tlambert | April 25, 2007John Wilkins has already told the story with pictures, but I had to post this picture I took at Watson's Bay:
What's that on the ground?
Have a closer look:
It's a paper published by the Australian division of the Larouchites declaring that Global Warming is a fraud. Mooney already had a copy because one had been slipped under his door at his hotel in Melbourne where the science writers conference was.
It's hard to make out in the picture, but the graph under the headline is Beck's nonsensical claims that CO2 fluctuated wildly before we started taking the most accurate measurements. And…
tlambert | April 25, 2007After Martin Bryant murdered 35 people at Port Arthur, Prime Minister John Howard got new laws enacted that banned semi-automatic long guns. At the time, I felt that was bad policy. Since almost all most gun killings involve just one death it didn't matter whether whether the gun was a semi-auto or not, writing:
I think that the new laws are mostly a stupid waste of money.
In the years that followed, homicide, firearm homicide, suicide and firearm suicide all fell, but a paper published last year by Baker and McPhedran argued that the decline was not statistically significant. However,…
tlambert | April 25, 2007Josh Marshall suggests that Karl Rove was getting his allegations of voter fraud that lead to the U.S. Attorney firing scandal from an article by John Lott.
He doesn't have a link to the article, but here it is, posted to Freerepublic by Mary Rosh.
tlambert | April 23, 2007Gilbert Burnham has been interviewed (subscription required, copy here). Some extracts:
Why do you think your survey has been criticised?
These are unpleasant results, and they are associated with a war that has seriously divided the countries participating. Some people felt that we were not supporting the troops and were unpatriotic. I am not angry about that. As malicious as some of the hate mail I received is, I can see their point of view because I was in the military, in a combat unit in Korea during Vietnam. These soldiers in Iraq are volunteers, by and large, with good intentions, and…
tlambert | April 22, 2007Glenn Reynolds accuses me of quote doctoring, linking to this utterly conclusive proof by JF Beck:
Lambert himself engages in selective out-of-context quoting in attempting to refute Berlau's assertion that Paul Ehrlich advocated the forced sterilization of all Indian men who had fathered three or more children. Lambert reckons this is what Ehrlich wrote:
A few years ago, there was talk in India of compulsory sterilization for all males who were fathers of three or more children.
Hell, for all I know Ehrlich's next sentence says, "I agree". Regardless, if Berlau is guilty of quote doctoring…
tlambert | April 21, 2007Mrs Deltoid wrote the following and told me that I had to post it on my blog. I'm not sure who it is directed at.
I'm a blogger, gonna try some rap.
XYZ put me on the map.
I'm a V.I.B
I'm on the list
I'm a VIP
you get the gist.
Piss me off and it'll be G.G.
Just try it- you will see.
Yeah I'm a blogger,
Unk Unk
One wrong word and you'll be sunk
My kids say I'm uncool
A nerd who acts like he's still at school
watchin' Bab5 on DVD
and listening to Beatles avidly
But it's my life and I'm gonna livit
Blogging takes time and I'm gonna givit,
Cause I have fans, I have a lot
A million hits is what…
tlambert | April 20, 2007The Lancet authors have released the data to other researchers:
Six months have passed since the publication of the study and we feel the time is now right to make the data set available to academic and other scientific groups whom we judge have the technical capacity to objectively analyze the data. It is our desire that the data be used in a way that will advance the understanding of how to best assess mortality during conflicts and to improve the protection of those caught in conflict. Although conflict is inextricably intertwined with national and international politics, it is our very…
tlambert | April 20, 2007Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy" writes about some of the dubious numbers used by both sides on the debate about guns.
This one should be familiar to my readers:
Another number that has emerged from the antigun-control camp ties multiple-victim public shootings to restrictions on carrying concealed weapons. John Lott Jr., visiting professor at SUNY, Binghamton, and University of Chicago economist William Landes counted references to multiple public shootings -- more than one killed or wounded at one time -- in the Lexis/Nexis news database for a 2000 book. They matched…
tlambert | April 19, 2007The editorial in the Australian today stated:
With memories of the 35 killed at Port Arthur still raw, many Australians would be shocked to learn that the gun lobby in the US pounced on the Virginia Tech massacre to call for extending the right of citizens to carry concealed weapons.
