confused? not suprising

Both of these on the front page today:

The Age: Liberals face crushing loss at poll
The poll, conducted last Friday and over the weekend, shows support for Labor after distribution of preferences at 56 per cent, way ahead of the combined Liberal/Nationals vote of 44 per cent.
This represents a swing away from the Government of two percentage points since its record win at the 2002 election — but a one point move back to Labor compared to the last poll, taken two months ago.

The Hun: Poll reveals Labor backlash
THE Bracks Government is facing a voter backlash and could lose up to 16 seats, an exclusive Herald Sun poll shows.
The poll of 800 Victorians, conducted on October 17 and 18, shows that the primary vote for Labor has fallen to 44 per cent, down from the 48 per cent recorded at the 2002 election.
On a two-party preferred basis the swing against Labor is 5.8 per cent.
Liberal support rose from 33.9 per cent to 39 per cent.

The Age: And it records a surge towards the Greens. Their vote is up from 10 per cent at the last election to 13 per cent
The Hun: The vote for the Nationals, who hold seven seats, rose marginally while the Greens vote fell from 9.7 to 7 per cent.

The Age: If the vote in the latest ACNielsen poll were repeated at election, Mr Bracks would be returned with only a slightly reduced majority. A uniform two percentage point swing against the Government across the state would result in Labor losing just three seats — Evelyn (held by Heather McTaggart with a margin of 0.4 per cent), Hastings (Rosy Buchanan, 0.9 per cent) and Gembrook (Tammy Lobato, 1.6 per cent).
The Hun: THE Bracks Government is facing a voter backlash and could lose up to 16 seats, an exclusive Herald Sun poll shows.

Confused? Yes, well, that's hardly suprising. The Age is reporting two-party-preferred numbers, while the hun is reporting primary votes. Neither of them, in their online stories, report things like margin of error, or the full set of data. Of course, it's also pretty clear that the hun is going all out for the Liberals, the age is biased (but less so) towards the ALP. But still - guys. This is bad reporting, on both sides. It's totally unclear what the polls actually said. I'm guessing that at least the age probably had the full table of data inside the paper, and I'd hope the herald-sun did, too. But only sad politics geeks like me check that stuff out.

pushing back the boundaries of science

You know - a sausage on a stick, wrapped in a pancake. That's kinda missing something. How about adding chocolate chips? Yeah, that's the ticket.

(image from cabel's blog)

The Daily Show comments:
( behind the cut )

OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA AWAITING MORE BULLSHIT ORDERS

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists overseeing the ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission said Monday that the Spirit's latest transmissions could indicate a growing resentment of the Red Planet.
"Spirit has been displaying some anomalous behavior," said Project Manager John Callas, who noted the rover's unsuccessful attempts to flip itself over and otherwise damage its scientific instruments. "And the thousand or so daily messages of 'STILL NO WATER' really point to a crisis of purpose."
According to Callas, Spirit was operating normally until the onset of the Martian winter, whose shorter days and frigid temperatures typically mean a slower pace for exploratory rovers. "We began getting the occasional transmission along the lines of 'ANOTHER SOIL SAMPLE OF THE EXACT SAME COMPOSITION AS THE LAST ONE,'" Callas said. "Most of the time, she'd power down and not transmit much of anything, which, at the time, didn't particularly concern us."
But as the winter lingered, Spirit began producing thousands of pages of sometimes rambling and dubious data, ranging from complaints that the Martian surface was made up almost entirely of the same basalt, to long-winded rants questioning the exorbitant cost and scientific relevance of the mission.
"Granted, Spirit has been extraordinarily useful to our work," Callas said. "Last week, however, we received three straight days of images of the same rock with the message 'HAPPY NOW?'"


-- more, much more at the onion

(no subject)

One for the TMBG completists - an unreleased song (well, kinda :-)

They Might Be Giants - Dog on Fire

They Might Be Giants playing the tune "Dog on Fire", written by Bob Mould (of Husker Du fame).

The attentive folks might notice it as the theme song to a certain news show. The were obviously running short the other night, so there was a good minute plus of credits, giving a much fuller version than the normal 15-20 seconds that is played.