AV or not AV - it's all in the Boundaries

This is an interesting section on p8 of the Electoral Commission leaflet that arrived yesterday:
---
If more people vote ‘yes’ than ‘no’, when will we start using the ‘alternative vote’ system? 
The ‘alternative vote’ system will be used after a review of the boundaries of the area that each MP represents (known as their constituency) is completed. This is due to happen between 2011 and 2013. The review will happen regardless of the outcome of this referendum. 
At the end of the review, the UK Parliament will vote on implementing the new boundaries. If the new boundaries are implemented, the ‘alternative vote’ system will be used for all future elections to the House of Commons.
---
The underlining is mine ... it seems that an electors' vote in favour of AV can be ignored if the House of Commons decides they do not want to change the rules for setting constituency boundaries ... and from my limited understanding they might well not.  I have yet to find an explanation for this linkage, though political manoeuvring comes to my skeptical mind.  O, what a blunt instrument is democracy. 

Universal energy - going down or up?

Ben Miller on TV back in Jan laboriously (re-)discovered his physics basics about temperature meaning & measurement:

• tea cools and heats surroundings, you don’t get the reverse spontaneously i.e. without applying energy
• the universe gradually all becomes the same temp
• you never lose energy, it just changes
• so Big Bang energy will eventually be evenly spread throughout universe
• this is entropy

However now we're told that the expansion of the universe is still speeding up ... hmm, so the universe as a cup of tea is getting hotter, in which case energy must be being applied  from outside ... now would that be:

• a rather large life-form with a blow-torch
• God's breath
• or a much bigger, hotter universe cooling down

I know this doesn't help with today's wars & famines, it's just occasionally interesting to let the mind wander.  Any thoughts 'on a postcard' always welcome.

Starter for 10

Finally, on this auspicious Friday, 1st April (no fooling), I have created a place to air my occasional observations and suggestions to the world at large.


No doubt for some time I will be speaking with no-one listening ... if you are 'listening', do let me know.


At least the writing of my eclectic thoughts and sometimes stupid questions (the best sort),  will have a calming, even cathartic, effect on me.


The thought of someone responding is hugely exciting, however I bate not my breath and instead wait in patience.


It starts here ...