Confessions of a Nitpicker

"A nitpicker is a person who finds faults, however small or unimportant, everywhere they look. After seeing a movie, a nitpicker lists every tiny thing he or she didn't like about it. Use the informal nitpicker when you're talking about someone who is extremely critical, even when those criticisms seem inconsequential."

One of the things I am most proud about my blog, No Dogs or Anglophones, is the fact that through more than a thousand posts, readers have written less than a dozen times to point out a factual error. I take great pride and expend a great deal of time and effort meticulously fact-checking the content.
In fact, I daresay that I spend more time on the effort than mainstream media do on the stuff they publish, the constraints of a deadline and economic pressure limit the amount of time and resources devoted to keeping those articles absolutely clean of factual errors.

For that reason, I have developed an unforgiving rage when mainstream media either through laziness or ignorance publish stuff that is just plain not true, based on the facts.

Let me give you an egregious example of incompetent reporting that I spotted last week involving a study that rated passports according to the number of countries that were available to holders, visa-free.
Here from Global News; 

"Canada has the world’s fifth most powerful passport, new ranking says"

"The Henley Passport Index measures how powerful the national identifications are based on how many countries citizens can access without a visa.......     Canada is in fifth place at 185, and tied with Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and Switzerland.
These are the countries that made the top 10 list:

1. Japan (189)
2. Germany, Singapore (188)
3. Finland, France, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Sweden (187)
4. Austria, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom, United States (186)
5. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland (185)
6. Greece, Australia (183)
7. Czech Republic, Malta, New Zealand (182)
8. Iceland (181)
9. Hungary, Slovenia, Malaysia (180)
10. Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia (179)"

Really?.....
I cannot think of a stupider conclusion, one that actually skewers the truth and fosters the myth that Canada has the fifth most powerful passport in the world when nothing could be farther from the truth.
For the idiots at Global and CTV and a dozen other websites who got it painfully wrong, let me explain.

You enter a bridge tournament and at the conclusion of play one team is at the top with 189 points. It is followed by a group of two teams with 188 points, followed by a group of six teams with 187 points, followed by another group of seven teams tied at 186 points and finally a group of five teams (of which you are a member) with 185 points.
In fact, there are sixteen teams that have more points than you, but you go home and tell your family that you finished fifth.
Such is the logic of Globalnews, CTV and others which would have us believe that with seventeen players ahead of us in the point standings, we finished fifth.

This error is disturbing because it shows either an appalling lapse of analysis or perhaps worse, a desire to justify a false story that  puts Canada in a favourable light, which in that case, rates as "Fake News."
Let me further explain for the thick-head writers and editors.

When Canada's Penny Oleksiak tied with American Simone Manuel for first place with identical times in the 100-metre freestyle swimming event in Rio, two gold medals were issued, but no silver medal was awarded. The third-place finisher (who finished with the second best time) was awarded a bronze medal.
If you find this concept hard to understand, you shouldn't be writing for a national news organization, let alone be entrusted to edit articles.

For most of us, asking ourselves if what we are reading or watching actually represents truth is an unreasonable burden. If we doubted everything we see on TV or on the web we couldn't enjoy surfing the web, watching television or reading.
For me, doubting everything I see is a condition I cannot control.
When a TV weatherperson announces that we'll have bright blue sky's this afternoon, I ask myself if the sky will really be blue or is it a case of our human eyes perceiving it as such.
In other words ... a nitpicker.

I see errors everywhere, on national television as well as local. Some errors are big some are small, but the most irksome are those that just get the facts wrong or worse, invent facts to suit a point of view as in the case of the phony passport story above.

I have long given up attacking the plot loopholes and obvious errors in episodic television but even there, cannot resist when the mistake is egregious, committed by reputable writers who should know better.
Last week Barbara and I devoted three hours to an HBO series called "Cormoran Strike" about a less than successful gruff, one-legged British detective. The series was based on the work of the celebrated JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame who wrote the detective series under a pseudonym and who consulted on the show.
To make a long story short, the detective is asked to investigate the death of a supermodel by her brother, who appears upset that the police have closed the case and judged it as a suicide.
After three episodes totalling some three hours, Cormoran confronts the complaining brother as the murderer.
Whaat????
Why on Earth would a murderer want to reopen a closed case when he, in fact, is guilty?

