Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.
If you do the math, that works out to 16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people. The equivalent of the population of Pennsylvania (and then some!) does not know that chocolate milk is milk, cocoa and sugar.
[...] For decades, observers in agriculture, nutrition and education have griped that many Americans are basically agriculturally illiterate. They don't know where food is grown, how it gets to stores — or even, in the case of chocolate milk, what's in it.
[...] Upton and other educators are quick to caution that these conclusions don't apply across the board. Studies have shown that people who live in agricultural communities tend to know a bit more about where their food comes from, as do people with higher education levels and household incomes.
[...] In some ways, this ignorance is perfectly logical. The writer and historian Ann Vileisis has argued that it developed in lockstep with the industrial food system.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:01AM (41 children)
Nobody would troll and on-line survey would the? Say it ain't so.....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:03AM (34 children)
This...
Sanitize your fucking inputs. Any survey which allows for self-selection sure as fuck isn't sound science.
I might be biased.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:26AM (33 children)
Agreed. The number is nowhere near that low. I'd guess at least a quarter of American adults should believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, based on other surveys of ignorance. Actually, reading some other arcles, I'm probably right, since 48% of people in this survey indicated they "don't know" where chocolate milk comes from.
TFA notes other examples of food ignorance -- large numbers of Americans who don't know that hamburgers come from beef, half of middle schoolers don't know that beef comes from cows or that pickles are cucumbers, etc. (A few years back I personally witnessed a member of my extended family come to the realization that pickles are cucumbers. She was 22 and had just completed college.)
I've been aware of this for years. An older friend of mine told me of a commercial on TV years ago that showed Italian peasants picking spaghetti off of a tree or something. Many of my friends' neighbors in the city thought this was a factual depiction of where pasta came from. At that point he resolved to move to a more rural area and grow a lot of his own food in his garden and get away from the morons (which is how I got to know him actually, since we both liked gardening).
And need I point to all the polls about how many Americans believe in angels, astrology, etc.? Again, the only surprise to me here is that the number isn't higher.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:06AM (11 children)
It pains me to admit that I am, technically, a scientist. In my defense, I am retired.
What I want to ask, is what happened to reporting that whole, you know, confidence level thing? And, of course, the methods for establishing confidence.
I'd like to ask someone to reproduce this, but it's not gonna happen. No, no... Nobody ever listens to a David. We shall just slap this down into the record books as being certain. 7 out of 100 people you see, with some slight variance but I don't have to account for that as I bet they didn't, will believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
I am really, really fucking rural. As in, my milk comes from the neighbor's farm - and that milk is sold in the local stores. Well, for some definition of local. Not even a fucking five year old child, at least here, believes that.
Alas, this begins a rant on soft sciences and reproducibility. I'll spare you the specifics and assume you're smarter than I.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:54AM (2 children)
There's no point in listing the confidence interval in a country that has no confidence in science at all. Doesn't matter how tight the confidence is, people still won't believe it because scientists haven't completely nailed down absolutely every possible angle, including the ones that Alex Jones just made up.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:18AM (1 child)
We see it here every day, intelligent people searching for reasons to disbelieve science. I'm all for critical thinking, but confirmation bias is also a real problem.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:05AM
I gotta go fishing in the morning(ish). Otherwise, that's a good effort to get a KGIII rant. I don't usually get angry, but the state of science education makes me angry.
However...
Do NOT think that my anger is only directed at one side of the political spectrum. Yeah, I'm gonna stop now, take my off-topic mod, and just go to sleep soon.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:55AM (3 children)
Or rather, 7 out of 100 people (maybe, since you can't actually know that there weren't many people voting multiple times) will claim, in an online survey, to believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
I agree that this isn't sound science, but it's par for the course for these idiotic surveys. If you can't verify the issue objectively, then this is just a waste of time. At least you can later find out election results, but you can't objectively determine what these people really believe, making this junk science.
I'm as tired of it as you are, and tired of the media reporting on it as if it's valid science.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:24AM (2 children)
I don't even care. I'll agree with their silly numbers. It's still bullshit! ;-) Ain't no way in hell - at least in my neighborhood - you can find even 1:100 people to say chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
Trust me, you sure as hell don't want me to get started on my rant about the media and science journalism. It may well take months. ;-) I f*cking have a rant, maybe two.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:26AM
*can't*
Stupid marijuana.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:08PM
Post rants on your soylent journal.
