Cav's Place

On November 2, 14 candidates entered the first round of presidential elections here. However, it was always obvious that vote would be rather pointless, as the top two, namely Victor Ponta, who’s the current Prime Minister and the candidate of the Social Democrats (PSD) and their Conservative (PC) and so-called Progressive (UNPR) allies, and Klaus Iohannis, who’s the candidate of the Christian-Liberal Alliance (ACL), made up of the Liberals (PNL) and the Democrat Liberals (PDL), had a huge lead over any of the others. The end result was 40.44% for Ponta and 30.38% for Iohannis, with third-placed Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, leader of a splinter group of Liberals (PLR) wishing to remain allied with PSD and named future Prime Minister in case Ponta’ll win, obtaining 5.36%, and fourth-placed Elena Udrea, who’s current president Traian Basescu’s protegee, at 5.20%.
Since, as I said, that round of elections was quite irrelevant, it was used by the top parties, and by PSD in particular, as a dress rehearsal for the runoff, trying to see what will work and how in order to steal as many votes as possible and discourage or completely bar those known to vote for the opponent from doing so. As such, on top of the typical maneuvers, particularly in rural areas, which were now reported quite in detail by a large number of independent observers who largely came out of the lines of last autumn’s protesters, PSD’s main ploy was to stop Romanians living abroad from voting, knowing that they vote overwhelmingly against them and also remembering all too well that they lost presidency in 2009 just because of them, as they had won by a very narrow margin inside the country but when the votes from abroad were also counted the final result was the other way around.

Well, people didn’t stand for that. There are probably 3.5 to four million Romanians living abroad, nobody’s exactly sure how many, but it’s probably safe to say that just about every Romanian still in the country has a friend, relative, colleague or current or former treasured contact of some sort now living abroad, and when those 170 or 180 thousand of them who tried to vote on November 2 had to queue for several hours, in part because of the additional hoops some new regulations passed by the PSD government forced them to go through, and some ten to 20 thousand of them were in the end turned away because they didn’t manage to vote by the closing time of 9 PM and the hours weren’t extended, and in a couple of cases our ambassadors called local police to get our citizens, whom they are there to represent, out of our embassies, so out of what international law calls our territory on foreign soil, people were understandably furious.
So what did PSD do? They eventually made the Minister of Foreign Affairs step down, as it was his head the protesters asked for first, replacing him with the former head of our Foreign Intelligence Agency (SIE), Teodor Melescanu, who had resigned from that position to also run on November 2, obtaining 1.10% of votes. They also allowed the statement voters voting abroad need to fill to be written beforehand and only signed inside the voting station and claimed to ensure that all voting stations will have the maximum staff and stamps. However, they flatly refused opening new voting stations, first claiming the other countries won’t allow it, which was quickly proven false, then claiming the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) can’t do this because only the Electoral Bureau (BEC) can, then when BEC said it is in fact the Government’s job, they came back on the statement yet again and said the Constitutional Court won’t allow it, though the precedent they were referring to dealt with a different matter. Sounds like running out of excuses before finding one that’d stick, doesn’t it?

So on comes November 16, when people were already riled up, those living abroad had organized themselves to come very early, some starting to form the lines hours before the voting stations opened, some coming from hundreds of kilometers away, and independent observers inside the country had increased in number and were paying even more attention, trying to stop what tricks they could and report the rest in detail. However, with four different polls offering Ponta rather comfortable margins, listing him at between 53.5% and 55%, and with leaked early exit polls showing him at over 60% in the first hours of voting, it seemed to be a tight call in the best of cases. PSD’s voters are known to come early and votes from abroad can’t be included in exit polls, but that was a large margin to recover.
However, everything PSD tried simply exploded in their faces. They kept trying to pull their usual stunts in rural areas, but the independent observers documented them and posted everything on-line. The television stations owned by their members or allies kept trying to persuade people that the whole story about what’s happening abroad is a ruse orchestrated by ACL and everything’s just fine, but we could all see pictures, video and live streams of people spending five, seven, nine hours to vote, and that’s if they were lucky, because some spent even 11 hours waiting and were in the end turned away, or had to be carried away after getting sick. And to make matters worse, Melescanu said about those queuing in Paris that if they really wanted to vote they could head over to Nancy since it’s a superb city and there’s no queue there, ignoring the fact that Nancy is nearly 300 kilometers away from Paris in a straight line and nearly 400 on the road. In addition, people standing in line in Vienna received fliers advising them to vote in Slovakia or the Czech Republic since there are no queues there and PSD spokesperson Gabriela Firea posted pictures of the admittedly quite empty Liverpool voting station claiming it was near London and that those who queue at the London voting stations refuse to go there. Well, I’m guessing that might have been because there are nearly 300 kilometers between London and Liverpool in a straight line and over 350 on the road…
In other words, PSD missed the fact that the Internet makes such brazen lies far less likely to fool people, and definitely underestimated how fed up people were of being pissed on. As such, the more the situation continued, the more people mobilized, both here and abroad, and the more they rushed to vote for Iohannis. Or, of course, not exactly for Iohannis, but against Ponta, against PSD. The number of people who voted abroad was more than twice the previous record, and keep in mind that some were yet again turned away, even being tear gassed or injured in the process, and the turnout inside the country was the highest for a presidential runoff since 1996, though it was slightly lower than that seen in the first round in 2000.

