Jim Daly the Chairman of the Technology Committee of the Seminole County Republicans and webmaster of the Seminole County Republicans Executive Committee (SCREC) website never fails to make me wonder just what kind of guys are in the upper echelon of the Republican Party. The following are two emails he sent over the list. Do you think this sounds racist?
In as much as I got such a ration of grief when I posted my poem about Pakistani's, I figured it would only be fair to give credit to the resourcefulness of other immigrants from the region!
For centuries, Hindu women have worn a red spot on their foreheads. We have naively thought it had something to do with their religion.
The true story has just been revealed by the Indian Embassy in Washington.
When one of these women gets married, on her wedding night, the husband scratches off the red spot to see if he has won a convenience store, a gas station, or a motel in Florida.
Ok one more just to make sure.
Lots of "press" these days on Affirmative Action in our colleges. Here is a suggestion for a test for those High School grads that are not in the top 20%
Time Limit: 3 Days.
Write Your Name: ________________________________________ (20 point bonus if spelled correctly).
1. What language is spoken in Germany?
2. Give a dissertation on the ancient Babylonian Empire with particular reference to architecture, literature, law and social conditions - OR - Give the FIRST name of Michael Jordan.
3. Would you ask William Shakespeare to:
____ (a) build a bridge ____ (b) lead an army or ____ (c) WRITE A PLAY
18. More advanced math. If you have three pears, how many pears do you have?
19. What does NBC (National Broadcasting Corp.) stand for?
20. The Cornell University tradition for efficiency began when (approximately)?
____ (a) B.C ____ (b) A.D.
Consider the words of Justice Rehnquist in the recent affirmative action decision(via Eschaton):
"...the effect of automatically awarding 20 points is that virtually every qualified underrepresented minority applicant is admitted." (emphasis added)
Is this joke not just a tad ironic? Is this really the way that the bigwigs of the Republican Party view Affirmative Action?
If so, shame on them.
While I am wondering, I wonder if this is the type of humor that those Committee members swap back and forth while at their meetings. Is this the sensitivity minorities can expect from SCREC?
Yes I finally got my computer back together, all the drivers seem to be working, the hard drives are humming along, the CPU sees all my hardware and I can post again. And I did not have to replace the motherboard, though I probably should have.
Below is the second part of the saga of Spinner Andrew Langer. Over the next couple of days I will take a look at the flurry of comments he seems to have left. If I find anything worth answering I will do one more post, then we can put Mr. Langer back in the box and feel totally justified in ignoring him.
I probably would have been up and running on Monday, but to tell the truth I spent the weekend reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". I finished the book in 24 hours (good thing too since my oldest daughter wanted to strangle me for insisting I read it first. Not because I wanted to check what she was reading but because I have been waiting as eagerly as she has for the book to go on sale). Wow, it was not an easy read and not nearly as fun as the other four books. I will post a review in the near future.
As the computer was going up and down, I was able to get on the net long enough to order a really neat toy. When I registered my soundboard, it seems that I became eligible for a few products from Creative Labs at a reduced cost, sort of thanking me for the reg. I admit usually I pay little attention to such things, viewing them as nothing more as an attempt to get more of my money than I have already spent on the hardware. I am glad I did not do so this time, because I got a great deal on a Creative Prodikeys, a combination computer keyboard and piano keyboard. I expect it to be shipped sometime this week. I can't wait.
In any case I can't tell you how glad I am to be back. Hope everyone's day is turning out to be as great as mine!
When last we left Andy, he was bravely defending the website "Earth and the Unbalanced" and the article "Car Free Panacea" by Kendra Okonski. He did this by using yet another quote by Gore:
Second, the statement is in reference, I believe, to Gore's famous statement about the internal combustion engine:
["The internal combustion engine's] cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront... It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period. page 325-326, Earth in the Balance, 1992."
The call for the elimination of the internal combustion engine is a call condemning cars, which represent the greatest proliferation of internal combustion engines worldwide.
This is Andy's Spin Point 1. Al Gore does not like the internal combustion engine. He thinks it is damaging the environment. Since cars "represent the greatest proliferation of internal combustion engines worldwide" then that must mean that Al Gore wants to do away with cars!
