Mainly because you don’t know what foo camp is all about. Yes, I have arrived in lovely Sunnyvale, safe and sound, ready for my alter ego, Tyler Nerden, to face the google geeks.
While I was hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, what did I miss? I just caught Behe on the Colbert Report, and yowza, what a clown. Einstein’s theories were all about putting limits on Newton? And Behe is the guy who’s putting limits on Darwin? Can we just say he’s an idiot and be done with it now?
And speaking of dismissive one-liners, what the heck is going on here in my own little fever-swamp? There are 357 comments on this trivial article! I could tell just from the numbers that a troll has been at work, and what do you know, there’s David snarking away (68 of those comments are just him prattling away), and all you people are feeding the little infestation. Stop it. He’s not worth it. Poof, now he’s gone.
I will be checking in a little more regularly now, so behave yourselves.
Colbert pretty much let Behe hang himself.
I think most watchers of The Report (Rapor if you will) get the joke, and Behe didn’t do himself any favors.
Exactly when does a mistake become a lie?
Sunnyvale as in the one located in Northern California?
Boring little town (I live there), but the Kwik-E-Mart/7-11 is nearby in Mountain View.
Why’re you in Sunnyvale again?
I’m here for the Science Foo Camp.
Frankly, at the point where Colbert said “… because obviously wood, a piece of metal, and a spring couldn’t have any other possible use?” (re. Behe’s moustrap), Behe should have just given up and gone home. I don’t think he made many converts :)
So that’s why my server was slowing down!111
I think David was a temp at AIG.
Isn’t “foo” that stuff that makes up irreducible complexity?
That Kwik-E-Mart/7-11 is really close to the Google campus. If you go up Shoreline (which, if you’re coming from Sunnyvale, is very likely), you’ll go right past it.
Any interest in trying to get locals together for dinner or drinks? Maybe we could start up Drinking Athestically? :)
I’m a grad student at W&M…want me to hunt him down and teach him some science?
I would like to apologize for feeding the troll a bit… but in my defense it was a reeeeeeeeeeeeally slow day at work. (Desk jobs suck, I can’t wait for summer to be over.)
Hmm… apparently there are some loose ends.
1. Thanks for posting my e-mail PZ. I appreciate that.
2. Stephen, if you want, be my guest. As I’m not a creationist, and I am not an ID’er, what science do you think I need to learn?
It appears to be a violation on PZ’s part if he reveals email addresses (even of alleged trolls).
Yikes!
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-odd-seven-legged-lamb,0,7045002.story
“‘m lkng fr rmmt fr th 2007-2008 cdmc yr. Grdt/Lw stdnts r prfrrd, hwvr nt bsltly ncssry. hv plc pckd t t Ppprtr, whch s n th crnr f Jmstwn nd 199. Nt qt wlkng dstnc t cmps, bt ts dfntly cls. Rnt wll b bt $400 prsn bfr tlts. Plc s flly frnshd, whch s grt. wld prfr n pts, bt dfntly n cts, s ‘m llrgc. W wldn’t b bl t mv n ntl bt th 21st f gst. f y r ntrstd, snd m n -ml t dcgld@wm.d dscrbng yrslf. Dn’t s th phn nmbr t cll m. t’s nt crrct. f y hv nthr plc n mnd tht y thnk mght b bttr, lt m knw qckly. hvn’t sgnd th ls yt n ths n, bt wll vry sn.”
Nw knw why h’s sch prck. Lw stdnt. f trllng s hs wy f strss rlf whl cllg s t ‘m frd fr hs prspctv rmmt’s snty.
No cats?!?
I have four. They would not approve.
ChrisD: I notice you chose to post anonymously. I’m a little perturbed that you think it’s fun to splash someone’s personal information across this page because you happen to disagree with their views.
Ok. Now this is getting ridiculous. I’m sorry, but I have to respond to this. It’s one thing to reveal my e-mail address. Its another thing to post my need for a roomate. IP blocking is one thing. This is quite another thing entirely.
Now, unfortunately I do not know of any legal action I can take in regards to this. I do not know of any action I can take in regards to this period. I can just hope that individuals here will be more moral than I give them credit for and not send e-mails, find out where I live, or anything like that. I’ve been banned. Must I be hunted too?
Someone science literate who belongs to Audible.com should provide a scathing review of Behe’s book, which is available in audio format now.
Otherwise, the hoi polloi will see only this:
Though many critics won’t want to admit it, The Edge of Evolution is very balanced, careful, and devastating. A tremendously important book.” (Dr. Philip Skell, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences)
I must unfortunately agree with David. PZ has the right to ban him (it’s his blog).
