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The Bradley effect in election history
What the FraggleRock is the “Bradley Effect”? It’s a fun name for the theory that black candidates will poll much stronger than the actual election results. SNL exshpleens further:
Is this Bradley effect whosiwhatsis RIKKA-RACISSST? well, some blonde lady writes in a column that if the explanation for such a dichotomy is true, then really its the opposite of racism: It is fear of being accused of racism.
Political correctness has taught people to lie to pollsters rather than be forced to explain why they’re not voting for the African-American.
This is how two typical voters might answer a pollster’s question: “Whom do you support for president?”
Average Obama voter: “Obama.” (Name of average Obama voter: “Mickey Mouse.”)
Average McCain voter: “I’m voting for McCain, but I swear it’s just about the issues. It’s not because Obama’s black. If Barack Obama were a little more moderate — hey, I’d vote for Colin Powell. But my convictions force me to vote for the candidate who just happens to be white. Say, do you know where I can get Patti LaBelle tickets?”
In addition to the social pressure to constantly prove you’re not a racist, apparently there is massive social pressure to prove you’re not a Republican. No one is lying about voting for McCain just to sound cool.
Reviewing the polls printed in The New York Times and The Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10 points.
She goes on to mention the perplexing fact that accusations of racism have previously notsomuch been claimed in these notable cases:
–1976: Jimmy Carter narrowly beat Gerald Ford 50.1 percent to 48 percent.
Bradley effect?: on Sept. 1, Carter led Ford by 15 points. Just weeks before the election, on Oct. 16, 1976, Carter led Ford in the Gallup Poll by 6 percentage points — down from his 33-point Gallup Poll lead in August.
–1980: Ronald Reagan beat Carter by nearly 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent.
Bradley effect?: A Gallup Poll released days before the election on Oct. 27, had Carter leading Reagan 45 percent to 42 percent.
–1984: Reagan washes America dark burgundy-red with Walter Mondale’s blood by winning 58.8 percent to 40 percent, — the largest electoral landslide in U.S. history.
Bradley effect?: Oct. 15, The New York Daily News published a poll showing Mondale with only a 4-point deficit to Reagan, 45 percent to 41 percent. A Harris Poll about the same time showed Reagan with only a 9-point lead. The Oct. 19 New York Times/CBS News Poll had Mr. Reagan ahead of Mondale by 13 points. All these polls underestimated Reagan’s actual margin of victory by 6 to 15 points.
–1988: George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by a whopping 53.4 percent to 45.6 percent.
Bradley effect?: A New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 5 had Bush leading the Greek homunculus by a statistically insignificant 2 points — 45 percent to 43 percent. (For the kids out there: Before it became a clearinghouse for anti-Bush conspiracy theories, CBS News was considered a credible journalistic entity.)
A week later — or one tank ride later, depending on who’s telling the story — on Oct. 13, Bush was leading Dukakis in The New York Times Poll by a mere 5 points.
Admittedly, a 3- to 6-point error is not as crazily wrong as the 6- to 15-point error in 1984. But it’s striking that even small “margin of error” mistakes never seem to benefit Republicans.
–1992: Bill Clinton beat the first President Bush 43 percent to 37.7 percent. (Ross Perot got 18.9 percent of Bush’s voters that year.)
Bradley effect?: On Oct. 18, a Newsweek Poll had Clinton winning 46 percent to 31 percent, and a CBS News Poll showed Clinton winning 47 percent to 35 percent.
So in 1992, the polls had Clinton 12 to 15 points ahead, but he won by only 5.3 points.
–1996: Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole 49 percent to 40 percent.
Bradley effect?: And yet on Oct. 22, 1996, The New York Times/CBS News Poll showed Clinton leading by a massive 22 points, 55 percent to 33 percent.
–2000: George Bush and Al Gore basically tied. Bush won in the recounts, yes, but only by a few hundred, so “tie” is really the only fair way to describe it.
Bradley effect?: The New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 3, 2000, showed Gore winning by 45 percent to 39 percent.
–2004: G. Dubya Bush beat John “did you know I served in Vietnam??” Kerry, 50.7 percent to 48.3 percent.
Bradley effect?: Most of the October polls showed the candidates in a dead-heat, with Bush 1 to 3 points ahead, but the exit polls on election day had “Dewey defeats Truman”esque tales of a clear Kerry victory.
Ice climbing choices
These people made the right choice on which side to climb…
After some time we finally found a waterfall, directly by the sea on a bay in the middle of a steep cliff. It was a strange formation—about 100 meters high of weird formed ice with icicles growing in every direction. We were highly motivated to do the first ascent of this spectacular waterfall.
For climbing we knew that we had to be on the left side of the waterfall always. To the right the ice did not look so good anymore. After we chose our line to climb, we were so psyched for the climbing that we abseiled down despite knowing that there was quite strong sunlight at the exit of the waterfall. The temps where ok, around -2°C, but we underestimated the strong sun.
But after some meters of climbing, a rumbling shocked us—the giant threw a monstrous load of ice against us. An ice roof fell down and crashed to the right of us into thousands of boulders. It was on the very right side at the exit of the waterfall where this huge ice roof broke off.