But did he? Of course not. This was nothing more than a Republican spin point and just another attempt to shove words in the poor guy's mouth. Al Gore never said anything about eliminating cars. Whereas it is true he was not crazy about the internal combustion engine, he merely talked about replacing it with cleaner, more efficient means of locomotion. Nor is this all that radical an idea. Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler did a pretty good job of debunking the idea that Al Gore wanted to do away with cars:
It is abundantly clear in Earth in the Balance that Gore doesn't want to get rid of the car; he clearly wants to replace current engines with newer, cleaner technology. And was Gore being "wacko" in saying that--in believing that internal combustion could be replaced? Only if you think that the head of GM is "wacko" about the car business also. On January 5, 1998, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal published page-one lead stories from the Detroit auto show, in which CEO John F. Smith predicted "a slow phase-off" of internal combustion in twenty to thirty years (again, see our 4/29 HOWLER). "No car company will be able to thrive in the 21st century if it relies solely on internal combustion engines," Smith said. Here’s Rebecca Blumenstein, leading her page one Journal story: "Time is starting to run out for the internal combustion engine."
If Al Gore wanted to do away with cars because he did not like the internal combustion engine can the same be said about George W. Bush? Anyone remember the State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003?
In this century, the greatest environmental progress will come about not through endless lawsuits or command-and-control regulations, but through technology and innovation. Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.
A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car -- producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.
Unfortunately I don't have the book, but can we trust Andy to reproduced the quote above accurately? Of course not, he has proven on this blog that he thinks nothing of cutting 21 paragraphs to form a quote from a newspaper article! Lord knows how many he cut here.
Of course the real beauty of the above quote is that it in no way agrees with Kendra's point that to "Presidential contender Al Gore, the car represents nothing less than the symbol of everything that is wrong with modern societies." Did Andrew believe Kendra was accurate when she stated this was Al Gore's view of the car? You bet:
Because Kendra's representation was not an inaccurate view of the Vice-President's professed environmental beliefs...
So even though Kendra did nothing more than "quote mine" (Finding quotes and snipping them in a dishonest manner to make your point) she was accurate. To make Andy's hypocrisy complete he had the nerve to complain when someone did the same thing to Gale Norton! (See link above).
So how did Andy answer the charge of quote mining? Well he didn't:
I have tried responding to this post twice - each time crashing my ISP connection and my Microsoft IE so that the post cannot be saved. I will try to reconstruct my lengthy and substantive response as soon as I am able, but wanted to say the following for now.
Jim, I got your e-mail, and because you have asked me to not send you any more e-mails directly (though I only sent the one), I am going to respond here. You asked me why I sent you the e-mail, which I sent to a number of others as well, inviting you to listen in when I did another radio interview on the election last night.
Too bad. You might note that Andy also mentions the fact that I didn't want him to email me, even though he has demanded I produce proof that I requested this courtesy once again. See, I never want Andrew Langer emailing me. Also note that he called me Jim, after acknowledging that he got my email requesting he no longer email me. That was the email where I also asked him not to call me Jim.
Andy's spin did not end there. As we were debating the EATU website, I asked once if Kendra worked for CEI:
Hell at this point (considering the credit EATU is trying to take for a website that CEI built) is there even a difference between EATU and CEI? Or are the same people signing yours and Kendra's paycheck?
In the same post I also asked if EATU and CEI were one in the same:
Or is CEI and EATU one in the same?
Well Andrew never did answer whether the same people were signing his and Kendra's paycheck (he carefully snipped the question from the post). But he did answer whether or not CEI and EATU was one in the same. One word.
Nope.
Now I never had and still don't have, evidence that EATU and CEI was one in the same. But what Andy carefully did not tell me is that Kendra Okonski was, at the time of this conversation, an employee of CEI! And may still be for all I know or care.
Strictly the truth, yet Andrew fails to mention that the EATU editor Kendra Okonski is a paid staff member of CEI.
