Regular readers know that lately one “Terry Dean, Nemmers”, or as I call him, “Comma”, has been on a crusade to get me in trouble — he’s been lashing out at anyone in any way in contact with me to tell his tale of woe. Which is kind of weird, since I’ve never met the guy, and his complaint mainly seems to be that the campus police haven’t given him a sample of my handwriting because he has these vague suspicions that I defaced a dozen copies of a free campus newspaper.
The world moves more slowly out here in Lake Wobegon, and especially in January and February, we have to make our own entertainment, you know.
His latest thing is harassing the organizers of the Gateway to Reason conference, and since the conference will be held on the Washington University campus, he’s whining at that university’s administration.
Michael R. Cannon, Executive Vice Chancellor and General Counsel:
Why would Washington University allow censor, slanderer, & an inciter of violence Prof PZ Myers onto your campus? Are you aware that UMM Prof Myers was investigated for defacing and inciting the destruction of UMM sanctioned student newspapers? I submitted a data request for the audio statements, the writing sample and the police reports of the abbreviated and slipshod investigation. The University is currently illegally withholding ( https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=13.09 ) the audio statements and the writing sample. Prof Myers was made aware of my data request. In retaliation Prof Myers began making wild, outrageous, unsubstantiated and criminally defamatory remarks about me on his blog. Soon after I received a harassing email from one of Prof Myers’ less-than-intelligent cult following. I stemmed the expected avalanche of harassing emails by informing the harasser that any further emails would be reported to law enforcement. Prof Myers’ less-than-intelligent cult following then targeted my YouTube channel with the same wild, outrageous, unsubstantiated and criminally defamatory remarks. It should be noted that I am an UMM graduate. It shocks the conscience that a UMM professor would incite censorship and incite the destruction of UMM sanctioned newspapers, doesn’t it? It also shocks the conscience that the UMM would illegally withhold apparently incriminating public information about a UMM professor who would incite censorship and incite the destruction of UMM sanctioned newspapers, doesn’t it? Finally, it shocks the conscience that a UMM professor would retaliate against anyone asking for public information, doesn’t it? Again I ask you: Why would Washington University allow censor, slanderer, & an inciter of violence Prof PZ Myers onto your campus?
Terry Dean, Nemmers
Oh, gosh, Washington University better lock up their campus newspapers when I come through, because I have a sharpie and absolutely no moral constraints against using it.
Special deal for Comma: if he attends Gateway to Reason, and buys a copy of my book, and gets in line for the book signing (it’ll be short), I’ll write “STR” on his copy, and he’ll have cleverly tricked me into giving him a handwriting sample.
Wait, I’m confused. Did the venue change? Last time I checked the conference was going to be held at a hotel in Fenton.
The second someone mentions criminal defamation, I know they’re uninformed and, for lack of a better term, an asshole (though I will point out that more than a few states still have vestigial criminal defamation statutes).
“An UMM graduate”, but “a UMM professor”. I’ve found the requested flaw in his, writing, haven’t I? Also, he’s not making proper use of the truth-seeking language which he knows to be terribly important. I can only conclude he’s not really sovereign, but just another sockpuppet of the Bilderberg Illuminati.
Busted.
What I love is that Comma defames himself with every letter, e-mail, complaint, whine, snivel, moan, and thought. Nobody can defame him if they post his owns words. He just can’t see that.
Yes, there has been a venue change.
You know he’s going to take this as a confession. Probably the original accuser too (can’t be bothered to look up his name).
It shocks the conscience, doesn’t it?
Like Comma, that’s all i’ve got.
it shocks the conscience that a
expletive[person] would demand public information, while ending every statement with a question, doesn’t it?Does anyone take this guy seriously? Really, do they? I have a right to know, don’t I? Me so sorry Mr. Terry Dean. I, as one of Myers, Prof. PZ’s cult, find your writings too amusing to take them seriously, don’t I? I’m just addicted (yeah, I know what it means; don’t you?) to mocking you.
.
I too, understand, PZ, that this appears to be a serious case of harassment, I hope the administration ignores this Comma.
–
I can’t understand the phrase:”Why would Washington University allow censor, slanderer, & …”
I read that use of “censor”, as a title of a job, not as an action undertaken by the person being discussed. I am an engineer, language is just somethin else I have to do (sometimes).
Comma-comma-comma-comma-comma chameleon. He comes and goes. He comes and go-oh-oh-oes…
So he complaining about PZ being censorious, while trying to get PZ… censored.
He also complains about PZ being slanderous… while making wild statements which could be interpreted as such.
Irony is dead now.