The end result? With thousands, which soon became tens of thousands, of people on the streets in several cities in Romania, showing solidarity with those trying to vote abroad and demanding that the current government pay for what they did, results started trickling in. At first partial exit polls, announced at 9 PM as per the law and showing the situation at 7 PM, which revealed a battle that was still rather tight, then the full exit polls and partial parallel counts, showing a rather comfortable victory for Iohannis, which Ponta finally conceded in the only brief statement he made that night, slightly after 11 PM, as he walked out of the PSD headquarters. In the end, Iohannis obtained 54.43% of votes, which is a higher percentage than that obtained by any president in Romania’s admittedly brief democratic history except Ion Iliescu.
So PSD had a 10% lead in the first round, they still had most of it days before the runoff, they had this huge well-oiled apparatus set on using all the tricks in the book to extend that advantage even further, and yet they were trashed. They took that 7% to 10% lead and turned it into a 9% defeat simply because the failed to realize that even that large mass of Romanians who usually stay quiet and accept whatever’s thrown at them as their lot in life get fed up of being shat on sooner or later. Or, of course, only some of them do, but this time they were enough to matter.

But, of course, our job has only just begun. With PSD obtaining the presidency when they already have the Government, the Parliament and most local authorities throughout the country, our situation would have been pretty much hopeless and that absolutely needed to be avoided. Since it was, we may now just have a shot at using these next few years to create the change we wish to see here, and we’d better take it. The worst possible thing would be to cheer this day as a victory and lay down our “weapons” instead of recognizing it as merely avoiding a defeat and a sign to press any advantage we may have even further now, when Iohannis and those behind him are all too aware that they owe what I’m sure is a quite surprising victory even for them to the people, and to those of us who have been protesting against them just as much as against PSD over the past few years in particular. As one protest chant goes, “do not celebrate, because you’ll be next”. Unless, of course, they’ll do something right for once.

Last night, at 0:36 GMT, contact with Philae was lost, as the lander’s non-rechargeable battery drained and it entered hibernation. Considering the very low amount of sunlight available in the location it eventually ended up in at the end of the two jumps it made after first touching down on the surface, the odds of the solar panels producing enough energy to exit this state in the near future are just about zero, despite the fact that the lift and turn operation succeeded, lifting Philae by about four centimeters and rotating it about 35 degrees in order to place the larger solar panel in the one area that does receive at least some sunlight. Still, there is hope for later, as it is believed the lander will be able to withstand the low temperatures it’s currently facing and the power situation will obviously improve as the comet approaches perihelion.
Something that seemed strange to me is the timeline, however, as it was initially stated that the conditions will become too hot for Philae to continue operating in March, yet during yesterday’s Hangout it was said that the power situation should improve enough when the comet will be at less than 1 AU from the Sun, and they mentioned late summer, perhaps August or as late as September. Admittedly, being in the shade and receiving about one and a half hours of sunlight on one side and about 20 minutes on a couple of others per comet “day”, which lasts about 12.4 hours, instead of the planned six to seven hours, does definitely mean that it won’t get nearly as hot, but that’s quite a difference.
Either way, they said the one solar panel that receives some sunlight for about one and a half hours per comet day produced less than one watt and the peak, for the 20 or so minutes when a couple of others come partially out of the shade as well, was three to four watts. That may have increased slightly now that they moved the larger solar panel in the better position, but when they also said Philae requires 5.1 watts to boot up and, at the moment, 50 to 60 to heat the battery to the 0°C required to start charging, it’s clear it’ll be a long time before anything may happen, and even longer before enough power will build up to support other instruments as well and do some more science.

