CBEB’s

If you’ve been following the comments in the Vincent Edward St. Francis thread, you probably know by now that one of vesf’s comments at Uncommon Descent made Fundies Say The Darndest Things:

If all goes well, Dr. Dembski will have the last laugh on Darwin’s next birthday.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if by the time Dawkins publishes his book, Darwin’s silly “theory” has finally been exposed and all the universities are using Exploring Evolution and The Design of Life as textbooks?

It’s only a matter of time, friends…

It’s a fitting way to honor a fallen hero, but the sweetest part is, here was the rating yesterday, before the quote was revealed as a Poe:

And here is the rating after the veil was lifted:

Pretty damned sweet, if you ask me. To the best of my knowledge, there’s been no freeping involved, either.

Note: I didn’t provide an actual link to the archived quote, because it’s being taken down soon since it was revealed as a fake. Nevertheless, I’d like to address a few quotes from the thread. Reader NonProphet had this to say:

VESF is the grandest, most elaborate puppet to ever sock on that forum.

While I appreciate the flattery, that distinction will always go to the lovely JanieBelle McKnight. To this day, idiots are still being fooled.

As much as I love FSTDT, one thing that has always bothered me is the level of discussion at the site. It is to be expected that the site would have something of a Peanut Gallery atmosphere, but it’s obvious to even the casual observer that most of the people there just don’t take the time to read the other comments. Long after the quote was revealed as a fake, people were still commenting on it as if it were genuine. One person who did take the time to read the entire thread had this to say about my sockpuppetry:

So that makes him what? A twelve year old asshole who gets a kick out of deliberately making himself look stupid?

It’s really too bad that FSTDT doesn’t give out awards anymore, because John would be a shoo-in for the “Missing the Whole Point of Fundies Say The Darndest Things” award.

Although Vincent Edward St. Francis failed in achieving his Prime Directive, I view his mission as a success, because he played a vital role in getting William Dembski to produce his long-awaited ID predictions; something a lot of people thought he would never do.

It looks like Evolution’s Waterloo will have to be delayed for yet another year.

It’s been a busy week for Tardminers. The general consensus is that this was the best week ever for Uncommon Descent-related hilarity. That said, it’s time to for some much needed rest & relaxation. With that in mind, here’s a clip of Chet Atkins playing an instrumental version of the old Russian folk song, “Dark Eyes” (aka “Ochi Chyornye”)
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A word of warning to those of you who play guitar: This clip will either make you want to pick up your guitar and practice all weekend, or it will make you hang your head in shame and not want to play your guitar for another six months… Enjoy!

I can’t take it anymore. Now I know how Laurence Fishbourne’s character felt in Deep Cover. It’s time to call in the Rational Response Squad and pull me out to safety. Someone… anyone… just let me be Mister DNA again.

If I drift back and forth between first and third person, please forgive me. I no longer know who’s who in this tale.

It all started back in November, when I created a user account at Uncommon Descent. My Prime Directive: say something so ridiculous, so uttlerly Tard-laden, that the moderators would have no choice but to send me down the memory hole. I also had a secondary objective: to foment antipathy between DaveScot and Denyse O’Leary. But somewhere down the line, things went south: I discovered that at Uncommon Descent, it’s almost impossible to say something so stupid that it will get you banned.

My first assigment was to come up with a name. A handle that would be a wink to those who knew, and a cold, steely, thousand-yard stare to anyone who looked too closely. I chose the name “vesf”. To the administrators at Uncommon Descent, I was Vincent Edward St. Francis; a nice, Catholic-sounding name if there ever was one. A name that unfortunately meant I would have to side with Denyse O’Leary if I reached my secondary objective. To the rest of the world, “vesf” was elementary school-level cryptography: take each consonant and replace it with the previous consonant in the alphabet… then take the vowel and replace it with the previous vowel in the alphabet. The result is “tard”.

I don’t remember exactly when I made my first comment at Uncommon Descent. Like any smart deep cover operative, I lurked and learned before I made my move. Here is one of my earliest comments, made on one of UD’s many Expelled threads:

DaveScot,

I wouldn’t want your daughter to get “Expelled”, but it would be great publicity for the movie!

