this makes no sense to me...

I was looking at the websites of various candidates for Montana state office today, and I came across this.

That is not the current official website of the Republican candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, but it does appear to be a website that previous was her official site, and it's the top Google link for a search on her name. Ignore, for the moment, that her official website is hosted by her AOL account. Look down the page at the endorsements she's touting, presumably to show her qualifications for this office. Then remember, this office is the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (head of state schools):

Endorsed by: National Rifle Association
Montana Right to Life
Montana Shooting Sports Association
Montana Contractors' Association
Montana Wood Products Association

None of those seems to me to have anything to do with the schools. Am I missing something?

If you haven't seen it yet, take some time and read these two stories from the Washington Post this week.

The two-part series on Dick Cheney and the showdown between Justice and the White House over the secret surveillence program is amazing reporting - it's also worth checking out the earlier stories in the "Angler" series on Cheney, and I'm definitely going to want to check out the book when it comes out.

It's this sort of thing that keeps me going to the front door in the morning to pick up the Post. Often enough, I'll think the paper is overrated - the local coverage, especially, doesn't stand out from any other major metro paper.
But then a series like this comes along, or some excellent Olympics coverage, or a long-form feature story, and it makes up for all the mediocre days. It's the stories that take a long-term investment of time that make the paper great, and it's those stories that are often the first ones cut as media outlets try to beat the economy by cutting back on coverage.

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.

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.)