Author: Matthew Barlow

I was reading a scholarly article on polling and the issues it creates in terms of the democratic process last week.  In the article, the authors note many of the problems with polling, and there are many.  I worked for a major national polling firm in Canada for a couple of years whilst in undergrad.  There, I learned just how dodgy supposedly ‘scientific’ polling can be. My issues have less to do with methodology, where random computer-generated phone numbers are called.  Rather, they have to do with both the wording of questions and the manner in which they are asked.  I should also note that the rise of cell phones complicates the ability to do random sampling.  Something like 48% of American adults only have cell phones (I have not had a landline since 2002, a decade before I emigrated to the US).  It is illegal to use random computer-generated calling to cell phones in the US. The authors of the study I read commented on the manner in which questions were worded, and the ways in which this could impact results.  For example, last year during the great debate about the repeal of Obamacare, it became very obvious that a not insignificant proportion of Americans did not realize that the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, was the legislative act that created what we call Obamacare.  So you have...

Rough and Rowdy is a form of amateur boxing native to West Virginia.  It appears to me to be the grandson of the 18th-19th century Southern backwoods fighting style known as Rough and Tumble, or Gouging.  It was so-called because the ultimate goal was to gouge out your opponent’s eye.  There were very few rules involved in Rough and Tumble and, while it wasn’t exactly prize fighting, winning was a source of pride in the local community. The men who fought in Gouging were backwoods farmers, it was common in swamps and mountain communities.  In other words, the men who fought were what the élite of Southern society called (and still call) ‘white trash.’  As an aside, if you would like to know more about the plight of poor white people historically in the US, I cannot recommend Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America enough.  Nevermind the fact that the story is not untold, historians have studied and published on poor people for a long time, but that’s what publishers do to your book, they create silly subtitles to sell more copies. I digress.  The West Virginia Rough and Rowdy is a continuation.  The Guardian produced a quick 7 minute documentary of a championship tournament in West Virginia, you can watch it here. I have some serious problems after watching this.  The first is...