Monday, October 19, 1998
I am a 65-year-old male, retired. I tumbled into your site and started reading. Lo and behold, I was entertained and educated by the polling fix. I have sent it to my kids and siblings in the hope they enjoy it as much. Your independent line suits me fine since I cross-vote most of the time.
Good work and keep them honest, all of them.
Edward Picciuti
He gets it! He really gets it! - LN
I suspect your poll was accurate for your readers - except for the spikes. Anybody who combs through your newsletter looking for interesting stuff is not likely to have enough time for scandal, at any level or place, and would be more likely to spend their time enjoying all the fine things one finds there.
And one more thing: don't bother me with this rat's ass stuff again. I'm too busy reading and enjoying your newsletter.
Richard Gardner
Your statistical report is interesting. It shows how numbers can be manipulated to reflect a predicted outcome. The 25 hours that showed this drastic rise in "do give a rat's ass" should also have been correlated to breaking news during that time span.
You reasoned that a Web site could have caused this peak. And yes, it could've been an influence, but don't short change the power of the news media like TV. News anchors have a mighty influence on the average Joe.
Thanks for honoring my rights under the First Amendment.
Catherine Owenby
I'm curious. How did you keep track of the data collection over time? Are you using some kind of Web site tabulation software? I would like to incorporate this time-dependent data collection in my research, so any information regarding the study methodology would be helpful.
Thank you for your time. Keep up the great work with NSD.
Jeff Browndyke - Baton Rouge, Louisiana
The poll was just a trivial Perl CGI program which captured votes, dates, times, and IP addresses of the voters. Any competent Perl programmer can whip up something like that in about five minutes. The graphs were straight from Excel. I highly recommend you learn both Pperl and Excel if you're going to mess with data - both tools are awsome in their analytical power. - AB
Thanks for running that poll. Your results are not at all inconsistent with what other polls are showing about the mood of the country.
Speaking of polls, one published recently in the Hartford Courant on online time spent by those with Internet connections seemed rather low to me. The pollsters didn't say what they did when the questioners got a busy signal - possibly indicating an online household with but one phone line!
Pam Shorey
I like the way you reviewed the statistics and spotted "at least a potential that someone was not playing fair", an obvious grey area out of the normal pattern.
It is also important that you presented all your analyses and thoughts (well, perhaps not all your thoughts) instead of just your final data as a slanted outcome.
I work with statistics, as do most of the personnel where I work, and I have tried to explain that it is possible to manipulate statistics to your end. The skill lies in spotting suspect data and not blindly accepting all that has been presented to you.
I will use your presentation as an example of suspected deliberate manipulation of data and of how one should isolate that suspect data from the total population.
Thanks for the excellent lesson.
Ab Cairns
P.S. I was one the ones who didn't give a rat's ass!
Thanks for your Starr Poll results reporting that most Americans aren't as obsessed with the issue as the media. And thanks for your analysis of the slanted results. Both articles were insightful and informational, things that are sorely lacking in today's press.
Mike Brazil
You didn't have to go through all that convoluted stuff to prove that people who hate Clinton were behind the poll spikes. Those types are really organized. They had already delivered a million votes to the Republican committee within a day or so. Democrats are still having a hard time getting even a hundred thousand people to say enough is enough and let's get on with running the country. Republicans don't want this to end and I do hope people will see through this hypocrisy, but I ain't betting that they will.
Clark T.Davis
Thank you for the charming demonstration on the unreliability of polling. Very well done and of course absolutely correct (applause). Pollsters know that people not only believe what they read (ugh) but that they believe what someone else counts.
That was fun to read. In fact, my son wanted to know why I was smiling at a Web page. Then he asked "what's a poll?" Ah, son... stay that way!
Carmel Roach
How amusing. You don't get the results you want so you discredit your own poll! Once again I beg you, please leave the spin doctoring to the professionals.
The only poll that counts is the one taken on election day.
Richard Ulrich
God bless you guys for that wonderful piece of detective work on the rat's ass analysis. You should be working for Bill. Are you sure you are not really the Click and Clack brothers incognito?
