Flypaper for illiterates

Dammit, Tim, I was just about to make a $50 charity bet with Blair that Garfield would confirm my [screamingly obvious] interpretation.

That's excellent work Tim. I was beginning to doubt my sanity in the face of Blair's belligerence back there.

Someone should do a survey to determine the number of threads on this weblog about this alleged study which appeared in The Lancet.

Must be hundreds of thousands of them by now.

That is illiterate , innumerates. Blair truly is out of his depth ; a lightweight with an emotional age of 12. He is best , as you say, to stick to cars and proof reading.( I liked his last exchange with you where he was at the level of "Liar ,liar pants on fire").

Ah, I see that in SurlsLand, bits and pieces of reality continue to vanish one by one.
Let's try that again, shall we?

Someone should do a survey to determine the number of threads on this imaginary weblog about this alleged study which appeared in the mythical Lancet about invented deaths in the fictional Iraq.

Much better. In the end there will be only Tim Blair's smile. On a plastic turkey.

Mr. Tim Blair. I have prepared your next Garfield quote as follows:

>"I am shocked that it is so high, it is hard to...believe it. There is no reasonable way...that this study is...accurate ..."

>"We know...who have died, and we know that [the Lancet study is]...more than others have [accurately] reported."

My gut level common sense dictates that Tim Blair should now admit that he was wrong. But I can make a more accurate prediction of Blair's behaviour by looking at how he has conducted himself in the past.
I'll still check back in a little while, TB. Who knows? You may prove me wrong.

Given Lambert's form, I'd like to read the entire email from Garfield. Any chance of that?

You're pathetic, tim. That is the entire email and the emphasis is his.

Right-wing ideologues are a rare and unrepentant species. I won't be holding my breath for a blair correction.

PS - Tim L, I thought you two were good buddies now after your intimate drinking evening?

Given Lambert's form, I'd like to read the entire email from Garfield. Any chance of that?

Oh my lord! Reality obviously need never intrude in Blair's postmodern world view. Misusing Derrida, "il n'y a pas de hors-texte". All truth is merely at the service of ideology for him.

Ha...ha...ha..ha. Tiny tim got owned. And it sure is fun watching him dig himself a little deeper with each post. I'm predicting he might give up now, though. Surely someone even that reality-deprived would realise that the war is lost.

Eeeesh, I just had the misfortune of viewing the comments attached to Tim Blair's latest post. Tim B has actually just posted a correction to his earlier Garfield comments. The problem now is that there's a new quote there now which is being dismembered in various cretinous ways by commenters. I haven't posted a link because it is painful to read. I'd only look at it if you're a glutton for extreme brain punishment. They seem absolutely determined to misrespresent this pair of quotes from Richard Garfield in as many ways as possible:

"I loved when President Bush said 'their methodology has been pretty well discredited"

and then:

"That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it."

While Blair posted a correction he didn't mention what prompted it, leading to this comment from one of the faithful:

>Poor ol' Tim's never gonna make it as a liberal, will he? Boy just doesn't have the self esteem to deny he was wrong then blame Garfield for the screw up.

Blair denied that he was wrong again and again and again. Even when faced with the email from Garfield he still would not admit that he was wrong.

Lambert,

You've declined to run corrections in the past because, as you explained it, your error was at someone else's site and therefore not your responsibility. You've concealed corrections below the fold. You've posted corrections at long-vanished posts rather than offering corrections, as I've done, as new items.

Yet you lecture me on correction protocol. Unbelievable. Hey, why not tell your readers about a certain stealth correction you made (without citing what prompted it) after I emailed you about the danger of telling the world you were going on holidays and leaving your house unoccupied?

Oy gevalt. If Blair was a lumberjack, he'd be hauling timber into the woods.

I don't know tim but if you were to post a graceful correction and apology for your indiscretions this time you might just shame him into it. If not ... well we're not too far from the schoolyard are we. And you really have put your foot right in it, then into your mouth, then shot it off, this time haven't you :)

Mr Lambert,

In your post Andrew Bolt gets a perfect score on global warming you claim (see item six) that Tuvaluans have fled to New Zealand to escape rising sea level. Yet the article you link to as proof says:

Over the last decade, the islanders have come [to New Zealand] for many reasons - better jobs, college, overcrowding on the islands - and to escape what many see as a threat of sea level rise, caused by global warming.

Shouldn't you now offer a new post correcting your error and apologise to Andrew Bolt (and Chris de Freitas)?

In your post DDT and the Tsunami you ridicule Michael Fumento's call for DDT use in Sri Lanka noting:

[The World Health Organization is] sending malathion, which will actually be able to kill the mosquitoes there.

If you were not aware at the time of posting that malathion was no longer effective in Sri Lanka you became aware of this fact soon after but did not spontaneously correct your error until challenged on it by me. When you eventually corrected your error you chose to do so by appending a correction to the original post which was by then over a year old. Shouldn't you have corrected your error in a new post, acknowledged that I had caught you out and apologised to Michael Fumento?

In your post How many Iraqis have to die before it is front page news? you accuse the Washington Post of refusing to put the Lancet Iraq survey on the front page when the paper's print edition carried, above the fold, a photo of a grieving Iraqi mother with the following just below:

Study Cites Significantly Higher Death Rate

A new study says 655,000 more Iraqis have died violently since the invasion than otherwise would have been killed. A12

Clearly the study's death toll estimate was presented, in prominent position, on the front page. When it is pointed out to you that you are in error you respond with this:

cm says:

You know sometimes it's better just to admit you did something boneheaded instead of defending it in such a way that makes you look ridiculous.

