And with that hypocritical announcement, the Intelligent Design creationist blog bans DaveScot, for writing a comment that points out that anti-evolutionists have a history of using Christian ideas to advocate racism.
I am greatly amused.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Wait what????
Is this one of those Star Trek episodes that doesn’t make any sense???
Are there Star Trek episodes that make sense???
As much as a wearable holo-emitter does.
so let me get this straight… they don’t ban or censor ideas, except those of the contributors to UD, to whom that statement doesn’t apply, but who are by definition the ones contributing ideas…?
*facepalm*
You can call it the Democratic People’s Republic of the Congo, but that doesn’t make it a democratic people’s republic.
Hahahahaha. No currants for O’Leary’s oatmeal cookies.
Evolution isn’t an “idea”, it’s anti-god “sin” direct from the published writings of Satan et al.
And they can’t have nobody promoting “sin” on their Holy S(h)ite now, can they?
Huh?? The whole thrust of most religions is embedded tribalism – “us good, you’s bad”. The majority of racist positions historically have used religion to back their ideas – heck, Judaism _is_ a racist position: “If you’re not a descendent of Israel, you are nothing!” Christianity is more inclusive, but lots of Westerners have used Christianity as proof of superiority – look at all missionaries. Islam is probably the only Judaic religion that doesn’t have a racist bias.
(Heck, I’m not even going to mention the Mormons. Well, not again, anyway)
Survivor: Uncommon Descent!
It’s OK. God told them to.
Wait? What? They banned DaveScot.
They banned DavemotherfuckingScot?
Wow. Just–wow.
Just when you think they cannot possibly be a more extreme parody of themselves…
“The creationist movement” can be summed up in the anagram “trite monotheist cavemen”!
It’s typical that creationist/ID blogs routinely censor anything that they don’t agree with.
How many times have DaveScot been banned by now?
I have nothing to add to my comment at The Sandwalk.
“The moderation policy does not apply to you”
Well, that much has been bloody obvious over the years!
It seems like they apply a VERY BIG double standard: for us, “banning or censoring ideas” is simply thinking that those ideas are false, like thinking that the geocentric model of the universe is false, whereas for them, “banning or censoring ideas” is… well, they don’t think about it, I guess.
How can they say something like “Uncommon Descent, ‘unlike the Darwinists, doesn’t ban or censor ideas'” with a straight face?
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-they-want-to-silence-us.html
Just when you think they cannot possibly be a more extreme parody of themselves…
Yeah, I thought so too, until Dembski today expelled the gem that Richard Dawkins (who else?) must have used a different weasel program algorithm than the one in his book The Blind Watchmaker because he may have changed the parameters for it on his BBC show.
So I guess that means that I’ve messed with the principles of statistics themselves by plugging in new variables.
Nobody lose any weight, now! You wouldn’t want to rewrite the law of gravity and make everything fly apart!
Seriously, who are these MORONS? They surpassed embarrassing a decade ago.
It seems like they apply a VERY BIG double standard: for us, “banning or censoring ideas” is simply thinking that those ideas are false, like thinking that the geocentric model of the universe is false, whereas for them, “banning or censoring ideas” is… well, they don’t think about it, I guess.
You see? The best thing about the creationist movement is that it’s self-cannibalizing.
“Here’s the challenge. In a comment that isn’t longer than about 200 words, that is grammatically correct and logically coherent, and that does not cite the Bible or other religious authorities (and does not rely on tales about who you went to high school with, or tortured analogies involving necrophiliac pedophilic milkmen), explain how evolutionary biologists resolve the trivial conundrum represented by the common question:”
How can you support a theory that lacks any shred of empirical evidence, either observational or experimental that establishes a plausible nexus, either real or hypothetical between the trivial effects of random mutation and natural selection and the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems found in living organisms?
Too many comments in the other thread :-)
Simply by understanding it.
@22
How can you be so intentionally stupid?
WOW.
Still, they’ve been splintering for a while now, no? What a terrible shame.
Marshall Nelson is Charlie Wagner, long banned troll. He will disappear when PZ gets around to it. Meanwhile, don’t feed the troll.
