Wikipedia's political attacks violate nonprofit 501(c)(3) status

The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization. Wikipedia's extremely biased biography of Cheri Yecke, a political candidate for the office of Florida commission of education, is a flagrant violation of an IRS rule prohibiting 501(c)(3) organizations from campaigning for or against a candidate for elective public office. The IRS says,

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

. . . .voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that: (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.

Not only is the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke extremely biased, but my attempt to add a rebuttal was censored. When I attempted to add my rebuttal, I had the courtesy to not disturb any existing material, even though I saw clear bias in that material. Of course, the satanic Wickedpedian control freaks who censored my rebuttal don't know what "courtesy" means. Truth is a defense against charges of libel but is not a defense against charges of censorship of rebuttals.

Here are some examples of extreme bias in Yecke's Wikipedia biography. Her bio begins,
.

Cheri Pierson Yecke, Ph.D. is a conservative politician who has been involved in attempts to teach creationism in science classes

Mentioning a bio subject's alleged pro-creationism activities in the first sentence of a bio might be appropriate in, say, a bio of Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis; it is hardly appropriate in the case of Cheri Yecke. Calling her "a conservative politician who has been involved in attempts to teach creationism in science classes" is based solely on a biased interpretation of a single minor event that happened in Minnesota in 2003. Yet about one-half of her bio is taken up with discussing that event.

There is no evidence that she ever made the following statement that was cited in support of the preceding claim:

1. Yecke: "every local district should have the freedom to teach creationism if that is what they choose" Minnesota Public Radio, June 9, 2003.

Her bio says,

In July of 2003 during her term as education commissioner, Yecke proposed that the Minnesota Science Standards included (sic) the technique favored by intelligent design proponents to Teach The Controversy in science curriculum.

Wrong -- she said that decisions about "teaching the controversy" should be made by the local school districts. A newspaper article cited by the bio said,

. . . she said she will instruct the science committee to avoid any clashes over the teaching of evolution. She will cite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits the teaching of strict creationism in the classroom and a section of the new federal No Child Left Behind Act that strongly advises school districts to teach evolution in a way that "helps the student to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society."

"My purpose is that we don't need to enter that debate," Yecke said. "And that these decisions lay with the local school boards."

"Teach the controversy" was also the technique favored by the 91 Senators who voted for the Santorum Amendment. And there is much more to the controversy than just evolution and ID -- there are many scientific and pseudoscientific non-ID criticisms of evolution.

The bio says,

She cited the pro-intelligent design Santorum Amendment as supporting her effort.

The Santorum Amendment is not "pro-intelligent design" -- this amendment does not even mention intelligent design. If this amendment is pro-ID, then so were the 91 Senators who voted in favor of it.

The versions of the Minnesota Science Standards circulated by Yecke contained language used by the pro-intelligent design Teach The Controversy campaign which casts doubt on evolution while offering intelligent design as a competing theory. The version that was circulated among the public did not include these revisions.

It is claimed that the original newspaper article containing this story is no longer available online, so here is the Pharyngula blog's quotation of the article --

Two drafts of Minnesota’s science standards circulated this week. The only difference? How they described the teaching of evolution.

The version the public didn’t see included words like “might” and “possible” at strategic points that clearly cast doubt on the certainty of biological evolution.

When members of the citizens’ panel that wrote the standards saw what was to be the final document, several saw the “mights” and “possibles” and protested that they didn’t write the document that way and that the department made critical changes without telling the panel.

In the end, the committee got the language it wanted, giving evolution the full stamp of approval of the state as the way to teach science to all students in Minnesota’s public schools.

The department said the confusion was a simple mistake caused by several versions floating around the agency, said spokesman Bill Walsh. He said it wasn’t that Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke — who has acknowledged her belief in creationism — tried quietly to place her own personal misgivings about evolution into the standards.

There is no proof that Yecke deliberately tried to sneak those words into the final version of the standards. The words were removed before the final version was released to the public.

The bio says,

Wesley R. Elsberry, marine biologist and critic of intelligent design whose blog The Austringer had referenced the article linking Yecke to the Teach The Controversy method of promoting intelligent design was contacted by ReputationDefender in June 2007.

Again, "teach the controversy" is not just specifically a method of promoting intelligent design.

The bio says,

Readers of blog then provided links to archived recordings of Twin Cities Public Television broadcasts from 2003 showing Yecke saying that teaching intelligent design was a decision local school districts could undertake and teaching intelligent design is supported by the Santorum Amendment.

Well, Yecke was correct -- teaching intelligent design is supported by the Santorum Amendment. The only thing is that the Santorum Amendment is not in the No Child Left Behind Law itself but is in a modified form in the House-Senate conference report accompanying the Act.

