Local (category archive)

Psychic predictions reviewed

December 13, 2009
0 Comments

You might recall that in January of this year Australia’s psychic of the year made some predictions for 2009. It’s now December, and I thought I’d take a look back at the year that was and see how Stacey Demarco’s predictions have faired.

1. Was Barack Obama assassinated?

The witch was concerned about the possible of an attempt on the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama (and, as she helpfully notes, she’s “not the only one in the spiritual community who thinks that”). Both Barack and Michelle Obama are fine. Prediction failed.

2. Kevin Rudd “may be beset with a serious, even fatal heart problem”.

It’s been 321 days so far and The Kevin Rudd Chronometer of Valour is still ticking—and so is his heart. Kevin Rudd, who has a pre-existing heart condition (he received a cardiac valve transplant in the early 1990s), is fine. Prediction failed.

3. Is Malcolm Turnbull the Prime Minister?

Malcolm Turnbull is not the Prime Minister. We haven’t had an election. This question and the next may not have been meant for this year in particular, but that’s what the Today Tonight segment was about, so that’s how I’m rating them. For now: Prediction irrelevent.

4. Is Julia Gillard the next female Prime Minister?

See above. Prediction irrelevent.

5. Did house prices stop falling after six months?

This really doesn’t seem like the kind of field a witch ought to be concerned with, but nevertheless: in the first quarter of 2009, house prices fell 2.2%, but in the second quarter, they increased 4.2%. For the prediction to be accurate they should have kept falling in the second quarter and risen in the third, but I’m going to be generous, since she’s clearly not very good with handling timeframes to begin with. Prediction successful.

6. Was August the nadir of the economic crisis?

I’m lazy, so I’m just going to go by the unemployment rate, which peaked at 5.9% in July and was about the same (5.8%) in August. If this witchcraft business doesn’t work out, maybe this woman could become an economic statistician. Prediction successful.

7. Did Slumdog Millionaire, Mickey Rourke, and Kate Winslet win the Oscars?

The psychic of the year’s predicted winners for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress were, funnily enough, generally considered favourites even by those without psychic powers. She was right on two counts, but was wrong about the Best Actor, which Sean Penn got in a surprise win. Now, if she had picked that one, I’d be impressed. Prediction failed.

The final score: ignoring the irrelevent predictions, two out of five. Does Australia have a new psychic of the year yet? It sounds like we need one.

Categories: Projects » Web applications » Braveheart, Humour, Local and Politics

Fight the power

April 11, 2009
4 Comments

There are a few ways to get your hands on Kevin Rudd’s stimulus package. One is to qualify for the $900 tax bonus payment. Another is to be Thérèse Rein. But, there’s something else Australians can do to get free stuff from the government, and all you have to do is complete a little online form. Thanks to the Australian Better Health Initiative, you can get—wait for it—five free tape measures, to support your ‘event’. Alternatively, you can download a PDF, print it out in 6 pieces, and stick your own tape measure together.

Categories: Humour, Local, Politics and Suggestions

Psychic predictions

January 26, 2009
2 Comments

Tonight, viewers of Today Tonight were in for a treat: Australia’s psychic of the year, Stacey Demarco (who technically calls herself a witch), offered her predictions for the coming year. As the presenter promised, the details really were spine-tingling. There was one especially serious prediction, concerning Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

According to Today Tonight and the psychic, this year our fearless leader “may be beset with a serious, even fatal heart problem”. (One has to assume that Australia’s top psychic is not just referring to the rheumatic heart disease he already has a history of.)

While the language in the report is tentative, with a little analysis we can see that the prediction has simply been toned down to avoid alarming the viewing audience. The psychic recommends “better diet and exercise” for Kevin, but this warning brings up a potential paradox:

If Kevin heeds the warning and manages to take good care of his health, he won’t have heart problems in future. But, if he doesn’t have heart problems in the future, she wouldn’t have been able to predict them and warn him about it. Since the psychic has forseen heart problems in Kevin’s future, we know he’s definitely not going to heed her warning.