Steve Imhof - Naples, Italy
Let's throw out the 25 hours? You dimwits! That's why no one trusts anyone in the media. You didn't like the results so you just changed them to fit your way of thinking.
Franklin McCullough
I have difficulty with several of your statements, although I agree with others. It is very true that "clever" pollsters (not good, please) can manipulate the results by the way they ask the questions.
However, you miss the real bias - who agrees/refuses to answer. People who don't care or have something more important to do usually refuse to answer at all, so are automatically excluded from the polls. In your case, the respondents are highly self-selected - i.e. they care about a poll about whether they care. :) This can sometimes be seen very well by asking political questions after a market research poll and vice versa - you get quite different answers.
John Bacon-Shone
It's refreshing to see that your poll follows the apparent basis of the other biased polls relative to this "issue", thereby proving your page a suck-ass page in line with other media bias.
Now, there is no doubt your page and polls are simply a medium to further your own opinions. Up yours! Guess I'll get the news from the Wall Street Journal. At least they are true to form inasmuch as the slanted news is presented there from a financial slant, not some unknown liberal's adolescent or utopian view.
Jerry Illing
I don't believe your poll indicates your readers' choice. I tried several times at different times to vote and kept getting an error response - something like "no such site". I wanted to vote "I don't give a rat's ass."
Gaye Shattuck - Highland, Kansas
I think we had a bit of a domain hiccup that week and that's probably what you encountered. - LN
My compliments on a nice piece of data detective work. I'll have to save that as an example for a statistics class sometime.
David Ikle - Assoc. Prof., Biometrics Section, Univ. of Colo. Health Sciences Center, Denver, Colorado
How refreshing to see someone in the media take a real look at the numbers used in an article. There are daily examples of reporters/writers quoting data which are clearly incorrect.
A classic example was a recent piece on a major computer-related Web site which reported that African-Americans are spending more on hardware and software than Caucasians. Had the article said they spend more per capita, I would have doubted the information, but could not have disproved it without research. However, it is impossible for the African-American 11% of the population (with a disproportional part of that population at or below the poverty level) to generate greater aggregate spending on computer items than the majority population.
Critical thinking is a dying art in this nation, and apparently is forbidden for most journalists with space to fill and deadlines to meet. Thank you for being in that important minority which thinks about data before publishing it. More importantly, perhaps you have challenged some readers to be more critical of the data presented to them.
Mike Nolan
I am glad to see that you were able to just casually throw away some 25 hours of data so that you could skew the results to reflect your pre-conceived notions. I wish I could do that with my performance reviews!
How do you know there wasn't a newsgroup somewhere that encouraged it's readers to vote no, but maybe encouraged everybody to not do it at once? Tell me which newsgroup did what you suggested and I'll believe it - in other words, show me the proof of your allegations. Otherwise, you have no basis for removing the this period just on a whim.
For that matter, I wonder if this practice is what the real pollsters do. Maybe they also just throw out the answers that would skew their data away from their opinion. Maybe that is how Harris keeps coming up with 60% approval ratings for the President when everybody I know thinks he has been a terrible president, especially now that the stock market has taken a nose dive.
I used to take NSD (somewhat) seriously, but now that I see how you are....
Glen Jones
When people "likely to vote" are polled, the result is 70% plus resignation/impeachment. The opinions of non-voters are irrelevant.
Arthur Krueger
Thanks for running your "Don't care" poll. I posted a link to it on my site.
I wish the press (and Clinton's critics) would not be so quick to assume he committed perjury. Sure, he fudged the truth, as most would under those circumstances, but that is a far cry from being guilty of perjury. And it is conviction of perjury, not fudging, that could be an impeachable offense. After reading the White House defense, which explains the fine points of perjury and how that applies to the President's case, I believe he is on quite solid ground legally.
Furthermore, I wish him luck. I think he has done a lot more for the country than he is given credit for.
