A Pakistan authority has issued a demand to block a file on your WordPress.com site:
Unfortunately, we must comply to keep WordPress.com accessible for everyone in Pakistan. We will not be challenging this demand, but if you wish to discuss what the legal avenues of appeal may be, please get in touch as soon as possible. There is usually a very short period of time in which objections can be lodged.
As a result of this demand, the file (below) on your site is now inaccessible for Internet visitors originating from Pakistan. They will instead see a message explaining why the content was blocked.
Visitors from outside of Pakistan are not affected.
And I was so close to turning the tide against believing in religious nonsense in Pakistan, too.
It tickles my fancy to know that there’s some censorious schmuck over in Pakistan tasked with finding random pictures insulting Islam from nearly 10 years ago. Of course, censorship is always a tragedy, but I suppose the silver lining here is that the sort of person who willingly censors others in violation of their basic human rights is also the sort of person who will have a tendency to go to extremes to punish those who they think should be censored. I’ve faced scum like that first-hand. So I guess it’s better that this Pakistani authority/human rights violator is sitting behind a desk rather than in a position of real power.
Also, not for nothing, but since Christianity dominates in Western culture that tends to favor free speech, my site hasn’t been blocked anywhere for posting a YMCA-Jesus pose picture in that same post.
Every so often I’ll come across something on the Internet about me that I hadn’t seen before. This is fortunately less common than it once was, but it still happens from time to time. Back in May it was a video:
I knew about that video long before it happened, but I never knew that it had been published until I was searching something else. (My part happens around 4:25.) Just the same, I didn’t know about this post by PZ Myers until just today. It was a response to the above video (which you should watch if you want the rest of this post to make sense):
[The case study in the video] is Michael Hawkins, a skeptic. C0nc0rdance is aghast; he notes that:
In two years, PZ went from praising Michael Hawkins for his courage in standing up to homeopathy…to banning him permanently for “being a douchecanoe”.
Yes. Two years. Almost from the beginning of his interactions here, Hawkins was a carping jerk, yet somehow he managed to continue dissenting here regularly for all of those years before he finally convinced me he was too stupid and oblivious to allow him to continue. This is of course an excellent example of my notorious hair-trigger banning of all disagreement.
I can’t search for my comments on Pharyngula, so I can’t link anything, but Myers is lying. My comments on his blog, whether on scienceblogs.com or his new, group-think site, have always been pretty sparse. Too many people post there for any fruitful debate to really happen; it’s like talking to no one in particular at a Metallica concert. No one is likely to hear you, and if they do, you better not say anything bad about the band, no matter how much you think St. Anger sucked. Furthermore, most of my comments on his scienceblogs site were generally pretty positive.
Not shown, though, are his whining emails to me. Yes, I praised his work fighting a quack in Maine; why wouldn’t I? What you don’t see is that after I put four posts on my blog on the Maloney issue, Hawkins would write to me complaining that I wasn’t doing enough, that I must not like him, that I was allowing my personal distaste for the guy interfere with the importance of his cause (there was no personal distaste until he started demanding my attention!) And from that point on, he came onto Pharyngula with a chip on his shoulder and was persistently obnoxious.
Again, Myers is lying. I would write to him when something new popped up about said quack, but that was a matter of keeping him generally updated. I didn’t complain about anything. After a short time, my emails (which were never that frequent anyway) tapered and I stopped bothering with any communication. Fast forward a bit and Myers gets a cease and desist letter from the quack and his wife/lawyer demanding Myers give up his First Amendment rights. Several months later, I got the same thing. I sent Myers an email about that as a matter, once again, of keeping him updated. At this point I was probably expressing some dissent at Pharyngula, but nothing major. And again, no complaining. Fast forward even further and now a lawsuit is being threatened against me. But by this time I had been dissenting a fair bit more in the sparse comments I did leave. Myers ignored my need for help, but once again, I did not complain. I eventually got help from Ken White and moved on with life. It was only in a comment or two, at most, that I said anything about Myers not helping me. Indeed, it would appear that Myers’ claim about all those complaints I made all boil down to one post – one post which was amongst a series on a particular thread which soon got me banned by Myers.
Let’s quickly review the above paragraph: Myers clearly says that I complained that he wasn’t doing enough and that I thought he should give me all the attention I want. As a result, this contributed to a lengthy interaction which, despite Myers’ incredible patience, resulted in my banning from his echo-chamber. However, the only time I complained at all was over 250 posts into some random thread where I made a post addressing 9 different people. I wasn’t even talking to Myers at the time.
