“Git ‘er done!” The cry of the modern masses. It, perhaps, says something about our society that we prize the completion of tasks above all else. Why else, do we reward students for doing their homework, even if that homework teaches them nothing? Why else to we heap kudos upon those who finish a race, even if they run it so slow as to reap no physical benefit? Why else to we have social sites where people can crow their day’s accomplishments to an audience of peers and receive a chorus of congratulations for nothing more earth-shattering than eating breakfast?
Is it any wonder that I find this mentality….lacking? No one who knows me is surprised, I’m sure. I hate everything, I’m told.Continue reading »
Polls are without a doubt one of the most dubious means of ascertaining public opinion. Especially when small, selectively or self-sampled, and biased through weasel-wording. Basically, the smaller the number of respondents, the easier it is for numbers to be blown out of proportion, and effectively make a tiny number of people represent a huge populace. Internet polls are particularly dubious, since polls are often posted on sites that are specifically geared to a certain response, thus being self-skewed in favor of a specific answer. Add to that some carefully worded questions or choices for answers, and a poll can be a great tool for driving public opinion, rather that reflecting it. Hell, politicians have been doing that for ages.
THEY LIVE!
All this builds up to my skepticism in viewing this article in the Telegraph, which basically states that a poll showed that 20% of respondents believed that aliens existed and were walking among us right here on our very own planet Earth. I mean, come on! One in FIVE?!?! The first thing I checked was the sample size…it might be tiny. Turns out it’s 23,000. That’s a pretty robust poll. But there the data on this poll ends. The article gives no information about who conducted the poll, or the methodology.
Google reveals a scant few articles about this poll, with most simply dropping the 20% number in a quick blurb along with a sensationalist headline and moving on to other things. I finally discovered that it was Reuters which commissioned the poll, and found their initial article about it. They also don’t reveal the methodology. The polling firm, Ipsos, has a little blurb about it but says nothing about the nature of the poll or how data was gathered.
So, bottom line? The information is interesting. If the responses correlate with the actual public opinion, then the findings are downright scary. Frankly, I don’t find them that hard to believe. People believe weird stuff. If accurate, then nearly 45% of Indians and Chinese think aliens are among us! They Live!! Additionally it says something interesting about relatively secular and socialist countries like Belgium, Sweden, and The Netherlands. Only about 8% of them put any stock in the idea. But all this is pointless if the poll was biased or flawed. Where is the careful reporting on this subject?
Now that I’ve blathered on about how silly polls can be, here’s one for you. Have at it….what’s your take?
There is an art to getting what you want. Children are masters of it intuitively, and invoke a special set of rules when faced with parents asking them to do something they don’t want to do (like bathing). First there’s the bargaining, seeing if maybe we can wait a little longer…delay, delay, delay. That’s not working, so then we escalate to simple refusal. This usually takes the form of saying “NONONONONONO” as a sort of prayer of warding. Not working…Mommy still wants to make me eat my vegetables! Now the child escalates to screaming, crying, and other general noise-making (protests?) in the hopes that maybe the parent will be persuaded to just appease the child to shut them up. These may take the form of hyperbole about how the parent is oppressing them (“you hate me”, “you’re ruining my life”, “you’re killing America”). This doesn’t work either, for the resolute parent, they know that eventually, children must take their medicine for their own good, and persist despite their angry cries. What is the final tantrum tactic? Combine all of the above with plain old body weight. Drop to the ground, and make the parent either carry or drag you to where they want you to go.Continue reading »
Okay, Texas, we get it. You ain’t much of a fan of book learnin’. So, as the rest of America bemoans how Texas is stupiding-up our textbook standards with their tremendous buying power, I can’t help wondering…why are they so powerful?
Texas Caught in Time?
