November 28 2009 — do you want enfranchisement with that?
116 years ago today, the first general election in the world where women were allowed to vote took place, in New Zealand.
From 1887, various attempts were made to pass bills enabling female suffrage; each bill came close to passing but none succeeded until a government strategy to foil the 1893 bill backfired. By 1893 there was considerable popular support for women's suffrage, and the Electoral Bill passed through the Lower House with a large majority. The Legislative Council (upper house) was divided on the issue, but when Premier Richard Seddon ordered a Liberal Party councillor to change his vote, two other councillors were so annoyed by Seddon's interference that they changed sides and voted for the bill, allowing it to pass by 20 votes to 18. Seddon was anti-prohibitionist, and had hoped to stop the bill in the upper house.
Both the Liberal government and the opposition subsequently claimed credit for the enfranchisement of women, and sought women's newly acquired votes on these grounds.
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Today I'm spending most of my time in $REAL_WORLD (well, academia) attending the thesis examination of a colleague, and the subsequent celebration. Not much time left for wanton Perl 6 coding. But don't worry; I'll be back with a vengeance tomorrow. 哈哈
What I did do today, though, sitting amongst the audience during the examination, was write a reply to a PerlMonks question about Perl 6. A year ago I wouldn't have considered this to be worthy of a November blog day, but I'm getting increasingly interested in the PR aspects of Perl, Perl 5 and Perl 6, and nowadays I consider encounters like this very important.
The Perl monk zwon made a reply before I got mine in. I'd say his view is quite common among perl5ers. It's also a bit pre-bridge, if I may say so. But, again, it's not really unbiased, just woven into a Perl 5 context. That is to be expected.
I also have live searches on Perl 6 and Rakudo in my Twitter client, which turn up interesting tweets daily from people I've never met. Some are useful for gauging the feelings about Perl 6 "from without", some merit responses or even dialogue. Twitter is a nice way to get in touch with people who share one's interests and are curious about Perl 6.
And now, it's time to jump into a suit and go celebrate my colleagues the doctors.