This post will be the last one to be mirrored to my LiveJournal account. A week from the date of this post, I'm going to delete that account (alextiefling.livejournal.com) and resume blogging on this one more regularly.

There will be a series of posts for refreshing my various filters in due course; this post is solely to announce the imminent closure of my LJ. Please leave any comments on the DW version, because I've done my last import of comments from LJ now.

I expect you all know why I'm leaving LJ, but just to be clear: I will not accept terms of service whose only official version I can't read, which appear to open me to (more direct) surveillance by any government, especially the one that's presumably dictated LJ's new terms.

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Happy New Year, everyone. Here's hoping 2016 is a good one.

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Happy Christmas, everyone, and best wishes for the coming New Year.

Inspired by this excellent post by liv about C S Lewis, I wish to ask a similar question about the works of Tolkien:

When did you become aware of the influence of Tolkien's Catholicism on his fantasy writing? How strongly do you think the Middle Earth Legendarium reflects its creator's faith?

(Less important, secondary question: aside from Tolkien's obvious interest in matters Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, and his religious faith, what other mythic or mystical influences do you see in his work?)

My take: I read The Hobbit at primary school, and didn't spot any of its influences myself, but my mother (a former English and Anglo-Saxon scholar) pointed out the main links to Beowulf when I talked to her about it. It wasn't until I was at a Catholic secondary school that I read LotR - a book which my mother dislikes as strongly as she likes The Hobbit. And it didn't strike me as a particularly religious book. In contrast with the extensive coverage religion got in my favourite RPG settings, Middle Earth seemed mostly quite irreligious. One or two things in the appendices caught my eye, but I didn't think much of it.

Then I read The Silmarillion, which aside from overturning how I pronounced several key names, also threw a lot of LotR into a strikingly different context. I also became very preoccupied for a while with Tolkien's concept of 'Ages', and his very catastrophist, quasi-dispensationalist cosmology. It was only later that I learned how this fitted into esoteric thought from the era when he first set all this down. the main impact of The Silmarillion at the time was to send me back to LotR to view it in a Catholic context.

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Based on my observations of the polls, my own informal corrections for house bias, and a scan of bookies' odds, here are my seat predictions for the election:

Share of seats:

Labour: 271
Conservative: 269
SNP: 50
Lib Dem: 20
DUP: 8
Sinn Fein: 5
SDLP: 3
Plaid Cymru: 3
Alliance: 1
Green: 1
UKIP: 1
Independent: 1

Seat-specific predictions:

Caroline Lucas (Green) to retain Brighton Pavilion
Sylvia Hermon, Lady Hermon (Ind), to retain North Down
Mark Reckless (UKIP) to lose Rochester and Strood to Con
Douglas Carswell (UKIP) to retain Clacton
Nick Clegg (LD) to retain Sheffield Hallam with a margin of less than 3% of the vote
Nigel Farage (UKIP) to fail to prise South Thanet away from Con

Minor parties:

Mebyon Kernow to keep their deposit in at least one seat
FUKP to lose theirs in South Thanet

(Written before the exit polls, and without seeing them; delayed due to a toddler meltdown.)

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I have made some updates to the filter settings on this journal. Some of you may now be able to see posts from earlier this week that you should have seen at the time, if I'd set things up correctly.

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Hi everyone,

Just a quick post. I want you all to know that I do still read LJ, and I don't want to lose touch with any of you. My mental health has been pretty awful this year, and looking after two small children while mentally ill is hard. Twitter's relatively lower level of attention suits me better than LJ in some respects, but I miss longer-form posting. I'm also experimenting a little with other platforms like Google+, but LJ is still my first home on the net.

I think of my friends often; I'm sorry I don't often have the energy or sanity to say so.

Hi all,

This is a plea for house assistance! Currently we are trying to sort our house out in preparation for building an extension, and to give the babies more play space. To this end, we're trying to pack up most of the contents of our library into boxes and put it in the loft til the new library has been constructed. There is only one problem with this: putting things into the loft is a 2 person job which makes it impossible to watch the children at the same time, so we can't do it alone.

To this end, we could really use some help. If you'd be willing to come over and help us put things in our loft, or just come and watch the children so we can put things in the loft, that would be amazing and we'd be very grateful. The best day for that would probably be this Sunday (2nd Nov) but if you can't make that and would be up for helping on another day, that's fine too. We will certainly reward you in kind with pizza & cake or something along those lines.