But he has no right to reveal personal information (his email) when it is written black on white (by him) that it is required for authentication purposes only.
I am just luck that the phone number listed is not mine anymore.
For the first time today, I agree with David. Troll or not troll, part of the ‘deal’ was that email adresses were for authentication purposes only.
As much as I dislike law students, I can’t condone posting his personal info, and frankly broadcasing his email address in the first place was kindof dickish (two wrongs don’t make a right, after all).
I would tend to agree with you guys, but a troll is a troll. If a troll comes on the boards, he or she deserves to be outed. A little deterrence will be nice for a change.
Plus, I don’t have anything against PZ playing god. :)
David, pay attention. God is punishing you. She is very angry. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is also angry. They have made you allergic to the second most important species on earth.
You still have time to grow up, get a life, and fake acting like a normal person. Otherwise, looks like your next life will be as a mouse somewhere and likely last until you meet up with…..a cat.
PS: Missed the mega-troll dribbling so don’t care. But it was a bit tacky of PZ to post the email address. For incorrigibles and 2nd time offenders maybe.
IS David a second-time offender?
Sigh, and here I had hoped Davy would finally give “evidence” of something.. Sorry, couldn’t resist. ;) Good riddance though.
BTW, I think his main problem was similar to the, “radical deconstructionist”, I talked with once. He came to opposite conclusions, that all things **are** naturalistic, so any definition of “truth” is purely arbitrary, but still had the absurd notion that this meant that there could be non-arbitrary “things” about the universe that, being unknown and unobservable, could mean that supernatural stuff did happen, we just have no way of knowing it. David seemed to take the opposite tack, arbitrarily define some things are actually “true”, therefor there must be a non-materialistic world, in which supernatural things *do* happen.
The logic isn’t any better, since the only real conclusion such a path can lead to is that *everyone* is full of it, and we don’t know anything at all, let alone what is natural or non-natural. A non-starter position. Obviously, to get any place, you have to start making assumptions, either that everyone is wrong and stuff *does* happen behind our sensory back, or, we see what happens, just not completely, so have to rely on material definitions, which automatically precludes *any* capacity to see, witness, know about, or do anything with, stuff that happens where we can’t perceive it.
Both views of which are, practically speaking, equally useless.
I’m baffled as to how/why reposting information WHICH SOMEONE MADE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE IN A WANT AD is supposed to be an invasion of privacy?
ChrisD: I notice you chose to post anonymously. I’m a little perturbed that you think it’s fun to splash someone’s personal information across this page because you happen to disagree with their views.
Posted by: Christian Burnham
Why shouldn’t I remain anonymous? I’m not the troll.
PZ: Delete my former message where I exposed the troll’s name, which I obtained by using Google to search for information you provided. Since it seems fair that I should be the one exposed for posting information anyone could have obtained by utilizing the email address you yourself posted, replace my email address with David’s in the body of your post.
Totally logical, eh Christian?
PZ (or other Pharyngulites), have any of you heard about the Evangelical Broadcasting Organisation (EO) in Netherlands censoring David Attenborough’s “The Life of Mammals”? This blog by an evolutionary biology professor is stated as having the scoop, but I lack the ability to read Dutch. By reading a Babel fish translation, I get the gist (it seems the EO did something similar to Al Gore’s Inconvinient Truth). This is really bizarre, and I was wondering if anyone else has heard of it.
/off-topic
It’s not – rather, it is the establishment of a link between a poster here and that want ad that is an invasion of privacy.
linking to publicly available information is an invasion of privacy?
that kind of casts a pall on all links to anything on the tubes don’t it?
Invasion of privacy or not, its in very poor taste. David may be a troll, but that doesn’t excuse rudeness. Ignore trolls, don’t become trolls.
Well, I understood the gist of the exchange to be that the revolution of 100+ years ago was about recognizing that there were limits to the explanatory power of classical physics, and Einstein was the bloke who showed the way beyond them. As Blake Stacey points out, Behe’s falldown is that, unlike the late 19th century physicists, neither he nor any of his pals have shown that there’s some problem fundamentally insoluble in terms of the reigning paradigm in biology (ie. Darwin and Mendel and extensions thereof).
I’m waiting for some senior scientist old enough to have met Einstein to intone: “I knew Albert Einstein; Einstein was my friend. Dr. Behe, you’re no Albert Einstein”.
It was a wonderful Colbert segment. Behe walked right into all the punches.
Oh please, Iskra. IF you want to chastise someone for being rude take it to the owner of this blog. I did not provide information about the poster, merely relayed what anyone could find out. If it were up to me the internet wouldn’t be anonymous anyway so as to discourage trolling in the first place.
