Studies in stupidity

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Studies in stupidity

An awful lot of money is expended by governments and public bodies engaging so-called academics to carry out studies. Now that might sound like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. After all we need to know certain information in order to plan for many different private and public organisations and with studies that actually move forward our understanding I have no problem whatsoever.

However I am seeing an increasing number of really stupid studies that seem to be telling us things that nobody with an IQ in even double digits should need a study to find out. It is annoying enough to see public money wasted in such a reckless way, but even more frustrating that I can’t become recognised as an academic and manage to grab some of this bounty for myself.

The latest of these forays into the frivolous is the study carried out by Otago University that trumpeted its astonishing findings to the nation via the pages of the NZ Herald this week. 'Right to success' belief can cause students to struggle screamed the headline to a story that informed us how students who had an exaggerated belief they had a right to success are more likely to struggle come exam time.

But the stupidity doesn’t end there; it goes on to ‘reveal’ that these same students whose own opinion of themselves was much higher than their academic prowess, performed worse than their peers in the final exam – but only when they found the paper more difficult than expected.

Well I never. Fancy that. And it took a huge slab of money from vote education that instead of being been used to educate our students tells us that little twerps who have lost touch with reality vis-a-vis their own capabilities are more likely to fail. Duhh!

And this study was not only funded by Otago University, but also published in the International Journal of Higher Education. Higher than what, I wonder. Higher than kindy education? No wonder the world is going to hell in a handcart.

If journals bearing such a prestigious sounding names as that are according studies of the bleeding obvious such importance, I have to wonder if there just might be a chance for me to grab some of the coin that is being freely tossed about.

Why don’t we commission a study into why we spend so much money on studies into such ridiculous ideas as the one above? I’m sure the answer to that is just as obvious, but for anyone who doesn’t see it; the answer is that governments, councils and bodies administered by them love to spend money on everything but their core functions. They also like to appoint wankers to carry out these idiotic activities so they can turn out press releases to divert our attention from the real issues and enable our shamefully unimaginative newspapers to fill a few more column inches without having to leave their desks and write anything intelligent.

Rather than print slop like this the Herald should have been out there grilling this twat about how his study had improved the lot of students at Otago Uni or slam Heckyeah Parata up against the blackboard and get her to explain why there is insufficient money to fund our schools properly but always enough to fund stupid studies like this one.

I have a few ideas of my own for some ground breaking (or is that wind breaking) studies that should improve the world just as much as the example above.

How about a study into why when I fill my car with petrol I am about $120.00 poorer? Why should this be? I am wondering if it could somehow be related to the fact that I actually have to pay for the stuff. It’s just a theory, mind you, but I’m sure if someone was to chuck me a hundred thousand or so I could investigate that fully and come up with a conclusion that would benefit the whole of New Zealand.

Alternatively I could carry out a study into the meaning of life. This I suggest could be a life- long study and I could drip feed my startling revelations via a series of annual reports which I know would be eagerly anticipated by a grateful nation. I could probably knock out between 700 and 1000 words of absolute bollox, much as I do on a regular basis these days except that the taxpayer would be paying me a handsome retainer to do it.

Yes, I think I could get used to that. They can expect my submission very soon.

Elephant’s trunk calls

It’s okay to drink and drive. It must be because I just read it in the Herald today. And not only is it alright to drink and drive; it is also okay to do both at the same time.

It’s times like these when you think you’ve either had too much to drink yourself or you have simply crossed over into a parallel universe. I don’t drink alcohol anymore, so I know it’s not that. As for the parallel universe; well I’ll let you make the call on that one. But bear with me for a moment before you leap to the conclusion that this old codger has finally and irrevocably exceeded his sell-by date.

