demographics

Looking through the early results of the Florida primaries, one thing jumped out at me. And it had nothing to do with any candidate.

According to the CNN exit polls, around than 40 percent of the voters in each primary were 60 or older. About 75 percent of the voters were 45 or older.

According to information on the state of Florida's website, and looking at the population of voting age (18+), those 60 and older made up 28.7 percent of the population, and those 45 and older made up 54.6 of the population.
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I haven't bothered to look at other states yet, although finding the data above took me about 10 minutes and a couple of Excel formulas, so it wouldn't be too hard to do. And I know every so often we hear about how young people don't vote, especially in primaries, and how older people are the most likely voters. I just didn't realize how out of proportion the numbers of older voters were compared to the numbers in the general population.

kiwi humour

I thought I'd posted this a long time ago, but they came up in conversation recently and I realized they hadn't made it onto my corner of the internet:

One of our favorite aspects of New Zealand culture was the willingness to poke fun at themselves, and just about anything else. It even manifested itself in a government advertising campaign for home safety. The ACC - Accident Compensation Commission - pays for all medical bills resulting in any accidents, for anyone in New Zealand. (This takes the place of personal injury lawsuits, which are generally not allowed in the New Zealand court system). The ACC put out a series of TV ads to try to lower accident rates around the home, but the ads have a serious black humor to them.

For example, every time this ad came on TV, Kirsten started laughing uncontrollably:

More of the ads can be seen here. And here's one more that wasn't on-air while we were in NZ.

kiwi humour, part II

One more for you-

This is an official Australian tourism commercial that got a ton of play in NZ our last few months there. Apparently it created some controversy in the UK, since "bloody hell" was seen to be a bit dirty:

This is a NZ take on the ad, apparently put together by a consumer advocate program:

The stories for this tag probably too often come from the Wired Threat Level blog but I think online security and the government's surveillance programs deserve a more penetrating look than most have been giving it. That's mostly why this stuff makes me sad, because even with the dust-up about warrantless wiretaps, it seems that the big picture mostly gets brushed aside in coverage of the details.

At any rate, here's an interested take on how the coverage is getting it wrong. I haven't taken the time to dig deep into the FISA legislation, but it sounds like the Wired guy has done more digging than the reporters, who (in defense of reporters everywhere) likely have way too many things on their plate and are reporting the information they're given.

Today's news item that just makes me sad

shampoo, used on my hair or other body parts

I was reading my shampoo bottle in the shower the other day (doesn't everyone?) and noticed a totally useless sentence fragment.

My shampoo informed me it was "Made in the USA." All fine and good. Then it added, "... from US and/or imported ingredients."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same thing as saying, "Made from ingredients"? Which is the same as saying "Made"? Essentially this is as useful as putting "This shampoo exists" on the side of the bottle. Although if I come across a product which needs to assert its existence on its packaging, I'll find that far more interesting than this shampoo bottle.

Yesterday, I answered an hour-long survey on Drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco and Mental Health. It's a government program called, appropriately enough, the National Survey on Drug Use & Health.

Most of it was as you'd expect - lots and lots of questions about what you'd done, how often, etc. For the most part, it was all dry and free of any obvious bias, although I think any survey of this sort is prone to people misreporting their experiences. (On the plus side, I got $30 for answering the questions).

Then toward the end, I ran into this question:

How do you feel about adults trying marijuana or hashish once or twice?
1 Neither approve nor disapprove
2 Somewhat disapprove
3 Strongly disapprove

No matter what I was going to answer, I was struck by an obvious omission. What if I approved of people trying it once or twice? If the question replaced "marijuana or hashish" with "alcohol" would there be extra options? Although what would "approve" mean in this case, anyway? Would it mean I advocate forcing everyone to try a joint once or twice? I certainly couldn't advocate that. But I also don't think trying it once or twice does any irreparable harm.

Looking through the survey's data from 2006 I can tell there were more questions for the 12-17 year olds who took the survey. They were asked questions about their feelings toward peers who used drugs, alcohol or tobacco and what they thought their parents' feelings were about them possibly using. Again, there was obviously no "approve" option.

It seems odd that a survey designed to measure people's perceptions of drug use would include such obvious bias. OK, not that odd. But being able to answer that you've tried illegal substances but being unable to approve of illegal substances seems so obviously political that it should have been flagged somewhere along the line.

(And for those interested - the survey web page lists survey results yearly starting in 1994. I didn't bother to search through the questions for all the years, but I found a page that said this question dates back to at least 2000, and I would guess it dates back earlier than that.)

profane stats nerds. I like.

I thought I'd posted this before, but I don't see it in the archives. One of my favorite sites for sports commentary is the Fire Joe Morgan blog, where a deep regard for baseball statistics and an equally deep disdain for lazy baseball commentary come together in sarcastic, profanity-ridden, vitriolic rebuttals to those journalists the authors feel have neglected common sense or reason.

Even though it's the off-season, the recent Hall of Fame voting has given the FJM folks ample fodder recently. My favorite is probably this post. Check it out.

running

My friend Dave blogged about running, how he enjoys the point where his mind is trying to justify quitting and he has to push through. He threw an insult at us amatuers, who find the use of an iPod to block out the pain helpful.

I was thinking about this as I tried to job around my neighborhood tonight and found my mind's justifications far stronger than my lungs and legs. I did use my iPod as a motivational tool, telling myself I at least had to run until the end of the track I was listening to. This is slightly more impressive than it sounds, as the track I was listening to was a 20-minute BBC podcast of a weekly show where comedians talk about current events. Then I realized I was using my iPod for motivation and to block out my brain with a BBC podcast of a weekly show where comedians talk about current events.

Not exactly "Eye of the Tiger," I suppose. But since I'm in DC instead of Philadelphia, perhaps appropriate. (Hard to set a montage to, though).

interesting (only to me)

I logged on to Blogger tonight and saw I had 100 posts on this blog and 300 on Leaping Point. Not so many, since I started them both late in '05, but surprising I hit a milestone on each of them at the same time, without realizing it.

I was talking with a friend of mine about how we liked the idea of Ron Paul gaining more ground in the Republican nomination race, just because we like to see totally out-of-left-field people in all areas, but especially in the focus group-crafted world of politics.
This even though the few things I've heard about Ron Paul's positions make him sound even crazier than he does just being Ron Paul.
In other words, I like Ron Paul's ideas about 1 percent of the time, but I like the idea of Ron Paul 100 percent of the time.