Deanna Carpenter

I heard of a survey that asked a few questions about American opinions. I don’t like surveys – they can be so slanted toward the desired outcomes that I don’t put much faith in them. The company sponsoring the survey usually has a lot to say about the questions and how they are presented. Then the surveyors have to reach a good cross section of people to be polled. that is pretty hard to do, too. They pretty much only reach people who have a home telephone, who can be reached at home and who agree to answer the questions. Then you have to wonder if they answered the questions honestly.

But this survey asked an interesting question, “What American company do you feel best represents America?”

The most popular answer was a complete disappointment to me. The survey says that the most popular answer was “WalMart.”

But what they don’t tell is if it was an open ended question or was it multiple choice with just 5 companies named? See how the results can be influenced very easily?

A friend was at my house waiting for me to finish some work so we could go downtown. I told her to flip through the cable channels to entertain herself while waiting. She put the cable on some music videos that were available “On Demand.” I didn’t even know that there were any music videos on demand. That was pretty cool to watch a few videos that I’ve never seen. But I don’t see any way to group a bunch of them or schedule them to play one after another. So to watch them you have to go through the on demand selection process every 2 minutes to find another video and keep the music continuous. That is a hassle – why can’t they let me que them up?

Have you listened to the disclaimer and warnings on the Ambien commercials? Over half of the commercial is talking about all the bad things that can happen to you if you take this drug. Some of them are downright scary – hallucinations, thoughts of suicide, aggression. Why would a drug cause all these bad things? Obviously some other people have had these problems or they would have to warn you about them.

Learning my way around Facebook has been a lot of fun this week. I had no idea that so many people I know are using Facebook. None of them has said anything to me about joining. I feel like I missed the big invitation somehow and everyone else is at the party without me.