicago all day.

Lets compare this to flying.  Now if she had booked ahead she could have gotten a pretty good deal according to Orbiz.com $159 including taxes on American Airlines but she'd have to pay for a bag, JetBlue is the same price and it leaves later and you don't have to pay for your bag and their seats are pretty comfy so I'd pick them.  This is of course if she'd booked a month in advance if she booked a day ahead of time she would have to pay nearly $500 which is pretty steep but its direct.  However, and I think this is a valuable point, you will be in California in 5hrs instead of 3 days!
 
Maybe she loves trains? I enjoy train trips one of the things I want to do before I die is take the TransSiberian railway and other great train journeys however in this case she wasn't taking a leisurely journey across America, taking in the sites and meeting new people.  Nor was she trying to make a point about how people are too concerned about instant gratification and are missing out on the importance that taking time to smell the roses is to us as a species. She was running away from her problems and trying to start a new life.  Maybe Amtrak sponsored the film?

I am looking forward to the next Step Up which I assume will include a dance battle on a train, imagine the choreography.