Comments on: You Turn Your Head For Five Minutes…

By: Mario and Mario « BiB

Mario and Mario « BiB — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:21:32 +0000

[…] manages to amuse even when plotting the demise of his fellow man. OK, there’s a touch of an unfestive spat going on in the comments to a post at PooterGeek, but emotion of the hour for Blogland seems to be […]

By: siaw

siaw — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:24:04 +0000

(Just one last time, Damian, we promise …)
Bertramese: “I canâ€™t rule out [the possibility] that you have simply lost your grip on reality” > English:
perhaps (1) “I can’t work out how to do a search on a Blogger.com blog”;
and/or perhaps (2) “I can’t be bothered with all this, I have much more important things to do” (which would be fair enough, as we certainly have);
and/or, most likely, (3) “I can’t think of anything else to say, so, as usual when that happens, I’ll resort to the world-weary scholar shtick while continuing to avoid making an honest response to any criticism of anything I’ve written”.
As we said, the point we wanted to make has been amply made - and then some. So it goes, and so we go. That’s all.

By: constablesavage

constablesavage — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:44:11 +0000

Has anyone out there, before Gould’s latest piece, ever heard of anyone being accused of being Jewish because they wear a poppy?

Can anyone understand why an anti-semite should connect the poppy with Israel/Jewishness?

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:43:54 +0000

Oh, and if you want to say that weâ€™re lying …..

To say that I’d have to be sure that you were intending to mislead. But I can’t rule out that you have simply lost your grip on reality. In fact, that strikes me as the most promising hypothesis.

By: siaw

siaw — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:46:33 +0000

Wrong again. It may seem strange to a petty-minded, obsessively self-referencing weasel such as yourself, but we really, truly can’t be bothered.
Anyone who’s that fascinated - and suspects, for obvious reasons, that Bertram’s bullshitting yet again - can easily follow up the links by searching for “Bertram” on our blog. Much good may it do you: Bertram specialises in endless variations on the theme of “Well, yes, you may have thought I said that, but what I really said was …”
Oh, and if you want to say that we’re lying, wy not come straight out with it?

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:19:20 +0000

â€œcanâ€™t supplyâ€ is not the same as â€œcanâ€™t be bothered to supplyâ€.

In standard English, this is correct. In Siawese “can’t be bothered to supply” means “Though we have no evidence for these assertions, we’ll make out that we have but that we can’t be arsed to supply it.”

By: siaw

siaw — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:32:24 +0000

Teehee …
Reading skills: “can’t supply” is not the same as “can’t be bothered to supply”.
Nor can we be bothered to get into another boring non-debate with you. After all, the point we wanted to make has been amply made.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:35:43 +0000

A pity you can’t supply the URLs and have to rely only on your feeble memory.

(1) I believe is substantially inaccurate. But as I recall SIAW, you never actually read the article in question and gave the lame excuse that the Financial Times was unavailable in the town where you lived!

(2) I’ve described Mad Mel as having a “pro-war blog” not as a member of the “pro-war left”. That characterization is accurate.

(3) No idea what this refers to.

By: siaw

siaw — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:36:03 +0000

â€œwhen we discover that someone is willing to lie or embellish we look at what they said before we made that discovery in a different lightâ€: Indeed. So, Chris, to cite just three typical examples from your very own, very crooked oeuvre - and no, we really canâ€™t be bothered to supply URLs - do tell us again all about how:
(1) an article describing how anti-Semitism is increasing in Europe in fact describes merely its presence;
(2) Melanie Phillips, whom no sane person would describe as being on the left, nevertheless is a member of the â€œpro-war leftâ€ and can be used to make infantile generalisations about them - even as you object shrilly to any generalisations at all about the â€œanti-war leftâ€;
(3) because Christopher Hitchensâ€™s militant secularism (as of 2005) isnâ€™t shared by some obscure bunch of religious nutters in Kansas (as of 2002), he must be a hypocrite.
Or better yet, just shut the fuck up.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 17:09:04 +0000

In fact, as I bloviated over there, there are two aspects of la Gould’s reporting, one of which may well be true, and one of which almost certainly isn’t.
I don’t doubt, allowing for her justifiable exaggeration, that poppies were thin on the ground in the Edgware Road area.
I do doubt that it’s significant.
Because although the area has a high concentration of Muslims, it’s a very small area compared with others where muslims are concentrated. And it’s a shifting area of short-stayers. Or pluted bloatocrats and their slaves.
I was in Budapest this March, and on their national day I found it extremely moving that they were all wearing their commemorative badges, but it would have been unseemly for me to have worn one. And while I know a few Pakistanis in London whose relatives fought with us in the services, some of whom wore poppies, it might well be considered unseemly for those who didn’t, or didn’t have a services connection, to do so. As an example of a stick to beat Muslims with, she invariably picks duff examples. There are loads of better ones.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:27:30 +0000

Well you’re right that I didn’t believe both what she said earlier and what she said later.

You otoh, seem to have believed what she said earlier.

The relevant principle is surely that when we gain particular evidence that a person’s testimony is unreliable (and I’ve just given you some) then that evidence should cause us to re-evaluate their earlier testimony. For example, when we discover that someone is willing to lie or embellish we look at what they said before we made that discovery in a different light.

At least, that’s what we do if we’re rational: no fallacy required.

By: PooterGeek

PooterGeek — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:02:04 +0000

Thank you for the clarification, Chris. It seemed obvious to me that you had linked to Ms Gould's latest writing because it might show her up as silly or prejudiced. Now I understand that your purpose was to draw people's attention to another account of Ms Gould's supposed experiences that you didn't believe in order to undermine her previous account of her supposed experiences that you also didn't believe---a priori. The exercise for readers is now to decide whether this is this Begging the Question, shifting the Burden of Proof, or falling for the Relativist fallacy.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:43:45 +0000

Chris,

Looks like special pleading to me.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:42:02 +0000

Superb description of what Crooked Timber has become, or rather what Chris Bertram has descended to.

Bravo.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:24:45 +0000

I think you need to distinguish between:

1. Carol is a jerk.
2. Carol says P
therefore
3. P is false.

Which is an instance of the poisoned well.

and

1. Carol usually talks bollocks.
2. Carol says P
therefore
3. There’s a good chance that P is bollocks.

Which isn’t.