It was a patently unacceptable conclusion that basically scoffed at the intelligence of viewers and considering the reputation of Ms. Rowling, wholly unacceptable, leaving me in a classic funk because I thought I was watching a quality program. Link
Shame on you J K Rowling!!!!

While I do try to leave fictional television and movies out of my nitpicking, I do take offence when stupid period errors like using words that weren't commonly in use in the era are employed.  This week I cringed at the use of  "Do me a Solid" in Showtime's "I'm Dying Up Here, a show about the comedy scene in Los Angeles in the seventies and the use of the word "Newbie" in an Amazon series about the personal and professional lives of employees at an American news magazine in the late 1960s.
And how about this gaffe in the period show "Magic City"about a Miami hotel magnate which takes place around 1959.

Did you see the error?

Jeopardy is a quiz show in which smarty-pants contestants phrase their answer in the form of a question.
 (Question: Young Prime Minister of Canada. Answer "Who is Justin Trudeau")

The show prides itself on being very finicky and precise, so any answer that isn't exactly right is rejected.
This leads to many answers initially deemed correct or incorrect by host Alex Trebek being reversed later on in the show when contestants are either docked or awarded points after the judges' review, similar to video-replay in hockey.
Sometimes the judges miss an error or reject an unanticipated but acceptable answer.  When the error goes undetected and has the effect of penalizing a losing player to the point of affecting the outcome, that player is invited back to compete again in a do-over appearance.

So Jeopardy is more than fair game when the show inadvertently misses a mistake that affects the game.
As a nitpicker, I love spotting these errors and find myself shouting "AHA!"  at the TV several times a week over just such a situation.

That happened last week when a returning champion was back for a do-over because just such an error and as the game played out another undetected error emerged.
The category was a word puzzle whereby words are presented to convey a message.
For example;
Question: "A legal doctrine overturned in the 1950's"

Answer: "What is 'Separate but Equal'."

The error that slipped by Alex and all the judges occurred on this question;
Question: "This familiar phrase originates from Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade'."

The contestant answered " What is 'Cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right of them!'"
Trebek awarded the contestant a right answer despite the erroneous answer.

Of course, I shouted out at the TV that the answer was wrong, much to the annoyance of my wife, who rightly claims that all my nitpicking ruins the shows which we're watching.

Since I can recite the poem off-by-heart, I knew that the contestant reversed the two lines, a clear Jeopardy No/No.
As you can see, the clue's first line is indicating "Cannon to the right of them." not left. Reversing the order makes the answers incorrect according to Jeopardy standards.

"Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

   Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,"

Since the mistake didn't affect the outcome, no later action was required and as Alex likes to remind us.... "No harm, no foul."
.....But the judges absolutely missed the error.

You can watch the exchange at the 9:00-minute mark on the tape below.

Now Jeopardy has a bunch of judges who have the added luxury of producing the show on tape. They still get it wrong plenty of times a week. Can you imagine the number of mistakes that occur in live TV news coverage?

I do... and it's appaling.

I have tried and failed to give up the habit of nitpicking and it is well-nigh impossible. So I will ask readers to indulge me and suffer through the nitpicks I present on an ongoing basis.

I'll let you go with this final nitpick, a photo of the then US secretary of State Rex Tillerson meeting with Canada's foreign minister Chrystia Freeland in Washington.

This nitpick is only for ultra-professionals and the only hint I'll give is that it has to do with the flags.

Consider yourself a nitpicker if you can find it..
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. This will help you see the mistake;

 On the left is a knock-off Canadian flag displayed in China (where else?) and a correct version displayed in Japan.

Still not seeing the difference???

Look at the deep sharp angle on both sides of the center shaft Maple leaf compared to the correct soft corners on the right.

The Chinese version and the American version are both wrong. It's comforting to know that the two most important countries in the world buy cheap knock-off versions of our flag for official use.