The Smoggies
The Smoggies or Stop the Smoggies (US title, cuz American kids are too dumb to understand that the Smoggies are bad so you shouldn’t love them just cuz the show is named after them) was an animated children’s television show by Cinar that started airing in 1988. It is originally from Canada but the show aired in the United States under the name ‘Stop the Smoggies’ in 1994 as well as in France as ‘SOS Polluards.’
The show revolved around a group of island-dwelling people called Suntots who spent the majority of their time defending their island paradise from the filthy, treasure seeking Smoggies who pollute the water around the island and who try to destroy their home for their own benefits. Almost every episode had the Suntots outsmart the Smoggies in their latest scheme, after which the Smoggies would invariably hatch another scheme to steal the island’s ‘magic coral’ (which the Smoggies believe will grant eternal youth) or to harvest the rare Echo-Tree, a species of plant that is similar to magic coral in its youth-giving properties. It also explains the importance of protecting the environment. The show often implied that neither of these things actually existed, however, and were just manifestations of the Smoggie’s greed and vanity.
Watch some episodes whydontcha?:
The main title theme was written by the man who wrote themes for Sesame Street, Shining Time Station, Three’s Company and The Electric Company Joe Raposo and composed by the woman who wrote themes for Arthur, Mona the Vampire, The Busy World of Richard Scarry and Wimzie’s House Judy Henderson.
Smoggies, Smoggies,
Smoky, oily, greasy…
Have you met the Smoggies?
We love the soot and grime,
We make the whole world dirty,
And we have a real good time.
We love to make things messy,
Just as dirty as can be,
And you can bet we’ll mess you up
ecologically.
Suntots, Suntots,
Earth and wind and sea and,
Make way for the Suntots,
A neat and tidy crew,
We’ll stay young forever,
And we want the same for you.
If we get your magic coral,
Then forever young we’ll be,
Do you think you’ll find it somewhere
In our clear blue sea?
We use the water, wind and sun,
To make our homes and gadgets run,
Where else can you have such fun,
Environmentally?
Come and see our island,
And smell the sweet, sweet breeze,
Where we’ll live for ever,
Just as happy as can be.
With the Suntots and the Smoggies,
Choose the way the world could be,
A messy mess or shiny clear,
Ecologically.
Suntots, Suntots,
Earth and wind and sea, and
Smoggies, Smoggies,
Smoky, oily, greasy…
Why do dogs sometimes eat poop?
Well, the technical term for “poop eater” is Coprophagia and its most common in much smaller animals. Some insects consume and redigest the faeces of large animals which contain substantial amounts of semi-digested food. (Herbivore digestive systems are especially inefficient.) The most famous faeces-eating insect is the dung-beetle and the most ubiquitous is the fly.
Bigger animals too. Capybara, rabbits, hamsters and other related species do not have a complex ruminant digestive system. Instead they extract more nutrition from grass by giving their food a second pass through the gut. Soft caecal pellets of partially digested food are excreted and generally consumed immediately. They also produce normal droppings, which are not eaten.
Young elephants, pandas, koalas, and hippos eat the faeces of their mother to obtain the bacteria required to properly digest vegetation found on the savanna and in the jungle. When they are born, their intestines do not contain these bacteria (they are completely sterile). Without them, they would be unable to get any nutritional value from plants.
Gorillas eat their own faeces and the faeces of other gorillas.
Hamsters eat their own droppings, which are thought to be a source of vitamins B and K, produced by bacteria in the gut. Apes have been observed eating horse faeces for the salt content. Monkeys have been observed eating elephant faeces. Coprophagia also has been observed in the naked mole rat.
But DOGS. What about DOGS…
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The history behind “Black Friday”
Ever wonder why the day after Thanksgiving is called “black friday”? We did some digging on the good old internets and found the answers…
Stress from large crowds
The earliest uses of “Black Friday” refer to the heavy traffic on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday (the 1929 stock-market crash) or other black days. The earliest known references to “Black Friday” (in this sense) are from two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, that explicitly refer to the day’s hectic nature and heavy traffic. The first reference is in an article entitled “Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor,” in The New York Times:
Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it “Black Friday” – that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army-Navy game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion.
The derivation is made even more explicit in an Associated Press article entitled “Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy,” which ran in the Titusville Herald on the same day:
Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. . . . . “That’s why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today ‘Black Friday,'” a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. “They think in terms of headaches it gives them.”
Both articles have a Philadelphia dateline, suggesting the term may have originated in that area.
Accounting practice
More recently, a false assumption has been circulated that the term originates from the theory that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year’s profits (the black). (Retailers’ profitability varies, but some retailers are indeed dependent on the holiday season for their profits.) This sense has been traced back to a November 26, 1982, broadcast of ABC News’ World News Tonight, which said:
Some merchants label the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday because business today can mean the difference between red ink and black on the ledgers. But this year hefty sales are vital not only to the stores but to the entire economy.
The primary flaw in this theory is that retailers (and their stockholders) would assume an acceptable loss for nearly eleven months out of the year in the hopes of finally earning a profit in the last five weeks. An examination of the quarterly SEC filings of any major retailer such as Wal-Mart or Target clearly shows that retailers intend to and actually do make profits during every quarter of the year. Because the heavy traffic etymology is contemporaneous with the earliest known uses of the term, while the black ink theory apparently was not suggested until several years later, the accounting practice origin is likely to be Urban Legend.