Remember that poll we crashed over the weekend? Apparently, whoever is administering that web page went to work today, approved a bunch of new suck-up comments, and deleted it. Heh.
You can still view the poll at polldaddy: 98% (418,948) said ID shouldn’t be taught in schools, 2% (8,901) asked what ID is, and less than 1% (902) think it should be taught. Good work running up the score, gang!
hehe, I got to vote “No” one more time. This time, for my cat.
How interesting that they would expel a poll from their website about professors who were supposedly expelled from their positions.
Not surprising that its gone; I’m surprised they left it up that long though.
Hah.
Such shocking suppression! Meanwhile, it’s still rating a B- at Yahoo movies…anyone with a Yahoo account can rate & review!
You’re not still saying that the numbers for Expelled don’t matter, are you?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
“418,948”
WHAT.
I did not think this would run the poll up over 400,000 votes. That is seriously shocking, amazing, and inspiring. Great job, fellow voters.
This is awesome, but I find your powers of manipulation mildly frightening.
I’m sure that someone had a bot running on it
I was on at 4 in the morning and every time I voted (it allowed multiple votes) there was like a change of 5-10
“Good work running up the score, gang!”
You’re most welcome Evil Overlord (TM).
Can I have my secret lair henchman’s uniform now. I’d like it in purple if possible, more flattering than the usual evil minion black.
PS. Shame you didn’t mobilise the minions to crash the polls in like, you know, Florida a few years back.
I’m a little suprised that there are so many of us and so few of them. I thought they outnumbered us. Some clever person must have made a bot.
Hey, serious question: did we actually get 400k people over there to vote, or did someone run a voting bot on it?
yeah, okay, pats on the back, okay okay.
but could we get to the **real** poll?
here’s the question:
new photo of pz above the profile:’
keep it, or revert to the old photo?
() keep
() revert
It did hit the Digg network as far as I know… and thats a lot of people on top of the 60,000+ here
Keep.
classic.
Creationists are both illiterate and lazy. It’s not surprising at all that a poll would garner 400,000 hits from science watchers and 900 votes from creationists.
The creationist base is very, very small. Vocal, but small.
If you compare the daily hit rate on the Discovery Institute’s site versus PZ’s site you see the same thing. Creationists can’t tread water much less surf.
Remember to rate our posts as helpful too! I clicked “Lowest first” and went through the first 100 or so clicking them “helpful”. We want the first things people see to be the negative posts.
I going to be a provocateur, and here seems like as bad as place as any…
It’s become so easy to poke fun at IDers that there doesn’t seem much sport in it anymore. It feels like the intellectual equivalent of Dick Cheney going hunting for game. A doped-up quail which has been raised in a box struggles for its first weak flight before some Republican shoots it out of the sky (well, either that or the nearest passer-by).
I like to see a little more fight in my prey.
The problem with ‘Expelled’ is that its arguments fall apart when poked with even the thinnest of twigs. Where’s the fun in that? Finding a mistake in ‘Expelled’ is hardly on the same level as finding a logical gap in string-theory for instance.
I have the following suggestions to make the game more fun…
i) Play by ‘Coulter’ rules: Try to find a single (non-trivial) true statement in ‘Expelled’.
ii) Write an essay criticizing ‘Teach the Controversy’ *after* drinking 95% of the estimated lethal dose of grain alcohol.
iii) Defect to become a visiting Professor at the DI. Surely in half an hour you can come up with 10 better arguments than the current ones as to why intelligent design must be true. For instance: God obviously intelligently designed the house-cat in order to spur humanity to create an electronic means of distributing LOLcat images. Get out of that one atheists!
iv) Translate ‘Expelled’ into formal mathematical statements through Goedel prime-number encoding. Then check the logic of the resulting mathematical statements to see if they form a ‘Turing complete’ system. If so, then send proof to Wolfram and finally unite ‘The Bible Code’ and ‘A New Kind of Science’.
Any God who created LOLcats is worthy of worship.