Hopefully “Expelled” will create an environment of academic freedom so that by the time your daughter gets to college she will have better options.

A few days later, Demsbki bragged about registering the domain “teliocentric.com” and Vincent E. St. Francis jumped at the chance to get close to the Big Man:

Dr. Dembski, I don’t think any of the atheists can afford $5000 right now. They need all that money to pay the ACLU to harass school boards.

Could you maybe donate teleocentric.com to Galapagos Finch as a peace offering? I’m sure he could do more with it than any Darwinist.

That was my entrance in to the seedy world of Tard; a little flattery goes a long way when you’re dealing with people desperate for acceptance in the real world. My comments were no longer moderated; Vincent E. St. Francis was free to say anything he wished. In one of UD’s more irony-meter-shattering moments, vesf contributed the following to the discussion:

If an electrical engineer can be so blinded by the liberal media, just think what the secular elites are doing to our children in the schools.

This was the first of vesf’s comments to get noticed at After the Bar Closes. I panicked. I had to reach out to someone in the real world and let them know that Vincent Edward St. Francis wasn’t the tard that everyone thought he was. I broke my cover. PTET would be the first to know my true identity. He had recently been banned at Uncommon Descent for committing the Unpardonable Sin of asking questions, so I knew I could trust him; just like every other decent citizen, he wanted to see the UD Empire brought to its knees.

Vincent found another chance to make a move in the aftermath of the PZ Myers/Geoffrey Simmons debate. The powers that be have since deleted the thread at Uncommon Descent, but not before vesf was noticed by a commenter at Pharyngula:

A cretin named ‘vesf’ at the UD blog recently writes in to say

I agree with FtK - the Discovery Institute should put out a transcript of the debate with notes rebutting the lies of the atheist PZ Meyers.”

That comment led to what is known on the streets as a “Double Tard Rebound”; UD commenter bfast took my statement and made a huge score with the astoundingly beautiful:

In my opinion we should just close our eyes and pretend that this debate never happened.

Vincent E. St. Francis was now a player. People took notice of what he had to say. But Vincent knew… when people are listening, you have to be careful of what you say. vesf decided to lay low and plan his next move…

A lot of things came and went while Vincent waited to make his move, but he lurked patiently in the shadows. The big day came on February 13, when DaveScot - in a moment of passive-aggresive splendor - decided to let everyone at Uncommon Descent know that PTET was not only calling Denyse O’Leary a “douchebag”, he was calling her a “Douchebag for Christ”. We all owe PTET a huge debt of gratitude for bringing DaveScot out of hiding to contribute some classic Tard. Vincent was especially grateful, as PTET and DaveScot had unwittingly made his secondary objective - to foment antipathy between DaveScot and Denyse O’Leary - obsolete.

Now was the time for Vincent to make his Power Play. He had to post something so utterly and overtly stupid that there would be no choice but to ban him at Uncommon Descent. To that end, vesf posted the following in DaveScot’s not-so-subtle attack on Denyse O’Leary:

Can Mrs. O’Leary, like, get one of the Discovery Institute’s lawyers to go after this libelous piece of trash?

No human being should have to be subjected to such filth. I feel like I need to take a shower after reading that.

Rich Hughes’ Explanatory Filter must have had fresh batteries, because he saw the design immediately. And Kristine evidently spent the extra 99 cents for the Super-Duper Deluxe Model Explanatory Filter, because she caught the “shower” reference, too.

As much as I hack on Granny Spice for her extraneous usage of the word “like”, I thought for sure The Banninator would blow my cover. However, it was not to be. I tried again:

FtK,

I really wish you would write a book. I know I would buy it. You’re most excellent blog documents what a weak foundation Darwinism rests on and how the evolutionists must resort to slander and mockery to cover up the lack of evidence for the Darwinian myth. I like your style. I laughed at how you exposed that atheist with your “Happy Darwin Day” post.

On the subject of books, I think we should all buy Denyse’s book as a show of support.

While the “buy my book” reference might as well have been written in neon lights, Vincent was upset that no one caught the FtK-esque misuse of “You’re”; he was beginning to crack. He even slipped in a reference to The Church Burnin’ Ebola Blog, hoping that someone would see that there was a rational being beneath all that Tard.