Thank you in advance, kind friends. This will make Christmassing much more feasible.

As part of my continuing quest to declutter the house, I've got a number of books and games here which I'm keen to offer free to any friend who wants them. I'm happy to post smaller items if that's most convenient. Here's the list:

Novels:
Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, book 3), paperback
Alan Garner, Elidor, hardback
Agatha Christie, A Miss Marple Quartet: The Body in the Library, A Pocket Full of Rye, A Murder is Announced, The Moving Finger, single hardback

Novelty:
Stephen Pile, The Book of Heroic Failures (slightly damaged) and The Return of the Heroic Failures, both paperback
Murray Watts, Rolling in the Aisles: The Funny Side of Faith, paperback
David Langford, The Unseen University Challenge, paperback
Roland Fiddy (cartoonist), The Fanatic's Guide to Computers, paperback
Mark Bryant (ed), The World's Greatest Computer Cartoons, paperback
Gary Larson, Bride of the Far Side, paperback

Reference:
Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, (Fourth edition, 1964), hardback
Eric R Delderfield, Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain, paperback
Peter D'Epiro & Mary Desmond Pinkowish, What are the Seven Wonders of the World? And other great cultural lists - Fully described, hardback

Games:
Frontier: First Encounters, PC CD with manual and short story collection
Munchkin d20: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, three slim hardbacks, novelty material for use with Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition or similar
Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition Class Handbook series: Sword and Fist, Masters of the Wild, Song and Silence, Tome and Blood, Defenders of the Faith, paperback

Other:
Debra Allcock Tyler, Fast Track: Managing Time, paperback
John Sutherland, Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? Further Puzzles in Classic Fiction, paperback

It's first come, first served, within reason.

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So I'm a little confused about the value of xkcd's #upgoerfive as a meme. I don't know if it's worthwhile to try and talk about things using only the thousand commonest words in the English language a bunch of recent American novels. But I like to think I'm a good copy-writer, so I had a go at describing my current job and aspects of both my university disciplines using Splasho's editor:

What I do:

I work for a body that helps people with different brain set-ups find work and other help. I make sure that the on-line stuff the body makes can be read and seen by the most people. I look after the boxes that give people the words and pictures that the on-line stuff is made from. Other people at the same body make the words and take the pictures. If something goes wrong, we have to work together to make it work again. Some of the people who can help with this work for another body that makes money by helping us. I let them know what help we need, and then they help us sort it out.

My longest piece of written maths work:

Three hundred years ago, people tried to work out how fast one number changes when another number that goes with it changes too. Two men, Mr Newton and Mr Leibniz, both thought they had got it right. But other people were not so sure. They said both men had got it wrong by saying that a number could be nothing and not nothing at the same time. A hundred years later, it still wasn't sorted out. A man called Mr Cauchy was told by his school to write about the changing numbers. He wrote a new way of seeing how the numbers changed. The school told him to do it the old way, but his new way was better. The new way meant making numbers closer and closer to nothing, but never exactly nothing. This way worked better, even though the school didn't like it. Now it is the way we all use when we want to find out how a new kind of number is changing when another number changes.

My theology work:

For tens of hundreds of years people all over the world have thought about if there are gods. Lots of people are sure they know the answer, but they don't all agree with each other. They also have different ideas about what things are right and wrong to do, and what happens when we die. For three years I learned about lots of these ideas. I read books nearly twenty hundred years old about how people thought the world was going to end. I looked at how women had been written about in books about God, and how people from different places and times felt and thought about gods and the after-life. At the end, I thought that people knew even less about gods than I had thought they did before.

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I have a new blog, and it has a new post on it, all about people I disagree with. Well, OK, it's about game design, fantasy settings, and cultural inertia. And people I disagree with. Enjoy!

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So I've ben inspired enough to put together my first halfway usable fanfic. If people like this, I might write more. (If opinions are split, I might start a filter for fic.) This hasn't been beta-read; you are its first audience. All comments welcome!

