Fumble in the endzone

When you find yourself calling the hundreds of biologists at Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Yale "dumb as a bag of hammers", you might want to revisit your ideas.

Or don't, and continue to make us laugh.

Come on, guys, cut her some slack. After all, she's Canadian.

OK, before you cut off my supply of Moosehead Lager, I mean that in the nicest possible way.

After all, Denyse has more backbone than all those worms at DI because she enabled comments on her blog. Pro and Con. Not a lot of vitriol there, from what I read, just the usual banter between rational people and Heddle.

I refrained from posting a lampoon on her site because, after all, she is a comedy writer. I can't take the competition.

Good blog, but: "distantiating"? When I was an editor the red pencil would have been out, for sure...

Not that I'm distancing myself from your point or anything.

Not to mention the other gaffes; "Darwinisn", "to dumb".

I'm willing to work for PT as a copy editor for the price of a few attaboys and a chance to share a pitcher if that ever becomes convenient.

Doesn't Telic Thoughts also allow comments from both sides? A quick visit showed some evolutionist posts.. maybe they are just less efficient at deleting than Dembski. Does anyone here have much experience posting on Telic Thoughts?

Re: "Or, as we say here in Toronto, Canada, "smart like streetcars.""

Both my brothers lived in Toronto for years.
Two of my nieces have lived there all their lives.
My first wife was born and brought up in Toronto, and had family there.
I have several good friends who were born and brought up in Toronto.
I have visited there about 50 times, usually for several days at a time.

I have NEVER heard anyone in Toronto or anywhere else say "smart like streetcars".

Of course, this has no implications as to the accuracy of the rest of O'Leary's writings....

I agree with John Wilkins. "Distantiate" is hideous. What on earth is wrong with "distance"?

I have NEVER heard anyone in Toronto or anywhere else say "smart like streetcars".

— Bruce McNeely

errrm, isn't it smithsonian institution?

I say we all start saying Distantiate and see how long it takes to "become a word." Then, the dictionary writers of the future will wonder why we bothered. It'll be great.

I wrote to the Smithsonian, as suggested... not programmed... suggested. An act, you'll note, that contra-distantiated me from my fellow Darwinists...

Oh, and while I'm at it... Why is O'Leary calling us all Darwinbots when Christians routinely threaten boycotts of major corporations to prevent them from sponsoring things that they don't like... Or has she never heard of Microsoft?

Hi from another Torontonian. "Smart as a streetcar" sounds new to me, too. I propose an alternate form: "smart as Denyse O'Leary".

I can't say I've ever heard any of my Toronto friends say "smart like streetcars" before either, but then I'm from Oshawa so what do I know, :-). Although those things are annoying to get stuck behind when you are heading down Queen St.

Doesn't Telic Thoughts also allow comments from both sides? A quick visit showed some evolutionist posts.. maybe they are just less efficient at deleting than Dembski. Does anyone here have much experience posting on Telic Thoughts?

I also live in Toronto, and can verify that the saying does exist. The full version is:
"Strong like bull, smart like streetcar"
You don't run into it every day, mind you - you have to watch for the right moment in the conversation.

Ah-ha!

Apparently "strong as bull, smart as streetcar" is a translation/adaptation of a Ukrainian proverb, brought to Toronto by that community.

Doesn't Telic Thoughts also allow comments from both sides? A quick visit showed some evolutionist posts.. maybe they are just less efficient at deleting than Dembski. Does anyone here have much experience posting on Telic Thoughts?

Heh, that's pretty good. Going to have to use that.

It seems to me that Denyse O'Leary was as dumb as a bag of hammers for claiming that the Smithsonian was "warming to intelligent design" (her exact words) when that clearly wasn't the case. She continues to say that the Smithsonian is showing this film. Oddly enough I haven't seen any criticism of her from ID proponents for getting these very basic facts wrong, and in doing so contributing to a chain of events that resulted in the Smithsonian Institution withdrawing its cosponsorship of the film.

I suppose it's ironic that this entire chain of events came about at least in part because in getting its film shown at the Smithsonian the Discovery Institute managed (intentionally or uninentionally--hmmm, I wonder which) to dupe a lot of people into thinking the Smithsonian was somehow endorsing "intelligent design"--including Denyse--thus forcing the Smithsonian to take steps to distance itself from that misperception.

And in all of this, few people (at least in the ID community) are asking the very basic question: why did the Seattle-based Discovery Institute choose the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC as the location to show its film in the first place?

hus forcing the Smithsonian to take steps to distance itself from that misperception.

— MrDarwin

Well done, Bayesian Bouffant, FCD; we should always correctify our misunderestimations!

Another thing interesting about O'Leary is the "never speak well of the opposition" sort of thing she seems to have going. Faced with perfectly reasonable behavior on the part of the Smithsonian in their principled refunding of money to the DI and fulfilling their role as physical host, O'Leary lashes out at other targets.

Ah, for the days of "Find the good and praise it."