Now we could dwell on what went wrong, starting with the failure of the thruster and harpoons which should have made Philae stay where it first landed, continuing with the fact that some of the operations which should have been performed on the surface of the comet were actually performed some distance above it, as the instruments started gathering information as soon as the lander first touched down, and ending with this particularly unfortunate position Philae eventually stopped in, which prevents it from continuing to operate at the moment. However, an incredible number of things went well, and this is what allowed this insanely daring attempt to be a success, because this is precisely what it was.
More than 20 years since this mission started being planned and ten years after launch, a man-made spacecraft caught up to a comet, entered orbit around it and delivered on its surface a lander which managed to complete its primary mission and transmit the science data obtained before it entered hibernation. This was an unbelievably difficult endeavor and so much could go so wrong that the idea of it succeeding on the first attempt as much as it did was likely difficult to believe for many who had some grasp of what was involved.
So now we move on and see what comes next, as Rosetta will continue orbiting the comet throughout next year, gathering as much information as possible before, according to some recent statements, eventually finding its final resting place on the surface as well. And if, at any point during that time, Philae will wake up as well, things can only get better, and if its current sheltered position will help it survive the period of closest approach to the Sun and the comet’s activity won’t otherwise damage it too badly, there’s even a chance it may somehow hop away from that spot and find one where it’ll receive more sunlight on the way back, allowing for far more observations than initially hoped for.

I’m going to end this by simply saying congratulations to ESA and to everyone else involved, and let’s hope space exploration will continue to offer us as a species reasons to celebrate. Once again, I must point out that, considering how little attention and funding governments seem willing to spare for such efforts, this seems quite unlikely right now, and considering the amount of time that passes between the moment any such endeavor starts being planned and the final, visible triumph, the results of this current attitude will hurt us all for decades to come, but as long as we’ll still have groups of passionate, dedicated and absolutely brilliant people, miracles may still happen. And this obviously applies to any field one may think of.

Though the active descent system failed, Philae has successfully landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. So, though the future of space exploration looks grim, today we have some reason to celebrate. Today, for the first time, humanity has a probe operating on the surface of a comet. Granted, I’m not sure such a project would have been approved these days anymore, but we’re talking about something that began being planned in 1993 and a launch that took place back in 2004. These days, I doubt they’d even dare to dream of such things anymore, and even if some still would, they’d quickly find that such plans can no longer be anything other than dreams.
It was a crazy idea; finding a comet, catching up to it, entering orbit around such a small celestial body that also changes as it approaches perihelion, having the orbiter drop a lander at pretty much walking pace and then having that lander latch on to the comet using harpoons, somehow avoiding bouncing or propelling itself back up while doing so despite the comet’s extremely weak gravity making it weigh roughly one gram and the escape velocity being of only around one meter per second. Of course, that thruster was there just to avoid such a scenario, and the fact that it apparently failed left absolutely no room for error and made the landing be to a significant extent a matter of luck, as any irregularity in the landing spot would have made latching on impossible without the thruster… But apparently another failure made that no longer be an issue for the Rosetta team at this point.
Unfortunately, I’m saying that because, just as I was finishing writing the above paragraph, I heard that, while Philae had a softer landing than expected and therefore didn’t quite fly away on its own, the anchors failed as well. As such, the lander is not anchored to the comet, which is quite a problem considering the extremely weak gravity and the fact that the comet will be increasingly active. It would appear that the team is trying to decide whether they should try activating the anchors once again or that’s too much of a risk, so there are problems and the mission may still fail completely if Philae begins to slide or bounce away, but at this very moment it is standing still on the surface of the comet and, at least according to the information released so far, its instruments appear to be operating normally.

At some point I briefly listed my top ideas in my OkCupid profile as “getting the population back down to sustainable levels without killing people or allowing them to die unnecessarily, protecting the environment and the other species we share this planet with, switching to a fair resource-based economy that’ll do away with any need to ‘earn a living’, giving much greater importance to personal relationships than current society tends to expect or even permit, and guaranteeing each person’s right to live as they please as long as they don’t harm others who don’t deserve it or the environment”.
However, recently I seem to have managed to list them in a form that, while still very brief compared to what would need to be explained, does offer each of them its own paragraph. The problem is that I did that on my KoTango profile, while poking at that place with a few twigs, and that profile can only be seen by site members despite the fact that I set it to be public. As such, it seems like a good idea to add this here as well, for future reference and also to have something to link to whenever the need for such brief explanations will arise.
Later edit: Since KoTango vanished at some point, it’s a good thing I saved these here.

1. Overpopulation. It’s the world’s worst problem and drastically lowering the human population is absolutely necessary, though of course not in itself sufficient, before we’ll have a chance to solve any other important environmental or social issue. Obviously, that should be done without killing people or allowing them to die unnecessarily, due to lack of access to needed resources or services, so the number of births must be reduced by any means necessary to around the minimum required to avoid a genetic bottleneck while those still allowed to have children should be carefully and objectively selected to bring evolution back into the game while preserving diversity.

