So, I realised what the current world situation feels like.

I remember growing up in the 1980s. As kids we were existentially worried about a lot of things.

• We worried about AIDS – a frightening disease with no cure that could turn into an unstoppable epidemic.
• We worried about the ozone hole – a major environmental issue that could lead to vastly increased rates of cancer and deleterious effects on plants and animals.
• We worried about global nuclear war – a political danger that threatened to kill pretty much everyone in horrible ways.

It seemed like there was a pretty good chance that none of us would have the chance to grow up to be adults, because civilisation might well not last that long. It was this background of all-pervading existential angst that underlaid the 80s.

But now isn’t an exact parallel to the 80s. The difference back then was:

• We had medical science that people trusted to do life-saving research and less ineffective folk remedies, anti-science, and unhealthy paranoia about “germs” leading to rampant overuse of antibacterials.
• We had an international agreement to ban ozone-depleting chemicals, and every nation carried through with it within a few years, rather than ignoring it as “too hard”.
• We had Russian and American leaders who were actually working together to try to defuse hostilities and reduce the threat of a major war.

Oh, and the other good thing about the 80s was that angst led to a decade of cool protest songs and other music. :-)

Does nobody else see the irony in this?
English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point

Sure, protest. But to do it by flouting one of Wikipedia’s own strong principles is undermining their credibility. And annoying. Organise a protest march, petition people, whatever. But to deliberately make things inconvenient for millions of people just to make a point is childish.

For about the past six weeks now, every time I go into a supermarket I check for toothbrushes. And I haven’t been able to find any suitable for use in our bathroom. There are two problems:

1. We want toothbrushes with soft bristles. Our dentist and all tooth care advice I’ve ever seen, anywhere, ever, says you should only ever use soft toothbrushes. They’re gentler on teeth and gums, they clean just as well, and they don’t cause problems of abrasion or irritation. Every dental professional I’ve ever heard has repeated the same thing. Never, ever, for any reason, use medium or hard toothbrushes, always use soft. The problem seems to be that (a) everyone has heard the exact same advice, (b) except toothbrush manufacturers. They seem to make toothbrushes in roughly equal ratios of soft, medium, and hard. Combine this with (a) and the result is what I see at least 90% of the time I’m out trying to buy toothbrushes: The sections for medium and hard brushes are absolutely full of brushes, while the section for soft brushes is out of stock. Why don’t the manufacturers make more soft brushes??
2. Toothbrush manufacturers are kind of like razor manufacturers. They seem to love adding new features to toothbrushes. Tongue cleaners, rubber massagey bits, spiral bristles, colour indicator bristles, ridged bristle shapes, micro-textured bristles. At some point it became de rigeur for toothbrushes to be made with big, chunky rubberised grips, moulded to the contours of your hand, presumably for easier gripping and manipulation. The problem is these enormous chunky grips don’t fit into the slots in our incredibly expensive and lovely gold-trim chrome toothbrush holder that matches all the other fittings in our bathroom. It seems only the el cheapo brands of toothbrush have plain handles that fit any more. And of course they’re only available in hard bristles…

Arrrghh!!

Oh, and I had a dream last night in which we found a hidden stash of soft brushes lurking behind some hard ones in the store. We grabbed every single one to buy and hoard. I presume this is what everyone else does when they see soft toothbrushes in the store…

The Australian federal election is in two weeks. Someone pointed out to me one of the relatively new political parties running for positions in the Senate: Senator Online. It turns out they’re running two Senate candidates in every state.

Here’s the interesting part. They have only one policy. That policy can be summed up as:

For every bill that comes up for vote in the Senate, our senators will vote according to the results of a web poll that we run on that bill.

The fine detail is that this will happen on a state-per-state basis, there is a minimum threshold of registered Senator Online voters to get the senator to do anything, and the web poll result must be a 70% majority otherwise the senator will simply abstain. (And they’re going to be very careful to avoid web poll stacking.) But basically it’s opening up the Australian Senate to what is effectively an Athenian style direct democracy, where very voter has a direct vote in every bill, rather than letting elected representatives decide.

My initial reactions to this, in order, were:

1. Oh dear. It’s going to end up like California, encumbered under the weight of direct citizen-enacted legislation that has mass-appeal but which is actually economically or socially irresponsible.
2. Or maybe not. Actually, this is an interesting idea. If there were one or two Senator Online senators elected, it could actually be very interesting. It might shake up Australian politics.
3. Hmmm. If one of these guys does get elected, will the Parliament let the senator be dictated by the whims of an online poll? They might introduce legislation to make this sort of thing illegal. Although… it’s hard to see what could be inherently illegal about it.
4. While one or two of these senators might be interesting, if all of our Senate was directed by web polls of the general public, the country would quickly degenerate, with populist but disastrous policies being enacted. You know, thinking about this makes me glad, in a surprisingly non-cynical way, that our government works the way it does, and that our elected representative actually do know more than Joe Q. Public about economic theory, foreign relations, social justice, and other stuff. It’s easy to be cynical about how incompetent politicians are, but realistically, they do a better job at running the country than 90% of people could do, or that would be done by Athenian-style democracy.

Anyway, realistically speaking, it’s very doubtful that Senator Online will get a senate quota in any state. But still, it’s interesting to contemplate.