Cav's Place

I was looking out the window as a nice snowfall blanketed everything in white and thinking everybody should be enjoying something like this. Yet the news say otherwise, because you keep hearing of all the problems caused by snow and ice and all the people who are unhappy because the weather isn’t allowing them to do what they supposedly have to do. So I have to wonder why must people think that what they want is so incredibly important? Why can’t they understand that Nature is way greater than they are and simply stop and enjoy its beauty, being thankful when it decides to give us a glimpse of it?
Things are different when the natural phenomena in question are clearly destructive, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, heavy hail, floods, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. The effects of such phenomena should be mitigated as much as possible when they are relatively rare occurrences, though I maintain my opinion that people should move away from areas that are frequently hit because it’s obvious they’re not exactly suitable for humans. But when the phenomena in question are not particularly destructive, why put so much time, effort and resources into fighting against them when we could just slow down and smell the roses (or the snowflakes), even suspending all nonessential activities if that’s what’s required. I think we could all benefit from this…

What you keep seeing and hearing at such times are complaints from people who are upset because they can’t get where they want to go, or simply because it’s difficult to get to their desired destination. They’re saying it’s difficult or even impossible to drive, trains and flights are delayed or even canceled and so on. Which is all true, obviously, but my question is why do they insist on traveling at such times, when it’s obvious that the conditions don’t exactly permit it?
Yes, having some way to travel is essential because emergency vehicles and other critical services shouldn’t be hindered, but I’m talking about regular people here. And it’s these people who insist on traveling in such weather that make it even more difficult for the authorities to clear even those sections of road that’d be required in case of emergencies, therefore perhaps even causing worse problems than the weather itself. But they don’t see it that way. I doubt they even think of it, considering how important most people think they are. They just know they want to get somewhere and they must be able to do so, Nature be damned…

But this is not just about the fact that, despite global warming tending to make the people from many areas forget this little detail in recent years, it’s perfectly normal to snow in winter. It’s about the greater issue of how people view the weather and natural phenomena in general, which becomes even more obvious, and worrying, when you think about all the attempts at controlling the weather in order to ensure adequate conditions for various events, despite the fact that the methods that have so far been used for this purpose often tend to have undesirable consequences. Though this may not be the best example, since it gets me right back to the issue of snow, the most terrifying weather control project I have heard of so far is the proposal to eliminate snowfall from Moscow…
Which just gets us right back to the even greater problem: People insist on thinking that they are more than they are, that they matter more than they do, that the world must bow down to their wishes and allow them to reach their goals, no matter how unreasonable those goals may be. And, unfortunately, the few who don’t share that view are constantly trampled over by the many who do… But that’s another issue…

I want to quote a phrase from an article from this month’s edition of National Geographic Magazine: “We were smart enough to invent our worries, ambitions and jealousies; then, dumb enough to allow ourselves to be ruled by them.” I quoted this because I think it’s relevant in this particular issue, because society makes a lot of people behave as they do. This rotten society we have created for ourselves tries to tell us that it’s of utmost importance to do everything it wants us to do, regardless of circumstances. It’s one of the reasons why, just after the first significant snowfall, newspapers tend to print titles like “the first snow fell and the only ones enjoying it were the children”.
But what if adults would learn from the children and remember what society made them forget? What if we’d do things differently? What if people would stop worrying about getting where society tells them they need to go when it’s snowing or raining or windy and start thinking about playing in the snow, kissing in the rain or simply feeling the force of the wind on their faces? Or, if they don’t enjoy those things, they could simply stay inside, either watching Nature’s spectacle through the window or ignoring it entirely, catching up on various other activities while using the minimum amount of energy, by keeping all doors and windows shut and preferably also living in a thermally insulated dwelling, to keep a comfortable temperature in the room they’re in. In short, what if we’d see Nature as an ally instead of an enemy to be defeated or a slave to be ruled?
I think a lot of time, effort and resources could be put to much better use if we’d stop trying to keep the roads clear enough to allow everyone to go everywhere they care to when it’s snowing, or to keep rain away from this or that apparently important event, or to constantly rebuild the places that are repeatedly hit by destructive natural phenomena. I also think many people would feel a lot better if they’d realize that the world will not end if they take it easy and take advantage of what Nature throws their way now and then. And the more people realize that, the easier it will be to change society as a whole, until this kind of behavior will be encouraged as much as the opposite one currently is. Because, though few seem to realize this, society is created by people and can’t exist unless they accept it. But, once again, that’s a different issue…

Since Avaaz managed to get such an incredible number of people to sign their “Save Copenhagen” petition, I feel I need to do my part, as little as it may be, and help promote it even more. Sent the link by e-mail to pretty much everyone I knew how to reach last night, but adding a blog post to that certainly can’t hurt.
I maintain my opinion that climate change is just a symptom, one of the many of the illness we have inflicted upon Earth, and that too many are focusing way too much on it at the expense of the real problem, which is that way too many people are using way too many resources and spewing forth way too many harmful substances and materials… But focusing on one environmental issue, even if it’s just a symptom, is at least much better than not focusing on any environmental issue. And when we’re talking about such an incredible number of signatures and an organization that can deliver them properly, even a petition could have an impact worth mentioning.

