“Acknowledgment of Complaint”

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Michael

To my utter delight, included in my mail today was a letter from the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation acknowledging my complaint about Christopher Maloney.

After the complaint is docketed, the complaint coordinator acknowledges receipt of the complaint and sends a copy to the licensee. The licensee is asked to respond within 30 days. Upon receipt of the licensee’s response, a copy is sent to the complainant. The complainant is asked to reply within 10 days, but a reply is not mandatory. The complainant’s reply, like the original complaint, is shared with the licensee.

I can’t wait.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Where’s the shame?

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Michael

I really just think Christopher Maloney doesn’t quite understand the Internet. He will make out-of-context posts all over the place, often just repeating himself. For instance, once the Internet blew up in his face, he posted this letter on a number of sites. It makes specific references and is directly addressed to PZ. His website was even worse, where he put a shitload of posts (which no one was about to tease apart) from Pharyngula and elsewhere where he basically says “Look! Look at my responses! They were dismissed everywhere else, but now that I’m reposting them, they must be true!” He has since taken down a lot of that material, so I guess that shows promise. Honestly. By addressing everything with so much Gish Gallop nonsense, he only made himself look worse (which is a feat in itself); everything clearly was (and is) stressing him out, his (misdirected) SIWOTI sense was (and is) going off the chart, and he was (and still is) only making it worse. Since he obviously can’t make anything better for himself at this point, the best he can do is not make it worse. That should have been obvious from the get-go. It’s the Internet. Learn it.

But, alas, he wants to keep it going.

I have requested meeting Hawkins’ in person, and he has responded by running to your blog.

Note the time stamp on that post. It was May 6 at 7:52 am. Maloney made his request on May 5 at 9:07pm (and it came across as an ambiguous, disoriented threat to go to the police). Now look at the time PZ made his post. May 4 at 5:44pm. Maloney made his request a full day after I emailed PZ with an update. This rearranging of events is common for Maloney. I’ve already documented quite a bit of his lying, but he’s getting so blatant now that I’m almost bored.

Of course, there’s more.

Since this is our first actual exchange, I will repeat. Like all stalkers you will not have the courage to meet with me. It is part of the pathology of stalking, and you are creating a feeble rationale.

Immediately above that post I said I would meet him. The only “feeble rationale” that I put forth was that I would not do it at his convenience, on his terms, sans all other witnesses people, and I would not let him “ply” me with anything, even if it is only useless homeopathic ‘medicine’. He is the one demanding the meeting; he does not get to dictate the terms. Of course, to him this means that I won’t meet him at all.

If you were capable of examining your own actions objectively, you would see that I have not reacted angrily to months of ignorant abuse. I reacted only when you managed, somewhat bizarrely, to get me noticed by Myers.

Right. The hours of hunting down critical websites, the trolling of threads on Pharyngula a month later, and the lengthy posts on his own site certainly do not indicate any sort of anger. Right…r-right?

Oh, and it wasn’t bizarre at all that PZ posted about Maloney on Pharyngula. Maloney and Moritz emailed each other back and forth before collaborating on a plan to get me shut down. The fact that Moritz was the one who sent the whining email is inconsequential to the guilt of Maloney.

But, despite months of your obsession, this is our first actual exchange. To claim that I am somehow the irrationally angry person is classic projection of your own pathology.

Says the guy who has been continuously claiming on his own website that I’m the obsessed one? While he continued to troll Pharyngula, pressing what had become an old, dead issue?

I would ask you this: how have I injured you? Have I reacted in any way that would justify your obsession with me? The only email I sent you was one requesting no contact with me, my family, or my neighbers, which you did not honor.

I actually honored the request not to contact Maloney or his family. He claims he received a paper, but given that he also claims I stuffed it in his screen door, I suspect he’s just lying again. (I never open anyone’s doors, and I doubt I mistakenly gave him a paper in the first place anyway.) His request I not contact his “neighbers”, however, was a silly one. Aside from the fact that the relative closeness of the houses to each other in that area makes it good for distribution, the people physically closest to Maloney need to know the sort of quackery he practices.