Even Johnathan Wells has discovered LOLcats – now *that’s* omnipresense for ya.
Re image: Needs more tentacles.
Vote early and vote often; that’s my philosophy. It’s just like mindless religious zombies to follow the result of an online poll.
Do you keep a daily count of visitors to your blog?
Kinda immature, but it still makes me chuckle.
Any God who created LOLcats is worthy of worship.
Funny, I find any God who would allow them to exist as the utmost evil.
Guess it’s time to declare jihad.
can’t wait for the launch of
exp-LOL-edcats
400,000 “no” votes next to less than 1,000 “yes” votes just has to look really really bad for them.
on the one hand, it feels like poll rigging and dishonesty. on the other, it kind of really doesn’t — people on the internet are surprisingly smart, and technologically and scientifically inclined people probably really do outnumber crazy religious people who don’t understand what “separation of church and state” means 400:1. but only on the internet.
i just hope no one wrote some kind of script to mess it up — i hope those were all REAL votes (even if a few were duplicates).
but you guys know they’re just gonna cry foul over this, right? claim more persecution?
So, their reaction to polls is the same as reaction to scientific evidence, is it? If it doesn’t agree with your conclusions, sweep it under the rug! Good old creationists, they’d be kind of cute if they weren’t so f’in nuts.
They don’t care. That’s the problem. THE CREOS DO NOT CARE. They don’t want logic, they don’t want rationality. All they want is to be spoon-fed bullshit and shove that same bullshit down the rest of our throats. We try to be fair and allow them their views and their space, but the sentiments are not reciprocated.
I hope, I dearly hope, that this all works out. But I can see a path where the line has to be drawn, and it gets VERY ugly.
Sorry to be depressing, but everyday, and everything I see and hear, makes this whole thing less amusing, and more scary.
You mean Ceiling Cat?
Its just an online poll on myspace. We didn’t disturb clinical research. I don’t think these people even know what original research is. It was a little propaganda gimmick, and it reflected the traffic of that site. Most of the traffic there is people realize this movie is shoddy lies in a second-hand, cheap tuxedo. If they wanted a real poll, they could have polled their mailing list. I’ve said this before, homeschooled children have limited access to the internet. Remember, their parents are f-ing nuts and controlling? I don’t think myspace is on the list of accepted sites. In other news, I heard 96% of people leaving the church showings would recommend it to a friend.
Marginally on topic is the news that even John Derbyshire hates Ben Stein and Expelled. And he hasn’t even seen the movie.
Here
I’m reading this John Derbyshire article and it says this:
Does that sound right?
I agree with the poster that points out that this is not research, but propaganda.
If it had not been “crashed” it would have been quoted as evidence that ID is supported, despite clearly being non-random sampling. All we did was non-random sample it right back. Real research would require tem to sample properly, which they certainly aren’t interested in doing.
I voted once.
He’s confusing intellectual honesty and personal honesty. Most YECs try to be personally honest (though really, don’t trust them too far, about as much as anyone else on the personal level), but they’re far from intellectually honest. They don’t even know what that is like, and if many others do not either, they actually think they’re being intellectually honest by being in denial.
The fact, however, is that the lack of intellectual honesty is corrosive, and was well before ID came along. In fact, one should probably see ID as an effect, as well as a cause, of the corrosive influence of so much intellectual dishonesty.
Derbyshire’s all right on the science, but he still doesn’t seem to get a lot of sociology and politics. He’s also trying to make science out to be a Western triumph, and if it does happen that modern science developed largely in the Western world, its development owes much to many cultures, and modern science belongs to the world. Derbyshire is something of a nativist, then, and while I’m not going to argue with him when that nativism bolsters his pro-science attitudes, you really can’t trust him very far sociologically or politically.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Wow. That many here. Impressive.
*waves* hi y’all.
:-)
Agreed! The point I intended to make was that even a hard-core right-winger like Derbyshire sees through the Expelled crap. I thought it would go without saying that he is wrong on just about everything else.
