But he has sent me a couple of email missives. Here’s one for your entertainment: he hasn’t changed a bit.
Hey Myers –
Speaking of kooks, you and Laden are poor judges especially since you’ve been busy sliming Michael Shermer who is far more respectable than either of you will ever be. No, I haven’t read either of your lame online attack pieces on me. But these confirm why I have advised certain people and organizations never, ever, to have anything to do with either you or Laden at any future events in which either of you may be a key participant.
I do wish Shermer much success in making you answer finally for your shameless, ridiculous attacks on very credible people which have been part of Pharyngula ever since you started it. Nor am I the only one who thinks so. I’ve been in touch with other, more prominent, people in the secular humanist and atheist movements who are looking forward to seeing you earn your just desserts. Contrary to the claims expressed by yourself and your delusional fans, you have not been a good advocate for public understanding of science, period. Your bizarre behavior towards Sheril Kirshenbaum when she condemned you for allowing a delusional fan to post a threat at Pharyngula to rape and to kill her and Chris Mooney as well as your recent allegation against Shermer are two major reasons why you have never been a good advocate.
Respectfully yours,
John Kwok
P. S. If Greg wants to post a picture of Stuyvesant High School, he’s chosen the wrong edifice. That wasn’t the building I went to high school; instead, it was the former location on E. 15th Street which is featured on the dust jacket of Frank McCourt’s “Teacher Man”.
P. P. S. In lieu of a Leica M7 rangefinder camera, I would prefer you donate an equivalent sum to one of Stuyvesant’s alumni organizations so that current and future students who have interests in pursuing careers in the sciences will have some financial support for their student research.
Stay gold, Jonnyboy, stay gold.
Satirists weep; you will never match this.
What, he actually spells PZ’s name correctly?
He’s still lying about death threats? Sheesh. Oh, and this school of his can’t be much chop if they taught him the expression is ‘just desserts’. Newsflash, John – it’s not a reference to pudding.
Won’t sombody think of the poor comata?
I want just desserts. That’d be delicious!
Delusions of grandeur defined
Rev BDC,
Oh I beg to differ. Kwok has delusions of adequacy.
Louis
blah blah blah blah STUYVESANT blah blah blah FRANK MCCOURT blah blah
LEICA M7 RANGEFINDER blah blah blah.
For those newbies wondering who this guy is, he’s a banned commenter. I offered him a chance to avoid the banning IF he could write a comment that didn’t include name dropping, Stuyvesant High School, and Frank McCourt.
He couldn’t do it. He literally was incapable of writing anything, even when his posting privileges were on the line, that didn’t include frequent indignant references to the superiority of his high school education. And here he is, still writing angry letters to me, still trapped in the same tired tropes.
What’s this about Sheril Kirshenbaum and a rape threat? And what would be the ‘bizarre’ behaviour? Could someone please explain?
*just deserts* Everyone misspells that.
He has that unique ability to confess to what he is trying to do by accusing some one else of it. It’s always so strange, that.
Kw*K . . . He was the best of kooks, he was the worst of kooks.
I once dated someone whose great uncle swept the floors at SHS (old style), therfore PZ iz a wanker.
:)
Kooks gonna kook.
Meanwhile, ol PZ? Squid gonna squid.
*smiles*
@Petrander – My extraordinarily brief summary would go something like this: Mooney and Kirshenbaum were peeved at PZ’s negative review of their book, Unscientific America. Much blogging happened back and forth between the Intersection and Pharyngula. At some point some Horde member made a fairly nasty comment, of a sort that I expect the current Horde would frown on more than the Horde did then, but which was very clearly hyperbole rather than threat. Kirshenbaum responded to it as if it were a direct threat and made it part of her argument against PZ as if he were responsible for it.
I’ve noticed that the Science Blogs version of Pharyngula seems to have been scrubbed of the whole Mooney/Kirshenbaum vs. PZ debate, so that now only the Intersection posts on the topic remain…
Oh wait, I’m finding some, it looks like the external links to the posts aren’t working. How much do we want to rehash this now?
the internet’s premier oblivious self-parodist strikes again. Unbelievable.
gussnarp
Probably not at all.
(but a couple of link wouldn’t hurt)
Wait, whut?
