Just one question...

Why are Conservapedia's administrators (and - generally speaking - a large number of online conservative commentators) so scared of open and public comments? Are they really that scared of having to defend an indefensible position? Are their egos that fragile that the merest questioning of their motives and actions will send them to their beds with a case of the vapours?

In fact, for Geoff Plourde, who is an Administrator of an (allegedly) open wiki that constantly rails against perceived censorship, to openly declare that his talk page is out of bounds is, quite frankly, a sad state of affairs, but also indicative of the kind of people running it. These are people who deal with secrets, who prefer to keep things "off-site" because then there's no witnesses to their deceit.

Palin and the Pledge

Half the fun with blogging lies in the research, the other half is in going off in a totally different direction to what you intended. Take this current example, for instance.

It started out with our friends at Conservapedia, defending a(nother) bullshit statement made by Sarah Palin. Now it would appear as if the Great White Moose answered a questionnaire put out by the Eagle Forum (that's the home-schooling university thingy, set up by Andy Schlafly's mum, Phyllis). One question asked, "Are you offended by the phrase 'Under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?" to which Palin replied, "Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me and I'll fight in defence of our Pledge of Allegiance." (Bold in the original) Conservapedia – in an attempt to usurp St Jude as the patron saint of lost causes goes on to defend it – throwing up a very tenuous (but Schlafly approved) link between the phrase “under God” and George Washington... and thus by default *all* the Founding Fathers. Nothing new when it comes to distorting the truth for CP really.

Hardcore John Patti

Conservapedia editor John Patti has a high opinion of himself, describing himself as a "hardcore conservative contributor despised by liberals" in their self-congratulatory article on CP. Then again, I suppose if nobody else is going to blow your trumpet...

As always, it takes an outsider to bring a little reality to the little man's world. Johnny baby, I hate to break it to you, but the only "liberals" who are even aware of your sad, little existence are those at RationalWiki, and we don't despise you. We just think you're a moron - something you've proven time and time again. There's a difference, you know, although you probably don't.

The "Child Friendly" Encyclopaedia?

So Conservapedia, besides being "trustworthy" also tries to promote itself as a learning resource geared towards children and teenagers. I wonder what the parents of these children would make of the administrators of this site asking editors for their e-mail addresses (especially Terry Koeckritz), or even worse, their telephone numbers, in the case of Ed Poor? The latter case is especially worrying, given his seeming focus on matters sexual, as witnessed by his comments about "bulging vulvas", "interstellar pimps" and a little sexual experimentation for our daughters. Then again, given that he is a Moonie, maybe it's just his way of grooming impressionable youngsters for the next mass-matrimony ceremony.

All of that is, of course, hidden behind the scenes on users' talk pages and is rarely seen by the casual visitor to CP. So it's even more worrying when they blatantly display it on their front page.

Happy Birthday Conservapedia!

Yup, Conservapedia turns three today and looking back it's amazing to see just how it's gone from being an interesting project to one of the most bat-shit insane sites on the internet. Admittedly it is a site which has delivered many hours of laughs, including such gems as Bugler's antics, the Lenski Affair, the Conservative Bible Project, Andrew Schlafly's insane debate with the erudite Kate Sorenson and the wonderful "Liberal Style Word Counter" bot, created by the now-blocked Mark Gallagher (which just goes to show that even if you do suck up to Andy, Terry Koeckritz will still kick you in the balls).

And it's about Terry that I'd like to write (once again) this evening. Anybody who's been following CP for any length of time, will know that once upon a time, Terry was Andy's right hand (probably in more ways than one!) boy. However, he tried his hand once too often in trying to usurp Andy's authority - after all Andy is the proverbial Brother Leader of CP and his fellow sysops, rather than actually having a hand in making decisions, simply act as his echo chamber. Andy decided to strip... or rather remove the sysop rights from his poster boy for on-line thuggery and a rather nasty e-mail battle ensued.

"Slutty" Ed Poor

I've already mentioned that Conservapedia sysop Ed Poor has some strange ideas when it comes to what is and isn't appropriate on Conservapedia (out = references to Jack the Ripper's victims as prostitutes; in = an article on bestiality). It's always refreshing to see new examples of just how his mind works.

Sysop Brian MacDonald (aka Karajou) would appear to be a fan of Tomb Raider and uploaded a copy of the first game's cover to CP. Looking at the file name, and scouring Google images, tells me that the one shown alongside was probably the one he used.

I say "probably" because along came Ed (slow walking Ed Jones, slow talking Ed Jones... I love that song!) and deleted it, claiming it was "too slutty". Needless to say, Brian was a bit worried about this and queried his Edness.

Delicious Irony

Now I know that being a Conservapedia sysop involves an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance (especially when you have to grin and agree with more of Andrew Schlafly's daily insanity), but there are times when you can only laugh out loud at the things they say.