Kendra Okonski, Research Assistant, kokonski@cei.org
http://www.cei.org/staff.html (link no longer works)
Kendra is one of only two people that work on the site, the other being the mysterious Greg of whom I have been able to find no last name.
From http://www.earthinthebalance.org/faq.php (link no longer works)
Your mission statement says that you are 'young people who are concerned about the environment'. Come on! You guys should come clean about who is funding this operation.
While we have been accused of working for a variety of organizations (the Bush campaign, Exxon, Phillip Morris, the Trilateral Commission, etc.), the truth is far less entertaining. As impressive as the site is, Earth and the Unbalanced is currently staffed by two people: Kendra, the uber-editor who is constantly writing letters to the editor or scanning the web for new studies to support the cause and Greg, uber-coder who is constantly tweaking (and breaking the site) to add new features. Our financial support has come entirely out of our own pockets but it hasn't been much: [snip of website costs]
And so what if Kendra works at CEI? I never said that she didn't.
This does not mean that EATU.org is CEI website. Or do you think that someone can't create a website on their own? Kendra's also one of the founders of Counterprotest.net (or is it .org? I forget sometimes). Kendra has a lot of interests outside of CEI - one of which (something she shares with me) is an abiding interest in libertarian youth activism.
Of course he never said that she didn't. As we saw above Andrew carefully snipped that question out of my post. Nor did I say that CEI and EATU was one in the same. In fact, I most carefully and clearly said that EATU and CEI not being the same was nothing but the "strict" truth. Yet even today I doubt Andy sees this as the spin job it is. It was dishonest of him not to tell me when I asked that Kendra did indeed work for CEI. Not strictly lying, but certainly dishonest.
So as you can see, I have no great reason to trust Andy, and a hell of a lot of reasons why I should not.
Andy also seems to have trouble understanding why I have such a deep visceral dislike of what he does. I am not sure why, I was posting to sci.skeptic at the time. Most of the skeptics posting there did so because they believed that twisting science was not a good thing. The truth is that the American public is dismally ignorant when it comes to science. Andrew was no better than the creationist that flooded the newsgroup, and not nearly as entertaining. Both take the opportunity to make flat declarations where science is unsure. With creationist it is evolution, with Andy it was the environment. If a scientist says "I don't know" when it comes to some feature of modern evolutionary theory, the creationist will say "That must mean scientist don't know what they are talking about, therefore evolution must be incorrect". If a scientist says "I don't know" when it comes to some feature of environmental science, then Andy and his ilk are there to say "Well that must mean scientist don't know what they are talking about, yadda yadda yadda". Same song, slightly different verse. Since people like answers that actually answer something, they tend to listen more closely to a person that claims to have that answer than a person that simply says "I don't know".
Well I hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Once again here is the link that leads to the majority of Andy and my debate. Go and read it, this is not the worse example of Andy's spinning, not even close. Go and see how well he was able to handle the differences between the timeline CEI put up on it's totally ridiculous "SaveJohnStossel.org website and the timeline "Brill's Content" was able to put together over the same controversy.
I hope that I have shown, at the very least, the total futility of attempting to engage Andrew Langer in honest debate. Honesty is simply not in him.
Ok the bad news first. "A Skeptical Blog" will be going on hiatus. No it is not because I am tired of writing or bored with blogging. Quite the opposite, since having my computer problems, I realize just how large a part of my life this blog has become. I miss it a lot.
So now the good news. Hopefully this will be a very brief hiatus. Unfortunately my computer problems have not improved, I have had to re-format my c:\ drive three times now. Let my story be a lesson to us all.
When I got my graphics board, I did something so incredibly stupid that I am still in a state of disbelief. I installed the idjit thing without first reading the fucking manual (RTFM). Much to my regret. After I did the install, I found that I no longer had a desk top. Hummm that was pretty interesting. So I figured I would uninstall the new card, remove the drivers and re-install my old card. Ooops, that did not work. Things were getting serious. I reinstalled the registry (always, always make a back up of the registry before doing a hardware install). That did not work. Now I am in a panic. So I crack open the manual. Right there, on the very first page, was this huge warning:
Do this first.