But I’m not the dishonest one here, so I feel obligated to point out that, yes, I do think Myers ignored my request for help in a lawsuit because he dislikes the views I’ve expressed on his brand of feminism. I fully believe that he would have responded to and helped someone he considers to be ‘on his side’. (After all, he was quick to ‘help’ someone accusing Michael Shermer of rape. That person had unfounded claims that may get Myers sued. I had actual facts and legal materials to offer up.)
For example, here is Hawkins’ very first comment (aside from some test comments) on Pharyngula after I made the move to Freethoughtblogs.
I hate to feed the troll (PZ), but the fact is Watson and (more so) those who spread her video and story are the ones who made this all a big deal. Anyone who says otherwise is either a moron or liar. Take your pick.
By the way, you don’t get to damn Christians for projecting, PZ, when you did the exact same thing in this very post when you went out of your way to use “shrill”.
That was in September 2011. He wasn’t banned until four months later, after he’d piled up an impressive record of belligerance and antagonism. And note the source of his ire: that Rebecca Watson had said, “Guys, don’t do that” in a youtube video. You want to really piss off the regulars here? Take that attitude. It’s one of the most annoying things anyone can say here, and yet, notice, it didn’t get him banned.
For once Myers isn’t lying. He’s wrong because he isn’t very good at parsing language, but at least he isn’t lying. My “source of ire” wasn’t what Watson had said. I was annoyed that Myers and co had recently taken to claiming that they had always been aloof to and above “elevatorgate”. Why, they weren’t the ones who created a mountain out of a mole hill. It was all those damn women-haters! They just won’t shut up about it! Yeah, right. As I’ve said before, almost no one would know what “elevatorgate” was today if Myers hadn’t picked up on the story and later continued to push it.
He became notorious here as a tone troll: the substance of a complaint didn’t matter, what was horrible was being so irritating as to make a complaint in the first place (we note the irony that he was actually hoist by that petard eventually). He had a reputation as someone who demanded irrelevancies, like the time he told me to go “craft a few hundred words” and publish them in my local paper, rather than writing blog entries (there’s a theme here, too, of people ordering me to run my blog or my life in the particular way they prefer).
Again, that’s a lie. Aside from the fact that I’m very, very, very far from being a tone troll (I mean, really? me? c’mon), there was one thread in which I talked about using more effective rhetoric. That is, I said that if a person’s strategy is to get a person to listen and be engaged, then insults aren’t likely to work. However, if the strategy is to shame a person (and for many of the caricature feminists out there, it is), then using harsh language and insults may be the way to go. That isn’t me being a tone troll. That’s me describing rudimentary rhetoric.
As for me ‘telling’ Myers to go craft a few hundred words, he is intentionally taking that out of context. That is, he wants it to sound like I was saying, “Why don’t you go fuck off?” Then to add to the quote-mine, he says that I was telling him to do that instead of writing blog entries. Again, we have another magnificent lie. What actually happened is that another poster came into a thread bitching about how awful those threads were. A bunch of people piled on that poster and nothing interesting happened. I then noted that that user did have a point about the lack of productivity in those threads. So, I thought and wrote, why not use a better medium for an important message? That is, I thought an OP-ED (not a mere letter to the editor) by Myers in his local paper would be a good way to get people discussing this or that issue. But who knew that “Have you thought about using your status as a professor to contact a newspaper about an OP-ED” was equal to saying, “STOP WRITING YOUR BLOG POSTS AND DO WHAT I DEMAND!”
The final straw was his privileged, oblivious pomposity. Hawkins, the fellow who got terribly irate that a driving range made him buy their golf balls, then waxed indignant that poor people might use food stamps to buy lobster in Maine. It was classic privileged meddling. Subsidize my golfing hobby, but no, no, no, don’t let those poor people enjoy a good meal!
Again, we have a lie. The issue I had with a driving range was that I was treated poorly by a business. I went to hit a few of my own golf balls near closing time at an empty range. The owners, outraged that I would dare not immediately pay them $1.50 for a small bucket, berated my girlfriend and me. At no point was my problem that they had a rule about buying a bucket. (Most ranges in the area have no such rule, nor did this range have that rule written anywhere; an owner of another range told me he always gets customers from the one where I had an issue.) Had they said, “Oh, sorry, we don’t allow people to use their own golf balls. You need to buy a bucket”, I would have bought the fucking bucket. But that isn’t the real issue for me here; I’m well over that incident. What bothers me is the incessant dishonesty from Pharyngula, now continued by Myers. This issue was brought up randomly in a thread in which I was disagreeing about something else. People focused on it for the sake of personally attacking me. It is easily the absolute best real life example of an ad hominen I’ve ever seen.
