When polling goes bad

A new "poll" has determined that rich kids work hard, are responsible for their money and give to charity.

How did this scientific endeavour come up with these conclusions? It asked the rich kids what they thought of themselves.

Now strangely they find out the rich kids paint themselves in a positive light. And since rich kids wouldn't lie or anything, it must be true.

Oh, and the control variable? You know, asking the not-so-rich kids what they thought of themselves as a basis for comparison?

They didn't bother doing that.

And since "they" is a "wealth management company", I guess we'll just have to trust that they don't have some sort of hidden agenda here.

On the return of Newswatch

Midnight Poutine has a review of CBC's one-hour News at Six, focusing on their new sports commentator P.J. Stock.

The return to one hour of local news, which CBC hopes will bring it back into the same league as CTV as it was many moons ago, was first discussed back when I had a brief stint at the Corporation TWO YEARS AGO.

Hopefully future improvements won't take as long.

Behold, something we haven't seen at the Big O

Spectators.

Also cool in this video: monster trucks.

Careful, Le Devoir

Keep doing this and you'll go blind.

Test the Nation: CBC stumbles out of the gate

So CBC has been running ads for this Test the Nation "event" that came out of some brilliant mind in the senior programming boardroom.

I'm not quite sure what the point is. It seems to be some sort of nationwide IQ test, complete with break-the-stereotypes revelations where they show stupid surgeons and smart tattoo artists.

What struck me on their website is this "mental gym" quiz. Ten surprisingly difficult questions about logic, memory etc. Below the big link to the test is a list of the top 5 finishers so far.

Apparently all five answered the questions 100% correctly in under a second and a half.

Could have something to do with the fact that you can take the test over and over again and the answers never change.

Leave it to the idiots

The Park Ave. YMCA, which was involved in that unfrosted windows peeping tom debacle, has decided not to think about the issue too much (or trust some provincial commission), but to simply conduct polling and see what Joe Schmo Quebecer thinks.

Shawinigan Handshakee runs for office

In a desperate grab at relevancy, Bill Clennett, who tussled with Jean Chrétien 11 years ago, is running for office for Québec solidaire in the Quebec riding of Hull.

New Montreal tech blog

The Gazette's Roberto Rocha has quietly started up a Montreal tech industry blog (fixed link) with some startup fodder. It should probably be announced some time over the next few days.

On successful Amber Alerts

CNN is reporting that a 13-year-old Florida boy has been found alive hours after he was abducted at gunpoint.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the SQ located two Pierrefonds children who had been abducted by their mother (I think).

Both cases sparked Amber Alerts, which prompted countless calls from the public, though in neither case it seems did the public make a difference.

Attack on ref saves ref's life

Hopefully people don't use this as an excuse to start cross-checking refs in the face though.

Don't forget about the other third party

Québec solidaire (the fringe-left association of hippies that pretends to be a serious party) has a new strategy this election: focus on some key ridings.

Good luck with that.

How's Mickey doing, anyway?

Fanatique.ca has a roundup of how former Habs are doing in their post-Montreal hockey careers.

It's official: Trudeau's running

Try to act surprised.

He'll be seeking the nomination in Papineau, where the BQ's Vivian Barbot narrowly beat Pierre Pettigrew last time around.

Fark compares Trudeau to what Brian Mulroney's kid is doing now.

Chez Schwartz

I'm out of the loop. Just heard about this documentary today, co-produced by Concordia documentary prof Barry Lazar.

Campaign websites critiqued (updated)

Quebec bloggers are critiquing the websites of the three major parties in the upcoming provincial election.

Eric Baillargeon gives top marks to the PQ's website, which for some reason redirects to an administrator site with a bad security certificate:

Issued to:
E = root@server3.astralinternet.com
CN = server3.astralinternet.com
OU = SomeOrganizationalUnit
O = SomeOrganization
L = SomeCity
ST = SomeState
C = --

Besides being issued with incomplete information, the certificate is also assigned to the wrong domain and by an unrecognized certificate issuer, all of which raised alarm bells in my browser.

The real website is still available here.

The ADQ website, meanwhile, starts up with an annoying typing sound and plays a video without asking me first. Once upon a time these things were bad netiquette. Has that changed or something?

