monday's missive

Dear Bed,

I miss you so much. It has only been an hour since I left but already I am thinking longingly of your cozy inviting softness. How are your pillows? I miss them a lot. Since I've been gone I have set up a new bloglines account so that I can read stuff without clicking billions of links, that was fun, but nothing compared to being near you. And no one has taken my survey, except Hubris. I fixed the link, but still... no love. I tried to make it funny and everything. Oh well. I will just sit here and think of when I can finally return to you at the end of the day. Hopefully it will help the day go faster.

Thinking of you fondly
-Nobi

Open Source Polling

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting post today about the idea of open source polling. Which is an great idea IMO, but would be very difficult to implement and still get accurate results.

He seems to have a very good idea of what would be necessary to having a polling system like this work. But I don't see how it would be possible to gather this much expertise without paying someone for it. I volunteer to help though.

Things I love,

Asking questions about issues to ascertain political identification. I LOVE this, and there already are methodologies to do this, in fact OK Cupid has a test that does a good job of identifying political ideologies. In general though it is much more accurate to use an index to get an idea of political ideology than it is to just ask. They used an index in the study I posted on earlier today. (It would be interesting to see how often self reported identification coincide with the index.)

Multiple versions of questions and transparency. More than one version of each question will help reduce the affects of bias within those questions. Asking three versions of a question instead of just one should give more accurate results. I don't think this is done very often.

And I love the idea of a free system. Though I think maybe to fund the free part you may have to charge businesses.

But I think that the ultimate killer of a system of this kind is that you could not get true samples of the US population. Since not everyone has internet and certainly not everyone will be included in the database there will be large amounts of bias present. If there were any kind of centralized way identify individuals on the internet it would be a much simpler problem.

But unfortunately any kind of membership driven program will systematically exclude people who don't know about it or aren't interested. I don't know how to overcome this and it seems to me to be a fatal flaw in the system. Possibly if the online surveys could be supplemented with phone surveys. Hmmm...

Anyway, in honor of this I have created my own survey about my blog on surveymonkey.com. Maybe if all 5 of my readers take it I'll know what they think.


Actually Working Survey link, TAKE ME!

A Day in the life: #Ninja

8:30 Am- Wake up to demon on chest meowing for food, roll over.

8:31 Am- Allow pitiful demon to escape evil clutches.

9:10 Am- More demon meowing, this time the other one. Look at clock, lay in bed.

9:20 Am- Alarm goes off, get up, feed demons. Take shower, then lay in bed with towel on head.
9:45 Am- Get up, Get dressed, say good bye to sleeping boyfriend walk to work.

10:00 am- Enter work, checking to see if Dumbass has arrived, he has. Check gmail, then check work e-mail

10:30 am- E-mail from Dumbass makes no sense, one sentance e-mail for clarification.

10:45 am- "Clarification" arrives in which Dumbass continues to use the same term to discuss two COMPLETELY different issues for at least 2 paragraphs. Get Annoyed, Walk over to Dumbass and ask what he meant? After an agonizing process which takes around a half an hour get Dumbass to realize that he is in fact discussing 4 completely different issues, three of which are not issues at all but things that are working properly. Subtley guide him towards the conclusion that he needs to use better terminology.

11:30-12:30 - Read blogs, read CNN, read anything, call boyfriend make sure he woke up, post things on blog, contemplate suicide, check gmail, check gmail again.

12:45- Go to cafeteria and purchase "lunch" which consists of an overpriced salad from the salad bar and something sandwitch shaped. Spend at least 6 dollars. Get Ice for coke products hidden in desk. (Coke is no longer sold at the Company that shall not be Named Pepsi is the a client now)

1:00- Finish eating, read more blogs, post something on blog about how stupid Dumbass is

1:30- Visit CoolGirl in her cube, discuss Dumbass's dumbassness, talk to TallGuy about last night's episode of a tv show.

2:30 pm - Return to cell, send file to client. Check e-mail, check gmail, check horoscope. Look for jobs on job sites.

3:00 pm- Your kidding me, how is it only 3pm?

3:15 pm- OH MY GOD THIS DAY WILL NOT END. Dumbass forwards e-mail from makers of Cancer Sticks requesting data that it will be very difficult to get and that will add approximately 0 value to project. Get annoyed, wonder when you'll have to do the tedious work involved in setting it up. Procrastinate.

3:30 pm- Be really bored, really really really bored. Wish that had charged iPod last night.

4:00 pm- Take a feild trip downstairs to the mail room.

4:05 pm- You've got to be kidding me.... work on bad sci fi novel to pass the time.

4:30 pm Watch the steady stream of happy people leave the office, be annoyed. Check to see if Dumbass has left.

4:40 pm Check to see if Dumbass has left every 2 minutes from now on.

5:04 pm Dumbass Leaves- Tell CoolGirl, use stealth mode to exit building.

5:30 - 11:00 Hate the fact that time is passing and that every moment is one moment closer to having to go back to work.

11:30 watch Daily Show, Sleep.


So yeah, that's about my average day. Just thought I'd provide more Schadenfreude for you people. Oh a happy note I have an interview in NYC next friday. Now if only I could figure out how to get there/where to stay.

The Liberal Conspiracy-Brainwashing your kids

A study about the ideological beliefs of professors has come to the attention of the blogosphere. and Volokh has some thoughts on why the clear liberal bias in college faculty is bad.

I think a more interesting question than Why is this bad?, is Why does this happen? This is the first step to discovering more about how to rectify the problem.

My initial thought about this study is that they used self report data. Someone who works at a more liberal school may be more likely to identify themselves as liberal regardless of actual political affiliation. (For instance, I would identify myself as fairly liberal, but I don't know if I actually am.) A belief system such as this is very subjective and it is difficult to measure someone's "liberalness" without first looking at their beliefs on individual topics and using that as an index of their beliefs. To just ask means you might not get accurate results.

Interestingly they did break down some issues and found that professors were mostly liberal on these issues (Abortion, homosexuality, the environment etc.). Using an index and found similar results to the self report data. Both models indicated that more conservative professors tended to teach at lower quality schools.


So now that I have looked at this study and found no fault with it (Disclaimer, I only have a BS and I'm lazy, so there still could be problems, but I'll leave that to the academics who get paid to review studies) we can discuss other reasons for why they would get these types of results.

I would like to point out that I am comparing Academics to non Academics and not Liberals to Conservatives. The proportion of liberals in Academia is much higher than that of the whole population, why is this?

Let's start with the conspiracy theory and have it out. Liberal academics hold the conservatives out of the academic world by refusing them tenure, not publishing them etc and so forth discrimination wah. I don't agree with this mostly because it is my experience that the higher up in a liberal university you go the more conservatives you find, the board of directors of most universities is made up of rich guys and I have trouble believing that all of them are liberals too. I could be wrong, but just as I refuse that there is some conspiracy keeping women out of scientific fields I refuse that there is a conspiracy keeping conservatives out of schools. It is just too easy.

My personal reaction is to say that that is because Academics are more likely to evaluate something critically and scientifically than non-academics, and that these evaluations lead more of them to a liberal conclusion. I would like to believe that this is wrong, so I will move on.

Another thought, maybe individuals who are more liberal are more attracted to academia. There is typically a lot of work, and not a lot of pay. There is no Christmas bonus, and on purely economic basis, being a professor sucks unless you get a lot of cushy consulting jobs. Are liberals more attracted to this kind of environment, my magic 8 ball says "Yes, Definitely" but it lies all the time.

This is my third thought, a self fulfilling prophecy. Because there are so many liberals, only other liberals are comfortable in academia. Just like there are few conservatives rushing to move to San Fransisco there are probably few conservatives dying to be on a faculty with gay men and feminazis.

And finally, all academics have been brainwashed by the academics that they learned from. I am a liberal zombie, me eat republican BRAaaaaaaaaaaains. GIVE ME BRAAAAAAAINS!

More?

God... what a depressing day.

"Pope John Paul II has been given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church as his health deteriorates, a Vatican source tells CNN."

More sad news

My boyfriend just called and in addition to his academic troubles he heard a rumor that Mitch Hedberg had died.

I googled and confirmed.

He was a funny funny man. I will never forget the set he did at my University.

RIP

Mitch Hedberg

The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get,I'll never be as good as a wall.

Laying it to rest

I was going to post something statistical today. But I'm feeling pretty lazy. Maybe in a little while. It's sunny out I just want to go lay in the park and smoke. That would be lovely.