Not those who get the Australian, because today they also printed an op-ed by John Lott calling for just that.
Lott writes:
Bill Landes of the University of Chicago law school and I examined multiple-victim public shootings in the US from 1977 to 1999 and found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, the…
tlambert | April 18, 2007Glenn Reynolds argues that if only more people had guns, there would be fewer mass shootings. Unfortunately he gets his facts wrong.
If there were more responsible, armed people on campuses, mass murder would be harder.
In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene.…
tlambert | April 18, 2007The Globe and Mail reports:
After he couldn't get a visa to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children, a renowned Iraqi epidemiologist has been told he can't fly through Britain en route to give a similar talk in Canada.
Riyadh Lafta -- best known for a controversial study in the respected medical journal The Lancet that estimated Iraq's war dead at more than half a million -- said in an e-mail to his U.S. research colleagues that he had two choices: Fly to England without the transit visa, or turn around and go home.
University officials were working hard…
tlambert | April 17, 2007Back in 2004, Glenn Reynolds declared that the election here in Australia was in no small part a referendum on the Iraq war. This was wrong, as anyone who was here at the time could tell you. So, I posted a roundup of comments from news stories, pundits and bloggers, left and right, pro- and anti-war. Everyone agreed that the war was only a minor issue. Reynolds' sole support for his position, Tim Blair, showed up in comments to deny that he was saying that the war was a major issue.
Since not one person in Australia now supported his position Reynolds concluded that he was right and that…
tlambert | April 15, 2007Dennis Avery has taken a break from getting global warming science wrong to write a Rachel-Carson-was-worse-than-Hitler piece:
If Rachel Carson were still alive, April 12 would have been her 100th birthday. All over the Western World well-meaning, but misguided, souls marked that day with choruses of praise for the woman who almost singly-handed created the modern environmental movement. Her book, Silent Spring, warned us that man-made pesticides would kill our kids with cancer and eliminate our wild birds.
What? I didn't notice anyone marking April 12 with choruses of praise for Carson.…
tlambert | April 14, 2007Glenn Reynolds endorses a post by John Berlau who accuses environmentalists of making racist comments like Don Imus. Berlau gives five examples and Berlau is deceptive in each and every one of them. Environmentalists must be completely non-racist if Berlau can't make a case without resorting to quote doctoring.
The most outrageous environmentalist comment Berlau offers is this:
Charles Wurster, co-founder and former chief scientist of Environmental Defense Fund (now Environmental Defense):
When asked about human deaths that would result from the banning of DDT, due to exposure to more…
tlambert | April 14, 2007The Durban Mercury reports:
South African medical researchers have reported alarming evidence of low sperm counts and other damage to the male reproductive system linked to the use of the pesticide DDT in anti-malaria spray campaigns.
Professor Tiaan de Jager, project leader and co-author of the study, told The Mercury on Wednesday that there was now sufficient evidence for the department of health to be concerned about the health impacts of DDT and to consider moving towards safer alternative methods for malaria control.
De Jager and fellow researchers from the University of Pretoria's…
tlambert | April 13, 2007The Globe and Mail has more details about Lafta's visit to Simon Fraser:
A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the United States.
Unable to travel to the University of Washington, Riyadh Lafta -- best known for a controversial study that estimated Iraq's body count in the U.S.-led war in Iraq at more than half a million -- will arrive at Simon Fraser University in B.C. this month to give a lecture and meet with research associates.
Dr. Lafta…
tlambert | April 13, 2007BetUS.com has set up a bunch of bets for suckers on global warming. Ker Than at LiveScience has the story:
BetUS.com spokesman Reed Richards said the company will personally back numerous bets, or "propositions," posted on the website related to global warming. "It's part of a campaign we've been doing for the past two and a half years called 'pop culture gaming,'" Richards said. "You can wager on things in the headlines."
One bet gives members 1-to-5 odds that scientists will prove global warming exists beyond any scientific doubt by the end of this year. Another gives 100-to-1 odds that…
tlambert | April 13, 2007Craig Harper has created a list of the top 100 Australian blogs based on Technorati rankings (which are based on the number of blogs that link to you). It's in his right side bar near the bottom.
Of course that are lots of other ways to rank blogs, so Meg has re-ordered it using Alexa rankings (which are based on the number of visits from people who have installed the Alexa tool bar.)