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Shuttles FREEDOM!!!! and INDEPENDENCE!!!!

Man am I glad NASA is more creative when naming real spacecraft

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Satapathy

Some people think there should be only two parties, so that there can be stable governments. I agree. One of those parties is Loksatta, the other can be anyone :-)

Jokes apart, there is a problem. Vote share is continuing to fracture, as more and more parties are coming up. When AAP joins the fray next, KA is likely to have at least seven fairly intentional parties soon. So, all other things being what they are, we will rarely see candidates who get more than 40% of the vote in future elections. Virtually everyone is about to be elected on a minority vote share.

There is no point in wishing there were fewer parties, for the reason mentioned above - every party will think that it should be one of those that remain. This problem is not unique to India. Around the world there are many multi-party democracies, and they have all crossed this threshold, by and large. Germany, Israel, South Africa are places from which we can learn how.

The answer lies in understanding the risks of the current system. What we now have is a 'first-past-the-post' system. Whoever gets the most votes win, regardless of how much percentage of the vote that is. I.e. even if you get only 10% of the vote, you will win if every other candidate gets less than 10%. As a result, 90% of the people may have voted for someone other than the winner.

Also, with every new party that is formed, the threshold for winning gets lowered. If there are 2 parties, you need 50% to win. If there are 22, 5% may be enough !! As a result India has become a strange democracy, where someone who gets 100 seats in Parliament sits in opposition, while someone who gets 10 seats is in government.

This problem has been around for many decades. We are unlikely to ever get a ruling coalition that has obtained more than 50% of the vote, even when there are pre-election alliances. We absolutely need electoral reform.

One solution, which many countries have adopted, is to abandon the first-past-the-post system, and move to Proportionate Representation. This works as follows - if a party gets 8% of the vote share, it will get 8% of the seats. This means that every vote counts more than in FPTP, because votes add up to vote-share, so there is no way your vote can be wasted.

Of course as a result of PR, no party may get an absolute majority, but that is true anyway, even today. What PR does is eliminate the impact of 'concentration' of votes. A vote is a vote, regardless of where it is cast. Most countries that use PR follow a system of multi-member constituencies so that there is a 'local' vote and a PR vote.

Also, parties that get less than 5% of the vote get nothing in PR, so this also ensures that parties with a minimum threshold of support are the ones that exist in the long run. Parties also have an incentive to form an ideological basis and seek votes on that, rather than just cults as now.

Everyone who has fought for progress in India understands that electoral reform is at the heart of the changes that are needed. But Congress and BJP have both resisted it, and that has made it difficult to push this change through. However, the national trend in recent years has been one of declining vote share for both parties, and if only to consolidate their positions, they are beginning to have a rethink now.

Richardson

From a Sister

It was June 1995, I was in 7th standard. Me, my elder brother and sister had been in Srinagar for studies when one morning we heard the shocking news of our eldest sister of being martyred by Indian forces. We even could not see her face last time. She was the mother of a 2 month old baby ; he is in 12th standard now. Right after 8 months of the incident, we lost our uncle and within 3 months, my other uncle was also martyred. Within 5 yrs we lost 15 to 20 relatives, all innocent. But here i want confess that i am proud to be called as sister of martyrs. After 40 days of her martyrdom, she came in dream of her husband and asked him to do something about the wetness inside her grave, because she could not pray properly. After consulting the local imam, and one f the Islamic scholar we opened her grave and honestly, there we saw the sweet fragrance and blood was still oozing from her body as it was coming on the 1st day of her martyrdom.
it dosesn’t matter for us if we make India bow down before us or they kill us, in both the cases only we win. Because we believe in here and Hereafter!!

May Allah grant highest of place to the martyrs in Jannah.

Lakhanpal

Several people have written to me and asked me why I am so quiet and avoiding all political issues.

Its because I am so tried of all the hate and arguing. There was a time when i loved to debate with my friends on FB, but something has changed. Now its the GB mentality of "If your not with us, your against us, hence you are now the enemy." And that comes from both my conservative and liberal friends.

Very few people want me to have my own opinion. And if I do have one, it better be chock full of verifiable "facts," and not one philosophical idea, as those cannot be fact checked :/

I am tired of people trying to put me and others I see in boxes. I dont care if its a conservative box, a liberal box, a believers box, or an atheist box. It's a freakin' box people. It has limits by it's very nature.

Richard Bach once wrote "argue enough for your limitations, and sure enough, you'll get to keep them." Wise words.

Keep all your boxes. I dont fit in any box. As a matter of fact, the only place I scored off the charts on my IQ tests was in abstract thinking... and that is thinking outside of the box. I do indeed have *original* thoughts.

Try it sometime. And try to stop hating everyone that isnt the same as you are.

Yeah, I know, another abstract thought... someone call the thought police :/

Zhōu

Chaos hijacks all plots. Even ones I came up with in WoW.

Agnihotri

seriously. bored. help.

Scott

Their number is Legion, their name is Death.

Bell

Hello, and happy Tuesday. On the program today, we talk jobs and wages. New data from the Federal Government says that workers in 7 of the 10 largest occupations make less than 30K per year. In some professions, like food service, that number drops to less than 19K per year. Today, we'll talk about the impact of low wages on the economy. Is paying a low wage good for a company's bottom line in the long run? There's a lot to unpack here. Join me at ten. - CF

Rodríguez

Camouflage is the colour of fear... I have no need to hide from my foes... I have no fear of death. My colours I wear openly, they proclaim louder than any words, "I am proud to live - I am proud to die."

Morris

The price of cars in the USA is really depressing.. I saw a mint condition (second hand) 2009 Porsche Cayenne in a car year today in LA for $18,000... WTF!

We pay too much for our cars....

Nelson

What are some good horror movies I should watch?

Rath

Easter, the most important day in the Christian calendar, is just another pagan holiday the church stole, contorted, and reappropriated for its own purposes. And as usual, the Pagan original is far superior. Oestremonat, the month of Estre, was observed by the Saxons, and presented the sex goddess as a symbolic patron of spring and all the fertility which accompanies it. What is the Christian version of that myth. Oh, you know, he died for you, and you need to respect that sacrifice, because it was for YOU. Oh yeah, and It's 100% proven true because it says so in the Bible, an anthology of Judeo-Christian literature written by hundreds of scribes. WAKE UP. What does Jesus have to do with Spring? If you celebrate Easter, you need to admit that the eggs and bunnies tradition comes from pagan cultures your church oppressed and suppressed wickedly and mendaciously. Then you might also admit, while you're at it, that those customs made way, way, way more sense for a celebration of Spring than pretending the Hebrew messiah came back to save you.

Sahni

Anyone have any idea what on earth this is? Found it crawling up my compost bin today. Like a maggot with a rats tail. Weirdest thing I ever did see.

Murphy

Authors, what is the word count for a novella versus a novel versus a short story?