Something non-political for a change. Who is the NHL’s best general manager? Tough question to answer, but one way of answering is to look at how a club performed relative to what it spent — that is, who put together the best team for the fewest dollars? (recognizing of course that the GM in place often inherits the pluses and minuses of his predecessor). On that basis, here is the ranking from best to worst:

* since departed

With Saddam Hussein’s hanging yesterday, I thought it might be useful to review the state of capital punishment in the world. Here are a few countries (courtesy Wikipedia). Click world map for large version.

NOT ALLOWED
The Netherlands, 1878 ⁵ (last in 1952)
Iceland, 1928 (last in 1830)
Switzerland, 1942 ⁴ (last in 1945)
New Zealand, 1961 ¹ (last in 1957)
United Kingdom, 1965 ² (last in 1964)
Malta, 1971 ⁶ (last in 1943)
Sweden, 1972 (last in 1910)
Finland, 1972 (last in 1941)
Canada, 1976 (last in 1962)
France, 1981 (last in 1977)
Cyprus, 1983 ³ (last in 1962)
Australia, 1985 (last in 1967)
Germany, 1987 (last in 1982)
Czech Republic, 1990 (last in 1989)
Denmark, 1994 (last in 1950)
Philippines, 2006 (last in 2005)

NOTES
¹ Full abolishment 1989.
² Full abolishment 2003.
³ Full abolishment 2002.
⁴ Full abolishment 1992.
⁵ Full abolishment 1983.
⁶ Full abolishment 2000.

ALLOWED
Belarus
China
Greece
India
Iraq
Japan
Pakistan
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Sri Lanka
United States (see map below)

As part of my work in submitting a proposal to the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, I recently compiled a list of the percentage visible minority population in every Ontario riding. So I figured I would publish this as today’s Useful Fact^TM. Here are the regional breakdowns, followed by a riding-by-riding breakdown (Note: these numbers are based on the 2001 Census, which is the latest available data; I also used the Ontario’s new 107 provincial ridings). Feel free to download the proposal to see the regional maps. As you can see there is considerable variation from region to region (Toronto and the GTA are highest, the North, Central and East are lowest). How diverse is your riding? (recognizing that here I’m using “diverse” as a catchphrase for highest visible minority population — obviously, diversity is more than just visible minorities)

Not surprisingly, there is a virtual 1-to-1 correlation between % visible minorities and population size. The most diverse? Scarborough-Rouge River at 84.4% visible minorities. The least diverse? Parry Sound-Muskoka at 0.7%. The provincial median is 10.8%. Remarkably 30% of Ontario’s ridings at 97% or more white. Nearly 40% of Ontario’s ridings (41 of 107) have fewer than 5% visible minorities (i.e. 40% of Ontario’s ridings are 95% or more white). And exactly half have fewer than 10% visible minorities (i.e. half of Ontario’s ridings are more than 90% white). I’ve also included the party that won the seat in the 2003 provincial election — based on the transposition of votes in the new ridings — as you can see there is a strong correlation between ridings that are white and ridings that elected Progressive Conservative MPPs. PC ridings have a median of 5.6% visible minorities (and an average of 8.2%). Liberal ridings have a median of 15.0% visible minorities (and an average of 22.0%) and NDP ridings have a median of 3.2% visible minorities (but an average of 14.9% reflecting the polarity of their seats — either downtown Toronto or rural labour ridings).

REGIONS
1. TORONTO — 42.3%
2. PEEL-HALTON — 32.2%
3. YORK-DURHAM — 22.9%
4. OTTAWA — 17.7%
5. SOUTHWESTERN — 7.5%
6. NIAGARA PENINSULA - 6.8%
7. SOUTHCENTRAL — 6.0%
8. CENTRAL — 2.2%
9. EASTERN — 2.2%
10. NORTHEAST — 1.4%
11. NORTHWEST — 1.4%

click below to see riding-by-riding list
(more…)

I’ve never really paid attention to what kind of traffic I get on a regular basis (I know that it jumps to astronomical levels during election campaigns), so I thought I would do a quick check of the ranking of some of Canadian political bloggers using Alexa.com. It’s highly random, since Alexa seems not to have some sites and many blogspot sites aren’t ranked. So if your site isn’t listed it was because it wasn’t available or I don’t know it (sorry). So, anyway, here are the rankings as of today (I got bored at 80, so stopped there; I also didn’t bother with links OK, I broke down and added the links). I’m just to have just edged out the Western Standard! :) [Note: italicized entries have been added later]