Michel Leblanc takes a more statistical approach to critiquing the PQ vs PLQ websites (no mention of ADQ), and notes that they both have their technological issues.

This is impressive since there's very little at the Liberal website besides some candidate photos and promises of a blog.

UPDATE: Canoe's Dominic Arpin jumps into the fray, adding brief critiques of the Quebec solidaire and Green party websites. He adds that the ADQ's domain (adqaction.com) isn't exactly intuitive.

Death to lattes

It seems a letter writer has found the solution to Quebec's post-secondary education funding issue: Students are buying too many iced cappuccinos and should be spending it on increased tuition:

Here are a few suggestions: Students – or parents footing the bill – can rent one fewer video a week, go to one fewer movie, buy one fewer latte or iced cappuccino.

And here I was thinking that these students are buying 99-cent pizzas because their maxed-out credit cards won't allow them any money to live on, and they still owe their four roommates three months back-rent.

How silly of me.

Meanwhile, Henry Aubin points out that Quebec's adult workforce is the laziest in Canada, with shorter work hours, more sick days, less productivity and more early retirement:

They’ve simply absorbed a ethos that we, their elders, have unintentionally taught them by example. Many of us in older generations have established a culture of entitlement, a sense that everything is due us.

Maybe they're the ones who should be spending less time sipping lattes and more time on the job?

Montrealers cure diabetes

(well, not quite)

Doctors have found genes that apparently increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

It's all about the separatists, baby

Here's how Reuters sees the upcoming provincial election.

Bloomberg, meanwhile, takes a more matter-of-fact approach.

37 people we've never heard of

were appointed to the Order of Canada.

As usual half of them are CEOs of big companies who bought their way in through donations to charities.

Am I the only one who finds it odd that "philanthropist" and "philanderer" sound a lot alike?

Telus caves in

The surge in media attention that has thrust Telus into the hot, sweaty spotlight has gotten too hard for the overly sensitive wireless provider, who has pulled out of its porn services to cellphones, leaving its johns stroking their heads wondering where their next climaxes are going to come from.

And yet Videotron still has SexTV on its lineup.

The Guy Lafleur disco album

I have no words.

Some things are best left in the past. Il fait beau dans l'métro this is not.

Shawinigate Hotel for sale

Got $1 million lying around? Now you can spend it on a piece of political history.

The inevitable XM/Sirius merger

Greetings, new monopolistic overlords.

Do people actually subscribe to these services?

New BNL video features YouTube stars

The Barenaked Ladies, who are playing the Bell Centre tonight (I'd see them, but Heroes is on), have a new video featuring YouTube stars like the Numa Numa guy, "Where the hell is Matt?" Matt Harding, and a few other people I don't recognize. Lonelygirl15 is nowhere to be found.

(via BoingBoing)

La Presse turns the tables on tenants

After a fascinating series on horrible landlords, La Presse takes a look at bad tenants with garbage-filled apartments left by people who don't clean, or worse, wilfully damage their own apartments or those of others.

(via mtlweblog)

Some humour escapes me

Are these people serious?

Is my MP Canadian?

Yes she is.

But The Gazette's Liz Thompson has a piece in today's paper about so-called "lost" Canadians who are now realizing they were never Canadian citizens for bureaucratic reasons. Marlene Jennings is safe, but apparently was worried for quite a while about it.

This concerns me somewhat. Does Parliament not check that MPs are Canadian citizens before allowing them to take office?

Also today: Gazette freelancer (and Habs Inside/Out Puckcast host John MacFarlane lectures educates us about the politics of food, and Part 3 (subscriber-locked) of my supermarket shopper series.

And on Page A6, a far-too-large story on a CanWest spelling bee is surrounded by stories on shootings, stabbings, home invasions and drunk driving.

Lost explained

This video made me laugh. It also reminds me why I don't watch Lost.

She ordered St. Hubert once. Oh the horror!

As part of its six-day food series, The Gazette today looks at the personal culinary habits of its restaurant critic, complete with photos that keep her off camera so she won't get recognized doing her job.

It's about what you'd expect.

My daily profile of a supermarket shopper isn't online, but it's in the paper on Page A4. Today is Daisy Leclerc, who was lots of fun to interview (albeit for a brief period).