I’ve often noticed a tendency for some people to host a whole gnarly syndrome of denialist symptoms: some people are creationists+HIV denialists+global warming denialists+ant-vaxers+whatever. They stand out in the crowd as hyper-intense paragons of idiocy; I often wonder how they get around at all, since the power of their disbelief is so strong that they probably deny their shoelaces as soon as they get up in the morning, yet at the same time they believe a magic man in the sky will soon make them float up into the air to a rapturous eternal congress of their fellow reality deniers.
I’ve found an amazing example of this syndrome. You’ll be able to recognize the problem from just the title of his blog post: Christendom Preachers Pastors Christian Lay People Asleep Wheel Ignore Darwinian Attacks Veracity Genesis Scriptural Inerrancy Not Defended Historical Account Torah Doubted Treated Lightly Quaint Fairie Tales Believers Story Adam Jesus Revelation When Will Evangelists Pulpits America Wake Up Academic Intellectual Onslaught Christian Holy Writ? The post is ostensibly a defense of Young Earth Creationism, but somehow includes rants about Obama’s “shadow government,” gays, Egyptian history, teabaggers, birth certificates, yadda yadda yadda. Have you ever had a conversation with a schizophrenic? Read that long, long post and you’ll get a slight feel for that.
Unfortunately, he claims to be done with blogging.
So I think I’ll be cutting back on my blogging, tired of so very few inquiries and expressions of interest, none from pastors, can you believe it?
No, really?
Wow, that’s incoherent. He changes subjects every 2 sentence paragraph. That is a hell of an epic title, though.
“Young Earth Creationism Solutions (in ascending order of entry)”
Ooh this should be interesting!
“Charismatic Sarah Palin is certainly the most physically and personally attractive presidential candidate ever, and her speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville tonight certainly impressed the audience, so she’s on her way, leading the reformed Republican party, for smaller government with effective strategic national defense through secure borders and alliance with Israel.”
Wait… Whut? THAT’S the best thing creationists have got going for them? Oh dear…
“Since pastors and preachers, by and large, refuse to talk about young earth creationism and its essence in the Bible, then it’s up to Christians on the internet to disseminate these compelling truths, in chat rooms, online magazine articles (such as at http://SmithsonianMag.com under the Sphinx article) in the comments sections, and in your own blog, so I hope you help me in spreading the word.”
wait I thought you said you were quitting blogging because no one was taking any notice of you?
I think you are a little confused, have a little lie down and think about what you have done eh? There’s a good lad(ladette?)
Maybe, just maybe, that’s because it’s 271 paragraphs, 13,438 words, and 80 kilobytes of Guatemalan insanity peppers…?
Buh, unintelligible nonsense gibberish blog conspiracy brain fried loon quibble whiskey tango foxtrot.
Just… wow!
I thought it a possible parody, till I had a glance through his corpus.
I’ll be impressed if anyone manages to get through that whole thing. Christ it’s long.
Hell, I’d be impressed with anyone getting 1/4 way through.
If we played a recording of him reading that… thing that leaked out of his… brain (I guess we’ll have to call it) what would happen?
Certainly he wouldn’t notice that it was insane, boring gibberish, but would he start jitterbugging about and cheering, saying things like “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! That dude’s really got it!,” or attempt to attack the playback device – or the padded walls concealing the speakers – in a frothing fury at the idea that someone had stolen his… ideas (I guess we’ll have to call them) or start (this time literally) pulling himself off – thumb and index being surely sufficient, even clumsy, in this case – or what?
And would this be a cruel experiment, or a valuable and necessary one?
Way too many voices in his schizoid head and, unfortunately, he seems to be listening to them all.
A great follow up to his previous insane rant:
and
etc.
It’s like watching a raving lunatic running around in public frothing and shouting – you know you shouldn’t stare, but you just can’t help it.
I hope he gets help soon.
“Too compelling,” that was the term my brain was searching for as I read part of his post.
Well, maybe not.
I like his whine that if the earth is supposed to be 5 billion years old, why are there no sedimentary rocks older than 2 billion years old? Except of course there are, and rocks metamorphosed from sedimentary rocks must go back to at least 3.5 billion years ago.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Ow. Reading that broke my brain.
My brain just ran away screaming and is now hiding in a dark cave lying in the foetal position sobbing and sucking its thumb. Bloody hell PZ, do you have to scare us so just before going to bed. I’ll be sleeping with the light on.
Actually fascinating from an anthropological standpoint. And let’s be fair, he makes one great point:
“If the book of genesis is not true, then why believe the Bible at all”.
Well, quite.
Ladies and gents, the only good point in the entirety of those ramblings.
ant-vaxers – PZ
Are you going to follow up the post on how to masturbate an elephant with one on how to vaccinate an ant?
