I’ve got a great deal of other stuff on at the moment, so will only comment briefly. I’ll try to update this post in more detail when I’ve finished thesising. For now, a few thoughts:
1. Hoaxing only works when there is a pretension to expose/exploit. Sokal exposed the postmodern pretension to science; Ern Malley exposed the high modernist pretension to poetry (although you can make a pretty good case that it showed that good modernist poetry can be knocked up easily enough in an afternoon by a pair of clever chaps). I exposed the pretension that one needs to be ‘authentic’ in order to write well about a given topic. And ‘Dr Gould’ has exposed the pretension that historical accuracy can be reduced to footnotes.
2. If one is going to hoax, one should hoax in good spirit. This is something I failed to do, at least as time went on. Instead of following the Ern Malley hoaxers, or Leon Carmen (the Wanda Koolmatrie hoaxer) and outing myself, I waited for the press to find me. This was a bad idea, and led to a great deal of bitterness, some of it ongoing. ‘Gould’ should out him or herself. As I said over at Larvatus Prodeo:
I will make only one suggestion: hoaxer, if you’re reading this, out yourself. I failed to out myself back in the day and the reaction was much worse as a result. People think you’re pulling their chain and unwilling to take responsibility for pulling their chain. I speak from experience.
3. Australians are very good at hoaxes. In fact, we rock. I do think Australians are — on the whole — good at handling pretension. They don’t like it much, so they go about puncturing it to the best of their ability.
4. While it is tempting for lefties like Margaret Simons and the LP crew to engage in some schadenfreude, and they’re probably entitled to their fun at Keith Windschuttle’s expense, the real test of character will come in the form of Windschuttle’s reaction. When I exposed the fashionable leftist pieties attached to ‘multicultural literature’, the lefties ran me out of town on a rail. Maybe all those of years of Howard have taught them some humility as well as a sense of humour. I hope so. For his part, I hope Keith Windschuttle is not motivated by malice to make ‘Dr Gould’s’ life as difficult as many lefties have attempted to make mine.
5. If any more evidence were needed, surely it is time to end taxpayer funding of ‘merit goods’. There is simply no merit in evidence. Ironically, Quadrant will survive a withdrawal of Australia Council funding — KW is independently wealthy. Many of the ‘little magazines’ throwing slings and arrows at him and his supporters will fold. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. For those thinking only Hayekonistas say stuff like that, here is John Rawls, the social democrat par excellence:
The principles of justice do not permit subsidizing universities and institutes, or opera and the theatre, on the grounds that these institutions are intrinsically valuable, and that those who engage in them are to be supported even at some significant expenses to others who do not receive compensating benefits. (A Theory of Justice, 291-2).
The best summary post is from Tim Lambert, who not only links to everyone else who’s written anything worthwhile, but can take considerable credit for protecting my Wikipedia entry from malicious vandalism over the years. He was doing this without me knowing, too — simply out of generosity of spirit.
UPDATE: I note that people on all sides are trying to mitigate the effectiveness of the hoax against their ‘side’, so the Social Text aficionados are trying to draw a distinction between this and Sokal, while KW is trying to make something of the fact that only ‘Dr Gould’ is fake, not his/her article. Take it from someone who knows and give up. You’re all covered in egg. In fact, you’re all wrapped in a giant omelette. That’s what a good hoax should do. Now go wash the egg off and get on with the rest of your life.
UPDATE II: I also like Andrew Norton’s comment — very sensible as usual.
UPDATE III: Catallaxy’s Jason Soon makes a strong case for the Quadrant hoaxer being Katherine Wilson, who used to post as ‘weathergirl’ around the blogs. She also used to write for LP (and Crikey), becoming increasingly fractious until she requested that LP delete all her posts and comments. This was done, although with some regret — LP has never been the sort of blog to engage in covering up anyone’s tracks, including their own. See Jason’s comments here, here and here (although there are a few others scattered through the thread).
UPDATE IV: Troppo’s Don Arthur comes to the same conclusion as Jason Soon, while Nexus 6 makes the very pertinent point that the whole thing looks very bad for Crikey.
UPDATE V: Mark B quite properly disassociates himself from Katherine Wilson and all her works and all her ways over at LP.
UPDATE VI: Woolly Days provides a very fair summary of events thus far; quite apart from anything else, it’s a helpful guide to who’s up who. The Australian’s Samantha Maiden also does a nice job.
UPDATE VII: Get it while you can — Wilson’s ‘hoax blog’ is now password protected, although a truncated version is still available at this link (it only goes up to November, however, so some of the jucier bits people have been quoting have vamoosed).
UPDATE VIII: Simons fesses up — quite an amusing, lighthearted piece, too.
UPDATE IX: How the whole thing looks to a scientist and skeptic. I keep forgetting that there’s actual, ahem, science buried underneath all this. Andrew Norton also looks at the science situation, and comes to the conclusion that Wilson hoaxed the wrong magazine. He also digs up some of Wilson’s MO, this time by linking to the National Library of Australia’s ‘Pandora’ archives. Wilson may have browbeaten LP into deleting all her posts, but this cracker of a conspiracy theory is still there to enjoy, preserved in aspic for posterity.
UPDATE X: Tim at Will Type for Food ponders the verbing of various nouns, including the one in the headline for this post. Highly amusing.
194 Comments
What a weird hoax. Funnily enough, I think the central premise of the hoax article has some validity – that is, we should be wary of a knee jerk reaction against genetically modified organisms, and rationally consider the pros and cons without getting emotionally wound up by concepts such as “human genes”. I’m not surprised that Windschuttle didn’t pick up that the article was a hoax; the piece reads convincingly enough to someone who is not an expert in the field. I guess the point of the hoax was not about the topic of the article itself, but was rather about checking the sources and references of pieces you publish (Windschuttle’s personal bug bear).
I am very surprised that Quadrant doesn’t check the footnotes and sources of articles it publishes, although I suppose it’s not an academic journal. Certainly, Law Journals exhaustively check the footnotes and references in the pieces they publish. Perhaps Quadrant doesn’t have the resources to go through absolutely everything it publishes with a fine tooth comb. After all, Law Journals usually rely on unpaid student members to do the grunt work. It does lessen any pretensions Quadrant may have had about being a more informed and accurate species of journalism.
Still, as Andrew Norton says, it really isn’t a very good hoax – hardly worthy of being compared to Ern Malley or Sokal.
Wow, what a hoot! Quelle fun! In a spasm of drunken frivolity I bought Quadrant last night (along with the New Internationalist and The dreary Monthly) on the way home from the dreadful Frost/Nixon fillum. I think I might have even perused a few pages while downing a few wee drams before passing out. Not sure if said hoax was among them.
Having only just picked up this kerfuffle, I am pissing myself laughing at the Luvvie Plodders praising the Lord that this redeems Social Text, the Sokal hoax, and their religion postmodernism itself. No doubt it redeems those Commie charlatans masquerading as historians too!!
Ah, viva les culture wars Luvvies!
SL
EXTREMELY sage advice, my dear. brillliant ashley.
It does seem like politics by other means. If the basis of this hoax is a couple of dodgy footnotes, the Larvy Prodders – and others – seem to be using it as a catch-all excuse for abusing Quadrant and, by extension, conservatives and right-wingers. The Age referred to Quadrant in an article this morning as the ‘Conservative Bible’ !
Really, I think Windschuttle has been caught out here, but this doesn’t really reflect terribly on Quadrant itself.
It was nice to see this gracious, and sensible observation by Jeff Sparrow, who is I understand the literary editor of left-wing magazine Overland. That makes him both an ally and an ideological enemy of Quadrant. Pity some of the other commenters weren’t as level-headed as Jeff.
Tim T
Unfortunately this episode will see people in Jeff’s position absolutely shitting themselves in anticipation of “return fire”. The flames have not even begun.
I don’t share Jeff Sparrow’s politics one bit, but I read his journal and a lot of what he writes in good faith. I would most definitely not like to see all this blow up for him and others.
SL
Heads-up. The Crikey bint is now bitchslapping you.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2009/01/07/helen-demidenko-gives-advice-to-sharon-gould/
My immediate thought on this hoaxing business is that it illustrates once again the impossibility of being a genuine, disinterested generalist. No matter how hard we try, we all end being ideologues. All that differs is how dogmatic we are. Why? Well largely because there is too much information out there for any one person to sort through and secondly because we are all subject to certain psychological processes that that distort our thinking, for example confirmation bias. We are certainly witnessing a great deal of confirmation bias in how left and right blogospherians are responding to this latest hoax.
I disagree with Legal Eagle. I am far from scientific, but unless one is ideologically blinkered, it does not take much to scent something ‘odd’ about the piece. Not enough to be paranoid, but enough to put the antennae up and check the references.
Going back to historical hoaxes, ideological blinkers and backfires, I can’t help but be reminded of a Catholic Schoolgirl who was given Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” to read, as an example of the perfidy of the Protestant English.
Warwick, it was a bit of an odd piece, I agree; but then I’ve read some other perfectly authentic pieces in Quadrant which I also considered to be odd.
My understanding is that our genes are indeed largely similar to those of other animals and the expression of genes is determined by some kind of switching mechanism found to be contained in “junk code” sequences, so the point was potentially arguable. I do know that scientists have successfully managed to transplant a luminescence gene from a jelly fish into a mouse (leading to glow-in-the-dark mice). So AFAIK there’s no reason why a gene sequence from a human could not be transplanted into a plant’s gene sequence.
Anyhoo, the content of the piece is not really the important bit for the purposes of the hoax – the clincher is the misleading or absent sources.
I guess this was a very roundabout way of schooling Keith Windschuttle in the substance of Hanlon’s Razor.
Heads-up. The Crikey bint is now bitchslapping you.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2009/01/07/helen-demidenko-gives-advice-to-sharon-gould/
what a first rate creep she is. It wasn’t a hoax it was a fraud.Most of the science she presented was quite believable anyway at least to non science people.
And as i said she had her pubic hairs burned off by a blow torch in Keith’s reply.
It was quite possibly the worst attempt at a hoax I’ve ever seen, so no wonder the web-rag crikey picked it up seeing they have nothing else to report to their readership.
does anyone these days actually fess to to subscribing to Crikey?
