Czech Nationwide Census Shows Jump In Jedi Knights 321
First time accepted submitter il_genio writes "The Czech Statistical Office (SÚ) unveiled the first results of its regular 10-year census on Thursday. While almost half the population, 4.8 million, shied away from answering the voluntary religious question, a surprising strong showing was given by those Czechs who described themselves as Knights of the Jedi and believers in 'the Force' as depicted in the Star Wars films. Overall, 15,070 Czechs identified themselves as Knights of the Jedi with the biggest proportion of adherents in the capital, Prague, with 3,977 followers or 0.31 percent of the population."
UK Census, Church of Jediism (Score:5, Interesting)
i read somewhere that the number of people in the UK who declared themselves as Jedi Knights exceeds the number of people who declared themselves to be Sikhs. however, for some reason, Jediism - http://churchofjediism.org/ [churchofjediism.org] - isn't recognised as a religion in the UK.
Re:Church of Facebook? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like something twitter or facebook triggered. All it would take is one tweet to get this sort of thing started when census was underway.
That 15000 people thought of the same answer (I'm guessing it wasn't a check box on the form), it would have to have been croud-sourced at some level, and any random high school kid could have started it.
Re:Discrimination against The Jedi! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Discrimination against The Jedi! (Score:4, Interesting)
However, where the legislation fails is when it does not protect people against discrimination based on their place of birth or language, should that be within the UK. For example, were you to discriminate against someone based on the fact that they were English, Welsh or Scottish, or even Cornish, Northern or from Norfolk, Kernow or Cymraeg speaking or any one of many other ways that people are "different" then you would be quite entitled to do so. e.g. Anne Robinson's comments. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1279679.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:This is why I don't believe in compulsory votin (Score:5, Interesting)
That, if forced to vote, you'd see Bullwinkle and Kodos and Senator Palpatine winning thousands of votes.
As an Australian who has worked at polling booths counting votes, I can say that the number of informal ballots (that is, ballots that don't indicate a valid choice, such as your examples above, or people who just shove the form in the box without voting at all) is a small minority. Even then, it is useful - the most recent federal election had a record number of informal votes, indicative of a populace who was deeply apathetic about both primary party candidates. The apathy was borne out by other evidence as well - we ended up with a minority government for the first time in my lifetime, due to the extreme swing away from both primary parties.
As to your statement about Gore and Bush, if Bush had stated his intentions of invading Iraq when he was elected, he probably wouldn't have been. That's the primary problem with our elected politicians - once elected, none of their voters have any guarantee of what they will do, and they aren't held to any promises they said they would. We're essentially voting them into a position of supreme authority blind.
Re:This is why I don't believe in compulsory votin (Score:5, Interesting)
Consciously abstaining is the stupidest fucking thing imaginable. Vote for a third party, if you must, but better yet, vote for the less bad candidate. And vote in primaries, so you get better choices. People DIED because of Bush being elected. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands worldwide. Trillions of dollars were wasted. It was a complete, unmitigated disaster, and it was one that was obviously coming. That was several years ago... and the Republicans got your message loud and clear. They learned their lesson: that if they make things awful enough, you'll just give up and let them take whatever they want. Great job!
Re:Dog tags (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is why I don't believe in compulsory votin (Score:5, Interesting)
Consciously abstaining is the stupidest fucking thing imaginable. Vote for a third party, if you must, but better yet, vote for the less bad candidate. And vote in primaries, so you get better choices. People DIED because of Bush being elected. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands worldwide. Trillions of dollars were wasted. It was a complete, unmitigated disaster, and it was one that was obviously coming. That was several years ago... and the Republicans got your message loud and clear. They learned their lesson: that if they make things awful enough, you'll just give up and let them take whatever they want. Great job!
LOL.
In case you haven't heard all the Obama hate, apparently he hasn't made anything better. Or so I'm told by angry Americans.
I'm Australian, not American so I'd bet the truth is infinitely stranger.
I'm Australian as I said and we have compulsory voting. I'm looking at an A$120 fine for just not turning up. It's the most retarded electoral idea ever, as the OP said in this thread, you cant force people to care. You can only force them to do "something", chances are it wont be something good. A lot of Australians just tick boxes at random or worse yet in order (ballot order is randomly drawn) but you dont want someone like One Nation or the BNP getting the apathy vote. People who vote properly but dont care who they vote for are worse then people who Donkey [wikipedia.org].
Bush could have won by a much larger majority in both elections due entirely by apathy voters. More people voting != more people caring.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Happy Holidays from the Golden Girls! (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, I give in to hatred very easily. In fact, I'm probably halfway to being a sith lord, already.
p.s. my first post was obviously off-topic. Flamebait? Come on. I could even see troll, but flamebait? Moderators on crackers!