;-)
[shakefist] Curse you and your slightly-faster-than-me posting, Malastare!!![/shakefist]
In fairness, I did quote it incorrectly!
I’m enjoying this article though, this Nienhuis gentleman is the sort of creationist who comes into my field, classical archaeology. I can start to understand just how exasperating it must be for biologists when charlatans come into their field and start vomiting their crap all over many years of meticulous work.
I tried. I honestly tried but I couldn’t get more than ten paragraphs into his screed. It’s just too painful to read that much frothing stupid.
I’m imagining that a psychiatrist could read this guy’s stuff and make a pretty fair diagnosis of what sort of mental condition he has.
Sweet. Fancy. Moses. If God exists (ahem), surely He’s up there thinking “James! Seriously, dude. What the fuck? I had to get that Hovind guy locked up for being a complete nutter, now I’ve got YOU dribbling Me-knows-what all over the place. You’re confusing My people. You don’t get it, do you? Ah well, I suppose that’s what I get for letting that Gabriel loose at the Conceptionator™. ‘Let me have a go, Lord, please? I promise I’ll Conceptionate™ a whole bunch of Republicans. Please? I’ve been reading the manual and everything!’ Hmph, Archangel. More like pain-in-the-assAngel. Now, where’d I leave my smiting stick? Ah, there it is by the Weathertron 5000™. Now, how do I set this thing to ‘smite internet connection’?”
Two words come to mind to describe this screed – anal leakage.
Ciao y’all
<pedant> Hovind is in prison for tax evasion and money laundering. </pedant>
Copied into Open Office Writer to do a word count, this single post runs to 22 pages, full width not the original column width.
13,576 words, or more than the typical undergraduate dissertation.
Copied into Open Office Writer to do a word count, this single post runs to 22 pages, full width not the original column width.
13,576 words, or more than the typical undergraduate dissertation.
The title looks like it was designed to hit search engine crawlers so it would be more visible to searches. Also, look at the bottom of that page…
”
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
* Why do Christian Pastors Preachers Evangelists Dodge Ignore Avoid Book of G…
* Importance Relevance Christian Preaching Debunking Christophobes Truly Info…
”
The first of those auto-generated posts has a similarly interesting title…..
”
Why do Christian Pastors Preachers Evangelists Dodge Ignore Avoid Book of Genesis Stories Literal Real Accurate History Ministers of Gospel Ignore Evidence Young Earth Creationism Why Preachers Pastors Hide Avoid Controversy Discussions Sermons Messages Genesis Actual Authentic Historical Account Foundational Book of Bible for Scientifically Cohesive Comprehensive Understanding Reading of Old New Testament History Genesis Veracity Nienhuis
”
Nonetheless, the guy a grade A, class 1 lunatic.
“Have you ever had a conversation with a schizophrenic?” Yes, my mom is one. I grew up with a mother who is paranoid and delusional. I can’t be around her when she’s having an episode. This is the main reason why I’m so anti-religion. Christians, especially Evangelicals or bible literalists, like the author of the blog in question, are very delusional and paranoid. I can’t tolerate them. I can’t even read their blogs are watch their videos on YouTube. My anxiety level goes way up along with my blood pressure. My coping mechanism kicks in which is to avoid them at all costs.
You’re forgetting that god works in mysterious ways.
Blockquote fail in #27. “Hovind….laundering.”
Sorry.
It is apparent from his blog that Nienhuis is a lunatic and a hater. This is what happens when the medical establishment rely on drugs and let lunatics like him roam free. Our society needs to have more asylums for this type of schizophrenic.
I think the author is channeling Abdul Alhazred.
Well it seems some times religion makes people crazy and some times it just attracts crazy people.
anal leakage on fan
His material is all over the place : biology, physics, geology, climatology, history, theology, politics, media, …
Now he has noticed the Pharyngula thread and complains that the commenters here are not trying to rebut his material but rather mock the messenger.
Nope – not gonna go read. Sounds way too much like my brother, who recently told me that “force has no dependency on mass – density is the key! The Earth is not Flat!!”
What is it lately with this “flat earth” claim being the be-all, end-all for whacko commentary?
Oh yeah – he also told me his advanced maths would soon be recognised as superior to all that had come before.
Nope. I am quite familiar with schizophrenia, thank you very much.
JC
Wow, I’m a mainstream archaeologist now? Nice to know, considering I’m proudly the worst graduate classicist at Oxford, but hey, let’s go with it. A rebuttal… well, his idea that Heraklion and Menouthis sank before Alexandria was founded is simply untrue. This is because a stele has been found in the underwater ruins of Heraclion which is dated to the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (c. 182 -116 BC), recently published by the guys round the corner at OCMA – the Oxford Centre For Maritime Archaeology. Unless Nienhuis is suggesting with his usual… perspicacity that the Egyptians created an enormous bilingual inscription and sailed it into the bay and sunk it into the sea, he is clearly incorrect. In addition a number of other interesting discoveries dating to Ptolemaic or Roman times and even Byzantine and early Islamic periods have been brought from the bay floor by the French team working there.