It’s like Playboy in reverse when dudes used to say they bought playboy for the articles. Now people would say they buy Crikey for the pics as they should be embarrassed buying it for the stories.
Actually Helen I though that your creating an entirely invented persona to promote your novel was a great piece of theatre and I thought that the way that you were treated was by the self-righteous lefties was a despicable over reaction. Does anyone complain about Barry Humphries bring out the Dame Edna persona? You played a character to promote a work of fiction .
However when it comes to the “fraud” perpetuated here i struggle to see the point of the whole exercise. It in no sense addresses or refutes Windshuttle’s historical writing all that it does is show that as editor of Quadrant that he was willing to take a reasonable looking submission at face value.
As someone who has been the victim of similar tactics I see nothing admirable about this fraud at all and I find the various crowing comments from the usual suspects say more about their authors lack of morals and ethics than it does about any “failings” of Keith Windshuttle.
Excellent post Skeptic.
I think there would’ve have been some bitterness if you’d outed yourself. But it would’ve taken the self-righteousness out of the said Anti-Demidenkans.
Gould should out herself. But I wonder if the ideological shitfight at Oz unis somehow applies to this matter? Does she have good reason to fear reprisals?
I don’t think you’d avoid this kind of thing if journals were entirely privately funded, altho’ I tend to agree with the argument that there shouldn’t be any. It’s simply welfare for the intelligentsia. Besides which they only require funding because they can’t raise the money to print the things. If they went online and managed to get a decent readership they wouldn’t need public funding and they’d be happier for it.
No-one likes going to the dole office.
David marr had a good laugh. Reporting:
The hoaxer reported on his or her blog: “So neatly did my essay conform with reactionary ideology that Quadrant, it seems, didn’t even check the putative author’s credentials.”
Reactionary ideology hey.
I’ve offered $3,000 on Andrew Norton’s blog to anyone that can get a hoax into the op-ed section of The Age, SMH or Fin Review and then publicize it was a hoax. Anyone can join the financial inducement.
the other side, the reactionary side can also play at the game.
Mel, I’d love to be a renaissance woman, but unfortunately, as you say, it’s impossible to be knowledgeable about all areas, no matter how hard one tries. And it’s true, one does tend to accept material which confirms one’s point of view more readily, no matter how hard one tries not to. It’s just human nature.
jc, I have to agree that Crikey lost any interest for me about two years ago, and I didn’t bother to renew my subscription. I can’t put my finger on what happened to it exactly, but I felt it became predictable.
The majority of the footnotes are mostly accurate anyway; pretty pissweak hoax if you ask me. The Sokal one was much cleverer because some passages were really very amusing, providing a satire of postmodern gibberish. I’ve written on my dislike of deliberate obscurantism before.
P.S. jc, you really make me laugh – I can’t wait to see the results of your challenge.
my guess as to the hoaxer’s identity
you’ll remember her, Helen
http://www.catallaxyfiles.com/blog/?p=3967#comment-115755
http://www.catallaxyfiles.com/blog/?p=3967#comment-115756
I’ve offered $3,000 on Andrew Norton’s blog
.
Mmmm I like that idea. I might think on it. Could be fun.
Iain at 13, are you saying Helen’s purported hoax was not really a hoax at all, thus invalidating her authority to offer advice to other would-be hoaxers?
This is — sadly — becoming truer and truer, Mel. It’s something I do my best to avoid — as I think this piece evidences. There is a great deal of confirmation bias going on out there with this, too.
Even if — as seems likely — the hoaxer appears to be Katherine Wilson, it’s still a good hoax. As Andrew and Tim pointed out, it would be better if it had been on climate change — more on point — but it uses footnoting to have a go at KW, and footnoting is his scholarly stock-in-trade. She has made her point.
weathergirl has form
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/04/party-bohemians-welcome/#comment-72499
“This is — sadly — becoming truer and truer, Mel.”
It’s only sad if we’re not willing to accept how inadequate our own version of reality is likely to be.
And yes, I reckon it’s Kath Wilson.
Well it looks like Don Arthur on Troppo has come to the same conclusion.
Before Don’s post went up at Troppo, I alerted both Mark B and Keith W to the situation; Keith has been blaming Margaret Simons, while Mark knew nothing until the Crikey email landed in his inbox. While Simons admits she did know about the hoax beforehand, I doubt in the extreme she would be so silly as to manufacture a news story with another Crikey writer. Katherine Wilson also hung LP out to dry with all her post deletion palaver and her SOP at Crikey was to carry on about GM crops in between having a go at me for pulling a hoax.
The irony is delicious.
Except hers isn’t a hoax, Sl. All her propositions look or are credible.
The woman seems freaking insane. She went awol on you and then if it’s her it does a really poor imitation of a hoax.
She’s absolutely outrageous.
I can’t help but think that Croakey was in on the act.
Helen did you notice that you get a big mention in the Oz for this blog post?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24885923-7582,00.html
Cheers
I’ve updated the post accordingly, Iain. Thanks.
And also, I should mention that Jeff Sparrow’s commentary has been very thoughtful and useful on this, and comes highly recommended. He works for a small magazine, and so carries all the risks that entails.
Over at LP Mark says he’s ‘sure Simons was telling the truth about what transpired’.
I dunno, it sure looks like she was colluding to me. You have to time these things – it’s no use breaking the story about a magazine being hoaxed before it’s published. And Windschuttle’s arguments here do have some validity – Simons did display in-depth knowledge about the article, and the means by which Quadrant was hoaxed.
At what point does correspondence with a hoaxer become collusion? Dunno, but it helps if both hoaxer and journalist who breaks the story write for the same publication, and plan beforehand via email how best to embarass the victim of the hoax.
I think that all this illustrates how tribal Australian debates have become. It reminds me of two groups of kids at opposite ends of the paddock, throwing rocks and abuse at each other. With a hit, there is loud cheers and laughter.
Good fun, perhaps, but not informing us much.
I am not sure whether the net and blogs have made it worse or just exposed something that has always been there. The comments sections of blogs rarely produce debate or discussion. Either everyone piles on: “yeah, what you said” or add the verbal version of a raspberry (“bronx cheer” to any confused Americans who have got lost and wandered into all this) before running off.
I just wish that we could use it to sharpen and polish the debate. I want to have my opinions challenged and modified, not just confirmed. I want to be made to think.
But maybe I am just getting old…
PS To further my campaign, my Christmas present (to myself) was a T Shirt bearing the text:
“I think you will find that it’s a bit more complicated than that”
(With acknowledgment to the wise Ben Goldacre)
I will attempt to cross-post this to John Quiggin’s blog.
I’ve just read the Oz article and was appalled but not surprised by the connotations of ‘relied on the press’ (which suggests deliberate deep dark plotting of how it would play out — Helen, don’t these people know or remember how old you were at the time?) but more to the point surprised by the hoaxer’s comment that neither the Khouri book (about which I know, and want to know, nothing) nor THTSTP was ‘designed as a culture-jamming exercise’. I read THTSTP in 1995 on the assumption that that was precisely what it was, if not one’s usual culture-jamming exercise ideologically, and have seen no reason since to change my mind.
Margaret Simons and Katherine Wilson are both a bit slow, PC, and they also — like many journalists — think that they can divine other people’s motives from afar. Of course — as I told Jack Robertson over at LP — there were other things involved in my hoaxing, but the day a lecturer in the University of Queensland’s English Department told me that Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country was ‘not a legitimate book’ because its author was a white man was the day that Helen Demidenko was born.
I had access to some interesting stories, and I came from a left field background (ie, genuinely working class) so could carry it off to a degree. I also wanted to make money, and since I’m no longer a leftie I have no trouble with owning that. Of course, I’ll be terribly upset if anyone was forcing people to read my novel at gunpoint, but AFAIK that didn’t happen.
Since this story broke, my concern has shifted somewhat, to be fair. WG dropped Mark and LP in it, and I now fear that she’s done something similar to Simons. Simons has always hated me — okay, fair enough, I’ve been hated by worse in my life. This includes other shodans in the boxing ring — ie people who can actually do proper damage. That said, this is a clear case of someone’s hate — of Windschuttle, and by extension of me — being used against them by a manipulator of the first water. I say this with knowledge because I have the skill to be just such a manipulator.
SL -
Jason has definitely rightly identified WG Katherine Wilson.
If you look at at the Age article, the ‘hoaxer’ refers to you as “Helen Darville/Demidenko/Dale” , exactly the same way as WG always did/does.
Good point nanu.
I’m going to call collusion on this one, just like there was collusion when Crikey launched a hit on Helen via both WG and her friend who did this scoop. So Crikey essentially manufactured news. Fair enough but come out with it already.
Is this a new Age article, or the one that people had links to yesterday (sorry I’m losing track being 10 hours behind over here). Anyone got a link?
Sorry ….should read “the Australian article” (Iain Hall’s link)
When Media Watch returns in February I guess this will be one of the top things on their agenda.
What’s the bet they lift all the juicy bits from the blogs – stuff like Jason and Nanu’s detective work – without credit? Though probably they won’t publicise these aspects (possible Crikey collusion, the identity of the hoaxer) and instead choose to focus on material that embarasses Quadrant.
I think the Crikey collusion angle will get a run, possibly from ‘Hillary Bray’, tee hee. Nothing like sinking the slipper into the erstwhile employer.
Wilson has been revealed as the hoaxer in the Oz. Surprise, surprise. Maybe Weathergirl and Windschuttle could be sent away to a deserted island together to sort out their differences?
Crikey’s sure got some explaining to do.
Nexus — do you have a link, or is the piece not online (I’m in cold and snowy Edinburgh, far from any copies of the Australian). I’ve got Simons’ piece linked here, which is fine as it goes, but she shouldn’t have to carry the can for serial post deleter Weathergirl.
It’s here, Helen.
My immediate thought on this hoaxing business is that it illustrates once again the impossibility of being a genuine, disinterested generalist.
It’s not impossible it’s just unfashionable. It pays to be an obnoxious and partisan shrieker. hence Michael Moore has several hits Andrew Bacevich has one.
JC – Croakey – n’uk.
I think the most important observation about this whole affair is by Ken Nielsen at #31.