The ongoing battle of Asshats vs. Protein Wisdom minions is still raging. Fairly entertaining to say the least.

Last weekend I was driving around with my sister and we drove past the hospital where my mom had her stroke. (Yes, she had it in the hospital, and then stayed in the hospital.) It occurred to me that we very rarely drove past that hospital on a regular basis. But that suddenly when my Mom was there it became the center of our universe. Daily routines changed completely as my Dad would pick Shorty up from school and then go directly to the hospital. We went to different banks, different restaurants different grocery stores all on our way to and from the hospital. We found new shortcuts, that we no longer use. It was like a different mode of living. (I think I noticed this mostly because I was out of town for 90% of of it.)

I hope that Terri's parents can find new routes that don't go past their daughter's hospice, new restaurants, and a new way to live their lives.

I Herd about some Stupidty

HundredPercenter apparently can't STAND the idea that other people might not follow the herd and agree with him a hundred percent on the Shciavo matter and so he posted a RIDICULOUS post removing some really great blogs from his blogroll. I'm going to ADD all of these blogs to my blogroll, regardless of whether or not I agree with them about anything because they are all diverse voices and that is good. Not that I didn't already read instapundit, but does he really need to be linked to at this point?

In fact, I don't know that I necessarily agree with anyone on my blog roll most of the time, but they are blogs I read and find interesting and if they don't agree with me then I am sure they are in good company.

Anyway F This guy

Yay for These Guys


A SMALL VICTORY
BEAUTIFUL ATROCITIES
COX&FORKUM
DIGGERSREALM
INDC JOURNAL
INSTAPUNDIT
LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS
PROTEIN WISDOM

Welcome to the blogroll with the least traffic ever.


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I have such a blog-on about thisguy . All of these cows in people clothing are posting on the comments at 100%lame. Ugh, it makes my blood boil when people are closed minded and followers at the same time. They will feel the wrath of the Shinobi. ::polishes throwing stars::

GRRRRR

I just wrote this great post and then it broke. Stupid internet. GRRRRRR

On a relatedly angst filled note APPARENTLY now that I've had 2 interviews BigBoss man is happy with my work and they are thinking of giving us new stuff to do in the fall. (which is awefully far away IMO) But I'm seriously annoyed now, because if I do get a different job I'm going to feel like a bitch taking it. GRRRRRRRRR Damn you Murphy and your laws!

But it isn't like I'm going to get either one of these jobs.... I just wish that I were going too. Sigh.

Deathmatch: Dumbass v. #Ninja

So a couple of weeks ago Dumbass sent me an e-mail with detailed instructions on what to do with some information we were waiting for. Why do I mention this? The reason is threefold.

1. I didn't need the instructions, even the littlest
bit. I wasn't wondering how to do this, I knew, I was waiting
for the info, in fact I believe I was in the middle of doing this when he sent
the e-mail. Since I was the one who set up the entire file, him giving me
instructions on how to add 2 columns was insulting to say the very
least.

2. He CCed them to about 10 other people who A, don't need the instructions
and B. Now think that I need to be told when to do my job.

3. I sit about 10 feet from him, and so, if he had any questions about
wether or not I was going to do this or if I knew how, he could have very
simply walked over to my desk and asked.

I confronted him about this because it really pissed me off. I mean a lot(PMS). And the e-mail was really long and far too detailed and I'm sure he spent too much time writing it. So I requested that if he needed any adjustments in future he should first check with me and find out what the status was and if I knew what I was doing. And he said "Well I wasn't sure you knew to do it."

Let me clarify for you how work actually gets done around here, CoolGirl has her own set of crap that she shares with NewGuy (who is no longer going to be on the project when PregnantLady gets back, bastard). I sometimes help out CoolGirl, but mostly I handle a separate bunch of crap, I do all of the legwork, all of the updates, all of the adjustments with occasional input from Dumbass. And when he does give input it is things like "you need to make this title bold." The man has sent me back to my cube to change one formatting thing instead of just doing it his god damn self since he has the file open on his computer. Now why, for any minute amount of time would I assume that anyone besides me was going to do any work? He certainly isn't.

So this week he did the same thing, AGAIN, he sent yet another e-mail out with instructions to me to do something I was ALREADY GOING TO DO. AHH. Fortunately, I don't read anything he writes anymore and I had done it differently. I spoke to him about it AGAIN and, the best part is, his detailed and longwinded instructions were completely wrong. He didn't understand what the client wanted, and now he's telling me how to do something completely different. But he was trying to be all funny about it "Oh, I should just let you handle this stuff.. hehehehe" Yes, You should you completely incompetant pompus asshole.

On a happier note I had a phone interview on friday that went really badly because I couldn't tell if the interviewer was entertained or annoyed by my attempts at humor. Three more days until friday.

Sleepy

I am sleepy, so I'm going to post about this MSNBC article. Now see here, the article is just about sleep in America and how americans aren't getting the sleep we need. I'm not going to talk about the poll today, I'm tired. But I am going to talk about the headline that I saw on MSNBC that caused me to link to the article.

• Survey finds Americans too sleepy for sex

B'scuse me? Okay, so maybe that is true for some people. But this article mentions sex Twice, but there is only one fact about it in the WHOOOOLE thing.

• Roughly one-fourth of respondents who have partners report that their sexual relationship has been hurt because they have been too sleepy. They had sex less often or lost interest in having sex because they were too tired.

That's all she wrote kids. That's it. That's how we know that AMERICANS are too sleepy for sex, not jsut some Americans who have very busy lives or blah blah blah. Clearly.

I hate journalists. They make ridiculous claims and have little or no evidence to support them. But the claim is all about the hook, getting people to read the article, getting ratings. Bastards. Well I promise to keep writing boring stuff so on one will ever read it. But hopefully it will be factually valid.

Post-Easter Post

It's another Gloomy day here in da burgh. Flew in this morning under approximately 3 layers of clouds, ridiculous. I feel like crap. Today I will see how little time I can spend in the office and still get paid.

Anyway on Sunday I went to church because it makes my crazy mother happy and I love her, so I go. I stood in the aisle (no seats left) with my little sister and groaned inwardly when the homily started. But this hear Msgr talked about the Terri Schiavo case (instead of how all the people who show up to Easter mass were missing about 51 other Masses every year.) And I was expecting a right to life diatribe, but he didn't give us one. Instead he read parts of articles that had been in the post presenting differing views. And then he read a passage by someone old whose name I don't remember about how death is God calling us to him, and it was really beautiful. And that was the first time in ages that I didn't hate the Catholic Church.

It seems like the opposite might be beginning to happen all over the country, Jeff Jarvis's Jumping the shark post was GREAT and I really agree that I think the fundamentalists have pushed it too far this time. At least I hope there is some kind of backlash over this.

I do find it interesting how easily people are mislead by the media. My Aunt was going on and on yesterday about how "all these people" agreed with Terri's parents. And I pointed out the different polls that I've read and that all of them had a majority disagreeing with Congress's action. She mentioned too that she heard lots of people on the radio and I pointed out that people who strongly oppose this are more likely to call into a radio show than people who think the whole thing is a family matter. Nutjobs make better radio/tv than normal people, apparently she never watched the real world.

I am concerned that people whose views are more secular will decide that they are clearly the minority and they should just shut up. Because I don't think we are. We shall have to see.

If by Changing you mean Half

I wasn't planning to post today because I'm going to STL for the holiday. (Yay political arguments with Dad) Aaanyway, I was minding my own business reading CNN and I found this article which said something about cookies, YUM. It turns out to be about how companies are using cookies to collect data and finding that consumers delete the cookies and make their data unreliable. And I was all OOOO YAY data isn't always trustworthy == true. But now I'm reading and I get to this.

Rational or not, fear is dramatically changing consumer behavior. Take a look at
these statistics from Jupiter:
Fifty-eight percent of online consumers have
installed, updated, or operated anti-spyware software over the past 12
months.
Fifty-six percent have deleted the temporary files stored in their
browsers' caches.
Forty-nine percent have deleted their browsers'
history.
Forty-one percent now use a firewall.

Soooo what they are saying is that consumer behavior is "dramatically" changing because almost half of consumers have (COMPLETELY NECESSARY, but we'll get to that in a minute) anti-spyware software. And their evidence of a change here is? Change requires 2 data points, the original one and the new one, and I'm only seeing one. I tried to access Jupiter's data, but this blog makes me no money, so I'm not buying it. But here is the report that it is from if anyone has a subscription and wants to send it to me.