“Mainstream Archaeology” this may be, but it is mainstream because there is actually physical evidence demonstrating that Nienhuis is wrong. The exact date and reason for Herakleion’s sinking are still to be determined, but we shouldn’t have to waste time dismissing unfounded claims by people attempting to prove the obviously incorrect to fit a book of bronze age legends. Sound familiar, biologists? I bet it bloody does.
Clearly he needs better reading comprehension. If he did, he would realize that we are mocking his claims and the way he made them. If he wanted a discussion, he could enable comments, but I don’t think that will happen.
3 words come to mind….”RAVING BARKING MAD!!!”
Now he has noticed the Pharyngula thread and complains that the commenters here are not trying to rebut his material but rather mock the messenger.
Allow me on behalf of all Pharyngulites to extend my sincerest apologies to Mr. Looney-up-the-bum-chute. Alas, we are a sorry, ignorant lot, lost in confusion at your radiant text. We mock out of envy.
Someone should send that link to O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity, let them see the intelligence of their fan base.
And just what the hell is a long-form birth certificate? A regular doesn’t fit his form?
Some people should be banned barred prohibited from owning having possessing a thesaurus.
I Only agree with one item I read, although I admit I only scanned some random paragraphs. I don’t know that I agree specifically, but in general.
“The chatters at http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ have tuned into this blogsite, predictably not trying to rebut the material but rather mocking the messenger, typical obfuscation there by the darwinist…”
As skeptics, we have a tendency to make fun of the messenger and not focus on the message. I do it too. Last night I posted a rather sarcastic comment on Skepicblog about the newest Medium to hit it big…But the fear is that we will lose our own credibility by sounding like ignorant bullies. Generally when you attack a personality trait, or mental illness, you sound like you have no actual facts or logic to use in the debate at hand. And worse it becomes hard to distinguish who is the rational reasoned participant in the debate.
Making fun doesn’t help. I seriously doubt if anything will help the angry fundamentalist christian, they believe so hard that the belief is part of their self identity….
Oooh! Oooh! I know this guy! He left an odd comment on my Blog post railing against young earth creationism. In it he states that the young earth creationist argument holds up quite well with the climatology data from ancient egypt. When I follow his links and read the smithsonian article he sites and his own I was a bit confused. I really tried to under stand what he was referring to, but failed. The guy is a lunatic. Funny lunatic, but lunatic none-the-less. Just another run of the mill faithful
You can see for your self.
http://blessedatheist.com
I believe it’s under the Young Earth Creationism rant
Sara, don’t forget that if you critique these clowns on substance, they, like Gerard Alexander, will get all self-pitying about how they are being condescended to. This particular blogger may not be merely deluded, but having a full-blown schizophrenic episode, but even the others who deny reality when it comes to biology, cosmology, climate, medicine or whatever don’t really care whether you actually offer evidence to show that they are utterly, totally, ignorantly and completely wrong. “Here are your mistakes” is taken as an insult as much as “what a total fool”.
This is fun! I’m obviously clueless! I don’t know exactly what happened that caused a pair of cities to sink into the sea 13 centuries ago! I only make extrapolations from the evidence and attempt to construct an effective model rather than making completely unfounded assertions! That’s clueless, apparently, instead of being basic academic process.
As for why Alexander renovated Rhakotis into Alexandria, rather than going to Heracleion, anyone who understands Alexander’s colonial policy as a method for control of annexed territory would immediately apprehend the reason – I refer you to A.B. Bosworth’s Conquest and Empire. Furthermore, Ra-Kedet, or Rhakotis, was sited in a perfect harbour far more suited to the large trading and governmental city Alexander had in mind.
Oh, and a stele is not a statue, it is a monumental inscription. Clearly Nienhuis is an excellent archaeologist who is truly accurate with his terminology, rather than being, as he might put it, clueless.
Sarah Palin isn’t more attractive then Obama or Kennedy. SHe’s pretty for a politician, but the bar isn’t very high there. The dude just manages to utterly forget that attractive male candidates existed, so as to not be accused of TEH GAY.
Then again, my judgement may be skewed. I consider intelligence sexy.
… so very few inquiries and expressions of interest…
And even fewer requests to use his title for a band name… :-P
But Sara… we are bullies. This is the mean nerds blog and we, PZ’s (PBUH) minions. There is no mission here apart from entertaining ourselves and those who think that lightening our contempt is in any way going to change how folks like Mr. Looney-up-the-bum-chute think are as wooful as any creationist or homeopath or… (Oh crap, that list goes ever on)
PZ? Can I call you Prank? Please? Pretty please? I mean, the only name more awesome than that is Colonel Alfred Buttermuscle.