Things were getting crazy. As Mister DNA, I live in a world where Reason is a virtue. As Vincent E. St. Francis, I had become a denizen of a world where up is down, wrong is right, 1+1+1=1, and calling someone names is okay, as long as you don’t make fun of their religion… unless, of course, their religion is Islam. It was time to get out. I couldn’t just make a run for the nearest exit, though. I tried to goad DaveScot into some more name-calling by appealling to his Inner Marine:

vtjorley,

Like you, first thought the quotes attributed to DaveScot at that obscene website were more of the typical Darwinist lies.

DaveScot served in the US Marines defending the right for filthy atheists like this PTET character to mutter profanities, so Dave has more than earned the right to “swear like a sailor” if he so chooses. At least he has the class not to do it on Dr. Dembski’s blog.

It makes me so angry that the Anti-Christian Lawyer’s Union will spend millions of dollars to protect the right of old men to pretend to be lesbians, but won’t lift a finger when comes to our right to teach children about the evidence for a Designer.

DaveScot might be a little rough around the edges, but we should all be thankful that we have someone like him on our side fighting the good fight.

It was no use. Comments were closed on the thread soon afterward, and older threads were bumped up in an attempt to conceal Dave’s miscalculated gambit to embarrass Denyse O’Leary.

A new day brought a clearer perspective to Vincent’s mission. Today would be the day. Vincent Edward St. Francis would post something so obviously intended to make Intelligent Design proponents look stupid that Dr. William A. Dembski himself would open the skies and toss vesf into the Lake of Fire. Dembski posted a lovely Valentine’s Day bouquet of sour grapes to Richard Dawkins, and vesf leapt at the chance:

If all goes well, Dr. Dembski will have the last laugh on Darwin’s next birthday.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if by the time Dawkins publishes his book, Darwin’s silly “theory” has finally been exposed and all the universities are using Exploring Evolution and The Design of Life as textbooks?

It’s only a matter of time, friends…

Again, no dice. Vincent had considered adding a “Waterloo!” reference, but that would have been too over-the-top. When you’re this deep undercover, you’ve got to be subtle.

It turned out that Dr. Dembski had caught a bigger fish in his Nixplanatory Filter: DaveScot. Dave was having a meltdown in another UD thread and he viciously attacked a fellow cdesign proponentsist. That in itself is worthy of a separate blog post, but I’ve got to stay focused. Vincent’s story must be told.

Dembski reacted to Dave’s meltdown with standard UD protocol: He deleted the thread and admonished the troops:

I deleted this thread because I found the comments offensive. Let’s keep postings and comments germane to ID.

This was Vincent’s big chance; if he couldn’t get kicked out of Uncommon Descent for saying something stupid, he’d do it the old-fashioned way… he’d request some science:

Let’s keep postings and comments germane to ID.

An excellent idea, Dr. Dembski. Perhaps you could bring things back on topic by posting that list of Intelligent Design predictions you have.

It’s been a month since that post, and the suspense is killing some of us!

That was it. My cover was blown. Dembski looked me over as he tried to make out my true identity. Was I in the employ of PZ Myers and the Evil Athiest Conspiracy? Was Vincent E. St. Francis an agent of the NCSE, gathering intel on behalf of Eugenie Scott? Knowing that scientists everywhere might be watching, Dr. Dembski played it cool:

vesf: your link seems not to work.

Sweat beaded on our foreheads. Nervous glances were exchanged. Tension mounted. Silence…

BANG!

Fortunately, a brave comrade by the name of Semprini stepped in and took the bullet that was meant for vesf:

Dr Dembski’s ID predictions? Yes, we’re all keen to hear those. After all, one key thing that a scientific theory - like ID so totally is - does is to make testable predictions

Semprini, whoever you are, and where ever you may be, we salute you. I hear you were only a week away from retirement, too. Thanks, brother.