BTW, the Wikimedia Foundation is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, the home state of Cheri Yecke. How convenient.
.

READ MORE

Update on holy war against Wickedpedians

.

"I don't make the rules." Famous restaurant scene in "Five Easy Pieces"

====================================================

I just found the following additional Wikipedia rule:

Self-published sources (e.g., blogs) should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer.

So much for the phony claim that the blogs of BVD-clad bloggers Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers are entitled to a special exception because these bloggers are "nationally syndicated columnists." What a farce.

It's past time to bring in ReputationDefender.com. If ReputationDefender does not help now, then Cheri Yecke should cancel her membership.

Also, the Wikipedia rules for the biographies of living persons say (here and here):
.

Reliable sources

Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully. Without reliable third-party sources, a biography will violate the No original research and Verifiability policies, and could lead to libel claims.

Material available solely on partisan websites or in obscure newspapers should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all. Material from self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source about a living person, including as an external link, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see below).

Editors should avoid repeating gossip published by tabloids and scandal sheets. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to an encyclopedia article about the subject. When less-than-reliable publications print material they suspect is untrue, they often include weasel phrases. Look out for these. If the original publication doesn't believe its own story, why should we?

Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material

Editors should corroborate contentious material about living persons with proper sources, and add them if they are not present. An editor who cannot find a source should remove the material promptly — simply tagging it as questionable is insufficient. Where the material is derogatory and unsourced, relies on improper sources (see Wikipedia:Verifiability), or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research), it does not belong in Wikipedia.

Contentious material about living persons on user and talk pages also must follow the above rules. Negative biographical material needs to be placed in proper context. If this is done, contentious material from questionable sources may be discussed on talk pages, but problems with the material and the sources must be clearly identified, and it may be removed if the discussion has ended or is not contributing to the development of the article. When in doubt, contentious material that is not properly sourced should be removed.

Removal of material under these principles is not subject to normal restrictions, and the three-revert rule does not apply. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked (see the blocking policy and Wikipedia:Libel). Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and negative in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to, should delete the article without discussion (see speedy deletion criterion G10 for more details).

Jimmy Wales has said it is better to have no information at all than to include speculation, and has emphasized the need for sensitivity:

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.

Those Wickedpedian control freaks have broken every rule in the book, which ought to be thrown at them -- hard.

Also, the following is an excerpt from an email that I sent to a ReputationDefender customer service representative:
.

. . . I might add that I am defamed in the Wikipedia discussion page on Cheri Yecke's bio, so my reputation needs defending too. Wikipedia administrators on this page are trying to justify their discrimination against my blog -- other blogs are used as references in the bio -- by calling my blog "crappy" while calling the other blogs "reputable." I know that you don't offer your $29.95 clean-up service to non-members, but let me ask you this -- if I were a dues-paying member, would you refuse my request for help in my fight against Wikipedia? Also, a lot of people do not want or need your monthly search report service but just want help with specific problems. I could understand you charging non-members more than your $29.95 fee but I cannot fathom your policy of not offering your clean-up service to non-members. Remember that famous scene in the movie "Five Easy Pieces" where a waitress tells a customer that giving him a side-order of toast is against the rules, so he tells her, "OK, I want a chicken-salad sandwich on toast, hold the chicken-salad and the mayonnaise and just bring me the toast, then give me a check for the sandwich and you haven't broken any rules"? OK, here is what I propose: sign me up as a member, then help me fight Wikipedia for $29.95, and then I will cancel my membership, and you would not be breaking any rules.

LOL
.

READ MORE

Simplified instructions for holy war against Wickedpedians

Update: Cheri Yecke's Wikipedia bio has been "semi-protected," which means that only those with Wikipedia user registrations four days old or older can edit the bio.

The crusade against the Great Satan, the evil Wickedpedian control freaks, is in full swing. There were about 20 reverts yesterday on Cheri Yecke's bio.

This article contains instructions on how you can very easily help even if you know absolutely nothing about Wikipedia editing.

I have been unexpectedly joined by three allies on the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke. Their editing has been far less restrained than mine -- they are wiping out everything that has anything to do with the evolution controversy. In contrast, in my first edit, I did not delete or change anything already there but only added a short rebuttal along with links to this blog. When they censored that rebuttal, I retaliated only by censoring their material that referenced blogs, saying that if my blog goes, then the other blogs go too. There is a Wikipedia rule -- with some narrow exceptions that do not apply here -- that blogs may not be used as sources. So if an exception to the rule is made for some blogs pursuant to Wikipedia's "Ignore the Rules" rule, then the exceptions must be made for all blogs. On the discussion page, the Wickedpedians had the gall to try to justify their discrimination by calling this blog "crappy" while calling the blogs of Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers "reputable." The Wickedpedians even made some frivolous claims about these two BVD-clad bloggers being "nationally syndicated columnists." If you don't find all of this to be an outrage, then I beg you to read some other blog (like the Glenlivet whiskey ad where the brewmaster says, "if you can't drink Glenlivet in the proper way, then I beg you to drink some other Scotch").