Thorne @38
The comment on Birth Certificates make me think he is British
Quote from Directgov.gov.uk-the official UK government site
I suggest he has said this to prove his parents were married as both parents names (and mothers unmarried name) are on the “long form” (Why this should matter I will leave to others,,,)
I apologise to all for this person If I am right about his nationality(sarc)
I will admit to not reading past the title I value my old brain to much
Another thing I’ve noticed is that these people will come and comment on my blog but they post any comments on theirs. When I leave relatively polite but obviously dissenting comment it never shows up. Don’t they want to start a dialogue? Seemingly they want to preach to rather than be preached at. Sad.
Sigh, a few here and there.
Untreated schizophrenics tend to structure their delusions around various belief systems.
Xianity is common. They are always targets for the vultures of fundieland, who see weakness and pounce.
Conspiracies involving THEM, i.e. Bigfoot, the Illuminati, Trilateral commission, CIA, NSA, FBI, the USDA, and the federal and UN governments.
UFO aliens and flying saucers.
Untreated SZ’s also seem to have short, unhappy lives. One I knew of died of hypothermia in his front yard.
“When Helen of Troy sailed to Pharos Island, no mention is made of Menouthis nor Heraklion, so Malastare, how ’bout that?”
What about it?
I tend to discount literature featuring Achilles, Helen of Troy, and the gods of Greece fighting one another, or a monster called Scylla who eats anyone who sails through a pass as direct evidence anyway, but when Jack Kerouac went to Denver no mention was made of Boulder or Aspen. When Gandalf and Pippin went to Minas Tirith no mention was made of two tiny villages in northern Gondor. This is because it just didn’t matter. Menelaus was on Pharos to visit Proteos, a shapeshifting soothsayer, not to make incisive commentary about the lay of the land.
As for the Ipuwer Papyrus, well, if you want to use something that dates to well before 4000 BC as direct evidence then go ahead, since you then tacitly admit that the accepted young earth dating is wrong. Regardless, a positivist reading of an essentially fictional poem is flawed and cannot stand in contradiction to archaeology.
I love it when teabaggers try to deny that “teabagging” was the name they came up with for themselves and only dropped it when every single reporter (and blogger) in the US made fun of them.
I can’t argue with his logic, either. He has left this reality and completely constructed his own. Tea parties = lefty, liberal, progressive types, but still pose some sort of threat to the lefty, liberal, progressive type movement:
I’ll be honest, I skimmed most of the article. No wonder why he has low readership!
I thought it was fairly coherent up until “Young Earth Creationism Solutions (in ascending order of entry)” When it suddenly spiralled into madness. Coherent, but not correct.
The only problem I was detecting until that point was that he’s clearly taking the biblical account as a higher premise than what the evidence says (so if the science says something different from the bible, the science is wrong), which is a fairly common delusion.
After that though… wow.
I’m in awe of just the title.
Of course his book cover would be titled in Papyrus. . .
Free Lunch – You state that if we discuss the debate on it’s facts the opposition “will get all self-pitying about how they are being condescended to.” That’s fine. The point is not to be kind and protect their self esteem. The point is to not be like them – to fall into the trap of being about pointless mudslinging. If your purpose is to change their position – then don’t attack their personality. Attack their position.
If on the other hand, your purpose is as IanM states, just to self entertain – then go forward with the oh so easy and exceptionally funny remarks. Because as IanM states, there is little hope in changing the minds of the extremists who blog even with cogent facts.
I would contend however that there is a real chance of influencing the mind of the vast majority of the public who might be sitting on the fence about some issues like Vaccinations, or feeling disillusioned about green politics and wondering if the Tea Party is the answer…
Heh, he has a category of “Random Notions”.
Boy-howdy.
I do research on patients with schizophrenia, and I’d say most of them are less crazy than this guy. Sure, you might get word salad, or delusions (sometimes religious), or paranoia, but not always all three. And to their credit, most of them are sane enough to REALIZE that they’re crazy and are taking medications and seeing psychiatrists to alleviate their symptoms. This guy, on the other hand, expresses no doubts, and, in fact, claims the authority of God. This is a special, potent kind of crazy.
Lithium. That is all.
Followup to #50, SZ and life span. Down by 20% at least, on average.
It generally seems to be worse in Red states although the numbers aren’t all that uniform. Virginia is least and Ohio most years lost.
Posted by: ‘Tis Himself, OM February 7, 2010 8:36 AM
It’s early and my eyes are still tired. I read that as: “Hovind is in prison for tax evasion and monkey laundering.”
It’s going to be a good day – I can tell!
Pssst. The title field is NOT where you enter the tags.
“Now he has noticed the Pharyngula thread and complains that the commenters here are not trying to rebut his material but rather mock the messenger.”