@10 UnknownEric
Sir, SIR, i will thank you to treat chameleons with the respect they deserve, sir. It shocks the conscience that they would be slandered in such a way by tainting their good name with associations to Comma, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t it?
Doesn’t, it?
Does, n’t it?
Do, esn’t it?
Donut it?
Wait, you have a cult? Can I get a level of enlightenment (or a T-shirt) if I send you all my money?
I’ve been sending all my money to the Church of Shatnerology, but I’m sure they’ll give me a refund.
Should read
A White Sport Coat And A Pink Carnation
PZ has ink on his hands!
A White Sport Coat And A Pink Carnation
Why won’t you heed my demands‽
—Terry
DeanDene, 1957Not sure why anybody is spending more than second even thinking about this clown. His record clearly shows that he is batshit crazy. An image search is even worse.
[derail]
“an UMM graduate” vs “a UMM graduate”, which one is ummmm,
wrongpoor usage?I am always mislead by the ” ‘an’ before a vowel, ‘a’ before a consonant” rule, when the vowel/consonant is part of an acronym, not an actual word. Phonics they taught me in elementary school, so I read the (above) phonetically as: “an you emm emm graduate” vs “a you emm emm …” the latter sounds more decorous than the former [“decorous” being a word, I just recently encountered in The Imitation Game, so I’m trying to utilize it in my vocabulary]
in short: as written, “an” is proper (follows that rule), but verbally “an” would be improper; am I wrong?
He’s not even doing the name stuff right. Real Freemen use colons! Of course, his colon is too busy since he’s talking out of it.
@17: I just go by sound. “U”, at least to Americans, is pronounced like “you”. You wouldn’t say “An Youth”, so “A UMM professor” is what works for me.
twas brillig, I’d agree with Trebuchet. Far as I know, there’s no convention that the written form shouldn’t follow the spoken; which exists to separate two vowel sounds. (For this purpose the hard Y sound, as in ‘you’ is a consonant.)
Google sez this guy’s got a history, some of which sounds potentially scary: http://www.wctrib.com/news/state/299730-july-2007-nemmers-faces-two-new-charges-pope-county
Acronym vs. word doesn’t make any difference if the rule applies equally to the letter and to the word the letter represents. Both the letter U and the word university begin with a pronounced consonant. So they both would be “a”. “I went to an university”? What kind of pretentious poser would ever write that ?
C. S. Lewis once had a character say “Was it an hallucination?” *That* threw me through a loop when I was 12.
… so if it were the Unhappy Student Federation, you say “I’m an Unhappy Student Federation member” or “I am a USF member”. Simple.
woozy #21:
Peter Serafinowicz is a poseur? But then, it only works for comedy pronunciations of ‘universe,’ of course.
Wow, you must really make him angry. He was so furious that he spewed out five declarative sentences in a row without remembering to turn them into questions.
It’s for the best, you don’t want to be stuck out in Fenton.
Reminded me of the viewer request segment on the old Paul Revere and the Raiders TV show where Mark interjected “The letter came pouring in.”.
Since the guy was previously arrested for stockpiling huge amounts of ammo and guns, this does kind of worry me.
@22: Lewis of course had an upper-class educated accent, but try saying that in more down-market English (say Cockney or broad Yorks) and it sounds right.
There are Americans who do that, too: they can’t deal with [h] at the beginning of an unstressed syllable.
And then there are Americans who have no trouble pronouncing [h] in such positions, but take the above as a *headdesk* spelling rule anyway.
“C. S. Lewis once had a character say “Was it an hallucination?” *That* threw me through a loop when I was 12.”
I read that quote as (phonetically), “Was it an allucination?” (ie: silent ‘h’).
Thanks all, for the verification that my pronunciation is agreed upon.
So Comma was incorrect, wasn’t he? [mocking continues, always ending every statement in question form, is that so?]
Ah, the US ‘h.’ I’ve never figured that one out. If the ‘h’ is silent due to one’s accent, shouldn’t it be given an apostrophe, the same as with cockney: an ‘allucination?
I remember an episode of M*A*S*H where a character was mocked for saying “an harmonica”.
I see the solution here.
Change your name to PZ, Myers. Declare yourself a Sovereign Citizen.
Inform Terry Dean, Kook that the Supreme court of PZland, chaired by your cat, has just has ruled against him. So, no he doesn’t get a sample of your handwriting.
Seriously (as in seriously seriously, not ironically seriously) doesn’t it sound as if this guy has some actual mental health problems and poking fun at him is not the most humane thing to do? (Or given the US’s Right To Arm Bears, maybe the wisest either?)
johnstumbles #35:
No. And please, can we avoid making internet-diagnoses.
re johnstumbles @ 35
Agreed ;-(
I hesitate to say such a thing, out of fear of being scolded for playing “armchair diagnostician”.