Reinforcements are badly needed in the holy war against these satanic Wickedpedian control freaks. The scumbags have now blocked me so I cannot wage jihad myself. I find that anonymous proxies no longer work in hacking Wikipedia. A lot of readers here might not be familiar with Wikipedia editing, so below are some simplified instructions in what to do. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but it is so simple that a trained monkey could do it in a few seconds:
.
You can edit Wikipedia without registering. Go to this webpage. This is my initial edit, with just my rebuttal added and no other changes. Also, this version has my name and the name of this blog -- I was too generous before in removing these when the names of the other bloggers and their blogs are included. This is the way the bio is supposed to be.

Click on "Edit this page" tab on the top (I could have eliminated this step if I weren't blocked), above and to the right of the name "Cheri Yecke."

Then, without making any changes, go to around the middle of the webpage and click on "save" or "save page" or something like that (I don't remember exactly). You may want to add some remarks in the box just above the save button, like "restoring Larry Fafarman's initial edit, with just his rebuttal added and no other changes. This is the way the bio is supposed to be."

That's it!

BTW, this bio is a smear campaign against Cheri Yecke. Here are the facts: Back in 2003, Yecke, as Minnesota's commissioner of education, said that teaching creationism was "off the table" as a result of a 1987 Supreme Court decision but that a Congressional report accompanying the No Child Left Behind Act recommended "teaching the controversy" and she said that decisions about "teaching the controversy" should be left up to local school districts. For this she is being vilified today. There is nothing wrong with citing a Congressional report for support -- the courts do it all the time.
.

READ MORE

Seeking tag-team members for edit jihad against Wickedpedians

So far, no less than four different tag-teaming Wikipedia control freaks have canceled my edits on the bio of Florida K-12 education chancellor Cheri Yecke. Two can play this game. I invite my supporters to help me wage jihad against these control freaks. With your help, we can break the power of the Great Satan, these Wickedpedian tyrants. Anyone can edit Wikipedia -- you don't even have to register. If you don't use a registered name for editing, you will be identified by your IP number. I have no idea why they post the IP numbers -- they are pretty useless pieces of information. When these IP numbers are dynamic, they can't even identify a particular Internet user from one Internet session to the next. Anyway, Wikipedia is fairly easy to edit and if you don't know how to edit Wikipedia, IMO this is a good time to learn.

The biggest issue now (there are other issues) is that the Wickedpedians are violating the Wikipedia rule against using personal blogs as sources. There are two exceptions to this rule: (1) when a blogger is writing about him/herself and (2) when a blogger is a news media professional who is writing on a blog that is under the "full editorial control" of a news media outlet (called a "newspaper" in the rules but presumably also including other kinds of media outlets). Neither of these exceptions applies to the personal blogs cited in the bio, i.e., the personal blogs of Wesley "Ding" Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers. The Wickedpedians went so far as to claim that these two BVD-clad bloggers are "syndicated columnists" or "nationally syndicated op-ed columnists"!

It could be argued that the Wikipedia rule called "Ignore All Rules" allows exceptions to be made to the Wikipedia rules. The "Ignore All Rules" webpage says, "If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them." However, this rule is ambiguous, because the Wikipedia webpage titled Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means implies that the "Ignore All Rules" rule was only intended to encourage readers to edit Wikipedia without first bothering to learn the Wikipedia rules. Also, it is not clear whether a consensus of a Wikipedia article's editors is needed for making an exception to a rule. But if the "Ignore All Rules" rule is applied to create an exception to a Wikipedia rule, in this case the rule against using blogs as sources, then I assert that the exception must be available to all editors of the Wikipedia article. Otherwise the "Ignore All Rules" rule would just be a tool for a clique of Wickedpedian control freaks to create exceptions to the rules just for themselves whenever they please. The Wickedpedians censored references to this blog while citing the blogs of Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ.

