This'll end in tears...

Oh dear. User StephenE has been pretty useful on Conservapedia. He's spent most of his time beetling around, being a good wikignome and correcting many, many spelling and grammatical errors (of which there are MANY) on CP. Does he get thanked for his efforts?

No, of course not. You see, he made the mistake of getting frustrated with all the crap he was coming across and started to express his frustration in his edit comments, such as "VERBS! Sentences need VERBS! Subjects are nice, too." and more succinctly "Groan". Obviously the Powers That Be (in that case John Patti and Terry Koeckritz) can't have that so it's double team time.

This reminds me of somebody...

...because hell, we need a break from the insanity now and again. (and h/t to XKCD... possibly the greatest webcomic evah. Let the flame war begin!)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Skins"][/caption]

I See Stupid People

I'm just going to step off the Conservapedia short bus for a moment, to share this wonderful graph with you. In one simple picture, you get to see where all the stupid, crazy, easily led people live in the USA. But then, we knew that already, right?

[caption id="attachment_224" align="aligncenter" width="383" caption="Where the Birthers are..."][/caption]

(h/t to Break the Terror)

John Patti - A Special Kind of Stupid

I know "stupid" is virtually synonymous with Conservapedia and even more so where its "administrators" (again with the """", seeing as they do no admin) are concerned. However, there is one individual there, who deserves a special mention - Ohio's favourite Faulknerian man-child, John Patti. I've been promising this for a while, but there's been so much stupidity to wade through, that is was either a case of having a several volume blog post, or trying to put together a "highlights" package... although low-lights is a far more appropriate word.

Here's an example to start off with: Conservapedia does, of course, have a massive hard-on for all things Obama - and that includes his wife, the delectable Michelle. So it should come as no surprise when somebody adds the totally spurious "She is the first African American First Lady, descended from slaves brought from Africa by early Americans." Still, have no fear... CP has "admins" and this is probably on of the red flag articles, so one will be along shortly, to remove such rubbish. Well... whoops... CP's resident historian, RJ Jensen, leaves it in, and then here comes John the Boy Wonder... he's an "admin", he's responsible, he'll remove it.... oh dear. Instead of removing it, he adds the nonsensical "that were sold by rival tribes" to the sentence, as if that is even vaguely relevant. He also feels the need to tell us she has a staff of 22. (The slavery bit has since been removed by StephenE, who amazingly hasn't been blocked for "liberal vandalism" or something.)

With apologies to Dr McCoy, "It's stupidity Jim, but not as we know it."

Conservative Bible Project - Intellectuals killed Jesus!

(h/t to Toast for tipping me off about this. You gorgeous chick, you!)

Well, the Conservatisation of the Bible is underway. Young Andrew Sclafly started his day by "translating" six verses of Mark 3. (Here's the tidy version) I say "translating", because writing something in your own words isn't translating. It might paraphrasing, or even plagiarising, but not translating... even if you are going from English to Andyspeak.

Admittedly, at first glance it doesn't look too bad. After all, he is getting rid of all those nasty "thee's" and "thou's" which really have gone the way of the Dodo. (I'm always reminded of reading Taylor Calwell's epic 'The Earth is the Lord's' which has Genghis Khan spouting "thee's" and "thou's" and "shalt's" all over the place, when he was more likely to say the Mongolian equivalent of "One owt treadles gone askew on't spindle.") However, we soon see problems. In the opening sentence, Andy has "...and noticed man with a crippled hand." Yes, Andy's notoriously bad writing habits are coming to the fore. Maybe we'll have another Wicked Bible on our hands... you know, the one that says 'Thou shalt commit adultery"... although God knows what it'll say once Andy's finished with it.

Right, Andy doesn't have a beef with Obama

[caption id="attachment_174" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="HLR 1990 - Obama & Schlafly circled"][/caption]

I mentioned in the past that Andy Schlafly was on the Harvard Law Review at the same time that Barack Obama became its first black president. I've also mentioned that Andy also doesn't seem to like Obama very much. Maybe Andy ran against him and lost (and we all know Andy can bear a grudge... just look at his reaction when Richard Lenski handed him his ass, nicely gift-wrapped), or maybe it's because Obama is in the White House, several HLR staffers from that time are on his staff... and Andy's teaching home-schoolers in a New Jersey church basement. His mum must be so proud.

All this meant, of course, was that Andy's pet encyclopaedia blog could now spawn vicious articles about the then president elect (a trustworthy encyclopaedia, which opens its article on Barack Hussain Obama (because we must mention his "Muslim" name - at least they didn't go the Coulter route and call him B. Hussain Obama) by saying "allegedly born in Honolulu" and then goes on to list his shortcomings long before getting to the biographical details. However, now that he's in the White House and *gasp* doing a good job, Conservapedia has really gone overboard, as a glimpse at their latest main page will show - the "news" items, with their photo-shopped Obamas, especially. Of course, all Andy's little trolls have jumped onto the bandwagon, especially Ohio's favourite manchild, John Patti  - who is clearly incapable of having an original thought, as he swings from "Obama is Muslim", to "I'm a teabagger", to "I'm a Birther", to "He's a Commie... no, wait... he's the Gestapo!" Basically, whatever fad comes along that is anti-Obama, little Johnny boy is leaping aboard. One good thing, is that Ken "I have a million socks on the 'net" deMyer has also  abandoned his obsession with teh gay and leapt aboard Andy's ship of morons, and we look forward to him bringing his own special kind of stupidity to the whole mess, thus further discrediting Andy and his blog... if that's even possible.

Conservapedia's Law

No, that doesn't mean "Say Andy is right... or else", nor does it mean "Kiss Terry Koeckritz's ass and give him your e-mail address, chest measurement and name of your junior high school when he asks, or else". No, what this means - and I was remiss in not bringing this up earlier is that hot on the heels of "Best New Conservative Words" comes Andrew Schlafly's new master-piece, "Conservapedia's Law." I do confess to being surprised that it's not Schlafly's Law, or even Mummy Phyliss's Law... maybe deep down he realises that having his name associated with it will confirm his insanity to the world.

So what does CL hold in store for us? Brace yourself, because it's a doozie:

Conservapedia's Law is the observation that conservative insights increase over time at a geometric rate, as in 1-2-4-8-16-etc.

For example, there is a doubling in effective new conservative terms per century.

This startling revelation is based upon the findings of Andy "Best" New Conservative words exercise we spoke about. Now normally, before some new law that governs the universe is promulgated, you can bet that some pretty serious investigation and research has gone into its formulation. Fortunately, this isn't the case here. No, all Andy has done is take a bunch of words that he (and one or two parodists) decided were conservative and then chopped and changed them to fit his pre-determined result. Words were cast off as being "not conservative enough" in order to meet his "geometric rate" of growth. Maybe we'll see these one day in a list of "Not quite good" New Conservative Words, or "Worst" New Conservative Words.

Andy Schlafly does the Bible... again

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And Andy Schlafly saw the Word and said, “That ain’t right!”

It must be nice to be Andy Schlafly. Firstly you get to use Mummy’s money to fund your little on-line hobby and secondly, you get to have your own personal Stepford. In this case, however, it’s facts that enter Stepford all dull and boring and, well, factual and end up shiny, hollow, manufactured shells of their former selves. If I want to expand the metaphor a bit further, he can also lie back and hear the moans and cries of “Oh! Andy! You’re so great! You’re fantastic! You’re so clever!” provided by his personal echo chamber of Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, who also do a fantastic job of censoring anybody who might dare criticise Andy’s way of thinking, thus leaving him to wallow in the mud-pool of his own self-importance.

So what has our little bastion of conservadom done this time, you ask?