And that pretty much says it all…
It’s ok to lie to spread the gospel!
It’s ok to lie for salvation!
It’s ok to lie for Jesus!
These people don’t care about the truth in any way at all. This is why for example debating them is such a fruitless endevour.
You often hear people say, lets settle the issue in an honest debate. That is fine, but in order to have an honest debate on the issue there needs to be a way of efficiently remove the creationists opportunity to blatantly lie.
If anyone has a good method of doing this, that would in a efficient way remove the ability for a participant in a debate to score rethorical points from lies while not opening up the ability for them to score rethorical points by implying that a truthful argument is based on a lie I would be glad to participate in debates versus creationists.
Can anyone can think up a format and rules that would work reasonably well towards this end?
Marshall, ask Daddy about ontogenetic depth before he reads the bedtime story to you tonight.
How can you support a “theory” that lacks any shred of empirical evidence, either observational or experimental that establishes a plausible nexus, either real or hypothetical between the effects of an invisible man in the sky, a “virgin” giving birth to a man-god, a guy who died and then magically sprang back to life?
Life is good.
What the fuck do I see??? A science news at the front page of Fox news?? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509341,00.html
And Fox news has an evolution and palentology center??
Well, we can’t you see, because a scientific theory is only valid if it can explain all relevant observations (evidence). So, if we make observations that a given theory (which has generally been proposed to explain other observations and/or unite a number of related hypotheses) cannot explain, then we have to do one of two things:
1. We have to adjust the theory to accommodate the new observations (as was done for atomic theory after the discovery of electrons, for example).
2. If the theory cannot be adjusted (is simply too limited to properly accommodate the new observations), then it will be thrown out as a plausible explanation.
Just exactly which observation are you going to assert that evolution cannot explain? You asserted that there wasn’t a “shred of evidence” to support evolution, so common: give me an observation about life on earth that evolution can’t explain.
Marshall Nelson @comment #22 – and from the other thread!
I was just reading this paper earlier today, so go into a quiet corner and read: “Pleiotropic scaling of gene effects and the ‘cost of complexity’ ” by Wagner et al. (2008)
Ref: Nature 452:470-3
PMID: 18368117
It explains the means by which evolution can answer the challenge of evolving complex organisms, since previous models have been misleading. Once you begin to see that there *are* answers to this sort of question, you will be able to move ahead with your thinking regarding evolution. (If you can understand the paper, that is.)
Abstract:
As perceived by Darwin, evolutionary adaptation by the processes of mutation and selection is difficult to understand for complex features that are the product of numerous traits acting in concert, for example the eye or the apparatus of flight. Typically, mutations simultaneously affect multiple phenotypic characters. This phenomenon is known as pleiotropy. The impact of pleiotropy on evolution has for decades been the subject of formal analysis. Some authors have suggested that pleiotropy can impede evolutionary progress (a so-called ‘cost of complexity’). The plausibility of various phenomena attributed to pleiotropy depends on how many traits are affected by each mutation and on our understanding of the correlation between the number of traits affected by each gene substitution and the size of mutational effects on individual traits. Here we show, by studying pleiotropy in mice with the use of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting skeletal characters, that most QTLs affect a relatively small subset of traits and that a substitution at a QTL has an effect on each trait that increases with the total number of traits affected. This suggests that evolution of higher organisms does not suffer a ‘cost of complexity’ because most mutations affect few traits and the size of the effects does not decrease with pleiotropy.
Betcha he’s going to say “origin of life”. Creotards are so predictable.
Lie detector hooked up to an electric chair?
You’d think that a troll would make it harder than actually linking to his own website. *doh*
I was I was as smart as these fundies.
C’mon, guys. Stop feeding the troll. We need to get back to the topic at hand: making fun of Dumbski and his cadre of IDiots.
Quick question: Who else things that DaveScot was a very undercover troll that infiltrate UD in order to make them look bad? Looks like he just got bored with it and decided to go out with a bang.
“You asserted that there wasn’t a “shred of evidence” to support evolution,…”
I did not. Evolution is a fact.
