With the NSW election campaign well under way and a federal poll soon, I’m glad I stumbled across this classic explanation of how to get the answer you want from an opinion poll, courtesy of Yes, Prime Minister.
Lie honestly
A curious thing to find on a Monday morning: a passionate argument which claims that…
By lying to yourself, you are often able to innovate. You trick yourself into believing you are headed into something exotic and wonderful where no one has gone before. You imagine the thrill and seethe in the selfishness of seeing the chest of gold for the first time. You bask in your own glory that you are truly right and everyone else is wrong.
I’ve always tried to be an honest person. Is honesty holding me back from true creativity?
Surprise! Prohibition leads to crime!
Gosh, who’d have thought? Ban tobacco in a jail, where almost everyone smokes the stuff, and suddenly black market cigarettes are US$125 a pack. Jailhouse cooks make more from smuggling than cooking.
Chuck Alexander, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, says: “It didn’t do anything but make (tobacco) a lucrative business.”
Thanks to the clever lads at Freakonomics for the pointer — and some fascinating follow-up comments from their readers.
“Whose ABC?”: the first 100 pages
I’ve just read the first 100 pages of Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983-2006. I’m enjoying the journey, but I’m wondering if “eminent historian” K S Inglis is talking about the same organisation where I worked from 1984 to 1991.
You see, at my ABC we used to make programs.
Inglis’ ABC is a boardroom, a managing director’s office, and the occasional brawl with politicians.
So while I half-recognise what he’s talking about — someone called Geoffrey Whitehead as MD, the re-naming of Radio Two to Radio National and all that — very little of what he’s saying seems to reflect the day-to-day reality of broadcasting.
Last week of Hedwig
Last night we caught the “cult hit musical” Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Fantastic. iOTA‘s performance is astounding, despite having a name even sillier than mine. My friend Andrew said what needs to be said about this show ages ago. See it. You’ve got one week.
What hope the Liberal party?
Forget my last post about the Libs’ shoddy campaign in Marrickville, they can’t even organise a decent scandal any more!
While the Americans bring us sordid tales of evangelical ministers doing meth with rent boys and astronauts in diapers in kidnapping allegations, all the NSW Liberal Party can manage is sending a schoolboy-standard lewd SMS message. Pathetic.