c.i.
Having now read your latest post I think Lola may have a point.
I especially enjoyed this exchange between nimh and Bernie:
BernardR wrote:
Polls mean very little.
nimh wrote:
If polls mean very little, why were you quoting them so proudly even right above my post?
Or are you one of those who consider polls significant if they are favourable for their side, but meaningless if they're not?
BernardR wrote:
I am surprised that you would think that a poll of 600 People would elict anything near the truth about each Senator.
nimh wrote:
Note - that's 600 adult residents of each of the country's 50 states - a total of 30,000 respondents.
BernardR wrote:
l.No one, excpet a very brave person, because of the guilt that has been built into millions of Americans by left wing radical professors left over from the hippie generation, would dare to say anything bad about Barack Obima. If you don;t know this, you know NOTHING about American Poltics.
nimh wrote:
You already proposed the "they wont say anything bad about a black politician" argument in the Obama thread, and I replied here. Two words: Condoleezza Rice. Doesnt get anywhere near the approval rates of Obama. So those splendid rates are not due merely to race.
BernardR wrote:
3. Only someone who is mathematically challenged would think that a poll which has 600 respondents( AND I NOTE THAT YOU DID NOT PRESENT THE QUESTIONS THAT WERE ASKED OR THE WORDINGS OF THOSE QUESTIONS WHICH, AS EVERYONE BUT CRETINS KNOW, ARE CRITICAL IN THE ASSESSMENT OF THE POLL PRESENTED) can really reflect the truth about the Senators.
nimh wrote:
Note, again - 600 per state - 30,000 in total.
As for the wording of the question, you can read it in the link I provided in my very post.
nimh wrote:
Well, heres an interesting list:
Obama, Snowe and Conrad Are Top U.S. Senators
Not that the wording is especially striking. It is as follows:
"Do you approve or disapprove of the performance of your U.S. senator?"
Now how does this wording affect your assessment of the poll presented?
BernardR wrote:
4. You are apparently ignorant of the fact that there are many people who will not answer a pollster. I know( and will search for data backing this up) that elderly people especially will refuse to be polled. This, of course, gives a taint to poll presented.
nimh wrote:
And younger people are more likely to rely exclusively on cellphones, and can thus not be reached by pollsters, yes.
The thing is - is there any reason to think that the people whom the pollsters couldnt reach lean significantly to one political direction? If that were the case, polls would have turned out to be grossly wrong all the time; that, however, does not seem to be the case.
For example, here's a list of the final polls and vote projections that pollsters published on the 2004 US Presidential elections. The average of these 17 polls had Bush at 49% and Kerry at 48%. In actuality, Bush got 51% and Kerry 48%. Not bad, I'd say - on average they had Kerry's score pegged 100% right, and on Bush they were just 2% off on a total of 51%.
Even the pollsters who were off-track the very worst of those 17 had Bush's score within 4% of what he actually got, and Kerry's within 2% of what he actually got. Apply a 2% or 4% error on any of the numbers above about how the Senators are appraised, and pretty much nothing changes in the overall picture.
More relevantly still, when assessing this Survey USA poll, is what Kelticwizard once noted regarding the pollster's track record in the 2004 elections. Back then, "Survey USA .. showed Republican Senate candidates finishing an average of 1.5% better than they did." No reason, thus, to think that this time, somehow, Survey USA's numbers would be ferociously slanted in the Democrats' favour.
BernardR wrote:
Because you are ignorant about American Politics(This is not the crypto-Communist Hungary, you know) you are unawre of the DISLAIMERS GIVEN BY YOUR POLLSTERS --SURVEY USA-
Note:
other possible sources of error in all surveys that may be more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. These include refusals to be interviewed, question wording and question order, weighting by demographic control data and the manner in which respondents are filtered (such as, determining who is a likely voter). It is difficult to quantify the errors that may result from these factors.
nimh wrote:
Pretty much the same disclaimer would pertain to any poll - including the one you had just boldly quoted as evidence for your argument yourself. And yet, again, polls apparently succeed to, in general, not be off too wildly. Or, in the case of Survey USA polling on Senators, to be off only slightly - in the Republicans' favour.
BernardR wrote:
Why not? Don't they teach that in the Hungarian Schools?
Another "projection" without any common sense or merit.
nimh wrote:
I have spent very little time in Hungarian schools - just about five months, in fact.
I was thinking of Lola in the bath and one thing that came to mind was this spin thing.
That we all do it. Which I don't of course.
Spin means pretty-prettying up something to make it look better to those that particular type of pretty-prettying looks better to.
Like when the maid polishes the dining room table.
It cannot but represent a fear that without the pretty-prettying the sight would be messy down to ghastly. One need only measure in the mind the significance of the amount of money used for pretty-prettying techniques to assess the strength of the fear.
Which is why I denied employing any spin. I'm too pretty for my own good. I've been in a few tight corners as a result. Anyway it can bankrupt you or drive you to moonlighting or making the wife go out to work.
But I don't know about the rest of the threaders. Lola might be right about them. I'm denying it.
(Few meaning more than once and up to where "many" becomes more appropriate.)
You deny everything Spendi.......you innocent in the bath person.....spinning, yes. Spin has little to do with pretty and more to do with manipulative skills.........mr innocent spendi.
btw, do we have another Bernie around here lately? It's a bit confusing. Maybe we'll have to call the real Bernie Mountie or something.
The pterosaurs were inferentially included in the warm blooded tetrapod classes. Their emergence is kind of a mystery and they continue on with evolutionary changes until the end of the Cretaceous, whereas birds split off from a separate line in the Triassic. Colbert always stated that pterosaurs were warm blooded , because of their inner bone structure and nares . The pleisiosaurs is another area of evidence that Im afraid Ive never seen much data on.
