User:SamHB

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INACTIVE FOR 66 DAYS (until August 28, 2018)



INACTIVE FOR 66 DAYS (until May 20, 2018)



INACTIVE FOR 66 DAYS (until February 16, 2018)



INACTIVE FOR 66 DAYS (until November 19, 2017)



NO-CLAPTRAP ZONE
THIS USER HAS ZERO TOLERANCE FOR NONSENSE



I also have zero tolerance for

  • Idiotic behavior.
  • Sycophancy. I note in particular those people that try to take Andy's side in controversies over relativity, but run away when asked questions that require actual understanding of the subject. It's really very transparent. I've developed good "spider sense" on this issue. More on this topic below.
  • Childish behavior. Children should be seen and not heard given block authority.


So here are some essays that eschew claptrap:

What's that last one doing here? Funny you should ask. It's really just the same as the main Pussy Riot article, but it removes the claim that only leftists oppose Vladimir Putin. A look at the history of the main article will show what's going on. Apparently there are people here who think that opposing a thug who has his political opponents murdered in the street while security cameras mysteriously malfunction is something only "liberals" and "leftists" do. I would like to think that opposition to such a person would be something liberals and conservatives could all agree on. But not here.


Anyone who wants to contact me may do so at sam4557@gmail.com.

At present, I make edits to those things that I believe I can improve (mostly science and math) and stay away from those things that are utterly hopeless (like evolution, creationism, and why year 20XX is going to be the worst year ever for evolution or atheism or whatever.) I also (believe it or not, and some people don't) try to encourage well-intentioned new users, and try to make this a more orderly and friendly place. I also engage in a lot of good-natured banter with Cons. I also occasionally find myself amused by the way some users seem to stalk me.

I am seriously "behind the curve" on the latest high-tech gadgetry. I own a laptop computer (several of them in fact) and am quite literate about actual computer science. I do not have "FIOS" or any similar things; just plain cable internet. I do not use things like Skype or Instant Messaging (or Tinder, or Facebook, or SnapChat, or Pinterest, or Twitter ..., though I have, under duress, used IM at work. However, I am capable of high-bandwidth communication with people through email, using attachments when the information transfer quantity requires it. People desiring to contact me are strongly encouraged to use the email account given above.

In addition to the email above, I have accounts, all under the same name (SamHB) at Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Ameriwiki (I am an administrator), and that other place that rhymes with "national picky".


There is a section about the Daily Beast article on my talk page. It was originally on mainpage talk, and seems to have disappeared.




A few words about vandalism and parody in science and math articles. There's a lot of it. I have reverted a lot of it. Just in the last few weeks I cleaned up some parody in the articles on Calcium and on Gabriel's horn. (Well, in the latter case I just pointed it out.) Both parodists' accounts are still active.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that there is a lot more parody in math and science articles. It's just too much for one person to fix.


Stop hand.svg
This user has been blocked 22 times.
SP This user knows how to use "Show preview".
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This user knows that evolution explains the origin of species.
Earthsat.jpeg This user knows that the Earth is billions of years old according to conservative scientific measurements.
Universe expansion.png
This user knows that the Big Bang explains the origin of the Universe.
UserCross.jpg This user is a Protestant.
UserCross.jpg
This user respects your right to be a fundamentalist, but does not necessarily accept whatever scientific conclusions you might draw from that.
Books.jpg
In addition to his Ph.D. thesis, this user has written a number of books, journal articles, anthology contributions, technical reports, and original wiki pages, in a variety of media, (hardcover books, print journals, internet pages), as well as some invited video presentations, on a variety of topics. None of them are YouTube videos, though this person has appeared in other people's YouTube videos on a few occasions.
John McCain official portrait 2009.jpg
This user considers John McCain to have been a war hero, patriot, great American, great Senator, and great Republican. He was not a RINO.
Horse picture.jpg
While this user deplores deviant and perverted sexual behavior, it is not a source of embarrassment, or a sore point, with him.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for physical phenomena at scales for which field theories are applicable.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the result of the Pound-Rebka experiment.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the connection between radioactive decay energies and the precise isotopic weights that are summarized in periodic table charts hanging in science classrooms all over the world.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the precession of the perihelion of Mercury.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the observed frequency anomalies in GPS satellites.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the "frame-dragging" effects observed by the "gravity probe B" satellite.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the observed behavior of pulsar PSR_B1913_16.
600px-Albert Einstein Head.jpg
This user knows that relativity provides a good explanation for the 2015 and 2017 observations of gravitational waves emitted by merging black holes.
Breitbart This user does not support Breitbart News or its lies, bias, and fake news.

Contents

Inflating the statistics on COVID vaccination acceptance

A Mainpage-right article, placed at 18:28, 24 April 2021, says

The CDC and other health authorities are inflating the statistics on COVID vaccination acceptance. In fact, many fewer people are taking it than the CDC says.

The item links to the external page [1], which is an article by Bradley Dean on the "conservative news and views" web site. Since the claims in that posting are so utterly at odds with what every sensible person knows to be true, I decided to check it out.