Windschuttle has had his beard well and truly singed, and I’m not especially upset about that , but is this going to be anything more than a “Gotcha!” moment?
I think the tribalism Ken describes is one of the biggest problems in public debate today. The usual divide is between the Right and Left, and I do think those words are useful and have not been transcended, although neither Right nor Left is a monolith. However, almost as important as Right and Left is the difference between two different ways of debating, “My Mob vs Your Mob” and those who welcome debate and controversy.
Both of those ways of debating can be found on the Right and Left. To use an example from the USA, I find the liberal/pro-Democratic Party DailyKos and the right-wing Little Green Footballs equally bigoted and close-minded. “Little Green Kossacks”, I call them.
This hoaxing of Windschuttle, and the reaction to it, is just another symptom of that sort of thinking, IMO. It’s froth and bubble. I doubt that it will change one single person’s point of view. People who already disliked or disapproved of Windschuttle now have a convenient debating point with which they can question his rigour. And people who liked or supported Windschuttle will circle the wagons, talk darkly about collusion, make the reasonable argument that a journal like Quadrant can’t pay to have every last detail of its articles fact-checked, and wonder who on the left they can catch out next time.
If you want healthy public debate on the Australian Internet, I’d ask you to stop thinking about who won or lost this round of the endless culture war, and start thinking about what you can do to foster a culture where opposing ideas are genuinely welcomed instead of being wished and bullied away, either by the thugs of the right or the vapid, languid sneerers of the left.
Well said, David Jackmanson.
I second that, Mel
DavidJackmanson -very timely and well said. But I wonder if this enlightenment possible when you have such posters here referring to Margaret Simons as a creep and a bint and references to her pubic-hair being burnt by blow-torch(yuk!). These comments give this whole thread, and by association the site, a really creepy thuggish ambience. I may be left wing or right wing but I CANNOT come at this kind of sentiment. Ever. What say you sir and skepticlawyer?
OK, so we are in violent agreement that we want
“to foster a culture where opposing ideas are genuinely welcomed instead of being wished and bullied away, either by the thugs of the right or the vapid, languid sneerers of the left”
Though I’d soften the language a bit by removing “thugs” and “sneers”.
What are we gunna do about it?
“What are we gunna do about it?”
Hmmm…pistols at dawn of coarse!
Languid sneering sounds quite fun. Where do I sign up? And ‘of coarse’ should be the slogan of the blogosphere – or at least *some* parts of it.
Well I disagree. I think Jackmason is standing on a soap box along with Nielson inferring their sh…t don’t stink (while everyone else’s does) ignoring the fact that their whole line of reasoning is both contradictory and self aggrandizing.
Windschuttle has had his beard well and truly singed, and I’m not especially upset about that , but is this going to be anything more than a “Gotcha!” moment?
Unfortunately that gives the entire plot away contradicting:
“this going to be anything more than a “Gotcha!” moment”.
Windschuttle has done a very useful thing. He has questioned the entire premise in the way our established closed shop historians were presenting the nations history. To a large extent he has turned the idea that our history was a genocidal bloodbath and a long-term strategy by the white race to completely eradicate the aboriginal right on its head. Like it or not that was how history was being sold to us over the years. Although Windschuttle may have got some points wrong at times he was far more accurate than the swill we were being sold.
For that service Jackmason seems happy Keith’s “beard was singed”. As he hasn’t explained why he’s pleased I can only assume it’s because of the reasons I established (otherwise he wouldn’t have said that).
and start thinking about what you can do to foster a culture where opposing ideas are genuinely welcomed instead of being wished and bullied away, either by the thugs of the right or the vapid, languid sneerers of the left.
Well yea, let’s do that. So let me ask you why you think it was a good thing Keith’s beard was singed as a result of a fraud… Not a hoax but fraud perpetrated by what looks like a complete nut ball?
Secondly if as you imply we ought to be “welcoming” Keith’s scholarship and defending him (as different points of view on a subject is important) why aren’t you?
Sure there is tribalism as both camps want to see the country organized differently. And they are important differences no matter how you cloud them over.
As Virginia Prostel once said:
The left wants to take us back to the way we worked in the 50’s while the right wants to take us back to the way we lived in the 50’s.
Clouding over important differences in political philosophies is quite frankly superficial.
Frankly the real reason KeithW is attacked, hated and called a racist is because there was serious money at stake in the guilt trip the whites were made to feel about the plight of the black man. Right or wrong KeithW made us question some of that and even if he was only ½ right it put a dagger right into the heart of the interest groups that were plying for guilt money.
That’s important and if opposing ideas are welcomed these two jokers ought to be defending Keith rather than happily talking about how his beard was singed and why that makes them happy while suggesting opposing ideas ought to be welcome.. That’s just dishonest in view of their other statements.
Ken N, SL and I have quite different political beliefs, and we manage to share a blog stable together perfectly happily. It’s a start, I suppose!
Personally, I hate all the point scoring that goes on, and I loathe the personal digs at people whose political views are different (both sides of the blogosphere do it). If anyone posts a comment which is a personal attack on SL or I, rather than responding to the argument, I delete it.
I’d rather people would critique an idea if they disagree with it than attack the person. The only time you can really get personal, I suppose, is if the idea advocated by the person is hypocritical – ie, a blogger advocates a vow of poverty for everyone else, but secretly lives like a millionaire.
I wrote a post a long while back about the kind of guidelines appropriate for polite blogging.
Ken says:
OK, so we are in violent agreement that we want
“to foster a culture where opposing ideas are genuinely welcomed instead of being wished and bullied away, either by the thugs of the right or the vapid, languid sneerers of the left”
Though I’d soften the language a bit by removing “thugs” and “sneers”.
What are we gunna do about it?
Well you can start right now by defending KeithW and telling us how you welcomed his different points of view about our nations history and that he did indeed get some things right (about our history) and criticise the sorry plight of established historians and the junk they were trying to peddle. you can also take a swipe at the special interests peddling most of that which turned out to be crap to access more and more money for government programs that actually worsened the situation and turned a lot of the aboriginal people into beggars.
Simons is having difficulty getting her own story straight. In one post she says:
Now. Who outed Sharon Gould? Even as I type these words, there is a great deal of boasting on the blogosphere about who tracked down the Sharon Gould-Katherine Wilson link first. Bloggers, pull your heads in. It wasn’t you.
In fact mainstream media journalists Bernard Lane and Justine Ferrari of The Australian made the connection as early as Tuesday afternoon – within hours of Crikey publishing the “Sharon Gould” material.
In another she says:
A small point, perhaps, but The Age is wrong to report that Wilson outed herself. She was outed on-line, and then reluctantly released me from my obligations of confidentiality.
She seems to have a little difficulty in saying ‘she was outed by bloggers’…
Okay, minor and snarky point. Done now.
Yea well that’s ok LE. I’m of course not attacking these two guys personally but their comments.
as I said
On the one hand Jackmason says he’s happy Keith’s beard was singed then on the other hand he tell us how the left and right are just silly little tribes and opposing ideas ought to be welcomed.
Well, er, Keith did present differing ideas and to be honest not many of his ideas on our history has been proven wrong.
So rather than celebrating his singed beard they ought to by their own standard be welcoming his ideas and getting a blowtorch to all the lefties having an orgasm that Keith was somehow caught out.
I’m only using their own standards here.
I second that JC.
Thank you Legal Eagle for the link. The thread had some revealing comments on it and I commend the posters for being so honest.
I recommend the posters here who like to name-call and use violent, scatalogical and macho language have a look. This kind of language often masks a secret fear in the poster that their own short-comings may be made public, and ironically, by indulging in it, these short-comings are made very public indeed.
jc writes: “Sure there is tribalism as both camps want to see the country organized differently. And they are important differences no matter how you cloud them over.”
Sure, there are many important differences on issues among us. My problem is people signing up to a tribe and then defending that tribe on everything.
I am a subscriber to Quadrant (and have been from the very beginning) but that doesn’t mean I buy all of KW’s views or that I defend him against what was clearly a lapse in editorial control. I don’t think it was a very serious lapse but that is also something that good people (all of whose whose bowel motions do in fact smell bad) can have different opinions.
Enough.
Well I’ll defend Keith, Ken.
I says it’s exactly how he describes it to be it like passing a dude check rather than a hoax.
I don’t read Quadrant as I find it insufferably dull and I’m totally against the idea that the taxpayer is partially funding it.
“My problem is people signing up to a tribe and then defending that tribe on everything.”
I think you’ll find that’s more of a problem on the left than the right. This is a good example.
The woman who performed the fraud was a loon by any account. She’s also a hypocritical turd. She went after SL’s hoax in the most unhinged way. In fact it was almost to the point where people began to feel she needed to be certified.
18 months later she’s perpetrated an attempt at hoax which is no more than a pathetic looking fraud.
That’s hypocrisy for you…. And what does the left do?
I think that this loon should have been called out for fraud and that her hypocrisy should be challenged.
Are you going to?
jc -Crikey – you haven’t got Mr. Neilsen’s points at all have you? In fact quite the opposite. And all this anger and name-calling is making you incoherent. You are not making sense at all! Your short-comings are showing! And boy it’s tiny!! Dearie me -Please SOON this poster now!
No that’s not right, Wain. I have understood his points quite well.
It sounds more like you lack the skills to understand mine.
If you can’t make a case as to why you think my comments are wrong rather than just saying they are then you ought to be the one getting the bullet for disrupting the thread with a stupid senseless comment.
I should “Soon” some of these comments. However, I’ve never had to do it before, and I don’t know precisely what’s involved. I’ll ask Helen when she wakes (Helen is safely tucked up in bed I hope, given that she’s in Edinburgh).
jc, you’re welcome to attack Wilson’s arguments or to argue about the ethics of what she did, but please don’t call her names. Gawain, don’t make innuendos about jc either. Play nicely, fellas.
Incidentally, I don’t think those who disagree with Windschuttle have to turn around and agree with his point of view. What’s not on is taking a personal delight in him being tricked.
LE
Weathergirl went after Sl to the point where it seemed she was going out of her mind over Sl’s funny hoax. Calling her what I did is in fact slang for medical terms that indicate mental instability.