As to poor people buying lobster, Myers has about as much understanding of economics as he does of philosophy: he’s a dolt. I dislike the idea of expensive foods being available via food stamps because 1) they fail to contribute to lifting people out of poverty, 2) they are not nutritionally necessary nor without more than adequate alternative choices, and 3) they cost the taxpayer more, thus hurting the economy (and thus poor people). (Lobster happened to be the example I used.) So did Myers respond to each of my points, considering and perhaps rebutting each one? Of course not. He simply characterized me as hating poor people since my position wasn’t sufficiently liberal.
At that point he was toast. Again, it’s not that he disagreed with me — there are plenty of people bickering on that thread, and some making the same claim that these youtubers do, that I’ve violated FREE SPEECH by kicking him out — but because a persistently sanctimonious asshole wore out his welcome at last.
Of course I was banned because I disagreed with Myers. He even admits as much when he talks so dismissively about me, in his view, not wanting poor people to have a good meal. Why, how dare I hold such an opinion! It’s just so privileged. There was simply no way such a viewpoint could be tolerated at Pharyngula.
As to a ‘violation of free speech’, there seems to be mass confusion about this. People think that simply because something isn’t an illegal violation of free speech as described in the First Amendment, it also isn’t censorship. I don’t know what YouTube comments are being referenced, nor am I saying that Myers is expressing this type of confusion, but no one seems to have any idea that censorship can happen in both an illegal and legal context. In this case, yes, Myers legally censored me. That’s the entire point of the video – and it’s a point that is 100% correct. Furthermore, it’s important to note when censorship is justified and when it isn’t. Simply because it is allowed does not mean that it is defensible.
And that’s C0nc0rdance’s Big Lie: that I don’t tolerate any disagreement, that I’m quick to pull the trigger, that no dissenters can get a word in edgewise here. If you actually look at the record honestly, you cannot come to that conclusion…but it’s now the party line for people like NoelPlum99 (168 dissenting comments here) and C0nc0rdance (12 dissenting comments).
C0nc0rdance closes with the horrifying statistic that there are 105 entries in the dungeon file. Oh, no! A big number! Let’s terrify the children with it!
Perspective: that’s the number of permanently (there were a few others who were released) banned individuals accumulated over ten years of blogging. I get between 15,000 and 20,000 comments per month, and have banned less than one person per month.
You want to argue that my commenting policy is just too brutal? The facts say you’re wrong.
It’s so cute that Myers is calling someone else a liar. It’s even more cute when he tries to use facts, as if he has any clarity on any matter in which he’s so clearly biased. Yes, the number of total bans are small. So? Think, Myers. If your argument is that your policy isn’t bad because you only implement it on occasion, then you have a shitty argument. When that exact same logic is applied to something more extreme, like murder, any reasonable person can see that it fails. (I suspect that analogy doesn’t work for Myers, what with his poor record in philosophical thought.) The real fact is, you ban people for disagreeing with you. You can’t handle the speech of others, so you get rid of it when it begins to offend you. Aw, your poor wittle feelings. Deal with it, man. Deal with the fact that other people are going to dissent and do so in a way in which you will lose the argument. Don’t pretend like allowing a handful of people to say a negative thing here or there proves that you have nothing but patience. Rather than constructing these elaborate tales of your tolerance for other views, drop the ego and own your censorship tendencies. Just be honest and own what you do.
I’m a big believer in fighting speech with more speech. That’s why it’s so easy for me to explain to people why I don’t like people like PZ Myers and the thought-police at Freethoughtblogs:
There is a facebook page called The Patriot Nation, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: people raging against an America that isn’t white. And it is on facebook, so hell no, it’s never going to get taken down, even when it lies.
and
I just got a comment on twitter about this post:
@Miserere22: @pzmyers hopefully she gets raped. no offense.
Hopefully their account gets reported by people all over the world. No offense.
and
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated
I found all this within the first 4 pages of his blog.
There are two major arenas where censorship happens: publicly and privately. When it occurs publicly, it is generally illegal (in fact, by “publicly”, I only mean in instances where the question is a legal one). That is, a person who is prevented from engaging in public speech is a person who has had his First Amendment rights trampled. Of course there are all the caveats – threatening speech and gag orders and yelling fire in a crowded theater and things like that – but I’m not talking about those and they aren’t important for this post. What’s important here is when censorship occurs privately. Specifically, I want to talk about online censorship as wrought by people in administration positions, whether it be on a message board or a Facebook page or, especially, a blog.
I view Popehat as property: my property, held in common with three friends. For me, the inquiry stops there.