@chigau – I’m trying to find Sheril’s post where she responded to the comment, but haven’t gotten there yet. I feel like the comment was at Pharyngula, not at the Intersection, and the benevolent overlords at National Geographic seem to have scrubbed the old Pharyngula of all comments to protect delicate sensibilities. The whole thing started here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/08/unscientific-america-how-scien/ and here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/07/13/pz-myers-vs-unscientific-america-summary/
Oh god, I had forgotten, it was well past the original review of Unscientific America and into the Tom Johnson sock puppet affair. Sheesh. Here’s a starting place then: http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Rusty_Knife
petrander,
Rusty Knife!
However, I note some important links are broken on that article. Maybe I should take some time some day and go around the Wiki fixing those that can be fixed.
***
gussnarp, I think this is Sheril’s response. This is the Pharyngula post where the comment was made, I don’t see any response from her there.
Oh right, it was much later than I though. I had forgotten the whole Tom Johnson affair. And how come your link has comments, Nightjar, when I couldn’t see comments on anything I looked at on ScienceBlogs?
I don’t know! Some posts have comments, some don’t. When they don’t I try Wayback Machine. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a bit sad that some comment threads there seem to have been lost completely.
Wait, I read that book. It criticized PZ by name for, well basically for not being an accomodationist, or for getting his atheism in their science activism. Which fair enough, people have the right to publish wrong opinions in a book, but you can’t expect a positive review from the person you’re attacking. WTF?
I think the phrase “just deserts” should just be banned from the English language altogether. Surely we can come up with something that is less of a linguistic clusterfuck.
Wow. It’s really striking (every time again) how he makes one argument of authority after another. He seems to genuinely believe it’s all about social status and nothing else! He seems to believe there’s no such thing as a fact!
He used to write Amazon reviews of books he hadn’t read.
No. Their script for importing the comments broke down at the sheer volume of Pharyngula comments; it’s been taking them years to upload them.
Oh yes. In that particular thread, Kwok compared me to Tex Antoine, because I pointed out that the rusty knife comment was obviously not a violent threat and that the commenter explicitly remarked that they expected it to be immediately taken out of context and portrayed as such.
These days, I would probably react slightly differently to the original comment (as would most of us), but I certainly wouldn’t react differently to the blatant misrepresentation on The Intersection.
A minor warning, because this is a particularly odious bit of rape minimisation – Tex Antoine, of whose behaviour I apparently reminded Kwok, was a weather reporter:
Perhaps I should put in a request for some sundry item of technology by way of compensation?
Rey Fox #28 – then you might as well scrub English altogether and start again with a new language with fewer foul ups in it.
Holy Rodent, he’s like a record. Same old thing, with new things on top.
I was only a lurker during the Survivor series, but I was greatly saddened when JKwok was banned. As Chas says above, JKwok is the:
I want to stress “really premier*”. The best of the worst. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. If a website existed on which Greg Laden and John Kwok tormented eachother with text messages, like in real time, I would need no other source of entertainment. It would be for me the Samizdat.
*Worse than “just deserts”, no?
I get the feeling that Kwok thinks this is a popularity contest.
You’re not familiar with the musings of John Kw*k, are you?
This email saddens me. There’s no mention of the assuredly many communications between the author and the inimitable Dr. Kenneth Miller. Has the relationship between the two soured? Is John Kw*k no longer the keeper of Dr. Miller’s soul’s secrets?
Be well, John Kw*k, and know, that thanks to you, this aggression will not stand.
Oops, too many commas in that last comment. Be a dear, John Kw*k, and ensure that my errant comma is returned to the estate of Frank McCourt, the trustees of which with whom I do not doubt you spend many a worthwhile hour engaging in long conversations about literature, science advocacy, and photography.
I wonder if this individual knows Roxy? ;) I’m getting really tired of people jumping to Shermers defense. Never mind the women concerned, Shermer has a penis….so naturally, he MUST be innocent! Jesus.
Good eye. Kw*k’s brain gets stuck sometimes and it may take him a while to cycle through all of his modules.
Seth, John Kw*k is known of old here, waaaaaaaaaaaaay back. Chas said it best, he’s a premier oblivious self-parodist, has been for years.
***
Gotta say, I love how he’s not completely letting go of the Leica Rangefinder.
Seems like “K*ok” would be the more appropriate redaction, then.
Well he seems like a complete moron to me….and I’ve encountered some doozies.
No; before my time around these parts. It just seemed silly to me how he played up how respectable and prominent his friends are.
That is one of his motifs.