Vincent tried to remain as cool and collected as Dr. Dembski. I knew it was going to be tough; after all, vesf was dealing with a man who plans to one day be the Grand Inquisitor in the Holy Crackdown on Darwinism. Vincent E. St. Francis held back the tears and tried not to stare at Semprini’s corpse lying between him and the Mad Doctor, then innocently quipped:

Apologies, Dr. Dembski. My html skills must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Semprini’s link is working, though.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has been waiting for this.

There you have it, folks. The world has been waiting a month for Dr. Demsbki’s elusive ID predictions, and only one person had to die to get them. I hope you’re all happy now.

But Dembski wasn’t quite yet through with vesf. Perhaps Vincent E. St. Francis had played things too subtle and banning him outright would raise suspicions among the UD faithful. As far as everyone else knew, vesf was still one of them. The Isaac Newton of Information Theory did the next best thing: vesf was placed back in moderation.

I knew it was time to put Vincent E. St. Francis to bed once and for all. I decided to go out with guns blazing… but are the walls of the moderation queue bulletproof? Apparently not. I’ve added emphasis to underscore Vincent’s final moment of glory. This is dedicated to all the fallen sockpuppets who didn’t make out of the Tardmines alive. For as long as I live, I’ll consider you the lucky ones. The dead can sleep. The dead can forget.

Without further ado, here is what seems to be vesf’s final post at Uncommon Descent:

Thank you, Dr. Dembski. You are without peer when it comes to
The Argument Regarding Design.

I must say, I was also curious about the TV show you would be on. To be honest, I was hoping it would be one of the more credible programs like Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and not an America hating liberal windbag like that Olbermann idiot.

I certainly hope you will publish this in the next issue of Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design. When is the next issue coming out, anyway?

That’s my story, folks. More importantly, it’s Vincent’s story. It’s a story that will one day be told again, but with different names. As long as Uncommon Descent is still on the streets, brave souls will dare to strip themselves of their true identities and venture into the very Heart of Tardness. Most of them won’t come back.

Epilogue: Vincent left one last comment that evidently didn’t make it through moderation. Here is a screen cap of that fallen comment. Considering the subject matter, it’s in poor taste, but don’t read it left-to-right. Read the first letter of each line, top-to-bottom:

As is my custom, I started yesterday morning off by making the rounds at the blogs I read daily. I was pleasantly surprised to see our good friend “For the Kids” was celebrating Darwin Day with me by using the final image in my Darwin Day post.

I wasn’t in any way upset that she had used the image without my permission. To the contrary; I was flattered. My only beef was that I keep all the images I use for off-site purposes on a separate server so that my access logs are nice and tidy. Had she asked in advance, I would have gladly put the image on the other server for her benefit.

I could have sent her a PM at After the Bar Closes, or could have left a message at her blog. No, scratch that. She told me to never leave any comments on her blog, so I wasn’t about to waste my time making a friendly offer.

As Darwin Day progressed, FtK made the usual revisions to her blog after comments that she didn’t let pass through moderation called shenanigans on her bullshit. That gave me an idea… I sent out several PMs at AtBC, giving readers a chance to witness the event live.

All I had to do was change the name of the image I was using for my Darwin Day post, then replace the original image with something that would show up at Reasonable Kansans. Here is a screen capture of her page from earlier in the day:

Here is a screen capture taken at 7:30 pm, CST:

Seeing that FtK is a living, breathing punchline to a bad joke, it only gets funnier… Once she realized what had happened, she updated the post to reflect the events as she saw them in her Bizarro universe:

Best. Darwin. Day. Ever.

An intrepid explorer has discovered what just might be the source of all the writing attributed to Denyse O’Leary: The Crapola Web Translator

The Valley Girl Translator churns out text looking suspiciously like the prose-ac of Saint Denyse of Leary. For example, take a look at the Preamble to the United States Constitution when run through the translator. Before:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

and after:

We the People of the United States, in Order to like, form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to like, ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Is that Valley Girl, or Denysese? Now let’s run some of Denyse’s writing through the translator… oh, how about this?

Piffle? Yes, because ,as another friend notes, in much of academic life today the terms are decided in advance by functional atheists - you know, facts support atheism but feelings support theism, and we all respect each other’s feelings … UNTIL any theist actually cites facts that support his view. Then watch the temperature drop 50 degrees Celsius in, like, a second..

Oops, too late! Someone’s already done it.

