Windmills ahead!
Tim Lambert accuses many different online personalities of being John Lott. Xrlq is unconvinced. While Lott has admitted to using an internet pseudonym (yeah, I’m one to talk), I remain unconvinced and that is mostly because in the comments at Xrlq’s, Tim keeps moving the goal posts.
Update: Lott has admitted to using only one pseudonym.
May 16th, 2005 at 8:36 am
Pardon? How have I moved the goalposts?
May 16th, 2005 at 8:56 am
One example:
‘Lott decides to post a review of MGLC. Changes his account name from “JL” to “washingtonian2″ to cover up who wrote it. Gives his location as Washington DC.’
becomes
‘You don’t find it plausible that someone who works in Washington would choose washingtonian as a handle? Are you now going to deny that Washingtonian was Lott’s handle at freerepublic beacuse you don’t find it plausible that he would choose that name?’
becomes
‘Are you now going to deny that Washingtonian was Lott’s handle at freerepublic because you don’t find it plausible that he would choose that name?’
becomes
‘This disproves your absurd claim that he couldn’t possibly be washingtonian2 because Lott would never had chosen such a handle despite the fact that he worked in Washington.’
I don’t know that Xrlqy Wrlqy said ‘he couldn’t possibly be washingtonian2’, merely that you can’t prove he is.
May 16th, 2005 at 10:06 am
He can’t prove Lott was ever Washingtonian-anything. Not that it would matter if he did; Lambert has been “documenting” Lott’s supposed identity as Washingtonian for years, so any troll attempting to push Lambert’s buttons would have known to use the name, and the real Lott would have known not to.
Another nicely moved goal post was selectively editing a review to make an attribution look like a signature, then changing the topic to a supposed wish list as soon as another commenter called him on it. Even if we take Lambert’s word that this is more legitimate than this,
it still wouldn’t prove anything since the troll would know his initials are JL, too. Meanwhile, Lambert never did explain his original dowdification of the review; once again he just MovedOn.
May 16th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Tim Lambert has played Captain Ahab to Moby Lott for some time now. His goal seems to be if he can just catch Lott in an obvious lie, then it will automatically discredit the whole concept of concealed carry.
What Tim fails to realize is that concealed carry is much, much bigger than John Lott. Millions of Americans know first hand that allowing private citizens to carry handguns does not increase violence or crime, and probably has the opposite effect.
Kinda like trying to convince the Irish that potatoes are poisonous.
May 16th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
I did not move any goal posts. Xlrq claimed that it was not plausible for Lott to have chosen the pseudonym Washingtonian even though Lott was working in Washington at the time. He refused to look at the evidence that Lott used the pseudonym.
He also persistently gets his facts wrong. For example, his latest claim above is that some troll could have faked the Washingtonian posts after I accused him of being Washingtonian. But the Washingtonian posts occured before I made the accusation. Or are we talking about a time travelling troll? Another example is his claim that if you get a new IP from your ISP, only the last eight bits will change. Or his claim that Lott’s book doesn’t mention one-gun-a-month. Or his claim that Lott would never make spelling or grammatical errors.
And no, presenting additional evidence is not moving the goal posts, either.
Nor did I change an attribution to a signature. It was and is a signature.
May 16th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Thank you Captain Holly, but that is not my goal. You may not care about fraudulent research, but I do.
May 16th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Holly, in Tim’s defense, he’s not anti-gun (he has stated that on this site before). He is anti-Lott.
May 16th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
He’s not just anti-Lott, he’s also clearly anti-gun. Granted, he’s less anti-gun than his government, but that’s like being more pro-free speech than Saddam Hussein.
May 17th, 2005 at 12:54 am
Xlrq has run out of arguments so he’s just calling me names now.
May 17th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
Er, yeah, that’s the ticket. After all, your arguments were so, like, convincing and stuff.