But as for injury, naturopaths do not have the proper training to be receiving patients, except according to unfortunate state laws. That is enough motivation for me. The fact that Maloney brought attention to himself in the first place with a letter to the editor of the local paper just raised his profile.

Now I am requesting that we sit down and discuss the situation like adults, but it is evident that your pathology is too severe to allow you any insight.

No, he is requesting that we sit down with no witnesses people so he can “ply” me with diluted ‘medicine’. I’ll be happy to call him a quack to his face, but not under ridiculous, creepo terms.

Your university told me that they have brought up counseling for you, but that they could not force you to take their suggestions.

I have been forwarded an email where Maloney claims to have gone to my university. Apparently he wanted to discuss whether or not my paper was endorsed by UMA. I’ve never claimed any sort of endorsement, so I’m not sure why Maloney would think I have. At any rate, I’ve never been contacted by anyone from UMA for any reason whatsoever. Maloney is lying. Again.

The Augusta police department is very familar with you, and if you continue your obsession I will need to take legal action. Not as a threat, Michael, just to make sure you get help.

He says the APD is familiar with me as if I don’t know. After I wrote about how one officer had no idea how to handle a freedom of information request, I personally delivered a copy to the police department. When I later discovered that another officer who was mentioned in the article had a Facebook profile, I friend requested him (not because I thought he would accept, but instead because it made me chuckle to do it at all), sending him all the links in which he was mentioned.

But it’s cute that Maloney is pretending as if he isn’t making a threat. No, no. It’s just out of genuine concern for my welfare, right? Don’t mind all the lies leading up to this new claim.

But I’m curious. What would a lawsuit from Maloney look like? Aside from probably getting him far more national attention, I suspect it would be utterly ridiculed when everyone realized that the complaint came down to “someone was mean to me!”. But hell, maybe I would get more emails from people like Simon Singh and Richard Dawkins.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

“Thank you for your complaint”

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Michael

After a long wait and a little back and forth, I’ve finally completed my formal complaint against Christopher Maloney. As it turns out, it shouldn’t have taken nearly this long. It’s a matter of filling out a simple form.

To file your own complaint, go here and enter in the following information.

Licensee Information:

Mr. Christopher L Maloney
4 Drew St
Augusta, ME 04330

Phone: 207-623-1681

License number: ND240

Part of my complaint read as follows:

Maine law concerning naturopathic doctors states naturopaths cannot:

D. Practice or claim to practice medicine and surgery, osteopathy, dentistry, podiatry, optometry, chiropractic, physical therapy or any other system or method of treatment not authorized in this chapter.

Christopher Maloney recently said this:

“Did it ever occur to any of you that I practice evidence’ based medicine?”

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/christopher_maloney_still_a_qu.php#comment-2285801

This would appear to be a violation of Maine law and the conditions to which Maloney agree when he became a naturopathic doctor.

There was more, including links to his site, but I don’t want to risk having him alter the text before anyone see it.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Christopher Maloney: still lying

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Michael

You all know Christopher Maloney, the quack with a history of lying. For quite some time he has remained pretty quiet, unlike Andreas Moritz, thus preventing himself from appearing on FTSOS too much. Unfortunately, I just came across some of his lies.

2/25/10
Michael Hawkins’ blog was offline for all of four days, including a weekend that involved a general wordpress failure of many sites. At this point it is clear the entire skeptic charade was a lot of screaming about nothing but standard software error. I don’t expect an apology anytime soon.

First, my site was down for 6 days. Second, Maloney is trying to say that the reason my site was down was because WordPress had technical difficulties. Those difficulties lasted a short period of time and were unrelated to the suspension of FTSOS that happened. But does anyone expect a scummy person like Maloney to be honest?

Michael Hawkins of Augusta ran a blog attacking me for a few months. In the process he began arguing with his webhost, got himself suspended, then argued with them again and got kicked off.