My point is that though it is interesting that so many individuals are now deleting cookies and using firewalls etc, it does not evidence a change in behavior since we do not know how common this practice was say 6 months ago. In fact we might know, but it isn't in this article, Therefore, who ever wrote this should be smaked around a little. (Hey Business 2.0 Hire me!)

Now, to the other main point of the article, which is in my rough summation "Poor corporations can't collect data on consumers because consumers think that their innocent cookies are evil." Now this guy apparently has never had to do a full system reload because of one little malignant file downloaded from a website. Apparently the man has never been foiled in his attempt to read his e-mail by countless numbers of popups caused by allowing websites to put whatever they want onto his computer. And Apparently he has never had multiple system crashes while trying to run Microsoft word because of all of the CRAP that these companies are putting on his machine. (Nor has he had to hide his naughty surfing habits from his Mommy Girlfriend, or Boss.)

While I agree that one cookie is harmless, 500 cookies take up space. This is not a fear issue, it is self defense, I payed for that 40 g hard drive and not so I could keep track of other people's information or get them ad revenue. The statistics described above are the kinds of steps PC users have to go through in order to avoid catastrophic system failure once every three months. Fear is not the problem, other people's crap on my PC is the problem.

Dear Corporations that just want to serve their customers better, Find a new data collection method and quit putting your stuff on my computer. I don't have the disk space to keep track of YOUR data for you. Sorry, but between you and the other 50 companies that want to know everything about me I've run out of room for my porn.

Venting

Please note: This post is me bitching about things of a personal nature, it will probably not be very entertaining or interesting to you, but I have to post it somewhere just to get it out of my system or I will go postal.

My boss, is the worst boss in the history of bosses. I know, I know, everyone has bad bosses. They have the micromanaging boss, or the boss who is never around and then gets mad when stuff isn't done, or the boss who thinks he is always right, or the boss who is never right. Well I have all of these, in the form of one person. Not to mention my boss is one of those people who is not very intelligent, and assumes that no one around him is very intelligent so he treats everyone like they are stupid. Any time I talk to him I find myself being "explained" to about something I already have a good understanding of. And to top it all off, the man wears his pants pulled up to high and a polo shirt and ugly golf socks every day. He is like a cartoon character, from now on we will call him Dumbass. I also work with a lovely girl who I will call Coolgirl, she should be in charge of the project because she has been on it the longest, but sadly nothing here at the company that shall not be named ever seems to work out properly.

So a few months ago we added someone to our project because Dumbass was supposed to be working on other project work for senior management. He started training NewGuy and CoolGirl and I were informed of his addition to the project at the last possible moment. (Because why would anyone want to share information with their subordinates or you know, ask their opinions on things.) Coolgirl is asked to take more responsibility for the project and being taking on a more management role. We start working, work picks up, The Unrest begins.

One day NewGuy does sommthing that Coolgirl told him to do and Dumbass yells at him for this. Then again a few days later. Then he proceeds to do the same thing to me (#Ninja). And I blow up at him in a manner that is somewhat notorious because I'm pretty loud for a ninja and the whole department heard me. I explained to him calmly that He could either be the manager or not the manager but that I need to know whose instructions to follow and that his ocillating between ignoring this project and micromanaging it is driving me bonkers. This leads him to believe that I am "Overwhelmed" which lead me to want to bitchslap his ass. In any case, we had a corporate restructuring and more defined roles within the project. YAY.

Well now, he's supposed to be working on other stuff, but he is back to micromanaging. In fact under CoolGirl's very nose he has launched a campaign against NewGuy. For NO APPARENT REASON. (Besides the fact that he his a Dumbass) He is new and the project has a long learning curve, so there is a limit to what we can do. Additionally there is just barely enough work for three people and sometimes it is easier for Coolgirl and #Ninja to just take care of it. And so today because of Dumbasses fucking WHINING NewGuy might get fired. And I am PISSED. There is NO REASON for this, Dumbass's Failure to communicate effectively is more to blame than any one of us, even our client (the producers of Cancer Sticks) hates him.

I hate my job so much. If you're hiring, I'm a fabulous analyst with a BS in Statistics and Decision Science and a little under a year's worth of experience. Please e-mail me and rescue me from this hell.

UPDATE-
I am Shinobi's All Consuming Rage. Not only are they switching all company vending machines and the cafeteria to sell exclusively pepsi, the pepsi will now cost us 1.25 per bottle, instead of the low low price of 1.00. I know it is stupid, but I like to have free choice.

Awww your baby looks just like

........ a red.... thing...

Today an article in the New York Time's "examines" the claim by several studies that Babies tend to resemble their fathers. (If by examine you mean regurgitate.) They cite 2 studies (Just "the Facts") that used different methodologies to see if there is a pattern in human resemblance in behavior. In any case, the NYT FAILs to mention this study (by the way the first result on google) which disagrees and fails to replicate the results of the original 1995 study.

I did find another study which based it's conclusions on what people "said" about a baby's resemblance. I actually laughed out loud when I read it. I wont do it the honor of linking it because...... no. I know if I were included in that sample I'd be completely making something up. To me, babies, look like babies. Booooooring.

It seems like this would be an interesting thing to look at for people who are studying facial mapping technologies. (I did some work with these last year actually, the agony of doing data analysis on photographs.) It would be interesting to see if an algorithm would see more resemblance to a mother or father in a baby. Someone smarter than me should do the research and get back to me.

Anyway the NYT's article is interesting if a little one sided. The Claim, The Facts and my favorite part:

"THE BOTTOM LINE Infants are more likely to resemble their dads. "

According to 2 studies that haven't been replicated. Oh god, I'm going to go laugh in the bathroom stall now so people will stop popping over my cube walls and looking at me funny.

Numbers for thought

An ABC poll (N=501 margin of error=4.5%) conducted Sunday found that 60% of those polled opposed of federal intervention in the Schiavo Case. 70% said it was "not Appropriate" for congress to get involved.

Self labled "Conservatives" were most supportive of Congress's move 48% saying they supported federal intervetion in the matter. 44% of Evangelical Protestants supported the move. (I don't know what % of the respondants were conservative/liberal, I can only see what there results are, I would like to know just to make sure that there is enough data for each group to constitute a sample.)


Another interesting post from over on Cabal shows how numbers and comparisons can be misleading when discussing prisoners of war.

The setup is: 108 POWs have already died in American custody, while only 114 American POWs died while in North Viestnamese custody during the entire war!

For some reason, Atrios skips the other question that immediately came to my mind - how many POWs were taken overall by each country?

Read on to find out.


2.5 hours left at work.

BS

The day after my first test in Mrs. F's class she walked up to the front of the room and said

"Well, the tests overall were not that great"

She turned and wrote two letters on the board.

B S

Then turned back to a room full of stunned 16 year olds and said "Be Specific."

In the world of academia where length is key being specific sometimes gets lost in our quest to fill pages and pages of blue books or to type 10 pages of words that have some meaning. The MSM seems to have a similar problem in their search for brevity (or is it their search for ratings)

Today on the NYT's health page I see two quotes that are shall we say slightly less than music to my ears.

"Many Americans are taking an active role in their own deaths, "

Many huh, HOw many? Oh... further down in the article we find out we don't actually know how many americans have had an assisted suicide. But the gallup poll says

"In a 2004 Gallup survey, 65 percent agreed that a doctor should be allowed to assist a suicide "when a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in pain," up from 52 percent in 1996. "

Oh so, what we actually know is that 65% of american's think that assisted suicide can be okay. But we don't know how many are taking an active role in their own deaths. (by the way, isn't there something else you could be covering besides contributing to the insane media frenzy over Terri Sciavo. I almost miss daily coverage of the artist formerly known as the king of pop's bowel movements.)

"More Celebrities Finding Roles as Antidepressant Advocates"

OKay, more than what? More than two days ago? Please. You're killing me.

Other words I hate. Less, increased, fewer, higher, few, most... the list goes on and on.

These words tell us NOTHING they don't give us any information unless they are followed up or preceeded by actual facts and actual numbers. I could say that I have more money today than I did a year ago. But In actual fact I have about 5 dollars more. Sounds nice, but in reality all I can get with it is a value meal from the McDrivethru.

So I say to the media. B S, be specific.

Moody monday

I think I'm starting to understand this whole template thing. I added a blogroll and other crap. Woot. If you're sad about not being on my blog roll then you should add me to yours, or if I'm already on yours you should send me a bitchy e-mail because I'm a bitch.

