Hа 3доровье!

Here’s a brilliant bit of rapist journalism, pawing and assaulting Glenn Beck for donning such enticing rhetorical clothes.

It’s Beck’s fault, after all.  He called it upon himself. How is one to resist the attractions of maxim universalization when Beck is wagging his sophistic ass in your face?  But lo, John H. Richardson appropriately seizes and undresses Beck where he stands: in the loving arms of his Mack Daddy.

Silly Kids, Tricks are for Rabbit

In response to the 9YQ — the nine-year question: about why it took so damned long for McIntyre and others to get the data — some have protested that the publication policies of Science are such that Briffa et al were obligated to offer up their data immediately upon publication.

In the original Hockey Stick Redux comments section, I replied at several points that there may be other plausible mitigating reasons why Briffa, or his proxies, would be released from fulfilling this alleged requirement.  I also confessed that if it were true that one condition of publication was that all data were categorically open for evaluation, and if it were true that this was a binding rule, then it would also be true that Briffa et al would be obligated to release the data.  I added, however, that it would not necessarily be true that there would not be other conventions that override the prima facie obligation on Briffa et al’s part.  I did not add, but wish I had added, that such a conclusion seems to me incomprehensibly strong, that it would be counterproductive in the extreme.  Scientists and researchers would likely never offer up their findings for publication, and thus, practically speaking, such a rule would be self-defeating.

Those are a lot of conditionals.  Such was my abstract little contribution to this otherwise scintillating debate.

Fortunately,…