Sunday 18 May 2014

I’d take a tattoo on my body a la Glover above–”Bugger off alarmist d***heads,” I’d place it where I’d like you to kiss it.

New comment on your post "Ha ha: Lennart Bengtsson leaves advisory board of GWPF"
Author : thomaswfuller2

Comment:

I'd take a tattoo on my body a la Glover above--"Bugger off alarmist d***heads," I'd place it where I'd like you to kiss it.

Permalink: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/05/14/ha-ha-lennart-bengtsson-leaves-advisory-board-of-gwpf/#comment-42346

[Update: I note here that "Tom Fuller" denies making this comment. I don't believe him; which is to say, I think he did make the comment. Before I explain why I think that, in possibly tedious detail, I'll note that I am at least partly happy that TF does not wish to be associated with such a comment, and denies authoring it. Now for the tedious detail:

Preamble: the identity: this being the internet, I have no real way of knowing that the person who runs the blog The Lukewarmer's Way is actually called Tom Fuller. I've no reason to believe not, but it makes for confusing terminology. I also can't verify that the person who emailed me is the same as the person who runs the blog. But the co-incidence would otherwise be so extreme that I'm not going to doubt that latter. Its probably also the same TF as at https://plus.google.com/114317544880622632763/posts. Note, conversely, that you can be sure that I am the human called William Michael Connolley, because enough biographical detail exists to link together this blog, my other blog scienceblogs.com/stoat, my old blog mustelid.blogspot.com, and my wiki pages.

The denial: at TLW, ATTP linked to a comment  placed on my blog (and copied to stoat-spam by me) signed by Author : Tom Fuller. And then, to the one I've copied into this post. The two comments have different IPs, and they geolocate to different places, both in the far east. The first named, made in 2015, geolocates to Taipei. The second named, made in 2014, geolocates to Shanghai. Note: revealing IP addresses is, I think, unacceptable; revealing broad locations such as Shanghai or Taipei is acceptable; and TF has self-located to these broad regions anyway.

The first IP matches a number of other comments on my blog ostensibly from "Tom Fuller", such as one, two, three, four. Note that those comments self-locate, correctly, to Taipei. All those are from 2015.

The second IP also matches a number of other comments, such as five (note: one the same post as the disputed one), six, seven, eight. All those are from 2014.

Either all of these comments were made by TF, or none, or someone in close geographical proximity to him made them, or someone with truely l337 haxor skilz. I'm going to discard the last (because its a bit like "suppose we're inside a virtual reality"; once you assume that, you can assume anything). All the other comments are plausibly in the style of TF, and I think unlikely all to be faked. What would be the point? The close-geo-prox is conceivable but implausible, especially as the location follows what I know of TFs moves from place to place.

Which brings me back to TFs assertion that he didn't make the offending comment. When I told him "really? It came from this IP" he replied that it couldn't be him, since the IP was in S and he was in T. However in 2013 he announced he was moving to S (permanently, he said, but permanence changes) so I find that unpersuasive.]

2 comments:

  1. As I remarked via email, I understand (now) that the comment originated in Shanghai, where I lived at the time. I believe I know what happened.

    However, I did not make this comment. I have made some that are arguably worse. But not this one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tom,
    So it now seems that the comment comes from a city I've never been to and is where you were living at the time. Yet, you didn't make it. That's fine, I guess, and there's much point in simply disouting it. However - unless something has changed since I last looked - there are still comments on your blog, made by you, in which you essentially accuse me of making this comment. Not only was it made before we'd ever interacted (I think) but I've never been to Shanghai.

    ReplyDelete