Meh. We could spend the length of an undergraduate college course rebutting every crazy thing you say, or we could just say you’re crazy, which should be obvious to pretty much anyone. It’s Sunday morning, give us a break.
raven,
Some of the difference must be due to the high rate of tobacco smoking among schizophrenics. This may be self-medication both to reduce the side-effects of anti-psychotics, and the neurophysiological disturbances of schizophrenia itself: Nicotine Dependence in Schizophrenia: Prevalence, Mechanisms, and Implications for Treatment.
or feeling disillusioned about green politics and wondering if the Tea Party is the answer – Sara
If someone is wondering that, they are already waaaay beyond rational argument. Let’s mock!
That title was too good not to take a peek at the actual blog. Like most of the posters here I could not get through the entire thing but it was truly remarkable how he could not stay on a topic more than about three or four words at a time.
I briefly read the posters here and while quite entertaining for the most part (as usual) my favorite comment was right out of the chutes at number 3… “Guatemalan Insanity Peppers”. Perhaps could be abbreviated as GIP. “That guy must be really hitting the GIP with this one!”
Madlibs: He’s doing it wrong.
Either that, or he fucked up and pasted his list of meta-tags into the title of the post.
I’m submitting that blog to
http://emailsfromcrazypeople.com/
That is part of it for sure. A lot of it is because SZ’s tend to be poor and don’t have access to medical care. Because of the disfunctional USA health care system. They also tend to not follow basic medical advice as well.
Is he making the point that classification systems are useless? I’m so highly confused.
Oh, the insight! and the logic! and the coherence! and the knowledge! and the total command of the language! and the flow of the sentences!
Here we have a TRUE GENIUSTM!!
Impressive screed, if only for the sheer volume of things he wrote. I actually read 95% of the little snippets. I wanted to see what this person was up to. I found myself laughing merrily at a lot of it, especially the anti-Obama snippets.
My take is that this person thoroughly hates Obama and anything having to do with Dems. That was clearly evident. The person is also a typical GOP believer, who has now included teabaggers into his ‘philosophy’. Oh, how they forgot that unlimited, unfettered, unregulated capitalism was what brought us the housing bubble in the first place, then caused it to burst, causing a global lending crunch and economic meltdown. That fact never fits into their dialog.
I did some of the Google look-ups, as he suggested, and found that he’s purely speculating on more than half of what he wrote, too – coming to all sorts of bizarre meaningless conclusions. All in all, this was just a rant and nothing more. It was certainly good for a laugh!
Oh, and just for the record. His god is a myth, a mental construct; and the Earth is 4.567 billion years old. There is no metaphysical afterlife, and his view of the world is because he is either off his meds or never took them in the first place.
Re #70:
Ah, and I forgot, there are 13,993 words of wisdom there. In short coherent sentences.
Aaaaaannnnnndd… I’m done! I read the whole damned thing and I still have all of my facilities intact! I totally deserve a gold star.
I’m not sure if James I. Nienhuis is schizophrenic, but he is certainly nuttier than a fruitcake. Maybe he’s bi-polar and experiencing a manic episode…?
Either way, this dude would be a totally epic Twitterer.
I only scanned through parts of this amazing piece of writing but it didn’t take long to come across this:
Yes, I would think it very odd indeed because I an not aware of anyone claiming that age for the Earth. Incidentally, what exactly is a “darwinist”? I know this is old ground but apart from general interest, I would expect such comments to be made by geologists or astrophysicists. And they say the solar system is about 4.57 billion years old, about 30 million years older than the age of the Earth at around 4.54 billion years. Even the Universe as a whole is not believed to go back further than about 13.7 billion years. I cannot find any reference to anyone (other than this author) claiming 20 billion years for the Earth.
And even this author cannot make up his mind about what “darwinists” believe. A few short paragraphs earlier (and on the same page on my screen) he starts off a paragraph with:
So. Which is it, sir? 5 billion or 20 billion? It is a bit of a difference.
And when did you say life appeared? The first widely-accepted fossil evidence of life is from the Mesoarchean, 2.8 – 3 billion years ago. Some have suggested life has existed on Earth well before then.
You complain about the treatment you receive from Pharyngula, that we don’t take you seriously. How can we? Why should we?
I think this guy is the speech writer for the “Charismatic Sarah Palin.”
Heh!
Barack Hussein Obama’s political career really now hinges on what he does with attorney general Eric Holder, who intervened to have moranda rights read to the crotch bomber. Intelligence agencies knew the crotch bomber was all wrapped-up in Al Qaida training in Yemen, so Holder knew too (so did Obama), therefore, since Scott Brown won in Massachusetts much because of this issue, president Obama must certainly face the fact that the American people want at least Eric Holder to go for now, then followed by B. Hussien himself in 2012.
First, is moranda supposed to be Miranda? I would give him credit for trying to be funny but I doubt that he has a sense of humor.