First, I ignored the Bible quotes sprinkled through it. These quotes all predate the Coronavirus and the vaccine. Why some people sprinkle completely irrelevant Bible quotes into their writing is beyond me.

Ephesians 4:14
John 8:44
Deuteronomy 16:19
Leviticus 17:11, 19:19
Psalm 94:20
Romans 1:18

Now one of the major points of the article seems to be:

The truth be told, the only ones that we can verify that are dying are the ones that have taken their vaccines (Leviticus 17:11, 19:19).

The only ones that you can verify? Other people seem to be able to verify over 1/2 a million people in this country that aren't just dying; they have died. And most of them died before a vaccine became available, so they couldn't have "taken their vaccines".

You shouldn't just make stuff up. Especially when it flies in the face of the reality that every sensible person knows.

Another major statement is

I have a friend that is the main law enforcement officer in his county. One day, he voluntarily told me that we are being told that 75% of the elderly have been vaccinated by the mainstream media and yet, these numbers do not fit. He went on and said that we have 147,000 alone in this county. He said that he had the real numbers in front of him. And out of that 147,000 only 5,400 people had received their vaccinations. Friends, that is not 75%; that is less than 3%.
Who is this friend?
What county?
Who are "the elderly"? How is that defined? Isn't 75% a suspiciously imprecise number?
We are being told this? By whom?
"These numbers do not fit." You're probably right. But it would be good to know that the numbers actually are, and what they are supposed to fit with.
He has the real numbers in front of him? Good. Publish them. Just copy and paste them into the article. Internet space is cheap. That's better than telling us what an anonymous friend told you.

Pseudoscience

A very interesting web site:[1].

Thanks to User:Dataclarifier for bringing this to my attention.

Is Conservapedia proven right about relativity and other similar topics in science?

It does not appear so.

The material below was removed by the site owner in mid-October, 2020.

I restored it with the edit comment: Restore material that is carefully researched, well established, and widely accepted by experts in the field.

It was taken out again, by someone who is not known to have demonstrated any expertise in relativity: Undo revision 1697217 by SamHB (talk) only according to liberals who believe and accept pseudo-scientific hogwash

Date of Conservapedia's statement Conservapedia's statement liberal claptrap in response Result Date of Result
February 27, 2011 "Despite wasting millions of taxpayer dollars searching for gravity waves predicted by the theory, none have ever been found."[2] This was actually true at the time, but the implication was that gravitational waves would never be found. The (perhaps overzealous) researchers at the "BICEP2" project claimed to have discovered evidence of gravitational waves from the "big bang".[3] This was shot down in 2015: "Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead."[4] But in 2015 and 2016, gravitational waves from colliding black holes were irrefutably detected by the LIGO instruments. See Gravitational waves. Confirmed.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]

[15][16][17][18]

January 21, 2016

Speaking of Google searches

Apropos of this, note this, from Google: No results found for "sensible creationist websites".

An address at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, 23 Sept, 2019

"My message is that we'll be watching you.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.
"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.
"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.
"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.
"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.
"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
"Thank you."

Stuff Cons keeps vaping and re-creating (excuse me, resurrecting)

I don't want these pearls of wisdom to be lost, so I'm going to start saving them. Some of them are incredibly stupid "atheism and flyswatters" sorts of things, many are "atheism (or evolution) is going to have its worst year ever in 2014/2015/2016/2017/2018/2019", and some of them appear to be dialog with the folks at RitionalWaki [sp]. The latter often have the word "gentlemen" in the title. The folks at RW seem to refer to these things as the "red telephone".

Cons has "un-vaped" the actual article; it is here. He has vaped the version in my sandbox, which is why it's a redlink above.

Essay: The thrill of Christian victory and the agony of atheist defeat

Well, gosh, that was fun while it lasted. That page, and its two charming pictures, were only up for a few minutes. But I did enjoy the cute picture of the two children in ecstasy over whatever they were watching on their computer screens. It's too bad Cons deleted it so quickly. Does he not take himself seriously?

He's really been on a tear these last few months. Including changing the pixel size of an illustration here. Is this something to get higher web site statistics? Wouldn't giving the correct context for that quote (see about 10 sections below) be a better way to give Conservapedia a better reputation?

I assume he's on a tear because he's going to make a New Year's resolution to stop this silly behavior, and lead a productive and focused year in 2019. I wish him well. I will also try to be more productive and focused next year. SamHB (talk) 17:24, 24 December 2018 (EST)

20XX is/was/will be the worst year ever for evolution/atheism

  • 2012 - "Is 2012 on its way to be the Worst Year in the History of Darwinism?" and "Internet atheism has taken a fall in the last 5 years and in 2012

"[19]

  • 2013 - "You see atheists and evolutionists: 2013 is the worst year in the history of atheism and Darwinism - just like [sic] we predicted!"[20]

John McCain, an American hero

John McCain official portrait 2009.jpg

His farewell statement, written just prior to his death:

