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Just Stuff
Nov. 1st, 2008 05:31 pmHaven't done much today. Planned on taking a long walk with one of the social networking groups, but woke up feeling queasy and with a sick headache at 7am. So passed. Instead walked a bit later in the day, picked up groceries and the Spike:After the Fall comic. Devoured the Spike:After the Fall comic in the space of twenty minutes, possibly less. The story hit my mood. Don't really feel the need to analyze, not sure there is anything to analyze, which may come to think of it be partly why I loved it. Spike loves Illyria. Spike wins the day. Spike cares about Connor. And Spike maintains his sardonic tough guy bravado, with a bit of self-deprecating wit. What's not to like? Well, nothing, that is, if you are me. ;-)
Oh well, have a four day weekend to play around with. Taking Sat off as a people free, veg day, of rest and relaxation is not a bad idea. Good for the soul, as they say.
Spent most of the day watching tv and reading my correspondence - which is basically the four social/professional networking spots that I'm currently on. Actually on five, but I don't do much with MySpace. It's more of a music listening network than much else. I joined it to see Dr. Horrible only to discover that I could watch Dr. Horrible on LJ via my correspondence/flist. The others are Facebook (which mostly consists of writing brief sentences and taking quizzes and occassionally corresponding with folks. Or what I like to call "public text-messaging/email".), Linked-In ( a professional networking site- allows you to link up with anyone you've worked with or done business with and all of their business contacts, easier than a frigging rolerdex. Although, like a rolerdex, it is only updated when the individual decides to update it. Some people pop on it and forget about it. I'm on the damn thing twice, because that's what I did, I joined, forgot about it, and had to rejoin.)
And Meetup's - which is a social networking site that's sole purpose is to organize events for people to join or meetup for. (Example - say you want to go hiking in the Hudson River Valley, but not by your lonesome? You organize a meet and invite folks to join you. I call it "group blind dating" - which in some respects is a lot less scarey than individual blind dating. It's really no different than meeting up with someone you corresponded with on Match.com, Chemistry.com or Eharmony.com - except that you don't correspond first, you meet them doing an activity, and it is with a group of four to fifty to a hundred and fifty people.)
One of the reasons Barack Obama has done so well in this election is Barack has figured out how to use these sites to bring people together. While the McCain and Clinton campaigns continued to rely on "email", snail mail, robocalls, and tv ads. Obama on the other hand has a huge presence on the social networking sites, youtube, and blogs. Oh I know the other side has people on them as well, but from what I've read, not to the same degree.
Regarding polls? Read a rather interesting article on "polls" in the Economist this past week.
Not sure if I mentioned it already or not. According to the article - polls are rather unreliable. David Plouffe - campaign manager for Obama stated that "We don't pay attention to national polls."
The reason? Not what you might expect.
One way that polls can be wrong, some say, is because of the high percentage of young people without landlines. Polling organizations usually call landlines, because federal regulations targeting telemarketers makes it illegal to dial mobile numbers automatically. But after a recent study by the PEW REsearch Centre, a non-partisan opinion research group, found that the exclusion of "mobile-onlys" (who are mostly young and pro-Obama) could introduce a bias into survey data, many polling organizations now feel pressure to invest money and time to have humans call more mobile phones. Still only some of them do so, and to differing extents, which could help explain the wide variation in polls on any given day.
Polls are most likely to be misleading because of bad methodology. While every poll should strive to get representative sample of likely voters, many fail. Online surveys are notoriously biased, because respondents are self-selecting. Postal surveys have low response rates and in-person telephone polls are crippingly expensive to do. Some polling organizations like Ramusen Reports, weight the responses of less represented groups more heavily. But most experts consider this a sloppy way to compensate for a biased poll.
In short, we have no idea what people think or will do, until they definitively tell us and do it. You may say in a poll that you are going to vote for so and so, but either not vote or vote for someone else. Heck, for all we know, you could get hit by a bus and be dead before you get a chance to vote. [This is a major possibility where I work, which may explain why we get the day off.]
Frustrating. November 4 is going to be a really long day. And if the race is anything like the last two Presidential elections, November 5 may be a long day too.
Oh well, have a four day weekend to play around with. Taking Sat off as a people free, veg day, of rest and relaxation is not a bad idea. Good for the soul, as they say.
Spent most of the day watching tv and reading my correspondence - which is basically the four social/professional networking spots that I'm currently on. Actually on five, but I don't do much with MySpace. It's more of a music listening network than much else. I joined it to see Dr. Horrible only to discover that I could watch Dr. Horrible on LJ via my correspondence/flist. The others are Facebook (which mostly consists of writing brief sentences and taking quizzes and occassionally corresponding with folks. Or what I like to call "public text-messaging/email".), Linked-In ( a professional networking site- allows you to link up with anyone you've worked with or done business with and all of their business contacts, easier than a frigging rolerdex. Although, like a rolerdex, it is only updated when the individual decides to update it. Some people pop on it and forget about it. I'm on the damn thing twice, because that's what I did, I joined, forgot about it, and had to rejoin.)
And Meetup's - which is a social networking site that's sole purpose is to organize events for people to join or meetup for. (Example - say you want to go hiking in the Hudson River Valley, but not by your lonesome? You organize a meet and invite folks to join you. I call it "group blind dating" - which in some respects is a lot less scarey than individual blind dating. It's really no different than meeting up with someone you corresponded with on Match.com, Chemistry.com or Eharmony.com - except that you don't correspond first, you meet them doing an activity, and it is with a group of four to fifty to a hundred and fifty people.)
One of the reasons Barack Obama has done so well in this election is Barack has figured out how to use these sites to bring people together. While the McCain and Clinton campaigns continued to rely on "email", snail mail, robocalls, and tv ads. Obama on the other hand has a huge presence on the social networking sites, youtube, and blogs. Oh I know the other side has people on them as well, but from what I've read, not to the same degree.
Regarding polls? Read a rather interesting article on "polls" in the Economist this past week.
Not sure if I mentioned it already or not. According to the article - polls are rather unreliable. David Plouffe - campaign manager for Obama stated that "We don't pay attention to national polls."
The reason? Not what you might expect.
One way that polls can be wrong, some say, is because of the high percentage of young people without landlines. Polling organizations usually call landlines, because federal regulations targeting telemarketers makes it illegal to dial mobile numbers automatically. But after a recent study by the PEW REsearch Centre, a non-partisan opinion research group, found that the exclusion of "mobile-onlys" (who are mostly young and pro-Obama) could introduce a bias into survey data, many polling organizations now feel pressure to invest money and time to have humans call more mobile phones. Still only some of them do so, and to differing extents, which could help explain the wide variation in polls on any given day.
Polls are most likely to be misleading because of bad methodology. While every poll should strive to get representative sample of likely voters, many fail. Online surveys are notoriously biased, because respondents are self-selecting. Postal surveys have low response rates and in-person telephone polls are crippingly expensive to do. Some polling organizations like Ramusen Reports, weight the responses of less represented groups more heavily. But most experts consider this a sloppy way to compensate for a biased poll.
In short, we have no idea what people think or will do, until they definitively tell us and do it. You may say in a poll that you are going to vote for so and so, but either not vote or vote for someone else. Heck, for all we know, you could get hit by a bus and be dead before you get a chance to vote. [This is a major possibility where I work, which may explain why we get the day off.]
Frustrating. November 4 is going to be a really long day. And if the race is anything like the last two Presidential elections, November 5 may be a long day too.