I mocked him, regardlessly, hiding behind anonymity.
whether poking fun or not is humane may be a question but making all of his communication as public as possible is wise. You do not want to talk to the scarey guy alone you want it in public in front of was many witnesses as practical.
uncle frogy
*puts on English teacher hat*
It’s an before a spoken consonant, irrespective of writing.*
But like everything, English is descriptive rather than prescriptive, just go on, all you need is a few million users and a couple of decades.
*same rule as with theeeeee pronounciation of “the”
+++
I’m still amused by “somebody sent me an unsolicited e-mail after I sent a couple of them, therefore I’m going to send out a couple of them to you”
…And all the harassers are below average….
of course keeping “the horde” informed keeps us entertained !
nothing wrong with a good laugh now and then?
uncle frogy?
Criminal defamation dons’t exist at the federal level, but there is a statute in Minnesota. Here it is:
There is no way in hell that PZ’s going to be found guilty of criminal defamation.
From the Int’l Journal of Communications Law & Policy:
While it didn’t completely erase criminal definition, SCOTUS has dramatically reduced its scope.
Moreover, the statute as written and as historically used supports “fair comment” on public acts.
But even that isn’t enough, the statute may be entirely constitutionally invalid. Eugene Volokh of the Volokh conspiracy leads a group of students in (one of?) the UCLA law clinic(s?)*. Read their work on a current case challenging the underlying statute.
Yeah.
It’s actually not a bad bet that the state doesn’t HAVE a constitutional statute that would make any defamation criminal.
But then, Comma knows that and is just using “criminal” in its most metaphorical sense, isn’t he? Isn’t he?
*I strongly suspect there are several, as there are at most big law schools. But I don’t happen to know.
uhoh
I think Comma got to Crip, Dyke.
Unless i’ts a tpyo.
It appears that your tormentor is a Comma, Criminal.
What I want to know is, what with all the shocking going on, has anyone yet succeeded in defibrillating Comma’s conscience? It certainly seems like it should be on life support.
Giliell @39
English doesn’t have rules, it has conventions, customs, and exceptions to the conventions and customs.
So, when you cult followers send your harassing emails,
do you really include a statement like, “PZ sent me.”?
Y’all should prolly stop that.
I’ve just been to his ‘Lion News’ website. I think we should all go easy on the guy. I don’t want to get into remote diagnosis and all that but clearly something is not quite right with him.
Nemmers Terry Dean sez:
PZ is a censorer, so Washington U should censor him.
PZ is a slanderer, so let me tell you all that he also “incited violence”, which I have even LESS evidence for than the previous bullshit.
While there are cold cases involving missing children, homicides, mysterious suicides, and sexual assaults, Comma here is loudly criticizing police for not being thorough enough in investigating the mysterious case of someone writing on free newspapers.
You know what, Nemmers? FUCK. YOU.
Tommy Mato:
“I’m not racist, but….”
Tommy Mato wrote: “clearly something is not quite right with him.”
Agreed, he’s an A-hole. Nothin else is necessary. Armchair diagnoses are easy, but: “only the facts ma’am”.
I got about halfway through the screed very worried about the lack of questions. I was starting to feel disappointed about it and thinking maybe he’d stopped doing that from all the mocking he’d gotten. Then the second half cheered me up again. Thank you, dear Comma. You may be a tease, but you always deliver.
@39:
That’s an rule I haven’t come across heretofore.
David Marjanović #30
Educated British English of the conservative RP type used to have many mute aitches now “restored” by spelling-pronunciation. In unstressed initial syllables (historical, heretic, hypocrisy, humility, etc.), the introduction of /h/ is recent, and an hallucination was still more or less standard in C.S. Lewis’s time. Even under stess some Hs were formerly mute in words that have /h/ today (humble, humor). Note also the restoration of /h/ in the British (but not American) pronunciation of herb. Traditional spellings like an hotel or an historical book are still common and may be used by writers who normally pronounce the /h/. Winston Churchill regularly said “a tome” (with a resyllabified /t/) for at home. You can hear it clearly in his “End of the War in Europe” speech (“We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad”, 1:24 in the recording).
See also Language Log.
Remind me again why we are not supposed to engage in internet diagnostics.
One way or another comma is paranoid; obsessive; irrational; compelled; and weird. Are we doing anyone any favors assuming he is a mentally healthy asshole rather than a marginally detached deluded obsessive?