It seems that the VIA chipset on my motherboard did not support an AGP graphics card. I should have updated the chipset first. Arrrrg. And remember, this is one of the things I do for a living!
So I update the chipset. That causes my drives to go nuts. So I go get a new drive. I have spent the last four days trying to get it to accept the VIA IDE drivers for the hard drives, but I am stuck in MS-DOS compatibility mode. When I remove all the IDE drivers and just use the generic drivers from Windoze, the computer sees my drives, but lists them only as generic drives. As I kept installing and uninstalling the drivers, I somehow screwed up the sound card. The second time I somehow "lost" my R-W CD Rom. Then I "lost" my DVD Rom.
So here I am. I hate to think it, but I might have to upgrade the motherboard next. Yeech. The fact is that both my bios and my chipset are pretty old. A lot of the problems I am having can be traced back to one or the other. But all of this could have been avoided if I had only RTFM!
It reminds me of the first job I had as a support tech. I was hired to install an internet system for an company that built computers. I set up an account at a local ISP then spent the next two weeks trying to connect to the damn account. Then one day I am informed that they needed the modem on the computer I was using, but they would replace it. The first time I tried to connect after the new modem was installed I succeeded. Realizing what that must mean, I ran to the back to tell the guy that the modem he just took was no good. Sure enough...
The fact is I know better. When I am on the job I have a check list that I go though before doing upgrades. The first is RTFM. The second is check the hardware. I was exceptionally careless and I am paying through the nose.
So let my bad luck be your good fortune. Always remember to read that fucking manual.
In any case, I hope that this will be a very short break. Certainly I don't expect to be gone more than a couple of weeks (if I have to upgrade the motherboard). As soon as I upload this article the computer will go dark and I will start going though withdrawl.
Just a quick note to let everyone know that my computer experienced a really bad crash after I installed the graphic card. I had to replace my hard drive and re-install windows. I am still trying to get everything working once again. Hopefully I will be done by tomorrow, but I ain't promising a thing.
Before I shut down the computer for the day, I did want to mention I have a new song up at Acid Planet. It is an entry into the Fiction Plane remix contest. You can give a listen by clicking here.
Boy you have no idea how much I loath even the thought of having to go back through Andrew Langer's bullshit. After spending the evening reviewing our collective works, it reminds me of why I am glad I don't post to Usenet any more.
This is going to be a long one. So as usual I will split it up into two or three posts.
One other thing, my graphics card is fast going to shit. I hope to post more tomorrow, but I may end up replacing the card instead. So if you don't see anything tomorrow rest assured I will finish this up sometime this week.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that consumers are best helped not by government regulation but by being allowed to make their own choices in a free marketplace. Since its founding in 1984, CEI has grown into a $3,000,000 institution with a team of nearly 40 policy experts and other staff.
In other words, it is a Libertarian think tank. When it says consumers are best helped out by a free marketplace they mean that government should not regulate business at all. This is especially true of environmental regulations:
...the Competitive Enterprise Institute focuses on the development and promotion of free market approaches to environmental policy. We believe that where individual property rights exist in environmental resources, the environment is most likely to be protected, and that market institutions more effectively allow for the realization of environmental values than political agencies and bureaucracies. As one of the leading proponents of free market environmentalism, CEI's program includes both an overall effort to reframe (sic) the environmental debate and a series of targeted projects to reform specific policies, ranging from federal land management and species protection to risk regulation and global warming.
Either CEI is living in Fantasy Land, or they when they say "where individual property rights exist in environmental resources, the environment is most likely to be protected" what they really mean is "It's my property, I will do with it what I want, and to hell with protecting the environment". The idea that the property owner is the best protector of the environment is ludicrous on it's face. If this were true, there would be no need of Superfund clean-up sites.