Title: The Moriarty Addendum
Author: Alex Tiefling
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: U
Characters: Sherlock, John, Mycroft, one or two others...
Genre: Gen, Patchwork, Infill (Hiatus)
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Everyone mentioned here is either the invention of ACD, or a real historical figure. Some situations draw on the recent Game of Shadows. Credit is also due to Sub Rosa for some inspiration.
( A collection from the Black MuseumCollapse )

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ewt asked me yesterday if I could provide advice on when to make various ritual actions in church. This isn't definitive, but it's what I as an Anglo-Catholic learned and grew up with. I'm sure this will only be of interest to similarly minded geeks, but here goes:

Bow: Whenever the name 'Jesus' is mentioned; whenever you pass directly in front of a tabernacle containing the reserved Sacrament; at the word 'worship' in the Gloria, and 'worshipped' in the Creed ('adoramus' and 'adoratur' respectively in the Latin); at 'receive our prayer' in the Gloria; when the celebrant or the processional cross pass you; while you are sprinkled with holy water; after you are incensed; and throughout 'and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man' in the Creed.

Genuflect: As you go up to receive the Sacrament, and after you rise having received it; and during the Creed, on Christmas Day and the Feast of the Annunciation, during Incarnatus, when you would otherwise bow.

Cross yourself: Whenever the Gloria Patri is said; whenever a Trinitarian blessing is given (including at the end of the Eucharist, and often at the beginning of it, and of the sermon); at the end of the Creed (during 'life of the world to come'); during both elevations (while the Sanctus bell rings, if there is one - also bow your head) in the prayer of consecration; during the final response in the Gospel acclamation (this is the most common time to sign three times, on forehead, lips and heart, with your thumb); immediately before receiving each element of the Sacrament; when receiving absolution, both singly and congregationally; and at the beginning of the Benedictus qui venit.

ETA: Another bow in the Gloria.

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Just a quick note to let you all know (if you're not on Twitter right now) that we've decided the best response to the situation at St Paul's Cathedral is to, well, go to church. According to this Beeb article, St Paul's are going ahead with their regular services as scheduled, so it's the 8am Eucharist for us. And we've already had a Jesus protesting there today, so what better show of solidarity could one make in a place of worship?

If anyone else wants to join us, they're very welcome; religious beliefs or lack thereof are not, IMO, as important as the desire to demonstrate our communal right to use public venues (a state church, after all) for our reasonable needs. And that includes peaceful protest.

(Copied from nanaya)

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Today is Bi Visibility Day, otherwise known as Celebrate Bisexuality Day. I'm not normally a big one for special days. Stuff that's important is important all year round. But it's a very opportune time for me to let out a bee that I have in my bonnet.

Defining as "bisexual" does not mean that I endorse binary gender.

It comes up time and again. Someone who identifies as 'pansexual' or 'omnisexual' will speak up and tell us how they've gone beyond bisexuality. This will usually be followed by a short lecture on the evils of the gender binary. Well let me be quite clear about this: other people don't get to define my sexuality.

A while ago, inspired by another such debate, I conducted a little informal research online. My highly unscientific conclusion showed that almost (though not quite) no-one who identified as bisexual felt that that specifically meant attraction to two genders, whereas almost everyone who identified as pansexual or something similar felt that bisexuality did mean that. But people keep on grinding the axe. And the implication is that at least some of the self-styled pansexuals think that they know better than the self-styled bisexuals what those people are into.

At the root of all this is an absurd linguistic quibble. Yes, I am well aware that 'bi-', as a Latin prefix, means 'two'. But the resultant prescriptivism is of a very familiar flavour. People have also tried, at various times, to insist that a dilemma must consist of exactly two options, because that's what the Greek means. And now and then it's even claimed that the word history embodies the subject's patriarchal character because it contains the word his. (This one is dead wrong, even etymologically.) Whether or not mankind is sexist is a bit of a dead issue - there are perfectly workable synonyms. But the Germanic root man turns up with a unisex meaning in other places (such as as a German pronoun), while the same proto-Latin root that gives us humanity gives French its very gendered word homme. At school, when we first learned in Latin class that homo meant man, this sent titters running around the class from boys who though this was the classical basis of homosexual man-sex. For what it's worth, homo actually means more like what we now mean by person. 'Homo-' meaning 'same' is Greek, just like 'hetero-'. Some boys instead said that they were 'trisexual' - because they'd try anything once.

