Mushy polls

Again nothing to do with my post. As my grandbabies played with my iPad today, I played around with editing some of my California photos of last February. Love the pink ice plant

I do not do polls or surveys particularly ones that call my home phone number. Why should I give personal information out?

In the middle of the night during my bouts of insomnia, sometimes I listen to This American Life podcasts. The other night I listened to one about inaccurate polling particularly of Presidential primaries. It is very easy to tell in hindsight how accurate the polls were. Why even poll people when the answer that counts will soon be apparent? Which candidate should the party and individuals throw money at I guess. Some polls are more accurate than others. Someone invented the concept of 'mushy polls'. Some people's answers are more predictive than others. If you have to coach someone to answer your question, then this is a 'mushy' response as opposed to someone who clearly has made up their mind about a certain individual. Mushy responses are still considered in this paradigm but not as much as certain answers. And people lie.

In the Sunday New York Times magazine, they have an ethics column in which a reader presents an ethical dilemma. I usually agree with the response excepting one regarding surveys. Are you honor bound to answer surveys accurately? The ethicist says yes; I say no.

A few years back, my airline credit card presented a deal: in return for answering consumer surveys, I would earn 25-50 miles credit per survey. If for some reason my survey was rejected, I would earn at least 5 miles credit (worth maybe 5 cents). So I would start to answer these surveys. by page 6 and considerable time, my survey would be rejected. Meanwhile they had all my answers. And as it turned out, I was never even credited the 5 miles per trial survey. Clearly this was a scam. I started filling out the surveys any old way just to see if they would be rejected. They always were. The whole business was deceitful.

Our 4 days of warmth are over. Winter came back with 30 mph winds so no more bicycling.

I have been busy. The other night, our work group tried a new restaurant: overpriced, bad service and bad food. I won't be back. As there was 4 of us, we asked for the check to be divided 4 ways. Oh you want everything halved? No we want everything quartered. Silly presumptuous lady presented us with 2 checks assuming that we were 2 couples, though we are not. But aside from the bad restaurant, it was fun.  And then a day of more Xmas shopping and wrapping. I think we are done. And more baby sitting.

Tomorrow our bicoastal family arrives on 3 planes: our house will be filled for the next 4 days. Should be fun.