canspice.org

Take a look at this graph:

That graph is from this CTV story about poll numbers in Quebec slipping for the Conservatives.

Now many ways does this poll fail? Let’s count them.

One: what do the different colours mean? Being astute followers of Canadian politics we all know that Conservatives are blue and Liberals are red. But which red are the Liberals? Dark red or light red? Follow-up question for the non-Canadians: which party is orange?

Two: What happened to September 11?

Three: If you count up the days in the last two labels (”Sept 4-10″ and “Sept 12-18″) you get 14 days. Why are there only eleven points on the graph?

Four: Sure, we know that these are polling numbers and the numbers up the y-axis are probably percentages of voters who say they’ll vote for a given party, but do we know that for sure? Maybe that’s the number of ridings in Quebec going to each party! (Never mind that there are 75 ridings in Quebec and the first two data points add up to more than that)

CTV, hire someone who knows how to chart some numbers on a graph. It’s not that hard.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok” has Jean-Luc Picard stranded on a planet with Dathon, an alien captain of another ship. Dathon is a member of a race called “The Children of Tamar”, and they communicate with each other through metaphors and references to historical occurrances. The most famous of this is Dathon’s continual reference to “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”, a situation where two heroes in Tamarian legend come together to trust each other to defeat a common foe. Picard and Dathon are set upon by an invisible enemy and have to come together to defeat it.

XKCD is a rather geeky webcomic that I’ve mentioned before. It appears to have some degree of popularity amongst geek circles, with people making reference to specific comics through phrases and innuendo.

Why not mix the two? Each XKCD comic is numbered and can be got to via http://xkcd.com/<number>, so they’re easy to uniquely reference. Suppose you were at a Chinese restaurant and got your fortune cookies. If you’re with a bunch of geeks and nerds you’d say “four twenty-five” and everybody would snicker. Or you could say you “four twenty-oned” for breakfast. And I know of way too many people who have two fourteened, myself included.

So, huge nerd or hugest nerd ever?

From the CBC:

One of this country’s most familiar tunes may have been heard on CBC-TV for the last time Wednesday night when the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins and won the 2008 Stanley Cup.

The Toronto agency representing the composer of the theme tune for Hockey Night in Canada says the CBC has declined to enter into a new licensing agreement for the song for next NHL season.

A news release posted on the website of Copyright Music & Visuals quotes company president John Ciccone as saying the CBC’s licence agreement for the hockey theme song ended with the Stanley Cup final.

The CBC “has advised the composer, owner and administrator of the musical composition that it is not prepared to enter into a new licence agreement with respect to the use of the theme,” the release says.

The CBC had no immediate comment Thursday.

The familiar theme music for Hockey Night in Canada was written in 1968 by Dolores Claman, who was raised in Vancouver.

In the news release, Claman expresses her disappointment that her song will no longer be heard in homes across Canada during hockey season.

“I am saddened by the decision of the CBC to drop the Hockey Night in Canada theme after our lengthy history together. I nevertheless respect its right to move in a new direction,” she says.

Copyright Music & Visuals says it had offered the CBC a chance to renew its licence to use her song on terms that were “virtually identical to those that have existed for the past decade.” Each use of the song in the past has cost the broadcaster about $500, the company says.