I choose to invest my time into Popehat for one reason, and one reason alone. I enjoy what results from it. I believe that Popehat is a great website, and I gain personal satisfaction from knowing that I have done my part to make it so…
But if I were forced, by compulsion or out of assumed moral obligation, to allow others to use Popehat for purposes I find repellent, the joy that I gain from this site would turn to ashes in my mouth. I would no longer be the master of this house: I would become a slave, working for no reward…
I wouldn’t work on a website that makes me angry, unless I am being paid obscene amounts of money. Since that will never happen, I will not allow Popehat to make me angry.
If it’s a choice between you and me, you will go. So that I can stay.
I’ve pasted his response together in pieces, but I think I’ve captured the gist of it.
I feel entirely different about censorship of this nature. Sure, if someone wants to censor what others write in a privately run space, I’m going to deem it stupid if the censored individual runs to a judge and jury, but I have no issue with the criticism that the censorious individual gets. In fact, I would like to join in: I generally view censorship as cowardly regardless of any legal questions that may exist.
I also find people who are willing to censor to be very untrustworthy. When I visit a new blog and leave a comment, I often have my first comment kept in moderation. That’s fine if the person is looking to filter out all the spam possible (or just too lazy to fix his settings), but if I leave a second comment and that is also kept in moderation, I am unlikely to continue with my posting. I do not spam and I do not troll, thus there is no reason to prevent my (or most other people’s) comments from immediately posting – except for the purpose of making a censor-based decision.
I want to mention another blogger for whom I lost nearly all respect when he not only proved himself inept at his profession, in my opinion, but also a FOX News-like liar regarding a particular issue. After we had a falling out – we aren’t even Facebook pals anymore :( – I continued to comment on a few of his posts, despite the reasonable risk that he might censor my comments. I don’t mean that as a personal jab but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that we are two individuals who do not like each other and I wasn’t allowing his comment sections to go as swimmingly as he might like. As it turns out, though, he has not censored me in the least. He hasn’t even threatened to do so. That I respect. That is how a blog administrator should behave. That is how I run my site.
Shifty gears slightly, one common theme to issues like this is for people to compare their blog or forum to their living room. “Why,” they say, “I would never allow someone to speak rudely to me or my other guests from my couch, so why should I allow it here?” I think that analogy fails. It only works insofar as one’s living room and one’s blog are both private. But my front yard is private property, just as my bedroom is. Does that mean it would be okay to walk about naked whenever I pleased? Of course not. Having one characteristic in common does not make two things equal (Nate‘s mother and bovine specimens excepted). The difference in this cases lies in the fact that a blog is essentially an open-invite to the public. Whenever I make a post, including this one, I am asking anyone and everyone to come into ‘my living room’ and tell me what they think. I would never do that with my real living room.
I want to be sure, though, that I’m not polarizing this issue. Like with most things, it isn’t all black and white. I have banned one non-bot person from FTSOS. He was spamming and trolling and had no interest in any sort of discussion. He was clogging up my Recent Comments widget to the point where he killed at least two discussions that were happening elsewhere. (People had no idea their comments had received a response and the posts only existed several pages deep, so the ability to see recent comments – the only lifeline for the comment sections – was severed.) His comments were also stupid, but that isn’t why I banned him. I banned him because he made my website logistically incoherent.
And there are other instances where I can understand someone censoring a post. If someone posts a link to lemonparty.org (consider context to be your warning), I would probably edit it. Not always, but probably. Or, let’s say, a blogger loses his spouse to cancer. If a person starts talking about the deceased as some evil person and other personalized vulgarities, I don’t think I would consider the blogger a coward for utilizing his “Move to Trash” feature.
All that said, I am against censorship on private forums – forums that are inherently designed as open-invites to the public. That means I have no respect for the closing of threads or banning of commenters at places like FTSOS or Popehat or any blog in 99% of the non-bot instances. “I don’t like what you’re saying” and “I don’t like how you’re saying that” are the two things administrators are telling everyone when they close things and ban people. That impresses me less than Brad Pitt impressed Shania Twain in 1998*. It’s a way to insulate one’s self from the so-called marketplace of ideas. Obviously no one wants to run a shitty market, but allowing others to meet a bad apple at one or two of your corners is a good thing. That’s reality. And if those bad corners turn into bad streets and then bad areas and then a bad market, that probably isn’t a reflection of a lax censor policy. In that case, there is likely something wrong with the sort of posts being made or the sort of people making the posts. Anything on the Internet can attract awful people, but awful things will attract them in clusters. (That is in no way a comment on Patrick or Popehat. I think Popehat is a fantastic site, and I would think that even if Ken had never helped me so much with a tough problem.)