And the innumerate Lancet critics will be doing this when?

Shouldn't you just admit that you got it wrong and post a correction? Or do you only demand corrections, not offer them?

Not shorter but clearer tim:

"I'm wrong but I'm not going to retract/apologise/correct myself because I don't like the way you do it when you are found wrong."

If anyone cares: Blair's beef is with the form of my corrections, not the substance. If it isn't entitled "Correction" and contains the words "I was wrong" he doesn't count it as a correction.

He also wants everyone to know that I added the last sentence [in this post](http://timlambert.org/2005/12/christmas-dog-blogging/) an hour or so after I posted it after he sent me an email message warning me that if I posted that I was away, burglars might target my home. I'm not sure why he wants to call this a "stealth correction", since it wasn't a correction at all.

I guess he wants us to think that he's really a nice guy.

Tim L.,

What exactly is your problem with admitting that you sometimes get things wrong? You've got no problem describing me as "wrong again and again and again"; why not apply the word to yourself when you are in error?

(Frankis and Fatfingers: I posted a correction some time ago. For some reason Lambert hasn't updated his post. Visit my site and scroll down.)

Blair, Tim has no problem admitting he sometimes gets him wrong. He was in error about you, but he quickly [corrected](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/correction.php) himself:

In this post I stated:

"The New York Post found someone [Kyle Smith] with less knowledge of science than Tim Blair to review An Inconvenient Truth."

I was wrong. Tim Blair has less knowledge of science than does Kyle Smith.

OK, I get things wrong to. The penultimate word of the first sentence is 'things', not 'him'. Unlike [Tim Blair's](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/tim_blair_claims_richard_garfi…), my proof-reading skills are not very good. I wonder what that entails...

Well I would call that a graceful correction tim and apparently it was up on your site before my comment was made here too, pardon me.

What's that one thing called, when different things are different magnitudes of wrong? Or is any wrong thing the same as the next? I'm so confused. I'm afraid I'm going to have to root for England in the Ashes, just to see tim b. blow his stack. I know, what a troll thing to say.

JF Beck. What is the point of your comments? Is it your claim that Tuvaluans aren't leaving because of climate change and accompanying rising sea levels? Or is your quibble nothing more than the link Tim used didn't site rising sea levels as the sole reason for leaving the country? Either way, the article still listed rising sea levels as a reason for fleeing, so Tim need not apologise to anyone.

Incidentally,here is a study by Hunter, in which he observes sea levels are rising in line with IPCC estimates. Also New Zealand's acceptance of global warming refugees is nothing new, having accepted the first wave of refugees as early as 2001, when large numbers of people were forced from their homes when they were simply washed away.

I think it's important for people to examine their motives for attacks on environmental commentators. Clearly, JF Beck, you are a right wing ideologue - for christ's sake, your website is RWDB!! Anyway, my experience with wingnuts is that their anti environmental anger is usually motivated by a dislike of people with dreadlocks and other 'greenies'.

Use your research skills for something other than pissant pedantry - Blair's got that niche under control.

Alex,

I can find nothing indicating that so much as a single person has had to flee Tuvalu as a result of rising sea level. Tim Lambert has clearly failed to show this to be the case.

There is this, however (lightly edited; my bold):

In this figure the zones identified and outlined from the 1941 aerial photograph have been superimposed over the 2003 satellite image. This allows us to see which areas and buildings in modern Fongafale maybe positioned in former low-lying or swampy ground and which buildings are positioned on the old reclaimed, disturbed lagoon foreshore. It is interesting to note that the Meteorological Office and nearby areas on the eastern side of the airstrip are all positioned in or near what is identified in 1941 as upper inter-tidal ironwood thicket. This vegetation type occurs in the high inter-tidal zone and would have previously been subject to regular (at least 1 or 2 times a month) saltwater flooding. Similarly, the freshwater and/or brackish swampy zones (green line) correspond well with present taro pits and low lying areas which experience occasional flooding. Similarly, Tafua pond's former extent was far greater and it appears to have extended west of the runway into what is now housing areas. The identification of these historically low-lying areas helps explain why some parts of Fongafale are vulnerable to saltwater flooding today.

Photograph (d) was taken during the second groundtruthing trip in 2005 and shows a typical ironwood thicket or saline swampy area in Funafara Islet. It is interesting to note that immediately west of this saline ironwood swamp was a transition to low-lying brackish / freshwater areas where swamp taro (e) was also growing (Cyrtosperma chamissionis - "pulaka"). The landform system of Funafara is assumed to be in a more or less pristine state and appears to mirror the pre-1943 environment of Funafuti. Furthermore, it is an indication that both saline and brackish flooding is a natural component of these islets. However, in view of the scale and nature of the 1943 US military engineering efforts on Funafuti the natural hydrological processes on this islet would have been irrevocably disturbed.

Earthworks going back to World War II might contribute to flooding but there is no evidence the flooding is the result of rising sea level. Fleeing the perceived future threat of rising sea level is not the same as fleeing rising sea level.

Fleeing the perceived future threat of rising sea level is not the same as fleeing rising sea level.

So taking that statement one step further, would you then agree that a perceived ban on DDT is far different to an actual ban on DDT?

I'll take your change of subject -- from rising sea level to DDT -- as an admission you can find nothing to support Lambert's contention that Tuvaluans have been forced to flee rising sea level.

There was indeed a de facto DDT ban. This is established beyond doubt.