Then you can just say See My Journal.
Read your own journal 6 months later and see if you still believe it. If so leave it alone.
Rinse Repeat. Can be quite Therapeutic.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:20AM (3 children)
Oh, I get all your criticism and agree. A lot of these studies are crap from a stats standpoint. On the other hand, plenty of other studies over the years have shown the considerable ignorance of people about basic food source stuff. So this study sounds plausible, and even if it isn't accurate, other similar misconceptions are likely widespread.
I didn't see a link to an actual study with detailed results. It would help if someone posted a link.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:10AM
Yeah, I am really skeptical. I am a scientist, I guess. I'm really a mathematician who used the scientific method to model traffic. So, I admit I am biased with regards to the soft sciences. If someone has a link to the paper, I am more than happy to rip into it, as soon as I have the time.
I'm going to guess, and this is a hunch, that it was a self selected survey. That's not science. I sometimes get bored and fill those out. In the comments section, after filling them with trash, I tell them to sanitize their inputs. This has not had any meaningful results, but it amuses me. I am easily amused.
I should still be sleeping.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
Actually, it will probably turn out that this "study" was a troll, published to see how many people would be suckered by some totally bogus claims made in the name of "Science", and therefore duped into outrage even though they themselves do not know a single person who believes the brown cows nonsense.
But hey, thanks for playing along! Their internet gullibility study is coming along nicely.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:52PM
Please message me when you discover proof that this "study" was a "troll." I'll be waiting.
I think it's much more likely to be a poorly designed "study," like the vast majority of such studies in most disciplines these days. By the way, who exactly other than this thread is claiming this is a SCIENCE (with a capital S)? It's a poll. Yes, there are more and less statistically valid ways of taking polls, but rarely do I consider a public poll to be "Science."
What I do know is that time and time again, polls have shown large numbers of Americans believe in all sorts of nonsense. Would I be surprised if this was yet another sort of nonsense Americans believe in? No, not at all. Nor would I be "outraged." At most, I'd view it as "par for the course." Would I be surprised if this poll was completely bogus and had incredibly bad methodology that makes the results meaningless -- or that a better survey found the belief much less widespread? No, not at all.
But what you're arguing is about the percentage of people who belief in Bigfoot vs. the Virgin Birth of Jesus vs. Lizard people run the country vs. Ancient Alien Astronauts vs. chocolate-producing cows. Are you seriously arguing the last one is THAT much less plausible or that much more nonsensical so we should immediately discount a poll as wrong?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:15AM (8 children)
Yup.
I've had people, apparently intelligent people, ask me where duck eggs come from - like from special chickens? Lord knows what they'd have thought if I'd given them an emu or ostrich egg.
I had one woman who confidently asserted that she had no problem with dairy, but could never eat veal. When I gently, patiently explained to her that veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry, I unleashed horrified realisation on her. The simple idea that milk = lactating cattle = calves = surplus calves = veal had just never crossed her mind.
I had someone demand that I farm according to vegan rules. How I farm without any functional pest management strategy (even IPM involves keeping livestock, please note - usually poultry) was never clarified.
And on, and on ... I could write a book called Dumb Shit City Folk Say.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:22AM (3 children)
Go on?
I am /technically/ a farmer.
I have just about 1.5 acres of garden, a bit under 2000 acres of woodlot, and 400 acres of blueberries. Also, I have chickens - but they're assholes. I also didn't invite them. They come from the neighbor's farm and decided to live on my lawn. I built them a house and call them my refugee chickens - it's a long story and, trust me, you don't want to get me started.
Seriously., tell me some more shit city folk say. I promise to giggle at the appropriate times. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:29PM (2 children)
Your refugee chickens do make me curious.
As for more dumb shit city folk say?
I recall the one who warned me that my having farmland on a slope meant that all the nutrients would be leached out of it by runoff rainwater. He was totally unable to explain the existence of 100 foot trees on my property in light of that.
Then the fellow who asserted that farming is stupid work for stupid people, and when I started to explain how modern farming is very far removed from what his great-grandpappy did just shut it all down with handwaving about Monsanto and the Devil Frankenfood.