Now, feel free to say whatever you want in my comment section.
Freethoughtblogs.com is, presumably, promoted as a gathering of blogs which support the free exchange and criticism of ideas. Of course it has its leanings, but sans any legal issues, it is to be expected that such a place would not only allow opinion that parted ways with the local majority, it would embrace it. Unfortunately, expectations are not always met:
I thought Freethought Blogs was a stupid idea when I first heard it, because I knew it would just encourage a groupthink mindset… you know, the kind of thing that we self-proclaimed “free thinkers” generally desire to stay away from.
Thank you, PZ Myers, for proving me right. As if you hadn’t gone downhill enough already during ‘Elevatorgate’.
And this once again shows that for whatever reason, dissent of any kind on topics related to ‘feminism’ – even if it is simply misperceived – turns certain people in the atheist community into raving idiots who just shout past each other.
This is all in reference to the recent addition of Thunderf00t to the community. He is probably most well known for his YouTube videos criticizing creationism and other ill-thought, but when he turned to blogging, he set his sights on talking about Freethought Blogs’ pet issue: feminism. I have no desire to wade into the minutiae of it all – anyone who didn’t already agree with me would probably be a caricature feminist, and everyone knows there’s no arguing with those people – but here’s the gist: A new blogger comes on the scene and takes a contrary view to the established bloggers. In turn, the established bloggers fire back. The new blogger does the same. And ’round and ’round we go. That is, until the 800-lbs gorilla in the room – PZ Myers – steps in and censors the dissent:
That’s right. Someone wrote negatively about feminism and, since he had the power, PZ went about pulling the plug on everything. I would call it pathetic, but that really is far too kind.
I can’t say I’m personally surprised at any of this. PZ originally helped me with my Maloney issue but later completely ignored me when push was coming close to shove. It’s entirely obvious why: He didn’t like that someone was quieting something with which he agreed. That was the linchpin to his initial help – he agreed with my criticism of naturopathy. By the time I was close to being frivolously sued, however, I had spent some time disagreeing with him and criticizing some of his arguments (especially on feminism). He clearly knew this and had no desire to help a person who didn’t see eye-to-eye with him on his favorite issue. He never cared about censorship or the First Amendment. His concern was purely for issues that mattered to him, not any broader principle(s). And now we’re seeing that more clearly than ever: PZ Myers, censorious hack, has taken the steps necessary to censor Thunderf00t for doing no more than holding a different opinion.
I recently read an excellent article by Shambling After about her time in a bathhouse in Istanbul. Take a look. The event clearly represents a significant moment for her, and I think it obviously deserves a bit of respect. As such, when I saw it reposted on The Hostel Life I wanted to leave a quick comment of praise. I did, but then I thought about it a little more. The title. It’s…it’s awful:
Rub-a-Dub-Dub in a Hamam Tub
The article is the same, but this really does it a disservice. This wasn’t some trite throwaway piece meant to bring about a quick chuckle from the audience. Anyone who reads the article – and you should – won’t be able to avoid realizing it has clear emotional gravity to the writer. I think she conveys that fact admirably, which is why she gave it an intelligent title on her blog. Unfortunately, the yellow rubber ducky image The Hostel Life implants in the reader’s mind is misleading and a poor way to start any serious writing. I had to leave a second comment to voice my opinion:
Incidentally, while this article is absolutely wonderful, I think the title is misleading. “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” implies a light-hearted, whimsical piece. It sounds to me like this was a significant experience for the writer, something which carries with it striking weight for her even today. It would be nice if the title reflected that.
I actually went ahead and made it a point to save that because I had my suspicions. The Hostel Life is one of those sites that moderates all comments. That tells me they aren’t very interesting in discussion they can’t control, and when they do have control, they’re going to be censor-happy. Even though my comment could only be described as respectful constructive criticism, I got the distinct sense that some coward wasn’t going to approve it.
It looks like I was right.
It has now been a full week since I attempted to comment on the unrepresentative title and nothing has appeared. The first comment I left praising the piece showed up within hours. It’s hard to tell if anyone else has commented in the News section since my second attempt because there are no time stamps on comments, but I find it difficult to believe no administrator has looked at the submitted reader posts since January 14th. It seems that the most reasonable conclusion is that there is some censorious asshat over at The Hostel Life that can’t deal with a little well-intended criticism.
It’s too bad, too. Bathing in Istanbul is a great article – with a great title to boot.
