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Czech Nationwide Census Shows Jump In Jedi Knights
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."
then that would make George Lucas THE Prophet in said religion.
"Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an end to themselves. A Special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing."
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/ - isn't recognised as a religion in the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jediism#Reaction - wonderful. a jedi knight gets thrown out of a job centre for not removing his hoodie. and a new law in 2010 *excludes* members of the Church of Jediism in the UK from protection against racial discrimination and hatred. wonderful.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
50% of the population didn't want to report their religion because they are secretly Sith.
If they can call themselves Jedi Knights shouldn't the be able to like Force Pull there car out of their parking space and over their heads to another parking space?
I would be more inclined to take them seriously if they called themselves Force Adepts or Force Sensitive rather than Knights.
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
For the longest time, I admired Brazil, among other countries, for forcing people to vote.
Because one of the reasons sometimes the suckiest politicians get elected is because people don't vote. Remember how close the 2000 election was between Gore and Bush? Did you vote?! We would not have invaded Iraq in 2003 if something like 0.002% of useless turds actually got off their asses in 2000 and spent 15 minutes at a polling station instead of at a video game console. No: the Democrats are not the same as the Republicans. Gore would not have invaded Iraq. That's why your vote COUNTS. (Now we will hear some assholes argue why Gore would have invaded Iraq, rather than concede the simple and obvious point that your vote matters.)
You get the government you deserve, and if you don't vote, then your government shows as much interest in you as you do in it when it comes time to actually PARTICIPATE in the formation of your own fucking government. People died so that your leader is chosen by you. People are dying today to get that right in other countries. And some people could care less. Some pathetic losers would rather play video games.
But then I realized, when this Jedi story was discussed awhile back, from an Australian census I believe, that some people just don't take life seriously. And you can't force them to.
That, if forced to vote, you'd see Bullwinkle and Kodos and Senator Palpatine winning thousands of votes.
You can't force people to care.
So, while I still admire Brazil and other countries for forcing people to acknowledge they should participate in their democracy, because it is such a gift, I don't push the issue anymore. Now, all I do is, when I hear someone complain about politics, I ask them "did you vote?" And if they go "no," I simply walk away and that person is simply dead to me forever more and I have zero respect for them. For being such a complacent hypocritical empty tool.
There are some things in life which are actually important and not funny. YOur religion? Jedi? OK, that's funny. But voting? Vote, damnit, it's not a joke. Thousands may die because you couldn't be bothered and some sycophant of the oil industry got in a position to fulfill Neocon masturbatory fantasies, nevermind your own country's domestic ruling agenda.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Some of us don't vote because we consider it politically irresponsible to make a choice that we don't believe in. If I dislike (or like) all candidates in an election equally, not voting is a (even the) proper choice. The point: before you brush people off for "not participating" in government, make sure they really are being lazy rather than consciously abstaining.
I don't know about the Jedi Knights, but the two weeks I was there, I got pussy that was in the 9-10 range every single day. Never cost me more than $100, either.
Why don't you have a seat over there?
They do, they just use a lightsabre.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
There's a word for people like that.
"Happy".
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
every choice you ever make in your entire life, on every single topic, from the most personal, to the most small, to the most cosmic, to the most mundane, to the most crucial, is a compromise
you will, forever more, in your entire life, and as long as human beings with free will exist in democratic societies, only get a choice of candidates that only approximates your values, anyone's values. you get a choice: vaguely grey area candidate this, or vaguely grey area candidate that. no better than that. welcome to reality
that you don't get to vote exactly for your ideal hero as your candidate, who matches your values 100%, therefore, you're not going to vote: that only tells me you are a fool
what you just said earns you, from me, instantaneous disrespect and disgust
because, in essence, what you are saying is that you are too good for us. you will not sully your "principles" to submit to an ugly process that might mean you have to recognize that life has compromises. no: fuck you, you are cluelessly idealistic. there's nothing wrong with being an idealist. but there's something wrong with being so idealistic that recognizing basic facts of political reality is an insult to your cognition
you don't have principles. you have high minded impossible standards that life will never live up to. and rather than live with the basic truth of the ugliness of the world, such as it is, and help to make it better by participating in it, you'd rather hide in your ivory tower and pretend you know better than us. no, you know less than us, because you believe your abstention makes you superior. it makes you inferior, for failing to recognize that your participation is the only way any of your ideals get realized. you tweak your ego at the expense of actually mattering to the world. you are a narcissist, preserving the ego at the expense of participating in your society, there is nothing "conscientious" about your behavior, that's just how you rationalize your complacency to yourself (since it is flattering to your ego, you narcissist)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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!
