One thousand adults (in a nation of 300 million) from a "random" sample. FWIW, my academic background is in math, probability and logic to be specific. Their poll-description language is formulaic and resembles closely that of large, respected polls. The problem is that like any organization, their staff are human beings. People make mistakes, and have biases of their own. I question, in the absence of many more confirming polls, whether this result is an outlier or not. They can claim anything they like in their description of the poll's validity, and it matters little to me. The sample size is just a little too small to stand on reputation alone given the weirdness of the result.

I cannot know enough about the human beings who conducted the poll to declare it valid or invalid, so I'd simply prefer a bunch of other independent polls to deliver the same result before I consider it "The American Public's Opinion".

Further, by 'construction' I mean: What questions, if any, were asked alongside this one in the poll? Was there a possible bias in the way the questions were ordered, etc? I think the poll question itself, specifically:

"Do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider..."

Italics mine. If you phrase a question passively and philosophically enough, you'll pull all the devils' advocates out there into saying yes, to name just one way this could have gone awry. Thus I question both the poll's statistical validity and its 'construction'.

You have it backwards: I stated an opinion, and you disputed it. Thus you are arguing with me. Also, it's not uncommon for polls to end up with inaccurate results. Orthodoxy does not imply perfection, it implies either sufficiency or a lack of alternatives. The way polling works is that we weed out outliers by measuring them against other polls. The small sample sizes are ok because we know that many polls will be run. If there were only going to be one definitive poll a decade on a given subject, you'd need many, many more people (Gut says about 10% of the population, and even then you'd run a very small risk of being wrong).

The +- they give isn't authoritative, it's an indication of probability up to some number of standard deviations. But sadly even it is a questionable number due to the human factors I mentioned before. I have no special reason to believe this particular polling group is biased or inaccurate. I have no special reason to believe this poll didn't screw up badly. The numbers look weird and the question was poorly formed (IMO). Thus I will wait for confirmation before basing arguments upon these numbers and so should you (again IMO). That is all.

Once you said it was in pdf form it took about 5 seconds. Thanks for that.

What you said, I came to say. A really great soundtrack, too.

Think about it.. "sectors" like education, healthcare, and social services (as well as lawyers, doctors, politicians, etc) all exist as fundamentally parasitic (or at best symbiotic) components of society.

Resource production (farming, mining, fishing, oil pumping, solar energy producing, nuclear power plants, recycling, etc), manufacturing, energy production and research are where value is actually created. Consumption (food, durable goods, disposable goods, energy) are where value is destroyed.

Pretty much everything else is just people shaking each others' hands in exchange for shiny tokens. So to the extent we move toward an economy dominated by those sectors, we'll be gradually becoming poorer. Any other outcome is magical thinking, relying either on a perpetual motion machine (in which case the value producers who own the machine will hold ultimate power) or a juvenile understanding of cause and effect.

I hate it when I agree with you. It makes me feel dirty.

The downside of raw milk is you have to know where your milk is coming from. It has to be fresh, and it has to be clean. But you can buy raw milk cheese all over Europe and it's not like people are dropping dead from eating raw milk cheese -- in fact, studies show people who drink raw milk are a lot healthier than people who don't.

Link to the studies?

FWIW I eat raw milk cheese all the time (hard ones). The soft ones are scary, as the article admits. But if there are really significant benefits to drinking raw milk, I'll do some scouting at my local hippie farms :]

detass:

While some of those detass were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods ...

While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods ...

after having been all over the place: the South, the Midwest, the East, Asia, etc. Prop13 has had some fairly ridiculous side effects, this much is beyond debate. I don't think Kamiya really has this problem nailed though-- many, many people living in this state are new arrivals, who were here long after Prop13 was enacted. We don't bear much responsibility for that law.. repealing it has never been considered politically realistic. I've heard the words "third rail" used a lot in conjunction with 13.

We're just the ones who have to pay the bill. And now we don't even get to go to the parks anymore. Meh. Washington State is starting to look real good.

is to avoid responsibility by spreading it around. Good management technique in a competitive environment. Utterly dishonorable and disastrous for our reputation in the world and for our civil rights, also yes.

I mean, after McCain had his heart attack and all. Chew on that.

that the people who have gone into full-scale meltdown over the last year or so are still the serious adults we're supposed to listen to when it comes to terror and the erosion of our civil liberties.