Feel free to use the following private information of my own at your leisure, as if they will do you any good as far as “invading” my privacy:
militant.agnostic@yahoo.co.uk
Chris Delozier
Invade away.
garth, his email is not publicly available info. Especially when it is stated just under “POST COMMENT” : Email is required for authentication purposes only.
I think this is quite key to the success of blogs, including this one.
Eamon,
you don’t have to be some old physicist to tell Behe that he is not Darwin’s Einstein.
Einstein did build a theory that made quite a few predictions. What predictions does Behhe make ? None.
I am only a middle aged physicist.
I agree re invasion of privacy, general rudeness, poor taste, bad nettiquette, etc. PZ should remove David’s email address from the body of post and the ‘want ad’ from the comments.
*Ahem*
If you care to note, I said it didn’t matter if it was an invasion of privacy, it remains rude. But you are correct, I do have more of a problem with PZ’s posting as your’s.
Pz
I must voice my agreement with the majorty of posters here – posting davids email was in clear violation of the rules that you have set. We expect everyone (including you) to abide by the very limited rule (anonymous is anonymous)
I care not if you have one of my email addresses. However, david’s email was not a throwaway – but an institutional one – which makes it very inconvenient (at the least) if he now needs to abandon it.
Is this ‘outing’ the new resonse to trolls? I hope not!
David – for what it’s worth – I disagree with your style, your intention and almost every single post you’ve made. You are a troll. But you do not deserve this.
Sunnyvale?
Does this mean PZ is going to visit the Hellmouth?
Wow, I went to bed last night and David was just starting. I only read half the threads posted as it made me want to give up and go back to sleep.
I didn’t see where David’s email was put up, that does seem poor form. Anyway, just to restart the argument, David asked for evidence that the trinity doesn’t exist. We don’t have to provide it, because we aren’t proposing it, David has to. But to be helpful let’s look at the concept of Identity:
x = y and y = x This states that x is identical to y.
If x = y and y = z then x = z (Transitivity)
OK, the trinity states that the godhead is 3 separate persons in a unity. They are distinct, but the same. This unity violates Identity.
Thus: G = godhead, F = father, J = Jesus, S = ghosty.
We have:
G = F (The father is god),
G = J (Jesus is god),
G = S (ghosty is god). All good.
Now, for it not to violate the law of Identity, that is for God to be the father, son and ghost we have to have transitivity:
F = J = S, That is the Father is the son who is the ghost.
But this is not what the doctrine of the trinity says. It says they are 3 distinct persons, not 3 names for the same god. Trinity is logically false.
Thank you I do matinees too :)
Hmmm. Yeah, blowing David’s anonymity is a questionable action.
His last name isn’t Korn, is it? Has he been sending threatening private emails to anybody? Does anyone here feel unsafe as the result of any of his comments? Has he intimated that he has specific knowledge of any unsolved crimes that might, perhaps, be of interest to law enforcement officials?
That one or more commenters here have disagreed at length with his positions on one or more topics is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to this issue.
Sure, anonymity enables trolling. It also allows people to have, if they so desire, a layer of identity protection between themselves and the invisible lurker or anonymous predator who happens to be paying attention. This is not a trivial concern.
Even if posting his email was intended as a way of enabling those who were engaged in discussion with him to continue the debate off-line (so to speak), that’s still something he should have been allowed to offer or withhold at his own discretion.
Flaming is one thing. Plaming is quite another.
I petition Dr. Myers to please remove any and all of David’s personal information from this page. Thank you.
I’m dutch and yes the Evangelical Broadcasting Organisation (EO) did cut every piece out of “The life of Mammals” that would suggest evolution and an old earth, well older then 6000 years that is.
The really bizarre thing is that the broadcast organisation is a part of our public broadcast organisation, they get their funds from our taxes. Our public broadcast organisation is hard to explain it is build up from several different smaller broadcast organisations who cater for several groups in our society, like protestants, catholics, socialists, mainstream, etc…
They broadcast together in a mix on three channels and it is difficult to see when and who is sending their message in disguise.
But all in all it is the same as our government who never ever will consist out of one party, because no party will ever get the absolute majority. At this moment our government consist of Socialists (a little to the left from mainstream), Christians, a party for Protestants and Catholics, (a little to the right from mainstream) and old fashioned protestants, the smallest party and the one who is the group who is the real deal concerning theocracy over here
Since this government you can feel the influence of those small of believers in everything…. It is scary.
Don’t think we don’t have those loonies.
