kidattypewriter

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The lack of all these positrons puts me in a very negative frame of mind

I was reading on Catallaxy the other day that
The Australian Conservation Foundation has hit back, releasing the results of a national poll of some 1500 people that appears to confirm that over three-quarters are in favour of the problems of the Murray-Darling being fixed...
and that (according to the ACF)
New polling shows more than three quarters of Australians (77 per cent) agree that degradation of the Murray-Darling needs to be fixed now...
Blimey. Sounds serious. These people being polled are in favour of problems being fixed, and shortages being rectified. As for that one quarter of people who aren't in favour of a problem being fixed, well, one wonders what they'll do if a problem happens to them? That would be very problematic, indeed.

Then again, most people would probably agree with a survey statement statement that 'there are too many chemicals in our food' or 'we have to stop using chemicals in cleaning products'. (Although of course almost everything is made out of chemicals.) That's all right, it doesn't make them stupid - you don't have to go around carrying a set of dictionary definitions in your head to be considered intelligent - but it would seem to indicate that survey results can sometimes be a little bit, er, misleading.

It makes you wonder what people won't agree to on surveys. I've got one or two surveys of my own in mind, something like...

Do you strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree with the following statements:

1. There is a shortage of positrons in this section of the universe, and something should be done to rectify this shortage before nothing is done.

2. All religions should be respected, and so there is nothing wrong with the worship of Cthulhu.

3. There is a lack of neutrinos in our galaxy, and we need immediate government funding to rectify this imbalance.

4. Problems are bad, and badness is wrong, so we should all do something random immediately in order to stop this wrong badness from causing problems.

Thank you for your assistance. I look forward to drafting a self-righteous press release and hurling it at every available media source as soon as the results of this survey are back in.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Problems are bad, and badness is wrong, so we should all do something random immediately in order to stop this wrong badness from causing problems. "

Is the converse true? If so: solutions are good and goodness is right so we should all do something deliberate immediately in order to start this good rightness causing solutions.

TimT said...

Most likely, I should probably write to the minister urging him or her to do something deliberate to immediately cause the quantity of good rightness and nice happiness in the world to lift. Any deliberate somwething will do!

Legal Eagle said...

Definitely need more neutrinos. Bring 'em on.

(The word verification is "swedeme". Is this a message from Cthulu telling me something - that I should go live in Sweden???)

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

eXTReMe Tracker

Blog Archive