The answer, of course, is about money. The beauty of free-market capitalism is that money walks, even if it means that the only ones walking are the ones dragging their knuckles on the ground. Texas, it seems, has tremendous buying power in the textbook world. Due to their high population, their standards drive publishers to pander to their every whim in order to get their business. So, when they dumb down their own textbooks, they also dumb down the textbooks of other districts in the US who don’t have the “purchasing power” (read “money”) to get custom-made texts.
It’s not as bad as it seems. As someone working in the educational publishing industry, I can tell you that both New York City School Districts and Los Angeles School Districts also have a major influence in the textbook market. Still, if Texas pushes standards to (what shall we call it?) the intellectual right, it can affect many other districts that aren’t looking for content that’s geared toward NYC and LA’s urban populations.Continue reading »
Okay, okay! So I haven’t been keeping up on posts as promised. The Jury Duty thing has been interesting, at best, and frightening, at worst. If you’ve never had the opportunity to serve on a Grand Jury, I recommend it. The volume of cases is enlightening, as far as understanding the process of law. In addition, the interaction with the larger jury (a Grand Jury has 23 jurors rather than the 12 used in a trial jury) is a somewhat harrowing means for looking into the heart of the American judicial system. Okay, so it’s not as bad as all that. Naturally, the jury is comprised of everyday average people. I just wonder if maybe there’s anything skewing that average. If not, then the average is a bit more average than I expected.
The process is as follows: the prosecutor for a certain set of charges presents whatever evidence they have, the jurors are allowed to ask questions of witnesses (through the prosecutor), the charges are read by the prosecutor, and then the jury deliberates and decides if there is “legally sufficient evidence, and reasonable cause to believe” that the defendant can be indicted for those charges. It should be a very straightforward process… since the laws (as is the nature of laws) are very clear on what is required to charge an individual. Where the system falters is with the jurors, funnily enough.
The first thing I noticed is that most people don’t seem to have any grasp of relevance when it comes to what evidence is being presented. The question period, where the witness leaves the court and the jurors are allowed to ask the prosecutor any questions they want put to the witness, is particularly painful! Fortunately, the prosecutor acts as a legal advisor to the jury, telling them what questions are legally proper. In one case, an undercover officer was describing taking part in a drug bust at a certain location. He described the deal taking place at two cross streets (say 95th and Atlantic, as a hypothetical) and explained the rest of the process, such as the exchange of money and the search of the suspect resulting in the finding of 500 pills in separate baggies (narcotics). After the witness left, we were asked if there were any questions. Several members of the jury seemed concerned that 95th street didn’t intersect Atlantic, and the prosecutor was forced to call the witness back and clarify. Yep, he misspoke, it was 93rd or something. Totally irrelevant. The witness had testified that the bust took place in Kings County, and that was all that really mattered, as far as the law was concerned.
On to reading us the charges. One of the charges was possession of a controlled substance with the intent to sell. Well, no one seemed convinced that these 500 pills were intended to be sold! WHAT!?!?! “Well, maybe it was a prescription,” said one juror. I had to argue with her to convince her that pharmacists don’t hand out 500 pills at a time….particularly not of a narcotic drug! Furthermore, they don’t dispense drugs in little plastic baggies. The charge was hotly debated, since most didn’t think it constituted “proof” that the individual was planning to sell the drugs. A bunch of Law & Order fans, no doubt. We don’t have to have proof, just “legally sufficient evidence, and reasonable cause to believe.” This was lost on most, and the charge was dismissed. Yikes.
Another juror decided to excuse herself from the voting process on all charges, because “you guys are throwing these kids in jail! That’s someone’s SON!” Excuse me, but I’m pretty sure that every criminal on the planet (and every non-criminal, for that matter) is someone’s son (or daughter). Not to mention that the Grand Jury doesn’t throw anyone in jail, they are simply indicting them on charges, which will bring them to trial. And all these weird happenings are taken entirely in stride by the system! No one monitors the proceedings (they have to be conducted in secret, with only the jury in the room), and charges are held and dismissed on the whim of a group of people that seem to have no grasp of logic or reason, let alone law.
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