It usually takes a lot to bother me, but sometimes it can be just a fewletters, such as those found in the CYOW TAF:

TAF CYOW 221138Z 2212/2312 29012KT P6SM FEW020 BKN080 TEMPO 2212/2215 BKN020
FM221500 30012G22KT P6SM SCT030
BECMG 2220/2222 29008KT FEW050
FM230600 VRB03KT P6SM BKN060
FM230900 VRB03KT P6SM -SHRASN BKN020 OVC050
RMK NXT FCST BY 221500Z=

Specifically,it’s the letters that appear in the precipitation element for the weather forecast starting at 0900Z tomorrow morning: -SHRASN.

There probably won’t be any significant accumulation, but it’s still unnecessary.

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed today to be World Statistics Day.

To quote from the UN Statistics Division’s website,

The celebration of the World Statistics Day will acknowledge the service provided by the global statistical system at national and international level, and hope to help strengthen the awareness and trust of the public in official statistics. It serves as an advocacy tool to further support the work of statisticians across different settings, cultures, and domains.

National statistics concern everyone to one degree or another. They contribute significantly to our knowledge of how well we’re doing as a country and they play a vital role in the creation of economic and social policies. The seemingly simple question "how large is a country’s labour force and what is its composition?", for example, can only be answered using data collected by a national statistical agency.

As one of the thousands of people around the world who work for the various national statistical agencies in the world, I’m proud of the role I play, however small it may be, in contributing to the better understanding of the world we live in.

I’ve noticed a number of “vote for anyone but the incumbent” campaigns in Ottawa. The premise is that if enough people don’t vote for the incumbent, they won’t win the election (usually true when there’s only a couple of candidates). The problem is that we have a first past the post system where someone can win the election even if they don’t have a majority of the votes — they only have to have more votes than anyone else.

A flawed system, at best, but that’s what we’re stuck with for the time being.

Let’s assume that the results of the election last time were:

• Joe Blow: 40%
• Jane Doe: 25%
• Jason Bourne: 25%
• James Bond: 10%

Joe Blow is running again, as are the others plus four additional candidates: Ernst Blofeld, Joe Q. Public, Maxwell Smart and Charles Carmichael.

Let’s assume that some people actually like Joe Blow’s track record and are going to vote for him for that reason. Let’s also assume that some people are going to vote for him simply because he is the incumbent and they recognize his name on the ballot. But some of the people who voted for Joe Blow last time are going to follow the “vote for anyone but the incumbent” school of thought and vote for someone else — 12% of voters, in fact. The remaining voters are going to continue voting for the person they believe in, who happens not to be Joe Blow, with the new guys are going to attracting some of the votes away from all of the candidates.

Election Day comes and goes and the results are:

• Joe Blow: 28%
• Jane Doe: 23%
• Jason Bourne: 12%
• James Bond: 17%
• Ernst Blofeld: 5%
• Joe Q. Public: 3%
• Maxwell Smart: 6%
• Charles Carmichael: 6%

This time, the incumbent, Joe Blow, wins again, but with 72% of the votes going for “anyone but the incumbent” instead of 60% of the votes like last time. More people don’t like him but he still won. Well, that strategy didn’t work, did it?

If you really do not like the incumbent, then find a more suitable candidate and vote for them. If, after considering all the candidates, the incumbent still tops your list, then you should probably vote for him. If you really don’t like any of the candidates, then perhaps you should have considered running for office.

If you do vote for some random person and that random person happens to win the election then you have no grounds for complaint when the random person jacks up your taxes, supports a new by-law requiring all homeowners to perform weekly sacrifices of baby bunnies and declares every Tuesday to be Walk-like-a-duck-or-else Day.

The organizers of the “vote for anyone but the incumbent” campaigns should have identified a slate of candidates that they support rather than telling people to toss their ballots to the wind. That way they might be more successful in their quest to see new faces on Council.

The Ottawa Citizen has a story today about one of the lingering problems that resulted from the cancellation of the north-south rail plan a few years ago. A right-of-way for the tracks that runs between the lanes of Chapman Mills Drive in Barrhaven has gone unused. There are breaks in the resulting median at intersections with the side streets that are protected by stop signs.

The problem is that because the intersections are so large due to the width of the median, the stop signs aren’t as effective as they would be if the intersections were smaller. Gloucester-South Nepean councillor Steve Desroches says that the roadway is confusing and dangerous for both pedestrians and drivers.

It strikes me that these large intersections are ideal candidates for roundabouts. They would keep traffic flowing nicely, provide space for safe crosswalks for pedestrians and reduce the amount of time vehicles would spend waiting for traffic lights, which means fewer greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions. And there’s also the added benefit that the city wouldn’t have to buy the traffic light equipment or pay for its on-going operation and maintenance.

The City of Ottawa’s website has a great animation of how roundabouts work. You can select the type of vehicle you’re driving and the route you’re wanting to take through the roundabout. If you’re not familiar with the way they work, you should check it out.

A tip o’ the hat to Wikipedia Commons for the animation of the roundabout.

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy 42 Day!

As you probably know (you should know!), 42 is the answer to the great question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Today’s date, 10/10/10, looks suspiciously like the binary number 101010, which is 42 in base 10.

Check out Twitter for the #101010 and #42day hashtags to see what people are tweeting about. And, of course, check out the 42 Day website at fortytwoday.com.

Three times during the last month I’ve received an automated phone call from Ottawa This Week, not-so-subtly advertising that they’re a new “community newspaper” and then went on to say that the call wasn’t a marketing call. Instead they’re calling to offer employment to people who might be interested in being a carrier for them.

The first time they called on the 18th of September, their auto-dialer left a message on my voicemail. If you click on the triangle in the player, you can listen to it.

The second and third times they called, yesterday afternoon and this afternoon, I was home and the message was slightly different. In it they also said you could press 1 to speak to someone about being a carrier.

Yesterday, I pressed 1.

(more…)

The number of comments that have gotten through the Ironclad CAPTCHA since I installed it yesterday but been caught by Akismet is significantly higher than the number that slipped past SI CAPTCHA. I suppose I could do away with the CAPTCHA altogether, but then I’d have to wade through the Akismet queue on a regular basis.

So, I’ve switched back to SI CAPTCHA while I look for something more effective. There are some picture-based CAPTCHAs that require the user to pick a specific image out of a collection of  images. One is Confident CAPTCHA, which has an online demo. It requires the user to pick several images in the correct order to prove you’re not a ’bot. The problem I can see with it is that it’s too much of an inconvenience and requires a user to spend longer than they’d probably want to to pass the CAPTCHA.

So the search for a more effective CAPTCHA continues.

In the mean time, I leave you with this thought: All spammers must die.