“My fellow Americans, whom I have gratefully served for sixty years, and especially my fellow Arizonans,
“Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.
“I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on Earth. I feel that way even now as I prepare for the end of my life. I have loved my life, all of it. I have had experiences, adventures and friendships enough for ten satisfying lives, and I am so thankful. Like most people, I have regrets. But I would not trade a day of my life, in good or bad times, for the best day of anyone else’s.
“I owe that satisfaction to the love of my family. No man ever had a more loving wife or children he was prouder of than I am of mine. And I owe it to America. To be connected to America’s causes ― liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people ― brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
“‘Fellow Americans’ ― that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process.
“We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.
“We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.
“Ten years ago, I had the privilege to concede defeat in the election for president. I want to end my farewell to you with the heartfelt faith in Americans that I felt so powerfully that evening.
"I feel it powerfully still.
“Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.
“Farewell, fellow Americans. God bless you, and God bless America.”


From an opinion column in the Washington Post, by Stephen Wrage, a professor in the political science department at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. The piece reflects the author’s views and not those of the Navy or any other organization. It refers to the U.S. Naval Academy graduation on May 25, 2018, where President Trump will speak, and to emails he has received from several midshipmen, such as:

"We are under no obligation to clap for Donald Trump. Trump wants the image of young service members cheering him on and we can deny him that image."
"We are taught selflessness; he practices narcissism."
"If he is a role model, it is only in the exact opposite."

Wrage goes on:

"... There is no question, however, how the officers whom the midshipmen report to will behave: They will offer the quiet deference they owe to the office of the president. They speak with full academic freedom in their classrooms, but they maintain military decorum at a ceremony."
"Decades later, officers remember their commissioning. One Marine I know recalled whole passages he heard from the speech at his graduation in 1993, 25 years ago. That year, John McCain came to speak and, as they say, he killed it."
McCain told them
As ensigns and second lieutenants, the character of the young sailors and Marines entrusted to your care will be formed in large part by their appreciation of your character. You are where leadership begins. You are the models who stand just past the sergeants and chiefs, and those under your command will derive from your behavior the direction of their own lives. Their firm respect for you, on which their lives and our security will depend, will be determined by how faithfully you keep, on duty and off, the code you learned here.
At least one Marine in the crowd will recall the way McCain closed his speech:
I will go to my grave in gratitude to my Creator for allowing me to stand witness to such courage and honor. And so will you. My time is slipping by. Yours is fast approaching. You will know where your duty lies. You will know. God bless you. Semper Fi. Fair winds and following seas.

Moral clarity

"The administration’s current family separation policy is an affront to the decency of the American people, and contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded. The administration has the power to rescind this policy. It should do so now." -- John McCain, Jun 18, 2018.

Other opinions

"He's dying anyway" -- Kelly Sadler, White House aide, May 10 2018, on McCain's opposition to a nominee for CIA director.

"Torture Is Good, ‘It Worked on John McCain'" -- Thomas McInerney, Fox News contributor, May 10, 2018.

Sarah Palin

I do not agree with the decision not to invite Ms. Palin to the funeral. While I strongy disagree with just about everything she says, she was his running mate in an historic election. The decision was apparently made by McCain's widow.

Bible verses, Matthew 5:1-11

  • And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
  • And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
  • Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  • Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
  • Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
  • Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
  • Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
  • Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
  • Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
  • Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  • Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Bible verses, Luke 2:7-14

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

The current occupant of the White House

  • Knows essentially nothing about American history.
  • Knows essentially nothing about American government.
  • Knows essentially nothing about compassion.
  • Knows essentially nothing about empathy
  • Knows essentially nothing about forgiveness.
  • Knows essentially nothing about contrition.
  • Knows essentially nothing about redemption.
  • Knows essentially nothing about Christianity.
  • Knows essentially nothing about the Bible.
  • Knows essentially nothing about self-control.
  • Knows essentially nothing about ethics.
  • Knows essentially nothing about patriotism.
  • Knows essentially nothing about service.
  • Knows essentially nothing about honesty.
  • Knows essentially nothing about science.
  • Knows essentially nothing about healthy eating.
  • Knows essentially nothing about a healthy lifestyle.
  • Knows essentially nothing about exercise.
  • Knows very little about American geography.
  • Knows very little about spelling.
  • Knows absolutely nothing about respect for women.
  • Knows absolutely nothing about the sanctity of marriage.

Patriotism

If people want to leave our country they can; if they don't want to love our country, if they don't want to fight for our country, they can.

—Donald Trump, who avoided service in the VietNam war by claiming bone spurs, July 17, 2019

Religion

The fact is, no President has ever done what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself!