He flatters himself. There was one post of a letter I sent to the editor in response to Maloney. That letter was too strongly worded, so I sent another and posted that. I then responded to the responses that raised. I then responded to an email that threatened legal action from one of Maloney’s fans. (There was also one more post that merely mentioned Maloney, but was not about him.) He makes it sound like this blog is all about him. It isn’t. Most of the topics are far more interesting, and in fact, there were over 75 other posts made over the time I mentioned Maloney.

Of course Maloney has to conveniently forget all the details, right? He says that “in the process” of my posts about him I began arguing with WordPress. That isn’t true. I only made a post about “Mark” from WordPress being a simpleton after I got a warning from WordPress (as well as a brief suspension, what with this host’s shoot-first policy). I was pretty much done with Maloney at that point. But, of course, what Maloney doesn’t mention is that he was emailing Moritz back and forth; Moritz, armed with false information about Maloney’s status in Maine, had gone to WordPress. Does anyone else believe this makes Maloney innocent?

But there’s more!

My deepest apologies to my friends and neighbors who received the “Without Apology” hate mail.

Michael Hawkins is someone I have never met. He is not a patient, does not know any of my patients, and is only interested in attacking me because he wants attention. Today he waited until I was away from my home before stuffing his hate mail inside my screen door, which gives a pretty good sense of him as a person.

As I noted in my post about that edition of Without Apology, I specifically tried avoiding Maloney’s home. There were two houses which had lights on inside, but the outside light was too low for me to see the numbers. Since I don’t like approaching homes while people are awake at that time unless I can throw my paper from a distance (I’d rather not scare people), I did not get close enough to check the exact address. Maloney’s house number is 4, so I thought I was avoiding house 4 and 6 or 4 and 2. If anything, I was disappointed that I couldn’t risk giving all his neighbors my publication. Apparently he did get a paper, which is great, but I specifically tried avoiding giving him one because he sent me an email telling me not to contact him, his family, friends, or neighbors. He has a legitimate request on the first two counts, but his friends and neighbors are not off-limits. The fact that he mentioned them (not that I know any of his friends) is why I went to his neighborhood.

But my favorite part of this is that he thinks I know when he is and isn’t home. How? Does he think I stalk him? That’s the first time I’ve ever been on his small road. Hell, I wasn’t even sure which house was his. And I certainly didn’t “stuff” anything in anyone’s screen door. I would never open someone’s door like that because 1) that’s creepy and 2) it would make a lot of noise. It’s possible that I placed a paper in the handles of some doors, but I doubt it since the papers are small and would have just fallen out. I pretty much just throw the papers on porches or some other visible location.

I encourage any and all neighbors to contact the Augusta city police department if they see him lurking around. The department is already very familiar with him because he spent one of his “newspaper” issues attacking them after he received a parking ticket.

Lol? Yes, lol.

I walked around his neighborhood in light colored khakis and a red shirt. I’m not sure how that is lurking.

But again with the lies. My article about the Augusta Police was not merely over a parking ticket. It was about an officer who did not understand that he needed to hand over certain records under the Maine Freedom of Information Act. The ticket was from years ago and played a small role in the motivation for asking for the records. (The bigger motivation was course requirement for a journalism class I happened to be taking.) I eventually received a written and signed apology from the chief of police over the incident.

On a side note, I’ve been surprised no one has asked me what I’ve been doing this whole time. I know people have seen me in various neighborhoods, but no one has asked me what’s up. Granted, other than once when it was freezing, I always wear fairly bright clothes, but it seems like the “Neighborhood Watch” signs should mean something.

But sure, tell the police that you see me. If I continue with the paper, I’ll even be sure to let them know when I’m going to be distributing it so they don’t have to waste their time asking me for ID over something that is not illegal. I mean, Christ. I have my name all over the paper, I know the police have seen it (I personally dropped it off at the police station), and I even have contact information included.

My understanding of him is that he is a desperately lonely UMA freshman who has fallen in with a group of atheists online and this hate mail process is a bit like trying to join a gang for him.

Well, it’s not like anyone has ever thought Maloney has much understanding of anything.