Okay, I get it. Mental illness is a serious issue and ignorant people insensitively use “he’s a looney-tune” to dismiss people and not realize it’s a real concern. But aren’t we doing the same when we deny it exists at all and dismiss comma’s delusional paranoia as being “just an asshole”? I’ve lived my entire life with paranoid obsessive delusionals of one sort or another and … well, if he isn’t one than I’m happy, complacent and easy to get along with.
woozy #55
wut?
Here’s the thing woozy: In computer science there is the concept of garbage in, garbage out. There’s no point in speculating about the problems the machine or software might have if you aren’t feeding it data that can produce an intelligible output. Likewise, for Comma, how do you determine that his erratic behaviour is because he’s mentally ill and not that he’s simply absorbed so many nonsense ideas, but otherwise healthy?
@55
We don’t engage in internet diagnostics because we aren’t qualified to do so, and because we have no idea, from the handful of snippets we see of his writing, if he’s truly mentally ill or just trolling, being unreasonable, or just operating from a very strange set of assumptions about the world.
He certainly seems obsessive, delusional, and paranoid, but these things are hard to diagnose over the internet. He may be a perfectly functional member of society and just spends his weekends ranting at various UMM professors. Admitting we can’t know this for certain is not a denial that mentally ill people exist. It’s just admitting we have insufficient information to place him in that category.
We’re not denying it exists.
What is the problem with Comma’s e-mail?
Why was sending it wrong/bad/rude?
If it’s wrong/bad/rude to express pathological delusions, that will make people with pathological delusions even more excessively careful in expressing them so as not to be branded wrong/bad/rude (and, by the by, crazy). Which will make providing help even more difficult.
Moreover, why are we MOCKING Comma? Not because of any psychiatric illness.
If we mix MOCKING and DIAGNOSIS on the same thread – even if different people are doing it, it makes it seem interrelated.
This is a mocking thread. This is a thread criticizing bad behavior. The bad behavior is bad whether or not the actor is crazy. The mocking is of mockable expressions, whether or not the words were expressed by anyone crazy.
We’re not denying the existence of mental illness, but since:
1) we can’t diagnose the writer
2) we can’t help the writer
and
3) we risk creating an atmosphere of crazy-blaming by mixing mocking and diagnosis,
thus,
we as a community have decided it is inappropriate to bring that stuff up here.
I will probably appear to be just asking question here but that will just have to be to bad I will ask them any way.
What is it to be delusional? How am I to know when some won is just acting like it and truly is delusional? Even in the face of having direct evidence to the contrary pointed out to them they still go right on saying the same things. The only way I have of understanding what anyone is like or what they believe is true is when they tell me. If what they are saying is so out of touch with demonstrable reality that there is very little overlap what am I to make of it?
I know it often does no good to point it out to such people that what they think about the nature of things does not match up very well.
I have found the biggest reaction sometimes comes from those who meed the most help.
I do not see it as so much of a negative judgement so much as an understanding that many people maybe even most people at some time in their lives go through a period where for almost numberless reasons they lose good contact with ordinary reality. I myself have experienced this. I will go so far as to say that if anyone thinks they can go through life with out ever needing to talk things over with a counselor and not just some layer they are a fool or possibly a lying
I can understand that there is so much social baggage surrounding this whole subject that it makes it difficult to talk about.
This is the 21st century, this is a blog run by a scientist for crying out loud! this is not huffington post of youtube
PZ posts some bizarre stuff from some truly angry, delusional and paranoid sounding people. Were can we broach this if not here?
uncle frogy
lawyer not layer though sometimes you might need a good thick layer of lawyers.
uncle frogy
leerudolph
You get a brownie for noticing ;)
+++
The problem with labelling Comma’s behaviour as “mental illness” without being qualified is that if you go by those criteria you would have to declare huge parts of the US American adult population to be so severely mentally ill that they shouldn’t be able to manage their day-to-day lives. Since this obviously isn’t the case, maybe “being a deluded asshole” is a more useful description.
“Deluded Asshole” is what I will call my next band.
BTW we now have good term for Glen Beck, Lush Rimbaugh and the Reptilians.
Well, he is a UMM graduate, isn’t he? Therefore his concerns regarding this newspaper are important, aren’t they?
I’m sorry, I want to smack myself upside the head now.