—Donald Trump, Dec 20, 2019 [2]

More patriotism

U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman's comments on recent Ohio cases involving political violence, while announcing federal criminal charges against someone:

Now let me speak generally to those who are advocates for white supremacy, or white nationalism. I am talking directly to you. The Constitution protects your right to speak, your right to think, and your right to believe. If you want to waste the blessings of liberty by going down a path of hatred and failed ideologies, that is your choice.
Democracy allows you to test those ideas in the public forum. If you want to submit your beliefs to the American people and get their reaction, please be my guest. Keep this in mind, though. Thousands and thousands of young Americans already voted with their lives to ensure that this same message of intolerance, death, and destruction would not prevail - you can count their ballots by visiting any American cemetery in North Africa, Italy, France, or Belgium and tallying the white headstones. You can also recite the many names of civil rights advocates who bled and died in opposing supporters of those same ideologies of hatred. Their voices may be distant, but they can still be heard.
Go ahead and make your case for Nazism, a white nation, and racial superiority. The Constitution may give you a voice, but it doesn’t guarantee you a receptive audience.
Your right to free speech does not automatically mean that people will agree with you. In fact, you have an absolute God-given and inalienable right to be on the losing end of this argument.
What you don’t have, though, is the right to take out your frustration at failure in the political arena by resorting to violence. You don’t have any right to threaten the lives and well-being of our neighbors. They have an absolute God-given and inalienable right to live peacefully, to worship as they please, to be free from fear that they might become a target simply because of the color of their skin, the country of their birth, or the form of their prayer.
Threatening to kill Jewish people, gunning down innocent Latinos on a weekend shopping trip, planning and plotting to perpetrate murders in the name of a nonsense racial theory, sitting to pray with God-fearing people who you execute moments later - those actions don’t make you soldiers, they make you criminals. Law enforcement doesn’t go to war with cowards who break the law, we arrest them and send them to prison.
As I said, this case was made by a concerned member of the public and a responsive police officer. That’s all it takes to stop you. The men and women of our community are allied with law enforcement. And every single member of law enforcement took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Many of us have taken that oath several times - as police officers, federal agents, prosecutors, military members, and elected officials.
Together, we represent the absolute best of what America has to offer. Our skin is every color you can imagine, our families come from a hundred different countries and a hundred different faiths. What makes us different doesn’t split us apart, though. Those differences are insignificant compared to what is the same about us - we are united in our commitment to each other, to our families, and to our communities. We are the living embodiment of everything you say is impossible.
Together, we are united to ensure that you commit no further acts of violence in the name of your beliefs. When you wake up tomorrow morning, no matter what time, I want you to remember something. You can’t set your alarm clock early enough to beat us out of bed. The men and women of law enforcement don’t wake up. We never went to sleep. We are always awake. And arm in arm with the public, when your hatred leads you to break the law, we will do everything we can to be there to stop you.

Roy Moore

I see that that cesspool of fake news known as Breitbart.com has been accusing Beverly Nelson, one of Roy Moore's accusers, of forgery. That is, of writing the note below Mr. Moore's inscription in her yearbook and asserting that Moore wrote that note himself. I don't have time to do my usual careful analysis of what's going in on this case, but I'll just present a few web links:

Religious people and Donald Trump

An article from June 2016 (just before the election)[21] says "Finally, it’s not a coincidence that religiously observant Christians were least likely to be seduced by Donald Trump’s “post-truth” style politics in the GOP primary."

America

This little bit of patriotism was inspired by a recent discussion on my talk page.
The reader's attention is particularly drawn to the last two lines of the second stanza.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!


O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!


O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!


O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

People who write about relativity but don't know what they are talking about

I occasionally run into people wishing to weigh in on relativity, opposing it. This of course sets off my sycophancy alarm. They seem to be agreeing with Andy with very little understanding of the topic. When asked for an explanation, they typically run away. To be clear, Andy is the only person I know of that can communicate relativity denial with any degree of effectiveness or erudition; all others that I have seen are either sycophants, vandals, or just plain troublemakers. (Though I'm openminded enough to allow that another articulate relativity denier could show up in the future.)

Arguments for or against relativity are conducted at a rather sophisticated level here at Conservapedia. The topic is not for amateurs.

Here is my homework assignment for people wishing to join the anti-relativity bandwagon. Read the following articles:

How NOT to proselytize

User:Conservative ("Cons") has the laudable goal of introducing people to Christianity on the pages of this wiki. However, I don't think the incredibly obsessive way he does this is likely to be effective.