Personally, I think that the rule against using personal blogs as sources is stupid. A citation of a personal blog does not imply Wikipedia endorsement of the citation. And the blogs themselves often contain citations of reliable sources. What is the difference between direct citation of a reliable source and giving a link to a blog that contains a citation of that source? The linked blog article might contain the blogger's own personal opinion in addition to the citation of the reliable source, but IMO there is nothing wrong about Wikipedia linking to a personal opinion in a blog so long as it is clear that the opinion is not endorsed by Wikipedia. Links are a convenient way of avoiding cluttering up text with material that is contained in the linked sources. That is the way that the Internet is supposed to operate. Welcome to the 21st century. But as I said, if an exception to the rule against citing blogs is made for some blogs, then I assert that the exception must be made for all blogs.

I think that the Wickpedians are becoming nervous about canceling my edits. My edits now often last for several hours -- they used to be deleted within minutes, even when made in the wee hours of the morning. I think that the Wickedpedians use audible automatic alarms to inform them when particular articles are being tampered with.
.

READ MORE

Edit War at Wickedpedia!

I am engaged in another edit war at Wikipedia, on Cheri Yecke's bio -- and this one is a dilly! Those Wikipedia control freaks have really painted themselves into a corner! Here is the exchange of editing messages (the maximum allowable length of the message is short -- otherwise I would have said more) --

IMO Wikipedia is not the place for political campaigning, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (I added my entry)

non-notable self-promotion by long-known internet crank (my entry censored)

Larry Fafarman's name and the name of his blog have been removed from this entry because of complaints of "self-promotion" (I restored my entry, less my name and blog name)

Advocacy for intelligent design and Teach The Controversy - removing unreliable sourcing, non notable self-promotion from Larry again (my entry censored again)

Removed references to personal blogs -- Wikipedia verifiability rule against using personal blogs as sources makes no exception for personal blogs of "notable" people (I censored references to blogs of BVD-clad bloggers Ding Elsberry and Sleazy PZ Myers -- two can play this game).

no Larry, read the sourcing policy (references to blogs of Ding and Sleazy PZ are restored)

The sourcing rules say that the only exceptions to the "no blogs" rule are for bloggers who are (1) professional journalists or (2) writing about themselves. Stop playing games, dunghill (I censor Ding's and Sleazy PZ's blogs again)

Reverting POV edits (Ding and Sleazy PZ restored again)

Now they have plumb run out of excuses -- they can't even dream up any more phony reasons for canceling my edits. Right now I am planning a late-night editing raid.

I am really giving those control freaks hell on the discussion page! On the discussion page, one of them went so far as to call BVD-clad blogger Sleazy PZ Myers a "syndicated op-ed columnist"! LOL. I wish I could bring in ReputationDefender to really give 'em hell. I would gladly pay their $29.95 fee but there are two problems: (1) their $29.95 jawboning/blackmailing service is available only to members who pay a $10-16 monthly fee, and (2) it's not my bio. I hope that Cheri Yecke will take action -- after all, she has the most to lose. I invite others to join the fray -- this is great fun!
.

READ MORE

Something must be done about Wickedpedia censorship NOW

.

The clowns who run Wickedpedia. Picture is courtesy of the Wikitruth website. "NPOV" stands for "Neutral Point of View," the name of one of the Wickedpedia content policies and a policy that Wickedpedia frequently ignores.

===================================================================

I feel that it is inappropriate to use Wikipedia for political campaigning, but since the Wikipedia bio of Cheri Yecke already contained political attack ads, I decided to respond with a rebuttal. Incredibly, my rebuttal was brazenly censored by a Wikipedia control freak named "FeloniousMonk" who gave the following incredible reason -- "non-notable self-promotion by long-known internet crank" -- see here.

Talk about arbitrary!

Unless we do something about Wikipedia censorship NOW, we might as well just throw in the towel now and forget about having a big democratic online encyclopedia open to reasonable editing by all.

Wikipedia should not be considered to be "private" -- it should be considered to be in the public domain. A lot of people supported Wikipedia in the belief that we should have a big public online encyclopedia and not just a lot of little private online encyclopedias. That is why so many people volunteered their time to work on Wikipedia. That is how Wikipedia got so big.

Darwinism must really be on its last legs if the Darwinists have to resort to that kind of censorship.

Cheri Yecke's current Wikipedia bio is here.

The last version before my entry was censored is on the bottom of the page here (my entry is just above the title "Allegations of Nepotism" near the bottom and the links are at the very bottom).

Also, I made some recent additions to the discussion page. I added comments to the "Deletion?" and "Advocacy for intelligent design" sections.

I will not stop until FeloniousSkunk is removed as a Wikipedia administrator. One would think that with all the credibility problems Wikipedia has been having lately, they would not have a jerk like that on their staff.

