February 2011
19 posts
Dear Tumblr, this is hard to write, but...
I’m leaving you.
It’s not you, it’s… well, actually, it IS you.
When we first met, I fell so hard for your beautiful themes and elegantly simple user interface. You were so hip, so pretty, so easy.You even had an API.
We had a great summer and fall together.
But then, things started to turn. First, I tried to put some basic HTML tables in post. That didn’t go so...
Ron and Daniel, Michel and Barbara
I’ve been working on a project using Elections Canada data the past few days and staring at a lot of lines of political contributions.
I noticed there seemed to be a lot of “Ians” among Conservative Party donors, so I decided to run an analysis on the first names of contributors to each party.
I filtered out the 20 most common names on the list (mostly English Biblical mens...
Scambaiting explained
Just to follow my previous post on the chihuahuas…
I am but a complete novice in the art of scam baiting compared to the folks at 419eater.com.
Scam baiting is the art and science of engaging Internet scammers in lengthy email exchanges. The website title is drawn from the section of Nigerian criminal code used to prosecute these electronic frauds.
The trophy the scam baiters often seek...
"Thanks, waiting": The Cameroonian Chihuahua scam
A couple of years ago, I wrote a story for my paper about a teenager who was ripped off in an African Internet puppy selling scam. The girl wanted to buy a Paris Hilton -style “teacup” dog and her dad sent money to someone they never met. The dog never arrived.
After the story, I decided to contact the vendor for a little scam baiting. Here’s how it went:
Glen McGregor...
"All the single ladies (and gents)"
As long as I have lived in Ottawa, I have had cab drivers tell me there are three single women for every single man living here.
The theory was that women are massively overrepresented in the public service. It is true there are more women than men working in the federal government, but nowhere near three times as many.
As for their marital status, can’t really say but if you’re...
Hewer of wood, namer of streets after trees
I was playing around with Where the Streets Have Your Name and became curious about the frequency of street names in Canada.
Using some open data sources, I was able to pull together a list of the most-common street names in Canada (long and tedious bit about the methodology appears below the table).
Oddly, “Second” is the most frequent street name in towns, villages and cities...
Tracking Harper government bills
This one speaks for itself. The majority of the bills introduced by the government that haven’t made it into law died when Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued parliament.
The data show that 42 per cent of Tory bills have made it into law, so far.
Really, this was just a chance to play around a bit more with Tableau Public, which I’m loving, even though they don’t offer a...
How they voted on transgender equality bill
NDP MP Bill Siksay’s private member bill amending the Criminal Code to protect transsexuals and transgender people passed in the House of Commons Wednesday. Much of the attention on the vote was focused on a block of socially-less-conservative Conservatives who supported the bill, House Leader John Baird among them.
But also interesting were the social-conservative Liberals who voted...
Government's own data shows crime, taxes not...
Last spring, the Department of Finance hired Harris/Decima research to poll Canadians on the current state of the economy and their concerns.
Not surprisingly, when Canadians were asked which issue the government should focus on, “the Economy” rated at number one on the list — but not for everyone. Women, the data show, put health care ahead of the economy.
And what of...
Chinese head tax redress a bargain for feds
The Harper government scored major points in the Chinese community when it announced redress payments of $20,000 for families affected by Chinese head tax.
One major pay-off for the Tories was a win in the Vancouver area of Richmond, with a large Chinese population.
The head tax was charged on new Chinese immigrants between 1885 and 1923 in Canada and between 1910 and 1949 in Newfoundland,...
Libs pick up on their own order paper question
Hey, Liberal Research Office, help yourselves to anything else you’d like on this blog.
Globe and Mail, Feb. 4:
“Following Haiti’s earthquake last year, rather than delivering aid as quickly as possible, the Conservative government wasted $27,000 on single-use backdrops, conveniently coloured Tory blue, when they were coordinating a response to the earthquake,” Liberal MP John McCallum...
No OC Transpo API for you!
Ottawa software developers were excited when the city started allowing them to tap into OC Transpo’s server that tracks real-time bus location data.
Using the advanced programming interface — API— to tap into the GPS data, coders were busy creating new mobile and web-based applications that would tell users whether their bus was on-time. Several of these were entered in the City...
Maple Leafs syndrome afflicts Senators?
