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Mountain out of molehill, writ large. Should have worked in something about FISA too
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I prefer to make my own espresso, but sometimes I like to throw it over ice so I can drink it quickly without burning my tongue. Murky Coffee sounds like a place I’d avoid: once you buy a drink, it is yours.
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Might feel lucky enough to install this today, or tomorrow.
Author: swanksalot
Always good to have a second user look at things
Cellphone Nation Ruining Polling Data
Polling data is goofy anyway, there is only so much one can really learn from them. Still, this undercount seems to me worthy of note.
Say you want to reach a representative sample of the U.S. electorate for a presidential poll. The Obama-McCain race is relatively close these days, with the Democrat’s lead hovering around 5 to 6 points in most surveys. Someone tells you that he’s selected a sample that’s predominantly under 40 years of age (oops, that one favors Obama); disproportionately renters rather than homeowners (Obama-leaning again); full of college students (sounds like a Starbucks Obama thing to me) — and, for good measure, includes a higher proportion of blacks and Hispanics than the national population does.
At this point you throw up your hands and exclaim: “Why are we concentrating on such a pro-Obama universe? He could be leading by 20 points or more among those people!”
He could. He probably is. But in actuality, the sample I’ve described is either not being included at all in many national polls or is being undercounted. Why? Because I’m talking about the growing number of American cellphone users who have no other type of phone or who choose to go wireless for the vast majority of their interactive needs. And this election cycle — for the first, and perhaps only, time — this group has the chance to render presidential polls “wrong from the start”: potentially disguising at least 2 to 3 percentage points of Obama support and maybe more.
Heretofore my industry has dismissed the cellphone-only population with a troika of “yes, buts.” Yes, they’re undercounted, but 1) they don’t vote anyway; 2) their numbers are still small; and 3) we can find acceptable substitutes in the land-line population.
And to be honest, there is a fourth, still more powerful rationale that remains unstated: “Yes, they’re undercounted, but it’s too damn difficult and expensive to reach them.”
[Click to read the rest of Cellphone users missing from election surveys | Salon ]
links for 2008-07-13
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My cousin Leo writes a heartfelt obituary for my recently deceased aunt, Kerry.
links for 2008-07-12
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I like the sound of this.
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One of these days I’ll watch this show. When it was on, I didn’t own a television, so missed it. Usually I like weird more often than not, so I should rent the first disc.
links for 2008-07-11
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Kelly Dwyer types up an excellent essay on the differences between breathless coverage of the NBA (thugs!) and MLB (oh, boys will be boys). Damn, I hate baseball.
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hundreds of free Photoshop actions. Can’t go wrong with checking ’em out
links for 2008-07-10
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All sorts ofextensions to make Firefox better.
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Boy, I’ve been there, and the beer and guitar are essential for sanity.
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I do so love the Simpsons for this reason in particular
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Ru-Oh, this is the Whole Foods I shop at most frequently. Yikes.
McCain Ignorant Re Social Security
Hilzoy catches a wee bit of obtuseness, or ignorance, dropping from John McCain’s mouth. McCain wants to gut Social Security, and doesn’t care too much about details, or facts.
McCain said:
“I’d like to start out by giving you a little straight talk. Under the present set-up, because we’ve mortgaged our children’s futures, you will not have Social Security benefits that present-day retirees have unless we fix it. And Americans have got to understand that.
Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s got to be fixed.
(From CQTranscriptions, “SEN. JOHN MCCAIN HOLDS A QUESTION-AND-ANSWER AT A TOWNHALL MEETING”, July 7, 2008. Accessed via Lexis/Nexis.)
Hilzoy responds:
The fact that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by workers, young or otherwise, is not a disgrace, or a scandal, or a new development. Social Security has been funded this way since its inception. The first person to receive monthly benefits, one Ida Mae Fuller, had worked for three years, and contributed all of $24.75 to the Social Security Trust Fund. She lived to be 100, and collected $22,888.92 in benefits. Did the Social Security Trust Fund found that money under its pillow? Somehow, I don’t think so.
Younger workers paid Ida Mae Fuller’s pension. Workers who were younger still paid those workers when they retired. And even younger workers, like me, are paying for their Social Security benefits. This is not a disgrace; it’s the way the system operates. And it’s certainly not a sign that we’ve mortgaged our children’s futures, or that something has to be fixed.
One interpretation of this statement would be that McCain is being deceptive: trying to make a straightforward feature of Social Security seem like a scary new problem, in order to gin up support for his nonexistent plans to fix it. I tend to think that he just doesn’t know how Social Security works. (This would explain why he doesn’t see the problem with privatizing the system: the need to pay a generation’s worth of transition costs.) However, it doesn’t really matter which explanation is right: either one ought to be close to disqualifying.
John McCain: deceptive or stone cold ignorant? We report; you decide.
All John McCain knows is that some of his long-term lobbyist buddies want to privative Social Security so they can plunder the government coffers. He’ll do anything he can to help them, because without his lobbyist buddies (and his media buddies), McCain wouldn’t be where he is in politics now (losing a presidential election).
links for 2008-07-09
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Strangely enough, my photo of a starbucks terrorist/barista was used.