This stand also tends to brings them into conflict with a lot of environmental science. So what is a poor think tank to do? Well of course, attack environmental science:
CEI Comments on OMB's Draft Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulations
CEI finds the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB)Draft Report "disappointing." CEI’s Fred Smith charges that the agency’s report fails challenge the growth of federal regulation and the agencies misuse of cost-benefit analysis. Moreover, it grants credibility to invalid ideas like the precautionary principle and contingent valuation, says Smith
Or:
Common Sense
Recently, the House International Relations Committee approved a "Sense of Congress" resolution that embraces the Kyoto Protocol’s vision of an impending climate catastrophe, advocates Kyoto-style energy suppression policies. Friends of affordable energy should go on the offensive, explaining via their own Sense of Congress resolutions why the Kyoto paradigm of climate alarmism and energy rationing is a dangerous delusion.
One more:
Will West Nile Virus Spoil Another Summer?
This Spring, public officials have again begun debating whether to spray pesticides to control the mosquito-transmitted West Nile Virus or to follow environmentalists’ advice to do nearly nothing to address another potential outbreak. Last year the U.S. experienced the worst outbreak ever recorded-with more than 4,000 cases and almost 300 deaths. CEI is warning officials and the public not to fall victim to environmentalist hype that pesticides are worse than the disease itself.
It was this fine organization that Andrew Langer was working for when I first experienced him on Usenet.
At the time we had this incredibly annoying idiot that went by the handle of Chive Mynde real name Devin McAndrews. He would copy entire newspaper articles to half a dozen newsgroups. This was known as cross-posting and was considered ok as long as your post had something to do with each of the group you cross-posted. For example, if I were holding a bicycle run to raise money for "The March of Dimes", then no one would object to my post ending up in alt.charities and rec.bike.riding. However if I also cross-posted it to alt.fan.britney.spears the people who post to that group would probably object on the grounds that it had nothing to do with Ms Spears. And they would be right to do so. Well Devin never respected cross posting rules, and he seemed to really dislike sci.skeptic so we were honored by posts that had nothing to do with the subject at hand. Without a doubt his favorite target was Andrew Langer. Because Devin was such an incredibly annoying person anyone he tended to attacked looked pretty good to the rest of the group. This bothered me because I thought that Andy was getting support merely because he was being attacked by one of the worse trolls on Usenet and not for the factual content of his posts, which when you got right down to it, was as void of facts as Devin's.
Chive posts newspaper articles that back his position. You post newspaper articles that back your position. Chive does not discuss science. You don't either. Chive has claimed to be a scientist, tho he refuses to tell anyone where he got his degree, what his degree is in, where he has worked...etc. You claim that because your father was an ecological scientist you have a special insight. By what right you claim that is beyond me, my dad is a surgical nurse but I would hardly claim that I have insight into modern surgical techniques. Be that as it may, you both lack a scientific background. Now this does not bother me overmuch, as I said I don't think of myself as a scientist nor do I think that is a bar to posting your opinions on any scientific subject. But, much like Chive, I also understand that you are not really interested in the truth of things, you are interested in the slant you can put on the truth of things. As such neither of you are to be trusted. You are merely a propaganda mouthpiece for CEI, and Chive is just a propaganda mouthpiece for his ego. The only thing either of you add to a debate is noise.
I don't plan to post about everything we argued about because, well that would be silly. I want to use one good example if for no other reason as to show exactly why I don't plan to spend a lot of time answering Andy's silly objections to what I write on my blog. The example I choose will be easy to understand by most of my readers because we are used to seeing the incredible amount of crap that was forced into Al Gore's mouth by his political opponents. That the media lied about Al Gore surprises none of us. That the media had help in the form of think tanks like CEI should surprise none of us.
Andy posted to sci.skeptic about a webpage that was put together by a group calling itself "Earth And The Unbalanced" They put up a website with the URL of www.earthinthebalance.org (website is no longer up) to insure that anyone looking for Al Gore's book via the web would run across this site. The "group" consisted of just two people, Kendra Okonski and Greg Schnippel. You don't see much of what Greg did, but you did get a most wonderful article by Kendra called "Car Free Panacea?" written in September 28, 2000 and advertised as "EATU editor Kendra Okonski takes issue with the anti-car campaign of radical environmentalists and Al Gore." Here is a paragraph from the article:
And indeed, to Presidential contender Al Gore, the car represents nothing less than the symbol of everything that is wrong with modern societies. According to Gore, we are "addicted to the consumption of the earth itself." We "follow a pattern of thinking that encourages the domination and exploitation of the natural world for short-term gains." Our civilization "as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet's ecological system." Ask Al, and he'll tell you "we have lost our connection to [nature]."