Clean your eyeglasses and re-read what I wrote.
exactly the same reaction I had!
DaveScott was convinced it was HIS blog a couple years back, when Dembski thought to shut it down permanently.
Marc: Wagner et al? Seriously?
(And, regarding the banning… my memory is failing me, but wasn’t DaveScot their hyper-ban-prone moderator until quite recently?)
Mr. Wagner, I thought you were banned from this site? Certainly that’s neither an answer, nor an assertion or question based in any kind of reality.
Learn some science, grow up, and stop making yourself look silly.
I swear, when DaveScot is the only HONEST voice at Uncommonly Dense, AND gets banned for it…
Hell has both popped into real existence, and promptly frozen over.
break out the ice skates.
@Charlie:
you have been banned from this site. What do you think gives you the right to maneouver around the ban to post here?
I’m genuinely curious.
would you violate a restraining order simply because you could?
interesting.
Marshall Nelson is really the “non-religious” ID proponent Charlie Wagner.
see
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Charlie_Wagner
“most QTLs affect a relatively small subset of traits and that a substitution at a QTL has an effect on each trait that increases with the total number of traits affected. This suggests that evolution of higher organisms does not suffer a ‘cost of complexity’ because most mutations affect few traits and the size of the effects does not decrease with pleiotropy.
This is what is known in my neighborhood as the old “shuck ‘n jive”
This is pure, unadulterated horsepooky and doesn’t address the dilemma that Darwin so clearly recognized.
.
In that Monty Python movie, those responsible for sacking, have themselves been sacked.
On the big screen, it’s ridiculous comedy. On the internet, it’s Uncommon Descent.
I read about this on Salvador Cordova’s blog. Salvador, you may remember, was banned by Davescot, before Davescot was banned by Barry.
Yeah, no censorship there. Nosiree.
This makes my hypocrisy meter cry!
http://www.ranum.com/linkedimages/hypocrisy-meter.gif
They didn’t just ban Davescot, btw, they banned him and deleted his comments and then deleted the thread.
Unlike those darwinists, with their censorship…
“you have been banned from this site. What do you think gives you the right to maneouver around the ban to post here?
I’m genuinely curious.
All Paul needs to do is ask me respectfully to refrain from posting here.
You would never hear from me again.
He refuses.
Ball’s in his court.
Sorry about feeding Charlie. I saw his text, but missed his name.
Situational Awareness FAIL
Jaycubed, I like your coining of “Holy S(h)ite” – I can think of lots of other webshites.
Charlie, since you refuse to acknowledge his blog, his rules, your posting here is the equivalent of the middle finger salute, and you know it. PZ does not need to ask nicely. You need to grow up.
I swear, when DaveScot is the only HONEST voice at Uncommonly Dense, AND gets banned for it…
Hell has both popped into real existence, and promptly frozen over.
break out the ice skates.
@Charlie:
you have been banned from this site. What do you think gives you the right to maneouver around the ban to post here?
I’m genuinely curious.
would you violate a restraining order simply because you could?
interesting.
First they came for DaveScot, but I did not speak up, for I was not DaveScot.
All Paul needs to do is ask me respectfully to refrain from posting here.
bullshit.
you WERE asked, repeatedly, before you were banned. As you have been on every other site that has banned you.
again:
If I get a restraining order on you, do you feel you have the right to violate it because the language the judge used wasn’t polite enough for you?
are you really that insane?
meh
According to Dante, didn’t it freeze over rather a while ago?
I swear, when DaveScot is the only HONEST voice at Uncommonly Dense, AND gets banned for it…
Hell has both popped into real existence, and promptly frozen over.
break out the ice skates.
@Charlie:
you have been banned from this site. What do you think gives you the right to maneouver around the ban to post here?
I’m genuinely curious.
would you violate a restraining order simply because you could?
interesting.
It’s like a real life game of Survivor – Wingnut Island with background music courtesy of Supertramp:
If everyone was listening you know
There’d be a chance that we could save the show
Who’ll be the last clown
To bring the house down?
