Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
September 30, 2004
This is David Hemenway's response to criticism of his book Private Guns Public Health by Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority.
September 27, 2004
I was asked to respond to what is claimed to be a critique of my book by Kevin Baker. I have neither the time nor inclination to have a detailed…
September 29, 2004
I don't think I've ever written a "go and read this post" post, but go and read this post. Please.
September 29, 2004
Lott has an article in the National Review Online where he claims that the Washingtonian DC handgun ban caused crime increases:
Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,…
September 29, 2004
There's an election coming up in Australia. I haven't blogged about it because other people are doing a much better job than I ever could. A special plug though, for Tom Vogelgesang, who is running for Senate on a libertarian platform and has the good judgement to run a blog, choose…
September 28, 2004
The Power Line blog informs us that the Kerry campaign has mounted a "terrorist attack on Australia":
"We all know that Kerry's sister is over in Australia telling the Aussies to vote for their [leftist] candidate if they want to be safer from terrorist attacks; that they need…
September 27, 2004
60 Minutes (the Australian version) has done a story on the use of deadly force in self-defence.
Unfortunately it sufers from the same problem that many of these stories do. Tony Martin (who was convicted of murdering a burglar) gets to present his account of what happened…
September 27, 2004
Sandor is collecting blogger's results on the political compass quiz. My own collection is here (now over 500 blogs!). Actually I think the Political Survey quiz is better, but hey, you can try both, enter your results into my table and send them to Sandor if you are so inclined.
September 26, 2004
A commenter on my earlier post on John "I hate guns" Howard wondered: "If Latham wins, will the public generally credit this issue?" Some shooters have a plan to try to make it an issue:
You Can Send John Howard And Canberra A Message From NSW Shooters
Stop victimising sporting…
September 25, 2004
For a webzine that has "Where free markets meet technology" in its masthead, Tech Central Station sure seems to have little faith in the ability of free markets to provide consumers with what they want. Consider this column by Glenn Reynolds. Reynolds reckons that…
September 19, 2004
Summary: Lott and Hassett have not analyzed their data correctly---it actually shows no evidence that headlines are biased against Republicans. (My previous posts are here and here.)
The essence of Lott and Hassett's case that newspapers are biased against Republicans is given in…
September 16, 2004
Crime statistics for the last 12 months in NSW have been released. Most crime categories have decreased significantly.
Indecent assault, act of indecency and other sexual offences
Down by 11.9%
Robbery with a weapon not a firearm
Down by 19.7%
Break and enter - dwelling
Down by 9.4%…
September 15, 2004
Glenn Reynolds writes
Here's some helpful advice for CBS: "A source lies to you, and you find it out, you burn him. Period."
Damn straight. So, Professor Reynolds, who was the anonymous source who lied to you, falsely claiming that Steve Levitt was "rabidly antigun"?
September 15, 2004
The story of the University of Newcastle plagiarism scandal continues:
Professor Marimuthu was 18 days from signing a new five-year agreement that increased the annual fee payable by the Institut WIRA in Malaysia, where the campus was based, from $50,000 to $300,000.
He asked the…
September 14, 2004
The AEI now has a video of the Lott/Hassett show alleging media bias against Republicans. (My previous post is here.) What is wrong with their study can be explained very briefly. First look at the graph on the left of unemployment rates. Now, here's what Lott and Hassett say:
"In the case…
September 14, 2004
It has now been two years since I asked him for evidence that he had conducted a survey. The original email is here. In all that time, the only evidence for a survey that he has been able to come up with is David Gross's story.
September 13, 2004
The Syney Morning Herald has the latest evidence from the plagiarism scandal at the University of Newcastle (my previous posts are here and here) (my emphasis):
The University of Newcastle sat on its "most serious" plagiarism allegations for more than four months, only acting when…
September 13, 2004
By popular request I'm going to comment on Lott's LA Times oped on the assault weapons ban. Basically, I agree with Lott here. As I noted earlier the ban doesn't make sense.
However, Chris Mooney has a point when he writes:
Providing balance is one thing, and it's something op-ed…
September 12, 2004
Lott has teamed up with Kevin Hassett to study whether economic reporting is biased. The paper, Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?, concludes, surprise, surprise that the newspapers are biased against Republicans.
The trouble with their study is that the economy…
September 10, 2004
McKitrick has added a correction his page describing his paper that purports to find economic signals that I posted on here. McKitrick admits to mixing up degrees and radians but claims:
There was a small error in the calculation of regression coefficients in our paper. Our conclusions were…
September 10, 2004
In the latest installment in the U of Newcastle plagiarism scandal, Ronald MacDonald tries to outdo Robert Rugimbana (emphasis mine):
The deputy vice-chancellor of research and internationalisation, Ronald MacDonald, said yesterday that he had originally believed the plagiarism claims by Ian…
September 7, 2004
The Sydney Morning Herald reports (emphasis mine):
In late 2002 a casual lecturer employed by the University of Newcastle to teach at its affiliated school in Malaysia, Institut WIRA, gave zero marks to 15 students in a class of 50, citing "deliberate, serious plagiarism".…
September 5, 2004
In my previous post I mentioned Daniel Davies' demolition of yet another dodgy Steve Milloy article. Milloy attacked a recent JAMA study that found:
Higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with a greater magnitude of weight gain and an increased risk for…
September 3, 2004
Daniel Davies has some criticism of a Steve Milloy Fox News column that purported to debunk a study that found that sugary drinks were linked with weight gain and diabetes. Milloy has a column on Fox News where he regularly disinforms his readers. Today I'm going to look at a…
August 29, 2004
On his blog Lott reports that he was recently asked by a reporter whether President Bush was evil or just stupid. If a reporter asks a question like that it raises serious questions about her objectivity. How can a reporter with such a negative opinion of the President…
August 25, 2004
I've had a closer look at the "bombshell" paper that Patrick Michaels described like this:
After four years of one of the most rigorous peer reviews ever, Canadian Ross McKitrick and another of us (Michaels) published a paper searching for "economic" signals in the…
August 23, 2004
Scott Campbell has a go at the Australian Historical Association, somehow managing to misread Cathie Clement's proposal that historians should not publicly attack their colleagues' integrity as a proposal that historians should not publicly disagree. Campbell has a fine old rant about how silly…
August 16, 2004
In my previous post I commented on the various responses of sceptics now that both that satellite and surface record show global warming is happening. (The map below shows the global warming trend for the troposphere from the satellite record.) Scott Church left a…
August 11, 2004
(The title of this post is a quote from John Maynard Keynes.) Today I want to look at different responses to new information about global warming.
I'll go first: In my archives I found a Usenet post of mine from 11 Aug 1988. In response to a suggestion that global warming…
August 10, 2004
Kevin Baker observes that Lott has removed Baker from his blogroll, presumably because Baker has described Lott as the pro-gun version of Michael Bellesiles.
This fits in with Lott's practice of not linking to criticism, which suggests that he thinks his position is a weak one. Rather…
August 8, 2004
From pages 469 and 471 of Richard North Patterson's novel Balance of Power:
If the purpose of deposing an expert witness was to help him hang himself, Sarah meant to be as helpful as possible to Dr. Frederick Glass.
"Dr. Fred," as he cheerfully called himself, was as…