Second, is he actually saying that the American people voted in Scott Brown as a Massachusetts senator because of the failed bombing? Not that it is any more detached from reality than anything else in that funhouse hall of mirrors.
Obama Girl now opposes him, perhaps a watershed moment.
I had no I idea she was such a power broker.
Chris Matthews says the Midgets tied down Gulliver in his Travels.
What does this have to do with anything?
Oh the irony that on This Week on ABC, they chose to discuss John Edward’s baby, which to help Obama they didn’t cover last summer when it broke, in lieu of the disaster in Haiti and Obama’s abysmal performance there. Do you suppose they would talk about Haiti if Bush were the president? The hypocrisy is so obvious.
That’s insane troll logic.
There are very good grounds to say that the ancient egyptian king Menes (god Min), said to have been the unifier of upper and lower Egypt, was a son of Sidon (a son of Canaan), also known as Posidon in Plato’s Atlantis story, his son Mneseus known anciently in Iberia (Spain) as Menestheo, and in Egypt he was known as Menes, who founded the great lower kingdom port city of Menouthis on the Mediterranean, which is really of the lower kingdom now, so to speak, submerged five miles from the coast about twenty miles northeast of Alexandria, clearly submerged since the end of the Ice Age.
Behold the glory!
I’d bet that conservatives have given three-to-one over liberals to earthquake disaster relief for the poor suffering folks in Haiti. Why? Because liberals expect the government to do everything for them.
I think he is trying to emulate Nietzsche doing philosophy with a hammer. But his hammer is of the giant inflatable kind.
Isn’t it funny that when you’re trying to think of something, your eyeballs move back and forth looking upward as if you’re scanning your brain?
Funny, that happened often while I was reading his screed.
Pastors, preachers, were the Nazi’s opposed to the Jews? Are the Progressives opposed to Israel? Did you know that Israel was named Palestine after the Philistines by Alexander the Great?
Word association, raving loonie monster style.
Only India’s S.R. Rao and myself know that the sanskrit hindu Vedas are words of the previously unknown Indus civilizations’ language and script spelled out with the hebrew alphabet phonetically, and now you know too, so tell your favorite linguist.
What do you know, he has rare knowledge. Bet you didn’t see that coming.
I know this is a minor complaint, but who the hell is Obama Girl?
Looking through some of his other blog posts (I’m not a masochist, I swear!), he’s really hung up on the definition of the word “species.” He thinks it’s a gotcha! question that no “darwinist” can possibly define:
I still can’t tell what the hell he’s driving at here. Can I define “species”? Well, dictionary.com defines it as:
And I’ve got no idea what “syngameons” is. Once again, dictionary.com comes up with “syngamous” and “syngamy”.
So, a species can breed w/in it’s own group and some how sexual reproduction disproves that species exist? This level of crazy is simply mind blowing.
She was a YouTube phenomenon.
If someone is wondering that, they are already waaaay beyond rational argument. Let’s mock!
exactly.
why must we keep rehashing this point? It has been shown time and again that mockery, too, has it’s place in influencing “fence sitters”.
Especially appropriate in this case, since, as Jefferson reminds us:
“Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.”
Seriously, is there any way to rationally engage with a person who claims that he was banned from a site because he was too convincing?
And I’ve got no idea what “syngameons” is.
I wonder if that’s a term from baraminology?
… yeah, I think in this case he is referring to the idea of biblical “kinds”.
Is it a splog? Or does it have too much coherency to be the product of a Markov chain?
I tried, but I can’t bring myself to care. “Girl makes bad pop song, decides later it was a bad idea” doesn’t register as news to me. This was a smoking gun to the dude? I suppose I’m getting hung up on the minor crap anyway.
He’s claiming that a Jew was the reference for a Greek God who’s name he can’t even spell? I don’t suppose he has any links to archeological finds, does he?
I know that the Sanskrit thing makes me want to kill someone, at least. I’m pretty fucking sure that if anything, hebrew would be based on ancient script, not the other way around. Just agh, how do you deal with that level of stupid?
Seriously, this guy needs our prayers. If you all would, please enter his name in your Prayermax 5000s, turn it up to 11 (you did get the one that goes to 11 and not just 10, right?), and leave it running while you watch the Superbowl.
The poor guy is obviously schizophrenic and off his meds. I’ve known several schizophrenics in my life and I know trying to converse with one takes practice. You have to just let go of your normal conversational flow because he/she can’t follow that. Instead, go with them, accept each shift in the free association. After a while the fact that they can start off talking about cats, segue into the relationship between Othello and the Eiffel tower and end up talking about the messages rocks sing to us, all in one 20-word sentence, won’t make your head hurt so much. It is apparent that he has a home and someone is probably taking care of him. He’s one of the lucky ones. He can rant on and on and that doesn’t hurt anyone.
He doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that supposedly sane people believe the same crap that his poor schizophrenia-melted brain tries to express. I am not talking about belief in God, per se, but belief in YEC and similar nonsense. He’s insane. What is their excuse? To quote Louis Black: “Evolution is just one thread in the intricate tapestry we like to call…
REALITY!”
I wonder if this guy just doesn’t realize that the entry tags are a separate field from the blog post title. Of course, this is batshit insane even as a tag list.
syngameons are actually pretty interesting:
... certain types of corals can create offspring with certain other types which led to the concept of "Syngameons", which some scientists use to replace the concept of species, instead they grouped the corals with the broad groups of other coral types that they hybridise with.But I don’t know that biologists are all hung-up on species anyway. Was listening to podcast “Monster Talk” and the biologists they were interviewing admitted that species is now a paragraph long discussion rather than a one liner these days.
As a return stumper, I’d ask him if he knows about the word hypergraphia….cause like dude…
and does anyone have a link to a tutorial or an add-on for firefox to help me with the html tagging?
“Serious Discussion on syngameons” was supposed to link to: http://xeny.net/SexAndDeath.Syngameons
See…html fail
I am actually stunned that he had the time to write all of that. Damn. I mean…. wow.
… yeah, I think in this case he is referring to the idea of biblical “kinds”.
So, he’s arguing semantics to prove that evolution is wrong? High holy hell, that’s weak.
It’s obvious that he’s desperately seeking attention from search engines.
Time, young padawan, isn’t something you have. It’s something you steal.
What else?
He doesn’t even know that Menes is Greek, not Egyptian; the vowels of the Egyptian name aren’t known, but the consonants are n r m r.
Speak for yourself. Mine don’t move when I try to think of something.
Wow! Meta blockquote fail. How the hell did that happen?
OK…
The winner of best comment is….
“As a return stumper, I’d ask him if he knows about the word hypergraphia….cause like dude…”
Good Stuff.
Holy shit, he’s updating the blog to respond to everything people say.
So, as you can see, work continues on the experiment to prove that, given enough time, a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters will eventually write Hamlet.
Always ready to promote BBCodeXtra.
It comes up as an options menu so it doesn’t eat up screen real estate like the formatting toolbar some infidels use :)
BS
It seems evident that this chap has some form of personality disorder. I am not going to attempt to be humourous about this. Mental illness is no laughing matter, and we can only hope that this individual gets the help he so clearly needs as soon as possible.
If I may echo Otrame’s point @ 87, the thing that I find truly frightening is the number of (nominally at least) sane people who buy into this kind of rampant, paranoid delusion. We are not necessarily talking a numerically insignificant fringe here. ‘Vox Populi’ has rarely been the rationalists friend.
Those who go along with this type of delusion do not all consist of average ‘Joe (or Jo) Blogs’ types either, but a proportion of them are people of vast wealth, power and influence who have the potential to manipulate public policy in pursuit of a manifestly pernicious agenda.
When you consider these points, one unfortunately afflicted individual ranting in the murkier recessess of the Interweb is not much to write home about. Unfortunately, there are far more powerful and credible figures out there who believe pretty much the same thing but are both far more slick in their delivery, and are an order of magnitude more capable of forcing their chosen woo down everyone’s throats.
That is pretty much the stuff of nightmares. We dodged a bullet in the last election (I go into cold sweats imagining what the world would look like if McCain had won. His poor health would have forced him to stand down after a few months, and then the world at large would have had to endure a Palin presidency for a while at least *shudder*), but I wonder if our luck will continue to hold.
Everyone thought that, after Bush, it was inconceivable that the Republicans could dredge up a candidate who was even less connected to reality; who had waded even further into the foetid mire of woo; who was even more ignorant about the world beyond the borders of the USA (not to mention pretty ignorant about the world within those borders). We all thought that no single human being could contain such a critical mass of raw, wilfull, self-inflicted stupidity paired with crushing arrogance and nauseating ultra-nationalism posing as pseudo-patriotism, and then: Palin. The impossible had happened.
I would say they can sink no further, but I have already made the mistake of assuming that last time…
He’s definitely channeling TimeCube…
At least in America, with our weak social support system, this guy would be living on the streets and preaching at unlucky people waiting for the bus. How the hell is he functioning? How the hell does he have a blog? What does he do for a living?
Oh man. Did you notice he thinks the Democratic nominees for President/Vice president in 2012 are Hillary Clinton/Harry Belafonte?
Oh that was good for a laugh.
What is his assertion? That the term species is meaningless?
If its meaningless then how could it EVER be defined and therefore he doesnt know if its correct or not.
And he thinks he won the argument? Too funny.
I love the stupid replies he has to our usual crew.
I will debate you moronic ass anytime James.
Wait… skip to the last paragraph… is he honestly citing a local tourism guide book as an authority?
No… I stand corrected… he’s citing someone else who cited a local tourism guide book as an authority.
