Data! Data! Data! Or maybe not.

[lds]

You know it's a recurring theme with me, when there's a controversy, to demand the data first? You've seen me do that with global warming, with quality of education in Wisconsin, and with the economic "recovery." It's a policy that's worked very well for me for years

Comments

[lds]

Now where have we seen this tactic before... the strategy of defining the terms more and more narrowly until they're absolutely useless to anyone except the riskiest of day-trading gamblers?

Oh yeah! I remember! When you predicted deflation!

[lds]

So what is that, an hour and a half then? You want to compare the preceding 24 hours to an hour and a half? That's your apples-to-oranges comparison now after you've actually had a chance to look at the data?

That reminds me of something I read recently. What was it? Oh yeah:

He just can't ever seem to say something useful unless he posts two separate comments back-to-back to say contradictory things; that's the only way he's assured of getting anything right...

If he has the approximate intelligence equivalent to a million monkeys with a million typewriters, all he has to do is type the same volume of random shit as those monkeys and maybe some of it will end up correct.

I'm sure, if comparing a 24-hour period to a 1.5-hour period is a bit too obvious, you can look harder and find equivalent five-minute periods on Thursday and Friday, at the same time of day, that would make your new point very nicely now too. And it could even be correct. It would't have any more relevance to your original comment than this one did, though, so

[lds]

Uh, no. I didn't screen that comment; not sure how it got that way. Did you break a LJ rule or something, that they started doing that to your comments by default or something? I don't know.

[lds]

To consolidate three responses into one comment:

"Plunge" (and I still think that term is overstating it, by the way)

That sounds vaguely familiar to me. Like it could be an illustration of this point: "He just can't ever seem to say something useful unless he posts two separate comments back-to-back to say contradictory things; that's the only way he's assured of getting anything right."

It's the slope that defines the terms. That's just how it works.

But the whole point of my complaint about the AP (and later you, and after your finger-pointing, CNBC) is that context defines the terms. The financial journalists can't ever expand their view beyond one day. To whom is that useful? Gambling day-traders? Who gives a shit about them

[lds]

before I knew that you thought commodity prices would always go up in a disaster... Or fuck up something as fundamental as which direction commodities are expected to move... implying prices must have gone up...

You created this out of whole cloth, remember? Then I provided you with a multiple-choice reading-comprehension test, which you failed.

But I understand: you desperately have to make this shortcoming be my fault, too.

However, I'm very tired of your outright lying in order for you to do that. Find another way to make it be my fault. Lying outright is simply not permitted.

To show good faith and an intention no longer to lie, you may give me answers for the following three questions.

1. Reading comprehension. Read the following and select the best answer for the question that follows.

you haven't seen my recent posts whinging about the AP's crappy economic reporting: "Gold prices plummet on Lindsey Lohan's return to court!!!" Hey kids, look at a spreadsheet sometime. Is it still considered "plummeting" if it's still

[lds]

The comment of whip_lash's that I deleted contained the following text:

Why did you insist on discussing context without bringing up context?

But of course, I did, and you would have known it, had you answered questions 1 and 2. I'm sorry, but it's come to the point where your refusal to answer questions 1 and 2 leaves you believing that you are permitted to put words into my mouth and argue against them, and then use them as the basis for your ad-hominems.

Let me be clear: you may call me names if you like. You may answer questions 1 and 2 by saying, "[answer], pussy!" and you never have to call me "sir." But you will not say that I did not bring up the context, when my very first comment was all about the context of the prices, nor may you construct your straw-man arguments by bringing me into them. Build them all by yourself if you must, but don't put words into my mouth

[lds]

It always astonishes me to see the lengths some people will go to, to preserve their dishonesty, to continue to believe things that have been proven to them to be false. This exchange reminds me of the story Dawkins told about the Christian who ran out of an auditorium with her hands clamped over her ears to ensure she could not hear the evidence being presented in favor of evolution.

These questions are not difficult. They are not phrased poorly. They rely on text that is right before you. Yet, it is clearly more important for you to argue against things that you want me to have said than for you to discuss things I actually said.

Good thing you've made that distinction clear, because I was about to introduce question 4 for you to respond to, just to make sure we're crystal-clear on the subject being discussed:

4. Which of the following is an accurate quote of what I've typed?

A.stop and think for a second about the prices of commodities in the wake of natural disasters before unthinkingly buying the report of the news ticker