I got email this morning…and so did every member of the science & math division at the University of Minnesota, Morris. This happens every once in a while, since our official email addresses are all publicly accessible, and anyone can grab them and spam the heck out of us all. What was unusual is that this email was directly addressed to me, personally, and the sender decided that he needed to put me in my place and flaunt his erudition to every one of my colleagues.
I am unperturbed by his effort, because in every case, without exception, the loon just ends up exposing his inanity. I mean, you’ve got to realize that trying to harass an entire university division is a poor decision in the first place, right? That thinking that most of the faculty are at all interested in your disagreement with me is somewhat delusional? That you’ve immediately put the wrong foot forward by arbitrarily spamming a whole mob of disinterested people with your long-winded and ultimately pathetic excuses?
You should have known that I’d happily post your email to my blog, where people can opt-in and choose to read the whole thing voluntarily. So yes, I include every word of the thing below.
It’s from Ted Steele, who wrote that very silly article, Cause of Cambrian Explosion – Terrestrial or Cosmic?, in which he proposed that squid fell to earth in comets. I laughed at it in my article, Squids from SPAAAAAAAAACE!, and what has irritated him is that my criticisms were picked up by that prestigious newspaper, The Sun, in an article titled ARE YOU SQUIDDING? Are octopuses aliens? Bizarre new theory suggests the sea creatures’ eggs arrived on earth on a comet from outer space. So the real concern is that a bunch of working class blokes are going to be reading their paper down at the pub, looking for topless pics and anti-immigrant rants, and they’re going to stumble across this weird American egghead who thinks Ted Steele is full of crap.
I think he should be more concerned that The Sun finds his work amusing than that I think it’s garbage. But read on. He’s indignant.