READ MORE

Best "reputation defender" is a "fairness doctrine" for blogs

Articles have reported that Florida K-12 education chancellor Cheri Yecke hired an outfit called "reputationdefender" to try to help persuade Ding Elsberry to remove or modify a statement about her on one of his blogs. One of these articles says,

About reputationdefender

-The company works by contacting the offending Web sites to request that they remove the material.

-Cost: For $10 to $16 per month, you'll get a monthly report that lists what's out there about you.

-It costs $29.95 for each item you want the company to eliminate. For information, go to www.reputationdefender.com

What can $29.95 buy today? In pre-inflationary days, Earl Scheib would paint your car for just $29.95 ("Riiight, I'll paint any car, any color for twenty-nine ninety-five! Riiiiiiight!"), but those days are long gone -- now prices at Earl Scheib shops start at $259.95.

A Wall Street Journal article says,
.

ReputationDefender begins by sending emails on behalf of its clients to Web-site owners. The letters typically introduce the company, identify the client and the offending content, and ask the recipient to remove it. The letters don't make threats -- Mr. Fertik, despite his training, and others at ReputationDefender aren't lawyers -- but instead try to appeal to recipients' sense of fairness: "Like our clients, and perhaps like you, we think the Internet is sometimes unnecessarily hurtful to the privacy and reputations of everyday people," one such letter reads.

"The first thing we do is we just ask, very politely," said Mr. Fertik. "Thereafter, we can get less polite," including contacting a site's Internet service provider to complain about the site. When Web site owners don't respond to its letters, ReputationDefender sometimes suggests that clients hire a lawyer, though Mr. Fertik said that happens infrequently.

The WSJ article gave an example of where jawboning a blogger failed to result in removal of the material.

However, the reputationdefender.com website claims that they have the ability to "destroy" targeted material, but I don't see how they could do that without illegal hacking. There is something else I want to say about this WSJ article but I will save it for a later post.

Fertik said, "Thereafter, we can get less polite," but it would be hard to get less polite than the "reputation defender" in the following story. A report about a particularly enterprising reputation defender said,

Arizona resident Ed Magedson is the manager of Xcentric Ventures, which operates RipOffReport.com, a clearinghouse where disgruntled customers can post freely about how much they hate a company, its products, or the people who work for it.

As you might imagine, RipOffReport has become something of a magnet not only for frustrated consumers, but also the reputation-defending services that can charge up to a few hundred dollars a year to try to clean up someone's name (or business name) online.

Magedson said, and a judge eventually agreed, that William Stanley (behind DefamationAction.com and ComplaintRemover.com) sent him a series of threats demanding that uncomplimentary information be deleted from RipOffReport.

Below are excerpts from one of those threats that Stanley sent to Magedson:

This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning.

Your neighbors already know about your criminal dealings and how you are making many people loose (sic) their business. You will soon be beaten to a pulp and pounced into the ground six feet under with a baseball bat and sleg (sic) hammer. You will soon be sorry not just from what I am capable of doing to you, but what other members will do as soon as they know exactly where you are. Its (sic) just a matter of time until I get to you.

Here is what you can do to save your life. But you must act imidiatly (sic). Make what ever deal it takes, you must comply.

You have the previous list of companies that you need to remove from Rip-off Report. We know you hold the power. We know you have that list.

That kind of cease-and-desist letter is what lawyers call "zealous advocacy."

I assert that the best "reputation defender" for blogging would be a "fairness doctrine" law that would prohibit arbitrary censorship of blog visitors' comments so that defamed people or others would be able to respond directly. Also, I propose that bloggers insisting on the right to arbitrarily censor comments be required to prominently post a notice such as the following:

The blogger on this blog arbitrarily censors comments for any of the following reasons:

(1) The blogger disagrees with the comment.

(2) The blogger wholly or partially agrees with the comment but the comment is contrary to a point that the blogger is trying to make.

(3) The blogger dislikes a commenter or a suspected commenter.

(4) No reason at all.

Also, I propose that all bloggers be required to fill out and prominently post a standard comment policy form.
.

READ MORE

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

I don't think that Wikipedia bios are appropriate places for political campaigning, but since political attack ads have been posted on Cheri Yecke's Wikipedia bio, I figured, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," so I decided to post the following response (the numbers in brackets represent links to this blog):
.

Larry Fafarman disputes most of these claims of Elsberry and Myers. Fafarman makes the following claims on his "I'm from Missouri" blog: (1) an article by the National Center for Science Education, Elsberry's former employer, misinterpreted the No Child Left Behind Act and the Santorum Amendment [11]; (2) an "incriminating" ( Fafarman's sarcastic description ) Yecke letter posted by Elsberry did not misrepresent or misuse either the Act or the Amendment [12]; (3) Elsberry censored blog comments that disputed his interpretation of the Act and the Amendment [13]; and (4) Yecke's Wikipedia bio is being misused for posting political attack ads against her [14].

