Remind me to “hijack” more crazy crank polls

Another site expresses outrage that atheists “hijacked” the Blaze poll, and I just got through to my email from Amsterdam and whew, I have gotten so much hate mail overnight! It gives me a warm happy glow to see the frothing.

Here’s a ‘nice’ one. Too bad he wants to argue creationism with me!

Our tax dollars go to support you and the educational elite to “educate” the youth of this nation and this is how you use your position?

Who don’t you get out in the real world and leave the world of academia and see how the real people of this country live and what they worship?

If you would like to carry on some “long distance” dialogue, please feel free to call me.

BTW, I only have an undergraduate degree in music, but I am fairly decent at communicating.

May God bless you and yours,

Jack

This one from Joseph Hasay isn’t so friendly, but more representative.

Loser asshole!

Hahaha! Beck caught you with your pants down you pathetic piece of human flesh!

David Dunn doesn’t like me at all.

YOU PROFESSOR

You are a FUCKING scumbag and you will rot in HELL!!! ENJOY eternity you waste of space!!

I could go on, but that’s enough — I’ll have to find more reasons to annoy Glenn Beck fans.

Markuze investigation continues

According to this news story from Montreal (Google translation), the police have opened an investigation into Dennis Markuze. Whatever that means.

One interesting part of the story: the reporter contacted his mother, who is in deep denial.

In a brief telephone interview with La Presse yesterday, the mother of Dennis Markuze confirmed that he is the author of the messages. However, she refuses to condemn the writings of his son, who still lives in his house, and ensures that it is not violent. “I do not ask him to stop, no. Why should I? It is his job, for what he believes. Why should I stop? “Said Ms. Markuze English.

She quickly washed away when the press told him about death threats that many people say they have received. “He never did that. It does not even kill a fly, sir. I do not believe. You probably understand its messages. “To quote some excerpts (” I’ll put a bullet in the head, “” I’ll t’exécuter “), she replied:” Read the full what he writes and you’ll see “before hanging up.

Oh. It’s his job to spam death threats over the internet. Is there good money in that, I wonder…

A character named Zenbuffy has decided I’m just as bad as Markuze, because i’ve been stalking her for ten years and sending her a collection of death threats every day. Oh wait, no, I haven’t done that…it’s because she has experienced mental illness personally, and because I think obsessively sending many hundreds of violent threats every day all day is a sign of being mentally disturbed (you think?), I have stigmatized every single crazy person in the universe. While I do think Zenbuffy is a narcisstic wanker — it’s not about you at all, lady, it’s about the guy who floods me with nonstop hate mail — I don’t regard all mental illnesses as the same, I don’t consider a history of mental illness as an evil. I just want ONE crazy stalker to stop what he’s doing and be taken seriously by community authorities.

Time to institutionalize Dennis Markuze

Every morning when I get up and get on the computer, the first thing I do is delete the pile of spam from Dennis Markuze, each of which is usually cross-posted to 50 to 100 other people. Every time I fire up Twitter, the first thing I do is clear the garbage Dennis Markuze has left there; yesterday I blocked and reported spam from over 25 Markuze accounts, amounting to several hundred messages.

You know what? This is wrong. I shouldn’t have to do this. Over the years — I’ve been getting these threats from Markuze since 1993 — it’s gradually grown from an occasional deranged message on usenet to part of my daily routine, where I’m dealing with hundreds of ranty messages every day from one disturbed individual in Montreal, Canada. And I’m not even his sole target: he has a hate-on for Shermer, Randi, and Dawkins, and this is all he does with his life: he sits in his bedroom in his parent’s house and sends out shrill, incoherent messages to the world, all day long.

I have reported him to the police. I have seen these complaints climb the ladder from the local department, to the FBI, to the RCMP, to the Montreal City Police, where they promptly fizzle out. The police don’t care. The word I’ve gotten back is that they aren’t going to do a thing until he snaps and starts killing people. A little late, don’t you think?

As a target for over almost twenty years, I’ve been watching this guy escalate — his hate messages have gotten crazier, more vicious, and more frequent. He’s a psychological cripple who wastes his life in this “project” to howl stupidly at the world; he’s on a clear trajectory of more and more demands for people to recognize him, and he’s not going to ever get any respect from anyone.

I am not a psychologist, but anyone who writes those disconnected rambling death threats, and does nothing else all day long, is mentally disturbed. Something is wrong in his head. I’m not the only one to notice.

The only people who don’t seem to notice are the Montreal city police.

If you’re on Twitter, one thing you can do is, when you receive one of his spam messages, retweet it, but delete all the names on it (because I don’t need more!) and add one: @SPVM. Give the Montreal police a sample of the noise coming out of their city that we’re drowning in.

There is now a petition demanding that the Montreal city police take his threats seriously. Sign it, please. I want at least ten thousand names from around the world on it.

I don’t have any confidence at all in them: they’ve had this deranged man making death threats on their watch for over a decade, and have done nothing. I don’t think the petition will do a thing.