Sometimes Darkness Is just a Dream
Traffic on LSD, from the North Avenue pedestrian bridge (old one)
[view large on black: www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=85 ]
links for 2008-07-08
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I fall into this habit sometimes: like a photo, but don’t take the time to say anything meaningful about it.
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LA vs. Chicago, from a California-centric perspective
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Kerry Eggers gets Frisked, deservedly. Why do so many old-school journalists evade facts when discussing blogs?
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How to get noticed: headline is prime importance
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since Basketbawful is borrowing this bit from the past
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I’ve only seen a few episodes of Mad Men, but I have liked it. Prime candidate for Netflix, I believe (skipping the incessant AMC commercial breaks).
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Peak metal? Yikes. Better buy that 80 inch flat panel soon
It Isn’t Worth it, Son!!
Actually they were just looking at their dropped fishing pole (I think).
[view large on black: www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=84 ]
links for 2008-07-06
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strange isn’t it? Childhood phrases repeated by others
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“sit in quiet contemplation of the plain fact that our country over the past seven years has engaged in torture, indefinite detention without charges, rendition, and other unspeakable acts.”
Ass Press for a reason
The Associated Press is known as the Ass Press for a reason1
Yesterday we flagged the AP’s Jennifer Loven’s ‘analysis’ piece flogging the McCain/RNC spin on Obama’s run to the center. Well, as every crack communication operation knows, message repetition is the key to success. And so today we have another ‘analysis’ piece, this time by the AP’s Steven Hurst. And it’s practically the same piece. Hurst and Loven actually both use the identical quote from RNC spinmeister Alex Conant.
Says Conant: “There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience.”
The identical quote appears in both pieces. If the pieces weren’t bylined I think I might have assumed one was a rewrite of the other. But they actually appear to be two completely original articles, just mouthing the identical McCain/RNC line.
Really is disgusting how deeply the majority of the US news media is in the tank for John McCain. No wonder McSame hates bloggers2 .
Footnotes:FDA Still Clueless re Food Safety
Tomatoes were apparently a false lead – the probable culprit was something used frequently in conjunction with tomotoes, but not in Italian restaurants.
Officials investigating the salmonella outbreak now are looking at jalapeño peppers as a leading suspect for spreading the bacteria that has sickened hundreds across the U.S. over the past three months, according to people familiar with the probe.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially blamed tomatoes. That led to industry losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the National Restaurant Association, as consumers cut down on consumption and restaurants pulled them from menus.
But as the disease continued to spread, the investigation turned to other foods commonly eaten with tomatoes, in particular to other ingredients used to make salsa. Besides jalapeño peppers, officials are looking at cilantro and Serrano peppers.
[Costuluto Fiorentino Heirloom Tomatoes are supremely delicious]
Restaurants, food markets and consumers are annoyed at the half-hearted pace of the investigation.
The lengthy probe of the outbreak and failure thus far to find the culprit are sowing frustration and even anger among restaurants, produce growers and supermarkets. Officials have acknowledged the slow pace, while facing growing pressure to identify the source of contamination conclusively — something the Food and Drug Administration has warned may be impossible.
[snip]
Richie Jackson, chief executive of the Texas Restaurant Association, said the CDC’s focus on salsa could confuse consumers and frustrate restaurants. The state has confirmed more than 350 cases, the highest number of any state in the U.S.
“To blame salsa brings nothing to the table,” said Mr. Jackson, whose state has about 5,000 Mexican restaurants. “Until you can define which ingredient is the culprit, I don’t think you can blame salsa and condemn it … there’s all kind of salsas.”
He said he’s not aware that restaurants in the state have removed salsa from their menus. “If you don’t have chips and salsa at the table, you’re not in Texas,” he said. “I think some of the credibility of the CDC warnings is a little more suspect after the tomato warnings,” he added.
Hitchens on Display
George Packer weighs in on Hitchens and his waterboarding moment.
The uncharitable view is that Hitchens will do anything to be noticed, that celebrity elicits a kind of masochism in him, and that being unpublished or unheard or unseen for even a day must be more agonizing for him than having his pubic hair removed by strips of hot wax or trying to breathe while water is poured over a towel spread across his face. And this view might well be true, but there’s more to it—there always is with Hitchens.
His greatest weakness as a writer is his need to put himself at the center of attention, to win every argument, to walk away from every encounter in prose, as in life, having gotten the better of someone else.
[From Interesting Times: George Packer: Online Only: The New Yorker]
I can’t fault Hitchens for his solipsism1 but since Hitchens has so vehemently supported the Bush version of the war on terror, one does wish Hitchens would have managed to work in more discussion of that topic, perhaps wrapped around his proclamation that torture is waterboarding and waterboarding is torture.
See also tristero for a longer look at George Packer’s little throw-away post.
Footnotes:- not a precise use of the word, by the way [↩]