Now we'll see how long it stays up there before the Wickedpedia control freaks censor it.
.

READ MORE

Campbell's Primordial Soup

The pictures are courtesy of Uncommon Descent and BRITES. To see the label details, click on the bottom picture above. Go to the BRITES webpage for the full story.

They forgot to include simulated lightning in the cooking directions (simulated lightning was used in the Miller-Urey experiment). They also forgot to say that unused portions must be stored at cryogenic temperatures.

The goo-to-you soup. As the saying goes, you are what you eat. M'm! M'm! Good!

READ MORE

Cartoon caption contest

.


When I first saw the above cartoon over at Uncommon Descent, I thought it was pretty tasteless, but then I thought that it would make a good subject for a cartoon caption contest. The cartoon was posted on UD under the title, "The Slippery Slope of Enforcing Darwinism in the Classroom?" Here are my own suggestions for a caption:

Survival of the fittest

Predator-prey arms race

I warned you not to get me into trouble with Judge Jones

Weeding out those who are unfit to compete in the global economy

==========================

The prize for the winner of this caption contest will be an invitation to post a guest article on this blog.

READ MORE

It is wrong to teach kids that censorship is OK

.

THE DOVER LEGACY --
THE TEACHER'S TURN TO STAY AFTER SCHOOL

Cartoon is courtesy of Uncommon Descent. This is not a legacy that Judge Jones should be proud of, but he has been criss-crossing the country giving speeches that brag about it. He now claims that his speeches are not about the Dover decision itself but are in support of judicial independence and "the rule of law," but the fact is that he would have no audience were he not well known for having made that decision.

===================================================

It just struck me that one very important factor that has not been considered in monkey trials is the effect of teaching kids that it is OK to arbitrarily censor even the mere mention of ideas that we disagree with. The same impressionability that makes kids susceptible to believing pseudoscience -- or even believing religion -- also makes them susceptible to accepting the idea that such arbitrary censorship is OK, which IMO is by far the worst of these susceptibilities in potential for long-term deleterious consequences -- it would give people tendencies to be intolerant and accept a fascist government. I am really kicking myself for not seeing this angle before. We should oppose arbitrary censorship wherever it raises its ugly head. Also, I am wondering why we have been hearing little or nothing from the people who are most affected by the censorship of criticism of Darwinism in the public schools -- the students themselves.

A Georgetown Law Journal article by Kevin Trowel says,
.

The challenge of education in a democracy is to balance individuality and autonomy with the needs of the state. The state requires that students become members of society, and it serves this goal by "encourag[ing] the political virtues so that [children] want to honor the fair terms of social cooperation in relation with the rest of society." To avoid homogenization, the "political virtues" must include "toleration and mutual respect, and a sense of fairness and civility" . . . .

. . . Civic education, therefore, must provide students with the tools to be active, critical, political, but tolerant citizens. This will sometimes put the goals of a system of civic education in conflict with the desires of individual groups or communities. (page 882 of journal, page 28 of pdf file)

.

READ MORE

Creators of Barney are to blame for this stuff

From an article titled "Daniel in the Dino's Den -- Why it would be a sin not to include dinosaurs in illustrated children's Bibles"

=========================================================


Another insult to Islam that could get us into deep-shit trouble: "The Jihad to Destroy Barney" roleplaying game.

==========================================================

These are results of mass-marketing an asinine purple T.Rex to kids as a cuddly, lovable creature.

The Barney theme song (my version), sung to tune of "This Old Man":

I hate you,
you hate me,
that's a Barney parody.
With a big lawsuit,
and a curse from me to you,
won't you say you hate me too?

Original version:

I love you,
you love me.
we're a happy family.
With a great big hug,
and a kiss from me to you,
won't you say you love me too?

READ MORE

Two-faced hypocrisies of Fatheaded Ed and the ACLU

Above: Cartoon courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

Left: Mugshot of Ed's smirking face




I submitted the following comment for a post titled Ed Brayton’s doublespeak — When Glib writes it, he’s “ignorant,” when Wendy does, she’s right on the StoptheACLU blog (Wendy Kaminer wrote a Wall Street Journal feature article titled The American Liberal Liberties Union: The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers "free" speech):
.

Glib,

I agree that Fatheaded Ed Brayton is a lousy two-faced hypocrite. For crying out loud (Fatheaded Ed's trademark expression), he kicked me off his blog permanently just because he disagreed with my literal interpretation of a federal court rule -- and BTW he did not even give me a single chance to respond to his objection to my interpretation. And since then this despicable BVD-clad blogger has not given me any chance to respond on his blog to personal attacks that he makes against me on his blog.