Al Gore believes that the car represents nothing less than the symbol of everything that is wrong with modern society? Wow, that is pretty strong. And we are treated with a plethora of quotes to prove this is Gore's opinion.
The problem is that none of the quotes seem to be talking about cars! So I went and looked up each quote:
Quote:
"addicted to the consumption of the earth itself."
Full quote:
"The cleavage in the modern world between mind and body, man and nature, has created a new addiction: I believe that our civilization is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself. This addictive relationship distracts us from the pain of what we have lost: a direct experience of our connection to the vividness, vibrancy, and aliveness of the rest of the natural world. The froth and frenzy of industrial civilization mask our deep loneliness for that communion with the world that can life our spirits and fill our senses with the richness and immediacy of life itself.Chapter 12, page 220-221.Earth in the Balance, Houghton Mifflin, 1992."
Gee I don't see anything about cars or engines here. Perhaps the next quote.
Quote:
"follow a pattern of thinking that encourages the domination and exploitation of the natural world for short-term gains"
Full quote:
"Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet's ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them, comprehend their global implications, and organize an appropriate and timely response. Isolated pockets of resistance fighters who have experienced this juggernaut at first hand have begun to fight back in inspiring but, in the final analysis, woefully inadequate ways. It is not that they lack courage, imagination, or skill; it is simply that what they are up against is nothing less than the current logic of world civilization. As long as civilization as a whole, with its vast technological power, continues to follow a pattern of thinking that encourages the domination and exploitation of the natural world for short-term gains, this juggernaut will continue to devastate the earth no matter what any of us does. page 269, Earth in the Balance, Houghton Mifflin, 1992."
Hummm nothing here either. I begin to despair!
Quote:
" Our civilization "as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet's ecological system."
Full quote:
Why it is part of the very same quote as above. Sort of!
"Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet's ecological system.
What an honest way to quote the guy, you simply have to love it. Still to my everlasting saddness there is still no mention of cars or engines.
Last quote:
"we have lost our connection to [nature]"
Full quote:
Well at least this time when the quote was changed it showed the change correctly.
"So too our relationship to the earth may never be healed until we are willing to stop denying the destructive nature of the current pattern. Our seemingly compulsive need to control the natural world may have derived from a feeling of helplessness in the face of our deep and ancient fear of "Nature red in tooth and claw" but this compulsion has driven us to the edge of disaster, for we have become so successful at controlling nature that we have lost our connection to it. And we must also recognize that a new fear is now deepening our addiction: eve as we revel in our success at controlling nature, we have become increasingly frightened of the consequences, and that fear only drives us to ride this destructive cycle harder and faster.Chapter 12, page 226. Earth in the Balance, Houghton Mifflin, 1992."
Not one word from Al Gore about cars or engines. Imagine that.
Of course, when I first read the site, I had no idea what the context of the quotes were, I just saw that they did not seem to have much to do with cars. So I asked Andrew about them:
Gee Andrew, would you like to provide the context in each of these quotes? Please to show me just where Al Gore has said that the "car represents nothing less than the symbol of everything that is wrong with modern societies". Hell I will give you points if you can show that any of the quoted material in the above was actually about cars.
First of all, on the site itself you have links to full quotes:
http://www.earthinthebalance.org/all_quotes.php (link does not work)
Second, the statement is in reference, I believe, to Gore's famous statement about the internal combustion engine:
["The internal combustion engine's] cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront... It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period. page 325-326, Earth in the Balance, 1992."
The call for the elimination of the internal combustion engine is a call condemning cars, which represent the greatest proliferation of internal combustion engines worldwide.
Next: Andrew starts his spin.