We now find out that she’s tried to do more or less what Sl did but in a far more untalented way that looks more like a fraud than a hoax.
So what word would best describe mental instability and hypocrisy that could be used that has a medical ring to it rather than simple ” nut ball”.
I’m being upfront here.
I’m aware of weathergirl’s unfortunate history with SL. But still, no need to call her a loon – find a less perjorative term, or let people draw their own conclusions from her conduct…
‘Tis a storm in a teacup and not many will be exercised by it one way or another, though plenty in the Oz history and indigenous politics world I bet are chuckling at the deeply satisfying spectacle of Windschuttle being hoist on his own petard, as the saying goes.
The big winners though, as far as it goes, are definitely Kath Wilson and Marg Simons. Kath’s hoax was successful and her post-incident outing is immaterial to and leaves undiminished her accomplishment.
As Marg S noted on Crikey, Kath’s culture-jamming exercise was motivated primarily by her political activist spirit and she rightly decided: bugger the academic, career or legal consequences which in any case are probably inconsequential to zero. As she would also know, and deliberately risked.
And Marg Simons, who is one of the smarter media operators and political writers around, has been able to weave a very interesting narrative around the episode and its many and varied permutations and repercussions – to date.
Conclusion: well done and salutations, kick-arse sisters. And thanks for the laugh.
If only such delectable you-beauty moments occurred more often. Sigh.
My view of Wilson is that she’s an attention seeker. Anyone who would plan and execute a hoax over a period of a year is clearly desperate for attention.
One other thing LE.
There are more than a few people who have commented on this thread that would, without one thought, label any skeptic of the science of AGW as a denier, trog, whatever…
Wilson is a self-described anti- science anti -GM activist who by default is actually promoting famine in the world with her hysterical views on mass agriculture, which if isn’t practiced would cause the death of millions of people through starvation.
Organic farming would cause the death of billions if taken to its logical conclusion.
GM crops have been examined by the two most important government groupings in the world -in the US and EU- giving those being currently farmed a clean bill of health.
Weathergirl would like to see that stopped and as a self described Anti-GM activist is doing her utmost to prevent further progress in that area.
As yet I haven’t seen one single poster feeling quiet satisfaction at Keith’s fraud correctly label this person as what she is and condemn her actions. Not one.
Keith thought he was publishing a piece that actively condemned those who agitate against genetic crops. I would congratulate Keith on doing so as it shows he’s basically on the right side of science on this matter.
Unfortunately those that say Keith isn’t on the right side of science over AGW remain silent on this other equally important issue. AGW mitigation calls for, indeed must call for, genetic crops if we are to avoid famine and deforestation. Have any those attacking Keith’s AGW skepticism also attacked Weathergirl’s anti-science credentials on genetic crops? Nope thought not.
Posey -
So what you’re saying is that Wilson wasn’t even original yet you think she & Simons rock. LOL
The big winners though, as far as it goes, are definitely Kath Wilson and Marg Simons. Kath’s hoax was successful and her post-incident outing is immaterial to and leaves undiminished her accomplishment.
Y’think so, Posey? Wilson’s going to have to cop some media attention sooner or later, and maybe not at a time of her own choosing. She got tracked down by an Age journalist today asking to speak to her… and they’re not going to go away. There are serious questions about her use of the space given to Quadrant writers; her apparent contempt for Quadrant writers, readers, editor, and staff; and what she really thinks about the arguments used in the ‘Sharon Gould’ article.
And Simons is a little better off, but not much – she’ll get questions about possible collusion, attempt to deceive other publications, and about the details of the story as it was broken on Crikey (notice how she’s devoting a lot of time to defending her account and putting out her side of the story on her blog and on Crikey?)
It’s not a huge story. It will interest only a minor demographic of readers interested in behind-the-scenes media gossip. But it’s too juicy not to follow up – it’ll give the media a chance to sink the slipper into a number of competing publications. So no, it’s not apparent to me that Katherine Wilson WILL benefit from this.
Anyone who would plan and execute a hoax over a period of a year is clearly desperate for attention.
Nanu, yeah – it’s extraordinary obsessive behaviour. I dunno about attention seeking though, it sounds just like she really, really holds grudges. From her behaviour so far it looks like she doesn’t like the media attention and had been attempting (through anonymity) to keep it away.
jc, one of the reasons I don’t like people being labelled “loons” is because people have labelled me a loon for not accepting the whole global warming thing as a definite. IMHO, that’s not a fair call – I have a rational reason for my belief, based on Popper’s scientific falsifiability and the difficulty of categorically correlating cause and effect in such a complicated system. I’m quite happy to listen to the rational reasons of others as to why they disagree with me, however.
I think your comment at 69 is fair enough. Do those supporting Wilson also support her broader agenda? Personally, I keep an open mind with regard to GM food, as long as it’s properly researched and safety tested. What I really want is for someone to genetically engineer nuts to which I am not allergic. It should just be a matter of removing the protein which makes me go into anaphylaxis…?!
TimT -
I don’t think calling the Age is avoiding the media.
This the ‘nutball’ who thinks the Governments failure not to ban wireless technology in schools is a failure in it’s duty of care and who then calls the Age to write about her stirring the pot in Brunswick East primary school. This is the same “nutball” who gets the Age to write a story that confirms that pumpkins are easy to grow anywhere in Victoria, even on Coburg rooftops. FMD!
[Sorry LE, but JC is right, 'nutball' is the correct word for her]
Posey, yeah the whole thing is a bit of a storm in a teacup. As my Dad was saying today, would 99.9% of the population really care about this whole debacle?
LE – or can I call you Legal Loon.
Nanu, I guess I’m just really wary cos I’ve been reviewing the history of people having a go at SL after finding out that this present hoax was perpetrated by weathergirl. Some of the things that were said to SL were seriously nasty. (Of course, one of the pieces having a go at her was that Crikey piece by Wilson). And I’ve been deleting nasty comments from our moderation bin for the last day. It puts me in a bad mood.
So I don’t want anyone saying that we’ve been hypocritical in letting people be nasty to Wilson. No reason to sink to that level.
Nanu, wouldn’t be the first time!
Actually JC – I think it’s fairly obvious from the tone of the posts on my own site and those @ LP on the subject that I’m contemptuous of the anti-science guff weathergrrl was coming out with, yet I spend most of my blogging time laughing at the equally dodgy guff that the AGW deniers spout.
So there is at least one.
I like to rely on the peer-reviewed science no matter what the supposed political bent. Conspiracy theories just don’t for it for me. I do, however, find it a little sad that that attitude isn’t more common.
LE -
First rule:
JC thinks everyone is a loon/nutball at some stage.
Second rule:
JC thinks everyone is a loon/nutball at some stage.
Third rule:
JC thinks everyone is a loon /nutball when his carbon slaves run away.
[Homer has gone AWOL]
TimT and Nanu, if Kath Wilson is an “attention seeker”, a silly, empty accusation usually levelled by males against women, not to mention pretty rich coming from habitual, addicted, blabbermouth-to-very-little-effect blog commenters like your respective male selves, then she has achieved her objective. Magnificently so, in fact.
She drew attention to herself as someone who was not who she pretended to be but who fooled the hapless wannabe Serious Scholar, Keith Whatsisname into publishing her deliberately fraudulent, misleading piece and thus exposing him as the academically sloppy, scholastic fraud so many suspected him of being.
As I said: Mission Accomplished.
Tee hee, too true, Nanu.
Yea LE. I find it pretty amazing that the so-called pro science (AGW) crowd are getting satisfaction over Wilson’s attempt at a snow job/fraud over a pretty important piece of science on which future human survival rests. Yea it’s that important
It’s hard to believe but global food production and agricultural productivity has really slowed down over the past 20 years and more than a little concerning. Meanwhile world population is expected to rise from 6.5 billion to 9 billion in the next 40 odd years or so. Over this same period we are supposed to reforest in order to mitigate AGW and feed 40% more people.
Activist loons like Wilson expect us – in fact- are demanding we go organic which is quite possibly the most anti-human thing we could do. Australia feeds an additional 200 million people around the world through our food surplus. If we went organic we would barely be able to feed ourselves leaving aside the question of what would happen to the price of food.
So Keith publishes a piece which he thinks is basically supportive of the low priced/more food argument finds out that there a couple of things wrong with the piece although nearly all is science based and lefties chuckle and think they have caught him out. Caught him out on a pro-science argument.! And those lefties cheered Wilson on, remained silent or used the fraud to attack him because of the history wars aren’t a hypocritical bunch of intellectual thugs. Of course not.
What’s so ironic is that it ought to be Wilson getting attacked for her anti-science, anti-human views rather than Keith who happened to publish a piece that was actually reasonably accurate and pro science.
That’s what pisses me off.
People like Marr at the SMH who is about as smart as a retarded mongoose uses this opportunity to attack Keith and totally misses the real argument here and Wilson’s position on global future food supplies.
No wonder the MSM is going broke. Here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later so that a better medium rises up.
Sweet, I didn’t think my comment would provoke quite so much discussion.
Ken Nielsen at 49:
What are we gunna do about it?
Good question. Some suggestions that point towards an answer are:
1) Engage with people’s arguments rather than who or what you think they represent. Unless they have demonstrated they are not serious about wanting such engagement, in which case, ignore them.
2) Spend your time on blogs that encourage civility and active debate. Make them the ones you link to.
3) If you moderate blogs, enforce a policy of civil debate. If people aren’t willing to fall into line, mercilessly delete their comments.
4) Attempt to find points of agreement and common ground. This does not mean ignoring differences, but it means you should always be looking for areas where you might be allies on a particular issue with someone you often disagree with.
As an example of this last point, Jason Soon at Catallaxy is well aware that I write for Strange TImes, a blog whose political viewpoint he is mostly opposed to. But when I made a YouTube video promoting the recent anti-internet-censorship protests, he quickly posted it on Catallaxy. He didn’t let his opposition to 90% of my political views stop him promoting something we happened to agree on.
I hope that at least gives us something to start talking about.
gawain at 48
Yep, those examples by jc and John Greenfield do IMO create a rather nasty vibe. As you mention in a later comment, I think Legal Eagle’s link lays down some more pretty good rules for how to be civil (and therefore encourage debate instead of shouting matches).
jc, I’m going to assume for the sake of the discussion that you are sincerely interested in what other people have to say, despite the rather negative tone of part of your replies to me.