The Ottawa Senators are now 8 games into a losing streak, fans are moaning and calls to fire either the general manager or coach go unheeded by the owner.
So, one might assume, lousy hockey and annoyed fans should result in falling attendance, right?
Nope. Just as the Toronto Maple Leafs sell out every game despite chronic on-ice, futility, Senators supporters are expressing their discontent...
Bandwidth lobbying wars
Look at just about any company with a dog in the fight over telecom issues, chances are you find high-paid lobbyists working in their corner.
The imbroglio over the CRTC decision on bandwidth caps for Internet providers is no different.
Netflix, which gobbles up bandwidth with its online movie distribution, has the most to gain from Industry Minister Tony Clement’s intervention in the...
Vote like an Egyptian
The country watches unfolding events in Cairo but no one probably is as keenly interested as Egyptians living here.
A quick data crunch shoes that people of Egyptian origin tend to be overwhelming concentrated in Liberal ridings. Even in Bloc-dominated Quebec, Egyptians tend to live primarily in allophone ridings that vote Liberal.
From Statistics Canada’s long-form 2006 census questions...
Strategic voting: What has it done for you lately?
Once again, opposition supporters are discussing strategic voting in the next election to keep Stephen Harper’s Conservatives out of government. The “Catch 22” theory advanced this time in the Georgia Strait follows the same logic that failed to defeat the Tories in 2008 and, in fact, left them with a strengthened minority government.
While the principle is sound, in reality, it...
Backdrops for Haiti! Government paid out thousands...
As Canadians dug into their pockets for donations to Haiti last year, the Department of Foreign Affairs spent nearly $27,000 on backdrops used at a ministerial conference to coordinate response to the earthquake.
According to recently released documents, the extravagant backdrops were used only once, when Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon hosted the Ministerial Preparatory Conference in Montreal...
Tories still mum on who pays for Harper's hair and...
From responses tabled Monday to order paper questions….
Hon. Shawn Murphy:
With respect to persons who have accompanied the Prime Minister on foreign and domestic trips, for the period January 1, 2006 to October 11, 2010: (a) in what capacity does image consultant Michelle Muntean travel on transportation provided by the government; (b) does Ms. Muntean receive any remuneration from...
Beer and cigarettes: Does the REAL Scott Reid know...
An email from Conservative MP Scott Reid`s office circulated today on Parliament Hill:
De : Reid, Scott - M.P Envoyé : 1 février 2011 10:57 À : - BQ: ADJOINTS; - BQ DÉPUTÉS/MEMBERS; - BLOC: COMMUNICATION; - BLOC: ADMINISTRATION; - INDEPENDENT MEMBERS/DÉPUTÉS INDÉPENDANTS; - LIBERAL ASSISTANTS; - LIBERAL MEMBERS/DÉPUTÉS; - LIBERAL OPPOSITION LEADER/CHEF DE L’OPPOSITION...
January 2011
17 posts
Webscraping Wikileaks
Now that it appears Wikileaks will continue to roll out its diplomatic cables into the foreseeable future, the challenge for journalists is to keep tabs on the enormous amount of data pouring out on a near-daily basis.
I just finished pulling together a Wikileaks webscraper for my colleagues at Postmedia. It’s a computer script, written in Python, that checks in on a Wikileaks mirror every...
Joe: What? National Newswatch Who?
When I first started editing a political section for the Citizen in 1998, I commissioned a piece on Quorum, the photocopied collection of newspaper clippings that are distributed to MPs and political staff every day when the House is sitting and twice weekly when it’s not.
Quorum takes the best of each day’s political reporting from newspapers (and increasingly from website) and...
More foolscap foolishness: Libs considering a new...
Not to harp on about what might just be a meaningless doodle, but…
Like most things, the scrap of paper (see below) found after the Liberal party’s caucus meeting on the Hill on Wednesday becomes more interesting the more I obsesses about it. So indulge me, here.
Clearly, the list of figures refers to 2011 marginal federal tax rates. Currently, the big fat middle of this range of...
Liberal tax plan scribbled on the back of a...
This scrap of paper was found at the centre of the head table in the Liberal Party’s caucus meeting from today.
I have no clue who jotted down these figures or what they mean.
But, were I to guess, I’d say the ascending percentage figures corresponding to ranges look at bit like marginal tax rates.
And if they are, I’m not really sure if they indicate a change from the current...