Students at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) recently created a free speech wall on campus in response to a controversial social media policy instituted by their school. Some people wrote things about legalizing pot, others made funny quips, and still others made topical and political comments. One of those comments said “FUCK OBAMA”. Another person wrote “BUSH” under “OBAMA”. This is all protected free speech, of course, but that didn’t stop Professor and full-time douchebag Joe E. Kirk from vandalizing the poster:
But what happened next is what’s so outrageous. An SHSU faculty member offended by the insult to President Obama reportedly used a box cutter to cut the expletive out of the wall after students refused to accede to his demand to censor that particular speech.
In response, the students called campus ‘police’ to report the vandalism. One might think that Kirk would have been ordered to leave the area, what with his unconstitutional, douchebaggery destruction of private property. But nope. This happened:
But after the students called the campus police to report the vandalism, they were threatened by a campus police officer with charges of disturbing the peace and required to remove all profanity from the wall, or else take it down! Under this pressure, the students dismantled their “free speech wall”…
What usually happens in events like this is that the wrong-headed authority figures will defend their moronic actions. This time is no different:
Later that day, as reported by SHSU student newspaper The Houstonian, University Police Department Deputy Chief James Fitch stated that because Kirk was “offended by the use of the profanity,” its use “qualified it as disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.”
That is a blatantly wrong statement. The courts have long held that free speech is free speech, no matter how indecent it may be. The above link discusses the specific cases, but this stuff should be basic knowledge to every American. The University Police, James Fitch, and especially Joe E. Kirk are all censorious, ignorant, douchebags. Each and every one of them ought to know better.
I really didn’t want to make another post about this guy. Really. I promise. But I can’t stand dishonesty. And I literally have never encountered a more fundamentally dishonest person than Jack Hudson. I don’t need to recount the details; we’ve seen it before from this guy. I’m just going to quickly point out what happened, show you the evidence, and move on.
What I also felt compelled to do was link back to a post by Jack where he completely misunderstood a basic-as-hell thought experiment known as the Trolley Problem. He claimed that one issue with the thought experiment was that it was unrealistic. In fact, he said it all really came down to a logistical problem. Anyone familiar with philosophical thought experiments knows they often are supposed to be unrealistic. The big point is to see how far we’re willing to go with our ethical positions and theories. And anyone specifically familiar with the Trolley Problem knows logistics has nothing to do with it. This doesn’t even rise to the stuff of Phi 101.
And what was Jack’s response to the link-back? Well, I’ve outed him for a lot of his dishonest doings, including when he became upset over a public Facebook discussion and texted my cousin dozens of times. It’s only natural that he has an interest in people not finding their way back to my blog from his. (Let’s ignore that 15-30% of his blog hits have come from FTSOS in the first place.) So his first response was to delete the pingback that showed up on his blog from here. Fine. I expected that, it’s his blog, and it isn’t important. But his next action? He deleted every single one of his posts where we had discussed his philosophical shortcomings.
But you say, “Drats, Michael! You claim he deleted all his posts, but how do we know that’s true?” Well, I’m glad you asked. As it turns out, he put my comments in moderation, failing to or choosing not to delete them. (I’m sure they’ll disappear quickly – I’ve got the screen shots.) What this means is that while Jack’s readers are unable to see anything, all my posts are still visible to me. And here’s the proof.
The circled part in the second picture is where I was quoting Jack when he claimed that the Trolley Problem was one of logistics. And in case anyone has any trouble reading it:
You are actually confusing a moral problem with a logistical problem, as I said before – it would be morally right to save everyone if it were in my power to do so. It would be morally evil to intentionally harm people – logistically I do what I can to help as many people as possible, and as one person is intent on hanging out on a train track where he has the possibility of getting hit by a train, he gets harmed in my attempt to help others.
I guess the entire field of philosophy has been confused on this one for about 35 years. Thank goodness Jack Hudson rolled on up to let us all know where the error stood.
Okay, so maybe this wasn’t the quick post I promised, but it needs to be here. As I said, I can’t stand dishonesty. But I like to think I’m a pretty nice guy, so I’m going to give Jack the same advice I gave a certain ‘doctor’ about a million times (I just hope it takes for Jack): If you stop doing dishonest things, I will stop making a spectacle of them. It’s really that simple. Just as with that ‘doctor’, my posts are responses. Don’t like them? Then don’t give me anything to which to respond.
Update: With the weird exception of the comments in moderation (thanks for making it easy to expose your lies, Jack!), it appears that Jack Censorship Hudson has actually deleted all my posts (or at least all I have checked). As a prize, here are some of the things Jack Dishonest Hudson (he wears many hats) has said.