Speaking of devils and evil, there was one (actually, come to think of it, more than one over the years) who intimated that I was evil for driving a truck. And got very offended when I pointed out that even if you fit their rinky-dink grocery getters with towbars, they couldn't credibly haul what I haul, where I haul it. And even then, burning more fuel for multiple round trips.
Then of course the usual self-righteous vegan screaming (well, maybe more screeching than screaming) about how I'd never eat meat if I had to kill the animals myself. No shit, that really got thrown in my face. I invited that one to come to our personal use slaughter day.
Along the same lines as the foregoing: "Don't you feel like a cannibal?" No. No, I really don't.
Or the one who wanted me to get rid of all my guns because ... some poorly articulated political reasoning about baby-killing. But was avowedly just fine with my hunting invasive pests with a longbow and broadheads.
I could go on, but the stupid burns. I need to go wash it off my synapses with some coffee.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:25PM
The closest I get to that is going down to the lake to watch the tourists wreck their boats and trucks while they try to navigate the boat ramp.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:33PM
Has a toddler ever killed someone with a longbow?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:10AM (3 children)
Calves could be grown before slaughter. That would make them normal beef, not veal.
Vegan farming is easy enough. Use a greenhouse. Use doors and air filters to keep out the pests. Done carefully, this also eliminates fungus and other pathogens. If you do the red/blue LED lighting, you can choose a harvest date that will bring a high price.
The duck eggs from chickens are more difficult. I don't know what counts. You could print "DUCK" on them and/or incorporate as a business called "Duck". You could create a breed of chicken called "duck", or perhaps a breed of duck called "chicken". A little GMO work might help. You could also just jam duck eggs into chicken butts, then soon afterward have duck eggs come from chickens.
It works for chocolate milk too. Some dairy cows are in fact brown. Use those. If you want it 1-step, try a cocoa IV. If cows won't tolerate a cocoa IV, maybe a bit of GMO work will get you chocolate milk.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:13AM (1 child)
A chicken butt is a multipurpose hole called a cloaca.
There will be a quiz.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:29PM
My turtles have the same thing!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:48PM
"Calves could be grown before slaughter. That would make them normal beef, not veal."
This is true. However, it depends upon a wide range of factors, such as how big is the beef raising market this year? It fluctuates like a whiplash.
"Vegan farming is easy enough. Use a greenhouse. Use doors and air filters to keep out the pests. Done carefully, this also eliminates fungus and other pathogens. If you do the red/blue LED lighting, you can choose a harvest date that will bring a high price."
Sure. You can do this. Just a few things to point out:
First is capital costs. I actually considered a greenhouse operation, and it is incredibly expensive. Bearing in mind that your truly hermetically sealed greenhouse (because you don't want soil-borne pathogens and pests in your vegan greenhouse) will need a good, load-bearing floor (probably a concrete pad), and double glazing (because otherwise the heating costs will kill you) with integrated ventilation systems and decontamination zones in airlock style doors, plus decontamination for the growth medium, the costs become stupidly high. The ROI is insane. And that's not even counting maintenance.
Next, pollen. If your plants are wind-pollinated, it's a bit easier (although either labour or energy intensive) but if they aren't self-pollinating (which many crops are not) you're going to have people running around with brushes manually pollinating flowers. The more valuable crops require cross-pollination, more often than not, especially for a good yield.
Next, labour. Do you have any idea what kind of labour is involved in managing that sort of crop? Unless you're running a gigantic Caterpillar or John Deere across a field, it's utterly back-breaking stoop labour of the worst kind. Never mind the insurance load for dozens of people wielding razor-sharp sickles, their wages will be incredibly high. You'll price yourself right out of the market trying to keep that up.
Next up, environmental load. Because let's not pretend, even if you got the greenhouses donated, volunteer labour on some kind of vegan CSA basis, and free NPK inputs because you have compromising pictures of important people, that any of this resembles a sustainable approach. You can't even handwave about fish ponds, because vegans don't do fish captivity, or mason bees because lots of vegans won't even eat honey (I know, that one's controversial, but you're basically halving your market there). But let's ignore all that. You're sucking down energy faster than Al Gore's jet, on land that is no longer available to wild growth or animals, and annihilating microorganisms in large batches, and even then you STILL have to transport inputs, crops and people back and forth to keep your thing going.