And now, Japan!

Terri

I don't like talking about "right to life" cases because it is a subject I am pretty on the fence on. On the one hand my mother has had several occasions where she could have been given up on and yet survived. (She's amazing.) But on the other I think that death comes for all of us and we must be willing to surrender to it when it comes, not hang on with machines and tubes.

I feel mostly for Terri in this whole conversation, because I wonder how much congress or the judges are really looking out for her. I haven't hear the testimony of doctors and I myself am not a doctor so I don't know if she's really in a "vegetative state" or if she actually interacts like her parents claim. And if she does have the potential to recover, then by all means she should be given the chance. But I don't know if she does have that potential.

What I do know is this woman has been effectively a vegetable for 15 years that is 65% of my life span, an amazingly long time. While I grew up, went to highschool and graduated college she has been sitting in one room on a feeding tube getting visits from her family but never going anywhere, doing anything fun. In fact she might not even know that she is still alive. Even if she is "alive" and able to acknowledge family, is she going to get better? Will she be able to talk with her parents? Will she walk again? Dance? Go to Parties? Or will she simply stay this way until one day she dies despite her feeding tube.

What purpose does keeping her alive serve? And to that end, is she really even alive? 50 years ago she would have died. But now that we have the ability to prevent her body's death, should we?

I see all these "right to life" signs and I wonder, why? What about quality of life, joy in life, experiencing life. There is no joy, no new experiences for Terri, unless by some miracle. But believe that death also is a miracle, saving some people from a life of pain or a life their spirit no longer needs to live.

Is this really about Terri? Is it about our own fear of death?

Or even worse, is it about politics?

Update: Words on this subject from one wiser than I

My Favorite Newspaper

Here's a blog post that I found via instapundit, Which I am sure that you have read already or at least seen. This guy lambast's the NYT's methodologies for criticism of poll data from Iraq.

It is a fabulous writing that I wish I had written, but since I did not, I will leave it to you to read its lovliness and learn more about why one should not always believe what one reads in the newspaper. (Especially if it has anything to do with statistics.)

Sad

RIP Andre Norton I will be sad that she is gone, but will look forward to reading her new book.

A Dissenting View on Dissent

This morning I did my usually instacheck and found this post, and proceeded to read all of the links therein.

This one is particularly interesting because it presents some interesting experiences, and I have some of my own to share.

I grew up in a conservative environment and for a long time considered myself to be a republican. At college I was one of the two republicans ( I am not exaggerating) and when the whole Bush Gore conflict was going on I was not treated rudely, although I will not say that my views were exactly popular, which is to be expected. But I continued with my support for the Bush Administration through the war in Afghanistan. But after watching the what was in my opinion a gross mishandeling of the lead up to the Iraq conflict and various other things the administration did that I disagree with I withdrew my support.

Well, my family immediately launched into the "liberal arts brainwashing" speech. Absolutely typical, my views are not valid because I was educated at a university which has a liberal bent. Rather than listening to me, they used this to "prove" that my opinions were invalid. (And they weren't very nice about it I might add.) You may think that I just jumped on the band wagon as well, but I don't have to justify myself to you imaginary person who is reading this, so I wont, HAH. I would argue that both sides are in fact guilty of this depending on the environment.

There was also some talk about the Liberals and their dislike of conservative media. And personally, I am not opposed to Fox news. What I am opposed to is people who think that Fox News and commentators like Rush Limbaugh are unbiased. Just like I would be opposed to people who thought MSNBC was unbiased, or any news for that matter. This, is false. If people want to watch or listen to news that includes other people's opinions that is fine by me. But if someone thinks that Fox News is completely unbiased reporting, how do you think they will respond to my opinions? Take my word for it, not well.

And for another example of crushing dissent from the right, how about Bush's Town hall meetings. What's with the loyalty pledges? If you can't ask him real questions, then what is the point. It is about time that the Bush administration answered some of the hard questions that liberals would put to them and acknowledged the dissent among the American people. We aren't all behind you Bush, why don't you try a little harder to convince us, say by addressing our concerns? What am I saying, this is crazy talk.

Anyway, I would argue that BOTH sides of the spectrum are guilty of crushing dissent and that it is simply a matter of geography whose opinions are getting crushed. (New York Dems are probably just as accepting of conservative Dems as Missouri Republicans are of liberal Republicans.) Americans should all work harder to listen to views that are different than our own, not as Democrats or as republicans. But as people who live in the best country on earth and want it to stay that way, we have a responsibility to ourselves to hear what our brothers and sisters are saying and try to do what is best for everyone, not just what we want.

Why

This article in the New York times is an example of the reason that I am having this conversation with myself in the first place. Not only is it about a study that was clearly overpublicized and misinterpreted, it's also not a very good article.

The article talks about a study done in 1997 that showed that girls were reaching puberty as early as 9 and 10 years old. And Apparently the proposed cause was the bovine hormone used in milk. And so apparently "Sales of organic dairy products took off rapidly" (This article talks about the growing popularity of organic products, but that probably had more to do with overall increased consumption of organic products than it does with one study.)

Apparently this study received a lot of media attention. Here is the original article that appeared in the NYT's in 2001. And there are some follow up articles about groups that doubted the claims of early puberty. Suffice it to say that the ENTIRE second page of the original article talks about how milk was a possible cause and really presents no actual proof. Lots of narrative and talk about conversation.

Anyway, so now it is 2005, and we know we were wrong and that milk probably has nothing to do with early puberty. And so this is what we get from the NEw York Times

A study published in 2001, led by Dr. Kaplowitz, showed that girls who developed sooner tended to have higher body-mass indexes. It also said that the findings of the early puberty study coincided with a rise in nationwide rates of obesity.

THE BOTTOM LINE - Bovine growth hormones are not connected to the early onset of puberty in girls.

Studies these days are irresponsible, and looking for media attention (t0 get funding). But getting media attention can spread misinformation and that can have worse affects on society. And it is even worse when the media is irresponsible with the attention it gives to these studies.

Oh and as an added bonus "Watching TV Hastens the Onset of Puberty!" Can you find the logic derailment in that study?

More on Blogging

Once again Jeff Jarvis says what I've been thinking all along (and a lot more than he probably needed to) about the women in blogging issue. Stupid MSM bloggers, we were done with this like a week ago and here we are again.

But for those interested in more statistics on blogging I found this and this, both of which are interesting. But remember that just because it is a number doesn't mean it is the right number.

I suck at titles

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Walking the blog

It's monday and I'm pretty busy but I wanted to post something so my Blog didn't feel lonely.

So here is a couple of links to make my blog feel loved.

This interesting article from MSNBC about the male dominated upper eschalon of blogging. Why does this happen? I don't know if I agree with the "boys club" idea. The blogosphere isn't about gender, it is about ideas and the people who promote themselves and are the most interesting rise to the top. Ideally. But maybe topp 100 bloggers really just want to create there own little bloggy club of joy and let the rest of us run aorund like little peons, especially the women because they have nothing to say. Hmmm... Somehow I doubt it. I'm so tired of this discussion, why am I even posting about it? Maybe I'm just not frustrated enough yet to be bitter about my lack of traffic, but actually I think if people were really reading this blog it would freak me out. So on with life.

UPDATE: I was just checking out my friends at the NYT and I saw this article. Looks like a few weeks after the blogosphere is done with this Men holding back Women debate the MSM finally picks it up. I still don't agree with this. You can think I'm a nag all you want, it doesn't make me less right. But hey, if anyone is looking for an op-ed columnette they should hire me because I'm smart and bitchy.

MSNBC has another article about petfinder.com which is an amazing resource. (It's where I found my Dora) There are so many stray animals killed every year because they don't have a forever home. Spay, Neuter and Adopt!

Okay, back to work.

Blogging about Blogging

As any Instapundit reader already knows they have published results of a survey of bloggers. Much yayness.

I like this survey, why? Because the write up told us that this survey is merely a sample of a sample. Which is totally true. Also, the survey gathered only demographic information. YAY! So while the questions were still subjective no one can suddenly claim that all bloggers are insane.

Unfortunately it is VERY likely that these results were skewed by the blogs on which the survey was publicized. In a network like the blogosphere where similar blogs link to similar blogs it would be difficult to get a true random sample. So while it may be true that a given blogger is more likely to say they are a Democrat, it could also be true that more left leaning bloggers responded to ads on left leaning blogs. etc and so forth.