Pam Shorey - Willimantic, Connecticut
Just because you suggest that everyone outside of Washington does not care does not mean you are right. Everyone should care. If more people had cared about the country and voted in the last two presidential elections, we might have a good president instead of a congenital liar. The USA will survive. If Clinton gave a rat's ass, our country would not be in this situation.
Do you really think that "First, everybody thinks polls accurately represent what the country really thinks"? I never thought polls accurately represented what everybody thinks. You are tricky folks, but I do get some real good sites from your e-mail.
Willie T. Hawkins, Jr.
I'm disappointed with the Sept. 11 "Starr Report" article, but I'm even more alarmed by your casual attitude towards those who complained. True, your service never claimed to be objective, but I think your subscribers deserve more respect than point-and-giggle responses. To invite people to comment, only to be ridiculed, defeats the purpose of getting customer feedback to improve your service. You do care about what customers want from your service, don't you? Or is this just a naive assumption on my part?
Bob Skaggs
I do not give a rat's behind about the Starr Report, which I found neither exciting nor irritating, just numbing and pitiful.
I am, on the other hand, enraged by the release of the grand jury testimony - though once taped, it was going to be released one way or another. That somebody can be interrogated without counsel and then have his testimony broadcast is such a violation of anything that could rationally be called due process. This should irritate people, but it apparently does not bother Cokie Roberts in the slightest.
In the last couple of weeks, Congress has refused to raise the minimum wage and has killed campaign finance reform for the indefinite future. And they prose abvout how Clinton owes them an apology. If Clinton had Bill Gates's lawyers, Starr would be in jail by now. The world economy is on the edge, there are wars and plagues in Africa and ongoing genocide in Kosovo, the last version of agricultural reform ("freedom to farm") is not working, welfare reform is an ongoing disaster, managed care is a national disgrace - these are real issues.
The Web was supposed to make us informed world citizens, not a nation of keyhole peepers.
Timothy Porges
I do give a "rat's ass" about Clinton, and think he should borrow or buy enough guts to resign. But, I really am tired of reading about it in your newsletter. If I want politic news, I'll go to CNN.com. Your newsletter is not the place I want to read biased political commentary!
Rick Osgood
Good on you! We here in New Zealand are asking ourselves the same thing, and nope, we don't give a rat's arse either! Interesting and titillating (a little brutal honesty never hurt anyone!) but does it affect how the country - our, yours, anyone's - should be run? No way.
Keep up the good work.
Rowan and Paula - somewhere in New Zealand
The media makes money on conflict and ratings. Doesn't anyone see that? Blabbing about sex etc. improves ratings and interrupts the running of our country. We've all been "tabloidized" for profit.
What Mr. Clinton does with his pecker is no one's business - even if it was on the roof of the White House! No one will admit adultery upon being questioned. What's news about that? And whose business is it anyway? Will this bring on an age of sexual witch-hunting? Will leaders have to be without blemish of any kind throughout their whole life in order to keep the press at bay? What kind of BS is that? Will we be run by "holier than thou" religionists?
Will the media govern our very life with slanted opinions and condemnations- only for ratings and profit?
George Orwell defined government as "big brother", but it may be the media. Doesn't anyone recognize the deterioration of their own personal freedoms in this media free for all?
Will employers soon ask "have you ever strayed from your spouse?" or "have you ever fudged on your tax return?" A guarded answer could be construed as a lie - and you would be drop-kicked out the door!
Perhaps the moralists and religionists will tattoo an "A" [adulterer] or "TC" [tax cheat] on your arm to alert anyone who would dare employ you.
The day of the religious "Nazis" is just around the corner, being helped along with the "right-to-know" media. Doesn't anyone get it?
Lorna Edgar
Unfortunately, your poll did not include the question "Are you American or are you interested in American dirty laundry?" My response would have been: "I don't give a r-a." You have an international fan club.
Barney Flaade
I don't give a rat's ass whether you liberal rats are spinning poll distortions out of your asses; I just want that White House rat's ass impeached!
Tom Reilly
Thanks for the very fine insight and commentary. By the way, I do give a rat's ass but want Congress to get on with the business of running the country.
Stan Zaske
Loved the poll report.
