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  1. about 16 hours ago on Non Sequitur

    Good polls are extremely difficult to construct and none of the polls being talked about seem very good [I can’t say cited, because most stories just say “the polls”.

    Polling I can be a good way for politicians and leaders to discover what is important to the public and vice versa. The problem is that they may be affecting the very thing they are trying to find out. In elections, polls can promote a bandwagon effect, in which voters see that a candidate is leading in the polls and decide to “get on the bandwagon” and support that candidate. Or, polls may cause some voters to decide not to vote at all, on the logic that they are unlikely to affect the outcome.

    What concerns me about “the polls” we have now? In general, you don’t have a lot of info about them: You don’t know who funded them or why, who wrote the questions, who did the polling or how, what the sample size was, where and when the polling was done. Unless you were one of the people polled, you don’t know what questions were asked or how. And a lot tend involve loaded or leading questions [e.g., the classic, “when did you stop beating your wife?”; and “Many US jobs have been outsourced in foreign countries in the past 4 years. Do you think out sourcing jobs is a good idea?” followed by “Do you think the President is doing a good job helping the US economy?” [actual polling questions from a previous election]

    Based on the number of polls / surveys that have hit my email and phone during the past 6 months, many seem designed not to gain information from or provide information to voters, but to steer voters in a specific direction, build up biases. They ask loaded and leading questions, use a lot of absolutes [another poor technique], and usually end by asking how much you are willing to donate [leading question]— and if you don’t donate, then it seems they don’t count your answers — because they send reminders.

    Wish there was a way that you would stop getting these once you’ve voted.

  2. about 18 hours ago on Pluggers

    It did save energy back then — not sure how much. Ben Franklin encouraged it in 1784, believing that rising earlier would economize candle usage and save people money.

    Pushing clocks forward to make greater use of daylight during the warmer months was formally adopted during World War I as part of a global attempt to conserve energy. The idea was that people would do more stuff during daylight hours. That was when stores closed at 5 pm instead of 9 and most people went to bed early — no television or late-night radio and street lights weren’t all that common.

    What scientists have demonstrated many times is that changing time is bad for our health. That hour change can upset our circadian rhythms, the body’s natural 24-hour cycles regulating key functions like appetite, mood, and sleep. Statistics show an increase in car accidents and heart attacks and strokes during the days following the Spring time change.

    The rationale for the time change is gone — we don’t go home at dusk and to bed with the chickens. We shop, work, play, watch TV [or rather our phones and computers] 24-hours a day.

  3. about 18 hours ago on FoxTrot

    I can only speak for Colorado, which has an excellent system for voting, voter registration, and detection of fraudulent voters. And it does seem here that more problems are caused by Republicans than others. Case in point:

    “The former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party was sentenced to four years of probation and 300 hours of community service for voter fraud. Steve Curtis blamed a “major diabetic episode” for causing him to vote his ex-wife’s absentee ballot in October 2016.

    Curtis, 57, told District Judge Julie Hoskins Friday it was “a customary thing” for him to fill out his wife’s ballot and he didn’t know it was illegal, but he said he didn’t remember doing it." [CBS News, 27 Jan 2018]

    Doesn’t it seem strange that a former Chairman of the CO Republican Party didn’t realize that it was illegal to fill out someone else’s ballot????

    And, according to Electionfraud>

  4. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Today, it is much more likely for him to be sitting with a computer [laptop, tablet, etc] on his knees. But holding a newspaper is much more dramatic than hands poised on a rectangle.

  5. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

    “Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flights–how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.” [“Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” Richard Bach]

  6. 3 days ago on Non Sequitur

    If employers treated their workers fairly, unions wouldn’t be needed. However, many employers still seem to have something of a ‘slave-owner’ mentality.

  7. 3 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Actually, a lot of previous millionaires lost their millionaire status with the crash. But new millionaires were made when people who had money saved were able to snatch up land, houses, etc. cheaply: J Paul Getty, William Boeing, Walter Chrysler, Joe Kennedy Sr., Charles Darrow [created the Monopoly game], Howard Hughes [that era’s Elon Musk]. They may not have all become millionaires right away, but they did gain wealth and status.

  8. 4 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Turn about.

  9. 5 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Nature—our world— survives by being balanced. Every living thing consumes part of nature and creates waste, which is consumed in turn by another part of nature—eaten by animals, insects, bacteria, etc. and broken down into usable nutrients and organic matter. Except man. Mankind is part of nature — we also consume and create waste. But we also create lots of other stuff which nature can’t easily break down or use. We are the ‘smart’ species and yet we have never figured out that we need to be clever enough to turn our “waste” back into something Nature can use instead of just dumping it into rivers and oceans or burying it in the ground. We haven’t yet figured out that the real cost of a car or a refrigerator should include the costs involved in getting it back to its natural components or at least turning it into other usable stuff.

  10. 5 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Probably less than the unconcerned wealthy conservatives who own private jets, private yachts, drive gas guzzling vehicles and have carbon footprints the size of large cities. And it is rather insulting for you to assume that Mr. Miller is one of those people.