My recent entry reminding people that the temperature during the days lately have been such that the Idling Control by-law (Bylaw #2007-266) got me wondering about how often people have been ticketed for violating it, so I asked the City of Ottawa for the statistics.

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Can you recite the alphabet backward? If you can, then you are in the minority according to the Wii Bureau of Statistics.

According to the results of the question on the Wii Everybody Votes Channel, only 32.1% of Canadian Wii users said they could, while 67.9% said they couldn’t, which surprised me because I don’t think it’s that difficult.

Question: Can you recite the alphabet backward?

National prediction accuracy: 71.5%

The mayor released the results of a survey conducted by Harris/Decima that asked city residents about the transit strike on his blog Tuesday. There’s a fair bit of detail in the results, so I thought I’d highlight a few numbers.

Overall, 63% moderately or strongly support the City while only 14% moderately or strongly support the Union. (Eighteen percent of people support both equally.)

While 14% of people have sided with the union, only 8% of people are satisfied with with way the union has handled the negotiations, compared to 36% who are satisfied with the city’s behaviour. Most people think the city is “being fair and reasonable with the transit union in its approach to the issues”.

It gets more interesting… (more…)

The results of a question asked on the Wii Everybody Votes Channel recently suggest that we Canadian Wii players are an intellectual bunch.

Question: Which is more important to exercise daily…

National prediction accuracy: 41.7%

… chewing gum.  (What did you think I meant?)

According to the Everybody Votes Channel on the Nintendo Wii, guys are more likely to swallow their chewing gum when they’re finished than girls are, but overall both groups are much more likely to spit it out when they’re finished.

Question: After you’re finished chewing gum, do you…

National predication accuracy: 89.6%

This just in from the Everybody Votes Channel available on the Nintendo Wii.

Question: Do you want to live in a foreign country?

Worldwide Prediction Accuracy: 51.7%

According to the results, about two-thirds of Venezeulan Wii players want to live in a foreign country.  Most Japanese Wii players, on the other hand, are quite happy where they are with only a quarter wanting to live in a foreign country.

Canada ranked second from the bottom, just behind Japan, with about 30:70 in favour of not wanting to live somewhere else.  The United States was about 40:60.

Of course, the Everybody Votes Channel is not scientific, but it’s still interesting.

More from the Everybody Votes Channel available on the Nintendo Wii.

Question: How often do you get your hair cut?

National Prediction Accuracy: 47.4% (Interesting… most people guessed wrong.)

Almost twice as many guys as girls go to the barber more frequently than every two months. The last time I visited my barber, we were talking about how much the average visit to the barber costs guys versus how much the average visit to the beauty salon costs women next door. I was shocked to discover that I spend in a year what many women spend in one visit to the stylist at a salon. And I spend significantly less time per visit, too.