Get yer Harper Goggles on!
If you take the Conservative Party’s 5th anniversary of power celebration this weekend to be something akin to a campaign kick of (as I do), then Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s eyeglasses may hold some significance.
Several news orgs reported that the Tories had cameras mounted on booms for the event, as though they were shooting a TV commercial. And attendees were warned that they...
Tory vote vs. the long-form census data
Amid all the election speculation, I’ve read a bunch of pieces like this, recounting how parties are targeting certain ridings.
In each, it is suggested, there are certain political and demographic factors that could flip these ridings from one party to another.
Often, for the Conservatives, a riding is said to have a large ethnic constituency they are trying to attract, for example, the...
A better name for CAR
For journalists who work with electronic records, finding a name for what we do has been a struggle. Since the 1980s, we’ve called it “Computer-Assisted Reporting,” with the dreadful acronym CAR.
The name is now silly. Today, every journalist is assisted by a computer, even if they use it to simply send email, write their stories or use a search engine in their research.
But...
Prime Minister Harper talks hockey on CBC (with...
Same drill for today’s data snack. Here’s the tag cloud from the second part of Stephen Harper’s interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC’s The National.
The big shift from the previous night: KNOW replaces THINK in the cloud. Most of these are in the form of “you know,” the phatic speech junk that we all throw in when other words fail us.
Harper leaned on the...
"I think, therefore...": Wordplay with Prime...
A hat tip to the CBC people who kindly provided a transcript of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s interview chief anchor Peter Mansbridge, which played on The National last night.
I removed Mansbridge’s questions from the transcript and threw PMSH’s responses into Wordle (as below), to see if any trends emerge.
I suspect the giant “THINK” in the graphic is not so much...
Data snacking: The mid-day distraction
My undertaking for the New Year is to post quickie data analysis hits on this blog every day. I’m hoping this will help hone my data chops and improve my speed in turning around news from numbers.
One problem with data journalism (nee computer-assisted reporting) is the long lead times from requesting data, waiting for it, processing it, to then researching and writing the story.
Because...
Carbon costs of Ignatieff's winter tour
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff begins the political season with a cross-country tour that will take him to 20 federal ridings in 11 days.
I thought it might be fun to calculate the environmental cost of his blitz. I based this on the schedule handed out to media and began crunching the distances. I did not include distances from riding events in each city to his hotel, as those details are not...
More Liberal stock photo fun
Oh, Liberals, won’t you ever learn? The party constantly leans on stock photos to illustrate their political tracts, sourced invariably from U.S. agencies.
Thus, pictures of people presented as average Canadians are, in fact, Americans or sometimes, Germans.
In this case, it’s a new Lib document entitled, “Five Years of Harper: Is Canada better off?” Stock images abound...
"Glocks don't kill people..."
The handgun used in the attempted assassination of a congresswoman and the murder of six people at a Tucson, Arizona, supermarket has drawn the obligatory media attention.
A profile of the gun used is a standard second-day or third-day story whenever there’s a mass shooting.
ABC News obliges with a look at the Glock 19, which goes for $400 to $500 and is available at Wal-Mart.
The...
The White Powder menace
View Ottawa’s white powder menace in a full screen map
Police and journalists alike have long been familiar with the trope of the white van. Whenever prompted about some umbral threat — terrorists, child abductors, what-have-you. — “witnesses” will invariably tell the cops or reporters about seeing a white van around the time something bad happened.
Since 9/11 and...
Baby boomers rule the House of Commons
Month of birth may be a key determinate of success in competitive team sports, but does theory hold for other pursuits?
In the case of Canadian politics, nope.
There appears to be no correlation between m.o.b. and the number of members of parliament in the House of Common
Number of MPs by month of birth:
Jan - 21
Feb - 18
Mar - 23
Apr - 27
May - 33
...
Month of birth and the Ontario Hockey League
Parents hear a lot about how the month of birth affects a child’s potential in organized sport. The theory is that kids born earlier in the year will have an age advantage over other players in a sport who are born later, and will therefore excel, at least at earlier ages.
A kid born in January will be a relative bruiser in Timbits hockey, compared to the the December baby. Anyone who...
December 2010
2 posts
Tracking the HarperDEX
My colleague at the Ottawa Citizen, Dan Gardner, has written what looks to be an excellent book debunking the ability of so-called experts to predict, well, just about anything.