But yeah, sure. Vegan farming's totally a thing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:30AM (2 children)
At that point he resolved to move to a more rural area and grow a lot of his own food in his garden and get away from the morons
And need I point to all the polls about how many Americans believe in angels
Your friend made the wrong move. The people believing in angels are much more concentrated in the more rural areas, because rural dwellers are more religious than urban dwellers.
The sad fact is that there's utter morons anywhere you go in this country. You're not going to get away from them by moving to any particular region, though you might find a slightly lower concentration if you get out of the South.
The last election should be proof enough that most people in this country are complete morons. How else do you explain us winding up with two such horrible choices?
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday June 17 2017, @06:34AM
[pedantic] actually they're much more concentrated in urban areas due to simple math, [/pedantic] your point is otherwise valid tho
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:48PM
Rural areas have a lower concentration of stupid people because they have a lower concentration of people.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday June 17 2017, @08:31AM (2 children)
To all those folks who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows: I have a cousin who'd like to sell you all a nice dish of mountain oysters, with a big loaf of sweetbread to serve it on.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:37PM
Is sweetbread a product of the Sugarloaf region?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Please provide a reference to an organ of the state.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @01:22PM
To be fair, "sweetbread" is ambiguous. Generally two words or hyphenated, "sweet bread" can refer to stuff like "pan dulce" and other sweetened breads from the around the word.
If you're referring to the glands, it's almost always "sweetbreads" with a final "s." No one would ever say "a big loaf of sweetbread" and be referring to the glands.
(Score: 1) by Pax on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:37AM
Well. cucumber is ONE type of pickle.. onion, gerkin and beetroot to name a few......
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:53AM (1 child)
The spaghetti hoax was a BBC April Fools' Day joke from 1957. [youtube.com] It supposedly documented the spaghetti harvest in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
And, yes, the average person is as dumb as a bag of hammers. And that's just the middle of the bell curve - half of them are dumber than that.
The problem is exacerbated by crappy education. Someone of average, or even below-average intelligence should be literate and numerate, and know basics facts of life. However, the US currently seems to have the philosophy that failing kids is bad for their self-esteem or something, so the US has lots of high school graduates who should have failed primary school. Other countries have other problems, but watching this happen in the US is just sad - this is how a first-world nation turns into a banana republic.
Before anyone chimes in on the political from, no, Hillary! and Trump aren't part of this process; they are just evidence of how far it has already progressed.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @01:14PM
Actually, since my friend never lived in England, I don't think he was referring to the BBC hoax, but rather a derivative of it, like this commercial [youtube.com] which aired in the U.S. Although the commercial actually says that spaghetti does NOT actually grows on trees, lots of people apparently wondered.
I suspect the cause of the "chocolate cow" thing might be related to something similar, considering commercials like this [youtube.com].
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:32PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday June 17 2017, @08:25PM (1 child)
> pickles are cucumbers
Nb: Outside of US, pickles just means pickled veg. Pickling is the process of preserving food by storing in water with lots of salt, vinegar and sugar. I don't know what a gherkin is, is it a cucumber? But I rarely eat them, only in weird American fast food type places.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:41PM
Yes, I know. "Pickle" in the U.S. means that too. I pickle various vegetables myself all the time, using both your brining method as well as fermentation methods (which generate acidity from bacteria growth, rather than vinegar). But in the U.S. without other context the word "pickle" generally refers to a pickled cucumber.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:59AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:07AM (3 children)
Well, just add as first question: "Are you going to answer the following questions honestly?" All those who answer "No" to that are excluded from the statistics. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:24AM (2 children)
But isn't anybody who's going to be dishonest in all the other questions going to lie in the first one as well?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 18 2017, @12:56PM (1 child)
Did you see the three characters at the end of my post?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday June 18 2017, @08:48PM
Yes, and my comment was meant as seriously as yours. I didn't notice my lack of a smiley until after I submitted.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday June 19 2017, @02:43AM
Well I'm sure that some people do believe all kinds of random shit....flat earther community.....
But as a purely single data point; I am lactose intolerant; at various cafe's / restaurants I have been asked when asking if there is any dairy product in various dishes weather or not having egg in the dish is ok? I have resisted the urge to ask if they are cow's eggs mainly due to my belief that you don't mess with those who prepare / get you your food.
But it has happened far more often then chance would suggest it should; and these are people work with food as their jobs.
