August 23, 2003

INTELLECTUAL INSIGHT

Someone should tell Robert Dessaix -- who believes that there is “no forum in Australian public life that allows for the open exchange of ideas” -- about this crazy new thing called the “internet”:

"The opinion column in our newspapers is not the answer. The columnists state their opinion, and that's that. I am talking about exchange," says Dessaix.

"The only thing we have that are genuine forums for such activity are our literary festivals."

Wank. Speaking of dinosaurs, Mark Latham needs to learn that if you’re aiming for a high-tech metaphor, it’s best not to use low-tech terminology:

By contrast, the new growth theorists argue that research and technological enhancement are the main drivers of growth. Instead of focussing on the accumulation of objects, economists need to focus on the accumulation of ideas. In particular, education and research are the 'twin-carburettors' of economic expansion.

And scientific advancement is the butterchurn of wealth creation.

Posted by Tim Blair at August 23, 2003 04:53 PM
Comments

That first article immediately strikes me as one of the silliest things I have ever read.

The trick is to bang the rocks together, guys!

Posted by: Evil Pundit at August 23, 2003 at 08:42 PM

I have placed an inane comment on nearly every post- do I qualify as a troll?
Let me know- I have an agent that may be able to get me an interview with Peter Jackson's gofer.

Posted by: Habib Bickford at August 23, 2003 at 10:03 PM

Scientific advancement is the bee's knees. And economic expansion is just plain groovy.

Posted by: Ken Summers at August 24, 2003 at 04:16 AM

Fuel-injection people, what's this outdated twin-carb reference? The man's clearly mad...

Posted by: Jake D at August 24, 2003 at 10:29 AM

Tim, you should point them to your blog, the phonograph of information transmission.

Posted by: Jerry at August 25, 2003 at 12:33 AM

Re: " Instead of focussing on the accumulation of objects, economists need
to focus on the accumulation of ideas. In particular, education and research
are the 'twin-carburettors' of economic expansion."

I am an economist and I can assure you that-as any student who passed Intermediate
Macro knows-there is a HUGE literature in the theory of economic growth that deals
with nothing but ideas, education, and research. This strand of the literature has been
around literally for decades; it's not something that economists "need" to focus on.
We've been focusing on it for a while.

Posted by: Tom Cone at August 25, 2003 at 12:40 AM

Literary festival.

Sad gaggle of grim-lipped, embittered old has-beens and non-entities pretending to be important, and failing utterly.

A literary festival is supposed to be the only place exchange of ideas takes place?

More proof of how insular, how hypocritical and how absolutely irrelevant our chattering classes are. They ... who preach broadmindedness, tolerance and 'relevance'.

Posted by: ilibcc at August 25, 2003 at 03:35 PM