Every time there's a census in Australia, putting "Jedi" as your religion is suggested as a fun way to mess with the system
I must admit that at first thought, this seemed like a cool idea to me, but I remember reading an analysis pointing out that it isn't such a great idea. If you're not religious, the best answer you can put is "Not religious" (atheist, agnostic, naturalist etc are filed under this by the census system)
Every non-religious person who puts "Jedi" as their religion is one extra statistic who is counted as being a religious when attempting to justify policies like compulsory religious instruction in government schools
mod parent up
if you don't participate in your democratic society, you are helping the side you like least win
those with ideology you dislike depend upon you to not participate. they understand how you think, and all they have to do is act ugly enough, and you just cede to them power
so there's nothing principled or conscientious about you abstaining. it's just stupid and self-defeating
show that you care enough to try to matter. that's more important than a "conscience" that thinks standing around idly while evil happens is any sort of conscience
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can put down anything you want as your religion in the US Military.
except that every election, past, present, and future, in any democratic society possible, is a choice between two evils
because politics is nothing more than a process of compromise. and every compromise can, and is, described as a form of evil
so your entire point is completely moot. you are always voting for the lesser of two evils, forever, for anyone, for any society
to not make peace with that realization just means you do not understand the nature of life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Congress made no declaration of war. Didn't happen. They passed The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 because they were too corrupt and cowardly to resist a President who lied through his teeth to take us to war without reason. So yeah, Congress let him do it, but Bush did it. How did you let that detail slip by you?
There can be consequences if you don't pick a recognized religion. I was restricted to base for a weekend and given extra duty twice for putting down atheist and refusing to change it.
The US Congress declared war on Iraq, not Bush. The President of the United States does not have the power nor the authority to declare a war, which is why Obama broke the law when he had our military bomb Libya without cause, provocation or a declaration of war.
Congress hasn't declared war on anyone since World War II. Congress did authorize the use of military force in Iraq in 2002 based on what Bush thought to be appropriate.
In Australia they where talking about it on the radio before our recent census.
null
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.
The same goes for all other major religions, in their first 20-30 years (often longer).
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.
Bush could have won by a much larger majority in both elections due entirely by apathy voters. More people voting != more people caring.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If I dislike (or like) all candidates in an election equally, not voting is a (even the) proper choice.
Most elections have a bunch of offices and decisions, each with a bunch of candidates/options. How is it possible that you are consistently seeing equivalence between the various sets of candidates and options? I could understand if, in some small fraction of individual line items, your research turned up that the options were equally bad. But how can you not be voting at all?
Far more likely: you aren't doing adequate research. The options seem equivalent to you because, with minimal information about the candidates, you are unable to substantively differentiate between them. So get off your butt and do your homework.
I'll say it's impressive - that's up around Linux desktop adoption level!
Hmm... now that I think about it, that's probably not a coincidence...
#DeleteChrome
Can't you cast a blank vote? In Spain there is the option to cast a vote without marking any candidate/party. These votes are effectively counted when it comes to the distribution of seats(*), and give a clear meaning of "I want to vote but I find nothing worth voting" (instead of "I don't think voting is important enough to go to the poll station").
(*) The distribution of seats is done taking into account the number of votes cast, so blank votes affect results (abstention does not). There is even a political movement arguing that blank votes should be treated as a full list (with all seats gained by it becoming unassigned).
Why can't
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.
I've spoken out against this for as long as I could vote, and no one has convinced me otherwise in 20 years (though I now vote - for the Pirate Party).