Given this is New Zealand and not USA; but I would have though we would come out better in such stats since the furthers you can get from a farm in NZ is about 25km.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:09AM (9 children)
I say... bullshit! I don't place any level of confidence in the ability of surveyors to produce accurate results, as almost every survey I've seen is shown or evident to be totally false. Damn near every kid in America knows you can make chocolate milk with nesquik or chocolate syrup, and you're trying to tell me they grow up and think there's a special chocolate cow?! How did the survey even ask the question?
Where does chocolate milk come from:
A. Mixing chocolate and milk
B. Out of a brown cow
C. From black women
D. What's chocolate milk?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:14AM (1 child)
E. Ms Pac-Man ate the Easter Bunny
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:08AM
She was a pill munching slut, is what she was.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:02AM (4 children)
I think properly surveying is hard, but a competent surveying company is quite able to produce accurate(ish) results, or they would be out of business by now. This is why companies hire them to do (unpublished) surveys (for internal use only).
Part of knowing how to produce accurate results is understanding how your results can be skewed, and how you need to compensate for those factors.
This means that
a) you can hire a competent (but unethical) company to produce whatever survey result you'd like to publish
and also that
b) lots of incompetent people are conducting surveys with no clue about the huge bias of their outcomes, and every so often one of their "results" is interesting enough to make the news
e.g.:
Where do you think chocolate milk comes from?
1) white cows
2) brown cows
3) Other/I don't know
(bonus points: even omit option 1)
I tried to track down the actual survey, but only got as far as it being "a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy", but could find any mention of it on their site [usdairy.com] :-(
Anecdote I'd like to spew: I actually knew someone who believed (after a bit of convincing) Milka chocolate was made from milk of special Swiss purple cows.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:03AM (1 child)
You can measure someone's penis size, so you can see if they were lying/exaggerating. How do you objectively determine that someone really believes X? Most of the time you can't, which makes this unscientific. You can't just assume that people aren't lying/actually know the answer; there is no science in that.
I'm not sure why you think that incompetent surveying companies would automatically go out of business. If they can generate plenty of headlines and fool enough suckers, it often doesn't matter how nonsensical their methods are. For things that can be objectively measured (at the time of the survey or later), this is different, but the media and public eat up pseudoscience.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:41PM
Case in point: Religion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @06:59PM
That depends on what's their actual business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @10:26PM
What makes you think that? They only have to convince people that their results are good enough to be useful, it doesn't have to actually be true. They might even believe it themselves.
However many people build businesses based on bullshit, and manage to stay in business (see homeopaths for one example).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:23AM (1 child)
Suspicion: yet another internet attempt to make people believe everyone else is a total idiot and therefore democracy can never work. Seriously, stupid shit like this hammered over and over can create a widespread belief.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:54PM
The Internet is not required. Formal demonstration of large segments of the population's failure to be able to think their way out of a paper bag has been available to any well-reasoned observer long, long before the Internet. It's called "superstition" and the USA, at least, is riddled with it. From your basic "imaginary friend" to ghosts and astrology and throwing condiments over one's shoulder, formally structured idiocy runs rampant here.
But you know, if that's something you're willing to overlook, there's always the election of Donald Trump to consider. Although that whole "Democracy" thing... not really testing that in a republic, in fact, a republic where the Electoral College just elected the president against the majority will of the voting public because counting states is considered more important than counting people. Not exactly the poster child for "Democracy."
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Snotnose on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:09AM (4 children)
Sanitize your inputs my ass. 7% is enough to put Trump over HRC, and I firmly believe 7% of US voters think chocolate milk comes out of brown cows.
/ I should not have to say this
// I did not vote for Trump
/// Nor HRC, went Johnson. Fucking dumass he turned out to be.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:19AM (3 children)
You're reading it wrong. This is actually a surprising and relevant result. It tells us that only 7% of Americans are proper smartasses.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:29AM (2 children)
--
( Y ) <---- Look, ass!