If someone could make a translation engine that strips all the “likes” and “you knows” from Denyse’s writing, her idiocy might seem, like, less idiotic.

a tip of the headgear to oldmanintheskydidntdoit at After the Bar Closes.

In honor of Darwin Day, I’ve put together a little gift presentation for our friends at Uncommon Descent. Here’s a delicious Ebola-flavored birthday cake:

I’ve invited the rest of the Ebola Boys (and an Ebola Girl; is that Kristine, or Abbie?):

They’re dressed in pirate regalia in order to ward off global warming.

What’s that over there? Oh, goodie - it’s a peaceful country church!

Do your work, Ebola Boys (and Ebola Girl)!

On behalf of Church Burnin’ Ebola Boys and Girls everywhere, Happy Darwin Day!

This is the clean opening credits to one of my favorite anime, Read or Die. It’s a three-episode OVA centering around the adventures of bibliomaniac Yomiko Readman, a mild-mannered substitute teacher. An anime about a substitute teacher who loves to read might sound boring, but Ms. Readman has another job… she’s a special agent for the British Library, code named “The Paper”. Yomiko is also a “Paper Master”: she can manipulate regular sheets of paper into weapons, gliders and defensive shields. The plot is pretty ridiculous, but the animation is excellent, and the music is fantastic. Dig the James Bond/Lalo Schifrin/Shaft groove the theme music has.

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Read or Die was followed by the 26-episode R.O.D. the TV, which IMO is even better than Read or Die.

By the way, “Yomiko Readman” is a Japanese/English play on words. “Yomi” is the Japanese word for “read” and “ko” is a common feminine suffix, so her name is “Readwoman Readman”

Here’s a historical tidbit about me that some may find interesting. As a teenager, I lived in Libya for a couple of years. My dad was a Gas Lift Specialist for Exxon, and we lived in the little town of Marsa al Burayqah, located about halfway between Libya’s two capitols, Tripoli and Benghazi.

I won’t go into a long story about my time in Libya; I only bring it up because since there wasn’t much to do there, one of the highlights of each week was the new copy of the English-language edition of the Libyan state-run newspaper. It was more of a newsletter than newspaper, but everyone in my family enjoyed it immensely. It wasn’t particularly informative, but it was extremely entertaining. This was the late seventies, when then-president Jimmy Carter had just hammered out a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, and “Libyan strongman” Muammar al-Gaddafi was none too pleased.

Each issue of The Jamahiriya (Arabic for “Republic”) was about 5-10 pages of rants about the US, Egpyt and Israel. If Jimmy Carter was making an appearance in Gemany, the article would read something like this:

Zionist puppet Menachem Begin’s Imperialist master Jimmy Carter made an appearance in the US-controlled colony of Germany in an effort to shore up capitalist interests blah blah blah.

Without fail, Menachem Begin was always referred to as the “Zionist puppet” and Jimmy Carter was always the “Imperialist master” and one could not be mentioned without the other. Anwar Sadat didn’t get off any easier, either. He was always “Zionist running-dog Anwar Sadat”. Also, Gaddafi was always referred to as “Leader of the Glorious September 1st Revolution”. To string this all together, here’s what an article on a plane crash in Syria would look like in The Jamahiriya:

The proud people of Syria, who have stood in solidarity with the Leader of the Glorious September 1st Revolution Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi in his struggle against the Zionist puppet Menachem Begin and his Imperialist master Jimmy Carter, suffered a tragedy last Wednesday when a plane crashed over Tadmur, killing all 30 passengers on board. It is not known at this time whether Zionist running-dog Anwar Sadat will be attending the ceremony commemorating the dead.

I was reminded of the Good Old Days of The Jamahiriya when I read this piece by our good friend, Slimy Sal Cordova. Although categorized in the “theology” and “rhetoric” departments, Sal’s article - hilariously titled “618 Synagogues of Satan honor Darwin on Evolution Sunday” - is pure propaganda. For a more thorough breakdown of the article, check out JanieBelle’s take on the subject; I’m just going to address two items in Cordova’s piece.

First off, take a look at this sentence:

This sunday, 618 Synagogues of Satan will honor Charles Darwin (a despiser of Christ) on Evolution Sunday 2008.