One of Ed's specialties is nitpicking and hairsplitting pettifoggery. For example, he tries to make a distinction between "reasonable criticism" and "batshit wingnuttery" -- but the "batshit wingnuttery" is often just truthful "zealous advocacy."

And you are right about the ACLU. Even when the ACLU's priorities prevent the ACLU from directly participating in lawsuits that the ACLU supposedly supports, the ACLU could just give moral support to those lawsuits but often fails to do so. I found that out when the ACLU of Southern California refused to even just make a public statement against California's grossly unconstitutional $300 "smog impact fee" on out-of-state vehicles (this fee was collected for about 8-9 years and was struck down by the state courts and most victims then got refunds). In contrast, the ACLU was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against an unconstitutional Florida tax on out-of-state vehicles.

Of course, I would like to post this comment on Fatheaded Ed's blog but cannot.

Ed Brayton's reply to the StoptheACLU post is here. Here is a discussion of Ed's kicking me off his blog.

"Batshit wingnuttery" -- LOL. That is almost as good as Wesley "Ding" Elsberry's "pseudo-aggrieved put-uponness".

Wendy Kaminer's WSJ article said,

Despite its professed commitment to religious liberty, for example, the ACLU tends to absent itself from cases on college campuses involving the associational rights of Christian student groups to discriminate against gay students, in accordance with their religious beliefs. But conservative students might be grateful for the ACLU's absence. Consider its intervention in a successful federal court challenge to an unconstitutional speech code at Georgia Tech, brought by the Alliance Defense Fund in 2006 on behalf of two conservative religious students. The ACLU of Georgia filed an amicus brief proposing a substitute but still overbroad "antiharassment" policy that included a prohibition on "injurious communications . . . directed toward an individual because of their characteristics or beliefs." In other words: Students should be punished for sharply criticizing or satirizing each other's beliefs if their remarks are deemed "injurious." Occasionally an ACLU affiliate does intervene in defense of politically incorrect speech and vigorous debate on campus. But the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education has become a much more reliable advocate for the rights of all college students, regardless of ideology or religion. (I serve on both FIRE's advisory board and the board of the Massachusetts ACLU affiliate.)(emphasis added)

Ed's response to the above statement was,

I agree with this completely. Yes, the ACLU takes an official position against hate speech codes on campus . . .

WHAT? Whaddya mean, "Yes, the ACLU takes an official position against hate speech codes on campus . ."? The WSJ article said, "The ACLU of Georgia filed an amicus brief proposing a substitute but still overbroad 'antiharassment' policy that included a prohibition on 'injurious communications . . . directed toward an individual because of their characteristics or beliefs.' " Sheeesh.

Also, Glib Fortuna, the author of the above StoptheACLU post, wrote on Ed's blog,

. . . I was no more harsh on the ACLU than WK [Wendy Kaminer] was. As a matter of fact, she went further than I did in my criticism on campus issues. I criticized the ACLU for being absent. WK actually went further by saying that the ACLU's rare involvement has been deleterious as the ACLU has supported reconstituted speech code-lite. So as far as your charges of my post being hyperbolic and "overblown," you cannot avoid attaching the same rider to WK's "constructive criticism" if you're being consistent.

Glib then astutely observes,

This post is the perfect example, Ed, of you depending on your readers to read nothing beyond your selective analysis, cherry-picked to serve you, but to disserve the people who trust you.

And one of the ways that Ed assures that his readers read nothing beyond his selective analysis is by censoring dissenting comments.

Also, Ed said the following about Wendy Kaminer:

. . . .she's one of the good guys and she speaks not as an enemy of the ACLU out to demonize the organization but as a passionate supporter and longtime civil liberties activist out to save the ACLU from itself . . . . I think her criticisms deserve to be taken seriously.

Glib Fortuna is right -- why in the hell should the validity of criticism of the ACLU depend on who is doing the criticizing?

Also, it is noteworthy that Ed lets Glib post comments on his blog but won't let me do so. The reason for this discrimination is that cowardly Ed is afraid of Glib because Glib blogs on a big, popular blog, StoptheACLU.

I don't agree with StoptheACLU on a lot of issues, but I certainly agree with them on this one.

Also, Fatheaded Ed says on his blog,

E-mail Policy
Any and all emails that I receive may be reprinted, in part or in full, on this blog with attribution. If this is not acceptable to you, do not send me e-mail -- especially if you're going to end up being embarrassed when it's printed publicly for all to see.

