Disappointing numbers, but delightful fodder

So after my frantic race to post futures market predictions for the election results on Monday - and declaring my utter fascination with their typical accuracy - I was a little bit disappointed to see that even they didn't predict the hold that the Grits maintained on Vancouver and the GTA, even if they were far more accurate than any poll I've seen.

That aside, I did enjoy the election and ensuing news coverage, complete with upsets, surprises, back peddling and more. From everything I saw and read, here are my three favourites:

3. Global's Early Prediction - I read yesterday that Global was the first network to declare a Conservative minority...at 7:30 p.m. ET!! With recounts and hanging chads being such defining features of U.S. elections in recent years, I thought the networks here would be ultra-cautious about making a call, at least until some of the polls closed. Bold move.

2. Andrew Coyne's Column - The National Post was chock full o' heavily slanted (and quite funny at times) news coverage following the election, but Andrew Coyne also delivered one of the most eloquent lines I've read throughout the campaign. Unfortunately I don't have the article in front of me, but it went something like this: For the first time in more than a decade, the Conservative wave from the West didn't break on the banks of the Rideau, but flowed over into Quebec.

1. Martin's Concession Speech - No matter what your political stripe (I haven't divulged mine I hope!) you had to love Martin's farewell speech. Not just because it was a bit of a tear-jerker, but because it immediately opened a new chapter in Canadian politics. With the Grits still very much alive in Parliament, his resignation instantly made me think of the final scene of from a Friday the 13th movie, where just before the screen cuts to black and the credits role, the (supposedly, finally) dead bad guy opens his eyes. Maybe there's going to be a sequel!

And the money is on...

I heard second hand last week that CBC researchers had identified a stunning correlation between Toronto Maple Leafs games and election outcomes; apparently dating back some time, every time the Leafs won the last game before election day, the Liberals won. Every time the buds lost, it was a Tory victory. Given Saturday's performance, it looked like we were in for a Conservative majority.

The futures markets paint a slightly different picture, but a Tory-blue one just the same. Here are the closing numbers from futures markets at UBC:

Liberal - 93
Conservative - 127
NDP - 33
Bloq - 54
Other - 1

and Pinnaclesports.com:

Liberal - 87.5
Conservative - 134.5
NDP - 30.5
Bloq - 55.5
Other - 0.5

A little bit of time will tell, but if proponents of free market dynamics have their way, look for numbers pretty similar to these in the papers tomorrow.

Futures Markets: Money where the mouth is

I've been meaning for weeks now to write about this topic - the fascinating predictive powers of futures markets - and time's quickly running out for it to have any relevance to tonight's Canadian election. The Globe, Post, Star and CBC have all reported on it, and the polls closed in Newfoundland an hour and a half ago, but I'm still going to take a stab at writing something noteworthy.

In simple terms - for my fellow engineers and non-MBA types - futures markets allow people to bet on the outcome of a future event. They've existed for decades - if not longer - in commodities markets, with traders buying and selling futures in oil & gas, produce, precious metals, and of course, pork bellies.

At the risk of offending pork belly traders, futures markets have become infinitely more interesting to the average observer, mainly with the Internet brining the concept to the masses with futures markets in everything from sporting events to elections. What's more, the results of these markets have been astounding in their predictive abilities. Some notable examples include:

• Intrade - The Dublin-based market showed that the probability of Saddam Hussein's capture more than tripled the day before his capture. Remember that his capture was a relative surprise to begin with, let alone on that day.


• Iowa Election Exchange - Over the course of 5 presidential elections spanning 12 years, the University of Iowa's election futures markets predicted the popular vote within 1.4%.


• University of British Columbia - In the 2000 election, UBC's futures market was remarkably close in its seat predictions, and accurate within 1.5% for each of the five parties in popular vote.


• Hollywood Stock Exchange - Harvard researchers have concluded that HSX's futures-based box office predictions are accurate to within 16% of actual receipts, more accurate than any other single means of forecasting.

The theory behind the predictive abilities of futures markets - compared to even the most statistically significant polls - is that traders have to put their money where their mouths are. Moreover, the theory holds that the more educated a trader is on the likely outcome, the more he/she will invest in their bet. In the case of an election, the traders don't even have to represent the actual voters to predict the outcome better than polls.

Whatever the theory, the results speak for themselves. And the predictions for tonight's election? Check back in a minute!

Coming to a thumbnail near you

Does "less is more" apply to TV?

Next week, CBS will be airing the 60-second pilot episode of The Courier, the networks' first major forray into the realm of the "micro-series" genre; shows specifically produced and exclusively broadcast on handheld devices like PDA's, iPods and cell phones.

Now don't get me wrong. The last thing I want to do is come across as ornery or technophobic, but does this make sense? In entertainment and interaction, isn't (at least in terms of screen size) bigger always better?

It's better in audio, but bigger can come with the right headphones. It's better in computing, and even in video games, but almost any user/gamer/player will sacrifice some screen size, and a bit of functionality perhaps, in return for benefits like freedom and mobility.

But with television (and movies for that matter) the screen is virtually everything. It's the reason the TV exists. With TV, the screen is the functionality. No?

Either way, chalk me up in the "late adopter/laggard" column on this one.

Tepid Lucidity

As much as I enjoy providing friendly, unsolicited advice to politicians every so often, I am a great believer in the democratic system. More to the point, I can't stand hearing people gripe about the corruption of politicians and the divide between government policy and local issues as excuses to give up on the democratic system entirely.

Yes, the system has faults, but how on earth can a country's leadership be determined other than through the election of representatives by their peers?

