John Lott gets more scary

He doesn't just rely on simple-minded economic models. He also appears to be somewhat controlling.

I didn't know much about the guy. I know he's written some books arguing against gun control. He's somewhat lawsuit happy, having sued Steven Levitt over something he said. That's about all I knew about him, I hadn't read his books, didn't have much of an opinion about him. But I saw him give a talk on C-spam and I wrote a short post on my thoughts about what he was saying.. My comments did not flatter him.

He responded to my comment. And this is where it gets interesting. He didn't just comment on my blog, he said something about it on his blog also, linking to my post. The reference to me and my blog is gone.

Here's what it said 8 days ago.

Go see it, the book is wonderfully ingenious, clearly written, and the balance of evidence and analysis makes John one of the formidable economists in the public policy arena." On the negative side you can find this: "John Lott is scary. He's on CSPAN2 right now, giving a talk on his book. What's scary about the guy is that he has no concept of the idea that human beings might be less than rational in the way they go about making life decisions. He really thinks I did put in a reply to his post on his website. It will be interesting to see if he has any response. Update: Well, there wasn't a substantive response, just some name calling.

He made that post on two different blogs. It's still there in one of them, but it's been deleted in the other one. I'm not sure what that's about.

He didn't publish the comment I made on this blog last night, I made a comment on the other blog this morning. I don't know what will happen to it.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the change in the old post on his blog is some kind of accident. If so I certianly apologize. But putting together everything I know suggest to me that's not the case.