Small juicy bits
I have some links that I've saved for myself that I need to just put up on this blog... I meant to write more exciting copy for them, but here they are...
If you haven't seen it yet, Move On's got a great new video where, as my housemate Kate put it, you can see Rumsfeld get a big fat
bitch slap. Nice.
Also for the politically-minded, Nature magazine (which is a well-respected scientific journal) had a recent article on
polling that I thought raised some good points. Some good points:
"Some say that market researchers have poisoned the well for survey research. Answering machines and caller-identification technology have made it easier to avoid unwanted calls, and those who do answer the phone are less cooperative. By one estimate, only 35% of people reached by phone during the 2000 campaign answered pollsters' questions, compared with 65% in 1985."
"Once pollsters find willing opiners, there's the matter of what to ask and how to ask it. Surveys of all kinds are vulnerable to errors introduced by question order and wording. An analysis of polls during the 2000 campaign by Monika McDermott of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and Kathleen Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News in New York found that it even makes a difference whether the question "Who will you vote for?" comes at the beginning or end of the interview. The percentage of undecided voters dropped sharply when it came last, leading the researchers to conclude that placement of this question accounts for at least some of the variance in poll results."
"And so the love–hate relationship with political polls continues. According to Traugott, who has studied attitudes towards polling, the public is generally dismayed about the proliferation of polls. But the single most important factor in people's judgments of a poll's accuracy is whether it agrees with their own view."
The was an amazing (and sad) story about polling on
This American Life... it's only the last fifteen minutes (though the first 45 are fascinating as well).
Finally, sex:
Why do Sex and the City's producers hate their creations? Sums up a lot of how I felt about the conclusion of the series...
And the results of sex: babies named
Granite Body Todd. No joke. The fifth one down.