Note on Reading Archive Newsgroup Articles: In the interest of making sure you get the whole story and not just my version of it I am going to explain how to use the archive Usenet engine for Google. You will note I linked to individual posts, I did this so you would not have to search for each article I quoted within a thread (one thread has over 200 articles in it). Even at this, Usenet articles tend to be very long and wide ranging, touching on two or three subjects in one post, so you will have a job just finding the quotes. But you should also get a chance to read the post in the context of the entire thread. You can view the entire thread by looking in the From area (the gray box at the top of the page). On your right you will see a link "View: Complete Thread" and the number of articles in the thread. Have fun.
Whoever came up with the saying "When it rains it pours" must be wise beyond the measure of wisdom. And speaking of rain that is exactly what we had in spades yesterday. A huge storm cell came blowing into town and as a result I spent most of yesterday without an internet connection. Not that I am complaining, no not at all. I love my Road Runner broadband account and I don't rave nearly enough about it. When I first went to broadband I went with the ADSL system through Southwestern Bell. It was horrible, I was up maybe three days out of every two weeks. That's no joke. When I got back to Houston and moved into the beautiful (if rabbit chewed) house I share with my lovely wife, the last thing I wanted to do was get DSL. Lucky for me, DSL was not available in my area. So I decided to try cable. Now up to this point I had heard nothing but bad about cable. It was slow during peak hours, you shared your "pipe" (the amount of bytes traveling to and from your system via the cable, the bigger the pipe the faster uploads and downloads are) with everyone else in your neighborhood, yadda yadda yadda. In a word, bullshit.
Road Runner Broadband has been a stable, superfast, reliable connection. I get unreal upload and download speeds and I don't notice a difference during peak hours. I have had to call their support service twice in the year and a half I have had it and neither time was it about my connection. This is the first time adverse weather has prevented me from getting online, and to tell the truth I am not sure it is because of the weather. For all I know it is planned outages. And just in case anyone thinks this is a commercial, let me make it clear that I pretty much loath everything that has anything to do with AOL/Time Warner. But I have to admit their broadband service is doing it right.
In any case, this is just to let ya know that my connection is iffy at best. This will be my only posting today (and I have already tried to upload this sucker four times). I promise to get to the Langer/CEI stuff on Monday. I really have tried, but I have not been connected long enough to be able to read through all the posts. For those interested, or wanting to get a head start, click here for a list of all the posts between Langer and I in sci.environment. I haven't even gone through a quarter of them yet.
So give me the weekend, and on Monday I will demonstrate exactly why I don't take Andy seriously. Then hopefully we can move on to bigger and better things.
Well after a lot of hard work yesterday I have my computer up and running pretty good. Except for one thing. I am going to have to replace my graphics card soon. Grrrrr.
I know, I know, I will get to the Langer stuff (including your comment Andy so please, stop whining), but today I want to talk about the website SavageStupidity.com
I wrote about Mike Savage (real name Mike Weiner) when I got an email from the Paul Revere Society consisting of Mike's ravings on the issue of slave reparation. You can read it here. I used SavageStupidity.com to find out more about Mike Savage, since I had never heard of him before that crazy email. It is a great site filled with information.
Well that might change if the Savage Weiner has his way:
Savage is attempting to seize our domain name. Lawyers for Talk Radio Network, Inc. (Savage's radio syndication partner) assert that it is "confusingly similar" to michaelsavage.com and say "Savage Nation" listeners are unable to tell difference between "michael" and "stupidity" (neither can we), they also claim violation of non-existent trademark.
Why is it always those that whine the loudest about their "free speech" rights that are more than ready to remove the free speech rights of others? Savage went off the deep end when he found out that certain organzations (such as The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and SavageStupidity.com) were contacting advertisers to complain about the Savage Weiner's out front bigotry:
“There are a group of people trying to drive me out of the radio business. They are working around the clock with lies and hate. They are the true haters, they are the neo-Nazis of our time. I doubt that they will succeed; they haven’t damaged me at all I haven’t lost one iota, not one station or one advertiser. But they’re slurring me.” -- Michael Savage, on "The Savage Nation", June 13th, 2002
Of course the legal papers sent by Talk Radio Network (TRN) claims something else entirely:
"As a direct and proximate result of the defendants' deceptive trade practices, TRN has lost advertising contracts and business opportunities and has been damaged in an amount in excess of $500,000." -- TRN lawsuit against SavageStupidity.com co-founders and others, filed on May 12th, 2003, point 47, page 15.
