Do UEFA deserve 13 spots at the World Cup?

29 games have been played so far this world cup, some more memorable than others. Between the jabulani, vuvuzela and dubious refereeing decisions, there has been plenty of controversy, all of which has been covered elsewhere. I want to move on to the most important aspect of any world cup: the teams.

FIFA has long been heavily biased towards the European teams, and this year UEFA accounts for over 40% of the spots in the world cup. Let’s look at the numbers for the first 29 matches to see if this bias is delivering entertainment for the punters.

UEFA teams have scored heaps of goals so far, as anyone will tell you. 20, in fact. But what if we look at goals scored per game played?

European teams have scored only 0.87 goals per game. Less than half South America’s score rate, worse than North America and New Zealand, and on par with Asia. Only Africa have been less inspiring than Europe, and they haven’t exactly impressed this world cup.

Do we really need a world cup clogged with so many boring defensive European teams? Wouldn’t we be better off with the addition of Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Bahrain, and the removal of Portugal, Greece, Slovenia and France? So we lose one or two big names, but France have performed abysmally anyway, and Ronaldo didn’t exactly set the world on fire against Côte d’Ivoire.

I’ll keep an eye on the stats and update this table, but I’m not expecting too much from Europe. Hopefully they’ll all get knocked out early and we can get on with the goal-fest!

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story

Paul Sheehan’s latest diatribe on the UK elections really highlights the decline of journalism in the Fairfax empire.

… despite the resounding rejection of the Labour government, with the Tories winning 306 seats … their 36 per cent of the primary vote does not make a mandate. This is the basic problem with a first-past-the-post voting system. It is also why Australia’s proportional representation system is a far more supple, equitable and practical way of expressing the electorate’s intentions.

The mandatory distribution of preferences under this system creates, by the end of the voting process, a two-party system. Under the Australian system, this British election would still have been a knife-edge but it would also have delivered a mandate to govern.

Firstly, Australia’s House of Representatives does not have a proportional voting system. The Senate does, but since we’re talking about electing government here, and government comes from the lower hours, I think we can assume that Sheehan is trying to refer to the House of Reps.

Secondly, I have run some primitive numbers on the UK election, assuming that they did have proportional representation. Here are my results:

Clearly, fringe parties win out under a system of proportional representation, making it harder for on major party to form a stable government. This is obvious from looking at Tasmania, which has proportional representation in its lower house, and ended up with 10 Labor, 10 Liberals and 5 Greens.

Now let’s compare Sheehan’s earlier comment:

Australia’s proportional representation system is a far more … practical way of expressing the electorate’s intentions.

With this, from later in the page:

… proportional representation [is] the least practical in practice.

Is their something in the desalinated water supply down in Pyrmont, or do Fairfax journalists and editors simply get higher grade drugs than the rest of us?

Anyhow, if you read down further, Sheehan’s solution to all our problems appears to be to weight everyone’s vote based on their contribution to society. Maybe giving people a free subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald in return for forfeiting their vote will have the same effect, eh Paul?

Damn you, Calibri!

Why?

The priest and the policeman

This disturbing piece of news could easily have had a much more hilarious outcome.

Police charge selves with internet grooming

Over the last month, detectives pretending to be a 13-year-old girl on an internet chat site have been talking a 54-year-old priest from Liverpool.

Police say he was sexually explicit during the correspondence, and they arranged to meet the priest for the purpose of sexual activity.

However, in a bizarre twist, it turned out that the “priest” was actually a 13-year-old girl, posing as an old man.

Upon arriving at the rendezvous, police realised their mistake, and were forced place themselves under arrest. They charged themselves with using the internet to groom a person under 16 years of age.

The detectives will face Parramatta Local Court today.

Making money in the GFC

The last 12 months have been tough. Especially for certain multinationals who rely on a lot of people getting sick to make a buck. During uncertain economic times, it pays to turn up to work, and all of a sudden the population stays healthier than normal. What to do?

Imagine that you could get some of your boffins to develop a new strain of some common virus. Something highly infectious, but not too virulent (it would be immoral to kill too many people). You could introduce it to some out-of-the-way location (say, Mexico) so that you wouldn’t be traced. Then, because it’s not actually a very dangerous virus, you whip up a little media frenzy by contacting a friend (say, R. Murdoch* Rupert M.) who also wants to make a bit more money.

Because it’s a slow news month, the hype surrounding your new virus spreads around the world quicker that the actual ‘flu. Governments start panicking, installing heat sensors at airports, and gearing up for pandemic mode.

Luckily, you have already developed a drug that will prevent and treat your new virus. Gullible health ministers start to order millions of doses of your cure.

Step 3: profit.

Sounds far fetched? Think I should be breaking out the tinfoil hat? Or do you recall a history of dodgy practises in this industry?

I’ll be reserving my judgement on this one for now.

* Name changed to protect confidentiality

Fun facts with Fielding

Senator Steve Fielding is organising a climate change briefing, and is inviting the entire senate!

I can’t see how any responsible senator could vote on an emissions trading scheme without listening to what the world of science has to say on the issue.

Sen. Steve “the fact-finder” Fielding

Giving the seminar will be prominent climate-change denier and chief scientist for News Corp., Professor Bob Carter. To keep with this theme, I am organising a few briefing sessions of my own, that I invite you all to attend:

1. The holocaust, with David Irving
2. Evolution, with Sarah Palin
3. Accounting standards, with Kenneth Lay
4. How to organise informative seminars, with Steve Fielding

You get the picture.

The swine, the swine!

Just when you thought that the media hype surrounding the swine had died down, along comes reliable Joe Hildebrand.

UP to 10,000 New South Wales people could die of swine flu in a two-month period – more than double the rate of all other deaths – unless there is mass vaccination, experts warned.

Source: news.com.au

A quick glance down through the article reveals that the “expert” is actually a nine-year-old kid, and the “new modelling” was based on a game of hopscotch.

Meanwhile, the federal government is reportedly ordering 21 million vaccinations, to be delivered after the flu season is finished.

However, according to startling new modelling performed by experts at the North East Institute, the government could be wasting their money. Unless we act now, Joe Hildebrand’s scare story could in fact be blown out of the water. Allow me to demonstrate.

Using the popular disease vector modelling program Pandemic, we can see that if the swine flu takes hold, our population could be decimated with only 41 people remaining after three months!

If you want to be one of the remaining 41 people, I suggest it’s time to start reading this site. Bon voyage!

The war on bikies

With the recent media hype surrounding bikie violence, I have been contemplating delving into the fray myself. Thankfully, I was spared the effort by Nick, whose excellent article was published by newmatilda.com, as the leading story no less!

Before he brought his new laws to State Parliament in a surprise move on Thursday, Rees had lamented the possibility that he may not be able to ram them through the legislature at the speed of light, because if hurriedly drafted they might be subject to pesky judicial review.

Mr (Greg) Gregory Eugene SMITH, SC MP

The Shadow Attorney General:

This type of crime shows an anger and ignoring the normal rules of society by just disgracing people’s houses, by graffiti and shop windows and that.

I couldn’t have put it more good myself, but.

Shark attack

There has been a lot of hoo-ha in the media lately regarding the recent spike in shark attacks. Is it due to global warming? Or perhaps K-Rudd is to blame?

In order to clear up the confusion, I have conducted some in-depth research, which reveals some surprising results, graphed below.

Good news, humans: we’re still on top! Let’s all go back to our corners and calm down.