There’s no doubt about it: Kevin Rudd is in trouble.

I know the world’s thoughts are now with Kevin in his time of need, so I’ve created a centralised resource for everyone wanting to keep up-to-date with news on Kevin Rudd’s upcoming heart attack*:

braveheart.maestrosync.com

—

* Technical note: while the term ‘heart attack’ specifically refers to myocardial infarction, for simplicity, all life-threatening problems with Kevin Rudd’s heart will be included on the Kevin Rudd Memorial Heart Attack Counter.

Categories: Projects » Web applications » Braveheart, Humour, Local and Politics

Facts and figures

January 5, 2009
2 Comments

Today’s episode of Today Tonight included a segment which featured a number of classic shonky current affair themes: today’s children being too insulated, political correctness gone mad, youth gone wild. It was rather impressive for a total non-news story. The start of the segment included the presenter making a comment along the lines of “what about the number of teen suicides these days”—no further elaboration was forthcoming, of course. It’s almost a given that Today Tonight is going to be full of crap, so I decided to look for some real statistics on the subject.

I didn’t have to spend very long looking, though, because there’s a very convenient source of statistics for issues like this. It’s the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and its website is full of useful and detailed facts and figures. In this case, I consulted a number of resources relating to suicide:

The figures I am using are for persons (male or female) aged 15-19 (which is as low as the statistics go), expressed in deaths per 100,000 estimated persons in that age group. First, the low-resolution (every 5 years) graph for 1921 to 1995:

graph

Yes, they have been going up. They’ve been going up since the 1960s. There’s nothing new about this. Let’s take a look at the graph for 1996 to 2006:

graph

They peaked in 1997. Since then, the suicide rate has been declining. This really is not news. In 2006, the figures had gotten below 1971-1975 rates. Data for 2007 and 2008 isn’t available, but it’s highly unlikely that suicide rate would have doubled in the last two years.

I’ll let these facts speak for themselves. Also, I’ve forgotten what the story was supposed to be about, but I’m sure I disproved something somehow.

Categories: Local and Maths & science

Not seam ripping

September 26, 2008
2 Comments

One last post about footy tipping, and it’s for the 1897 VFL season. The average percentage of correct guesses is 76%, better than average and better than this system’s average for 2007 or 2008.

Rounds 2 to 14 and the finals of the 1897 season on the X axis, correct guesses from 0/4 to 4/4 on the Y axis.

Full tally:
Rd   2: xxxx 4/4
Rd   3: -xxx 3/4
Rd   4: x--- 1/4
Rd   5: -xxx 3/4
Rd   6: -xxx 3/4
Rd   7: /-xx 2/3
Rd   8: --xx 2/4
Rd   9: -xxx 3/4
Rd  10: xxxx 4/4
Rd  11: xxxx 4/4
Rd  12: xxxx 4/4
Rd  13: xx-x 3/4
Rd  14: xx-x 3/4
Finals: --xxxx 4/6

Categories: Local and Maths & science

Not sheep dipping

September 26, 2008
1 Comment

Following on from my previous post about footy tipping based on ladder position. This time, it’s for 2007, and the strategy is not as successful. The average percentage of correct guesses is 62%, still better than average.

Rounds 2 to 22, the finals, and the Grand Final of the 2007 season on the X axis, correct guesses from 0/8 to 8/8 on the Y axis.

Round 1 omitted because I don’t feel like coming up with another table based on NAB Cup results and winning margins. The inclusion of the Grand Final result can make up for that.