And I could wax theoretical about the best way to gather demographic data on a group like bloggers. But the complex structure of the blogging network would occupy me for several pages, so I wont do this. I will just say that it would be hard, and so I give these guys credit for trying to get any information at all.

I wonder how close to accurate the 75/25 male female ratio is? Sausage? Anyone? We're having a festival.

Side note, I find it HILARIOUS that Blogger's spell check function does not recognize the words, blog blogger or blogosphere as being words. Hilarious, and also annoying, like Gilbert Gottfried or something.

Indivisible

What's with Thursday? Why can't we just skip it and go directly to Friday, do not pass go do not suffer through another day at work.

And while I'm venting, why do I have to wake up every morning and be greated by the pale visage of The Creature Formerly Known as the King of Pop. My soy vanilla chai smoothie threatens to resurface ever time.

So to something topical. This weekend at my interview I was asked how I did with "multitasking." Well, I'm fabulous at multitasking, not only can I watch 2 TV shows simultaneously I can also kick the crap out of some rabid thistle bears on WoW all at the same time. Not to mention "I think being able to program a great set of tunes while simultaneously packing a nice, tight bowl is a good example of multitasking. " (thanks Hubris)

But apparently this is some kind of phenomenon among the younger folks. This article by my home newspaper is as usual an example of quality reporting. "Teens juggle homework with multimedia addiction" Addiction? B'scuse me!? For while I do think it is interesting that there seems to be an increase in the amount of time being spent doing media type activities, I think addiction is kindof a strong word. Also there is no proof of any kind of addiction in the study being reported. Bad Headline Awarded!!

I think it is weird that anyone would find the fact that kids IM, Play video games and watch TV all while doing homework newsworthy. I guess that is because I come from this generation and that is what we do. I'm fine, it just takes a little more to entertain me probably than it did my parents. For instance during movies I generally make origami out of my ticket stub or crochet or annoy the people arrond me by twitching. Okay, maybe I'm just weird.

Aaaaanyway, to my point this is one of those dangerous studies. Right now, it's all fine and very interesting. Kids report spending more time using different kinds of media and multitasking. In fact this may help with concentration or visual skills, (this study is good because they even looked at the angle that maybe individuals with better visual skills are more likely to be gamers, good news, not true!) And multitasking will be helpful in the workplace, if not in college.

Regardless soon this will morph into "OUR CHILDREN ARE BEING BRAINWASHED BY THE DEVIL"(Some people are stupid, Henry thinks the homosexuals would want to do him up the bum.) The media will start putting negative spin on it, and all of the bad parents will have to sit there and make sure thier kids only do their homework and not IM, or that they don't have the TV on. This will be lame, and I hope that it does not happen.

With Video games and Instant Messaging for all!

Don't trust your data!

One of my coworkers (I work in a data factory) has a sign in his cube. It has a registration card from a Republican organization, and the sign reads "Don't Trust your Data." I know, statistics humor, hardly funny.

But today I found this article on MSNBC about the recent problems that Choicepoint has been having. Choice point is a supplier for one of my clients so I found this article very interesting. They do age validation for my client where they use an individuals name and address to verify that they are eligable for certain programs. But apparently one year at a conference they looked up data for one of the girls I worked with and they had EVERYTHING.

But besides the security issues which are clearly vast. What is the point in having all of this information if much of it is wrong? Granted the MSBNC article gives only a few examples, and probably neglected to mention individuals whose reports were accurate. But if a company is going to provide complete information on an individual do they not have a responsibility to both their clients and the individual that the information provided be accurate?

This is the kind of thing that makes me wary of massive surveys or other efforts to obtain data about the public. Now that information is so much more readily available, that leaves more room for errors.

(If you do a google search for my name you will come up with about 82 entries. 5 of which actually pertain to me and the rest belong to others. My name is fairly unique so that helps, but I feel sorry for the others whose history might someone get mangled up with mine. Poor Choicepoint, they must be so confused.)

Anyway, this is also one of the reasons I don't use my real name on this blog. I don't want future employers to read my political or ideological musings because they were able to track me down.

Conventional Stupidity

I'm Back! I can tell you missed me. I will be a much better blogger this week I hope. A weekend of shoving my friends in and out of wedding dresses was exactly what the doctor ordered. (I guess the copious amounts of alcohol may have helped too.)

Yesterday CNN had a report on a "review" of 37 studies done by the federal government that consumption of dairy products alone was not enough to grow strong bones.

The study itself I have nothing to say about. I would like to talk instead about the implications of the types of reporting that one finds on these types of subjects. For while it may be entirely true that Milk really doesn't "do a body good" as we have been led to believe all of these years it is still a good source of calcium as the articles indicate on the inside.

Well as long as the article reports facts , what is wrong with a few sensational headlines?

When people make decisions they use methods called Heuristics, some of these heuristics are better at evaluating information than others, but for the most part none of them are good. One of them is called the Availability Heuristic. This method of decision making uses information that is easy to recall, disastrous events or things that have been repeated frequently. So while this information is not necessarily accurate is the easiest thing for us mere humans to remember.

Why am I talking about this? Well when I see headlines like Milk, You May Not Need it Like You Once Thought, or Study: Milk Does Not Help Build Strong Bones I am concerned. It is very likely that parents may remember these headlines and decide not to make their children drink milk, because what is the point? But they probably wont remember that the article suggested that exercise was necessary for building strong bones, or that there are other sources of calcium which is still a useful mineral for growing bodies.

There are much better headlines obviously, I have picked a few of the worst. But the Availability Heuristic is the reason that I pick on headlines specifically. The average Joe American wont remember what the article said, they will remember the main claims made by the headline and they will use it in future decision making. And so this is why I think that journalists should be more responsible in what kinds of claims they make in their headlines and their articles so as not to mislead the public.

Yargh

In Chicago this weekend hanging with the girls. Also have an interview on Friday. Wish me luck!

Sorry for the postlessness, was sick yesterday and so busy today. God forbid we leave my boss alone for 1 day.

Hip and Cool

Another reminder of why surveys aren't good. CNN's article today on the "Cell Phone Only" demographic, of which I am a member, brings up an important issue with polling.

The weather outside is frightful. More Later.

Disbelief

Last week I posted a couple posts on gender issues. This week more attention is being paid to these issues by the mainstream media in the form of Time Magazine. (this article starts out interesting, I can't read the whole thing, but at least it seemed balanced and good at the beginning)

On Friday, I was crabby after blogging and Saturday too. I practically tortured that one guy who hangs out with me and even my cats were like, Hey, stop being such a bitch.

I took Sunday off and today I have renewed clarity.

Why on earth are we even having this conversation? Is it really fair that after all of this work women have put in to gain the ability to vote and own property and make their own decisions that we are being forced to defend our gender? In fact we aren't even having to defend ourselves from bigots and old men with "traditional" values. We are having to defend ourselves from science.

Women today have struggled to reach a place where they can work side by side with men as equals. Unfortunately though this is now possible it is not as common as we would like it to be. Women feel constrained by the demands of family is a commen thread in giving reasons for the "glass ceiling" (Why don't the men take some time off to raise the kids too? Why is it only the women? Good thing I hate rugrats.)

Let us go backwards oh, 50 years to 1950. How many women were working in the labor force then? This article from the BLS has a nice graph that shows us that for some age groups the proportion of women in the labor force has more than doubled. In my opinion that is not bad for 50 years work.

Going further backward oh another 50 years to when women in the US couldn't vote, in fact here is a timeline of Women's sufferage throughout the world. We were still trying to get our say in the world's governments as equals, forget the workplace.

I could go on and on about how throughout the 2000 years before this in most places women were treated as property and had no rights of their own. But I wont because we all know this already and it has only been in the last 200 years that we have reached a place even close to equality in education and opportunities. And I refuse to be told after all of the work that all of these women and more have done through the past 200 years is for naught because some scientist saw on some brain scan that I'll never be able to understand calculus as well as a man.

I hope that this breif conflict does not damage all of the work that has been done over the last 200 years. I hope that women take it as a sign that we need to work harder, and encourage our daughters to be mathematicians, physicists and engineers so that by the end of the next 200 years no man would even think to consider the idea that women are not their equals.

Dr. Summers and the Women

Today this study from the American Institute of Physics argues that the disparity in the numbers between men and women working as university faculty in physics actually begins before college and is not a result as of a lack of innate ability etc. See Mr. Summer's Remarks. on this subject from earlier this year where he implied that women might be to stupid/family oriented/ frail for academia.

