Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Four Weeks Usually Aren't A Month

Watching the post-debate coverage on NBC tonight, I heard anchor Brian Williams repeatedly state that the U.S. election is "one month from tonight." Now, when someone in that much of a position of authority makes a statement with such conviction, it makes me question my own knowledge. So I quickly searched online to confirm my own belief that Election Day is actually November 4th (the same as release day for Resistance 2!), which of course is four weeks from today, but not one month (which would be November 7th).

I know that this is picking nits, to say the least, but that inaccuracy still struck me as rather lazy journalism. Either Williams (or his script-writers) are too stupid to realize that four weeks only equals a month if you're going from February to March (in a non-leap year), or else they think that their viewers are. Either way, it doesn't say much for NBC. Hopefully no one watching the broadcast has now circled Fri, Nov 7th on their calendar for going to the polls, as they'll unfortunately show up 72 hours too late!

This reminds me of the days at work when we were doing month-long Iterations, and people would say that half-Iterations were two weeks long. Well, no, they often weren't; but they were always a half-month long!

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