Terry Calhoun
I do give a rat's ass. A president should have better sense than to get involved with a ditsy 21-year-old looking to become important. It's not an impeachable offence, but the media has made any such slip a major crisis for the country. It's terrible that defending this thing takes the president away from other things. However, as long as the "moral minority" in Congress deals with the matter, it keeps them from doing further damage to the country.
Stan Wagner
It would be interesting to know how many of your "Don't give a rat's ass" voters actually show up at the polls on election day.
Roger G. Haynie
Your bias was revealed by your faulty analysis of all of us who do care that we have a president who seeks to lie to our faces with impunity. Your perspective was then reinforced in the same issue with pitches for Ifnotnow.com and Pew Charitable Trust.
Gary Blumenthal
Sure, and we've covered right-wing talk radio in the past. We're interested in the medium, not the message. - LN
Your poll turned me off: it was gross and biased. I did not cancel my subscription, but that was close. In the future, please provide news, not editorial comments.
Genevieve Segol
The whole point of the silly poll was that it was, in fact, "gross and biased" - in more ways then one. Read the bottom of the analysis page for details. - AB
Your comments with regard to the Clinton scandal clearly don't reflect my views or the views of many of my friends and acquaintances. Although you and the others that hold your views have the right to express these views, the fact that so many of you are so blinded to the core issue truly distresses me.
Why are you willing to overlook the lies, deceit, and corruption that has followed Bill and Hillary since their days in Arkansas? Who's being played for the fool here? Do you really want someone who will go to any length to cover his transgressions in charge of our national security?
Aside from that, do you really think that this great big party (your life) ends without requiring an accounting for the things you have done? Don't be deceived, man! Your soul is eternal and will live on in either a blessed existence with our Creator or in a state of continual suffering in a place the Bible refers to as Hades, where there is no hope of repentence.
I was like you at one time. I didn't care what anybody thought and did what was right in my own eyes. When I was confronted by the Scriptures about my sin and my need for forgiveness from Jesus, the Savior, I repented and received that forgiveness that only comes from a perfect and holy God. My guilt was taken away and I now know that I will have everlasting life with Jesus Christ. Can you have the same assurance that, when you die, your soul will live on in peace with the Blessed God of all creation? Ask and you shall receive; knock and the door shall be opened to you.
Jeff Kamp
First, there ain't no Hades in my religion.
Secondly, the Bible mentions nothing about Hades. That's Greek
mythology. Next, for you to say that "I was like you at one time. I
didn't care what anybody thought and did what was right in my own
eyes." is not only awfully insulting, it's wrong, too.
Lastly, check out Luke 6:37. - LN
If you want to be Salon magazine, then be a Salon imitator, not a "netsurfer's digest". Your shabby left-wing politics seem to get in the way of what should be your mission: pointing to and describing interesting Web sites.
James F. Ladeda
Regarding your analysis, if you suspected someone posted the poll to a particular Web site, couldn't you detect that by analyzing the "referrer" site captured in the detailed log records?
Bill
I suppose, but that wouldn't help if it were posted to a newsgroup or mailing list. - LN
I dont give a rat's ass about your polictical opinions. I suggest we put that issues behind us and get back to the business of finding and linking to good Web sites.
Morrison
Thank goodness, just like so many others, you've uncovered a conspiracy. The GOP fanatics converged on your site just to skew the numbers. That poll was certainly crucial to keeping the Republicans afloat in the November elections.
Give me a break. In your words, who "gives a rat's ass" about the NetSurfer poll?
Now go out and crack the Clinton Dead Body Count Conspiracy and you just might earn a Dick Tracy watch for your efforts.
Thanks for the laughs....
B. B. Broughton - Conspiracy Central, USA
You describe this exercise as "a silly little poll" and claim that "our poll is a multi-level commentary on the silly media polling practices." Your spirited, if somewhat creative, statistical defense, however, demonstrates that you are determined to interpret the poll results as validating your own opinion.