(Today's headline award goes to an article on this VERY stale subject Are women cut out to be scientists? Yes we are, Asshole)

But here is a bit of good reporting from the NYT!

Dr. Ivie said the main reason fewer women made it to the top in physics was simply that fewer started at the bottom. At each job level, she said, the fraction of women matched what would be expected for women advancing at the same rate as men. And at top-tier universities, the percentage of female physics professors is low because many current professors earned their Ph.D.'s in the 1970's or earlier, when the field was almost entirely male, and have not yet retired.

Instead, the sex disparity arises earlier in the pipeline, between high school and college. Nearly half of students taking high school physics are girls, but fewer than a quarter of the bachelor's degrees in physics go to women.

So yeah, this seems like a fairly valid conclusion, at least it shows that there is no evidence to support Mr. Summer's claim that the lack of female faculty in physics is due to lack of innate ability or lack of desire to work 80 hours per week.

Unfortunately this study is not valid in all scientific disciplines, which is also mentioned in the NYT.

Dr. Ivie said the situation appeared to be different in at least some other sciences, like chemistry, where women earn a larger percentage of doctoral degrees but leave academia at a higher rate than men.

NYT, you get a gold star.

Debunking Myths? Or creating them?

The Washington Post (via MSNBC) discusses a study which "debunks" the myth that one gender has it better than the other in the US. The study funded by the Foundation for Child Development using child welfare indicies developed by Kenneth Land of Duke University

(I would like to make a side note here and say how amazingly unreadable the information I've found on this is and that I'm sifting through it to see what I can see, but it is agonizing, I will post more detail later. The study itself isn't online yet.)

The Washington Post article has good quotes if you read the entire article. Boiling down all of the different aspects of child welfare to one number can severely skew any data simply by the different numbers that go into any given indicator. Like a survey this data is based on the judgement of a group of individuals and so some information will be lost in the attempt to make it an easy to use index. There could be very significant racial differences, or differences due to population density but we can't see any of this because it has all been wrapped up into one number. Which is pretty, and neat, but almost everbody looks okay from 100 yards away.

Well overall everything is great, that's good, now what? This study could have completely glossed over the plight of one group by saying that "everything evens out" and so now any group that actually is hurting will have more trouble drawing attention to it because everyone can site this study an prove how rosy everything is. I do think that it is about time people stopped trying to out victim the other side and find ways to help everyone regarldess of whose life is worse. (Reminds me of highschool "I have so much homework'" "NO you don't I have AP AND Calculus!" Wah) But that doesn't mean we should make it so easy for ourselves and sum everything up into a neat little package of pure joy. Chances are if things look rosy you are missing something.

But I especially like the last quote in the MSNBC article from David Sadker

"We all know the guys are going on to make more money."

No headline award yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Surveys - The Anti Drug

MSNBC came to my rescue today with their article on the new Partnership For a Drug Free America Study.

The "study" can be read here. I found reading this document frustrating as at least the first part seems like lots of propaganda and it doesn't contain things that I would like to know. So readers I encourage your be wary. Here are some questions I would like answered. In the study they compared their results to a 1998 study.

Methodology Questions

• They compare all of this data to 1998, why 1998, was this the last time they conducted this study? If not, what did the results of the surveys in between look like?
• How did they select their sample, how was this the same or different from sample selection in 1998?
• Can I see the survey itself, Can I see the 1998 survey?
• What demographic data did they collect? (One that I would find interesting would be the DARE program, which students had participated in that and what their parent's response was.)

They seem to be making a connection between the high levels of teen drug use in 1979 and parental drug use, but I couldn't find any numbers telling me how many of these parents reported to have use marijuana and what their use statistics were. These statistics would be important to support their hypothesis that these parents are more mellow about drug use because they have used them themselves. While the data from 1979 is interesting, it is old data and their might be issues that arise in comparing it. Why not just ask the parents?

Also, in bold caps on their report it says "Only 1/3 of teens say they learn a lot about the risk of drugs from their parents." And apparently parental teaching is key. I would like to point out the word "a lot" in this phrase. Define a lot? Also, if 2/3rds of these kids have taken DARE, what are the odds that they would say they learned a lot from their parents, they might still have talked to their parents about it, but the amount of education involved in the DARE program might have skewed their definition of a lot.

Interpretation Questions

• What other possible explanations are there for the significant change in parental attitudes?
• Do these changes in attitudes coincide with changes in attitudes towards sex or other similar behaviors?
• Could it be because more students are participating in anti-drug programs at school and after school programs?
• Also were there significant geographic differences in the results of this study urban v. rural etc?
• What percentage of the parents surveyed reported having ever tried marijuana themselves? How is this different from 1998?

How have these views changed on a yearly basis? (if the data is available)

I am suspicious of this survey because of its origins as well as the large amount of information that is missing from its report. I would encourage you too to be wary before feeling that you as a parent are not doing enough to prevent your child from doing drugs.

I certainly think that parents should speak openly and frankly with their children about drugs. They should speak with their children about drug use and the risks and consequences involved in the use of all of them. (for instance I'm sure if I told kids about my friend who did ecstasy and now has chronic seizures and other brain damage they would think twice) But Kids are smart, don't lie to them, be honest, and teach them to make their own decisions, they will make their own decisions anyway, all you can do is prepare them.

You can talk their ear off and they might not think that they learned "a lot" from you. At least they will have learned something.

Today's Bad Headline Award!

Survey sez: Barely half of parents care if kids try pot New York Daily News

runner up

Survey: Parents Blasé About Kids' Drug Use

news max.com FL (blasé, not being as lame a word as sez)

Mind Numbingly Bored

I am so freaking bored. Oh god. I have read like 20 blogs today and my brain hurts. My group is in Virginia meeting with the client(The makers of Cancer Sticks), and I'm "holding down the fort" which consists of sitting on my ass and occasionally copying and pasting some data from one spreadsheet to another. And on the way into work today I saw no less than 3 mullets. All of whom work here and probably make more money than I do. Which is appalling. I HAVE to get out of here.

Links of the day, Ilkya is having estrogen week on her blog. Interesting highlighting of female bloggers, myself not included, that's okay though because I'd rather be known for my brilliant rhetorical stylings unlike Libertarian "Girl".

Iowahawk has an article about fundraising for the victims spotlighted in the Mommy Madness article. Absolutely fabulous, I'm going to run right out and donate.

And now I would like to plug Diet Coke with Lime! I have been adding lime to diet coke for years, but do you know how hard it is to find a lime? It is fabulous.

One more plug, The Committee To Protect Bloggers for the guys in Iran. I hope we help the people in Nepal next. (They should get some oil and I'm sure we'd be there protecting their rights already, if by protecting their rights you mean blowing things up.)

I forgot my book today, I'm reading Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. It is really interesting, I'm reading about how the Nixon administration manipulated pollsters and how it helped them push back watergate. Very cool.

I'll probably post a long summary of important points when I get further into the book so all of you people who don't want to read 300 pages about the Nixon administration (not that I blame you) can get the gist. But one of my highschool history teacher Mrs. Scarpinato recomended it and I figured it was high time I get to reading it.

hehe high. Okay, I'm going to go away now.

Who are these guys?

Instapundit has a post today about a poll done by Rasmussen Reports which apparently shows a decrease in approval of the UN. I'm not familiar with Rasmussen Reports, but I'm not familiar with a lot of things.

Thirty-seven-percent (37%) of Americans have a favorable opinion of the United Nations. That's down from 44% in a November survey.

I just want to point out this little blurb from lower down on their website.

Data from the current survey is not directly comparable to last November's results. The current survey sampled American Adults. Last November's survey interviewed Likely Voters. It is likely that the difference in samples may shift the results two to three points in one direction or the other.

Nothing personal guys, but then why did you just compare it at the top of your little article thingy? Some people might not understand why you can't compare these results. So a breif explaination of why not. (See this if the word Sample is scary sounding to you)

When they surveyed Likely Voters in November they randomly selected individuals who were listed as likely to vote. (I think these people are usually registered to vote an possibly voted in the last election but the definition varies). This time they took a sample of individuals who are simply American Adults. Well Likely Voters are a specific subset of American Adults and they may have differences from American Adults that would cause them to respond differently to questions in this survey. "But wait, aren't samples full of lots of different kinds of people? Why would it matter if you added a few more different people to the mix?" It matters because it is possible that Likely Voters are systematically different from the 40% (Guess?) of American Adults who are not Likely Voters. Maybe Likely Voters watch the news more, or maybe they are all more educated or less angry, than the rest of American Adults, I don't know, but it might have caused them to have answers to the survey that were very different.

