State Elections, Jolly Socialists, Alpha Micro Operating System

There has been some elections in Australia recently, in South Australia and Tasmania. In the former, the Labor government has been returned for a third term, albeit with a significant swing against the government. As a result it seems that the Rann government has lost only two seats, despite only receiving 48.5% of TPP - how? Because the swing was non-uniform. In safe Labor seats it was, on average, over 10%, and even in marginal Liberal seats it was almost 9%, but in marginal Labor seats it was a mere 1.6%. In Tasmania, it looks like a hung parliament with a massive 12% swing against the sitting Labor government (split 7% to the Liberals, 4% Greens, 1% other). With their multi-member, proportional representation system counting is still going, but looks like Labor 10, Liberal 9, Greens 4, and independent Andrew Wilkie picking up 1. Sitting Premier David Bartlett is a bloody idiot who is seems prepared to give up government rather than deal with the Greens. So whilst Labor seems to have been returned in both states, it should be a clarion call for other state parties to get their act together and, in particular, work closely with the rising power of the Greens.

On Saturday went to a Socialist Party educational meeting, the sort of thing I hadn't been to for years. It was pretty much orthodox Marxism, and I really should have expected that. As a post/ex-Marxist trouble-maker, I initiated a bit of debate by proposing pragmatisim against materialism in the first session, pointed out the economic calculation problem in the second, and following Luxemburg's dialectic contra-Lenin's "vanguard party" approach in the third. It was particularly interesting that as a nominally Trotskyist party, the Socialist Party seemed unaware that Trotsky supported market relations over all-encompassing plans: Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations., he wrote. The following day the chief member of the Melbourne branch and Yarra City Councillor, Steve Jolly, was (purely coincidentally) speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church about those experiences and the social problems of that area. I took the opportunity to raise with him the idea of the social and economic superiority of site rating for rates, rather than capital improved or net annual value - he has asked me to correspond further on that issue.

On a completely non-related topic many years ago I used to own an Alpha Micro AM-100, passed on from jamesmcparlane. It was a pride and joy for many years being the first computer that I personally owned (yes, I started with a multiuser minicomputer - fate really). I used its version of Pascal to hand in my assignments for Principles of Computer Science (heh, now Java-based) - on paper, as the Control Data 14" metal platter "Hawk" drives would be somewhat inappropriate. Anyway, all this history because some clever puppy has brought out an Alpha Micro Operating System emulator along with scans of plenty of old manuals. It's been quite fun playing around with this emulator, although I do wish I still had my old programs! Such is the joy of "computer archeology".