It is apparently okay to drink and drive because when a couple in Nelson recently reported seeing a dimwit driving his car while swigging from a bottle of beer they discovered from the plods that he was not committing an offence. Yes; that’s right. Apparently the geniuses that drafted our drink driving legislation only took account of people behind the wheel being a menace if they had over a certain level of alcohol in their blood which might seem fair enough to some. It seems that as long as you haven’t hit the magic figure you are perfectly entitled to drive and swig because it is not an offence on the statute books to do so unless you are under 20 years of age when your allowable level is zero.

The cops will stop you if they see you doing this, but due to a combination of the hopeless legislation and the brain dead plods, you will not be prosecuted unless you are over the aforementioned limit. I say brain dead plods, because (a) I like saying it; (b) it is an accurate assessment of most of the boys and girls in blue (sad, but true, but more of that later) and (c) because it just goes to show how little imagination they have. Honestly I doubt that a roomful of them would have enough sparks of intelligence to burn the toast.

If I had been that copper I would have charged the prick with driving without due care and attention. You can’t tell me that he could concentrate on the road ahead and behind him and to the side of him while his melon is tipped back so he can slug down a draft of Lion Piss. In fact I would go further and suggest that if these bozos who draft our laws ever wake up enough to do something about this, they might as well make it an offence to be swigging ANYTHING while driving, whether it is beer, coffee, alka seltzer, or drain cleaner. The mere fact that you are removing your attention from the road momentarily and tipping your head back and driving with one hand means you are not in full control of your vehicle. The fact that you might get away with it nine times out of ten doesn’t mean it is safe. If you shoot somebody with a gun, on many occasions they will live to kick your arse later, but that still doesn’t make it safe.

We have already banned the use of hand-held cellphones in cars because they are a distraction. Although with the number of plonkers still using them in cars you wouldn’t think we had. So why not extend that commonsense ban to include anything that takes your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road? Any answers? I’m buggered if I can think of any that would indicate the Government is actually serious about reducing the number of road crashes.

Of course this is another restriction upon our freedoms, but one that I think needs to be made, because most of the people on our roads are irresponsible idiots. Far too many of them are unable to safely drive their cars anyway.... or even walk and chew at the same time.

And while we are on the subject of drinking and driving I had a good laugh reading about the cousin-shagging moron from Masterton who came up with a cunning plan to avoid being done for drink driving. This seventeen year old retard had a couple of beers and then decided to drive his car. But because he realised he could get done for drink driving because the level for under 20s is zero (which already makes him smarter than the bozo at the Wairarapa Times who wrote the story and solemnly informed us it was 150mcgs), he decided that getting rid of the smell might throw the brain dead plods off the trail.

It might have worked if they had only wanted to get a whiff of his lovely fresh breath, but unfortunately our young Einstein decided the best thing to get rid of the smell would be his Lynx deodorant. After all it had kept him shagless for all of his natural life up to now so it probably should work fine in this case. Sadly for him it didn’t work, because the cops were proceeding down the road, as they do and following Police procedure when they stopped Mr Sweetbreath. As this neither involved wanting to shag him or reject his advances for that matter and instead meant breath testing him; the game was up. Furthermore as anyone with even a fraction of a brain knows, most deodorants contain alcohol, so our young Rhodes Scholar had just gulped down probably twice as much alcohol as his couple of cheap beers would ever have contained. Not that it mattered too much anyway as even the most minute reading would have meant that he was in the crap, given his age which was about the same as his IQ it would seem.

Oh, and further to the brain dead plods; some of you might have read the story in the Herald about the couple from earthquake city who had to go out and catch their own burglar because the cops were too stupid to do it for them.

They came home one day recently to discover their house had been burgled and it was apparent they had only just missed the burglars. It also appeared the burglars might be planning to return as their quad bike was sitting in the driveway. They rang the cops and told them what had happened and the fact that the crime scene was still red hot, but the plods responded by saying they wouldn’t be able to come out for 48 hours! 

So here was an extremely fresh crime scene and the strong possibility the offenders were still in the area, and yet the plods wanted the couple to carry on as normal and no doubt mess up the crime scene for two bloody days before even coming and checking it out.