First of all, let’s deal with your repeated noticing of my comment:
Windschuttle has had his beard well and truly singed, and I’m not especially upset about that
You say I “seem happy” that this happened, and attribute this happiness (that you percieve – please own your own opinions) to your assumption that I dislike Windschuttle because of his role in criticising historians such as Henry Reynolds.
Well I’m not especially “happy” about this at all.
Debate would be easier if you’d be more careful about assuming that you know what other people think and feel – exactly the same fault that skepticlawyer correctly criticises Wilson and Simons for at comment #33.
Having said that, I don’t entirely trust Windschuttle’s commitment to real debate either. This may be incorrect on my part, but it’s there. A big part of the reason is the piece by Mervyn Bendle that Windschuttle published in Quadrant in 2008, where Bendle clearly implied that Dr Anthony Burke was “pro-terrorist”. In my view this piece was intellectually dishonest and helps to poison the well of debate in Australia. Since Windschuttle published it, I’m not going to cry if he gets fooled – but nor am I jumping for joy, either. It’s just not that important, IMO.
Which answers the first part of your question:
Well yea, let’s do that. So let me ask you why you think it was a good thing Keith’s beard was singed as a result of a fraud… Not a hoax but fraud perpetrated by what looks like a complete nut ball?.
It seems that the battle lines are already being drawn. Soon we’ll be able to tell whose side someone is on by their use of either “hoax” or “fraud”. Frankly I don’t care that much.
As to the “complete nut ball” comment. I don’t think I’ve had any dealings with Katherine Wilson, so I can’t comment. But her personal mental state has nothing to do with the strength of the case she’s sprung on Windschuttle. Either this is an important expose of Windschuttle’s failure to fact-check, or it’s just a storm in a tea-cup. Whichever of those is the case remains true no matter what Wilson’s mental condition is. Do you think Windschuttle’s failure to pick up deliberate errors in an article he (ultimately) approved for publication is important, or not?
Secondly if as you imply we ought to be “welcoming” Keith’s scholarship and defending him (as different points of view on a subject is important) why aren’t you?
Well, Windschuttle is a big boy with a magazine of his own and a network of friends and colleagues throughout the intellectual world. He can defend himself on personal issues. I’ve already explained why I doubt his sincerity when it comes to civil debate. However, let me digress and explain how I first came across his work, to explain to you that I’m not just a hater, either.
In the mid-90′s I came across Windschuttle’s “The media : a new analysis of the press, television, radio and advertising in Australia”. I found the book profoundly liberating, because of it’s critique of the “Frankfurt School” of media analysis. The Frankfurt School’s line was the familiar one that working people are brainwashed into acceptance of their lives by the media, mass spectator sport, etc. Windschuttle had different ideas, EG that sport, when played by working people, creates a sense of solidarity, and when they watch it. they engage at a high level of intellectual complexity when analysing tactics, results and so on.
This was all done while still presenting a left viewpoint, and refusing to dodge the obvious facts of concentration of ownership, occasional campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion ordered by media magnates, and so on. I found the book incredibly refreshing as it helped me to open my eyes to the possibility that opportunities for liberation exist in daily society.
So while I’m not entirely convinced that Windschuttle will always do the right thing at Quadrant, I’m open to listening to him. I think that’s a start in moving towards the standards of civil debate I support.
“these two jokers ought to be defending Keith rather than happily talking about how his beard was singed”
Once again, please don’t attribute emotions to me that I don’t have, and please don’t call me a “joker” if you want me to think you’re serious about debate.
you can start right now by defending KeithW and telling us how you welcomed his different points of view about our nations history…you can also take a swipe at the special interests peddling most of that which turned out to be crap to access more and more money for government programs that actually worsened the situation and turned a lot of the aboriginal people into beggars”
Have a look at this thread from the old Last Superpower forum (out of which Strange Times grew).
I’m posting there under the name “youngmarxist”. You’ll notice that I cop quite a bit of foul abuse for insisting that Noel Pearson’s views be taken seriously. In fact the thread began as other posters at Last Superpower said that Noel Pearson was left-wing, because he actively took the side of oppressed people against the welfare bureaucracies who have an interest in keeping those people helpless and powerless.
Given your comment about “turning Aboriginal people into beggars”, you should find a lot there to chew on, and more agreement (on this issue) than you might suppose you would find at a Marxist site.
they ought to…be…getting a blowtorch to all the lefties having an orgasm that Keith was somehow caught out.
I did call them “vapid languid sneerers”, which was meant to imply disapproval.
“My problem is people signing up to a tribe and then defending that tribe on everything.”
I think you’ll find that’s more of a problem on the left than the right.
I disagree. I find that problem in many places on both the left AND right. Blair and Bolt for instance? Have you read the sometimes dishonest, angry, self-affirming “All lefties are evil and stupid” stuff there. I much prefer to get my right-wing viewpoints from sites like A.E. Brain (whose “Today’s Battles” posts are a textbook example of how to argue online effectively), Oz Conservative and Opinion Dominion.
I think that this loon should have been called out for fraud and that her hypocrisy should be challenged.
Are you going to?
No. Even if you’re 100% right, where does that get us? This is not worth my time, and doesn’t help to push debate in the way I want to see it go. It just starts another shouting match:
BUT BUT yew are a crazee loon! Everyone thinks so!
Yeah? Well you made up a character, and like, MADE MONEY out of it!
Not very productive at all.
Thanks for giving me something to chew on.
JC, David Marr’s biography of Patrick White alone proves forever more and beyond all reasonable doubt that he is a superlative thinker, researcher, writer and communicator. A National Living Treasure.
OTOH, all you seem to do is froth at the mouth and be schoolboyishly abusive.
How old are you, exactly?
Posey – if you read my comment you’ll notice that I disagreed with Nanu that Wilson was an attention seeker.
I DO agree with you that ‘attention seeker’ is a fairly stereotypical male response directed in criticism at women. And I also agree with you that Wilson has achieved her objective in poking fun at Windschuttle.
But somehow I don’t think that she has anticipated her unmasking by bloggers and the MSM, or the questions that will inevitably arise about her ethical conduct relating to this hoax – or, for that matter, her future career in the media following on from this (don’t you think publishers will be a little, um, *wary* about publishing pieces by her in the future, given the deceptive way she’s gone about publishing the ‘Sharon Gould’ piece?)
But I already made some of those points in a previous comment – in response to you, I might add.
Nanu – interesting examples, thanks. At least in this case, though, I think Wilson was trying to maintain her anonymity.
Legal Eagle, Skeptic – sorry for becoming part of a little snarky argument on what has been a largely enjoyable thread. Time for me to cut loose from this for a little while, methinks.
Why can’t they both be attacked for being equally hypocritical? – which to me it is pretty obvious they are.
If you want healthy public debate on the Australian Internet, I’d ask you to stop thinking about who won or lost this round of the endless culture war
One of the reasons this blog is good is because it’s not really partisan. The contributors are individuals who don’t agree on lots of stuff. I only vaguely recall ‘Weathergirl’ and don’t feel any kind of way about her.
But that said it’s really interesting how those who’re religiously political (or politically religious) react to a hoax. When its against ‘our side’ the hoax is ‘trivial’, ‘childish’, ‘vacuous’? And it’s very amusing to see people spend days or even weeks contributing a fat tome’s worth of text frothing about how meaningless such a hoax is.
But when it’s their side then it’s very very very important.
Many don’t actually receive the lesson that lieth herein: the spleen is not for thinking with.
Tim T – don’t you think publishers will be a little, um, *wary* about publishing pieces by her in the future, given the deceptive way she’s gone about publishing the ‘Sharon Gould’ piece?
.
.
Well no. Alan Sokal continues to get published. In fact he’s got a new line in bestselling generalist commentary on the absurdities of the modern humanities.
Posey – all you seem to do is froth at the mouth and be schoolboyishly abusive.
No he also comes up with amusing satirical alternative names for things like Microtheft and Lavatory Pronto.
In person he’s actually very different. I think the Net provides cathartic therapy.
.
Marr’s got good qualities. It’s been downhill at Media Watch since he split.
*immediately links to this blog post as the best summation*
By the way – will this blog go for the Bloggies? http://2009.bloggies.com/
Nexus6
I agree with you about the science of AGW. It hasn’t been 100% proven but it’s pretty compelling and of course when there are that many eminent science dudes saying that it is happening- that we are putting a lot of shit in the atmosphere isn’t good I’m not going to argue against them.
However that’s only one part and in fact I actually think it’s a small part of the problem. The really hard part is the economics of it all which means how do we best organize ourselves in a way that still maximizes human welfare around the world and it’s here that I have a problem with mitigating now or waiting until there even more evidence or we are much richer to deal with it.
Taking Sterns analysis: Stern says that AGW will cause the world to lose 20% of it’s GDP through losses resulting from AGW if we don’t’ mitigate now. Okay.
Now let’s look at the comparison using Sterns analysis.
Current global GDP is US$65 trillion. Growth rates have actually accelerated over the past 30 odd years where we can estimate that the growth rate will be 3.5%. (Over time I think that it could actually be even higher than that.) So let’s use 3.5% as the growth rate over the next 89 years taking us to 2100.
If we don’t mitigate and leave the growth rate unmolested GDP can be expected to be US$1.388 trillion.
Stern says the cost of mitigation will lop 1% off the growth rate, so if we mitigate the molested value of GDP will be US$ 585 trillion.
That’s loss of $ 802 trillion as the higher growth rate and the compounding effect makes an enormous difference over oceans of time.
So even if we used Sterns analysis and accepted that GDP would effected by 20% loss (1388 – 1388*20%= 1110) it would still be higher than if we mitigate.
Mitigated GDP would be $585 trillion
Unmitigated losing 20% would be $1,110 trillion.
Even under stern’s analysis and parameters the conclusion is not to mitigate. That’s even we accept the science of AGW.
Posey I’m 13. So what’s may mature age have to do with anything?
Where exactly am I being abusive other than calling Wilson an anti science, anti human activist loon? Which she is by the way as I’ve proved.