I can’t wait until his thesis on drop bears and those little creatures in Scotland that they make haggis out of.
@103
I knew a man many years ago who was schizophrenic. He lived in a little house that he owned and his sister made sure he ate properly. He loved to come to Texas Archeological Society field schools and someone in San Antonio would always see that he got a ride. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, batshit crazy, but we loved him and he was very much a part of the “family” of amateur and professional archaeologists here. He had the house and the money his sister managed because before the illness completely took over he was an electrical engineer and had several very lucrative patents. As I said, this blogger probably has someone to help him function, because he probably can’t without help. Though the someone in question really should get him back on his meds.
Hmm. You be the judge…
Excerpt from his rant:
… Markov chain output working from the same:
… ‘kay. There’s a slight difference, I guess…
(/But I’m not sure either generator would pass a Turing test…)
I’ve become fascinated by this guy’s lunacy.
That whole thing about the Woolworths stores – he references this post: http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=279115&t=279115
I quite enjoyed the Hancock article but I can’t tell if Nienhuis has understood that Hancock’s post is satire.
… Oh. Credit where due: the generator (for the latter text above) was the work of one Nick Didkovsky aka Doctor Nerve.
Nick,
I thought that was “an infinite number of monkeys,” after Douglas Adams (who seems quoted often in these threads).
Ha! This is like the gift that keeps on giving!
You hear that, guys? Get in line behind me, oh my horde of ignoramuses!
Hey James: if I’m so woefully undereducated, then you should have no problem turning comments on so we can have a proper argument, right?
It’s kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, but I can’t resist commenting:
Yeah, right. Pointing out that there is, in fact, only one human race is definitely racist.
Sili, it’s interesting you should mention Markov Chain, for I have a silly little tool that crams text into a Markov Chain and then spits out pseudorandom text based on it. I inflicted our blogger’s post on the tool. The results for a two-word chain are only slightly less coherent than the original.
Be warned. There’s more where that came from.
Glen @10:
Well, he obviously is, since he mentions six times that he was banned from various blogs for being “too compelling”. A veritable black hole of compellingness!
Thorne @38:
You guys obviously don’t follow the rightwing crazies. They don’t believe the birth certificate that Obama has released (and been verified by the governor of Hawaii) because it’s a “Certificate of Live Birth”, not a birth certificate, and doesn’t have the name of the hospital or attending physician.
Minor details like the fact that Hawaii destroyed all long-form certificates about 10 years ago when they switched to electronic records (if he ever had one in the first place), of course, don’t bother them. There are also other reasons why he’s not eligible to be president, such as how he gave up his American citizenship when he was adopted by his stepfather in Indonesia. Birthers are as deranged as this blogger, but they make up about 2/3 of the Republican voters including at least 20 members of Congress.
On the one hand, all these people confidently stating that this blogger sounds like a schizophrenic, and citing schizophrenics that they have known, set my teeth on edge – because I could confidently bet any one of you $1000 that if we met IRL, without you knowing my on-line identity, that you would never have any idea that you were talking to an unmedicated schizophrenic. And I know others like myself as well.
On the other hand, those long chains of wide-ranging associative jumps? I do that as well, I’ve just learned to bite my tongue in polite conversation (helps to rein in the motor-mouth tendencies as well).
Theadosia, I think the reason most people associate schizophrenia with this guy’s particular brand of crazy is because most schizophrenics are like you – not really showing noticeable signs. You’re the silent majority.
Anyone do a word-cloud of that speed demon’s offering? It might be interesting in a clinical way.
here’s a wordle of that word salad
here’s a picture of the wordle for the java-less and jave-impaired
I guess by bronze age underwater things he’s referring to the recent discovery of a bronze age city on Santorini? I guess the underwater comes from the theory that this is the best proof for a real Atlantis, but it was buried by a volcano, and its neighboring city by the resulting tsunami. Art historian sad.
I wrote about denialism a few days ago on my blog. The short and skinny of it is that I’m not a denialism denialist. Those people simply do not exist. It makes things a lot easier.
http://www.meddlingkids.org/2010/02/denialism-denialist/
Nick- the “infinite monkeys” theorem has actually been tested, although with a finite number of monkeys.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3013959.stm
I’m not familiar with schizophrenia though it seems a reasonable explanation for the blog post in question. But this seems to be the only post written in this manner, his earlier posts seem normal enough (normal for a creationist that is).
The problem with the infinite number of monkeys hypothesis is that it is meant to demonstrate what you get from infinite application of randomness, but monkeys’ actions are in fact not random, so it’s a poor example that doesn’t fit what it’s trying to demonstrate. Monkeys have an incentive to avoid banging on the keys when doing so gives them no benefit, so they don’t keep banging away.
The implication was that Hovind is a nutter and God had him locked up so he wouldn’t continue tarnishing His good name. And creation “science”.