Full tally:
Rd   2: xx--xx-- 4/8
Rd   3: xx----xx 4/8
Rd   4: x-----xx 3/8
Rd   5: -xxxx--- 4/8
Rd   6: x---xxxx 5/8
Rd   7: --xx---x 3/8
Rd   8: xx-xx-x- 5/8
Rd   9: --xxxx-- 4/8
Rd  10: x/x---xx 4/7
Rd  11: ---xxxx- 4/8
Rd  12: xx-x--x- 4/8
Rd  13: xxxxxxx- 7/8
Rd  14: x--x--xx 4/8
Rd  15: --xxxxxx 6/8
Rd  16: xx-x-xxx 6/8
Rd  17: xx-xxxx- 6/8
Rd  18: /xx--x-x 4/7
Rd  19: -xx-x--x 4/8
Rd  20: x/xxx--x 5/7
Rd  21: xxxx--x- 5/8
Rd  22: -xxxxx-x 6/8
Finals: xxxx-xxx 7/8
Grand:  x        1/1

Categories: Local and Maths & science

Not cow tipping

September 26, 2008
3 Comments

The upcoming AFL grand final got me thinking about football and footy tipping. I was curious, so I decided to work out what the results would be if you always went for whichever team was higher on the ladder:

Rounds 1 to 22 and the finals of the 2008 season on the X axis, correct guesses from 0/8 to 8/8 on the Y axis.

The average percentage of correct guesses turns out to be 72%. Not overwhelming, but significantly better than average (the 50% you would expect from randomly picking).

Full tally:
Rd   1: -x-x-x-x 4/8 (based on pre-season)
Rd   2: -x-xxx-- 4/8 (based on ladder from here onwards)
Rd   3: xxx-xxxx 7/8
Rd   4: xxxxx--x 6/8
Rd   5: xx-xx/-x 5/7
Rd   6: xx-xx/xx 6/7
Rd   7: xxxxxx-x 7/8
Rd   8: -xxxxxxx 7/8
Rd   9: -xxx--xx 6/8
Rd  10: xx--xxxx 6/8
Rd  11: xxxxxx-x 7/8
Rd  12: --xxxxx- 6/8
Rd  13: xx-x-xx- 5/8
Rd  14: x-xx-xx- 5/8
Rd  15: x-xxxxx- 6/8
Rd  16: -x-xxxx- 6/8
Rd  17: x----x-x 3/8
Rd  18: xxxxxxxx 8/8
Rd  19: xx-xxx-- 5/8
Rd  20: x-x-xxx- 5/8
Rd  21: x-xx-xx- 5/8
Rd  22: -x-xx-xx 5/8
Finals: x-xxxxxx 7/8

Categories: Local and Maths & science

The Holden Sportwagon

August 15, 2008
3 Comments

As the commercial says, it’s “a wagon with the word ’sport’ in front of it”.

Categories: Humour, Incidentals and Local

A highly necessary evolution

December 3, 2007
5 Comments

Advance Australia Fair, our national anthem, is not a bad one—it doesn’t mention God or war at all, for example. However, the second verse is rarely used, which is a shame. So, I propose taking the best bits of each verse and making the super-anthem:

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
With courage let us all combine,
Advance Australia Fair.

This version:

  1. Does away with the antiquated notions of us being young and girtness

    2. and replaces it with easily the best part of the entire song

  2. Keeps the nature’s gifts part, because our plains aren’t completely boundless
  3. Gets rid of the self-referential line about singing the anthem (and the word ’strains’, which I certainly didn’t understand until I looked it up) and replaces it with the line that usually follows the ‘boundless plains’ couplet
Categories: Incidentals, Local and Politics

Death Of A Franchise

July 4, 2007
5 Comments

As if new epsiodes of The Simpsons aren’t bad enough—and they are—on the episode that aired here yesterday, JABF10 (’Marge Gamer’), the whole thing was sped up by 5-10% (I assume this was done locally). The end result? Ridiculous and distracting high-pitched voices. Very not cool. I assume that’s to fit more material into a small amount of time, but that’s stupid because it was a particularly terrible episode to begin with that could have been easily shortened (or, shockingly enough, they could have shown less advertisements).

Compare the original, sped-up version to the slowed-down, ‘how it should sound’ version.

Categories: Complainin', Local and Television