Hi everyone, speaking of crashing a poll, let tell you about one that really matters: The 100 foreign policy public intelectuals.
Actually the list is already choosen, but you can vote for the top five! and there are some familiar names on it like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens and Fernando Savater. May be some of you doesn’t know of Savater, but even if he is not a new atheist (wathever that means) he is agnostic, a strong secularist and the main voice in separation of church and state at the hispanic and latinamerican world. So, if everybody wants to give more atention to the atheist cause, why not try with this poll?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4262
What shall we decimate next, sir?
Just a sugestion :)
I thougth it is a good idea
I checked the poll a couple of times over the weekend (before it was taken down) and got quite a giggle out of the publicly posted results. I didn’t check to see if any of the comments noticed it, though, unfortunately…
Over ≈400,000 trials, there is no evidence to suggest that God exerts any influence over bash or wget.
I did a search for evolution at Polldaddy and found a few other polls that need crashing. Lets start with this one that is leading evolution with a 72% vote.
>If you compare the daily hit rate on the Discovery
>Institute’s site versus PZ’s site you see the same thing.
>Creationists can’t tread water much less surf.
Well they would have to start attacking Atheists and put them down and call them idiots to get more traffic. Kind of like what happens here, but in reverse. Traffic does not equal intelligence.
Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.
Genesis 1:1, LOLcat bible
Hail Darwin, our Dark Lord.
(Distant thunder. Spooky music… annnnnd SCENE!)
Rolando Aguilera,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4262
I voted Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens (in spite of his Iraw stances), Rushdie, Diamond, and wrote in PZ.
Iraq**
This poll could use some votes too.
The poll is dead…… Yeah, I thought so — I’ve been pulling it up every so often and the numbers have been stuck for a while. But they’d slowed down quite a bit in the last 24-36 hours anyway.
Damn. I was hoping we’d make it to 500,000 NOs and 10,000 WTF?s.
Oh, and would the party who didn’t post the hack to the EXpelled poll please be so kind as not to post the hacks for the next couple of polls we’re not going to crash? I promise I won’t click on the nonexistent links.
p.s. Just got back from voting on the first poll:
(OTHER) o hai. we wuz maded bai Ceiling Cat. kthxbai.
So you can see I don’t need a few more chances not to vote. I don’t have a lot of other silly answers. And I don’t want to balance them out with at least as many right answers.
Thanks for not helping. :-)
Cool, just wish you could do that on election day too. That seems to be Karl Rove’s job.
But hey, what’s with the Jebus as Lon Chaney/Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee pic on that page — ghost man carries off unconscious babe?
I checked Isaiah 62:11 to see if the text of that verse was meant to be the tip-off that the person was joking. Here it is from the KJV:
“Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.”
(Humperdido!)
So, the usual gobbledygook then. Inconclusive.
Never mind that last comment of mine, posted it to the wrong thread.
For the record, the poll currently shows:
Yes <1% (906 votes)
No 98% (420,077 votes)
Not sure <1% (183 votes)
What is it? 2% (8,926 votes)
And as long as we’re mentioning polls upon which to converge, there’s a _major_ one that was mentioned in the previous thread — the TIME 100.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1725112_1726934_1726935,00.html
Neil deGrasse Tyson is currently in 8th place, right behind a couple of models. C’mon, models?!? Science >> models. And Christopher Hitchens is ranked lower than Dubya, jeez…
Doh, damn angle brackets (and not previewing)…
Yes (906 votes)
No (420,077 votes)
Not sure (183 votes)
What is it? (8,926 votes)
Hey PZ –
Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet…looks to me like you still have a lot of work cut out for yourself.
THESE are the numbers you REALLY need to work on:
“The Gallup organization has asked three questions for a number of years about evolution and creationism. Question one (young earth creationism): Do you think God created humans pretty much in our present form at one time within the last 10,000 years? Question two (theistic evolution): Do you think we developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including our creation? The third question: Do you think we have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, and God had no part in the process?