Yes, I'm one of those people who believes voting is not just a right, but civic responsibility. Yes, I'm one of those people who at least understands the "if you didn't vote, sit down and shut up" philosophy.

And yet, I'm afraid I must join the ranks of the gripers in expressing my disappointment with my first experience in riding-level politics in years.

I recently attended an all-candidates meeting in a GTA riding - I won't tell you which one, except to say that it wasn't my own. I can best sum up my experience as...underwhelming.

Why? Because I was expecting to hear how the candidates would truly address local issues, how they would translate national party platforms into local actions that (if I were to live in the riding) I could see when I walked out of my door every morning. Having seen and read more than enough debate at the federal level, I was looking for something refreshingly local.

Instead, what I saw was an off-off-Broadway version of the leadership debates I already spent too much time watching on TV. Almost without exception, every question of local relevance - gun crime, traffic congestion, green spaces - was met with an answer taken straight out of the party platform. One candidate answered a question about a local park with his party's stance on the Kyoto Protocol!

One of the setbacks I admit exists in our Parliamentary system of government is that voters must cast a single ballot to express their preference for both local representatives and the Prime Minister.

It has been said that local issues at best constitute 20% of a given voter's decision at the ballot box. If all all-candidates meetings were like this one, I'd say that figure should be closer to 0.

Those of you out there going to all-candidates meetings, I hope you're in for a more compelling evening than I had. Those of you who put on the debate, if I wanted to hear the party line, I would have turned on the TV. And those of you who got the Queensrÿche reference...YOU ROCK!

Go Ahead...Bring in the Army

The Liberals have had a rough couple of days suffering almost universal lambasting for an attack ad (guns....in our cities...in Canada) that seemingly almost ran on national TV. The wisdom - or lack thereof - of the attack aside, there is a shred of value in the ad as it relates to Toronto's rising gun violence: Why not bring in the army?

That's right. Bring the Army to Toronto. Arm them with big guns loaded with rubber bullets, and deploy them at strategic checkpoints in high gun-crime areas.

What? But we're in Toronto, not Kabul. It reeks of racial profiling. It's reactionary tactic, and it will only mean gun criminals move their turf.

Well...maybe. But here are a few reasons why it isn't such a crazy idea:

It's our bloodiest war - With the utmost respect to our fallen soldiers, more Canadians have died from gunshots in Toronto in the last year than in all foreign conflicts combined. According to reports from CBC and the DND, in the past two years eight Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan, one (serving with the U.S. forces) was killed in Iraq, and one submariner perished in the HMCS Chicoutimi fire. By contrast, Toronto saw gun-related homicides more than double to an astounding 52 deaths in 2005.

It might work now - I couldn't be more supportive of root-cause solutions to Toronto's gun problems, but they won't help curb the problem today; they'll either come into effect after subsequent rounds of gun deaths (in the case of raising minimum sentences) or in a generation (in the case of community programs). This solution could put a quick end to the problem in days.

It's their mandate - One of the duties of the Army is "providing armed and unarmed assistance to civil authorities when needed to maintain public order and security or to assist in emergency relief." And - jokes from Albertan aside - if snow removal constitutes emergency relief as Mel Lastman believed, surely putting an end to an explosion in gun violence does too.

It's not racial profiling - It's regional profiling, with soldiers deployed only to strategic locations in high crime areas. As someone who lives in one affected area, I can say without question that I'd rather wake up to checkpoints manned by the Canadian Forces than I would to find a dead man, shot in the head in an apparent drug deal gone wrong, in the playground of the school where my two-year old son may end up going in a few short years.

Stewart Delivers

I asked for it and I got it...Stewart. Summing up in less than 10 words what I attempted to convey in 500, Stewart articulated what I hope was on the minds of witnesses to the Sago Mine news coverage:

"Leave these people the f--k alone."

This is probably why Stewart has his own, internationally syndicated show, and I have my blog.

Show respect for West Virginia miners

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – a daily must-see for me – often pokes fun at national news media who sometimes report on news less than they create it. Coverage over the past 24 hours of the tragic explosion at Tallmansville, West Virginia’s Sago Coal Mine shows to what extent such creation takes place.

Families of 12 perished miners waited in desperation to hear news of their loved ones’ conditions while trapped in a carbon monoxide-rich shaft 240 feet below the ground level. After an unconfirmed and incorrect announcement that all the miners were rescued alive, the families of 12 men heard the worst news imaginable; that in fact all but one perished.

I had the television in my office on all day today, flipping mostly between U.S. and Canadian news networks. And to my disappointment – although not to my surprise – I couldn’t help but notice that the story had become – not the tragedy at the coal mine or the stories of the brave people who risked their lives as part of the rescue/recovery efforts – the actual news coverage of the initial “miscommunication” from the mine about the miners being rescued alive, and the international reporting of misinformation that ensued. In an interview with a local television reporter and news director on As it Happens this evening, I am fairly certain more time was spent discussing CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s reaction to the mixed reports of the tragedy than on the tragedy itself.

Really. Do the families of the 12 victims really want to know who’s to blame for an optimistic breach of protocol right now? At this time of grieving, do you really think they want to read about an entirely different angle to the story that has sent a torpedo into their lives?

For the record, 10 of the 12 victims of the Sago explosion (and it even took me a while to find these) were:

Alva Martin Bennett, 50
Jim Bennett, 61
Jerry Groves, 57
George Hamner Jr.
Terry Helms, 50
David Lewis, 28
Martin Toler
Fred Ware Jr
Jack Weaver
Marshall Winans

To the families of the victims, my thoughts are with you along with my hope that the news media don’t drag out this experience to excruciating lengths.

I haven’t seen the Daily Show yet today, but I sure hope Stewart is all over this.