  • He seems obsessed with svelte Indian Christian ladies and their graceful dancing style, as though that should persuade people to embrace Christianity. (Many references in this article.)
"Well, gosh. Those Indian Christian ladies are so graceful, that must show that Jesus is the son of God. I'd better join a church right away."
"Well, gosh. Ken Ham likes to yodel when climbing the Triceratops model at the Creation Museum, and when climbing mountains. I guess that shows that the universe was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago."
  • He also points out that the Swiss like to yodel, here.
"Well, gosh. The Swiss like to yodel. Jesus is lord!"
  • He also likes to point out, in too many places to list here, that non-Western cultures are expanding at the expense of traditional American cultures. He says this with a degree of glee that makes me wonder whose side he is on.
"Well, gosh. Non-Western societies are rapidly growing due to their high birth rate. I guess I'd better convert to Islam."
  • He points out the atheists aren't as good-looking as religious people here, as though there is something meaningful that we are supposed to take away from this notion.
"Well, gosh. Women don't seem to want to date me. I guess I'm ugly. I'd better join a Bible study group at my college. That will make me better-looking, and I'll get lots of dates."
  • And then there's this gem.
"Well, gosh. I'm kind of short. Most women I know are taller than I am, and seem not to want to date men shorter than they are. Maybe if I go to church regularly I'll grow taller. There is a causal relationship, isn't there? It's right in the essay: "Get over it little man, shortness is a causal factor for militant atheism!"
  • He has also been pointing out for several years and "20XX is going to be (or already is) the worst year ever for atheism. He even made a past-tense claim about a year that is still happening here.
"Well, gosh. After all this, are atheists still around? How come I still see so many of them? Does the existence of God not depend on something someone once said in an elevator?"
  • He had recently been obsessed with potholes in British streets, even putting an article on the main page for a while. He apparently wants to use the state of British roads to make some quasi-political, quasi-religious, quasi-scientific argument.
"Well, gosh. There are potholes in streets in the UK, and Charles Darwin (more than 100 years ago) was British. I guess that means that evolution did not occur. I'm glad people can see these scientific principles so clearly."

Most of his "articles" contain enormous numbers of references to other of his articles, as though that counts as a "reference".

I would really love to see User:Conservative slowly and painfully burn

his opponents in a debate.

Unfortunately, I'm not likely to see that, in view of his appalling lack of skill at convincing people that he is worth debating. Perhaps the most recent example is his page Essay: Debate challenge to new atheist Kyle Kulinski. Mr. Kulinski has made it very clear, in this video, that he will not debate anyone at Conservapedia, and has no respect for the way the admins marshall their arguments.

There are other instances of Cons backing out when people were willing to debate him (I was actually involved in one of these.) Perhaps the most famous case was one in which a person offered to donate 12,500 British pounds to a Christian charity, but Cons backed out. The web site on which this took place cannot be named here, but one can Google the exact phrase "actually laughable collections"

While Cons's debating and general rhetorical skill are appalling, there is one tactic that he is exceptionally good at—lifting quotes out of context. Probably the best example of this is the article Essay:_Atheist_PZ_Myers:_"I_despair_over_atheism_as_I_watch_it_burn...". This is, like so many of his other articles and essays, really just a collection of links to other of his articles. But it has an illustration showing a burning house, the same caption as the article itself: "Atheist PZ Myers: 'I despair over atheism as I watch it burn...'".

What's in that ellipsis? Well, there is an external reference to this article at PZ Myers' "Pharyngula" blog. The actual quote from that article was "I despair over atheism, as I watch it burn away allies and embrace the default attitude of patronizing bro-ness." It seems to be about feminism and PZ Myers' atheism. Or something. It's actually quite boring, like most of his writing, and I haven't read it.

But taking the phrase "watch it [atheism] burn away allies" and turning it into "watch it burn" is the most astonishing act of quoting out of context that I have ever seen.

Reinhold Niebuhr Quote (well, paraphrase)

God grant me the serenity to accept the things that are above the table of contents, the courage to change the things that are below it, and the wisdom to know the difference

What does that refer to? It refers to the fact that someone recently added some sycophantic rubbish to the Second Law of Thermodynamics page. Fortunately, it was above the TOC, so I didn't have to move it. Unfortunately (fortunately, actually) AugustO is even less patient with nonsense than I am.

Never asked God for forgiveness?

So help me understand why you thought God could use a man who’d said he’d never asked God for forgiveness, who serially committed adultery, who said he could grab women by the genitals, who cheated contractors and workers ... [who] didn’t even know how to say “Second Corinthians,” which he called “Two Corinthians,” and when asked for his favorite Bible verse struggled to name one until he landed on “an eye for an eye.” And you know what Jesus said about that one.

—Susan M. Shaw, Oregon State University

Bible verses, Matthew 6:19-21

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Bible verses, Matthew 25:34-36

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me, I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Bible verse, Galatians 6:7

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Bible verse, Matthew 23:12

And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

Bible verse, Leviticus 19:33-34

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Late August, 2016, Do ants harvest? Do snakes hear?

I don't know. I have no expertise in this field.

Early March, 2016, I get blocked, and then weird things happen

I was blocked by my friend, after replacing an incredibly asinine page with a delete notice. The original block was for one week, extended an hour later to two weeks. The next day the same person, after apparently being taken to the woodshed, unblocked me. (I nevertheless stayed away for three weeks.) This person then (perhaps after advice given in the woodshed) went to considerable lengths to inform me that the block had been lifted.

He left a note on my talk page:

== I shortened your block. ==
I shortened your block. You are now unblocked. Conservative (talk) 11:53, 8 March 2016 (EST)

And he sent me an email, to my sam4557@gmail.com account (which he had never used before):


Delivered-To: sam4557@gmail.com
Received: by ******** with HTTP; Tue, 8 Mar 2016 11:17:09 -0800 (PST)
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 14:17:09 -0500
Subject: re: You have been unblocked at Conservapedia
From: "********" <********>
To: sam4557@gmail.com
Dear Sam,
I unblocked you at Conservapedia.
Sincerely,
User: Conservativie

(He often types his own user name incorrectly.)