But we don't generally let the origins of words define their usage. We don't any more use 'meat' to mean all food, as the Saxons did. (In modern Swedish, the cognate word mat still means food generally.) The window, or wind-eye / vind-auga should keep the wind out, not let it in. We can distinguish between a filing cabinet and a war cabinet. When the wind is southerly, we all know a hawk from a handsaw, and have generally forgotten that a hawk was ever also a carpentry tool. And more pertinently, many of us who are sexuality activists are determined to show that the meaning of the word 'marriage' is not fixed solely by past practice or existing legislation. 'Bisexual' saw use before 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual', and if we're being thoroughly prescriptivist about it, was originally a biological term close in meaning to 'hermaphrodite'. We don't use it like that any more, because the language changed. (If we had stuck with the first word coined specifically to describe our sexual orientation, we'd be uranodionings.)

So don't try to tell those of us who call ourselves bisexual that we're endorsing a cultural and social two-gender system. Most of us aren't, and have never used the term with any thought of doing so. Call yourself what you like, but get down off your high horse and look me in the eye when you do.

And while we're at it, let's lay an accompanying gremlin to rest. The doctrine that pansexual is more inclusive than bisexual often includes a more-or-less explicit conception of an 'other' gender category. While there are a good number of genderqueer people out there, not everyone who is transsexual is genderqueer. It's damned presumptuous to lump all trans people into the 'other' category. The law in this and other countries makes it bloody difficult for trans people to be recognised as the gender they know themselves to be. I for one fear that the imposition of this broadly defined 'other' category on trans people with a clear gender is simply to try and push them back into a social outgroup that they have tried to evade.

Do not mistake me. I'm not intending to speak for trans people. I am not going to say "oh, I had a relationship with a genderqueer person, I know what I'm talking about". I just want a break from people dictating others' sexuality to them.

But today is Bi Visiblity Day. I am bisexual, and visible, and the term 'bisexual' is good and visible too. And I do not endorse the gender binary, either in my social outlook or my sexual tastes. But I will use the term 'bisexual' to describe myself, and I don't think that's confusing, or unclear, or in any way reinforces the gender binary. We'll do a whole lot more to break down barriers of gender and sexuality if we show the world how we live and love, than if we spend out time playing stupid games of linguistic oneupmanship.

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As part of our continuing home furnishing upheaval, we have three IKEA Flärke bookcases to give away. This cheap and cheerful product has been discontinued by IKEA, but is illustrated here. Each one measures 170mm x 60mm x 26mm.

Ours are just under five years old, and have some wear and tear - a scratch in the veneer, for example. All three of them would need their corrugated plastic backs fixed back on with tacks in places. One back has a flap cut out of it near the base - originally to allow power cables through - which has been repaired with duct tape.

We'd like to shift them as soon as we can, so if you're able to take all three away this weekend, that would be ideal. We're also around for them to be picked up on Monday, or you can call or mail me to fix some other time.

Thanks!

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nanaya and I have been considering whether to expand our drinks-making hobby to include making our own soft drinks. In a fit of environmental concern and 80s nostalgia, we'd been considering getting a SodaStream machine. However, quite aside from the fuss and bother of the carbon dioxide canisters, another issue has cropped up. It turns out that SodaStream is an Israeli company (not in any way a problem in itself) and maintains a production facility at settlement in the occupied West Bank. Now I've no intention of getting mired in Middle Eastern politics generally, but I do have a specific problem with the settler movement, and I'd rather not support it (or debate it). So the question is:

Is there another company out there which makes SodaStream-type widgets, but which does not have this specific difficulty? Is it possible to get gas canister refills without engaging with SodaStream? Or am I behind the times, and has the problem with SodaStream gone away? (I'm aware that there's been a Swedish campaign for them to clean up their act.)

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Although I live in London, I have not been directly affected by the riots of the past three days. None of them is very close to where I live or work, although it's a bit more ticklish than it was. A huge number of rumours are circulating, and based on my observations today, a lot of them are bullshit. Some rumours are genuine misunderstandings. Some are pranksters having a laugh at an inappropriate time. But I also suspect some are being deliberately put about to provide a smokescreen for organised looters.