Oh no, please no, don’t let the curtain fall
Enjoy.
um, I have no idea why that post keeps reposting itself.
can’t guarantee it won’t appear again.
sorry.
IIRC DaveScot has been consistent on this point and has called out his fellow creobots whenever they’ve fabricated a link between Darwin and racism.
Doesn’t stop me luxuriating in the Schadenfreude, though.
I wonder what their banning vs recruitment rate is? Could Uncommon Descent go extinct? (I’m not including reproduction since that’s an inverted bush or a telephone pole.)
So is it just me, or is it the epitome of irony that religious groups are claiming to be open-minded and tolerant?
Since when have they EVER been tolerant of other views? I’m not talking about individuals, I’m talking about the establishment. When your stated belief is in your holy book is inerrant, then tolerance is just not in the cards.
“you WERE asked, repeatedly, before you were banned. As you have been on every other site that has banned you.”
I have not been banned on any other site. I post under my own name on talk.origins, Panda’s Thumb and The Loom.
You don’t get it, do you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staring_contest
Charlie, nothing matters except PZ banned you, and you go around the ban and give him the middle finger salute by doing so. Your behavior is untoward, not his. You need to grow up.
You know Charlie, that closing your eyes and covering your ears doesn’t mean that the empirical evidence disappears. The evidence is there, whether you recognise it or not is irrelevant. And if you don’t recognise it, why are you ranting about not recognising it on a blog instead of writing to scientific journals showing how the current lines of empirical evidence for modern evolutionary theory are either a poor interpretation or a deliberate act of fraud?
I like it.
Unlike some other “scientific theories” we could mention (looking at YOU evilutionists), WE don’t ban ideas, or even ignore them if they’ve been refuted by everyone loads of times. That makes us open minded. And that makes our theory right and your theory wrong for some reason I won’t adequately explain.
That’s logic, fuckers.
So, to sum up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staring_contest
QED and checkmate, I think.
I found this over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog. He’s a Catholic who has a problem with his church because it doesn’t like the idea of gay marriage… I don’t understand his position. I don’t get how he can call himself a practicing Catholic while not believing in the Pope but…that’s just me.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/atheism-1-chris.html#more
The latest survey of American religious life reveals who’s been winning the mother of all culture wars:
It’s a reminder to exercise a little skepticism when you hear of America’s religious exceptionalism. Yes, America is far more devout than most of western Europe; but it is not immune to the broader crises facing established religion in the West. The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming.
As one evangelical noted in The Christian Science Monitor last week, “being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence”.
The quality of the Catholic priesthood has also drifted downward: the next generation of priests is more orthodox, but also more insular and less engaged with the wider world. There are a few exceptions: the 29-year-old orthodox Catholic Ross Douthat has just won a treasured opinion column slot in The New York Times. But he is sadly an exception that proves a more general rule. American Christianity may be stronger in some pockets, but it is dumber too. In the end, in the free market-place of ideas and beliefs, that will count.
There’s more but P.S. Ross Douthat is a much loved wingnut of the Andy Sullivan crowd…just saying…
QED and checkmate, I think.
LOL
Ross (“Women who don’t have orgasms during sex are a feature, not a bug”) Douthat is “engaged with the real world” like the defendant in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial By Jury is engaged to the plaintiff, Angelina.
It’d be easier for Douthat to be engaged with the real world if he a) acknowledged there was a real world outside of the cozy confines of his colon, and b) pulled his head out of his ass…
I have laughed so hard today, my gut aches. First this, then the butthead Jesus, then old Pat Boone’s dream – sheer hilarity all around.
By the way, does anyone know what will happen if I don’t replace my irony meter? They’re getting to be too much of an expense.
Susannah, you need to become self reliant and repair your irony meter. It also helps to be able to recalibrate it.
Susannh, I also recommend heavily fusing the input. You lose sensitivity, but the meter doesn’t go boom. Just be ready to buy fuses by the gross.