Posey -
Oh its good old misogyny… ROFLOL!
BTW, can you translate this…
“She drew attention to herself as someone who was not who she pretended to be but who fooled the hapless wannabe Serious Scholar, Keith Whatsisname into publishing her deliberately fraudulent, misleading piece and thus exposing him as the academically sloppy, scholastic fraud so many suspected him of being.”
Adrien -
I think you’re wrong about people getting hot and bothered by the hoax, I think more people are interested in the alleged collusion between Wilson & Crikey in the attempt to discredit Quadrant’s editor personally rather than Quadrant. To me it was plain entrapment, perpetrated with lies & deceit.
BTW, I was very vague about Wilson as well but yesterday evening was fun getting reminded of all her crazy platforms. She is a nutball.
[Sorry LE]
TimT, I don’t know Kath Wilson and didn’t much like her online presence for reasons not worth elaborating.
But I reckon I understand her enough to know that her alleged neglect in anticipating her unmasking (fabulously revealing verbiage of yours, btw) and the questions that would arise about that from people like yourself would, to her great credit, be the least of her considerations.
You don’t understand people like her. End of story, for you at least, for the moment.
I haven’t been able to read anyone’s comments since the first one from Nexus 6 a long way up the thread. I lost my internet connection over here last night and it’s still a bit flakey. I’ve heard from Legal Eagle that things are getting a bit heated, so if everyone can just take a deep breath, that would be very much appreciated.
Nexus 6 @ 87 – who are both equally hypocritical? Windschuttle and Wilson? I’m presuming so.
I have no problem with people labeling Wilson or Windschuttle as hypocritical through a reasoned analysis which doesn’t resort to name calling.
Well Posey, Patrick White hated average Australia, which is only one of very few nations that have been able to give its people one of the highest standards of living in the world over a sustained period.
Considering it’s only been around for 200 years or so living in relatively peaceful existence, respected around the world for being reasonable and fair, having lines wanting to emigrate here I would say Australia has been an astonishing success story. In fact Australia in lots of ways is quite possibly the success story of the world over the last 200 years.
Patrick White thought Australia was dull and boring. Patrick White in other words was a fucking idiot, so if David Marr did a bio on White that didn’t reach that conclusion Marr is an even bigger head case than White. I haven’t read the bio so perhaps you could tell me: did Marr reach the conclusion that White was an ingrate, or did he present him in better light?
Just need to go feed strawberry yoghurt to my daughter (*remembering the important things in life*)
SL -
I strongly object to ‘attention seeker’ being appropriated as a sexist/misogynistic term.
You can ask people to take deep breaths etc., but lets not get too ‘PC’ about it. I don’t think anyone has gone too far( but of coarse I don’t know what LE has had to delete).
Sorry to tell you, but Patrick White is, um, dead – so not a living treasure at all. But what has your comment got to do with Marr?
Seriously, and ot, is Marr’s bio of Barwick any good?
Patrick White thought Australia was dull and boring. Patrick White in other words was a fucking idiot,
Well before your lot got off the boat it actually kinda was.
JC, knock it off. People are doing exactly what I said they’d do in the post, to wit:
Keith got hoaxed, end of. We’ve exchanged emails about the situation and I can report that he’s in pretty good humour, and knows exactly what the likes of Simons and Wilson think of him. Whoopidoo. As I said, hoaxing only works when there is a pretension to expose, and Weathergirl found just such a pretension. Good for her.
However, I stand by my earlier advice that she should have outed herself, and that by not doing so she has dragged both herself and Simons into a difficult situation. It looks like they’ve colluded; Simons is clearly in a very awkward position. This is compounded by WG spending so much time in the past hating on me for being a hoaxer (JC is right about that much — she became quite silly about it) and now being the perpetrator of a hoax in her own right.
Now on hoaxes where one makes money: as should be abundantly clear by now, I am quite happy to own the fact that I made money out of at least one aspect of mine, although that said, I did have a product to sell. I’m a libertarian. Markets are it. Katherine Wilson (and to a lesser extent Margaret Simons) have always struggled with this, but that’s probably an irreconcilable political difference of the type that David Jackmanson has already eloquently spoken about earlier in the thread.
So what do we do? Continue to abuse the crap out of each other and get nowhere? Or start having a conversation about, say, why Australians are so hostile to pretension. The Poms aren’t. And the Scots just find everything funny. There are a heap of interesting questions that people can ask about this stuff, but unless we take David and Ken’s and LE’s advice, it’s all pretty pointless, really.
[Nanu -- LE has had to do a LOT of deleting. And I haven't seen the worst of it, only the stuff she wanted me to make a final call on. And, I might add, it's coming from both sides, the Windschuttle/me haters, and the Simons/weathergirl haters. Believe me when I say there are some 'friends' out there you really don't want].
I’d be interested in a biography of Barwick. Haven’t read Marr’s though.
Windschuttle is a hypocrite because of the footnote issue (minor, granted) . More importantly, he knowingly publishes article after article of climate change denialism that has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked within the peer-reviewed literature. I mean Ray Evans, for God sakes! And this is the guy that demands the highest standards of truth in others. Imagine if the historians he so hates made half the basic errors that appeared in just the recent Tim Ball article.
Similarly, Katherine Wilson, in her diary site excoriates Windschuttle for ignoring the ‘facts’ she links to about the evils of GMOs and goes on and on about the problematic reporting of science. But the links she provides (and the links from here Crikey articles) are as scientifically ignorant and fully debunked as the articles Windschuttle publishes.
The both are on the side of science when it suits them and against it when it conflicts with their ideology. Then it becomes a grand conspiracy inflicted by the agents of the other side.
Nanu @ 99 – some pretty horrible stuff. Not from anyone on this thread (they didn’t even get a nose in if they started off in that vein).
Speaking of your last book – any idea on the next (was it called black house?)?
I realise you’re thesising and all, but your reading public demands good literature.
It’s called Our House, and it will be completed in due course, Sinkers! I am duty-bound to Oxford University at the moment, however, and they are paying me for the thesising
Nexus 6 @ 104 – nice analysis.
jc -you called her a turd..
Actually DavidJ
I didn’t realize who you were and only realized now that you’re one of the guys Jason Soon was praising (which I agreed with)….. and take some of criticisms back, though not all.
Jason mentioned a Marxist site and it seemed to me that the people there talk more like confused libertarians rather than the hard lefties I am used
So yea ,you’re a serious dude, although I must say that all you need to do is take a few baby steps and do the right thing and join the LDP 
So sorry I take most of it back.
However, look I think Keith was hard done by in this whole episode.
Here’s what Keith says about it:
W says:
In the ‘Gould’ article, all the principal subjects, personnel and publications actually exist. The biotechnology controversies she discusses genuinely occurred. The authors she quotes do hold the positions she says and they did write the works she cites. The institutions she says were involved in the biotechnology products she discusses are real institutions and are well known for funding projects of this kind. In particular:
* There was an MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine scare in Britain.
* Ben Goldacre is the author of Bad Science.
* Andrew Wakefield did publish a paper about the MMR scare.
* Richard Hindmarsh did write a book called Edging Towards BioUtopia.
* The chief plant scientist of the CSIRO until 2003 was Jim Peacock.
* The July 2003 edition of Plant Biotechnology Journal and the study cited there are authentic. Only the footnote is an invention.
* There is a genetically-modified product called Golden Rice.
* The following institutions she cites are all real: the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the European Community Biotech Program and the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science.
Moreover, Margaret Simons confirmed to me yesterday that only one of the 18 footnotes in the article was completely bogus and in another six cases the articles, books and footnotes cited all exist but do not contain some or all of the information ‘Gould’ claims. Eleven of the footnotes are genuine.
In The Australian (January 7) reporters Justine Ferrari and Samantha Maiden allege the ‘Gould’ article contained ‘scientific nonsense’ and ‘pseudoscience’. This is untrue. The critical issue on which I was allegedly hoaxed, the claims about inserting human genes into animal stock and crops to give immunity to human consumers of those products, is anything but nonsense. As Kelly Burke and Julie Robotham reported in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (January 7):
… the projects cited by ‘Gould’ as having been dumped by the organisation [CSIRO] are not in themselves implausible, and similar technologies are in active development. Human vaccines against diseases including hepatitis B, respiratory syncytial virus and Norwalk virus have been genetically engineered into crops as diverse as lettuce, potato and corn, and shown to provoke an immune response in humans.
Gould also suggests the CSIRO abandoned research into the creation of dairy cattle capable of producing non-allergenic milk for lactose-intolerant infants and a genetically engineered mosquito that could stimulate antibodies against malaria in humans who were bitten, mitigating against the spread of the disease. Both ideas are under serious scientific study by research groups around the world.
At most, all that ‘Gould’ has done is misrepresent her own identity and the direct involvement of the CSIRO in some of the research projects she cites. She has done no more than demonstrate that, through the subterfuge of a bogus email address, an invented identity and CV, plus a series of deceitful email conversations with an editor, a writer can get an article published that contains a small amount of information that was not true, but which is otherwise entirely plausible. Rather than a hoax, her article is simply a piece of fraudulent journalism submitted to Quadrant under false pretences. It is no more a hoax than a dud cheque.
If he’s right, it means this was more a case of fraud then a hoax.
Okay. Wait patiently, I understand. Getting paid to thesisise is a good gig.
LE – you read Marr’s Barwick and let me know
Gawin
Oops forgot about that one.
Wilson even published keith’s private cell phone number. She didn’t have to do that, but she did.
That’s a real turdy thing to do.
You’re offended by me calling someone who does that a turd, or just angry at the language used to describe her?
What would you prefer I called her (for doing that)
And Nanu stuck her address up on Catallaxy, jc, and she’s had Age journos around to her house giving her an earful thanks to it. Mind you, they were nicer to her than they were to me. In my days in the media ‘sun’, journos hung boom microphones off a neighbour’s roof (they were on holiday) next to my parents’ place, and I didn’t even f*cking live there any more.
So I’m not very sympathetic to her situation, sauce for the goose etc, but I do think the circle will be squared in due course.