So if the difference is 7% right now, and it might shift 3 percent that could put us at a difference of 4% or 10% and since the margin of error is 3% the difference could actually be 1% or 13%. (I should point out that both of these aren't as likely as the actual percentages they gave, I don't have enough info to give you an exact probability for both of those possible results but it is pretty low) Aren't statistics fun?

Another side note, if you look at the questions, depending on the order the questions were asked in, it might result in different answers.

If someone asked me "Do you think that Bribes from the UN Oil for Food Program caused nations to protest the US led invasion of Iraq?" I'd probably say no. But if someone asked me if I thought the bribes existed and THEN asked me the above question, I might lead myself to a logical conclusion. That could work either way depending on the knowledge that the individual had at the time. These are tricky questions and so the results aren't completely reliable.

Posts that are better than mine

Apparently no one liked the Mommy Madness. Glad to know I'm not alone in thinking this woman is an idiot.

A Small Victory and Ilyka both have posts that put mine to shame shame shame.

Also the Advice Goddess has 2 posts today that both make me want to move to Canadia.

I added a picture yesterday, obviously it is not me, it is a picture of my cat. I hope this doesn't make everyone think I'm one of those crazy cat people.... Cause I'm not... really. I just think its a good picture, and I'd rather keep as much annonymity as possible.

Caffine Buzz

Today's CNN a study has found a Correlation between coffee consumption and low liver cancer rates.

Please note, that this study cannot prove a causal relationship. Even with the information we have on rodents, actual experiments need to be conducted before people who are worried about liver cancer should start pounding the Starbucks.

In a study like this one, which is merely observing people and reporting on results there are very high incidents of lurking variables. Maybe individuals who tend to drink more coffee, drink less alchohol (a risk factor for liver cancer). There are all kinds of possible explainations.


The Bad Headline Award goes to:
The India Times with "A coffee a day can keep cancer at bay."
Not only misleading, but rhyming as well

Poor Mommy

So yesterday I read this article in Newsweek. But then realized that I think my work is monitoring the activity on my computer and so decided not to rant about it. And this morning I realized that I don't really care so I'm going to post anyway.

Generally, I'm pretty pro women. In fact a month or so ago, my man read a very poorly taken out of context section of one of my favorite books in which someone threatens to castrate someone else. We had to have a "talk" about my attitude towards men. Which is, that they are stupid, and that women are stupid on a whole different level than them. But that as a whole women have had it bad, and we are responsible for fixing it, and that it isn't really the men's fault anymore as much as it is the whiney bitches who can't pay for their own dinner.

Take this article above. It goes on and on about Supermommies and all the work they have to do and how seriously they take their lives and how Hard it is and I almost want to cry big tears of sorrow for them. ::sniff sniff:: Or not. That's what birth control is for ladies.

Seriously about the article. I can't even imagine how difficult it is to raise a child AND have a career. I can imagine that rasing several children on your own is very tough, and that one could use some help. But wait, this article isn't about single Mom's. It is about all Mom's. This generation apparently "bred, from the earliest age, for competition" which is FORCING them to go to ridiculous lengths to 'Raise the Perfect Child.' She talks about the ridiculous hours mothers keep trying to get in "quality time" and the lengths they go for "crafts" and "snacks." And all of this results in some crazy and stressed women. (I have long been of the opinion that women who have children lose a large part of their mental faculties and this article is in line with my hypothesis) And what kinds of solutions does our dear deluded newsweek writer propose?

• We need incentives like tax subsidies to encourage corporations to adopt family-friendly policies.
• We need government-mandated child care standards and quality controls that can remove the fear and dread many working mothers feel when they leave their children with others.
• We need flexible, affordable, locally available, high-quality part-time day care so that stay-at-home moms can get a life of their own[omitted BS]
• We need new initiatives to make it possible for mothers to work part-time (something most mothers say they want to do) by creating vouchers or bigger tax credits to make child care more affordable, by making health insurance available and affordable for part-time workers and by generally making life less expensive and stressful for middle-class families so that mothers (and fathers) could work less without risking their children's financial future. Or even, if they felt the need, could stay home with their children for a while.
• In general, we need to alleviate the economic pressures that currently make so many families' lives so high-pressured, through progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation's wealth back to the middle class.

Soooooo What your saying is, the government should spend money on helping you raise your child. They should do this because you're "stressed" and because you are clearly insane. Obviously the government should take responsibility for the fact that you decided to breed. Especially since you have some deep need to raise the best child possible. In fact, I think what you're saying here is that you can't handle this. And maybe we should take your child away from you because all of this coddling is only going to raise the "perfect spoiled brat" And cause behavioral Issues which will only backfire. (I myself am a sufferer of SRGS, I'm still learning how to wash dishes, it really sucks and I wish I'd just had chores to do when I was a kid, seriously.)

And here's a thought. Why not ask Dad to do some work. I realize that if Dad isn't around this could be problematic. But he's half responsible for your demon spawn, and it probably wouldn't kill the little buggar to spend some time with someone who has a mind of his own and an ability to treat his child like it is capable of breathing on its own.

Then maybe you could give your kid some soft fuzzy toys or a ball and kick them out of the house for a while, away from any pools or holes in the ground. Maybe with one of the older neighborhood kids. Then your child will go off and learn bad words and come back and repeat them, but at least they will be exposed to something besides your overprotective insanity.

The real victims from this article are not these poor mommies, they are the children of these mommies, what will they do when they have to live in the real world?

-----later

Lilek's has a much better post on this. And he calls his daughter Gnat, how freaking cute is that.

(Via A Small Victory)

Gender Lies

So apparently "Libertarian Girl" is a guy. (yes, i'm an instaSlut)

I find this funny, because I had just been bitching to my boyfriend (I am a girl, not a gay man) about how I am so distressed that there are few female political bloggers for whom I have any respect. I am sure there Are some who Deserve respect, but somehow any of the blogs I read that are written by chicks seem to degenerate into who wore what to the grammy's and...well, other crap. (Now accepting good blog recomendations!!)

But really, I am stunned that someone would pretend to be a girl just to get traffic to their blog. I mean, the reason I like blogging is because it doesn't matter if the writer is a hottie, it matters what they say. I blog because I want my thoughts to be heard, not so some guy can oggle my pic while skimming my articles. And I think that the same can be said for any blogger. If you want traffic for being hot, start a porn site.

We finally have a chance to evaluate other people based on their thoughts and opinions, why is it always about looks? Isn't that what celebrities are for?

Speaking of hotties check out Hubris. ;-)

Protesting

Hubris is shutting down his blog. I'm protesting... though it is futile. His blog is very funny and if anyone besides him and possibly pyrrho ever read this blog I would tell all of my loyal readers to run and read his blog and yell at him for quitting. But I have even smaller readership than him. God, now I'm REALLY depressed, I hope the NYT did something stupid today so I can rip them to shreds and make myself feel better.

Happy Valentines Day.

My kingdom for some data

If anyone knows where I can find out how often White House staff accepts questions from which reporters, I will do something really nice for them. I tried whitehouse.gov, but they do not include reporter's names on the transcripts. ::sigh::

No interesting things for me to post about except for SS, which is still too confusing and there aren't enough specifics for me to conduct a useful analysis. I'd really like to see the whole plan here sometime soon.

Commercials- The Anti Drug

Today while attempting to read the NYT I was distrated by an Anti-Marajuana commercial. And so I read their little blurb about the harmful affects of Marajuana and now I take issue with it. (Suprise!)

Research of the affects of illegal drugs is difficult because the drugs are illegal, so to conduct a controlle experiment is rare and difficult (okay impossible) to get approval for. Especially if one wanted to study the long term affects of marajuana smoking. (We'd like you to smoke 1 joint a day for the next year, and then come back and we'll study you. Uhhh..... SWEET!) So, while I am going to be highly critical of the following research we must understand that these individuals are doing the best they can.