P.Z, the “Baptists for Brownback” people couldn’t say anything nice about you, but it didn’t stop them…
http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/scarlet-letter-campaign-update-a-victory/
OK, I either missed it or it’s since been deleted, but where did PZ post David’s e-mail? I searched all through the 350+ thread on the Pope’s pronouncement and didn’t see it anywhere.
So where is it? Not that I want to know what it is, I’m just curious to see where PZ supposedly put it up for all to see.
Sorry for the grammatical error in my post above, it should be “than your’s” rather than “as your’s.”
Brian, logic is a beautiful thing isn’t it? I don’t see how people can fail to follow that. 1 cannot equal 3, it shouldn’t be hard.
Wiley, I can’t tell if those people are an elaborate parody or just very, very pathetic. They describe PZ like a monocled super villain. Soon they’ll be warning us about his death ray.
It’s very poor form to post even a troll’s personal info.
This isn’t ‘nam, PZ, it’s blogging. There are rules.
JC:
The email address (which had been plainly attached to David’s name in PZ’s comment about David’s incipient banning) has been removed (thanks, PZ) but there’s the small matter of comment 14, which is still glaringly… umm… glaring.
Oh thank goodness, you’re back at the helm, Dr. Myers! I’m still new to the blogoshere (yes, I’ve been living under a rock) and I”ve never had the full troll experience until today. I can’t remember who said it (and I’m not going to re-scan 300+ comments to find out) but that was 3 hours that I’ll never get back. Six days without a cigarette with minimal nic-fits and that little putz made me want to smoke them three at a time.
Jazmin, you mean this comment?
[whistles tunelessly]
Thanks, Kseniya. I just went blind trying to find out where this personal e-mail info of said troll was. Cripes, ANOTHER 15 minutes lost! Time to sleep.
“There is not enough truth in the world to fill such a long affidavit.”
–Source unknown, cited by Lord Peter Wimsey [Dorothy L Sayers] somewhere or other.
Was there ever, and can there ever be, a thread of 300+ comments that is worth reading in more than a very small part? Meditation on this can be a useful alternative to wasting 3 hours on a dumb thread. Someone new to blogs can’t be expected to know this a priori and deserves our sympathy. Why anyone who has been around would go through that pain is beyond me.
Meanwhile, we have another demonstration of a principle that I find unimpressive as an intellectual policy: If some religious guy says something dumb, climb on his case and denounce him to the (strictly figurative) skies. If the same one says something undumb, Well, what the (figurative) Hell do we care what he says?
I must’ve missed david’s e-mail address. I realize people think that PZ should follow his own rules (I think that too), but if you want to be anonymous on the internet isn’t the first thing you should do is to not use an e-mail that can clearly be linked to you? Get a yahoo account or whatever with you pseudonym as the name on the account. That makes it more difficult for casual stalkers (an oxymoron?) to track down your real identity from the e-mail address.
BTW I never use my professional e-mail address on blogs or other personal activities because it’s a violation of the institutional ethics code.
Colbert is pretty science-literate, especially compared with Jon Stewart. It seems Colbert does know how to interview scientists and kooks alike letting scientists explain their views while playing the fool, and letting kooks ridicule themselves while agreeing with them. It’s an art.
Jon Stewart had such a good opportunity to expose Dembski when they did the Evolution Schmevolution panel, but they chose to have a ridiculous new ager instead, and cut the segment to the regular 5 minutes or so. Colbert would have done so much better.
I have seen that Skell name being thrown around in the Amazon reviews too, actually, there are two or three editorial reviews by him. It seems all the reviews are positive, but I suspect those are out-of-context blurbs.
‘Troll’ is very difficult to demonstrate, and relatively rare to boot. David is something much more common – a moron.
Funnily enough- I define troll to be anyone who’s more annoying than Caledonian on a bad day.
(Weird thing about Caledonian is he actually makes sense when he’s not pushing his libertarianism.)
I didn’t read all 300 odd posts- but I didn’t think David was being an outright troll.
Now, see? That actually IS trolling.
Mistaking Caledonianism for Libertarianism is another common error. ;-)
That’s Philip “Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology” Skell.
Only 29,900 hits on Google. A minor dumbass.
(beatlesesque tune:) All we (I) am saying, is let PZ post again! (ad nauseum, shouldn’t take long.)
Regarding the Scarlet A Victory post at Baptists for Brownback, (Wiley #47) I posted this response: (cut and pasted here if their moderator doesn’t approve it. And I noticed after hitting send that I made a grammar mistake. dammit!)
Has everyone seen Bora’s photos from Science Foo camp?