1. Paul Wells — 39,375
2. Garth Turner — 138,136
3. Progressive Bloggers — 149,605
4. Small Dead Animals — 158,382
5. My Blahg — 162,979
6. Blogs Canada — 188,206
7. Antonia Zerbisias — 193,738
8. Matthew Good — 218,400
9. Warren Kinsella — 233,312
10. Andrew Coyne — 264,183
11. Vive le Canada – 271,935
12. Rick Mercer – 276,979
13. Stageleft — 297,894
14. Blogging Tories — 310,217
15. CalgaryGrit — 330,438
16. Relapsed Catholic — 382,725
17. Stephen Taylor — 390,358
18. Steve Janke — 440,241
19. Damian Penny — 484,095
20. Gen X at 40 — 532,032
21. Daveberta – 541,088
22. La Revue Gauche — 572,256
23. Jason Cherniak — 581,561
24. Werner Patels — 689,629
25. Canadian Cerberus — 689,701
–> Liblogs.ca — 695,947
26. Bound by Gravity — 768,532
27. Nicole Martel — 770,151
28. Jay Currie — 829,529
29. democraticSPACE.com — 865,092
30. Western Standard — 871,040
31. Dust my Broom — 891,149
32. James Bowie — 988,509
33. Somena Media — 995,161
34. Conservative Life — 1,009,388
35. A BCer in TO — 1,009,965
36. James Bow — 1,100,043
37. Jordon Cooper — 1,134,637
38. Colby Cosh — 1,221,980
39. Political Staples — 1,287,957
40. Adam Daifallah — 1,288,575
41. Abandoned Stuff – 1,298,041
42. Officially Screwed — 1,415,650
43. TDH Strategies — 1,426,197
44. Dr. Roy’s Thoughts — 1,466,346
45. Iggynation — 1,760,619
46. Big Blue Wave — 1,772,925
47. John Lennard — 2,017,846
48. Clear Grit – 2,023,344
49. UW Habs — 2,049,958
50. The London Fog — 2,019,952
51. Red Tory — 2,156,918
52. Maxwell’s House — 2,279,135
53. Northern Ontario Liberal — 2,332,184
54. Girl on the Right — 2,371,370
55. Idealistic Pragmatist — 2,585,625
56. Michelle Oliel — 2,589,614
57. A View From the Left — 2,713,928
58. Big City Lib — 2,716,891
59. Murphy’s Point — 2,861,747
60. Vincent Geloso — 3,019,620
61. East-End Underground — 3,128,245
62. Blue Blogging Soapbox — 3,266,180
63. Scott’s DiaTribes — 3,327,582
64. Fuddle-Duddle — 3,328,775
65. The Vanity Press — 3,537,264
66. Gay and Right – 3,811,823
67. The Frog Lady — 4,441,261
68. The Monarchist — 4,441,287
69. Peter Loewen — 4,444,230
–> David Akin — 4,450,828
70. Urban Refugee — 4,559,956
71. WingNuterer — 4,638,171
72. Section 15 — 4,796,409
73. Liberal Catnip — 4,822,085
74. Prairie Wrangler — 4,871,265
–> Bill Doskoch — 5,307,935
75. James Laxer — 5,539,101
76. The Dan Report — 5,606,655
77. Dymaxion World – 5,828,817
78. John Murney — 6,022,657
79. Vijay Sappani — 6,024,762
80. HarperBizarro — 6,147,932

Update: As I noted, the above list was quite random, because Alexa’s rankings are rather wonky — a lot of blogspot sites aren’t ranked and sometimes no ranking is given. In other cases, I simply don’t know every blog out there (shocking!). So, if you aren’t on the list and deserve to be, let me know and I will add you.

I’ll be traveling quite a bit over the next two weeks, so bear with me if posts ebb and flow. We’ll be in the UK for a very jam-packed week (London for 3 days, Milton Keynes for a day, Oxford for a day and Bristol for a day), then in Seattle for the holidays. As I’m trying to finish a draft of a paper this week, I’ll be lazy today and post a Useful Fact^TM:

Cities with the Highest Quality of Life
(indexed to New York = 100)
1. Zurich, Switzerland — 108.0
2. Geneva, Switzerland — 108.0
3. Vancouver, Canada — 107.7
4. Vienna, Austria — 107.5
5. Auckland, New Zealand — 107.3
6. Dusseldorf, Germany — 107.2
7. Frankfort, Germany — 107.0
8. Munich, German — 106.8
9. Bern, Switzerland — 106.5
10. Sydney, Australia — 106.5
15. Toronto, Canada — 105.4
18. Ottawa, Canada — 104.8
22. Montreal, Canada — 104.3
25. Calgary, Canada — 103.6
27. Honolulu, USA — 103.3
28. San Francisco, USA — 103.2
36. Boston, USA — 101.9

Quality of life is higher in Calgary than Honolulu? I don’t think so!
Ottawa higher than Montreal? I don’t think so!
But there you go…

The latest installment of “Useful Facts” (note: by popular demand, we changed the name from “Useless Facts” — we’ll leave it to you to judge whether they are useful or useless)…

Total Armed Forces

LARGEST INTERNATIONAL AID DONORS
(as % of GDP)

Note that just 5 countries exceed the 0.7% of GDP standard recommended by Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson. This is also the level that donating countries agreed to spend 36 years ago:

Today, we learn that Canada’s PM Stephen Harper is applying diplomatic pressure on North Korea to ease off developing its nuclear weapons program. In honour of this, we present today’s Useless Facts ^TM.

TOP DEFENSE SPENDING
(as % of GDP)

From the looks of the top 10, it would appear that large military spending doesn’t guarantee security (of course, it is also true that lack of security motivates military spending…).

We’re rolling out a new series called Useless Facts ^TM. Every day we will post a new series of useless facts, gleaned from the trusty 2007 Economist Pocket World in Figures book. We will try to make said useless facts relate to some piece of that day’s news, but that may not always work out. So here goes…

In honour of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s concession that his province cannot closed its coal-fired power plants until 2014, 7 years after his election promise, we offer the following Useless Facts ^TM

TOP 10 LARGEST CONSUMERS OF ENERGY (PER PERSON)
(kg of oil equivalent, 2003)