You might have noticed that the Big Bad Blog is in the middle of election fever at the moment, with an election on Thursday. Many newspapers are publishing articles about the required swing in votes in order for the Conservative and/or Liberal Democrats to take control of Parliament. And the math behind those swings is horrible and naive in assuming that a swing in votes would be uniform across every constituency. This is blatantly untrue — one might as well claim that, since the Conservatives lead the popular vote in the polls, they will win every seat, because they will get more votes than the other parties.

Simply not true. Each of the three main parties have strong pockets of support, and places where they have no chance of winning. And the swing in votes away from Labour will not be uniform.

Enter Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, and the Advanced Swingometer.

Here’s an interesting comparison of the fair use economy, versus the copyright-dependent economy.

Also, engineers in Montreal are hard at work on their new ice printer.