You know Michael, I almost never feel compelled to deal with anyone physically, but you are very lucky your puny little bank teller body is in Maine, because i would kick your butt from one side of the room to the other if you said that to my face. Of course you wouldn’t because you are a coward.
Jack Dishonest Hudson later claimed that he never makes personal attacks. I’m pretty sure threatening to physically attack someone counts as a “personal”.
I mean Ty is a pitiable figure who incites disgust and perhaps some concern about his mental stability,
It appears this is a pathetic bid for publicity for your failing comedy career
Oh, and anytime you are in Minnesota (not that anyone here would be so incredibly stupid to hire you) – stop on by, and we will have a little talk about who the coward is here.
What people would I have that would want to call a pathetic drug addled excuse for a comedian?
Tyler is a Chris Farley wanna-be, except not as funny, and not nearly in as good a shape.
Fact is, it doesn’t matter, because since he couldn’t afford to come to Minnesota anyway – and he would have to figure out where it is. So I am not too worried, and the fact that you are concerned about humanism while enabling your cousin’s lifestyle is fiairly pathetic.
Dream on Chris Farley, dream on.
So Ty, I have always heard the best comedy is the product of lonliness and poverty. Is that a myth, or are you just an exception to that rule?
So, given all the incredible accomplishments in your life, to what do you attribute the current need to don a clown suit and work the neighborhood birthday parties?
Two things. First, Jack Dishonest Hudson made a claim in that same thread that he was civil. I guess he couldn’t access dictionary.com that day. Second, what I really hated about the direction of that whole debacle was the chest-thumping contest Jack Insecure Hudson was trying to have. Aside from it being an awful show of school yard boyishness, it wasn’t even credible. If you don’t work out, if you aren’t in shape, if you don’t regularly play sports, and you’re middle aged, you are not healthy enough to show any young whippersnapper what’s-what. And I say that out of a disdain for the immorality of not trying to be healthy, not from the well of immaturity from which Jack LittleKid Hudson was drawing that day.
Jack Hudson is a bit like Ken Ham. Both are Christians. Both are creationists. Both routinely fail to defend positions. Oh. And both refuse to link to those who criticize them.
Anyone who regularly reads Pharyngula knows that Ken Ham and his Creation ‘Museum’ people will notlink back to PZ’s articles. It’s a cowardly passive-aggressive sort of thing. They have made a habit of referring to PZ as an “atheist professor”, a “professor from Minnesota”, or some other similar name, but they won’t mention him directly. Now it looks like Jack Hudson has taken out a page from that play book for use on me.
After getting up in a huff over something someone else said to him, he left FTSOS, vowing never to return. Okay. But it has been clear that he still lurks around here. His articles have often been based upon links posted here, and his remarks have often been thinly veiled responses to comments made here (and a couple times even to comments made on Facebook…sort of like how he referenced his Facebook discussions when he texted my cousin).
You know, I can’t deny that I’ve had conversations with friends that have resulted in posts here. It happens from time to time. Of course, if I’ve made specific responses to a person, even if written in a generalized voice, I’ve always sent on a link to the person. It’s just common courtesy. And really, why would I want to hide from what I’ve said? I said it in the first place because I want people to listen.
This was in response to my post about an elderly gay couple that was separated by the state. The two men had about as much legal documentation as they possibly could so as to avoid the hardships of current end-of-life care in the United States which disregards their humanity. But it didn’t matter. They were separated and had their belongings stolen and sold by Sonoma County in California.
Jack thinks that’s the same as another older, heterosexual, married couple who was forced into a nursing home. While that is superficially similar (the gay couple was also forced into a nursing home), the fact is that this all hinges on marriage. Someone blinded by pure bigotry dressed up in lies isn’t likely to see this: the gay couple was separated and not allowed to see each other, despite the lack of any sort of conviction for alleged abuse (which was alleged by known liars), much less the presence of any charges. A married couple would have been given better than that. And, in fact, the married couple in the second story, while in a deplorable situation that was and is an abuse of power by the state, were not separated, the only reason being because they were married. Honestly. One friend (who will be getting this link, incidentally) recently told me that this whole thing is about “the legitimization” of gay relationships, suggesting that there are ways gay couples can get rights “without calling it marriage”. That’s crap and this is just another piece of evidence that separate but equal can never be equal. Oh, and gay relationships already are legitimate, gays already act as the heads of households and families, and no denial of equal rights is going to change that fact.
To that end I need to make clear a few simple rules I have here – one’s that I have always had, but didn’t feel the need to make public before, but now feel compelled to.