I have gone on the record to correct mistakes made concerning ID advocates. Has O'Leary done anything similar to correct misinformation spewed by ID advocates about working scientists in evolutionary biology?

A few words about commenting on Telic Thoughts. The "Memory Hole" feature is modeled after PT's own "Bathroom Wall", and was not installed to evade criticism. Authors are responsible for their own threads, so you might experience different standards of moderation, but we all try to be as fair and evenhanded as possible.

With regards to Tom's comment, it was moved to the Hole by mistake, and since we haven't yet installed a button for moving comments out of the Hole... well, it's still sitting there. However, our Resident Unpaid Programmer has told me he's on it.

I can confirm that since my last comment here, my comment at Telic Thoughts has been returned to its original position.

I know what a "memory hole" is from the viewpoint of system software -- it's an address space not decoded as a local RAM cycle by the memory management logic, allowing accesses within that space to be forwarded onto a bus for use by a bus-based device.

Does the "memory hole" at Telic Thoughts have anything to do with this meaning? If not, what is it intended to refer to?

Hi Flint,

The Memory Hole serves the same purpose as the Bathroom Wall at PT, namely to prevent posters from ruining the normal discourse, while still allowing their posts to be read. The name is inspired by George Orwell's novel 1984 and was chosen because it fits into our whole thoughts/mind theme. You can read more here.

Krauze:

Thanks. I haven't read 1984 for a long time, and it seems I need a refresher on it.

Hello. you won't believe this, but I found this thread because I was looking for uses of 'distantiate'! I'm reading a book called 'The Virgin Text; Fiction Sexuality and Ideology' (Jon Stratton, Harvester P, 1987) and found this:
'. . the woman as sexualised object - distantiated and fetishised in the same manner as the text . . .' (p.58)
so not finding it my big dictionary, or WordNet (or my brain - I'm doing a Phd and have a literature MA), I googled it and found you guys. I'm happy now - it is a bit of pretentious obfuscation designed to make a weak point sound better - just like your creationist friend's argument!

More power to your opposable thumbs - we don't have many flat-earthers round here (I'm in the UK).
Aidan

eschew obfuscation!

As an update on my experience at Telic Thoughts, I now find that every post I make there disappears within 12 hours. It does not go into the memory hole, or some other publicly accessible part of the blog. It just disappears.

In their comment guidelines I find that "Of course, any spam, threats, and material of a pornographic or violent nature will be deleted entirely." I can safely say that my comments contain no spam, threats, pornography or violence. So, their comment guidelines are misleading. They need an additional phrase indicating they will simply censor you if in debate you press them too closely when they disagree with you.

I will grant that if you simply stick with cliches so they can spin your comments as stereotyped, and you as not understanding ID, they are then happy to let comments stand.

Tom, your last post was just a huge copy and paste of my own response to you. It was deleted because you didn't write anything at all that was your own words. Other than that, if you posted in an old thread , it goes into a moderation cue. If no one is around to approve it, after a while, it just gets deleted.

Tom, your last post was just a huge copy and paste of my own response to you. It was deleted because you didn't write anything at all that was your own words.

That is actually a quite different post from the one you posted at telic thoughts. However, I can easily post this comment at the site and respond point by point.

By the way, if you think that your any of your posts are being deleted unjustifiably, feel free to e-mail me at my address, I will not only send it through if I see no reason why it should have been deleted, but I will subsequently respond point by point. I'll note that, in my opinion and experience, Tom has not offered any criticism that was not adequately addressed. What he does is just repetitively repeat or reword the same vacuous assertions in threads where those vacuous assertions aren't even the topic.

TelicThought is well known for deleting comments which do not meet the approval of its moderators. Nelson's response shows how ID friendly sites either do not allow comments or strongly moderate comments. Vacuous assertions are btw the hall mark of intelligent design.

That is actually a quite different post from the one you posted at telic thoughts. However, I can easily post this comment at the site and respond point by point.

I'll note that, in my opinion and experience, Tom has not offered any criticism that was not adequately addressed. What he does is just repetitively repeat or reword the same vacuous assertions in threads where those vacuous assertions aren't even the topic.

TelicThought is well known for deleting comments which do not meet the approval of its moderators. Nelson's response shows how ID friendly sites either do not allow comments or strongly moderate comments. Vacuous assertions are btw the hall mark of intelligent design.

Excerpt from "The Principles of Newspeak" An appendix to 1984 Written by : George Orwell in 1948 What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped 'false gods'. He did not need to know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the less he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the commandments of Jehovah: he knew, therefore, that all gods with other names or other attributes were false gods. In somewhat the same way, the party member knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible. His sexual life, for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words sexcrime (sexual immorality) and goodsex (chastity). Sexcrime covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them separately, since they were all equally culpable, and, in principle, all punishable by death.

The C vocabulary. The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms. These resembled the scientific terms in use today, and were constructed from the same roots, but the usual care was taken to define them rigidly and strip them of undesirable meanings