From the NY Times, somewhat regarding ‘culture wars’:
“The United Nations and the Sci Fi Channel will present a panel discussion Tuesday evening on the social and political issues raised by the Sci Fi series “Battlestar Galactica,” which concludes on Friday night. Moderated by Whoopi Goldberg (a frequent guest on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), the topics include human rights, terrorism, and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faiths. Among those participating are “Battlestar” actors Edward James Olmosand Mary McDonnell, above, as well as the show’s executive producers, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. The event is invitation-only.”
***********
Marshal @45 – I suggested *reading* the paper, not thowing one line from the abstract back in misunderstood fashion!
You did *not* read that paper in the hour or so since I posted! (Not for comprehension, anyway.)
Face it, the *whole* ID movement is Smith versus Nauvoo Expositor revisited.
Janine (#72) It’s hard to repair or recalibrate a meter that’s turned itself into a pool of bubbling sludge. Thanks, anyway.
Nerd, Good idea. I’ll order a case of fuses today. And hope that the good folks at UD don’t ratchet up their ID (Irony Density).
I imagine next that Dembski will ban himself, and the whole Uncommonly Dense shebang will wink out of existence.
Yeah. We can dream, can’t we?
I am sorry Susannah, you must be using a lower quality irony meter. It pays to invest in quality.
Wow!
This could only happen at Uh-Duh. I love this. I just love it. But am I, like Pat Boone, simply dreaming?
On the subject of fundy hypocrisy; I was looking for info on “the human lightning conductor” and the first google images result was http://www.maintainyourchurch.org.uk
wait, me is confused. isn’t davescot teh suxorz?
now he is banned by UD? is this the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or now do i have 2 enemies?
But … but … but … It was the best
buttermeter!*blip* *blip*
Good thing Nerd O’R suggested fuses. I recommend using a few in serial configuration. Sometimes the irony pulse is too quick to be caught be only one fuse. I remember mopping molten meter off the ceiling before I took his advice.
‘Course as a homebrewer, I’d done something similar before. ;-)
Marc Buhler — thanks for bringing to mind the heart of the creationist boondoggle.
I forget — they are mostly Calvinists, therefore believe in predestination (We are “hard-wired” by Sky-Zombie). Now, they think and assume that evolution is like that — that genes are like that. That they “hard-wire” a phenotypic trait.
Of course, anyone who has seriously thought about it recognizes, precisely because of pleiotropy, that that makes no sense. Genes program a variety of RNAs — the RNAs program a variety of proteins and regulate a variety of systems. The proteins then are components of machinery that build, locate and construct a series of carbohydrates and lipids… on you go, level after level, long before you get to anything that is recognizable as a trait.
Now, it’s easy to be mistaken about this — because if you break a gene, you often get get a very specific error. But of course, the fact that you can go one way — from a gene in a normal context to a certain trait, does not imply that in general the reverse is true. Traits are produced by a panoply of genes; genes are involved in a planoply of traits. And all of this occurs within a temporal and environmental context.
What we have is an adaptive mechanism, a general solution that is evolved for a variety of time and space varying conditions, with ample redundancy and feedback loops that will drive you insane. In essence an intelligent system — it has no foresight, but it has evolved to produce groups of traits that are adequate for many conditions.
That makes no sense to the rigid Calvinist. The Calvinist view would demand that everything is prearranged — that the genome is finely tuned to a specific context, producing an easily predictable result. If that were the case, evolution would have a problem — it would be insanely brittle, and only some Master with Awesome foresight could create biological systems.
But we know that’s simply not true. If you look at the co-dependence of human anatomical features, you see that with no evolutionary change, humans easily adapt to a variety of conditions; skull shapes and bone density can adapt to usage within a single lifetime; immune system learn, and pass on that learning to developing fetuses; height can vary wildly over a few generations.
Conversely, we are not well adapted to anything (just like most other organisms) — it doesn’t take an engineering genius to find a thousand improvements that could be made. Even at the base of the system, the photosynthetic conversion of radiation to carbohydrates, plants are terribly inefficient at extracting energy; they just happen to be good enough. The best converter, sugar cane, has less than a 10% efficiency! Adaptation is incompetent, but flexible.