The reality is infuriating enough without lies about (for example) the army being readied in the City of London. The reality is that several local landmarks have been destroyed, including longstanding family businesses. Buses are being set on fire. People's homes, livelihoods, sources of benefits, everything. Yes, there are political issues at the back of all this. Yes, the Metropolitan Police are in desperate need of root and branch reform. No, I don't want to see tear gas, water cannon or rubber bullets used. But the rioting is opportunistic crime, exploiting a family's grief and a city's self-doubt to make a fast buck at the expense of the poor.

I want to find out more ways I can help to restore this city. Anything feasible that I can do to put it on its feet again, really. I'd welcome any suggestions. I love London, and it needs our help.

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Voiceover (gentle middle-aged male, initially over black): What does it take to change the world? (Footage of hussars charging across a battlefield.) An army? (A brief glimpse of a magnificent coronation.) An emperor? (A young man is led out to be shot; another, watching from a cell, turns away.) A killing? (A beautiful young woman with white hair steps forward through an arch.) A princess? (A dish of mushroom stew is laid on a bare wooden table.) Or a single meal?

Cast:
Duke Francis of Lorraine
Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria
Prince Frederick of Prussia
Anna, Empress of all the Russias
Grand Duchess Elizbaeth Petrovna
Alexey Razumovsky
Peter of Holstein-Gottorp
Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst
Giacomo Casanova
Franz Josef Haydn
Augustus "the Strong" of Saxony
Stanislaw Poniatowski
...and dozens of others.

As I remarked to mrs_leroy_brown recently, the formula that works for The Tudors and Rome would work just as well if applied to historical figures who spoke neither English nor Latin as their first languages. The final fall of the House of Medici in 1736 would be a good place to start - the dying Duke Gian Gastone de' Medici was as gay as a goose and had ruled (not too badly) entirely from his bed for the last several years. The ensuing upheavals provide enough sex, drama and intrigue to fill several seasons, eventually leading to the rise of Catherine the Great and the first genuinely world-wide war. There's more than enough backstabbing and moral ambiguity - it's genuinely hard to pick good guys and bad guys. I'd love to see this made! If it got renewed for enough seasons, you could finish with the French revolution and related events.

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Dear BBC,

I am surprised at the coverage, on the UK front page and the ticker, of today's 'Rally against debt' event in central London. I feel it is important for the BBC to cover this as part of a range of stories on grass-roots political events. However, despite its small size, this march seems to be a lot better, and more punctually, covered than the equally peaceful and much larger 'Hardest hit' march by people with disabilities two days previously. I appreciate that the size of an event is not the only criterion, but this seems unduly biased in favour of the much smaller, pro-government event. When viewed in conjunction with the coverage of the TUC march and surrounding events on 26 March, when a tiny violent minority were given wildly disproportionate coverage on a generally peaceful and successful day, this gives a seriously worrying image of the BBC's priorities.

In general, the BBC seems to privilege small, undemocratic, non-representative groups (the Tax-Payers' Alliance, Black Bloc) over much larger, democratic ones such as mainstream political parties and trades unions. This is not what I think we can reasonably expect from a public-service broadcaster.

PS: I found your response to complaints about the interview with Jody MacIntyre in the winter disappointing; the fact that people discuss their outrage about your coverage online should not cause you to disregard that outrage as somehow manufactured or insincere. I trust that in this case you wil address the facts of the matter and not the Twitter trends.

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I wanted to create a new blog for this, but 'badhistory' is taken as a name on the free sites I tried.

Ahem.

BBC: Jesus Christ's Last Supper 'was on a Wednesday'

The BBC is reporting that an academic is claiming that the Last Supper was on a Wednesday. They haven't bothered linking to his research. The academic is question is this man, Professor Sir Colin Humphreys. AOL even goes so far as to call him a 'leading academic'. Yes, well. He's a materials scientist, specialising in gallium nitride, electron microscopy and aerospace. His arguments, though, are based on textual analysis of the canonical gospels, astronomy, and ancient calendars. Professor Humphreys' previous religious work includes an astronomical investigation of the Star of Bethlehem, and of numbers in Exodus. The Star of Bethlehem, like the date of the Crucifixion, is an old chestnut in New Testament studies. However, the Star of Bethlehem is only mentioned in one gospel (Luke), in a passage with no other external verifiability, and may well simply be an invention. The Last Supper, on the other hand, is in all four gospels and one of Paul's letters, making it the single internally best-attested event in the Bible. So examination of its timing deserves a little more seriousness.
( A serious examination of rather a silly claimCollapse )

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(Sorry if you see this twice - I'm posting it separately here as DW crossposting seems to be down at present.)

