Ugh

You may have noticed that the site has been down for a while. We were hit with a combination of problems.

First, we have been plagued by this idiot script-kiddie, the registrant for usuc.us:

(Information erased: a call to the person to which the domain is registered reveals he has no idea what is going on. Does anybody know how to inform the domain name registry that it is registered under a false name and get it deleted?)

He has been running a bot that injects some javascript into a search string that redirects the scienceblogs main page to google, since the main page rather foolishly embeds the top search strings into the html. We’ve known about this for a few days.

Second, the sciencebloggers’ complaints about this have been effectively ignored by the management here (and I think many of us are getting more pissed about this neglect of an obvious problem than anything else.) Several of us have been running a rather kludgy and ugly workaround, inserting code on our pages that secretly runs searches, too, to displace Mr Sullivan’s hack from the list of top searches. This has caused performance problems—we’ve basically been trying to out-thrash the bot to keep it from taking over the main page. A more elegant way to fix this would have been to patch up the search display on the main page, but we don’t have access to that.

Third, in the midst of all the overwork to which we were subjecting MT and the server, MT ate a large chunk of the Pharyngula template code. Poof, my page disappeared. At least that absence reduced the server load so everyone else’s pages were running a little better.

Anyway, the bottom line is that right now the scienceblogs main page will occasionally whisk you off to google, the Pharyngula index page is a corrupt and broken shambles, and server performance seems to be up and down.

DeLong explains Easterbrook

How can Gregg Easterbrook be publishing a science column in Slate? Brad DeLong explains it all.

The fact that Easterbook’s writing is “lively” and “provocative” and that he is a member of the appropriate social networks is sufficient reason to publish him as a “science writer.”

I can see where “lively” and “provocative” are necessary pre-conditions for getting a column in a popular magazine, but are they sufficient? No. Would they hire someone for a gossip column who had never heard of Scarlet Johansson or Brad Pitt? There is this phenomenon called “expertise” that ought to be part of the equation.

That being in the right clique is part of the prerequisite is unfortunate, but is a common part of human reality. The interesting thing, though, is that picking Easterbrook tells us something about the social circles in which Slate management seems to circulate—and that is that they are disjunct from the social circles that include competent scientists and science writers.

The fact that this has an effect not just on how good their operations are at delivering accurate information but also on how the scientifically-literate regard their operations as a whole–I don’t think that’s something that enters Weisberg’s (or Foer’s) mind at all.

Exactly. Although it could be that that’s a smart (in a short-sighted, counter-intuitive way) decision: the scientifically literate are clearly a minority in this country, so maybe one way to market ‘science’ to that profitable majority of boobs is to hire a boob to write it. That is, if you think your job is not to tell people what they ought to know, but rather to repeat to them what they think they already know.

Kook warning!

Why do we put up with these insane people? This is painful to listen to: it’s an NPR interview with John Hagee, and he goes on and on about his weird biblical prophecies that soon (maybe in the next hour!) the Rapture is going to occur, war will break out with Russia and Islam against Israel, and God will make an abrupt magical appearance that will prove his existence. It’s got excerpts from his looney-tunes sermons. We get to hear that “All Moslems have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews.” And what about Hurricane Katrina? “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God…all of the city was punished for the sin that was in that city.”

Terry Gross is much, much too nice to this raving lunatic.

My brief moment of fame

Hrm. Well. Since so many people are emailing me about this (I guess the book is officially out now, since so many are reading it), I’ll come clean: I am mentioned briefly but flatteringly in Dawkins’ new book, The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I’ll spare you all the mystery, and quote it here, blushingly. It’s on page 69, in a section titled “The Neville Chamberlain School of Evolutionists” (no, I’m not one of the members, I’m a critic; but as you can tell from the title, it’s a strong criticism of a school of thought that says we must appease the fence-straddlers who fear the godlessness of evolution). He cites a couple of things I’ve posted here: The Dawkins/Dennett boogeyman,
Our double standard, and
The Ruse-Dennett feud.

A page worth of the relevant section is quoted below the fold. Hey, if you like it, buy the book!

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This also says something about Texas

Pat Hayes wonders about the sensibilities of Minnesotans:

What is it about Minnesota — the cold winter weather, perhaps — that seemingly helps our northern neighbors see this issue more clearly than others?

You might also note that Canadians aren’t mired in a bloody mess in Iraq, either, suggesting that there is some bracing quality to the Northlands.

I’ll tell you the secret. Superconducting silicaceous brains.

If you close your eyes real tight, you’ll be INVISIBLE!

How odd. That little crank site that Bill Dembski runs has intentionally removed itself from the Google indexes: no search is going to turn up a link to Uncommon Descent. Elsberry speculates that it’s to remove the possibility of their penchant for revisionism being discovered.

I applaud this move. I suggest that the next step is to voluntarily remove their url and ip address from the DNS registry. We shall all be simultaneously dazzled by their technical prowess and absolutely confounded by our inability to point to the stupidity of the Dembskiites. That’ll teach us.

Oh, come on, Shermer…

Ugh. John Pieret is right: this effort by Michael Shermer to reconcile evolution with conservative theology is hideous, on multiple levels. It takes a special kind of arrogance to think that Christians are going to consult Shermer, a godless hellbound skeptic, on how to interpret the fine details of the Bible. Either reject it or buy into it—but nobody is going to believe that Shermer accepts the religious premises of the book. He’s being a kind of concern troll on a grand scale.

It’s also nonsense.

Because the theory of evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, it should be embraced.

Oh, really? Ask a Christian what his or her “core values” are, and they’ll probably spit up either doctrinal beliefs, such as the divinity of Jesus and the idea of salvation, or they’ll bring up a list of social concerns, such as abortion, homosexuality, or religiosity in government. Evolution either is irrelevant to those worries or contradicts them, and as I say over and over again, Christians aren’t necessarily stupid, and they know this.

I’m also not keen on someone using science to falsely bolster conservative ideology.

The denialists

i-3b22902bc0e8f3d919e7cab0ac583048-denial.gif

The Give Up Blog has a post outlining a general problem: denialists. The author is putting together a list of common tactics used by denialists of all stripes, whether they’re trying to pretend global warming isn’t happening, Hitler didn’t kill all those Jews, or evolution is a hoax, and they represent a snapshot of the hallmarks of crank anti-science. Most of the examples he’s using are from climate change, but they also fit quite well with the creation-evolution debates.

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