Aside from being a senior (who will have a Liberal Studies degree next semester, followed by a Biology degree shortly thereafter), I find it unfortunate that Maloney is trying to ‘win’ his case by using “atheist” as if it’s a dirty word. Atheists are some of the brightest people around, especially those who are in the limelight, so I ought to be taking this as a compliment. And really, wasn’t it atheists who helped me get my blog back? Thanks again to PZ, Richard Dawkins, and all the others who sent emails of support and made anti-quack posts on their sites.

Hawkins’ whole group has targeted me as someone small enough that they can attempt to bully me.

Really? PZ Myers dealt with the whole uproar over Crackergate. Richard Dawkins is one of the most famous atheists in the world. Simon Singh, who also sent me an email, recently beat the quackery of chiropractors in the U.K. Is this really about bullying or is it just that Maloney practices quackery?

I’m not sure if they’d like me to simply shut down or to cease to exist. I have been providing them with a steady stream of medical studies supporting what I practice, but for the most part these “scientists” are more interested in swearing at me than engaging in conversation.

Here’s another instance of someone undeserving of respect demanding he be given it. It’s pathetic. Oh, and Dr. Steven Novella had a pretty good take down of all those studies Maloney was abusing.

Christopher – you are just going through all the CAM logical fallacies, aren’t you.

Now you are playing – I have bad evidence, but so does regular medicine.

There is simply no comparison. We have already demonstrated that your ability to asses the evidence is incompetent, and you have not answered any of the direct questions. You cited irrelevant research, and you partially quoted an abstract drawing the wrong conclusion. You might as well just make it up.

The level of evidence for elderberry and garlic is so slight that the reliability is close to zero – this is almost as good as no evidence at all.

You cannot defend your position, so you trot out all the canards against mainstream medicine.

And to answer Maloney’s curiosity, we would like you to shut down. Your existence is okay.

I have been unimpressed by the level of scientific knowledge displayed and find myself having to explain the basics of medical research.

Again, Mr. Novella:

Christopher,

You are making excuses. There is not a difference between practice and science – practice should be based upon science. You simply cannot really know what works without scientific evidence. It is naive hubris to think otherwise.

Update: I guess I missed some more lies.

(Series of unfunny junk written without a bit of irony.)

Maloney also posted that on Pharyngula. Here is a rather succinct response.

No, the Qwackster is not a Poe. Just an idjit. Somehow, he thinks he becoming an authority via his repetative posts, so we will believe his malarky. That isn’t working, and he looks more desparate and deluded with each post. If he had even a smidgeon of intelligence he would just fade into the bandwidth, and quit wasting his time.

Double update: PZ has a new post.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

I told you he read FTSOS

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Michael

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 not link 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.

Jack has had at least three responses to FTSOS. The first was an update to a post of his that was pro-bigotry while vaguely featuring some infantile libertarianism.

An Addendum:

It’s a bit of a myth that this wouldn’t have happened to a heterosexual married couple; in fact, this does happen to elderly married couples.

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.

But that isn’t the only passive-aggressive attack.

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.

Really?

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.

And finally:

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?

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Creationism, Misc, Religions, Same-sex marriage | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Lawrence Stowe is a horrible human being

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Michael

I hate snake oil salesman. I hate them with an ever growing passion. They take advantage of innocent, sick people for nothing more than money. They make the world a worse place and ought to be jailed. Lawrence Stowe is one of the worst.

Con men used to travel town to town hawking medical remedies said to be made of Chinese snakes. Snake oil was useless and dangerous. So the FDA was created to put a stop to it and other food and drug scams.

But, today, quack medicine has never been bigger. In the 21st century, snake oil has been replaced by bogus therapies using stem cells. Stem cells may offer cures one day, but medical charlatans on the Internet are making outrageous claims that they can reverse the incurable, from autism to multiple sclerosis to every kind of cancer.

Desperate people are being bilked out of their life’s savings.

We’ve been looking into this surging crime and we found there is no better window on how it works than the practice of a man who calls himself “doctor,” a man named Lawrence Stowe.

Stowe has been unaware that, lately, some of his patients have been working with 60 Minutes.

I wish 60 Minutes could look into every quack out there, but there are just so many.