If you find a party or a candidate that suits you - fine. But if you don't, then voting for the least evil is not appropriate. It sends all kinds of wrong messages. Not only does it give the party you vote for a false sense of representation, it also tells everyone that the system is fine as it is, when it really isn't (because there is nobody in it who represents you).
My vote is all I have in a representative democracy. I will give it only to someone who I want to be represented by. I'm not falling for these attempts to give me a bad feeling about withholding my vote when there is nobody I trust with it. In fact, I would wish there was a "none of the above" option on the ballot, I would have used it for almost 20 years. As there isn't, abstaining is the only option I have to express myself in an election.
I am not responsible for bad people coming to power - the people who voted them in are, and nobody else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Good... Let the hate flow through you!!!
(Sorry - seemed an appropriate response to your indignation given the topic)
Yes, Facebook triggered it. Then, there was actually a separate checkbox in the form too:
http://czso.cz/sldb2011/redakce.nsf/i/csu_secte_pri_scitani_i_lidi_kteri_se_prihlasi_k_hnuti_jedi
(use google translate)
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
Difference is semantics only. You pay for it one way or another.
I cannot comprehend the reason for punishing somebody who isn't religious. It's like they want to foster an environment of blind, unquestioning obedience to a higher authority, even in the face of logical inconsistency bordering on outright fallacy.
Oh, wait...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
If you're religious, and answer 'none' to the census because you don't want to pay church tax, aren't you overdue to leaving your religion?
Speaking of idealists, really it's people like you who claim that "every vote matters" who are the idealists. In fact you are not just an idealist, but outright wrong in this. You are also wrong in claiming that by voting people should make compromises; no, they shouldn't.
In reality the vote of any single person is worth zero. The chance that your vote makes a difference - that without your vote the result would be a tie - is so small as to be negligible, and even if it were the case that your vote was the tie-breaker, since the precision in counting the votes for things like a national election is always greater than one vote, even then it would be pretty much up to pure chance who ends up winning, not up to your tie-breaker vote.
The decision of any single person whether he votes also does not have a significant influence on how many other people may go to vote, and so we are back to the argument in the previous paragraph: your vote does note make a difference. Period. From the perspective of the rationality of your decision it does not matter what would happen if everyone else did the same etc. It would be entirely rational for people to not vote at all, and in fact many people make this rational decision when they stay home or hang out with friends instead.
Hence there is no point in voting if your goal is to influence the result. You are wrong if you think there is. This is the negative part. Now to the positive: One value I see in voting is that it gives you an opportunity to signal your preferences and your goals in your local community when you participate in political discussions. The preferences and goals of people living around you influence your life, and by participating in these political discussions you may actually have an effect on how these preferences and goals change over time. Having chats about "who to vote to" is one of the very few contexts which allows for exchanging ideas regarding these issues.
And so I think you should make use of this opportunity to influence others around your. By taking the effort of walking to the poll booth you signal your preference for living in a democratic society (although you could merely assert this preference as well, the fact that you give up a pleasant afternoon just to stand in line may give some actual credence to the claim). When it comes to choosing the candidate, you should choose the person 1) who represents your views and your preferences most closely, and 2) from whom it's unlikely that you would get favors if it became known that you voted for him. Why? Because such a choice would make it most credible that you indeed intend to make use of the opportunity of voting to represent your preferences and goals, as opposed to using it for some other purposes, i.e. in hoping to get favors from someone.
From this it follows that you should not make compromises and should not choose the candidate who is most likely to win among the barely acceptable ones. You should pick someone who is not among your friends, but whose views are closest to yours, even if he is relatively unknown. Again: your actual vote does not make a difference. You voicing your opinion about preferences and goals might have a local effect. You should use the opportunity of voting to maximize this latter effect.
AFAIK in the US there is always a write-in option. More people should make use of it.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Right. Let's not ask people about what kind of delusion they adhere to, how about that for a start?
I somehow have a hard time taking a census seriously that asks about your favorite imaginary friend.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Women are like phone companies. Some require a contract and provide limited metered service, but some are pay-as-you-go with added features for a small fee.
The difference is that phone companies f*** you.
Just wait till your wife gets her hands on a whip and a strap on.