Recently, ciphergoth pointed me to a Huffington Post article about the biblical phenomenon of pseudepigraphy - that is, works which are clearly not composed by the people they are claim to be. Now, I was already aware of this - not least because I studied apocryphal literature at university, and this sort of pseudonymous writing crops up even more in apocryphal works than in canonical ones. But the discussion drew my attention to a wider point - which is that lots of people, religious and non-religious, don't really know what scripture consists of. So it's probably worth my while to fill in what I know of the current (or at least recent) state of scholarship on the subject. I'm not an expert - it's over a decade since I studied the subject, and I only have an associate-level degree in it. So I may be wrong, mis-informed, or have forgotten important points. I'm also happy to answer questions or engage in discussion. This post is deliberately not on my 'religion' filter because it's mainly about historiography and palaeography, rather than theology or personal faith.

Most of you will be unsurprised to learn that I am not about to embark on a defence of mainstream Christian dogma.

( There's quite a lot to cover...Collapse )
That's enough for now, I think. Has anyone found this interesting or useful? If I wrote more on this subject - say, about translations, or about the books excluded from the canon - would people read it?

There's been a lot of misleading reporting on both sides about the merits of competing voting systems lately. In my opinion, the misrepresentation of AV by the lobby to keep FPTP has been significantly more unfair, damaging and (amusingly) counterproductive. But I'm a lover of accurate reporting, so I'd like to pick apart a few myths from both sides. My approach is to pick on desirable aspects of voting systems, and talk about whether they're achievable. I'll assume all the way through that we're elective a representative assembly, because that's what we'll be doing with the system that results from May's referendum.

A voting system should be...

Local. That is, the representative you vote for should represent a specific region or location. Some systems don't do this at all, and aren't trying to. For example, any 'true PR' system is likely to throw this one out. Some systems, like the D'Hondt system used for EU elections, have large multi-member constituencies, meaning that there is a regional aspect, but you don't have a clearly identifiable representative. None of these is on offer in May - both FPTP and AV deliver wholly localised single-member constituencies. The importance of this is that control over who stands, and who gets elected, remains with local constituency parties, whereas larger constituencies give more control to the national party.

Majority-oriented. This one is often misrepresented. It's frequently claimed by opponents of FPTP that a system is only any good if it always delivers a candidate endorsed by more than 50% of those voting. In truth, there's no way a free election (see below) can guarantee this. With three candidates standing, they can each receive around 1/3 of the vote, and without coercion, you can't make the electors give any subsequent votes to anyone else. Even when electors do express multiple choices, you can't guarantee strict majority unless they are compelled to rank every candidate, which undermines the idea of 'support'. A workable majority criterion is that if a majority prefers one candidate to all others, then that candidate wins. Both FPTP and AV do this, but AV delivers an actual 50% endorsement much more often.

Produce equivalent results. In other words, each MP has the same sort of mandate. Both AV and FPTP do this, although we can be sure that a distinction would be drawn under AV between those MPs who would have won by first choices under FPTP, and those who wouldn't.

Proportionate. The distribution of successfully elected candidates should reflect the distribution of the popular vote, within reason. FPTP infamously doesn't deliver this. With three main parties, it's quite possible for the party which comes third in the popular vote to win a majority of seats. In fairness, AV doesn't change this radically, but it does offer significant improvement. This criterion can only be radically improved at the expense of the local criterion, or by adding top-up MPs who will have no constituency - thus violating the equivalency criterion.

Monotonic. This means that if you rank one candidate higher than before, without changing the relative order of any others, than candidate should never do worse. FPTP delivers this, for the simple reason that unless you put your promoted candidate first, and thus vote for them, your decision has no effect on the outcome. And voting for a candidate in FPTP is always better for them than not doing so. AV fails to deliver this, though. For example, promoting a candidate to first choice can cause your previous first choice to be eliminated sooner, and the second choices of their remaining electors could knock out your new first choice.