But for the rigid, the authoritarian, and the simple-minded, that’s just madness. A world that is just good-enough to slide by under a variety of conditions, rather than an Iron Law of perfection and sin. They can’t “get” evolution — it’s not just the lack of a Master that gets them, it’s the chaotic freedom that denies the efficacy of Mastery itself that drives their desire for simple order to madness.
If he could be turned, he would be a powerful ally. ; )
You start answering deliberate and really obvious parody posts as though they’re serious…
So I’d say: get it fixed.
Myself, I’ve been rebuilding mine with heavier and heavier components, as necessary… Sure, after binging on FSTDT a few months back I’m now up to 00 guage wire throughout, and the coil in the meter is roughly the size of a small truck, and I need a crane to lift the whole assembly, but the important thing is: no falling for that ‘Objective Christian Ministries’ bit now. Nosirree.
Why does a certain class of cretin think that it’s an argument to say “This is pure, unadulterated horsepooky”?? Not as an aside in a reasoned critique — that just throwing out an insult is sufficient.
If you throw out the insult as part of a strong critique, you show your cleverness (if the insult is relevant and rhymes or has consonance). If you just throw out the insult, the only thing folks can assume is that you simply didn’t understand the “fancy” words and are engaging in an anti-intellectual appeal to insecurity. Simple assertion is a sign of very weak kung-fu.
DaveScot’s banning is hilarious. He who lives by the killfile, dies by the killfile.
Please, it’s not the Sci Fi Channel, it’s Syfy.
Myself, I’ve been rebuilding mine with heavier and heavier components, as necessary
meh, I switched to using divining rods ages ago.
no moving parts.
:p
frog: *Standing Ovation*
Marshall: What he said. Seriously, all the genetic info necessary for two cells to grow into a human is contained in 23 chromosomes. It’d be pretty difficult to make anything out of 23 discreet, non-interactive molecules. Complex systems derive from inter-relation and communal reliance.
Dammit! I worked all day on an explanation of evolution that involoved a cheerleader and three members of the lacrosse team as well as a necrophiliac pedophilic milkman, and now you tell me I cant post it?!?
And to think that some branding consultant likely got paid more than I make in a year to come up with that gem.
I’m in the wrong line of work…
And to think that some branding consultant likely got paid more than I make in a year to come up with that gem.
I’m in the wrong line of work…
It’s a little known fact that Mensa groups, in addition to the publicized monthly local meeting, often have a secret second monthly meeting, to which they don’t invite the 10% or so of the members who are Social Defectoids. The reason is that 10% are people like Charlie Wagner.
The irony, it burns!!
Anyway, perfect opportunity for me to slip in my own little hidden agenda: A poll from South Africa that asks if blasphemy should be considered hate speech, in order to get censorship on some publications. I mentioned it yesterday, and the few of you who supported us actually got it turned around, but the godniks are voting and the wrong answer is gaining very quickly. PZ, if you will find it in your godless, tentacled heart to throw a bone to some atheists at the extreme other end of Africa, it would be _so_ appreciated ;-)
Poll is at http://www.mnet.co.za/mnet/shows/carteblanche/
@Robert #8
Can you point me toward your MORmON bit? I work with one and the more I learn; the more I just sit there and say, “You got to be fucking kidding me!” Seems to me that a MORmON is the result of an illicit love affair between Georgia Puredumb and LRon Chubber.
“Are there Star Trek episodes that make sense???”
Hey, now you’re disrespecting MY religion! We’re sorry about “Spock’s Brain” okay, really really sorry. But not every episode can be “City on the Edge of Forever”.
Irony Meter Building: You’re all doing it wrong.
Fuses are a good idea, but there’s always the chance that the irony will jump the gap and melt the circuit, which will self-destruct so as to protect the fuse. Using heavier gauge wire just means that the damn thing will cause more damage when it inevitably catches fire and explodes.
No, what you need to do is incorporate some newfangled Fractal Circuits™ into the design, so as to cope with the dreaded Fractal Wrongness of Creationists, IDiots, and the occasional bizarre crackpot anti-evolutionist who isn’t even religious (and therefore rejects the current scientific models for no good reason other than profound intellectual perversity), like Charlie Wagner.