Fortunately this young couple were made of sterner stuff and decided to lay in wait for the offenders to return. Sure enough, a short while later some young yob turned up and tried to get away with their quad bike. They pounced and the bloke knocked the little prick to the ground but then he got up and ran away. However the woman shot after him in her car and blocked the little shit in until her partner arrived and dropped him again. They rang the cops again and managed to hold onto him until they arrived. They have since had to do their own inquires with the offender and have basically done everything the plods should have done. Needless to say they are far from impressed. 

I suppose now they will be charged with assaulting the little twerp and driving without due care and attention, and some wimp in a wig will let the little scumbag go free.

It’s enough to drive a bloke to drink while it’s still legal to do so.

Not really any mystery here

How can people be so stupid as to vote these guys back into power? How can people not see what is really happening with their rates money? How come people don’t understand they are entitled to (an employment agreement/an opinion/good service)?

These are questions you regularly hear being asked by people who care what goes on or basically give a shit. They are fair questions and sometimes it is hard to understand why people are so gullible, but a few items I have culled from recent news articles go a long way towards answering those questions.

The first of these is a short piece from SunLive dated 4 July 2012. Apart from the last line which refers to someone not mentioned elsewhere and whose role we don’t know, this story tells us of a 33-year-old Pukehina man who burned himself as a result of pouring petrol on a fire. Ashes to ashes, dumb to dumber.

The next tale is from the Bay of Plenty Times dated 3 July 2012. It tells of the ingenious cunning one Gate Pa resident whose partner had been caught drink driving in their jointly owned car on Sunday night, 1 July. Around 1am on Monday July 2 Ms Dipshit decided to go and pick him up from his place (apparently they don’t live together). The problem was that she took along her two kids and a belly full of booze. The cops recognised the car cruising in Gate Pa and decided to pull it over in case it was Sonny Jim who they’d nicked earlier. Imagine their surprise when the driver blew more than twice the legal limit and they realised they had got two hits from the same car in one night. Teaching the kids to drive drunk – fag-end!

My third sorry saga comes from Wellington, where a lot of sorry tales are made. This one I saw in the NZ Herald of Monday 2 July. The coaches of two Under 11 rugby sides got into an argument about how the game was being refereed by one of them. As they were unable to reach a meeting of minds they decided to resort to a meeting of fists upon heads. A couple of parents jumped in to pull them apart and later a parent was also assaulted by an 11-year-old player who was no doubt simply emulating his elders. The cops were called and the two bozos that started the whole thing are being charged with assault. The Wellington Rugby Union is scratching its head trying to decide what to do, while any sane person can see exactly what to do. Stick a fork in ‘em and turn ‘em over; they’re done.

And to show there really is very little hope for our nation; here is the final tale of woe or is that whoa if that’s what you yell at an Ass to tell them to stop being what they are?  

This one I first saw in the New Zealand Herald of 3 July 2012. It involved the two Mensa hopefuls from Mosgiel who were enjoying a quiet huff of LPG on a chilly Mosgiel afternoon. For the uninitiated, huffing is the practice of inhaling a gas or similar toxic vapour. The two bright lads each had a 9kg cylinder of the stuff and they were getting stuck into these, while keeping warm in front of a nice cosy gas fire. I gather huffing is a rather imprecise process and there is no guarantee one can inhale every last drop of the gas being released. As a result there is a certain build-up of what one might call stray gas that is released into the room.

These two young twits would have been frequently turning the valves on the cylinders on and off between each huff and as they got more whacked and less co-ordinated, I would imagine they took longer t turn the valve off each time. Anyway as I am sure you all know by now they eventually had enough stray gas in the place for it to erupt into flames, setting both them and the house on fire. Fortunately (or otherwise one might argue) they got out of the house and shortly thereafter a third gas cylinder which was actually being used to power the gas fire also started getting hot around the collar and blew half the roof off the house. Reminds me of the big stupid wolf - he huffed and he puffed and he blew his house up.

