Of Mailboxes and Polls
First, a personal anecdote(don't worry, it is boring, but I'll be brief)
Sometime around 1 Oct. I received a threatening letter from the USPS. I was told that, lest my mailbox be raised 12"-14" I would suffer the ignominy of not having my mail delivered after 31 Oct. Oh, the horror.
Naturally, I procrastinated, as my mailbox has been at its current height since at least 1986, when I bought the property.
I politely asked my mail carrier why I had to raise it now? I next received a note from the postmaster telling me essentially, to just do it. How thoughtful.
In the interest of uninterrupted mail service I raised my mailbox the required 12" this A.M.
Because I'm in a rural setting, there aren't a great many other mailboxes to go round and measure to see if they're in 'compliance' with this new USPS edict.
There is, however a new housing project with a common mailbox drop point approximately 1/8 mi. from my now compliant box. Each of the 24 mailboxes there is under the new and improved 36" minimum height requirement. I called the delveloper, and he told that he had received no word about any height requirements, and added an expletive or three for effect.
I don't think I'm being singled out, but there does seem to some sort of multiple standard issue here. I know when to pick and choose my battles, and my newly scarred knuckles notwithstanding, I think I'll opt out of this one.
**********************************
New Bush Poll Numbers
Bloggers on the reality side of the political equation; that would be those with a left bent, cannot seem to easily come to terms with the fact that with all of Bush's cockups, his approval rating stands at 39% in a recent WaPo-ABC poll, and in typical MSM fashion, neither the abstract of the poll is given, nor the margin of error. *sigh*
Frankly - and without seeing the abstract - I'm surprised that Bush still doesn't have more support.
What I mean by that is simply this, is that you need to provide those polled with the latest information regarding all of the relevant facts about true knowns. Examples of these knowns are the the recent sag in the sale of durable goods, the facts of the Libby indictment, the knowns and unknowns about intelligence data manipulation, and a host of other things to bring the polled individual up to speed on the latest developments. Even people that consider themselves well-informed often miss when I ask them a direct question about a current policy issue, or recent happenings in Congress - truly, it can be anything.
So, the pollster needs to qualify the polled. This is not done in the name of expediency, and one can certainly see why. Some of these matters require an underlying grasp of the concepts involved in order to truly make sensible decisions about them.
Next, people generally want to please. They are apt to tell the pollster what they believe the pollster wants to hear. This is pretty basic human psychology. Couple the above point with the fact that large segments of the populace lack critical thinking skills, and you have a recipe for higher approval ratings on most any issue. Reality is very subjective for all of us. But, it is demonstrably far more objective for some than for others.
Dropping all the analogies, new paradigms, and metaphors brings us to where we really need to be to understand polling behaviors.
It's partly about evolution; that some behaviors have been reinforced for so long that they are now pervasive in the population. Being a pleaser is one of these behaviors selected for transmission - It's not difficult to see why. This fact is not contested.
It's also about a polled individual's grasp of - and ability to grasp - all the relevant facts and process them in a reasonable manner.
And finally, it's about the polling process itself. It is inherently flawed because of the factors mentioned above, and many more as well. But it is, unfortunately, the primary tool used to gauge public opinion on wide ranging sets of data.
Sometime around 1 Oct. I received a threatening letter from the USPS. I was told that, lest my mailbox be raised 12"-14" I would suffer the ignominy of not having my mail delivered after 31 Oct. Oh, the horror.
Naturally, I procrastinated, as my mailbox has been at its current height since at least 1986, when I bought the property.
I politely asked my mail carrier why I had to raise it now? I next received a note from the postmaster telling me essentially, to just do it. How thoughtful.
In the interest of uninterrupted mail service I raised my mailbox the required 12" this A.M.
Because I'm in a rural setting, there aren't a great many other mailboxes to go round and measure to see if they're in 'compliance' with this new USPS edict.
There is, however a new housing project with a common mailbox drop point approximately 1/8 mi. from my now compliant box. Each of the 24 mailboxes there is under the new and improved 36" minimum height requirement. I called the delveloper, and he told that he had received no word about any height requirements, and added an expletive or three for effect.
I don't think I'm being singled out, but there does seem to some sort of multiple standard issue here. I know when to pick and choose my battles, and my newly scarred knuckles notwithstanding, I think I'll opt out of this one.
**********************************
New Bush Poll Numbers
Bloggers on the reality side of the political equation; that would be those with a left bent, cannot seem to easily come to terms with the fact that with all of Bush's cockups, his approval rating stands at 39% in a recent WaPo-ABC poll, and in typical MSM fashion, neither the abstract of the poll is given, nor the margin of error. *sigh*
Frankly - and without seeing the abstract - I'm surprised that Bush still doesn't have more support.
What I mean by that is simply this, is that you need to provide those polled with the latest information regarding all of the relevant facts about true knowns. Examples of these knowns are the the recent sag in the sale of durable goods, the facts of the Libby indictment, the knowns and unknowns about intelligence data manipulation, and a host of other things to bring the polled individual up to speed on the latest developments. Even people that consider themselves well-informed often miss when I ask them a direct question about a current policy issue, or recent happenings in Congress - truly, it can be anything.
So, the pollster needs to qualify the polled. This is not done in the name of expediency, and one can certainly see why. Some of these matters require an underlying grasp of the concepts involved in order to truly make sensible decisions about them.
Next, people generally want to please. They are apt to tell the pollster what they believe the pollster wants to hear. This is pretty basic human psychology. Couple the above point with the fact that large segments of the populace lack critical thinking skills, and you have a recipe for higher approval ratings on most any issue. Reality is very subjective for all of us. But, it is demonstrably far more objective for some than for others.
Dropping all the analogies, new paradigms, and metaphors brings us to where we really need to be to understand polling behaviors.
It's partly about evolution; that some behaviors have been reinforced for so long that they are now pervasive in the population. Being a pleaser is one of these behaviors selected for transmission - It's not difficult to see why. This fact is not contested.
It's also about a polled individual's grasp of - and ability to grasp - all the relevant facts and process them in a reasonable manner.
And finally, it's about the polling process itself. It is inherently flawed because of the factors mentioned above, and many more as well. But it is, unfortunately, the primary tool used to gauge public opinion on wide ranging sets of data.
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