And another note on my talk page, to be sure I see it, in case I don't check the sam4557 mail very often:

== I sent you an email and... ==
SamHB,
I sent you an email.
Second, let me know when you get this message. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Conservative (talk)

To which I left this reply: (All this was taking place on my talk page at the time, later moved here to my user page.)

See my user page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SamHB (talk)

I no longer remember exactly what reply was referenced.

Then, a few weeks later, things got quite weird. He sent me 3 more emails:


Delivered-To: sam4557@gmail.com
Received: by ******** with HTTP; Sat, 2 Apr 2016 15:07:44 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 18:07:44 -0400
Subject: re: talk page post
From: "********" <********>
To: Sam Becker <sam4557@gmail.com>
SamHB.
Do you have Skype? If so, we can talk about the TAR matter.
If you have a Skype account, what is your Skype name?
Sincerely,
User: Conservative

Delivered-To: sam4557@gmail.com
Received: by ******** with HTTP; Sat, 2 Apr 2016 17:07:39 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 20:07:39 -0400
Subject: Re: talk page post
From: "********" <********>
To: Sam Becker <sam4557@gmail.com>
Sam,
I was hoping that you would get the email soon given that I have some free time tonight.
But since you didn't get the email soon, there is no need for the Skype call. I think the TAR matter will be settled via the talk pages.

Delivered-To: sam4557@gmail.com
Received: by ******** with HTTP; Sat, 2 Apr 2016 19:12:47 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 22:12:47 -0400
Subject: Re: talk page post
From: "********" <********>
To: Sam Becker <sam4557@gmail.com>
I see you are active editing again.
Do you have a Skype name you wish to share? I am free to Skype a bit tonight.

and left another note on my talk page about this:

I see you are editing again. Recheck your email. I sent you another email message. Conservative (talk) 22:17, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

I indirectly replied to all this on this user page (search above for "behind the curve") stating that I do not use Skype. I never replied to any of this by email.

Then this appeared on my talk page:

== The prank that never happened ==
As you know, I/we recently invited you to Skype call about a matter.
Second, I know you are skeptical that the User: Conservative account has been used by more than one editor (despite the evidence to the contrary. Evidence that a website which has devotees of CP noted).

[He really likes to misspell user names, by putting in a blank, perhaps to make them unclickable/unpasteable.]

Well, the Skype call was going to employ voice changing software so the voice of User: Conservativetism would be many. With proper notice, the various editors of User: Conservatism could have spoken to you via a Skype group/conference call. :) Conservative (talk) 01:09, 3 April 2016 (EDT)

[And this time it's "User:Conservativetism".]

Wait! He was going to use some kind of "voice changing software" to rig up a Skype conference call with me in order to "prove" that he is multiple people?????? Really?


Hey, he asked me via talk page to e-mail him and then via e-mail to Skype him. What you suppose he's doing? He asked 1990'sguy the same thing, I believe.--Nathan (talk) 14:44, 4 June 2017 (EDT)

Early December, 2015, On the Curious Matter of Sex With Horses

I'm not an expert in poetry, atheist or otherwise, but I found Atheist poetry, and its talk page, to be a welcome contrast from most of the topics Cons[22] writes about. Cons got into a spirited discussion of the topic with User:JohnSelway and User:JohnZ on the talk page. So I congratulated him on his good taste in this matter, with a note on that talk page. But I also expressed disappointment that he had seemingly grown tired of the poetry topic, and had gone back to writing about bestiality.

At about that time, he went on an editing binge, making 43 edits on the subjects of "Atheism and bestiality" or horses, including the creation of the article Essay: I say NAAAAAY to atheism and evolutionism!, complete with a picture of a horse, which clearly suggests a particular interest in the topic of sex with horses.

For some inexplicable reason, Cons moved my comment to the talk page for Atheism and bestiality, and wrote a long reply about bestiality.

Not having VargasMilan's vocabulary, I am at a loss for words to express how revolting I find that topic, and Cons's extensive writing about bestiality in general. Conservapedia was originally intended as a learning resource for home-school students, presumably in the junior high and high school age range. Everyone is encouraged to watch this video to see Conservapedia's original mission, as explained by Andy Schlafly himself.

Now, to reply to Cons's remarks:

>> SamHB, because you are an evolutionist and a defender of evolutionary pseudoscience ...

I prefer the term "one who accepts the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution". And I don't recognize the term "evolutionary pseudoscience". Sorry.

>> (along with holding to liberal theology which often tends to be anti-supernatural in character)

I believe I pointed out to you, at User talk:SamHB#Daily Beast evolution article, the significance of a comma in distinguishing a "restrictive clause" from a "nonrestrictive clause". By not using a comma after "theology", you are saying that, of all liberal theologies, I hold to one of those that "often tends to be anti-supernatural in character". You're right; I do. But perhaps you meant to say that all liberal theologies often tend to be anti-supernatural in character. If that is what you meant, you should have used a comma.