You focus on the results your Hobson's choice of a poll, while you ignore a 28:1 ratio of letters that would seem to provide a pretty clear indication of the prevailing opinion of your subscribers. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but try relaxing about having to be right.
I think many subscribers were at least as offended by your decision to impose your political opinion on your readership as they were by the substance of that opinion. We have many resources for reviewing and responding to political opinion; we do not have nearly as many resources for Web site information. Your Web reviews are intelligent, pithy and entertaining - this is the reason we read NSD and it is what you do very well. Why not stick to that? There are certainly enough soapbox sites and axe grinder pages already out there. We expect you to review them (if interesting), not become one of them.
John Shattuck
Faulty reasoning. A statistically non-random
sample, which both the poll and the letters obviously were, says
nothing about the prevailing opinion of our readers as a whole. That
was one of the points we were trying to make with the poll, but it
applies equally well to the letters. A vocal minority does not trump
an apathetic majority - except of course in politics. :)
There's also the well known effect that those whose beliefs are being
stepped on, whether by objective truth or sheer whimsy, tend to get
very defensive and outraged (c.f. any Usenet flame war). Thus the poll
was also a good way to demonstrate the unreliability of letters to the
editor as a gauge of the general mood. Ultimately, the politics of the
whole situation are irrelevant to what we were trying to show. -
AB
I liked the survey including "rats ass". I remember your article about space junk headed for Earth. Your advice was to stick your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye. Great!
Don Greer - Tulsa, Oklahoma
Martin Dodge - London, England
I'm not sure who reviewed my site, but I wanted to thank you all for the flattering commentary. Over the past week, you were responsible for more than tripling my e-mail subscriptions. Furthermore, I received almost as many hits over the last week as I did during the previous three months.
Plus, I can now quote a reputable publication as comparing me to Dave Barry. I hope you all visited the right site!
Marshall Camp
I love your mag, and owe many good bookmarks to her. But "think Dave Barry only funny"? Come on, the kid is OK but in spite of copying all Barry's original techniques still doesn't come up IMHO.
Keep up the good work!!
Larry
I really enjoy your magazine. A nice mixture of culture, business, etc. Please keep the sober line!
Michael B. Karbo
For the longest time, I was baffled - I couldn't understand the hundreds of hits I was getting at the most obscure page on my Web site.
I finally discovered that I had been favorably reviewed by NSD, which prompted me to subscribe immediately. Absolutely great service. If you send a banner, I'd be glad to promote you prominently on several of my pages.
Wolf De Voon
...thus completing the circle and giving us back some hits. :) Thanks! You can copy our small logo from here. - AB
Maaaaate.... Subscribing to your zine is one of the best things i've done on the Net, and it's arrival always makes me a happy little vegemite. Your piece in the latest issue on why we have such great swimmers was i'm sure a crocka ...but you're right about Queenslanders. My thanks for your great work.
Mike Wilcox
I don't know Queenslanders from cheese, but that little bit was courtesy of our Adelaide-based Netsurfer. - LN
This is concerning your recent post on African clawed frogs (NSD 4.29). Having once owned one, I read about a scientist releasing some into a river where they bred and ate everything in site. As a result these frogs are now illegal in California (and several other states), although scientists are still using them for research.
To confirm this information (I read it years ago in the newspaper) I searched through the Net. The only thing I could find is a note at the end of one page.
Tom Biggs
P.S. We had an aquarium full of various fish and even a newt. The frogs eventually ate everything. We couldn't figure out where the fish were disappearing to until we saw the newt's tail sticking out of the frog's mouth.
It is in great tragedy that the seeds of great
comedy are born. That made me laugh. :)
Thanks for writing, we appreciate it. - AB
NSD is head and shoulders my favourite and most useful regular Web resource, but I was just wondering why NSD 4.28, dated Sept. 19 lobs into my mailbox today, Sept. 26?
I don't normally take any note of the date, to be truthful, but your reference today (or rather, last Friday) to the "forthcoming" Clinton tapes alerted me. Nor is it something that really matters much. I'm just curious.
