Week in review, quiz style
QUIZ
1. In what way did this week feel most like 1979?
a. Everyone listening to shit disco music
b. Hardly any Vogel bread in the supermarket
c. Prime Minister a real downer
d. Talk about carless days
2. How doomed is the Prime Minister?
a. If vainglorious self-belief can save you, the guy will be there for another decade
b. Ask yourself who else they have to set the public imagination alight and you sort of have your answer
c. Dog tucker mate
d. Depends what people say when you whisper the words Prime Minister Winston Peters
3. When will Trump’s war against Iran come to an end?
a. When he says it has
b. When Iran decides to stop retaliating
c. When we get there
4. Latest figures show how many deaths with the COVID virus in the past week?
a. None, but the lying media won’t tell you about the two million deaths from the Jabcinda vaccine
b. No idea mate, pass the kettle fries
c. 9
d. 19
5. In what year was this delicacy being sold in Kiwi shops?
a. 1949
b. 1959
c. 1979
d. 1999
6. What’s been approved for development in Southland?
a. Data centre
b. Museum of rugby museums
c. International conference centre
d. International conference centre and rugby museum
e. Casino
7. True or false: Rare Earth Elements are very rare
a. Yep, it’s a real problem
b. Nope, they are relatively abundant
8. David Lange’s ashes have been scattered where?
a. Hokianga
b. Fiordland
c. Otahuhu
d. Molesworth St fish and chip shop
9. The earliest reported Women’s Day event was held where and where and organised by whom?
a. Londinium 50 AD, Boudica
b. Orleans 1429, Joan of Arc
c. New York City, 1909, Socialist Party of America
d. Madison Square Garden, 1988, Madonna
10. What’s something good to do on Thursday 2 April, in Auckland?
a. Eat Chinese gooseberries from a can
b. Watch Trump on YouTube
c. Watch Luxon on TikTok
d. Evening of music and talk at The Button Factory
ANSWERS
1. In what way did this week feel most like 1979?
d. Talk about carless days.
Say, what do we do when life’s just buried us neck-deep in lemons? Yep: it’s lemonade time. You can go a long way in a short time on a bike, especially if it has electricity helping you. More inspiration here
2. How doomed is the Prime Minister?
a. If vainglorious self-belief can save you, the guy will be there for another decade
b. Ask yourself who else they have to set the public imagination alight and you sort of have your answer
c. Dog tucker mate
d. Depends what people say when you whisper the words Prime Minister Winston Peters
Give yourself a point and a car windscreen sticker for any of those answer; they all have their merits.
But how ever has it come to this? NewstalkZB Facebook page commenters Stephen and Grant have their fingers on the pulse, don’t you worry about that.
3. When will Trump’s war against Iran come to an end?
c. When we get there. Given the way Iran is fashioning its response to be much less costly but still highly detrimental, that could be a good long while. And given the possibility that it has been readying cells across the world for such a moment as this, the unexpected should be expected.
But how long? Well let’s see the piece of string.
And let’s also see if it’s connected to anything.
4. Latest figures show how many deaths with the COVID virus in the past week?
d. Latest Health New Zealand figures show 50 hospitalisations and 19 deaths with the virus in the past week.
Respect, as ever, to Michael Baker for clear-eyed perspective on the report.
“When you look at the report, it’s pretty equivocal on most of these points; it’s saying the decision-makers were doing the best they could with incomplete information,” Baker says. “You could argue, in hindsight perhaps, that lockdowns in Auckland should have been ended sooner, but you have to do what we call a counter-factual analysis, and what would that have looked like? “And we would have had Delta, the Delta outbreak, which was being controlled in Auckland, spreading throughout the country. It was much more harmful than Omicron, which came after that. “It might have put a real dampener on business and social activities over that summer period for the whole country.”
5. In what year was this delicacy being sold in Kiwi shops?
b. 1959. Things do change, over time. Today’s business success is not tomorrow’s. But the Watties closures do invite some questions such as: are we going at things in the best way when the shots are called principally by a global conglomerate and the supermarket duopoly?
6. What’s been approved for development in Southland?
a. A data centre
… described by the company behind it as an “AI factory” is set to become NZ’s second-biggest electricity user. Resource consent was approved for Datagrid’s Data Park in Southland, as well as for an undersea fibre optic cable linking the South Island to Australia.
I should be thrilled, right, given all my boosting for green energy economic transformation? Yes, but also no, no, not like this. For more on that please stand by for something very soon now on goddam AI.
7. True or false: Rare Earth Elements are very rare
b. Nope.
To quote GNS Science: Despite their name, they are relatively abundant in the Earth’s crust, but rarely found in economically viable concentrations.
This is good news if you’re China but not so much if you’re Trumpland, because one of them has spent decades perfecting the technology for extracting the stuff and the other is currently three wide without a trail as they like to say at the racetrack.
8. David Lange’s ashes have been scattered where?
a. Hokianga. RIP.
9. The earliest reported Women’s Day event was held when and where and organized by whom?
c. New York City, 1909. “Woman’s Day”, was organised by the Socialist Party of America at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel.
Here’s a post for this year’s Women’s Day that utterly stopped me in my tracks.
10. What’s something good to do on Thursday 2 April, in Auckland?
d. Evening of music and talk and readings at The Button Factory
Read all about it here including some bio notes that I said looked fine to me without noticing they suggest I am much-loved. Oh well. Please do come if you can, we’d love to see you.
Also enthusiastically recommended:
Discerning reader Linda Burgess called this A description of a sordid world impeccably written by Andrew O'Hagan.
Discerning listener Dianne Swann said oof! this gave me the hairstandyuponmy arm thing... the song, the video.. the feelings. xx Vera Ellen