>> I can understand why the evolutionary belief and bestiality and Atheism and bestiality articles are upsetting to you

No, those articles don't upset me at all, except insofar as they make a mockery of Conservapedia's goals.

>> especially since you cannot find a single factual error in these articles.

We've been through this before, relating to various other things you've written. Find a factual error? I can hardly find a coherent sentence!

Mid-October, 2015, another vape-a-thon by Cons, over Pat Tillman

Disclaimer: I am not familiar with the case of Pat Tillman, except that it was apparently a tragic friendly-fire battlefield death in Afghanistan. I have absolutely no information on whether he was an atheist, and apparently no one at Conservapedia does either.

But that didn't stop Cons from getting really worked up in a giant kerfuffle with some people (mostly user "Ebionite") over whether he was an atheist. Now Ebionite was obviously a troll, and a foul-mouthed one at that, and deserved to be blocked. But he really got Cons worked up. Cons vaped (oversighted, "burned the evidence") the discussion 23 times in 51 minutes. I didn't save the stuff (I no longer log Cons's goings-on in detail) but the gist of the argument was the idea that Tillman could not have been an atheist because Cons knows that "No atheist would do [XYZ]." All this in spite of statements by people that knew Mr. Tillman personally.

Sorry Cons, but whether someone is an atheist does not depend on, and is in fact totally unrelated to, what goes on inside YOUR head. And the fact that you say "there are no good reasons to be an atheist" does not mean that there are no atheists in the world. It just means that you have not thought this through. There are atheists in this world. I know a number of them.

September 23, 2015, in which Cons leaves a note on my talk page about "User: Math" and then vapes it

Oh, Cons! Bad, naughty Cons! You left a note for me, and then vaped it. (You did the same on VargasMilan's talk page, telling him that you had sent him an email.) In fact, you've been doing an enormous amount of vaping lately. One might wonder whether this is because you are starting to be embarrassed about how many tiny edits it takes for you to say something. As I believe I told you elsewhere, the fix for that is to compose what you want to say in an editor, think about it, polish it into the form you want, and then upload it. I believe you said at about the same time that you were going to vape ("oversight") things more, in order to keep the Recent Changes log from getting so cluttered. Well, I'm sure you've noticed that, with the new wiki software, acts of vaping are even more visible than they were before. It just makes the problem worse. I'd suggest that you go back to just editing the way you used to. The bean-counters over at ritionalwaki will continue doing their thing, of course.

By the way, you shouldn't ever revert, much less vape, things on talk pages, especially users' talk pages. Talk pages should simply be archived. And I think that vaping another user's talk page is particularly rude. I wouldn't be surprised if VargasMilan was offended by what you did. (Actually, I would be surprised, since his notions of proper behavior seem to be different from mine.)

Now, getting to the issue at hand, you told me about a user called "User: Math". Complete with the space after the colon that you so charmingly like to put into these things. You apparently thought I would be interested in what such a person had to say, presumably because you know that I am interested in mathematics. A quick check (removing the space, of course) showed that there is no such user at Conservapedia. You gave a web URL. I went there, and, sure enough, there is a user called "Math". So I looked around at his profile and contributions. I found this and this (his profile) and this. When I got to the last one, I thought "Aha! I understand it now! This is why Cons is interested in this guy. Homosexuality and the Bible."

Unfortunately, I found no connection at all with mathematics in anything that I saw, though I admit I didn't look into every nook and cranny. You apparently thought I'd be interested in what someone with a screen name of "Math" would say. But no, I'm not interested in a fundamentalist crackpot who just happens to have chosen the name "Math" as his screen name on a crackpot backwater blog, and writes not about math but about homosexuality and the Bible.

Then you also indicated that this person might have something to teach me about the Generalized linear model. So I went and refreshed my memory about this. As I recall, you once tried to win an argument (Evolution, Atheism? Who cares?) with someone by telling him that he needed to know more about the generalized linear model. And yet your edits to that article were little more than links to the statsoft web site, and showed no actual knowledge of the topic. I called you out on this, and challenged you to a debate on the subject. I was actually quite specific in one of my challenges, suggesting that we could give each other some data sets to analyze. My intention was, of course, to find out whether you knew anything about the algorithm that begins with L-M. Fortunately for you, your bunny-hole was close by.

In any case, no, I don't think user "Math" at the bible discussion forum web site has anything to say to me on the subject of the generalized linear model. But my debate offer still stands. One thing you might do, short of a debate but still demonstrating some degree of mathematical erudition, would be to edit the Generalized linear model page and say, in your own words, what binomial distributions and Poisson distributions are.

Early September, 2015, in which Cons exhibits his expertise in computer network behavior, gets shot down, and then claims he is right and asks me to apologize

The exchange is here.

