Megagame: Iron Dice
“If the iron dice must roll, may God help us" – Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Chancellor, 1st August 1914. Later today I will be the British Team Control for the Megagame Makers Iron Dice game of the opening moves of WW1. Here's the blurb from the Megagame Maker's website. Megagame Makers are marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War with IRON DICE, a high-level operational megagame by Jon Casey (designer of Home Before the Leaves Fall). IRON DICE covers operations in France and Belgium between August and early November 1914. Historically, this was the period from the German invasion of Belgium to the end of the “Race to the Sea” and the First Battle of Ypres. Players will be a member of a national High Command, an Army Commander or staff officer. Megagames are an immersive…
A Call To Action for Everyone in the UK
Yesterday was a victory for democracy, lets use that to make the UK genuinely better. Regardless of what result you wanted, the primary outcome of yesterday's referendum is showing that people can be engaged to vote. It had the highest turnout ever recorded for a democratic election in the UK. That needs to be kept up. People voted despite the politicians and their tired rhetoric. The politicals need to wake up and be scared for next May. If the rest of the UK puts half the effort into getting proper representatives for themselves that the Scots put into the referendum then there could be a lot of new faces in Westminster in 2015. That can only be a good thing for both democracy and the people of all of the United Kingdom. People don't vote because they don't think it…
Scottish Independence – Predicting the Results
Earlier today someone passed me an interesting table on the expected times that each of the councils in Scotland expect to declare their results and the percentage of the electorate that they cover. As well as that there was an indication on how likely the people living in that area were to vote Yes. Prediction on how the result so far will change as they are announced So this leads me to my second from last piece of analysis on the Scottish Independence referendum. I'll look at the results compared to the predictions when the detail is available. It's going to be an interesting night. Some of the areas with the most Yes support are expected to be in the first wave to declare their results. Early on (from about 2am) it will look very much like Scotland has voted…
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Scottish Independence – Make Sure You Vote
August and September 2014 opinion poll results on Scottish Independence I've scoured the Web for all the Scottish Independence opinion polls I could find. My conclusion is that it's pretty much neck and neck in the final straight. So if you've got a vote it's vital that you use it. There was a slew of polls released on 11th & 12th September, and as you can see from the graph they basically overlap. This means that the differences between them are all down to the margin of error in the polling methodology. Given how close it is every vote will count. If you haven't yet made up your mind then it is time to do so, see my previous post on cutting through the bias inherent in every campaigner's rhetoric. You might also want to skim Robert Hutton's Would They…
Scottish Independence – 5 Steps to Avoid Bias
Bias is everywhere. Spotting it is a key skill for voters in Scotland (and people everywhere all the time). We all have biases, even me. This is a normal part of being human. We like being part of a group and generally moderate our behaviour to conform to group norms. There is loads of material on experiments about this, notably Milgram on obedience and also the Stanford prison experiment. The Scottish Independence campaign is possibly the largest social experiment I've seen on this. Both sides and their supporters have been egregious in their attempts to scare the electorate into voting for them. The campaign has also shown that people can be engaged in politics. Low turnouts aren't because people don't care. It is because they don't feel they have a genuine choice. This engagement has a down side though. And…