SANTA CRUZ, CA - SavageStupidity.com's co-founders, Thomas and Gunilla Leavitt, announced today that Public Citizen, a nationally prominent non-profit public interest law firm, has agreed to defend them from a lawsuit filed by Talk Radio Network, Inc. TRN syndicates "The Savage Nation", a nationally broadcast radio talk show hosted by the infamous Michael Savage (née Weiner). "The Weiner has demonstrated his contempt for free speech by filing this lawsuit, and we intend to dispute it vigorously," said Thomas and Gunilla. SavageStupidity.com will also be represented by David Bradford, a partner specializing in complex litigation at the prestigious Chicago-based national law firm of Jenner & Block, who will act as local counsel in the case.
I am glad that SavageStupidity.com will have the legal clout to fight this most frivolous lawsuit. But we can all do our part too! Join the SavageStupidity.com legal defense fund:
IMPORTANT: write "SavageStupidity.com defense" on your check, or call/email their development department after you pay by credit card and say that you donated on behalf of SavageStupidity.com. This is the only way that your donation will be credited against the costs of our defense (which could still be considerable).
SUPPORT THIS SITE: Help us keep fighting! Send a check made out directly to:Thomas Leavitt P.O. Box 7095 Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7095
or click on the PayPal/Amazon.com donation. (Well? What are you waiting for? Go to SavageStupidity.com and click on those buttons - Dom) We are both unemployed at the moment, so every bit helps keep our heads above water and fighting back against this ridiculous lawsuit and domain dispute.
So head on over and donate to the cause! It's a good one!
*Update*: I got email from Thomas Leavitt yesterday informing me:
Savage went off the deep end *BEFORE* the big guys got involved (which was after his book was published and he got the TV show, in about January of this year) - the June quote from last year is probably referring to local efforts to kick him off a radio station (somewhere in Oregon?) - although my ego would like to say it was my site and michaelsavagesucks.com (since we were the only ones actively campaigning against him on the Internet) - his reaction when GLAAD et. al did finally weigh in (where were they when this lunatic was ranting to an audience of 4 million via his radio show?) was similar though - he threatened to have John Ashcroft investigate them, and railed that they were all funded by grants and that he would see that they got cut off. Scary lunatic.
Sorry about the lack of update the past few days, but I have great excuses.
In case I did not make it clear, my niece's graduation was on Sunday at 4:00pm. So we decided to stay in Austin overnight. Then yesterday I went out and bought a brand new sound board. I have been needing a good sound board for quite a while. The one I was using before was from the stone age (a Sound Blaster 16) so I replaced it with the brand new Sound Blaster Audigy2. So now my music sounds like music!
The problem is hardware upgrades are always more system destructive than a software upgrade. I got the card installed just fine, drivers work ok....hummmm so far so good, oh no, I can't get either of my cd drives to work. Oh wait, the MS sound mapper does not work in Acid and now I have to set my sample rate from 44,100 Hz to 48,000 Hz. Ah I got my cd drives to work but the dvd drive won't play dvd audio. Head over to the Sound Blaster support page. Ug here are five download hours worth of patches to install. Ah the joy.
So I am still trying to get everything working with everything else. Hopefully I will be done today and can get back to posting. If I get it done by this morning I will try to have something up this evening.
I have been reviewing my old posting history with Andrew Langer, with is both hilarious and depressing at the same time. Not to worry, I promise I am not about to make "A Skeptical Blog" into an Andrew Langer watch or a CEI watch...but I do think this is an important subject. People like Andrew Langer and organizations like CEI are no better than Creationist, or Penn & Teller. They agree with science only when science agrees with their carefully pre-conceived notions. When science disagrees, then it is science that must go.
Andrew wrote to tell me he is "formulating" a reply to my article on Friday. If his posting history is any indication then it could take a few months.
In any case, I hope your having a better week than I am. I really hate it when my computer is being difficult...