The Fractal Circuits™ act in a way similar to a heat sink, only of course, it’s an irony sink instead. The irony is safely dissipated, protecting the meter, and you, from the dread irony meltdown.
Satisfaction guaranteed or double your money back.
Note that some models of Fractal Circuit™ Irony Meters contain circuitry routed through a Happy Fun Ball. All warnings and disclaimers regarding Happy Fun Ball apply. Really, we mean it about not taunting Happy Fun Ball.
From warren Ellis
Reminds me of when NBC went for a new logo a few decades back and after paying millions found it was already trademarked by a university.
This day has just benn a glut of schadenfreude
I am greatly astonished that people still read UD.
Frog @85: Marvelous insight! I’m archiving that; it’s going to be handy in the future.
I threw away my irony meters; I just couldn’t keep them recalibrated because they were linear, and we need a log scale model to keep up with the irony profile of our modern world. I’m saving a ton of money that I’d just been throwing down the meter rathole. Now I’m just embracing the irony, immersing myself in it, drinking it all in.
Of course, my brain is shorting out on a regular basis. Everything has a downside.
So, my question is answered; I either need an irony meter the size of a truck, and/or equipped with (probably expensive) Fractal Circuits™ and a Happy Fun Ball, or else my brain may short out. And worse; I may end up earnestly debating perpetrators of Poes.
… Can’t risk it. Where’s that latest catalog?
Dealing with the forces of stupidity can do damage no matter what precautions you take.
“Spock’s Brain” is still a million times better than every single episode of “Enterprise”.
BTW,who’s DaveScot?
Come on, people! Haven’t any of you seen the new Hall-effect clamp-style irony meters? I’ve been using one on FSTDT.net (the new version) and it works beautifully. I’ve only ever seen it peg on one or two SuperSport posts…
We read it for the humor value.
mabus,
take your meds man.
Does anybody know in what units irony is measured? I mean, we have Newton, Gauss, Kelvin, etc., to indicate forces and temperatures and so on. I think we need a standard unit for our irony meters as well.
May I propose the Behe? For example, the term creation science would amount to 1 kilobehe, just to have some standard by which to calibrate our meters. The lower limit is obviously zero. There is to be no upper limit. Irony is potentially infinite. What do you think?
Oops,
totally wrong thread !
LOL
WHAT?
Barry The Gentle Barrister has BANNED Davescot? For daring to make a post about how Christians and creationists can be racist too?
What’s next? Frogs falling from the sky?
Maaan, just as you thought that UD has had its day, and is no longer any fun to watch… Almost like watching the end of the 3rd season of Lost again.
#112- “Maaan, just as you thought that UD has had its day, and is no longer any fun to watch… Almost like watching the end of the 3rd season of Lost again.”
[Lost nerd]
OMFSM I love the third season finale!! [Lost nerd/]
Drosera proposes 1 kilobehe as a international unit of irony. There has been proposals of similar units of ignorance since 2006. However, as Einstein said, “only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure of the former”.
What? Next you’ll be telling me it’s “Go On Laugh Daily” aot UK Gold!
Nononono, you need to split the incoming irony into two, reroute the one half so that when you recombine them it is almost completely out of phase with the other half. The resulting dampening should protect your meter. Add in a variable length pathway for one half and you can regulate the amount of dampening (or even [if you are that loony] amplify the irony).
Thanks Didac @#114
I didn’t know about that. It is hard to be original nowadays. Still, I did introduce something like the standard yardstick, i.e. the irony content of the phrase creation science. That must count for something.
It saves a few fuses to buy an extension that converts the irony-meter to a logarithmic scale. However, some creationist will still blow it.
Now that I think about it, this attitude in UD may reflect the new focus of the DI’s policy. It’s still a PR game (as it always was), but it’s no longer about “teaching the controvercy”: It’s now, I believe, a direct slanderous attack on “Darwinists”, in an attempt to make them look as bad as possible. And the ridiculous “all darwinists are racist bastards” is the edge of their rusty spear.
