Apropos of the difference between errors of fact and errors of reasoning, Carl Zimmer (blogger at Discover Magazine) asked Bill Chapman, a University of Illinois climate scientist, about George Will's recent bungling of Chapman's data as well as the Washington Post's defense of Will. Chapman said: Since their statements were based on the end of … Continue reading Don’t try this at home
That's actually a word, but it's not particularly related to what I will say here. Last week George Will wrote a column sufficiently full of outright falsehoods–non facts as it were–such that people all over were demanding retractions, corrections, etc. Rightly so, as the falsehoods were fairly egregious (it wasn't just forgetting who argued … Continue reading Facticity
Sorry to outsource blogging completely, but this longish quote from a post by Steve Benen (Political Animal) is worth reading (apropos of George Will's most recent column): IN SEARCH OF MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY…. Over the weekend, George Will's Washington Post column was devoted to his rejection of climate science and global warming. As one might expect, … Continue reading De grammatico
George Will phones it in today with a boiler-plate global warming denying column. There really isn't anything of interest in the column, though I found myself wondering why it is that the particular argument he recites have any probative relevance to the question of global warming. The occasion for his cutting and pasting was some … Continue reading Phoning it in
Speaking of facts–I mean whether they matter on the op-ed page–pointing out that someone else has distorted or minimized or ignored inconvenient facts seems to me to be one of the hallmarks of an op-ed since it's one of the key moves in any critical argument. Perhaps for that reason alone op-ed editors ought to … Continue reading I’ve got a fever
The only thing that makes George Will madder (and more incoherent) than "global warming" are teachers' unions. Just as teachers' unions have singularly (without any interference from any other causal factor) been able to destroy public education and all that's good in America, environmentalists aim to destroy the economy for their Marxist political agenda. I … Continue reading The Green Hornet
George Will compares the housing "crisis" (his scare quotes) to another one of his famous pseudo crises: The housing perhaps-not-entirely-a-crisis resembles, in one particular, the curious consensus about the global warming "crisis," concerning which, the assumption is: Although Earth's temperature has risen and fallen through many millennia, the temperature was exactly right when, in the … Continue reading Built on sand
To my mind at least, the op-ed in a major national newspaper aims at a general audience–including if not composed entirely of people whose views differ from that of the writer. The point, in fact, in writing one of these pieces is to convince people who disagree with you of the strength of your view. … Continue reading The Power of Science
As far as I know, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright does not work for the Obama campaign. Obama has, in fact, "rejected and repudiated" some of what the good reverend has to say. But that has no bearing on those, like George Will, who insist somehow that Wright stands for Obama: Because John McCain and other … Continue reading The Wright Stuff
This is one of the dumbest ad hominem arguments I’ve seen in a major newspaper for quite a while: >My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a “hippie car,” and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are hippies. Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are … Continue reading It’s a start