(I intend to buy Future Babble for my Kobo but haven’t yet in protest of his publisher’s excessive $19.19 price for the electronic version, less than a dollar cheaper than the print edition.)
One expert...
Further on the NFL spread...
Even though the Philadelphia Eagles have historically performed the best against the spread, the slim advantage of 4.7 per cent isn’t enough to cover the vigorish.
If you broke out their road games, the advantage rises. The Eagles cover 58 per cent of their road games.
If you bet on all Eagles road games since 1978, you’d win more bets than you lost. But here’s the catch: the...
November 2010
2 posts
Fun with data and NFL lines
On the way back from a boys’ weekend in Buffalo, where we witnessed another Bills tragedy, we were discussing the accuracy of NFL betting lines.
One guy in our football pool has suggested, with no rational explanation, that spreads are inaccurate and/or misleading.
As a data geek and NFL fan, I thought it would be fun to compare the accuracy of the Vegas point spread over recent...
Teaching CAR with Craigslist
One of the things I’ve learned trying to teach computer-assisted reporting is that students respond well to exercises involving real-world data.
For a session on mapping I did at Algonquin College, we looked at the pattern of break-ins in Orleans, Ont., by Col. Russell Williams, before he went on to kill two women around Tweed.
To teach MySQL, I used real data from Ontario’s organ donation waiting...
October 2010
2 posts
Coding for journalists
My colleague from the Vancouver Sun, reporter Chad Skelton, has triggered an interesting debate about which computer language journalists should learn and how they should learn it.
Chad has already carved out a reputation as one of BC’s most tenacious users of the Access to Information and Freedom of Information acts in his reporting work, which he documents on his blog.
And Chad is also...
A SEDI look at Nigel Wright
The CBC’s Kady O’Malley has an interesting blog post today about the new chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, Nigel Wright.
Kady notes the unusual fact that Wright, apparently, is on an 18-month to two-year leave of absence from Onex Corp., where he is a senior executive. This was first reported by my Postmedia colleague, Paul Vieira.
Clearly, the ethics commissioner...
September 2010
4 posts
Benevolent bots for journalism and public good
For most of us online, ‘bots are a great annoyance. They harvest our email addresses and send us Viagra spam. They pretend to be bored co-eds and IM unspeakable offers on chat. The really diabolical bots hack our Hotmail and scam our friends with urgent demands for cash.
But bots – short for robots and, in this context, meant to describe computer programs that perform Internet tasks – can also be...
Mechanical Turk vs the EQAO
Ontario’s standardized testing results came out last week. For parents, the EQAO results are a chance to compare their kids’ schools against others. The results are also a story my newspaper covers closely every year.
For some reason, however, the people the Education Quality and Accountability Office wouldn’t give me a copy of the school-by-school results so that my newspaper...
A pitch from Ashley Madison
Journalists get these kind of unsolicited and self-serving story pitches from media flacks all the time. Typically, they go directly to the recycle bin. But this one was notable in its stupidity…
****
Story opportunity - what’s more important, your job or a faithful wife?
Hello, As unemployment is still at an all-time high, I have a great story The Ottawa Citizen might be...
John Baird press conference Sept.16.2010
EXCERPT…
Question: Good morning, Mr. Baird. Just wondering how you lost control of the whole gun registry issue because when everyone left for the summer it looked like there was a good chance you could win it. And, as we sit today, it looks like the registry will be saved. I think we have another NDP switcher today. So how did you lose control of the...
August 2010
2 posts
Prime Minister Stephen Harper takes questions...
MODERATOR: Ok, we have time for a few questions. We’ll start with Craig Oliver, CTV.
REPORTER: Prime Minister, how worried are you about what seems to be over a period of months a steep decline in support for your party and do you think if the economy looks like it may be slipping back into recession, your government is ready with a new stimulus program?
RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: First of all,...
Cabinet shuffle pool report
Pool report filed by Stephanie Levitz of Canadian Press:
The swearing in ceremony took place in the ballroom of Rideau Hall. There were about three dozen people in attendance, including family and staff of the new ministers.
Just after 10 am, Chuck Strahl, John Duncan and John Baird entered the room and sat in three Tiffany-blue arm chairs at the front.
Strahl was wearing a tan suit with...