Consistent and worthwhile. Voting honestly should always be capable of having a positive effect, even if very small, and anyone who wins all the wards in a constituency should also win the whole constituency. FPTP meets this requirement - your candidate stands a better chance of winning if you vote for them, and simple maths guarantees that the winner of every ward wins the constituency. AV sadly doesn't do either of these. The example at the end of the previous paragraph shows a situation where your first choice would be better off if you didn't vote. And if A just beats B in one ward, and A just beats C in the other, but B and C's supporters put one another's candidates second and didn't vote for A at all, A can lose in the constituency at large. On the other hand, FPTP is highly susceptible to gerrymandering - it is possible to create arbitrary wards in which the number of wards won by a particular party is maximised or minimised.

Free. Voting should be like free like speech. The worst that should happen if you fail to participate in an expected way is that your vote is not counted. Australia makes voting compulsory with a fine for non-compliance (and jail time for non-payment), and considers ballots which do not rank all the available candidates to be spoiled. This looks like a gross failure for freedom of speech to me. I don't want to express any preference at all between UKIP and the BNP; I want no connection whatever between me and them. Fortunately, we're not likely to be offered any system which violates this criterion.

Simple to use. Ideally, you should not have to do any mathematics in order to cast a valid vote. The more complicated the calculation required to use your full voting rights, the less simple the system is. Multiple-vote systems are trickier than single-vote ones, for example. Again, we're not being offered anything other than a single-vote system. AV is obviously more complex than FPTP, but not by a lot. If you understand that 'ranking' is different to 'awarding points', you can use it.

Simple to adjudicate. How many numbers must each polling station send HQ on election night? In FPTP, it's the same as the number of candidates (call it N). In AV, it's potentially as many as (N!) - that is, if there are 6 candidates, 6x5x4x3x2 = 720 results. In fact, AV is the voting system with the generally largest number of results per station. Despite this, it's still possible to count by hand, and there is no proposal to introduce machine voting.

Quick to count. Mathematicians will recognise this as 'can be counted in polynomial time', and will also be relieved to hear (after the previous mention of an O(N!) complexity) that both FPTP and AV can be counted in polynomial time. Obviously AV is a bit slower, but it's still feasible.

There are other criteria - one could write pages about Condorcet's criterion (a stronger version of the majority condition) alone. Having done a lot of research last night, I finally know the difference between AV and STV. STV allows for multi-member constituencies. If STV is used for single-member constituencies, it's equivalent to AV.

In short, I prefer electoral systems that deliver better levels of endorsement for candidates without forcing people to vote, and deliver locally-elected members rather than party plants from a national list. For these reasons, I'll be voting Yes in May, even though there are other systems I'd prefer.

Edited to remove a glaring error.

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In October, Education Secretary Michael Gove told the Conservative Party Conference that "[t]he current approach we have to history denies children the opportunity to hear our island story".

Today, OFSTED (the Office for Standards in Education, formerly Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools) published a report on history teaching. Not that you'd know it. They put it up on a Sunday, during two international crises, and didn't put so much as a link on their homepage. (Two homepage stories are about children's homes. Balance, much?) I'm reasonably sure their webteam will have had this decision pressed on them by the high-ups. Probably Gove himself, ultimately. Poor bastards. And why?

Well, I heard about the report from the BBC. Long may it prosper. The report specifically describes Gove's claim as a myth. Instead, the report reveals that primary history education is incoherent and lacks narrative, owing to the lack of specialist knowledge on the part of the teachers. Primary teachers, after all, are expected to be polymaths with the patience of saints and the child-handling expertise of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

As to secondary education, it's broadly positive, and certainly doesn't back Gove's claim at all. Rather the reverse. In particular, it highlights that 'British' history is all too often English history, and we get plenty of it. It's long been a contention of mine that history teaching in English schools is poor precisely because of a long-standing tendency to treat our history as island history. We learn Henry VIII without Wilhelm the Rich or Charles V, William the Conqueror without the early Capetians, the 1745 Jacobite rising without the War of the Austrian Succession, and if we could get away with teaching World War II without the Weimar Republic, we would.

So screw you, Michael Gove, with your insular, petty, nationalist, ignorant, poorly researched view of history and the way it's taught. You can't even manage an accurate description of an aspect of life in the UK as it is right now, in an area you're paid a small fortune to be in charge of. Why the fuck should I believe anything you say about what happened before you were born?

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