Someone has the plague and is hacking up a lung in the office next door. Well, at least I know now who to avoid when the killer epidemic of avian deathflu hits!

Christ, I think TMI worker was just on the phone discussing his upcoming liposuction with a medical professional. Well, some surgery that's elective and involves navels. Though I think he mentioned lasers too. I went for a walk, rather than listen.

Also, I can't google anything ever again, because I want to have "rugby hooker" in the search box on my address bar forever. My work efficiency has just been halved.

Is there any way to use those numbers put together to convince people that this 96% is likely a reasonable representation of the entire population, or is the fact that the sample isn't random going to doom any such efforts?

There is, but you would need a model to explain why some people have missing data. For instance, if you have information about the people who did and did not answer (e.g. age, sex, income, race) that allows you to predict whether they will answer the question, then you can get back the correct percentage. But this is very difficult and takes special software.

What most people do is to make the argument that missingness is not related to the answers people give. Do you have any idea whey some people answered and some didn't? Can you imagine any way that this would affect the particular answer that they would have given. Sometimes you can make a strong case. Then you can just accept the 96%.

Or you report the 96% with the caveat that it only provides information about responders and may not apply to the whole population. Put it in fine print in a footnote. No one gets 100% of the people they go after.

Dude, totally. You can make numbers like that say anything!!

The one in the middle of the front line of the scrum, whose job it is to hook the ball with their feet as it gets rolled into the scrum and push it back out the tail end of the scrum. The ones to either side of the hooker are called props.

So in rugby, you must give the hookers their props, yo?

Try searching on rubgy + scrum + "first row." There are only 3 people in the first row of a scrum, and the hooker is the middle one.

Done properly, the hooker sits on the shoulders of two middlerow people, one person per hip. Unlike the other two people in the first row, the hooker does not have someone reaching between his/her legs to grab at her waistband, either. It is a curiously virginal position to play.

I think one of my college roommates was a hooker -- she's kind of little and mean, so that would be right, right?

OK, I have got to get out of here. Note: favorite thing to do in the rain is not go outside. I failed miserably at that on Saturday in the driving rain, and will fail again today. Bleh.

My favorite thing to do in the rain depends on the season. Summer = run outside and play. Winter = curl up on the couch with tea/coffee/cocoa/etc.

Sadly, today, I do not have that option. (Though I will be having my lunch delivered -- no way I'm going out in this more times today than I absolutely have to.)

I think one of my college roommates was a hooker -- she's kind of little and mean, so that would be right, right?

I like this sentence.

I caught sight of a reflection of me this morning, striding into work in high-heeled shiny boots with big buckle, short red skirt, shiny black blouse and a Hellboy lunchbox. Ah, well. It's all me.

I really want cheese. I have yoghurt. Want cheese. Have chicken and rice, want cheese.