Stowe told our MS patient that he can reverse her disease with his program of herbs and vitamins to boost the immune system, custom vaccines and stem cell injections. Medical experts say it’s nonsense but it’s the same pitch that we secretly recorded again and again as Stowe claimed to reverse cancer, ALS, MS, Parkinson’s disease and more.

Honestly. I cannot understand how these people live with themselves. Stowe charges exorbitant sums of money so he can insert IVs into people in some dank, run-down building in Mexico. One family sold their home to pay for Stowe’s bogus treatments. Others have paid tens of thousands of dollars of their savings with no results. This guy is a piece of work.

Everyone who reads FTSOS knows I rag on Andreas Moritz over and over. A very small part of the reason is that he’s just too dumb to stop showing up on my radar, but far, far, far more important than that is the fact that I view him as legitimately dangerous. I’ve managed to divert a few specific individuals from his potential harm (and I will not mention any specifics because I do not want Moritz contacting and conning them), but I suppose I can at least give him credit for not charging massive sums of money for his ‘services’; his style is to play small ball and take small amounts of money from desperate people. And even though that’s just one of a depressing number of horrible traits that man holds, he’s nothing compared to Lawrence Stowe; there is no comparing the two. Stowe is in a league all his own: if Moritz is Mario Mendoza, Stowe is Babe Ruth. (I would say Ted Williams but it would pain me a little too much as a Red Sox fan.)

Watch these two videos. Every person needs to be aware of the scams that are out there.

Lawrence Stowe is a scumbag part 1.

Lawrence Stowe is a scumbag part 2.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Michael

Andreas Moritz insists on raising my ire over and over. Christopher Maloney, on the other hand, has remained pretty quiet. And who gets post after post after post about him on here?

Congratulations to Maloney for being smarter than Moritz. It isn’t much of an accomplishment, but I suppose it’s something. (And, hey, unlike Moritz, I bet Maloney knows what DNA is.)

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Deepak Chopra is not an intelligent person

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Michael

Deepak Chopra is capable of saying some of the most incoherent things imaginable.

The idea that we live in an intelligent universe has thrived for quite a while. It’s an important idea because it would explain many things, including how we got here. I keep my eye out for any bit of evidence to support the theory, and a beauty surfaced recently on the PBS program, Nature, entitled “Clever Monkeys.” It turns out that monkeys are far more than clever. They may be tapping into the basic fabric of the cosmos.

Wow! The whole wide cosmos? Goodness gracious. The rest of this article is going to be amazing!

But the red colobus [monkeys] recently made a life-altering discovery. They found that if they eat a bit of charcoal from the abandoned fires of local villagers, their indigestion is cured. This had made them happier monkeys, and as a result their numbers have dramatically increased; not only that, but they are free to explore other food sources. These advantages aren’t felt by the white-and-black colobus, who haven’t hit upon the charcoal-eating trick. New generations of red colobus learn the habit by having it passed on from mother to child.

Oh. A population of monkeys started eating something random (because that’s what monkeys do) and it helped settle their stomachs.

Again. Oh.

It’s amazing how much critical knowledge is contained in this one anecdote. Self-medication is well known, but here the red colobus has hit upon the same property in charcoal that emergency room doctors use when a patient arrives with acute poisoning. Medical science is able to explain how charcoal absorbs toxins in the stomach. Monkeys can’t explain anything or do laboratory research. It is completely untenable to claim that they eat substances at random until they hit upon just the one perfect remedy — such random behavior isn’t seen among them.

God damn it. They’re monkeys. They eat whatever is in front of them. And no, Chopra, they aren’t doing it with the intent of hitting “upon just the one perfect remedy”; they discovered they felt better after eating charcoal. That’s it.

But this is not an intelligent man. He continues.

What we are witnessing is an intelligent discovery on the part of creatures who stand far below Homo sapiens on the evolutionary chain, and that discovery is being passed on from mother to child without genetic adaptation. To me, this means that quite a blow has been struck for intelligence being innate in the universe. It suggests that evolution itself has never been random but is guided by the principle of intelligence — not “intelligent design,” which is a red herring supplied by religious conservatives. The intelligent universe is a cutting-edge idea, not a throwback to scripture. As a theory, it gives us a much more elegant explanation for many things that are clumsily explained by falling back on randomness to explain every new development in Nature.