By the way, this month’s edition of National Geographic Magazine contains a nice article about climate change, called The Carbon Bathtub. I think it’s a pretty nice analogy…

I first wrote about Australia’s Internet censorship plans about a year ago. Unfortunately, I find myself needing to mention this issue once again today, because it really looks like those plans are about to be implemented, regardless of the criticism.
How many other “Great Firewalls” will be created in the near future, once a country that received a perfect 10.00 for civil liberties in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy and a perfect 1 in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Index will create its own? Dare we risk allowing even the idea to pass? Will we be able to turn things around once it does? I doubt it…

I don’t really feel like reiterating all I wrote a year ago, so you may want to read that post if you want a more detailed opinion regarding this particular issue. But the general problem is that banning content that is illegal or can’t be rated paves the way towards forbidding people from challenging or even discussing any law or issue, such as euthanasia, which is being given as an example because it actually seems to already be covered under this law. No matter how they try to justify it, censorship is censorship and that’s where it leads, especially when it’s worded to allow such an interpretation from the very beginning.
The point is that the Internet must be free, allowing anyone to post any content they choose, as long as they don’t try to trick others into believing it’s something else, and also allowing anyone to view and use any public content they choose. Any laws and regulations that infringe this definition of the freedom of the Internet are harmful and must not be allowed to pass.
Actually, there seems to be something called the Freedom on the Net Index, which could help in the future. Right now it seems to be only a test, since so few countries have been analyzed, but even so it’s obvious that Internet use is already restricted to a certain degree everywhere. But maybe it’s not quite too late already…

Too lonely to sleep, or to think, or to dream… Apparently even to spell, considering how something I wrote this morning, after giving up on the idea of trying to sleep for a while, ended up… So I’m sitting here and thinking about what might have been and what most likely can never be, and imagining things that seem wrong even to me.
And there isn’t even anyone to talk to. And I don’t just mean that nobody understands, they never do, but that there really isn’t anyone to talk to these days. What makes it even worse is that dad is away this week, but the creature’s still here, so the house is usually very quiet but I’m not alone, so I can’t go out of my room and wander around or try to fix myself something to eat or do other such things. That caused me to go and talk to the creature twice already, yesterday and today, both because there’s really nobody else to say anything to and because I went out of my room when everything was very quiet and therefore just had the urge to stay out there and try to think of something to do, which meant it didn’t feel right to just crawl back into my room after noticing her there. The obvious result was that I felt like I just crawled out of a pile of shit when I did eventually get back to my room…

On another note, I believe I got clear confirmation that Elena G. did actually place me on ignore, but I still don’t know why. It’s awfully frustrating and the only thing I can think of is that none of what she said when we previously found each other on-line, especially in 2005, was true. So I’m once again wondering if any even remotely positive thing that appeared to ever happen to me was actually true, because it certainly seems like nothing good can happen to me, at least not when it’d involve another person, and whenever I think some such thing did happen it’s actually just me imagining things and letting any faint traces of optimism left within me cloud my judgment.
This obviously means I’m once again wondering if I didn’t imagine my relationship with Andra as well. I mean, it certainly doesn’t seem even remotely possible that something like that could have happened to me. There are clear memories, files, pictures, even a couple of movies, but it just can’t seem real anymore. Or maybe those things did happen, but I was lied to and played all the time by her as well, as it apparently is the case with everyone else… I can’t think that of her, but I can think it of the situation, so I don’t know…
A more rational perspective would be that all the people I ever knew were coming from somewhere and heading somewhere else, so they just came into my life briefly when they happened to pass by the place I’m floating about in, then moved on, usually heading towards places I know for a fact I never want to reach, leaving me behind. Perhaps in most cases they didn’t actually mean me any harm, they just didn’t care how their actions would affect me, perhaps not even noticing that they were, and likely still are, much more important to me than I ever was to them. But I don’t think that makes much of a difference. Why would it be any better to refuse to fix the harm you unintentionally caused, once you’re made aware of it, than to cause it on purpose in the first place? The end result is the same…

I should start by saying that this post should probably contain a lot of links, but it won’t contain any. There would be too many articles to choose from if I were to start searching, each with its own focus and perhaps even bias, so I prefer to just post how I see things and let any potential readers who might somehow be interested search and select according to their own preferences and desires.

