tlambert | January 11, 2006Michael Schwartz writes about the rules of engagement in Iraq:
A little over a year ago, a group of Johns Hopkins researchers reported that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the Iraq war during its first 14 months, with about 60,000 of the deaths directly attributable to military violence by the U.S. and its allies. The study, published in The Lancet, the highly respected British medical journal, applied the same rigorous, scientifically validated methods that the Hopkins researchers had used in estimating that 1.7 million people had died in the Congo in 2000. Though the…
tlambert | January 10, 2006In Lott's latest column he cuts and pastes his previous cherry picking on England, so I'll just repeat my correction: He carefully picks his numbers to avoid mentioning the dramatic decline in violent crime in England since 1996. As for Australia, he finds yet another way to avoid mentioning how violent crime has been falling here:
Australia's 1996 gun-control regulations banned many types of guns and the immediate aftermath was similar. While murder rates remained unchanged, armed robbery rates averaged 59% higher in the eight years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2004) than in 1995…
tlambert | January 9, 2006Andrew Cockburn reports on an analysis of the raw Lancet data by Pierre Sprey who used a non-parametric method (so it was not necessary to exclude Falluja) and found:
"So, applying that simple notion to the death rates before and after the US invasion of Iraq, we find that the confidence intervals around the estimated 100,000 "excess deaths" not only shrink considerably but also that the numbers move significantly higher. With a distribution-free approach, a 95 per cent confidence interval thereby becomes 53,000 to 279,000. (Recall that the Gaussian approach gave a 95 per cent confidence…
tlambert | January 8, 2006Tim Blair professes not to give a damn about global warming but also reckons it a scam and has over twenty rather confused posts in just the last month attacking the concept. In his latest post he seems to think that only the Arctic is warming, quoting John Christy.
"It just doesn't look like global warming is very global," said John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center.
"The carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is distributed pretty evenly around the globe and not concentrated in the Arctic, so it doesn't look like we can blame greenhouse gases for the overwhelming bulk of…
tlambert | January 7, 2006
One of the features of the endless stream of articles about the nonexistent DDT ban is the way they all cite each other instead of cracking open a textbook or checking with an actual scientist. I call this the disinformation cycle. As far as I can tell, it is nearly 100% efficient and there is little danger of actual facts about the world contaminating the pure flow of disinformation.
tlambert | January 6, 2006Could some kind reader send me (lambert-AT-cse.unsw.edu.au) a copy of this article:
J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2003 Jul 25;66(14):1295-339.
Human health risk and exposure assessment of chromium (VI) in tap water.
Paustenbach DJ, Finley BL, Mowat FS, Kerger BD.
This post will self destruct when I get my hands on a PDF of the article.
tlambert | January 6, 2006John Allen Paulos writes about Iraqi war deaths:
Another figure in the news recently has been the number of Iraqis killed in the war. President Bush mentioned last month that in addition to the more than 2,100 American soldiers killed so far in Iraq, that there were approximately 30,000 Iraqis killed. He was likely referring to the approximate figure put out by Iraq Body Count, a group of primarily British researchers who use online Western media reports to compile an extensive list of Iraqi civilians killed. The organization checks the names and associated details of those killed. It…
tlambert | January 6, 2006New Scientist has an article on sock puppets (subscription required):
IF YOU thought sock puppets were made merely for the amusement of small children, think again. In cyberspace, a sock puppet is a vandal's alter ego, an additional account that they use to pose as a different user and tamper with facts and dishonestly promote alternative viewpoints.
The article ends with:
And one academic was caught using a sock puppet to review his own book and to pose as one of his students. It's not just small children that sock puppets keep amused.
They don't mention the name of this academic, but we…
tlambert | January 5, 2006Peter Gleick argues that global warming skeptics are practising pseudo-science because no matter how much evidence piles up for warming, their position does not change. John Quiggin says that the latest evidence ends the scientific debate. Evidence for this can be found at Backseat Driving , where Brian Schmidt finds that warming skeptics just won't put their money where their mouths are and bet against future warming when when offered odds.
Meanwhile the Australian has printed a rather silly article by Ian Plimer:
Does it matter if sea level rises a few metres or global temperatures rise a…
tlambert | January 4, 2006It would be crass to post a top ten list where your own blog was number one. But if you posted a list where some other blog was number one and then that other blog returned the favour, well, that wouldn't be crass would it? Anyway, here are the top ten Alexa-ranked-by-traffic right-wing Australian blogs.
Tim Blair: 50,087
Catallaxy files: 225,663
Gravett.org (Yobbo plus a bunch of RWDBs I can't tell apart): 488,606
Observation Deck (Bernard Slattery, James McConvill, Peter Faris QC et al): 502,086
Blithering Bunny: 848,020
Man of Lettuce: 1,566,151
Whacking Day: 1,791,563…
tlambert | January 4, 2006Flashman has declared Jan 28 to be Grogblogging 3 night. I plan to be there. In true blogging style, a controversy about the location has already broken out.
tlambert | January 3, 2006Eli Rabett has scored Essex and McKitrick's briefing for Taken By Storm at Global Warming Skeptic Bingo. Alas, they don't win. I reckon their book will do better. For example, they get another box at bingo with this passage (from page 134 of their book):
There are enemies of T-Rex who think that the satellite average is the true one and the surgface average is so much crap. The Knights of the White Boxes respond that the satellite averages are very silly and no one should pay any attention to them. The Defenders of the Satellites went before the Grand Council of the American…
tlambert | December 25, 2005 Here's Silas with his Christmas present. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers.
Blogging is likely to be light to non-existent this week because I'll be in Perisher on holidays. It's a National Park so poor Silas can't come and has to stay home with the house sitter.
tlambert | December 21, 2005 After seeing yet another
href="http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2005/12/14/178999.html">ignorant column about how banning DDT killed millions and millions and millions of people. I've been inspired
to create DDT Ban Myth Bingo to make reading these stupid articles more interesting. Just tick the box when they use the bogus argument next to it. Get four in a row and win! If you get to the end and you haven't got four in row, you still have a chance to win---there's one box you can tick if they don't mention DDT resistance by mosquitoes.
Sri Lanka banned DDT in…
tlambert | December 20, 2005The Washington Post continues its sorry record on the Lancet study with this piece by Sarah Sewall:
The Lancet study relied on a door-to-door survey of Iraqi households in 33 neighborhoods. The surveyors asked for details of deaths in the months before and after the invasion and found a significantly higher death rate after. But the approach was flawed. War is not like a pandemic; it comes in pockets. And the study itself qualified its conclusions, acknowledging that the figure could range enormously between 8,000 and 194,000.
Sewall fails to present any argument, any argument at all, why…
tlambert | December 20, 2005In his latest op-ed Lott continues his misrepresentations about crime in Australia and England:
The British government banned handguns in January 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the seven years from 1996 to 2003. Since '96, the rate of serious violent crime has soared by 88 percent: armed robberies by 101 percent, rapes by 105 percent and homicide by 24 percent.
Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50 percent from 1993 to 1997 -- but as soon as handguns were banned, the robbery rate shot back up, almost back to 1993 levels. The crooks…
tlambert | December 19, 2005David Kane asked Les Roberts for the data for the Lancet study. He CC'd it to me, so
here it is.