On Marr: Always liked Barwick CJ’s view of the Income Tax Assessment Act, to wit: ‘a penal statute, and always to be construed in favour of the taxpayer’. Those were the days!
jc, keep it to the kind of language which wouldn’t embarrass my grandma please
She reads this blog – seriously!
Personally, I’d prefer you said Wilson committed an egregious breach of privacy (or something like that). Vastly more descriptive.
SL – I’d forgotten that quote from Barwick CJ. Alas, those days are long gone…
Really, Sl
Nanu stuck her address on the web?
I didn’t see that.
Well horses for courses. I’m sure Nanu wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t published keith’s private details.
There are times that require equal and opposite reactions.
Weatherloon should have thought about it before she publishes ” the reactionary’s” private details.
ooops sorry I meant weatherballoon
jc -you answered Mr. Neilsen’s point on blindly taking sides by immediately saying one side was more guilty of it than the other. There was no lead-in, no series of statements to back this assertion of yours. It was nothing more than an opening to attack whatisname. You were not adressing Mr Neilsen’s point at all -hence my statement. You also took Mr. Jackmanson’s “gotcha” sentence (I originally took it to be Mr. Neilsens -my apologies) question totally out of context presenting it as a statement. If it was not done for reasons of point-scoring then it was mis-understood.
Using agressive cliches about soapboxes and fecal odors suggests you are not interested in anyone’s point. Calling people turds and bints and suggesting bullest and blow-torches be used on those you don’t agree with is…well very junior. Using one’s age as excuse is just weak. When I was thirteen I was proud of my ability to discourse without recourse to crude and low language. Don’t confuse spleen with anus. Anyhow a little advice to you – too much feed-back on the guitar and you can not hear the notes. You might as well just throw it off a building instead of playing it. In fact -why a guitar?
legal eagle -sorry to have made inferrences. I got a bit carried away and am learning to SOON myself.
“Weatherballoon”? jc, I said it once, and I’ll say it again: you crack me up. As Adrien says, you have a gift for cleverly twisting monikers.
Gawain, no worries
LE, I didn’t know about Grandma. I’ve just edited one of my swear words. ‘Alltogether now, sorry LE’s Gran’.
Sorry Gawain,
But I disagree. Perhaps the language should have been tamer but the basic points were fine. I really think you need to read what I said again and then let’s talk some more.
jc -no, just responding to your question.
You asked where else did i abuse her?
Remember? It was only a short while ago.
Mmmm -maybe calling someone a turd isn’t abuse at your house.
Please respond to my comments. If you can remember them.
gawain, you’re now needling, which I take as seriously as abuse. Stop it.
Well, to be honest, I doubt Nanny would make it through 120+ comments, although you never know.
Poor Nanny, when I was a primary schooler I used to save swearwords just to shock her…without even realising what they meant, just reveling in the effect.
I agree Nexus 6. As an ordinary mug I feel compelled to go with whatever the “scientific consensus” happens to be at any point in time. Of course that consensus will sometimes be wrong but I’m sufficiently aware of my limitations to know that I’m not smart enough to foresee the mistakes.
SL, your memoirs will be a ripping yarn in 40 years time!
My point is valid. JC asked the question. I answered it.Jc confesses to alck of memory which doesn’t really wash.
Secondly I reread Jc’s comments about Mr. Neilsen and Mr. Jackmanson carefully and then responded as asked by JC. I’m most willing to continue my discussion.
Please note I am not talking about putting bullets into people as Jc has said about me. Also I am not calling anyone rude names.
What might be percieved as needling may just be a reaction to all this violent and agressive talk.
jc, I said it once, and I’ll say it again: you crack me up. As Adrien says, you have a gift for cleverly twisting monikers.
Yea, but it never came natural. It’s from years of giving abuse and receiving abuse in a trading room where one got a real sense of joy and achievement from cleverly (bullying) sparring with other traders while avoiding being bullied (sparring) back and all the while trying to make a few dollars mainly for oneself before the shareholders who came a distant last ?
Jc- are you describing yourself here?
Sounds kinda [WARREN BUFFETT].
[SOONED BY ADMIN].
I’d never make it as a trader. I’d probably get an ulcer in a matter of weeks.
Aaah, now I see the Soon technique in action.
That’s what it’s for — saves on writs. You can guess WHICH trader was there before.
See
I think I can…thinking of recent US uproar…
Well, I’m going to bed – meant to go 20 minutes ago. Keep it cool kiddos.
Wain says
jc -no, just responding to your question.
You asked where else did i abuse her?
Remember? It was only a short while ago.
Mmmm -maybe calling someone a …… isn’t abuse at your house.
Okay, Wain let’s call Weatherloon a standup sort of person, as after all screwing over some guy and then publishing his private details is a real stand up thing to do.
In fact its so “standupish” weatherloon is sitting on her roof nursing a freaking pumpkin in her lap and smiling…. giggling in fact.
Here take a look that’s her:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/i-was-quadrant-hoaxer-melbourne-woman-reveals-20090108-7cg9.html
As anyone would be doing on a sunny day she’s casually sitting up on her roof with a bloody pumpkin in her lap, the sun is out, the pumpkin vines are growing and weatherloon is smiling. What more do you want …. Oh I forgot, that’s right, write a fraudulent piece for a tiny little publication as a send up an then publish the editors private details on a web site.
This is all normal to you? Yea I would call that person a t… in my house and no one would think much of it.
I can understand why some may want to say bad things about Katherine.
A recent comment from Prof. Rick Roush at Crikey:
“By an interesting coincidence, I was interviewed by the Age about Gould’s Quadrant hoax a few days ago. I cannot remember even hearing of Karen Wilson before today, but have now learned that she has a protected website about me, which came as quite a surprise (http://katherinewilson.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/professor-rick-roush/). Why is it protected? No idea, but then, I don’t know what Wilson has written there.
The Age reporter has brought to my attention that Wilson has a previous article in Crikey that mentions me and others. It has several errors, of fact and interpretation, including various accusations. Wilson never contacted me for comment, and I doubt she contacted the others attacked in her piece. is there a mechanism for me to ask Crikey for a correction?
Damn it all -I have been hoaxed! I thought this was a public forum with published rules and guidelines. Now I see it is not. This a private conversation with it’s own set of unwritten rules and mysterious characters. Gotcha indeed! You certainly did -good one kiddoes! Any-how I must be off -I need a long shower after this.
As one of those 99.9% … um, no.
Okay, Windschuttle was gotcha’d due to slackness in chasing up footnotes, which is his particular strength as a professional scholar. Does this prove he is a) hypocritical or b) less professional as an academic? No. Quadrant is not an academic journal and I’d be very surprised if submissions to a mainly literary magazine are subject to the same kind of ‘peer review’ process seen in scholarly circles (where this kind of trick would be significant). My understanding is that the editor has been trying to widen the scope of Quadrant’s coverage to include issues of popular science – all this incident shows is that he needs to appoint a good Science Editor.
As for Sharon Gould/weathergirl/Katherine Wilson… meh. As hoaxes go this is pretty tame stuff. I’m a bit more worried about the fallout for Margaret Simons. My first magazine editor was canned for manufacturing news stories (some of which were also about things in which he had a financial interest) pretty quickly. The impression that Crikey has manufactured discontent for news purposes doesn’t do much for it or Simons – who as she proudly reminds us, is a REAL journo, working for a REAL paper. (Who hopefully, won’t sack her.)
It is Gawain, but users also have to READ them. If you want to be actionable, the blog of two professional lawyers is probably not the place to try and get it published. Sooning is an absolute privilege, wait until you’ve been Birdied!
SL -
I didn’t! I’ve hinted that’s all. I’ve debated whether or not to post it plus her phone & email but haven’t….(I think!)
Link if I have…sometimes I do get a rush of blood!
That being said, I’ve always admired you for sucking it up but these guys don’t let up and you should put them back in their place.
Not on this blog, Nanu, if you don’t mind.
I can see why people would want to, but I don’t think it should be encouraged as a general practice. Many of my original difficulties stemmed in part from someone (in this case a former teacher) who gave out my parents’ silent telephone number. Part of me wants to see it done to a journalist, so they can experience the invasion of privacy involved first hand, but I’ve got to hold myself in check — like many libertarians and non-Christians, I think very contractually, and I have to remember that other people usually don’t. In any case the Age are onto her already, whether they used your hint or not. It won’t take long to get around.
On the same note, Jason deleted comments I made about Metro & the CM which although I found excessive not a problem.
BTW.. the Age is on speed dial for WG..I didn’t bring them there.
Can I say say it…hmm..she’s an attention seeker!
You kidding SL. The Age love her. The pic’ed her sitting on her roof holding a pumpkin in her lap.
I’m not sure that photograph was entirely flattering, JC. You’ve only got to see what the Catallaxy crew have managed to do with it.
JC – Don’t forget she put her prep. child out there purely for attention.
Yes SL, before you say it this is very ad hom’…but she made the rules. I stop the line at personal details so if I have (and I don’t think I have but I would swear my life on it) that’s wrong.
FYI, Simons is a very big influence on Kath. She coined the attack on you SL that Wilson followed.
Nanu, I’ve deleted all the offending posts/email address etc. I’d appreciate it enormously if you stopped thread-hogging and left this business alone for a while, otherwise I’ll be forced to place you in moderation or close the thread.
SL – take out my post with her details please. It’s fun but not kosher.
Close, but not quite right.
The blog is private property, and usual nostrums of private property apply: the proprietors reserve the absolute right to eject anyone at any time for any reason. They reserve the absolute right to edit or delete any post at any time for any reason.
This is not a court of law, there are no ironclad rules, common law ideas of natural justice do not apply. What SL and LE say goes, goes.
I support this policy. It has been my experience that internet fora of all varieties degenerate into troll-blasted wastelands very quickly without rapid, vigorous norm-setting by forum owners.
I’m only the techie here, not a poster per se, but that’s my view of things.
Jacques, too true. Some of the most vicious Internet snarking I’ve ever seen was when I played World of Warcraft. There wasn’t anyone overseeing the forum on a daily basis.
We do our best to have free and open discussion, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
mostly accurate story except for the last bit
(the ‘blogger’ was Nanu)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24889714-5013404,00.html
Hmmm… who was a naughty boy last night then
Gee, 153 comments.
