Comments on: Are ads making kids fat? Readers weigh in

By: daveliberts

daveliberts — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:09:13 +0000

David Hand, as a reasonable leftie I can’t help you. I regard Ellis as an untidy shambling eccentric. I would have thought the right would have called him much worse. I also can’t understand Ellis’ concern about the right simplifying their enemies for propoganda purposes. Sure, this happens, but the left do exactly the same thing to their enemies. God knows, I’ve been doing Howard impersonations for over a decade (just a matter of getting that apeish sound he made when he was between thoughts right and the rest sorts itself out).

By: Gavin Putland

Gavin Putland — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:44:27 +0000

As my letter discusses employment in terms of production, i.e. in supply-side terms, I take it that Harry Goldsmith sees the problem as a shortage of demand and consequently regards demand-side measures as pulling the string and supply-side measures as pushing it.

But one could just as easily discuss employment in demand-side terms: if you want people to spend, you need to create reasonable expectations of future income. For those whose income consists chiefly of wages/salaries - i.e. most of us - that means securing and creating jobs.

This is NOT to say that “supply creates its own demand”, but rather to say that employment creates both.

By: Harry Goldsmith

Harry Goldsmith — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:01:55 +0000

I don’t agree with Gavin R. Putland and his alternative to the stimulus approach to stimulating the economy. He seems to be advocating pushing the string rather than pulling it. He is not completely wrong, he will be pleased to learn. If you apply a little push of the string along with the pull, it will reduce the drag, but not by much.

By: Raoul Dunk

Raoul Dunk — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:58:31 +0000

Poor Tamas just can’t take a trick with people like Harold Thornton. First they criticize Tamas for looking at the raw data and not the trends as revealed in their carefully drawn graphs - Then they criticize him for using an actual sequence of observations (summarising data just like a graph) as he is not paying attention to the individual observations.

And Henry - the sun has just come out here at Goolwa, so Global Warming is back !

By: Tamas Calderwood

Tamas Calderwood — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:44:37 +0000

Um, Harold - that Youtube video is “the complete 30 year history of the NSIDC satellite derived arctic sea ice extent in a single video”.

Does that make sense now? Try reading the blurb next time.

And the “science stuff” is far from a waste. In fact, it is disproving the global warming hypothesis as we write.