2. Environment and animal welfare. Humanity’s unique position as the species which can shape this world according to its will is far more of a responsibility to care for all the others we share it with and for the ecosystem as a whole than a right to exploit them according to our whims. We must take our role as stewards seriously, make every effort to fix the damage already caused, preserve what should be preserved largely unchanged, offer evolution a helping hand whenever appropriate and possible while remaining within the laws of Nature, and strive to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the suffering of all species sufficiently advanced to be aware of it and remember.

3. Relationships. Society should not only permit but strongly encourage people to put their personal relationships, whether romantic or close friendships, above everything except perhaps certain major causes. Ways to develop, preserve and strengthen these bonds, to eliminate the suffering caused by the current typical models and to help people share their lives more easily, more deeply and more completely with their family of choice should be promoted and taught, and a way of life meant to guide the vast majority of people towards prioritizing these relationships over the other aspects of their lives should become the norm.

4. A fair resource-based economy. We have reached a state of development allowing us to do away with any need to earn a living and should therefore guarantee a decent standard of living for all bar those proven guilty of serious crimes, fairly and efficiently sharing the resources that can be sustainably harvested to meet every need and as many wants as possible. Additional benefits should be granted to those whose actions or achievements will significantly improve the lives of others or the environment, as well as to those who’d fill the few positions that’d still need to be filled by humans and have a good performance in those jobs, but all but the dangerous criminals must be free to live their lives and pursue their interests without risking to have their standard of living drop below a decent level.

5. Individual rights and freedoms. All should be free to live their lives as they please as long as they won’t willingly cause unjustified harm to others or to the environment and will do all they can to fix any unjustified harm caused unintentionally once the situation is brought to their attention and explained. Ideally, countries should be defined by laws, children need to be taught about all the available options and adults should be free to move to the place most suited to their views, as I believe people all over the world would work together better if those they’d actually live around and possibly interact with on a daily basis would be people they’d actually like to be surrounded by.

Once again, if you already know me you already know all of this and more, while if you somehow ended up here without knowing me there are enough details missing about each to fill a few posts, which in some cases I have already written at various points, but I actually think I managed to come up with a rather good summary and it was a shame to keep it hidden away.

I was saying I had volunteered to help with a translation and it seems that I only finished with that today. At first I had simply translated the ten-minute “slice” I had volunteered for, without even using proper Romanian characters, since my brain just ignores those and replaces them with the standard letters they’re similar to, so I had to go through it all again several times to add those where needed after being told I should do that. Then there was the matter of adding the timestamps as well, since the guy coordinating this effort said the translation itself is more important and he could ask for other volunteers to do that part but it’d be a whole lot better if the actual subtitles would be done along with the translation. And then, once that was done and he looked over what I did, I also ended up looking over the “slice” he had done, since he said it seems a better idea if I check his instead of the other way around.
Well, I did that as well, made a number of changes, sent it back to him and didn’t get any reply in about a week… Until immediately after I said the matter was probably all settled by then and deleted the files, only to get a message from him some five minutes later saying he tried but there can’t seem to be any more willing volunteers and it’d be a pity to throw it all aside and waste the effort we made so far, so if I could please do another ten minutes and he’ll do the last part.
That was Tuesday night, so I did the translation itself on Wednesday and then yesterday and today went through it again to add the timestamps and also as many of those annoying Romanian characters as possible. Tried to use them as I was translating, but that only made that take a few times longer than it should have taken and, based on how many corrections I had to make later, I think I barely got a little more than half of them put in the right places, and there’s of course a pretty high chance that some were still missing when I sent the file. Doing that just about broke my brain even more than it usually is anyway.
Now I do have some experience with such translations from the interviews dad was asking me to help him with now and then, and now the sound quality was mostly better and in a few cases the images also helped, but there were still a few places where I simply couldn’t make out what was being said and a few others where I’m not entirely sure what was meant, since certain words in English may mean different things in Romanian. What’s worse is that, if in case of the translations I was doing for dad it didn’t exactly matter if there were some question marks here and there, since he generally knew what it was about and could fill in names or specialized terms and pick the correct meaning when I was uncertain, here I doubt there will be someone to do that accurately, so I’m feeling pretty bad about everything I couldn’t quite figure out…

But I guess it at least counts as doing something, and also as finally living up to the fact that I did state I was willing to help out with English translations when I filled a form during a protest, yet so far had never offered. Whether I’d do it again, I’m not sure, but right now I’m just going to have a shower and then crawl in bed… Perhaps surprisingly for some, getting something done when you don’t feel like doing anything, for the same reasons you haven’t felt like doing anything for the past more than nine years, doesn’t make me feel better at all.