So many things wrong. Brain explode.

1) Homo sapiens do not stand atop any chain. In fact, there is no chain. Those monkeys are perfectly well adapted in their intelligence for the sake of being monkeys. Evolutionary success is not measured in particular characteristics or traits (should one want to compare species), but rather in survivability and longevity.

2) This does not indicate any sort of intelligent guidance. It indicates that monkeys eat a lot of crap. Sometimes that crap makes them feel good.

3) This is not an example of evolution. Chopra has no grasp of the concept.

At the moment, evolutionary theory refuses to abandon the notion of random selection, and geneticists cling stubbornly to the doctrine of random mutations to explain why new things appear in the unfolding story of life.

Evolutionary theory is so much more than Chopra knows. Selection is not random, plenty of mechanisms exist which help to explain the appearance of new characteristics and traits, and again, he hasn’t even offered an example of evolution in the first place. But just to be clear, he eventually comes right out and says it:

We all have a stake in this argument, however. Seeing the red colobus evolve before our eyes cannot be denied.

No, no, no, no.

Rather than saying that a larger brain made intelligence possible, why not say the opposite, that intelligence dictated a larger brain so that it could expand?

Because you have no evidence for the ridiculous claim that inherently says natural selection has foresight?

This guy is such a fucking joke.

Filed under: Creationism | Tagged: , , , , , | 12 Comments »

Ol’ scummy Andreas Moritz

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Michael

I recently got a notice from Facebook that there were copyright issues with “various posts” on the Fan Page for For the Sake of Science. I naturally accused Andreas Moritz because he’s such a flaming retard who can’t take the fact that educated people know he’s full of shit. He’s just a greedy moron who has no detectable education.

It turns out I was right.

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your email. As you know, we received a claim of alleged rights infringement regarding the removed content. Per Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, users are prohibited from posting infringing content on the site.

If you believe that we have made a mistake in removing this content, then please contact the complaining party directly with the following information to resolve your issue:

Notice #: 21512613
Contact Information:
Name – Andreas Moritz
Email – andmor@ener-chi.com

If both parties agree to restore the reported content, please ask the complaining party to contact us via email with a copy of the agreement so that we can refer to the original issue. We will not be able to restore this content to Facebook unless we receive explicit notice of consent from the complaining party.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Kieran
User Operations
Facebook

I have no idea what the content is they removed. I post links to that page and I may have uploaded a satirical picture of Moritz, but I’m not even sure about that second part (though the picture is there now – not that Moritz has rights to it, anyway).

But none of that matters. Facebook apparently thinks it makes sense to cave to any and all complaints. They allow for counter-claims, but those obviously play no role since they send out these generic sort of responses that offer no help to the person who originally uploaded the content.

Of course, it’s possible to send Facebook frivolous complaints about the content of Moritz’s Fan Page, too. Or, someone could easily do a WhitePages search of Moritz, find out all his personal information, and write him letters encouraging to be more reasonable.

Andreas Moritz
9 Night Hawk Way
Landrum, SC 29356-3406

(864) 895-6285
Household: Stephen C Maresch, Lillian S Maresch

This is all publicly available information that took about 4 seconds to find. (That part is for WordPress to read when Moritz whines about this.)

I’m not recommending anyone harass Moritz. No, no, no. I’m just saying that as an alternative to the email address provided by Facebook, someone might prefer to write a friendly letter to the guy. Let him know that his complaints are getting tiresome. Or better yet, let him know that the stupid bullshit he believes will literally kill people.

Someone needs to knock some sense into this guy. He’s going berserk because he hates that other people don’t actually like it when he promotes the spread of disease while exploiting the sick and dying.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Michael

I have no idea why Andreas Moritz insists on making me post shit about him. Why. Why is he so genuinely dumb.*

*This is part question, part statement.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

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