Mark Allison
I put the issue together Saturday and sent it
off to Arthur, who processed it Saturday - thus the Saturday
timestamp. We only started the mailing on Sunday, however, and even if
everything goes right, all those NSDs (71,000) take four or five days
to e-mail to all the subscribers. When our server burps, it takes
longer, of course.
That, and sanity, is why we don't do a daily. :) - LN
Isn't perception a peculiar thing. I guess, without really thinking of it, I had a mind's image of a broadcast mailout as an instantaneous thing, a single, explosive burst of transmission; but of course it's a serial process - that, and the fact that as I sit at my solitary screen, I forget there are 69,999 fellow subscribers out there.
As usual, Occam's Razor applies: The explanation is simple and logical.
Thanks for your couresy in replying personally, and thanks again for a superb newsletter.
MA
In NSD 4.28, "Forget the Whales, Save the Language" reviewed a word contest.
Gee, guys, thanks so much for including this link long after the contest was over!
Catherine Harper
The site said the contest ended in September, but not when in September. NSD 4.28 went out on Sept. 19. Oh, well. - LN
I have subscribed to the HTML version of NSD without realizing the security peril of HTML through e-mail. Would you kindly change my HTML subscription to text? However, if you think that my fear is groundless, please explain.
Architect Kiumars
There is actually very little damage any e-mail
can do to your system, and any damage at all will come from only two
items: 1) a software program or 2) a macro that will be run in a
program.
Raw HTML is exactly the same as text - it is text, in fact. Software
that reads HTML just interprets some of that text (that is, the tags)
as style commands, just like your word processor displays bold or
italic text. Of course, HTML is a great deal more complicated than a
text processor, but it's the same in theory.
Best of all for you, you use a Mac (I can tell from the header on your
e-mail). So do I. Just about the only security problem we will
encounter in e-mail is an evil Microsoft Word macro.
So yes, I think you need not worry.
Lastly, we don't have a plain text version. If you still don't trust
HTML, you'll have to unsubscribe. - LN
To be absolutely correct, it's not HTML which
can be a security risk, it's executable content, like JavaScript,
Java, ActiveX, and so on. The other major ingredient is that you have
to get your content from someone who may wish to hack you.
Now obviously we have no desire to hack anybody's computer - it would
be business suicide for us to do something that stupid. We've been
around since the very beginning (remember, we're the oldest surviving
Web e-zine) and have too much to lose in terms of our reputation,
modest though it may be. Besides, none of us has the time or
inclination to bother. We'll leave that to adolescent WaR3z d00Dz who
aren't worried about where their next meal is coming from - i.e. a
correctional institution.
It's just a long winded way of saying that you can trust us - ask
anybody. And if our word isn't good enough for you, then you
shouldn't be reading NSD anyway. :)
Our FAQ
tells why we stopped sending plain text. - AB
Could you please arrange it so that, after visiting a site, the reader returns to where he was in NSD, instead of at some random place. It is a nuisance having to scroll back to where I was.
Olof Monson
Here's a quick fix: instead of just clicking to a site from NSD, open the link in a new window. When you're done you can close it and NSD will be just the same in the original window. I make extensive use of the "open in a new window" feature. - LN
I have just received my first copy of you e-mag, and it is very good. I have found some helpful info, but one thing I think it could use is a "new products" section. This could be a great place to scan what's new in the marketplace. I hope you will consider this in the future.
Robhair
How can I surf the Net undetected by the company network administrator/geek? I'm running Netscape on a PowerMac through the company server and on to a fractional T1 line. I guess they get a report from the phone company or internally that spills the beans.
Is there software or other means to mask surfing activity?
(Name withheld to protect the not-so-innocent)
I don't know, sorry. I did love your letter, though. - LN
For the record there's some good privacy and anonymity stuff here. What you're asking for is not easy to do, because a person who owns the network can look at anything going out over the wire - right down to every keystroke on every machine connected to his network. It can be done, but it gets convoluted. - AB
Publisher: Arthur Bebak
Editor: Lawrence Nyveen
Address your letters to
editor@netsurf.com.
Letters and
signatures edited for clarity and brevity.