@60 and @62. unclefrogy and Gilliell;
For the record, I’m not judging comma as mentally ill because of what he believes (actually, he doesn’t believe in anything “weird” or bizarre at all). Megan Fox and her campaign against the Field Museum in Chicago is very much not mentally ill. Neither is Ken Ham. But my stepfather, an atheist epidemiologist is. (Although, to be fair, his illness is mostly age related. A better example would be my previous paranoid schizophrenic stepfather. However that stepfather *did* believe strange things. Really strange things. Only he didn’t actually *believe* things… he just couldn’t really distinguish the difference between thinking things and things actually being… well, I digress… ) I’m judging comma on his writings and its tendency to cling to the flimsy ideas while being honestly perplexed that these ideas are not a known universal tautologies, his inability to objectively balance his beliefs with how others might view the beliefs, and his falling into repetitive cadences. It’s a writing and thought process I’ve seen in most of the detached obsessive delusionals I’ve known in my life and something I’ve never seen among anyone else.
Okay, that’s not a fair diagnostic based on anything resembling objective evidence and I’m not qualified. It’s as if I saw a photo of a stranger with a protruding lump in his belly and declare it a herniated ulcer. I’m not a doctor and I didn’t see enough. However, it’s another thing altogether to say “Whoa! That looks like a herniated ulcer. My uncle had one and it’s unmistakable.” Whoa, comma looks like he’s delusional and detached. My previous step-father was and the signs are unmistakable.
ReyFox, that’s a scurrilous lie!
Ter,ry;the.St?ate is “an UMM graduate”.
And Giliell is right, showing once again that second language learning can leave you more knowledgeable than the natives on stuff. The use of ” an” here implies that he pronounces it “um”, as opposed to ” you-em-em”. Of course, one clause later, he’s done the opposite, so who knows which is his typo?
Native speakers, consider “an STI”. Does it look better to you than “a STI”? To me the latter simply seems wrong, but I’m always aware, as a translator and linguist, that orthography is not language. So when I’m reading it, I’m “hearing” it in my head. And “ess-tee-eye”, per the lay phonetic spelling, clearly begins with a vowel.
Sorry, I know it’s a bit of a derail, but on the principle that more knowledge us a good thing, and Comma’s stuff is so blissfully innocent of knowledge, there it is.
Yes, the new location is at Washington University in St. Louis. Same price, amazing locations. Convenient to rail and road and bus. Washington University is one of the leading research institutions in the nation. Our confernece will be in the Lab Science building.
How about them crackers?
woozy,
It’s still unhelpful, to Comma and to anyone who is living with mental illness (which this person may or may not be). Imagine if every time someone like him did anything problematic, the Internet was full of people saying “the problem is obviously because he’s male” or “because he went to college.” Both those things are true of him, and neither is usefully explanatory. (That he went to that specific college is relevant, but lots of sociopaths are college graduates and don’t focus obsessively on their alma maters.)
CaitieCat
Is that an unusual thing? Because that’s the way I’ve read things for as long as I can remember.
the problem with aquaintances IGNORING potential signs of intability though, is that it makes it much more likely the person involved will never get help if they actually DO need it.
example:
David Mabus and his mother, who apparently never saw reason to seek treatment for her son, even though his behavior had obvious warning signs, that a court-ordered psychologist confirmed meant he needed treatment.
so the flip side, while you don’t want to play armchair psychologist and dismiss behavior as “obviously mental”, you’re doing the SAME THING by definitively stating it is not.
“don’t know” is probably the best answer for casual acquaintances like us, but hey, anyone who actually knows this person should probably be taking a close look to see if he does actually need some help, and not just ignore his behavior as: “well, he’s just being an asshole”.
false equivalence, since in neither one of those examples, do we see behavior that might have an underlying negative causation.
no, Woozy gets the concern expressed here, but he’s right. ignoring it is just the same kind of armchair analysis in the end.
it’s EXACTLY like if I said, you don’t have the credentials to judge the value of a particular field of scientific endeavor, like say… evolutionary psychology, so you probably shouldn’t assume there’s anything wrong with it, even though you personally recognize the bad patterns of behavior in it.
the thing is, many here DO recognize the problems with the bad papers being published, see the patterns emerging that we have seen before, and make comments on it.
could be we’re wrong, but that’s still beside the point.
Point of clarification. Shouldn’t…
be “But then, Comma knows that and is just using “criminal” in its most metaphorical sense. He is, isn’t he?”
It should, shouldn’t it be?
The lurker comes forth…
FWIW Here is a link to Perdue’s Online Writing Lab with information about how to use “a” and “an.”
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/591/01/
This is the way I was taught and how I taught my students. Sorry I don’t know how to make it an actual link. — OH MY! It knows how to do it all by itself!
John
Nope.
I second Lynna’s concern. Have you contacted authorities, PZ? It seems similar to David Mabus’ case, who was much farther away than this person.