What I want is a public record of the criminal neglect of that police department, so that when Markuze does have his little psychotic break and harms someone, probably some innocent, they won’t be able to deny that they were warned, that there was a world-wide outcry, that hordes of people thousands of miles away could see all this coming, and the incompetents in Montreal sat on their hands and did nothing.

(Also on Sb)

I get email

Mr. Lambertsen wishes to reopen a prior conversation.

Dear Mr. Myers:

Inasmuch as…

1. The theoretical analyses of Kaila and Annila (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, vol. 464, 3055-3070, 2008) and Karnani, Pääkkönen, and Annila (Proceedings of the Royal Society A, vol. 465:2155-2175, 2009); and

2. The empirical findings of Goldbogen, Calambokidis, Oleson, Potvin, Pyenson, Schorr and Shadwick (Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 214, 131-146, 2011)

all corroborate my 2007 theory that, in its most general form, natural selection works diametrically in opposition to the argument codied by the Principle of Least Action,

would you be so kind as to publish a retraction, if not an apology, for your [offensive and self-serving] blog titled “Word Salad — with Math?”

Without delay?

The favor of a prompt reply is requested.

Kindest regards,

R. H. Lambertsen, Ph.D., V.M.D.

Dear Mr. Lambertsen:

I took the trouble of looking up the papers you recommended, Natural selection for least action, The physical character of information, and Mechanics, hydrodynamics and energetics of blue whale lunge feeding: efficiency dependence on krill density, and alas, while I can see how they are relevant to fragments of formulae in your thesis, they don’t in any way support the whole. In particular, they don’t explain how the evolution of the craniomandibular articulation in baleen whales was the enabling mutation that permitted the occurrence of free will, what this has to do with Einstein’s special theory of relativity, the significance of the death of the largest blue whale known on 20 March 1947, and how you tie all these disparate observations into the conclusion that humanity is about to undergo a speciation event. I looked in particular in the paper on lunge feeding for evidence that George W. Bush stole your driver’s license, as you claimed in your paper, to no avail.

Given these deficiencies in your sources, I feel no need to retract my original blog post, Word salad, with math, let alone apologize for it.

I must also point out that your paper lacked a legend, or even a reference in the text, for this climactic figure, which I’m sure must explain everything. Your recent paper recommendations do nothing to enlighten me, either. It’s rather symptomatic; perhaps if you stepped back from your work and looked at it with a more critical eye, you might notice that it looks like an incoherent splatter of manic non sequiturs and random regurgitations of mathematical formulae, all spruced up with colorful charts that don’t actually contribute to the substance.

I would like to do you the courtesy of suggesting a reference for you, in that esteemed source, Wikipedia: it’s called the Streisand Effect.

With swift reply and the greatest concern for your health,

P.Z. Myers, Ph.D.

Jennifer Fulwiler: vacant-eyed, mindless cluelessness personified

I’m getting a clearer picture of Jennifer Fulwiler. She’s very much a Catholic, she thinks she’s an expert on atheists, and she likes things in fives. First it was five misconceptions atheists have about Catholics, and now she’s written five Catholic teachings that make sense to atheists. As if she’d know. She claims to have been an atheist once, but her list of stuff that makes sense indicates that she was an awfully Catholic atheist.

  1. Purgatory. Why? “it made sense to me because it explained how heaven can be a place of perfect love, and God can still be merciful to people who had some work to do in that department when they died.” Does she even realize that including speculation about the nature of God and heaven, especially speculation that ignores the monstrous tyranny described in the Bible, means it automatically makes no sense at all to an atheist?

  2. The Communion of Saints. Why? “I didn’t struggle with this doctrine at all—it struck me as an articulation of a spiritual truth known to the human heart from time immemorial.” The communion of saints is the idea that all Christians have a mystical bond with each other, both alive and dead. Magic ESP restricted to people who believe in the right god (the damned don’t get it) is not exactly a truth. What atheist would hear that and think that was perfectly reasonable?

  3. Veneration of Mary Why? when I heard that Catholics place a huge emphasis on the Mother of God, my reaction was basically to shrug and say, “Yeah. Of course.” She even acknowledges that atheists with a Protestant upbringing might find the Mary worship weird, but then blunders on to simply say it’s obvious that we ought to worship the human being who gave birth to all-powerful cosmic ruler of the universe. Errm, we don’t believe in gods, period; the fanciful story that a Palestinian virgin squirted him out of her vagina two thousand years ago in a stable doesn’t strike us as somehow intuitive or even possible.

  4. Salvation for Non-Catholics and Non-Christians Why? “It struck me as fair and consistent” that you wouldn’t get damned if you never heard of Jesus. This is the idea that if you’re a good person, but you’ve never heard of Christianity, you won’t go to hell. Of course, if you have heard of the gospel because some caterwauling missionary or proselytizer bellows at you, and you reject it because the whole shebang makes no sense at all, you will go to hell. This does not strike me as fair, or even sensible.

  5. Apostolic Authority Why? “this one God-guided Church has final authority on matters of doctrine”. She complains that all those other churches had people struggling to interpret and understand the Bible, and all coming up with different explanations. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, tells you to sit down, shut up, don’t question, here’s the one correct answer…therefore, this should be more appealing to an atheist?