I therefore have no qualms about publishing the following reply that Ed made when I emailed him the above comment that I submitted to the StoptheACLU blog:

Larry, exactly how fucking stupid are you?

The trolls here -- Voice in the Wilderness, Voice in the Urbanness, Hector, Bill Carter, etc. -- will now say what a wonderful guy Ed is and that Glib Fortuna and I are the bad guys.
.

READ MORE

Update on Barney and the San Diego Chicken

.
CLICK HERE
.

READ MORE

Barney the T.Rex was missing link for San Diego Chicken

The San Diego Chicken beat up that infamous living fossil, Barney the purple Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur, in skits during ball games, and Barney's owners sued the San Diego Chicken for trademark infringement. Barney and the San Diego Chicken did not know that they are actually close relatives. As Barney's theme song begins,

I love you
You love me
We're a happy family

A news article reports,

Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.

I wonder what this discovery is going to do to cladistic taxonomy -- LOL.

Poor Barney -- so many people hate him. There has been a lot of anti-Barney humor. There is even a role-playing game called "The Jihad to Destroy Barney".
.

READ MORE

Big new hole in evolution theory?

.


Again, my thanks to FortheKids of the Reasonable Kansans blog for the cartoon.

It seems that the Darwinists have been taking one step forward and two steps back in their efforts to prove evolution theory. There have been recent discoveries of "missing link" fossils, e.g., Tiktaalik, but now a news article says,
.

The big dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago didn't produce a flurry of new species in the ancestry of modern mammals after all, says a huge study that challenges a long-standing theory.

Scientists who constructed a massive evolutionary family tree for mammals found no sign of such a burst of new species at that time among the ancestors of present-day animals.

Only mammals with no modern-day descendants showed that effect.

"I was flabbergasted," said study co-author Ross MacPhee, curator of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

I think that the findings of the above study show the folly of cladistic taxonomy, the classification of organisms according to their known evolutionary histories. With the known evolutionary histories constantly changing, they cannot be used to establish a uniform and permanent system of classification.

READ MORE

The Evolution of Homer

.
YouTube Video
.

READ MORE

Parody of Evolution Sunday sermons

.




LOL. My thanks to FortheKids of the Reasonable Kansans blog for this one.

Real Evolution Sunday sermons are listed here.

BTW, posts with cartoons now have a special label! To see some good cartoons, click on the label. A link for this label has been added to the left sidebar.
.

READ MORE

Nice Holocaust denial cartoon

From the National Post (Canada) Feb. 16, 2007

=====================================

Talk about double standards! LOL

IMO prison stripes on Zundel and Irving would add to the humor.

I got this one from the website of the Institute for Historical Review.

READ MORE

Merry-go-round to hell

On the Uncommon Descent blog, William Dembski said,

Since 1999, Kansas has now swung four times on the question of science standards and whether evolutionary theory should be properly scrutinized or swallowed whole. Below is the latest. This war will not be decided by courts, legislators, or school boards, but by young people as they wake up to the fact that dogmatic Darwinists have been systematically indoctrinating and disenfranchising them. Just as the counterculture of the 60s overturned the status quo, so a new counterculture, with high school, college, and university students taking the lead, will overturn the Darwinian status quo.

Evolution Opponents Lose in Kansas Primary
By John Hanna
Associated Press
posted: 02 August 2006

Control of the school board has slipped into, out of and back into conservative Republicans’ hands since 1998, resulting in anti-evolution standards in 1999, evolution-friendly ones in 2001 and anti-evolution ones again last year.

He's right. For years, critics of Darwinism have been banging their heads against a wall in a futile effort to get legislators, school boards, and the courts to allow even the slightest criticism of Darwinism in public-school science classrooms. It is time to get off this merry-go-round to hell and target the students themselves directly. Legislators, school board members, and judges are soon going to find themselves irrelevant.

There has also been see-sawing in Ohio. After the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision was released on December 20, the Ohio Board of Education held an "emergency" vote in January on whether to keep the evolution lesson plan that included critical analysis of evolution (the only "emergency" was that the board wanted to avoid hearing public comments before voting), and voted to keep it. Then in February the Ohio BOE held another "emergency" vote on the plan and voted to delete it but invited a replacement. Now the board is considering another science standard calling for critical analysis of evolution. See http://science2.marion.ohio-state.edu/ohioscience/

The courts have also been giving the runaround. In an oral hearing on the Selman v. Cobb County textbook sticker case at an appeals court in December 2005, the judges noted that important evidence was missing but also appeared to be leaning toward reversal because of reasons that had nothing to do with the missing evidence. However, after five months of stalling, the appeals court remanded the case to the district court because of the missing evidence, a huge 16 months after the district court decision was released.

READ MORE