First off I filter foul language – if you can’t say anything without dropping the f-bomb or referring to a body part in the crudest of terms, then it won’t get posted here. It is a pretty simple rule for most to follow, but some can’t seem to help themselves.
This is in response to posts of mine which occasionally have featured th-th-th, gasp!, the F-bomb!
There are three reasons I don’t stop anyone from saying “fuck” all they want on my website. One, I’m not a child. I can deal with it. Two, censorship is mostly crap. Three, it is an immature view of language to think it a good thing to curb any of its use. Words should be elastic, allowed to move and flow with the times, context, and even emotion. Sometimes a good go fuck yourself is the best available terminology; the magic is in its simplicity. I often intentionally use very simple, straight-forward titles for my posts to get my point across. Was anyone confused about what I was saying when I titled a post Andreas Moritz is a stupid, dangerous man? Was anyone befuddled as to where I was going when I said Deepak Chopra is not an intelligent man? I like to think I was pretty clear. And that was the whole point behind those titles. Sometimes simple words are needed when what’s behind the meaning is simple. There is no need to be an obtuse, pompous douche when there is so much more clarity in being short. But then there are times when a pretentious title is needed. For instance, when I wrote about the tenability of unsourced claims as they pertain to objective morality, I wasn’t trying to convey that an easy read was ahead. Philosophical styles differ markedly from most other ways of writing – and not in a way that makes them a breeze to peruse. For anyone who actually gives a rat’s ass about writing, it is abundantly clear that it is a mistake to unnecessarily corner language and only allow what feels good. Language is expression; express it.
Secondly, I don’t post personal attacks or responses to them.
You know Michael, I almost never feel compelled to deal with anyone physically, but you are very lucky your puny little bank teller body is in Maine, because i would kick your butt from one side of the room to the other if you said that to my face. Of course you wouldn’t because you are a coward.
And along with that readers should know I never call or email strangers or people who I interact with online.
Again, Jack is directly responding to material from FTSOS, but he’s pulling the ol’ Ken Ham. He doesn’t want to link others here and get any exchange moving between users, I suppose. Fortunately, while Jack has a handful of creationist milling about his page, I have a bit of a larger audience. I encourage everyone reading this to venture over to Jack’s site and start leaving comments. Don’t spam the guy’s stuff, but make him actually response to something intelligent. I recommend starting with this incoherent post about atheism, but feel free to tear apart whatever seems appealing. Unlike Jack, I don’t want to pretend I’m your boss.
Recently I saw an atheist claim that ‘spiritual beliefs do not equal religious beliefs’. This may be true, but for an atheist to say so is a bit like a vegetarian lecturing on the best way to prepare a steak.
Surprise, I’m that atheist.
This analogy is just so awful. First, an atheist has no religion. That does not mean an atheist has no knowledge of religion or is unable, like Jack, to tell the difference between a real world phenomenon and a nebulous term that always needs to be defined before being used. Second, aren’t theists always claiming that atheism is a religion? In Jack’s bad analogy, atheism is very unlike religion. Isn’t it amazing just how often these people undermine their own silly claims?
So a quick wrap-up (because this post is way longer than I ever intended): Jack is a creationist like Ken Ham who refuses to link back to those who criticize him; he does not understand how to parallel socially important issues because (also like Ken Ham) he is a bigot; and finally, he apparently does not pay close enough attention to FTSOS. Say something stupid loudly enough, like Christopher Maloney or Andreas Moritz, or cross me in a magnificently stupid way like Rawn and Judy Torrington or Lt. J Christopher Read, and I have no issue posting and posting and tearing apart what I see as a wrong on my website (and for all five of those people, publishing and distributing stories all around my hometown, including Maloney’s own neighborhood). I mean, honestly. Have I not been clear? Has there been confusion as to what I am willing to do to get my point across? Do people not realize that to do something for the sake of science does not simply mean to act in a way that shows passion for science because science is good, but it also means to stand up to bad actions, bad behavior, lowly thoughts, and dishonest methods?
There’s been quite a discussion going on in my personal blog about the fact that all of WordPress.com has been blocked by Turkey.
Lots of people, including us, are confused and indignant about this wholesale censorship. Last night we received a letter from the person claiming to be responsible for the block, which in the interest of the community I’m going to publish in its entirety here:
As far as I know, we never received any notice from Turkish courts about anything, only barely coherent threats and bully-attempts written much like the above.
There’s no way Mullenweg can’t see the irony in all this. My blog gets censored and he’s a-okay with it all. Yet when he is censored, there’s outrage. Just outrage! How dare someone make incoherent, baseless legal threats to get something censored!
For the Sake of Science 