Can you imagine what would happen if some well-meaning, kindly, thoughtful Catholic read Jennifer Fulwiler’s post about what would represent common ground with atheists, and then came to me with charitable intent to discuss our shared ideals? The poor thing…it’d be like they were walking into a woodchipper, thinking they were going to get a cup of tea and a cookie.

We need a petition to urge a school to tolerate menstruating girls?

What has the world come to? Valley Park Middle School in Toronto has made a very special provision to make Muslim students happy: they allow them to use the cafeteria for private prayer (to which I have no objection), and then obligingly segregate the boys from the girls, and because it is so very important, also take the young girls who are menstruating and ostracize them in the back of the room, where they are not allowed to participate. OK, not making them join in a prayer is nice, but the implicit public shaming for their physiological state? Outrageous.

There’s a petition. Let’s add more names to it.

I can’t keep up with these teen fads

Christian knees are trembling, sensing imminent doom brought on by juvenile fantasy literature. Which is ironic, considering that they worship a big sloppy book that fits perfectly into the genre. Anyway, first there was the Harry Potter series, which turned all the teenagers into Wiccans (what?); then there was the Twilight series, that has led to an upsurge of teenagers drinking blood (I missed that one, too). What next?

Think carefully: What might happen if a “third wave” of popular entertainment inspires gullible teenagers to seek possession by demonic entities, thinking it’s good for them? To those who believe in a real behind-the-scenes war between good and evil, the prospect is truly terrifying.

There are no people with magic powers or functioning magic wands, and there are no quidditch matches on ESPN; vampires aren’t real, and all that can happen with rare instances of blood drinking is a little nausea and the potential transmission of blood-borne diseases.

Demons aren’t real, and inviting one to possess you is just a waste of time that will make you look very silly. And the people believe it’s a peril deserve a little terror, and should lock themselves up in their churches and not come out any more.

Now this is a creepy stereotype

“Little girl, would you like some candy?” Somebody didn’t think things through when they decided that this was a good strategy for proselytizing.

An Edmonton mother is outraged after members of a local church approached her daughter on a playground – offering a Bible verse, candy and a promise that if she memorized the passage they would give her more treats.

Kathleen Crowe says her nine-year-old daughter Angeline was playing in MacEwan park last week when she was approached by a couple from the Victory Christian Center who gave her candy and a Bible verse. Angeline was also promised more candy if she memorized the verse.

And if she didn’t memorize the verse, she could burn in hell!

Professional science journalism

I’ve taken a few pokes at the bad science of Rhawn Joseph and the Journal of Cosmology over the years — for instance, in this post summarizing an article that was little more than a thinly threaded excuse to show off pictures of women in bikinis, or this post about their claim to have found bacteria in meteorites.

I think my criticism must have stung.

Check out the bikini post at the Journal of Cosmology now. It’s been removed, with the disclaimer, “CENSORED This Article Has Been Censored and Removed Due to Threats and Complaints Received.” I am amused. I wouldn’t take all the credit, since I’m sure many people found that article ludicrous to an extreme, except…

Well, this is really weird. Notice in the header for the journal’s online page that it gives two URLs: journalofcosmology.com takes you to the various articles in the journal, but they also own cosmology.com. Allow me to show you the front page for cosmology.com. I’ll preserve it here since I rather expect it will be pulled in embarrassment at some time in the future.

Cosmology.com is For Sale

Sale Price:

$100,000.00

Price Based on Estibot estimated value.

Contact:
ForSale AT Cosmology.com

Include your name, address, affiliation, and phone number or your inquiry will be ignored.

In Honor of P. Z. Myers



P. Z. Myers celebrating

Is P. Z. Myers a “frothing at the mouth lunatic” who raves about subjects he knows nothing about?
Absolutely not. There is no evidence of “frothing.”

Copyright 2009, 2010, 2011 All Rights Reserved

Ah, yes…because nothing says you’ve got a property worth $100,000 like slapping photoshopped pictures of my face on obese women’s bodies.

And look! They have a whole page dedicated to my honor! I wonder what level of professionalism we’ll see there? Just in case that goes away, too, I’ve put a copy below the fold.

[Read more…]

I’m in the Bible?

A reader ran my name through one of those bible code programs — you know, those really silly exercises in goofy divination that juggles lines of the bible around to find some arrangement that reveals words and phrases — and it turns out I’m in there. See?

i-c8677422c461a1fc2777059ed85f6743-biblecode1.jpeg

Gosh, I guess the Bible must be true then.

Then the next step in this program is that it extracts a numerically related verse, somehow, that tells you deep things about the word in question. This is me:

i-7f8f90521cb6f8bb68be995355604c6a-biblecode2.jpeg

Respect my biblical authoritah! My very, very tired biblical authoritah…we got home from TAM at 4am, which means my brain is almost misfiring enough to find bible code crap somewhat weakly interesting. Almost.

Another reader sent me a different scan using the same software.

i-5a01596b8cad8cca98922bb966750673-biblecode3.jpeg

I like this one better.