The answers to these three questions have been consistent over many years. For about the last 12 or 13 years, about 45% of Americans agree with young earth creationism. The theistic evolution question is agreed to by a very substantial proportion of Americans, something in the range of 35%. And the atheist response is around 10%, which of course also reflects the amount of religiosity in American society.
The National Science Foundation has asked a question: Human beings as we know them today developed from earlier species of animals–true or false? Fewer than half of Americans agreed that is true. The National Science Foundation also asked a question: Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time–true or false? Less than half of Americans know this is false (48% in 1995; 51% in 1997). Basically, less than half or barely half of Americans realize the “Flintstones” was not a documentary!”
(from a speech by Eugenie Scott)
http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2000/jan_feb2000/scott.html
Re the picture: definitely keep! Looking good, PZ! Although maybe you should try Mr. DnA’s Elvis PZ photo instead. ;-)
Too bad the poll’s over. Excellent results, though. We are mighty forces of reason!
“Well, that was fun. Who’s for Chinese?”
While we’re at this, Expelled is rated a 3.7 or so at imdb.com; with a little effort we might get it into the top 100 worst movies of all time :)
It’s a bad day for CreationIDiots when I agree with that despicable twerp Derbyshire. This is the same guy who dropped salt on the kids killed at Virginia Tech for not rushing the gunman while he was reloading. Disgusting. But if even HE sees them as willfully dishonest scum, that carries some weight.
Nearly half a million No. That must be a bit scary for the makers of the pole.
@ #4
The reviews at Yahoo! could use some help. If the sort them by “most helpful” you can add your votes those that are getting the most attention.
Hey PZ –
Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet…looks to me like you still have a lot of work cut out for yourself.
THESE are the numbers you REALLY need to work on:
“The Gallup organization has asked three questions for a number of years about evolution and creationism. Question one (young earth creationism): Do you think God created humans pretty much in our present form at one time within the last 10,000 years? Question two (theistic evolution): Do you think we developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including our creation? The third question: Do you think we have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, and God had no part in the process?
The answers to these three questions have been consistent over many years. For about the last 12 or 13 years, about 45% of Americans agree with young earth creationism. The theistic evolution question is agreed to by a very substantial proportion of Americans, something in the range of 35%. And the atheist response is around 10%, which of course also reflects the amount of religiosity in American society.
The National Science Foundation has asked a question: Human beings as we know them today developed from earlier species of animals–true or false? Fewer than half of Americans agreed that is true. The National Science Foundation also asked a question: Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time–true or false? Less than half of Americans know this is false (48% in 1995; 51% in 1997). Basically, less than half or barely half of Americans realize the “Flintstones” was not a documentary!”
(from a speech by Eugenie Scott)
http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2000/jan_feb2000/scott.html
# 46
Great!
What I find most interesting that there are barely 900 cdesign proponentsists on the whole wide intartoobz. And even that’s assuming that none of them voted early & often.
Bob, #44:
Yeah, because the religious never accuse atheists of being incapable of morality, of corrupting children, of inventing Nazism, of–waitaminnit! Why am I telling you this? Send the guy who read this site to you; I’ll explain it to him.
So since scientific facts are subject to referendum, that means we win, right?
The Anti-Defamation League has weighed in!
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust
Post a poll asking whether ID should be taught in school; get 98% “No” and less-than-1% “Yes”; so delete the poll. Ah, that shows with how much good faith the question was posed.
And these are the people saying “Teach the Controversy!”
Ahem… WHAT controversy?
Their own poll demonstrates that there IS NO controversy.
#63
Kevin,
Have you been able to find those peer-reviewed scientific research papers presenitng data in support of intelligent design? You posted some of Guillermo Gonzalez’ astronomy papers on an old (possibly unrelated) thread, but these are not ID papers.
Kevin Wirth:
proud to be an ignoramus.
proud to argue ad populum.
tell me, Kevin: do you know what Project Steve is?