Take for example Brian MacDonald's (sysop Karajou - so much for Conservapedia's policy of "use your real first name and initial, which is a blockable offence if you don't)  claim about Wikipedia's sysops:

All I could think of when I read this was the fact that most of the "trusted" admins there reached that level by vitue (sic) of lying, bullying, falsly-accusing, acting like SlimVirgin, etc.

Update...

...on the Andrew Schlafly versus Kate Sorenson saga.

(Block log); 10:39 . . Jpatt (Talk | contribs) blocked KSorenson (Talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 5 years (account creation disabled, e-mail blocked) (Negative personal comments: childish parthian shot)

Yup, when somebody who actually knows the subject comes along and tries to improve Conservapedia (in other words show Andy just how wrong he is and how little he knows), they get shown the door.

It's also gratifying to see that Andy is such a "man", has he has to get one of his acolytes to do the job for him.

Well done, John Patti, the "Trustworthy" encyclopaedia is proud of you.

Dedication Time

There is, after all, one song that can be played, following onfrom the posts below. Kate, this one's for you.



And this one's for Andy.

 

And the show goes on...

Clearly feeling the need for self-affirmation, Andrew Schlafly has just posted a word-salad called "Quantifying Order". I'm not sure what he's trying to say, but it's something along the lines of "God created order and here's some examples."

The self-affirmation bit is clear as not only does he quote from his own bastardisation of the Bible, which  now renders the opening lines of John as "In the beginning was perfect order, and this perfection was with God, and this perfection was God." (I kid you not), but he has another dig at the Theory of Relativity by stating:

"The theory of relativity developed to explain the then-observed shift in Mercury's perihelion of 43 arc-seconds per century. Subsequently, however, more accurate measurements with more sophisticated technology have determined this precession to be 55 arc-seconds per century, nearly 30% off the number provided by relativity."

In true Andy "I-pulled-this-number-out-of-my-ass" style, he doesn't provide anything to back up this statement. - not to mention the hideous English of the first sentence. Enter our heroine, Ms Sorenson (who seems to work for NASA and is involved with the Gravity Probe B project, unless my sources are mistaken. Either way, this young lady knows her stuff). Quite respectfully and quite rightly, she asks Andy for a citation for his claim.

When faced with science... change the subject

For some reason, Andrew Schlafly doesn't like Einstein, or his Theory of Relativity much - probably because he's too stupid to understand it. So it always makes for interesting reading when somebody tries to insert some sense into any related articles. We also know that Andy loathes anybody with some sort of expertise, because they show just what an ignoramus he actually is. The Lenski Affair was a classic example of this. Another was a fantastic argument with his own brother on the Theory of Relativity. It's at the bottom of the talk page, which in itself is worth a good laugh.

So imagine his reaction when somebody - in this case, a well-spoken and clearly knowledgeable lady by the name of Kate Sorensen, comes along and starts to inject some reason into the article on Black Holes. Faced with the possibility that somebody knows more than him and is about to (once again) hand him his ass on a platter, Andy reverts to his favourite method of argument - changing the subject.

Conservapedia: Operating in a Void?

Ok, so one of the questions that's asked most often is "Just how relevant is Conservapedia?" Is the conservative movement hanging on Andrew Schlafly's every word, or are they (most likely) hanging their heads in embarrassment.The general impression is that the internet is laughing at Conservapedia... something that has been proven to a degree when scouring the web for comments on Ken DeMyer's offerings on "Atheism" and "Evolution".

However, it would be interesting to see just who is referring to CP and in what way. Luckily Alexa can tell me that a total of 1,217 sites link in to CP. It might sound like a lot, but when you consider that "evil" WikiPedia has 415,776 sites linking in and even tiny RationalWiki has 322, it doesn't look that great for the "trustworthy" encyclopaedia.

Now, the next step, to be undertaken over the next few days and weeks, is to visit said 1,217 sites and see what exactly they're saying about Andy's little blog. I'll keep a running score as we go and hopefully by the end we'll have a fairly good idea of just how important Conservapedia is to the web community in general.

Watch this space.

Schalfly's Sexist Shenanigans

One thing about Andrew Schlafly - he's consistent, if nothing else. Sadly, he's just a consistent buffoon.

Not content with ripping off parents on the pretence of teaching their children economics - a task at which he, yet again, fails dismally - he then goes on to abuse and humiliate his students again, by setting different tests for boys and girls.

Now, Andy will defend his choice until he's blue in the face, citing such rubbish as "he doesn't want competition between girls and boys" and most famously, "chivalry".

However, at the end of the day, all it means is that Andy see girls as being "different" to boys - and not in the sense that boys have winkies and girls don't. Andy seriously sees them as inferior beings (to the point of writing most positive female references out of his Conservative Bible) and should only be educated to the bare minimum. After all, their sole purpose is to stay at home, cook the food and churn out the next generation of Republican stormtroopers.

The again, what would you expect from the spawn of Phyllis 'Marital Rape Is Cool' Schlafly?