I am going to ignore the first two parts of this blurb as I have no "studies" or information to refute and google is yeilding nothing, so I will skip to the last bit

"Effects of Heavy Marijuana Use on Learning and Social Behavior. A study of college students has shown that critical skills related to attention, memory, and learning are impaired among people who use marijuana heavily, even after discontinuing its use for at least 24 hours. Researchers compared 65 "heavy users," who had smoked marijuana a median of 29 of the past 30 days, and 64 "light users," who had smoked a median of 1 of the past 30 days. After a closely monitored 19- to 24-hour period of abstinence from marijuana and other illicit drugs and alcohol, the undergraduates were given several standard tests measuring aspects of attention, memory, and learning. Compared to the light users, heavy marijuana users made more errors and had more difficulty sustaining attention, shifting attention to meet the demands of changes in the environment, and in registering, processing, and using information. The findings suggest that the greater impairment among heavy users is likely due to an alteration of brain activity produced by marijuana.

Longitudinal research on marijuana use among young people below college age indicates those who used have lower achievement than the non-users, more acceptance of deviant behavior, more delinquent behavior and aggression, greater rebelliousness, poorer relationships with parents, and more associations with delinquent and drug-using friends"

Reading this, it seems pretty convincing, people who use marajuana heavily have attention problems and issues with processing, and that people who use marajuana long term have behavioral problems. HOWEVER! The actual relationship between these is yet to be determined.

This article does not state that marajuana causes these problems, and they are right not to say this. These studies do not prove a causal relationship.

To take the first issue, attention problems and processing issues. It is possible that individuals with attention disorders gravitate towards marajuana use because it allows an indivdual to relax and can aid focus. (.... so I've heard) So marajuana does not necessarily CAUSE these problems. Though the statements about the findings suggests that it changes brain chemsitry, there is no evidence of this or that the change is permanant. (By the way, smoking pot 29 out of 30 days is just a little much, moderation people, moderation.)

Also, the second paragraph which cites "those who used have lower achievement than the non-users, more acceptance of deviant behavior." Again, a worried parent might take this to mean that marajuana use can lead to lower acheive ment and deviant friends. But it is equally as likely that an individual who is prone to be accepting of deviant behavior is more likely to smoke marajuana. In fact, any of the listed "problems" could actually be factors contributing to the use of marajuana.


An older study that is still frequently cited "proved" that marajuana was a gateway drug. In this study they surveyed some heroin addicts and asked if they had ever smoked pot. Guess what, They have!!! But do you think that smoking pot caused them to do heroine? Maybe, in their search for heroine all they could afford was pot. A better study would be to ask pot smokers if they have or ever will do heroine. But that would be considerably harder.



Please Note, this blogger does not advocate the use of illegal drugs, merely the use of accurate information to support claims about the dangers of drug use.

Statistics for Dummies

Not to imply that you are a dummy. But it occurs to me that rather than explain concepts over and over again in this blog I would like to have a quick reference for these definitions. So this post will be my brief tutorial of statistical terms and concepts so that you, dear reader, can navigate the labyrinth that is statistics with less difficulty. If the word probability puts you in a tizzy of confusion then you probably want to read this before proceeding.

Experiment- This is " done in a controlled environment designed to minimize biases and lurking variables. These will take a group and give them a treatment (Like a drug, or watching a video or soemthing else) and then examine how the treatment affects them.

Observational Study- An observational study merely gathers data on the world as it is. It observes the state of the world and reports on it, but does not act on it. Observational Studies cannot prove causal affects because they are affected by uncontrolable factors. A Survey is a type of observational study.

Sample- a sample is a randomly selected group of people. Assume that there are 1000 brunettes in a room that are all over 5'6" tall and you want to do an observational study of what eyecolor occurs most frequently in these tall brunettes. Rather than asking all 1000 brunettes, you could randomly select 100 of them and as long as the selection is random then you should get an approximation of the eyecolors of the whole population ( the 1000 brunettes in a room, I hope it's a big room). If these 100 people are not selected randomly then this can lead to Sampling Bias which can cause results of a survey to be wrong.

Margin of Error- every survey and experiment has a margin of error which is a number that is based on sample size and methods. This number signifies a range for the data. So lets say you found that 51% of brunettes have blue eyes and 49% had brown eyes. Well if your margin of error is 2.5% (which is pretty normal) that means that the actual % of brunettes with blue eyes is 51% plus or minus the margin of error. That is it could be between 48.5% and 53.5%. ( so this means that your results are inconclusive, so don't go running around shouting about how all brunettes have blue eyes will ya?)

Significance- For something to be statistically significant means that the probability of getting this result by chance is very low. (Usually below .05) So let's say that your survey of brunettes yeilded 25% for blue and 75% for brown. But that most other surveys of this nature have yeilded the above 50, 50 results. You can calculate the probability that you would get results this different from normal results. And this probability could be something like .01 which would mean that the results are statistically significant. So there is something about your population of 1000 brunettes that makes them special. It must be because they are all over 5'6" tall!

Correlation- A correlation is a measure of how linearly related two variables are. Like weight and height, as weight increases, so does height and therefore they are linearly correlated. HOWEVER this does not mean that one causes the other. Correlation does not imply causation, EVER!

Lurking Variable- This is a variable that causes results in a study to show up, but may not have been taken into consideration by the experimentors/ surveyors. In our study of our 1000 brunettes for example, we assumed that the results we got were different from the average population of brunettes because of their height. But have failed to take into account that this room happens to be in an italian part of town. Which means that most of the brunettes in the room have italian ancestry and therefore brown eyes. So while we may have attributed their brown eyes to their height there was a lurking variable, that was italian ancestry. This caused our study to have results that are not valid to the entire population of brunettes, but only the brunettes in our big room.


That is all I've got for now, I will add terms to this post as I get tired of defining them.

Disdain

This article probably belongs on my other blog, but I think I may just consolidate the two, so people looking for statistics will have to skim my rantings, they can suffer.

Today, I feel like venting, and so I will share with you, dear reader, the two things in the world that I have the most disdain for.

1. Religious fanatics- many of these individuals exhibit a failure to think for themselves and criticly evaluate facts that boggles the mind. While I do understand the comfort and joy that a strong faith can bring I think it is important not to let faith overcome reality. Individuals who do not have the capacity to critically evaluate the world around them and understand concepts without the aid of a pre determined world view should be culled out of society. Instead they are the only ones breeding because they don't believe in birth control.

2. Journalists-many of these individuals exhibit a failure to think for themselves and criticly evaluate facts that boggles the mind. (Sorry Pat and Pat's friends who are journalists, but it is the truth, and I don't believe in disgusing the truth!) So often I read articles from reputable magazines or news sources that completely miss the mark. And often these articles are nothing but the writer's opinion. ( please note that this blog does not purport to be full of facts, merely critical evaluation of facts portrayed in the news media) In fact, journalists have no place evaluating facts (partially because their evaluation is probably WRONG) but their job is to REPORT the news, not to comment on it. It is so hard to find out what is going on in this world without having it skewed by the tarnished lens that is journalism.

Today I have 2 examples of #2 that have seriously pissed me off, this article from Business 2.0 COMPLETELY ignores the existance of gamers as a sect of computer users and makes assumptions about the future of computing while failing to acknowledge a very major group of consumers. This is not wise. His assumption that disk space and ram are replaceable is very very wrong. For while some games are moving to a networked format (WoW) these games are A, still not the norm and B still require substantial processing power on the part of the machine and this is not likely to end in order to provide a good gaming experience. So yeah, while he may be right, his hypothesis is flawed because he has failed to evaluate the situation properly.

My other problem is THIS (Via cmu.misc.market) supposed journalist who seems to be working for Mr. Bush and softballing him on purpose so he can look good in news conferences. This, is Rather annoying. Also it takes valueable time away from the white house answering valid questions about the many many issues arising during their reign.

Lets get plastered

"Drink a Day may keep Older Women Sharp" says the headline from the NYT. Well this is entirely possible but once again the headline pushes it too far, neglecting to moderate this message. While the two studies they are reporting seem valid and did adjust for some other factors. It is possible and likely that this is the case, but until there are more controlled studies this cannot be proved.

The NYT does mention these things in their article (although they say nothing about controlling for other factors I foudn that elsewhere) but they do very kindly put the warning in that old ladies should not begin drinking... at the END of the article where I am so sure everyone is going to read it. Last sentance;

"The big challenge," he concluded, "is to make the recommendation in the right way."

Maybe I"m just picking on the times today because it is the first article I read. Everyone seems to be doing the same thing today (google news) and now I know why. Here is the original press release from the Wake Forest Study. Copy and paste around a bit and you got yourself an article. Unfortunately to make studies newsworthy they have to make them into amazing new claims. And while I certainly hope the claim here is true since I'd love to keep drinking into my 80s if I live that long, these studies don't prove it.