Is it any wonder people vote people who don’t have their interests at heart back into power? Is it any wonder people can’t see what’s happening with their rates money? Is it any wonder people don’t understand they are entitled to (an employment agreement/an opinion/good service)?

I don’t think so.    

Chumps’ tea party

Long before this election began I expressed the view that (sadly) there was probably only one way Jianqi could lose this election; and that would be if a really bad scandal erupted at a critical stage of the game.

The teapot tape might just be that, er smoking teapot. It is amazing to think a cup of cha could have such a potentially explosive charge. In fact, given the way Jianqi and Banksia have reacted I am more interested in what might have been in that teapot than what is on the tape. After all the tape is perfectly innocent, isn’t it? I mean it must be because His Right Honourable Prime Ministership said so. (Cue Tui sign)

There are many questions arising from this affair and not all of them will be answered by us hearing the tape. One that immediately springs to mind is, what is the offence Jianqi alleges has occurred here? It is clear there is nothing in the Privacy Act that could actually relate to this and in any case, that Act is administered by the Privacy Commissioner, not the Police Commissioner. So what piece of legislation is our toady little Prime Munter using for this?

My guess is the wanker is trying to drag something out from the National Disgrace’s considerable war chest of hastily passed legislation dealing with public order or National (geddit) security. Don’t forget an awful lot of flustering went on following 9/11 when ‘anti-terrorism’ legislation was shoved through at breakneck pace and further ‘amendments’ were whipped through following the Christchurch earthquake under the guise of ‘public order’ so it could be something from here.

I also thought it was interesting, nay damned troubling that police saw fit to deliver a warning to people not to publish. I don’t believe they are in a position to do this because I don’t believe there is a legal justification for it. But what troubles me more is why are they leaping to the defence of the PM and making an unnecessary and some would say, reckless and stupid statement about the legal position. Clearly little Jianqi has pulled rank and asked (read demanded) his big bully-boy mates come and support him and let everyone else know they’ll get the bash if they step out of line.   

But whatever he is trying to do, it seems an awful lot of trouble to go to for a ‘principle’. In any case I’d have thought principles and politicians did not belong on the same page never mind the same sentence. As I told Granny Herald this week, in an effort to encourage them to publish the bloody thing; why hold back on ethical grounds? That’s hardly a quality one could associate with Jianqi or Banksia – especially if, as I suspect they were running down old Duffer Dong and planning a coup de space. (That’s where one space cadet replaces another).

Clearly summat is afoot and someone is a liar. I sincerely hope we get to find out whom – BEFORE November 26!

As for the cameraman who allegedly accidentally left his recorder on, I have to say it is entirely plausible. I say this because I have done exactly the same thing on a number of occasions. What happens sometimes is you are interviewing somebody and you have to interrupt to take a picture of someone else because they are about to leave and it is very easy in the heat of the moment to leave the thing on. Several times I have been and done an interview and left and when I got back to the office found that the last 20 minutes of my tape are the sounds of me cursing at other motorists on my way home. It is much easier to do than most people would realise, especially when you are being rushed along by deadlines.

But to get back to my original point; this just might be the turning point in this election. At this late stage I would doubt it could completely sink the Nats, but it could certainly cut into their vote enough to make things really interesting. It might just expose the ACTors for the bit part players and pantomime dames they really are and sink them without a trace.

I don’t think little prissy Jianqi has a leg to stand on as far as obtaining any sort of prosecution over this, but I have urged TV3 and Granny Herald, and I urge all of you to urge them, to publish without delay, because if they don’t Banksia and Jianqi could seek injunctions to tie their hands. Then they could well face prosecution if they publish.

So carpe diem, Herald and TV3 and anyone else who knows what’s on that tape. It might be nothing, but then I might be two metres tall and the next All Black captain! We certainly can’t believe anything our incumbent Prime Munter says because he continually lies like a bloody flatfish. Oops sorry it’s not telling lies is it? We’re in a dynamic environment. Where is that dynamite when I need it?