Month: October 2012

Statistics Canada Issues Warning about Quality of Its Own Data

This past week, Statistics Canada released some findings from its 2011 Canadian census data, showing that Canadians are speaking a greater variety of languages at home.  Justifiably, this news got a lot of attention, because of the political and societal implications of linguistic diversity in a country with two official languages. However, what was almost completely unreported that Statistics Canada also issued a warning about the quality of its own information. (more…)

The Real(?) Thing, Part I: Katy Perry: Part of Me 

The dynamic between perception and reality – both at the organizational and the individual level – is a big theme in the study of organizations.  In an organization, factual realities often don’t really matter. What drives people’s and organizations’ actions, and what shapes people’s understanding and experience of an organization, is their perception of how things are or how they should be, not what things really are.

I recently saw two movies that, in very different ways, deal with that same issue of perception versus reality. (more…)

Best Author Acknowledgement Ever

I just finished reading Guy Walters‘ excellent book Berlin Games: How the Nazis Stole the Olympic Dream. I’ve done research on some of the Canadian groups that organized  resistance to the 1936 Olympics, and so I appreciate Walters’ efforts in preserving some more of the very important history around this event. What happened in and around the 1936 Berlin Games has more influence than we’d like to think on the ceremonies and structures of the Olympics we see now.

The book is extremely well researched and engagingly written, and I very much enjoyed reading it. But what I want to share from the book is one of the best author acknowledgements I’ve ever seen. (more…)

Yahoo Canada Insults Elections: Not Smart, and Not Funny

Since I became old enough to vote (which was, er, um, quite a while ago), I’ve voted in every municipal, provincial, and federal election that I’ve been eligible to participate in. I’m a firm believer in the principle of  “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain” – and I know that people in my own country and around the world have fought for the right to vote, which makes voting even more important to me. So I was both sad and angry to see this screen pop up on Yahoo Canada’s website this week: (more…)