Id imagine that they were, like ocean mammals of today , active swimmers and hunters(hence they maybe were warm blooded whose entire line, just vanished at the bitter end of dinosaurs).They appear to be Unlike aquatic reptiles who are mostly marine vegetarians or ambush hunters and adapted to specific mostly tropical environments.
Were pretty sure that pterosaurs were warm blooded and that this feature cleaves off the Permian pre Mammalian reptiles to give rise to dinosaurs, pterosaurs and birds as well as mammals.
Ill have to see if I can find anything on Pleisiosaurs and their metabolism.
fm wrote-
Quote:Ill have to see if I can find anything on Pleisiosaurs and their metabolism.
If it's of any use fm don't trouble yourself on my account.
Have you any inside info on anything it's possible to get a bet on?
Trust me spendi, when its the least of all others I consider, your name is about on the list.
Im providing that information to those who recognize that they are not the center of the known world.
farmerman wrote:The pterosaurs were inferentially included in the warm blooded tetrapod classes. Their emergence is kind of a mystery and they continue on with evolutionary changes until the end of the Cretaceous, whereas birds split off from a separate line in the Triassic. Colbert always stated that pterosaurs were warm blooded , because of their inner bone structure and nares . The pleisiosaurs is another area of evidence that Im afraid Ive never seen much data on.
Id imagine that they were, like ocean mammals of today , active swimmers and hunters(hence they maybe were warm blooded whose entire line, just vanished at the bitter end of dinosaurs).They appear to be Unlike aquatic reptiles who are mostly marine vegetarians or ambush hunters and adapted to specific mostly tropical environments.
Were pretty sure that pterosaurs were warm blooded and that this feature cleaves off the Permian pre Mammalian reptiles to give rise to dinosaurs, pterosaurs and birds as well as mammals.
Ill have to see if I can find anything on Pleisiosaurs and their metabolism.
Thanks for the info FM. As you can probably tell by my other thead on the subject of dino's, Birds and Reptiles, I'm not clear on where everything split.
From the evidence I've seen, pterasaurs were probably warm blooded as were many of the therapod dino's. I'm not sure about Plesiosaurs, but I always assumed they were dino's, not reptiles. I had made the same assumption about Pterasaurs until recently.
Were there any flying dinosaurs, or were there only flying reptiles?
"Spendius!!. SPENDIUS!!!!! Wake up!
It's boring Sir.
What do you mean, 'it's boring'?
Well all these reptiles from way back. What use is that?
It's fosters a scientific mentality.
But what about today's science.
What about it?
Well OK then. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you had hacked into the computer at the Chase Manhattan bank and got onto the mainframe and created a bundle of accounts with agreed credit facilities.
Would you smack 'em just the once or dribble it out as a sort of private income?
Splutter,splutter.
That's science NOW style. Who cares about reptiles and whether they had feew-excuse me- flippers or not. What mysterious force is causing Auntie Lolita's necklaces and bangles to fly off the shelves in BERNIE'S Jewelry Emporium into the arms of eager customers. You have the effect. What's the cause? Is it the amber glow? Cripes! It's levitation.
Is that not science?
Unravelling the next mystery not the last one or do we have to have what you were taught because you couldn't be arsed keeping up? If science was interesting there would be more people interested in it, obviously, and more scientists might come out of the other end.
You should ask the physics professor and the psychology professor those sort of questions.
I already did Sir.
Well-what did they say?
They didn't know.
Did you ask anyone else?
Yes-I asked the priest.
What did he say?
He patted me on the head and said I was too young for that sort of thing and I should stick to marbles.
fm wrote-
Quote:Trust me spendi, when its the least of all others I consider, your name is about on the list.
He means I'm on amber. "Others" are on the list and I'm only "about" so it's not bad considering how long the list must be given fm's notorious grumpy intransigence.
Spendi only plays in his own pen. But it you share an interest, he is he is he is he is fun to play with.
Thrusts shoulders back,glows, shoots cuffs and sets off confidently for pub.
see you later then.......
and the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka dots
and it's partner found, it's partner lost
And it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops
it's closin time
I swear it happened just like this
a sign a cry, a hungry kiss
the Gates of Love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
looks like freedom but it feels like death
It's something inbetween I guess
Sheesh!
Them women in the pub.
They have no sense of taste and discernment like wot the the ladies on this thread 'ave.
I'm gonna relocate. Is New York anywhere near Llandudno?
spendi, A wise, well educated, man like you should know exactly where New York is located.
New York is somewhere near Faustusland........just east of the north star
wande wrote-
Quote:The Oxford Round Table was held at Harris Manchester College in the University of Oxford, England. Approximately 40 delegates are invited from around the world to discuss topics of global interest.
Come on wande. This is a grown-ups thread. What's the full stop for after "interest"?
Quote:The colleges with their beautiful medieval dining halls, chapels and libraries provide a most agreeable venue for relaxed exchange of ideas and opinions. Participants live in college dormitories and dine the old halls.
.
Perhaps they ought to study English a bit themselves eh? No comma after "colleges",participants are accomodated in dormitories and how do you "dine the old halls"?
Red ink mess.
I liked "relaxed" though. Relaxees rarely bother to mention the invoices and only talk about pollution when it suits them.
Surely Ms Leonard is much too busy to sully her tender hands on students (shuddershudder). And what you quote her as having brayed is infantile in it's generality. I'll bet there was a nice little spat in High Point over who got the nod.
Does that sort of shite impress you wande? It makes me laugh. I've seen 'em in action mate. It really is quite predictable.
It's a junket mate. (see "spin" posts).