Sunday was the second round of the Romanian presidential elections, the opponents being incumbent president Traian Basescu, supported by the Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL), and the president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Mircea Geoana. As all the other parties united in an effort to get rid of Basescu, Geoana also enjoyed the official support of PNL, UDMR, PRM, PNG, PNTCD and PAS, as well as the unofficial support of the Greens, which angered me terribly. On top of that, the major private media groups maintained and even worsened their usual obviously hostile attitude towards Basescu during the campaign.
Basescu won the first round with 32.45% and Geoana was second with 31.15%, but all the support received from the other candidates helped Geoana to an 8% lead, 54% to 46%, in a poll published between the two rounds of elections. The accuracy of that poll can be disputed, but I don’t doubt that he was indeed leading at the time and only lost that lead right at the end, after participating in the televised debate. Actually, exit polls can’t exactly be accused of wrongly saying that he’ll win because he did win, albeit by a very small margin, inside the country, and the votes coming from the Romanians living abroad made Basescu come out on top overall.

But let me start from the beginning. You could find the partial results of exit polls on-line during the day, since it’s illegal to broadcast them on TV or radio but there’s no such law concerning the Internet. Those results showed an obvious bias, depending on which TV station would be broadcasting it. But the most interesting moment was around 7 PM, when the results for 5 PM were posted. The site that I was checking, belonging to one of the TV stations that has known ties to PSD and an obviously hostile attitude towards Basescu, stopped updating the results of all four polls, deciding to focus just on the two that gave Mircea Geoana the best results. In addition, and this is the key part, those same two polls were being quoted on the site of a magazine belonging to the same media group, and the numbers appearing on these two sites as the results at 5 PM were different. The magazine’s site was listing Geoana as leading with 51.2% and 52.0%, respectively, while the other site was listing him leading with 52.5% in both polls. At the same time, a mere 50.4% for Geoana at 4 PM was rumored in other places, and it’s known from past elections that PSD’s share tends to drop later in the day.
Then it started getting really interesting. At 9 PM, the polls closed and the TV stations broadcasted the exit poll results for 7 PM. The two TV stations with known ties to PSD said 51.6% and 51.2%, respectively, for Geoana, the state-owned TV station said 50.8%, also for Geoana, while the one TV station with a known bias towards Basescu claimed a deadlock, 50.0% for each candidate. That prompted both candidates to give victory speeches. Basescu started his before the exit poll results were displayed, calmly warning his supporters that the numbers they’re about to see are fake, because PSD influenced at least two of the results so Geoana will have at least 0.5% added to his score, assuring them that he won “just like in 2004” and urging them to be calm and wait for the official results. Geoana, on the other hand, was extremely happy when he saw the numbers on the screen and gave an enthusiastic, and lengthy, victory speech.
Around 11 PM, the final exit poll results were made public. In the same order as before, they were 51.2%, 51.0% and 50.7% for Geoana, and 50.4% for Basescu. But the first partial parallel count results from the parties directly involved came just before that time, when PDL claimed that Basescu is leading with about 50.7% and PSD that Geoana has “somewhat more than the 51.6% estimated by the exit poll” after counting 15% of votes.
Some time later, PNL announced that, according to their own parallel count, Geoana is leading with 51.4% after counting 20% of the votes. But that was the only real announcement they made that night, only quietly releasing a brief statement a couple of hours later, saying that Geoana is still leading with the same 51.4% after they counted 41% of votes, then being completely silent until morning.
The rest of the night was spent by PDL and PSD trading conflicting parallel count results, as follows: PDL were the first ones to make another announcement, claiming that Basescu had just a little under 50.4% of votes after the vast majority of votes had been counted. Then they made another announcement, saying that Basescu was marginally leading, with 50.03%, after counting 99% of votes. PSD answered that immediately, saying that “not even NASA could count that fast”, and claiming that, according to their own parallel count, which was then at 35%, Geoana had 51.1% of votes. Then, close to 3 AM, PDL announced that Basescu was leading with 50.14% and that the only votes they couldn’t already count were those cast by some of the Romanians living abroad, especially in the Americas, where the polls were still open at that time. They also invited PSD to some talks about the most effective methods of parallel counting of votes, as a reply to the claims that nobody could count that fast, and said they’ll make the final results of their parallel count public around 11 AM. PSD countered by saying that their own count was at 62% and Geoana was still leading, with 50.8%. During all this time, members and supporters of PSD and PNL, including Mircea Geoana, were celebrating their victory.
Around 3:30 AM, a very tired, but also very happy, Basescu left PDL headquarters, once again stating that he won. No further announcements were made until morning, which was to be expected in PDL’s case, but is quite surprising when it comes to PSD, since they still had a lot to say… Unless they found out things that they weren’t willing to make public, that is.
Around 5 AM I went to bed, not before thinking that PSD should be releasing another statement, in the early hours of the morning, claiming that Geoana had about 50.3% after counting about 80% of the votes, and wondering if they’d notice the pattern and admit the possibility of defeat. Later I learned that the first part of my estimate was perfectly accurate, but that they still didn’t admit that they could have lost the elections. PDL did keep their word, though, and released the final results of their parallel count, which gave Basescu 50.33%. I don’t know the exact time of this announcement, but it was at some point during the morning.
At 8 AM, the first official results were published, and they showed Traian Basescu leading, with 50.43%, after 95.4% of votes had been counted. As further results trickled in, around 11 AM, a visibly depressed Geoana returned to PSD headquarters, refusing to answer any questions. The tension was mounting and PSD was starting to claim that Basescu won by fraud.
At 3 PM, the provisional final official results were announced and they confirmed PDL’s parallel count. Basescu obtained 50.33% of votes, defeating Geoana by exactly 70048 votes. This victory was thanks to the Romanians who voted abroad, because Geoana received 14738 votes more than Basescu inside the country, but only 31045 out of the 146876 votes from abroad. I should point out that Basescu’s clear victory abroad is no surprise, because he even obtained well over 50% there in the first round, competing against 11 others. The number of voters could be a little surprising, because it’s about 50% higher than the one from the first round, but it was to be expected because those people knew their votes would truly matter this time and various sources stated throughout that day that the Romanians living abroad were encouraging and helping each other to vote, to have their say.