I hate to break it to you, Sal, but that’s not “rhetoric”, it’s pure fallacy. Since Salvador’s “Advanced Creation Science [sic]” is nothing but regular Creation Science [sic], only stupider, he has no choice but to try and scare away the people in the pews with some hogwash about Darwin being a “despiser of Christ”. Guess what, Sal? It doesn’t matter if Charles Darwin buggered nuns in Belgium; evolution is still a fact.

Since Sal is too much of a chickenshit to venture beyond the confines of his Young Cosmos compound, he responded to JanieBelle’s post in the comments of his own blog, and somehow managed to outdo himself in the ridiculous propaganda department:

Goes to show, even Darwinist Drag Queen Transvestites, Imitation Lesbians like Lou(JanieBelle) can be useful for something.

Good fucking grief. I’d like to think that poor Sal is so sweet and innocent that he’s basically clueless about such things, but his obsession with sexual deviance indicates otherwise. “Drag Queen Transvestites” is completely redundant. While not all transvestites are drag queens, all drag queens are transvestites. If Sal is going to pull out all the stops in his well poisoning, perhaps he should rewrite the sentence like so:

Goes to show and demonstrates, even Evolutionist Darwinist Drag Queen Transvestites, Fake Imitation Sapphic Lesbians like Lou(JanieBelle) and the moderator at AtBC can be useful for something.

What a fucking douchebag.

I knew beforehand that some people would have a problem with the word “Douchebag” when I started BPSDB.org. Fortunately, those who would rather not add that word to their lexicon have been cool about it, and a compromise has been reached by creating a “Blogging on PseudoScience” graphic. No harm, no foul. Some people, however, feel otherwise.

Greg Laden’s Blog was the first ScienceBlog to officially join the BPSDB program (the concept had been earlier been endorsed by ScienceBlogger Green Gabbro), and it didn’t take long for the douchebag contingent to voice an opinion. Five comments into the thread, Scott Belyea chimed in with this:

Well, I continue to be puzzled why so many rational, well-educated, knowledgeable, liberal bloggers are still using references to female genitals and hygiene as the worst insults they can come up with.

Why?

For the love of Christ. There’s really no need to address this, because Stephanie Z came up with a brilliant response:

Let’s see, Scott. Transparent; full of stuff that’s at best useless, at worst harmful; and sold in coded language as the cure for a problem that doesn’t exist? Works for me.

A little research reveals that Scott Belyea is a one-trick concern troll. Look how he derailed this thread at the Panda’s thumb and tried to do the same at Recursivity.

It would appear that Mr. Belyea is still living in the pre-Dover era of “he said, she said” journalism that treated ID proponents as if they were doing legitimate science. That era is long gone, and it’s not because of Judge Jones’ ruling; it’s because it has become painfully obvious that Intelligent Design has only been pretending to be a scientific endeavor. If people want to think criticism of ID should be respectful and considerate, that’s their prerogative, but a growing number of observers have come to the realization that ID deserves nothing but mockery.

After Judge Jones’ ruling, did the “Isaac Newton of Information Theory” react by putting forth a testable theory of Intelligent design? No, he produced a cheesy flash animation. If that’s not a douchebag move on his part, I don’t know what is. If pseudo-scientists don’t want to be called douchebags, the solution is simple: stop acting like douchebags.

Incidentally, I don’t know why other people find the word “douchebag” funny, but I’ve always found it funny since the classic “Lord and Lady Doooooooouchebag!” sketch on Saturday Night Live. Plus, it - no pun intended - rolls off the tongue a lot easier than “enema bag” or “colostomy bag”.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is probably one of my all-time favorite horror movies. Released in 1982, it flopped at the box office primarily due to competition from a certain alien whose initials are E.T. Since that time, however, it has gained cult status, mainly due to its orgy of old-school special effects, a great ensemble cast, and one of the greatest lines in The History of Horror Films, which is featured in the clip I’m showcasing.

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I’ve been meaning to post this clip for awhile, but I kept procrastinating. Today, certain events conspired against me and now I have no choice but to post it. See below for the full rant…
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