Honestly? I just mentally pronounce that as “cock”.
Jacob:
Oh man, it’s not Kw*k without snooty, pretentious name dropping. As PZ noted, back in the day, Kw*k had a choice – stop with the name dropping, or lose posting privileges. He lost posting privileges. Really, it wouldn’t be Kw*k with STUYVESANT and FRANK MCCOURT and all that.
Kw*k, he has a personal relationship with all the prominent leaders of the atheist / secular community. Has ’em on speed dial even.
Plus, IIRC, the comment was suggesting something for Sheril could do to herself, making it not much of a threat at all even if one did not understand how hyperbole works. “Do this to yourself!” “Um, no.” “ok, then! Your decision!”
It’s so nice of you to assume they’re even still trying.
He advised people and organizations?
Well, Hotspur called spirits of the vasty deep, after all.
I thought I caught a glimpse of Stuyvesant just the other day, and I said to myself: So, Kw*k’s out again, wonder for how long. That’s all I can relate, folks.
Wait, didn’t you mean fowl ups?
ETA: I do remember K*ok now, and his obsession with camera gear. I’m guessing the obfuscation of his name was to make it harder for him to search for comments people were making about him, because his head was so far up his ass he couldn’t help but try to respond to them all?
Just for curiosity’s sake I looked in Amazon for Leica M7 rangefinder cameras. They only have one in stock, going for $5K. There’s also only one review. John Kw*k gave the camera 5 stars.
Was he the one who was always making the same joke about Klingons all the time?
In a world where Jim Pinkoski hasn’t updated his website, apparently, in years (although apparently he got an article on Big Think somehow), and where Yamil Luciano apparently hasn’t abused anyone in English for a good long time, it’s nice to know that there are still some dipshits you can count on. Kw*k on, sir. Kw*k on.
Sheesh… And I thought I was obsessive.
You’re just one of those commenters that has a deep reservoir of rocket sauce. You’ve been shaking the bottle for years and still there is sauce coming out.
Rev. BigDumbChimp-
They’re Facebook Friends™!!
The saddest people in the world are those who peaked in high school.
csue #58
Amen.
Dafuq?
csue:
True. I’m not sure it can be said of Kw*k that he peaked in high school, though, as what he seems to have gotten out it is the not-so-stellar ability to name drop.
@ 56,
+1
Anthony K gets rolling and I start to annoy my family with snorty horse chortles.
So… how did the camera enter the equation with this guy?
Ah, this is delicious. Vintage Kw*k. I would tell him to never change, but there’s no danger of that happening.
…Not sure what you mean. That just means “self-published [to avoid the censorship on publishers]”.
:-) My impression is that more and more threads have surfaced over the years, so I conclude they haven’t stopped… the thread that broke their script was Crackergate, and younger threads are up now.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
He demanded that PZ apologize for something or other and send him that silly camera. Or else… ah, maybe he’d alert [name forgotten], President, Brown University, that one of her fellow scientists somewhere in the world wasn’t behaving like a gentleman and a scholar. *giggle*
(And never “the president of Brown University” or something. Always “, President, Brown University”.)
I forget, how many years has he been demanding that camera?
‘Just deserts’ is neither foulup nor clusterf*ck. It’s an excellent and useful English phrase.
It summarises, concisely, the notion of someone receiving what, in a just world, they deserve.
We don’t live in a just world, of course… but once in a while, someone gets their just deserts.
Why would we waste our best term for that, just because it’s sometimes misused or misunderstood?
Dumbing down occurs when we eschew all but what is easily understood by the dumbest.
Ok, wait. Soooo “go fuck yourself” is a legitimate threat, but if some one tells you they *were* raped it is probably a lie.
I’m in backwards-land, aren’t I?
Oh, you are right, I had missed that particular bit of hypocritical inconsistency.
Thanks for pointing it out. I guess. As amusing as it is, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry any more.
Because the person who is the subject of this post and thread is overly fond of said phrase, and consistently types out “just desserts”, which I suppose you might have noticed if you were paying attention. However, I suspect you just want to lecture.
And you are dumbing down. We know Kwok. We know his overweening hubris caused by the high school he attended. Which is meaningless to what has happened since….and he ignores, except, by reference, to implicate he is “above average”. *snort*
I like these “Where are they now?” posts. Sadly, Kw*k’s appearance on the show seems to have had little effect. Can’t save them all, I suppose.