If you ask me, from the looks of this photo, it seems that PZ’s aggressive, cantankerous online persona might be starting to take over his reputedly mild-mannered real-life personality. Or maybe he just hasn’t gotten enough sleep.
(Weird thing about Caledonian is he actually makes sense when he’s not pushing his libertarianism.)
Well, he very often has a problem “showing his work”. Usually he just drops his bon mots and expects the audience to coo over them. I’m not cooing until they sprout at least 8 tentacles.
Caledonian very often engages in trollish behaviour, but he is not, per se, a troll.
There’s a 2 hour time difference here — I am jetlagged beyond what is reasonable, so lack of sleep is probably the major problem here.
You do all realise that Baptists for Browning is a spoof site?
Do we know that for sure? I was half-suspecting it, but then I looked at the blogroll on the right. Even Jon Swift leaves clues on his.
Having checked out the members pages, now I know, and I fess to being Loki’d. Shelley the Republican strikes again.
#67, it’s just so hard to tell real fundie whacko bigotry from the mockery of fundie whacko bigotry. There’s no amount of spew they won’t sink to.
HP (#64>, if you have ever read any of Prof. Steve Steve’s travelogues, just trying to keep up with him would make any quiet, unassuming biologist worn out. And I am sure that he wouldn’t have let PZ drink beer. It would have to be scotch all the way.
Jet lag, indeed.
Should I have put a smiley in comment #64? I thought it was self-evident that I was teasing. Maybe all the gotcha-playing and hairsplitting and bad behavior upthread threw off everybody’s detectors. Apologies to PZ if that post didn’t come across as I’d hoped.
I’ve been following the science blogging community for a couple years now, and I’ve concluded that of all the great writers and thinkers I follow daily, the one I most want to meet in real life is Prof. Steve Steve.
PZ, I hope you can catch up on some rest to get the most out of Foo Camp. Sleep deprivation sucks.
Anyone remember the, I think it was, Australian movie with the guy Yahoo Serious in it, called “Young Einstein”? Even if Behe was trying to compare himself to *that* Einstein he wouldn’t qualify. lol
“Anyone remember the, I think it was, Australian movie with the guy Yahoo Serious in it, called “Young Einstein”? Even if Behe was trying to compare himself to *that* Einstein he wouldn’t qualify. lol”
Sadly, yes. And you are right. Now I must scour my brain with Drano to expunge the memory of that movie.
I think if you break the rules of blogging (trolling) all bets are off.
I think it’s good that PZ took the email address down.
But he does have the power to dish out a little reality to the deluded godbot hiding behind the anonymity though.
But troll feeding restaint really is the best method.
Baptists for Brownback is a spoof?
Whoa, had me fooled.
phat
Well, phat I had already been to Blogs 4 Brownback and the post in which Sisyphus has been accused of being a parody site. He is claiming that he is serious:
And a certain “BJ Tabor” is sticking up for him. I think Shelley is cutting it pretty close, and making all of the rest of the Brownback blogs look pretty pathetic. (As if they needed help.)
That site is amazing.
If it’s a parody, it does an incredible job of mocking the religious right. None of the over the top claims are unbelievable, in that the crazies do make these claims on a regular basis.
Although, after reflection, I considered the whole post about the “scarlet letter” as pushing it. But it’s still believable.
And, I think, there are some people posting who are believers. Amazing.
I read a little bit more on that sight and still couldn’t figure it out. There are things that point it out as being parody, but they are so incoherent that it’s hard to figure.
phat
Check out the prayer on the Hellbound page. I think it has sucked in some authentic fundies, but the description of PZ as the demonically debonaire playboy of Darwin could only have come from one of us.
I am fermi of the opinion that life would be bohring without beer. Yahoo Serious split the beer atom! I hope he made piles. Everyone niels before such genius.
‘Young Einstein’ is not a great movie, but I bet Yahoo Serious was behe-he-he-ing all the way to the bank.
PZ: “…what the heck is going on here in my own little fever-swamp?”
A fine trigger for argument amongst the fevered it apparently was too. Couldn’t have ARRANGED for one more effectively.
Hardly anybody mentions Behe or the Popester after the first several dozen posts (and almost none here). At least its a (yet another!) good example of how elaborate branched-out patterns can come about cumulatively and quite spontaneously from astoundingly simple origins….
I think a very good indication of what Colbert thought of Behe and his argument can be seen in how the interview ended: abruptly.
Normally, when discussing an issue raised by the book the guest has written, the interview will end with a plug for said book. Not so with Edge of Evolution, as I don’t recall there being anything said about it. I remember the interview suddenly ending, almost as if cut short, but still with enough closure as to not seem suspicious.
(.)(.)
(.)(.)