It is all part of the new left wing “NZ sucks” campaign.

look back at Steve Piersons posts to define that phrase

This isn’t so bad, really.

I’m better, maybe.

I love white puppies, do you? Especially when they have happy faces, and can run up and down a cliff face- impressive.

Exactly what does running a business have to do with coming up with policy ideas? I think you have a few circuits crossed about types of tasks and thinking techniques required to achieve them.

Running a business involves doing a reasonably specified job (eg make profits, provide good service, raise market share). These are reasonably straight forward in most businesses. The ones that are tricky are when you’re doing it without reasonable resources (where usually the correct response is to wind up the business if you aren’t an entrepreneur). It is largely setting up well-known systems to direct the available resources coherently. I’ve done that in the past.

It is quite different to navel gazing to look for a viable solution. That is looking for a solutions to a problem where all of the normal solution patterns aren’t going to work. That is pretty much what I like doing (along with actually implementing the solutions as well) and usually what I’m employed for. Quite a different pattern. You’re looking for a path to a solution. That is what the task-force was tasked to do. They didn’t even attempt it.

The other type of thinking is one that I seldom indulge in these days. It is playing what-if games that you know are impossible to implement. That is what the Brash task-force did. Shows in the lack of rigor and the sheer lack of any implementation path. Anyone can do that. It usually helps to have a few beers before starting.

The type of brain activity is completely different. If you don’t understand the difference then you probably haven’t done it enough for me to explain…

Then I saw felixs comment and there was the hook. An easy to see stupid online poll that failed to offer a reasonable alternative is a perfect example of the issue……. The post was completed a few minutes later while waiting for compile to run. Posted 15 minutes later after I edited out the typos, spelling mistakes and above all the half-finished sentences that are the bane of my writing style. I often wish I had a compiler to check for syntax for english.

But the media are frigging annoying me at present. They seem to have already hit the silly season.

Don Brash has an IQ of:

A) 80
B) 70
C) 60
D) Less than 60

Now that’s fair isn’t it?

Would you like me to link back to that conversation?

Interesting that this leads straight into Eddie’s next post.

I was watching the most recent Intelligence Squared debate yesterday that happened to have Richard Harries (Anglican minister), Charles Moore (ex-editor of The Guardian), A.C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins. Now, out of these four in a debate over “Atheism is the new fundamentalism”, only one of them pursued a line of ad hominem attack. Take a guess which?

If you guessed the ex-editor of a major newspaper, you would be right. And I think this example speaks a lot about those that are in charge of the content of such papers that no longer can we trust them to be the 4th Estate as they no longer intend on reporting with as little bias and as much insight as possible. Preferring instend to scream as shrilly and emotively as possible in their attempt to sling mud at opposing players. They are no longer reporters, they are entertainers and should be treated like the clowns they are.

Any poll that can’t distinguish between the responses of the National Party and the Socialist Workers Party is a load of right wing pants.