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:54AM (1 child)
Now we know, the Minty Broussard is in the Seven Percent! He just knows when chocolate milk is the result of too much blood and pus to pass as just plain milk.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:25PM
Elizabeth Beck is disgusting! Lawyer Elizabeth Beck did a terrible job against me, she lost (I even got legal fees). I loved beating her, she was easy. And she pulled out that pump to be disgusting, to pump out her disgusting milk from her disgusting lawyer boobs because she's disgusting. She's a loser. #FuckBeck [twitter.com] #WINNING [twitter.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:35AM
That saying came from somewhere. Tomatoes are red, ketchup is red. Cows are brown, milk is brown. 7% of Americans are WOKE!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:55AM (7 children)
7 % of cows are brown. 7 % of the time you drink chocolate milk, it came from a brown cow.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:04AM (4 children)
Most dairy cows are Holsteins though - which are black and white.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:54AM (3 children)
Do you know what "though" means? 93 % of cows can be non-brown.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday June 17 2017, @06:26AM (2 children)
90+% of US dairy cows are holsteins, and I very much doubt that 70% of the rest are brown. More likely, of the 10% left, 7% are brown. Unless 70% of the remainder are brown, there is not a 7% likelihood of your chocolate milk coming from a brown cow. Also, due to the way distribution networks work, the likelihood of purchasing chocolate milk coming from a brown cow is probably much lower than the actual percentage of brown dairy cows.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)
Ahh, but if you average the color of a black and white cow, you get a brown cow.
They were just overthinking it!
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday June 19 2017, @10:24AM
Given how much of the milk is Homogenized, then there's a non-zero chance that chocolate milk contains milk from a brown cow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:06AM (1 child)
I don't care for chocolate milk. What about strawberry milk?
(Score: 2) by n1 on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:34AM
How did we get a Red and White Holstein population in North America when all of their imported ancestors were Black and White? [psu.edu]
Feed them strawberry.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:46AM (1 child)
Okay I can't believe there isn't some kind of trollery afoot right now. I shit you guys not, I just saw someone ranting about how trump voters are so stupid they'd think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Before this article.
I mean come on now. Do people think these americans buy the premixed chocolate milk and never saw syrup before? That premixed stuff is expensive and inefficient!
This is the only explanation I have here. I just can't believe something this headline friendly without going "wait wot". I might be willing to believe it from the named urban California school only and it said "7% of california high schoolers". Not that it's an excuse, but it'd be pretty blindsiding if wisconsin didn't know where cheese came from, Georgia thinks pickles are their own fruit and California isn't the biggest milk producer in the country.
Also this was commissioned by some kind of Dairy collective. The milk underworld is darker and deeper than most eldritch things.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:26AM
I made another comment about how I suspect polls and clickbait articles are part of a larger propaganda campaign to discredit democracy because "everyone's an idiot so we need smart dictators that aren't impeded by morons."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lester on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:06AM (1 child)
From a mathematical point of view Online surveys are nothing. They are statistically non-significant
What this online survey concluded is:
99.99900%: Don't know/ Not available / REF Refusal
0.00007%:
thinkhave answered that chocolate milk comes from brown cows0.00093%: have answered that chocolate milk comes from brown cows
Error: ±5%
Real surveys are much more expensive than online surveys. So if you want just to show a survey to catch public's eye, for TV or newspapers, any survey is good, so online surveys are cheaper. But, if you want real data to make a decision (i.e. a company, a political party), you will pay for a real survey. Later you can keep the results as secret information or make them public. But if you want the most reliable snapshot of reality, use a traditional survey. Maybe it's wrong but it is still the most reliable, the best you can get.
Surveys companies are trying to use online surveys to get statistically significant results, because they are much more cheaper.They are working on it but they still haven't solved the biased sample problem.
Note: Don't confuse data mining with surveys.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday June 17 2017, @08:28PM
Oblig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:50AM
Give that marketing manager a promotion; she just spun the new Leftist-pushed self-hating-American ideology into an effective advertisement.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:06AM (1 child)
Banana milkshake, on the other hand, is made by milking monkeys.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:16AM
Sure, but is the banana milkshake that is made by milking monkeys made from the milk milked by the milking monkeys, or do the milking monkeys keep the milk they milk for themselves and use other milk to make their monkey-made banana milkshake?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:50PM
Europe might outdo the US on the cow colour topic: Quite a few apparently believe there are lilac cows, because market leader "Milka" runs those in their ads. :) Moooo!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @01:09PM
According to this [iqcomparisonsite.com], about 7 percent of the population has an IQ below 77. And that's the highest number in that cohort. So if you take a survey across the whole population including these people, of course about that percentage is going to believe wacky things. I'd be more interested in "what college educated Americans believe" type of stuff. Or anything that controls for IQ, educationa level, SAT scores, whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:15PM
in the famous words of picard:"make it so!"