What I want to point out is that PDL’s parallel count was proven right and the exit polls were proven wrong twice before: Once was during the 2004 presidential elections, when the exit polls said Adrian Nastase (also from PSD) was the winner, but it actually was Traian Basescu, a fact that PSD fairly admitted at the time. The second time was during last year’s parliamentary’s elections, when the exit polls said PSD had about 3% over PDL, but the official results showed a negligible overall difference and PDL actually won the most seats. In 2004, PSD had the government. In 2008, PNL had it, with a silent support from PSD. So I feel that any accusations that this caretaker PDL government could have arranged things to go their way are countered by the fact that the same thing happened twice before, when they couldn’t have been accused of this. The only difference is that PSD accepted the results the first two times, albeit more grudgingly last year, but this time they decided to challenge them.
I also want to remind people of the interesting difference between 5 PM exit poll results, depending on who quoted them. On top of that, there was an interesting moment yesterday. The one person who asked for patience and caution Sunday night on the TV station that gave the most optimistic exit poll results for Geoana, though she works there and the policy quite obviously appeared to be a different one, was asked by one of their news anchors why did she do that, what did she know that others didn’t. She answered that on one hand she had seen this before and knew the effectiveness and accuracy of PDL’s parallel counting system, and on the other hand she has various sources, as any good journalist, and knew how things really stood with the exit polls. I don’t know how much she’s risking for saying that, but I think it’s about as close to confirming Basescu’s claim about PSD interfering with the exit polls as you can get without saying it in quite so many words.

Now PSD has filed an official complaint and is asking for the elections to be repeated, because they claim that they have evidence of 136000 illegal votes, which could obviously change the result. The question is how many of those votes, if indeed they were somehow illegal, were for Basescu and how many were for Geoana. Because there’s no way to tell that, and if you can come up with so many names so fast it can be assumed that you already knew where to look, which may mean that they’re sacrificing their own people to end up with the required number to back their claim. I support this statement with a quote from an important member of PSD who let it slip yesterday that “PDL’s theft and fraud machine […] worked better” and then refused to answer the question which obviously followed, when a reporter asked if that choice of words means that they have a “theft and fraud machine” of their own.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that PDL stole some votes, but I’m certain that PSD did the same. And considering the fact that PSD is still the largest party in Romania and that each electoral committee contained just one person from each party, which meant one person from PDL alone among those from PSD, PNL, UDMR, PRM, PNG and sometimes even some from the smaller parties as well, I find it rather hard to believe that PDL stole more than PSD. And, either way, the fact remains that I see PSD as clearly the greater evil, so until an option that’d actually be good would present itself I have to support those who somehow manage to keep PSD away.
But let’s wait and see how this will play out…