An Open Letter to Marie Callendar

I appreciate your care for the health of your patrons. Also, I like broccoli quite a bit¹. However...

Fettuccini alfredo is supposed to be a pure and sensual, panicking-arteries experience. Pasta, creamy sauce, and pepper are all that are required. Small chunks of chicken are not unwelcome, though they do dilute the quality of the event. However, a side dish of broccoli and carrots is entirely superfluous.

If I wanted a frozen Sunday dinner that actually promoted my health, I would purchase something from a different company. From you, I want luxurious excess. Please, recognize your ecological niche and stay in it.

1. And I liked it even before Bush the Elder denigrated it, in case you're wondering.

Ich Muss Razzen

Rasmussen Reports fairly consistently produces results more favorable to the Bush administration and to Republicans generally than most other reputable pollsters. It is precisely for that reason that I read their website - they place a bound on the plausible.

A few days ago, I noted a rather misleading headline on their site. Briefly, having conducted a poll on popular perception of media bias, they found that 39% of respondents felt that the major TV networks showed a liberal bias in their news shows; 25% saw no bias, 20% saw a conservative bias, and 16% were not sure. The headline read, "Americans See Liberal Media Bias on TV News".

Today, in another article, Rasmussen Reports asserted that, and I quote, "Earlier releases showed that most Americans believe the major broadcast networks, CNN, and NPR have a liberal bias". This is flatly false. According to their own reported data, a majority of respondents do not believe there is such a bias.

Let me be precise. By "X does not believe Y", I mean "It is not the case that X believes that Y is true". By this definition, 61% (25%+20%+16%) do not believe the major networks have a liberal bias. Even by the more stringent interpretation, "X believes that Y is false", a plurality - 45% to 39% - hold that position.

Rasmussen has moved from being misleading in its headlines to presenting falsehoods in the body of its reports. I am deeply disappointed in them.

Charlie Nails It

Charlie Stross, in a discussion on Making Light of novel series:

"Teratology" is hereby designated as the official term for a trilogy or other reasonably contained multi-book sequence that metastasizes.