Is that a record?
I have now adopted a fairly transparent alias, only to try to limit the Googetrail.
Ken N;
No, if you count the back catalogue.
Result:
Thanks, Jacques – not even close to a record.
But I won’t encourage everyone to shoot for it – discussion is getting a bit ragged by now.
“the ‘blogger’ was Nanu”
For the record, I didn’t threaten, I indicated my temptation to post her detail given her total disregard for the privacy of others and further indicated that I would have no problem giving them to KW.
It was inferred that a media camp had formed outside her house as a result of me recklessly revealing her home address, which resulted in me having a rush of blood (please allow for the fact I was PUI
:S ) and posting her street number & email for the heck of it (all of which are readily available online) . While her personal details are available online, I took the view that highlighting them is inappropriate regardless of the fact WG has no such qualms. SL can confirm that I quickly asked her to delete them with my second request overlapping their deletion by her.
moderation?
It’s raining memes – hallelujah
Hmmm…. I’m still on the naughty chair
Free at last…free at last!
Well maybe not!
Sorry Nanu, was out to lunch with my family.
LE -
Who told you that you are allowed to take a lunch break. My understanding is that this blog is to be manned 24/7. How dare you take a break before dawn in the UK when SL takes over for the next 12hrs. Shame, Shame, Shame. You have a duty to your advertisers!
So what do we do? Continue to abuse the crap out of each other and get nowhere?
.
Yeah. It’s called human politics. Fab innit?
.
Or start having a conversation about, say, why Australians are so hostile to pretension.
.
Or even you should be more careful with stuff even if you think it’s good? But no. Then we’d learn something.
.
The Poms aren’t.
.
Is there an Annual Understatement Award we can nominate you for.
.
And the Scots just find everything funny.
.
Except sporrons. Which is weird cause they are actually pretty funny.
I’m having big problems with my internet connection here – I’m on the laptop because my husband has done something strange to the other computer. But the laptop has about 3 months worth of virus software to upgrade and is whirring away like mad here…
I don’t know how to take you off the Naughty Seat, Nanu. Do you promise to be good? If so, I will ask Helen or Jacques to let you out again.
Before I promise to be good…
Your computer problems may be related to your husband searching for visual relief during your final trimester.
…OK, I promise to be good!
The weathergirl pumpkin photo took up about a quarter of SMH page today. I think Ms Wilson looks quite fetching in it.
And for inner-city Sydney and Melbourne folk, it’s beyond cool to grow vegies on your roof . In fact, it rocks.
Nanu, nanu @ 169! You naughty fellow. As it happens, the little fella emerged 8 weeks ago so I’m back to normal…thank goodness for that!
No, it’s something to do with hooking our old computer up to the new one with a KVM switch. But he couldn’t work out how to get the new computer back again. I heard a shout of joy which I think means it’s all working now.
Posey, the main problem with growing vegies in the city is possums. As soon as the fruit ripens, they come and take a chunk out of it (or at least, that’s what’s happened to our tomatoes and strawberries recently).
On the plus side they’ve mispelled the name of LP, so with any sort of luck Mark won’t be carrying the can for Ms Post Deleter.
I’ll take you off the naughty seat, Nanu. I didn’t want her details all over this blog, that’s all. If you wish to make private contact with Keith Windschuttle with her details, then that is fair enough and — in context — probably appropriate. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably better that the matter be settled between the two relevant parties. But not on a blog, when it’s now become clear that she didn’t expect to be outed, and is eight months pregnant.
On another matter, we have been made aware of your history, Posey, as ‘jinmaro’ at LP. A repeat of the same or similar behaviour will not be allowed to get as far here.
Right, now back to ET at the top of the blog.
Ah, I’ve worked out how to take you off the Naughty Seat, Nanu.
They mispelled Catallaxy too at the end of the article.
I don’t think Windschuttle will be too worried about being punk’d by Wilson, however he might take issue with Crikey’s involvement which clearly predated the articles publication.
I have no idea who jinmaro is or what you are talking about, SL. I posted for 2 weeks on LP and got accused by Liam of being jinmaro because I backed up Adrien on a couple of issues. Go figure.
Thing is LE, people bitch about the possums but end up affectionately saying things like well, they got to eat somewhere. As with the bats, the possums are beauteous wild animals who are breeding up in the coastal inner cities because these are the greenest, yummiest places around. I say, go for it, dear ones.
I live about 12kms from Sydney Airport and in the decade I’ve lived here I’ve seen: a tawny frogmouth, a bandicoot, red foxes, deer, frilly tailed lizards galore, brushtail and ringtailed possums (in the back garden), frequent raids/visits by flocks of rainbow lorikeets, galahs, koels, both black and white cockatoos, honeyeaters, terns and, of course, miners, currawongs, magpies, and very rarely, the to-die-for butcherbird.
I can’t imagine life without the presence and existence of these other fabulous, beautiful creatures.
Nanu, the relevant contact information has been sent to your login email address for this blog.
We had a whole bunch of black cockatoos come over the other day. They were awesome. We’ve also got lots of small frogs because we live next to a creek. My daughter is the expert at finding them.
The black cockatoos fascinate me, LE. So diifferent from their coarse, white brothers and sisters.
They’re rarely sighted in Sydney (well, not by still comotase office workers) and most frequently heard, not seen, in the early Spring morns.
I hold my breath when I hear them flying overhead, bound for who knows where, and always try but fail to memorise their wistful-joyful call.
I actually agree with K. Wilson, she’s not the story and I’m actually pretty pissed off that I revealed enough for lazy ass stalkers to feed on, even if it was only for a moment.
[SL, I've posted on the cat in this regard and admittedly it was directed at you] …one swallow etc.
To me Wilson strickes me as a an intelligient woman who has been distracted by the crew that you’re all too familliar with.
Tears ran down my cheeks as I read Robert Manne’s account of same. This from the dope who was sacked from Quadrant for falling for the biggest hoax/fraud in Australia of the late 20th century – Bringing Them Home Report and its other two stooges – “genocide” and terra nullius! WTF was this last stooge all about? How the hell did an entire nation fall for this bullshit, and why do so many continue to do so?
KW was extremely brave to take on all the forces that peddled this pornography, and they will never recover from the bitchslapping he dealt them all. They will never forgive, forget, or leave their bubble of denial.
Poor lambs.
Can anybody explain how this zero-sum analogy between KW and the Fabrication-set works? Surely, weathergirl is like the villains Lyndall Ryan, Henry Reynolds etc, while KW is the equivalent of an editor at University of Queensland Press, Allen & Unwin, Penguin.
Now, I have not read much bile directed towards well-staffed academic publishing houses with scores of Ph.D trained editors to fact-check publishing tosh, so why get medieval on the ass of a single bloke who works for free having to juggle elevnty-four different disciplines for a mag that has always been devoted to extended op-edesque musings, and never claiming to have expertise in original scientific research, nor interested in acquiring it?
The dopey Leftists have just declared open season on themselves.
Poor dears.
On another matter, we have been made aware of your history, Posey, as ‘jinmaro’ at LP. A repeat of the same or similar behaviour will not be allowed to get as far here.
Posey isn’t Jinmaro Skeptic. She’s been labelled as such for the reasons she states.
I doubt either of them would attempt to hide behind a sockpuppet. And frankly they were both castigated for agreeing with me by a group of individuals who will remain un-named but (I hypothesize) take exception to any woman agreeing with me for reasons that will likewise remain unspoken.
I’ve never seen either of them ‘misbehave’ at LP tho’ they both been accused of it.
‘Jinmaro’ used to go after me in rather weathergirlish terms, Adrien — although before you were regularly around LP, to be fair.
I will say, though, that it’s not an accusation Mark would make lightly, and in any case — when it comes to moderation — we’re quite happy to be dictators
Adrien, jinmaro is delightful until you say something she strongly disagrees with or write in a way that she dislikes. Then she will go after you at each and every opportunity, and will even appear on blogs of third parties in order to do so.
But you’re a Camille Paglia fan, so you’re much less likely to have seen this side of her.
Ah, so ‘jinmaro’ is really Kerryn Goldsworthy!
Hildegard of Bingen! Jinmaro, Kerryn and weathergirl sound like a veritable cacophony of yawps. Bit ruled by their passions, peut-etre?
Not like us eh, sweeties?
But you’re a Camille Paglia fan, so you’re much less likely to have seen this side of her.
Or maybe that’s the attraction.
I know that this is a bit late but here is another point of view on the subject by R.J. Stove at the American emagazine Takimag:
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_hoax_down_under/
Thanks for that, MCB. Sorry about the delay — you got trapped by the spammer.
Yes, thanks for the link to the R J Stove piece, MCB.
Stove mentioned in an entry on John Quiggin’s blog that he had been an applicant for the job of editing Quadrant. It was then that he discovered that the job was unpaid.
It is a bit misleading to describe Quadrant as “taxpayer funded”. I believe that it receives a small grant for publishing fiction and poetry. I doubt that it would fold if it lost this grant.
Seems hoaxing isn’t a practice unique to Australia … however in the UK it’s not taken quite as seriously.
Peer reveals ‘cello scrotum’ hoax
DEM, that’s hilarious. And I like the way everyone took it in good humour too.
5 Trackbacks
[...] Note, in particulary, the blogger formerly known as Helen Demidenko opining on literary hoaxes here. There will, one imagines, be more in Crikey today, including (I think) a piece by me arguing the [...]
[...] "Whoever "Sharon Gould" is, the joke is on hem/hir for attempting the trick in the first place – fooled that we were a serious journal. , a QuadRant hater who boosts revenue by increasing sales… delicious! [...]
[...] tipped off Helen Dale/Darville/Demidenko at Skepticlawyer, who updated her previous post on the affair accordingly. Meanwhile Larvatus Prodeo picked up the [...]
[...] and mainstream media in outing Ms Wilson. Then go to this piece by scepticlawyer (Helen Dale) Quadrant Demidenkoed. That is all. This provides a picture of the evolving events, including links through to some of the content [...]
[...] various places around Ozblogistan (enumerated in considerable detail in my earlier post on the topic), people have been calling Katherine Wilson a fraud. Or they’ve been calling Ern Malley a [...]