‘Expelled’ was a prominent example of this shift in focus, IMO. But it’s going to get worse:Prepare to read about how Evilutionists support male chauvinism, euthanasia, late trimester abortions, fascism, cannibalism, stomping kittens…
Desperate people make desperate claims. That’s why Barry and UD, “new policy” or no, are so adamant in promoting the “Darwin was a racist” idea- enough to ban their old watchdog for claiming otherwise:
They’re just following orders.
Marshal @45 – So it’s horsepooky? Then grow a pair and write a reasoned rebuttal to be published in Nature.
“is this the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or now do i have 2 enemies?”
If you now have 2 enemies – where is the transitional enemy?!?!?!
I’d love to say I saw this day coming but I didn’t. Davescot has been out of tune with some of the UDenizens “Ixnay on the Jebusay ok al right Jesus is wonderful” bullshit, but I thought he was Dembski’s BFF!
Oh well, I was wrong.
Louis
P.S. Jafaf Hots: There was not transitional enemy. Jesus created another enemy for you because you’re a sinner? Why do you hate the baby Jesus and poke him in the balls with a stick to make him cry?
If evilution is true, how come pigs have wings? Huh? Huh?
Typos. I can has them.
Louis
#19
“Nobody lose any weight, now! You wouldn’t want to rewrite the law of gravity and make everything fly apart!”
Oh, on the contrary…
I did it thirty-five minutes ago.
That’s it! Dr. Manhattan is the glowing substance inside of Happy Fun Ball!
As a side note on that tangent, I got an electric knife for Xmas a few years back. Not only were the included instructions mostly in Korean, and for a toaster oven, but the translation included the phrase, “Do not taunt the appliance”. I’ve got them saved somewhere.
The gilly was proposed as a unit of analogical bogosity back in 1988, when one Don Gillies thought reactions to RTM, the Internet Worm author, should be determined by asking what if he had accidently murdered millions of people instead of shut down a thousand machines for a day or two.
Remarkably, the bogosity involved is actually quantifiable, and lends itself easily to SI prefixes, like the milligilly (not very bogus) to the gigagilly (Godwin level bogus).
Epic footbullet.
#3: Hey, don’t hold all of Trek to the deplorably low standards of Voyager.
On-topic: With the rate I’m going through these irony/bullshit detectors, I’m going to need to start getting insurance. (I sure am glad they developed the combined detector; hauling two around at once has lightened my load considerably.)
At least they censored one of UD’s most egregious censors.
Doesn’t make it ok, but I fail to have sympathy for DaveTard himself.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
See, evolution is a fact, which idiot-boy Charlie knows because of the continuity of known causes across time, which yield the evidences for evolution.
And this fact of evolution points to another, greater, fact, which is that there is no continuity of known causes through time. Only magic can give us the appearance of non-teleological evolution (Idiot-boy denies evidence of non-telic evolution, but always fails to address the facts pointing to just such a conclusion, as presented by Darwin on down to the research of the present day).
I know this could be called feeding the troll, but I think the fucktard in question has left the building, and in any event considers the well-supported judgments that he’s an obtuse idiot to be beyond the pale. You know, since he’s such a nice tard-troll who crashes into forums from whence he has been banned.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Dembski Blog @ “From the The moderation policy does not apply to you; you are held to a higher standard.”
Damn, that is hilarious. Apparently when you join the ID crowd you take a purity pledge.
I got a big hearty laugh about DaveScot being banninated. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. I might tend to agree with the assessment that he wanted to get banned, since he’s been in and out of UD lately. But you have to remember he derives his fragile emotional satisfaction from being with an ‘in crowd’ and feeling like he has power over others. He didn’t buy the whole line hooker and sinker, he just dragged it behind his boat. Now with this falling out of thieves, he’s been thrown in the water.
DaveScot, if you’re reading this, congratulations, you can now join the Banned from UD club (of your own making). Well, if you weren’t banned from every other site already you could take part in the meetings. Kudos on the momentary infection of logic in your brain, I’m sure if you sneeze hard enough you can get it back out again and play in their sandbox once again.
Hilarious news!
As Howard Tayler explains in Rule 29 of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates: “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.”