Conservapedia's server experienced a serious storm of sporadic server outages. Cons weighed in with the advice "get a faster browser", and was totally shot down by knowledgeable people—AugustO, Bringreaganback, MelH, and myself. I explained in great detail why Cons's theories were incorrect. Cons thrashed around for a bit, and then cited an article in the "askleo" web site. He attempted to make that web site seem authoritative by citing its Alexa rank of about 25,000. This isn't necessary; any technically literate person can look at the web site and see for himself that Leo knows what he is talking about. Alexa ranks don't make a site more authoritative. And that's a good thing, because Conservapedia's rank is about 105,000. (By the way, ritionalwaki's rank is about 23,000, a little better than askleo.)

Leo says that he is very familiar with the error. In the article, he repeatedly says that it's a server error, not affected by anything the user might do. Finally, in the "some straws to grasp at" section, he mentions some things that a user might do, including trying a different (not faster; different) browser. But he makes clear that those are very far-fetched scenarios.

In late January, Cons changed the phrase "including trying a different (not faster; different) browser", from the paragraph above, to use boldface and a large font, and gave the edit comment "VICTORY". I am baffled by this. The "askleo" site mentioned using a different browser, not a faster one; what Cons had suggested was a faster browser. He still seems confused about browser speed and server errors. Why he considers it a victory to call attention to this confusion by putting it in boldface and a large font is a mystery.

So, no, Cons. There is no need for me to apologize.

Now one of the things that I pointed out in the exchange was that Cons was writing "word salad" (or should I say "file attribute salad") in what he wrote. The attribute specification that he gave, "-rwxr-", makes no sense, and does not appear in the page that he cites. I suggest that this "calls into question the veracity of Cons's internet research on other topics as well." The significance of this is that it shows that Cons can't even cut-and-paste accurately from another web page. He just makes things up. Why does that call his veracity on other topics into question? Because he writes very prolifically on a number of subjects (atheism, homosexuality, bestiality, Richard Dawkins, etc), pretending to back up what he is saying with references to things on the internet. I rarely look at the cited articles; I just take Cons's word for it that the person said that. And I'm not an expert on these topics (especially bestiality). I have to take the author's word for it. But if Cons just makes things up, I can't.

Postscript: In late September, Cons added a note to Talk:Main_Page, thanking Andy for fixing the sporadic outage problem, and pointing out that he no longer gets the errors. The rest of us had noticed that things were working normally weeks earlier. For some reason, Cons must have had second thoughts about his note, because he vaped it. In fact, he committed 8 acts of vaping of this page in late September, some of them probably to other people's edits; I didn't note them in time. One of the vapings was of a routine archiving.

PostPostscript: At 12:59, 26 September, Cons put the note thanking Andy back in again, this time on Andy's talk page.

March, 2015, On the Curious Matter of Putting Ferris Bueller's Day Off in italics

At 15:04, 28 March, User:ConsMovies made an edit to the "Greatest Conservative Movies" page correcting the italicization of the title of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, along with 3 other movies (The Goonies, God's Not Dead, and Man of Steel.) Cons blocked him 1 minute later. ConsMovies' edits in general were of a somewhat provocative and snarky nature, but movie titles are generally in italics on that page, and his edit was correct. Cons reverted the edit 3 minutes after that, so that those movie titles are no longer in italics.

I complained about this on Andy's talk page on March 12. There was a long discussion on this topic, as seen here. (The discussion is reproduced below.)

An interesting (to me, at least, as a "Cons-watcher") thing to note about that discussion is that, from looking at the history log, Cons twice burned down (completely deleted) Andy Schlafly's talk page, and recreated it, once at 23:21, 12 March, and once at 14:21, 13 March! He had apparently made some edits that he realized were inappropriate, and needed to cover his tracks. He has since then learned to use more sophisticated techniques to "vape" embarrassing material.

As of this writing, the errors in the 4 movie titles are still there!

Breaking news: At 22:03, 7 February 2016, the page finally got fixed. Congratulations to User:Northwest.

More about the ConsMovies incident

This section, and the one below, were recovered from an archive of Aschlafly's talk page. It is being brought out of the archive because it illustrates a few things about Conservapedia as of 4 years ago.

Hello. I have made this account for communicating with admins about my ban. I will not use the account for any other purpose.

The account that was banned was ConsMovies with a block id of #193504. It was banned by one of the users of the User:Conservative account, and I think I know which one. I think it was whichever one I politely disagreed with about halal meat on a talk page, and I think the ban is personal. The reason given for the ban was "desperate parodist" and seemed to immediately follow the addition of the movie Evolution to Essay:Greatest Conservative Movies.

I can see that a case could be made for the movie actually having no message, and me reading too much into it. In that case it could have been reverted and the reason why posted to the Essay Talk page. It doesn't seem like a reason to block a contributor with a history of constructive edits and revert almost everything they did.

Many edits were then reverted by this particular user of the User:Conservative account simply because they had my name attached to them.

Robocop for example. Anyone who doesn't think that my description of what is wrong with that film is accurate has obviously only seen the poster and not the actual movie. From the title and tagline it looks like harmless silly action but it is silly in a far less harmless way than that.

The user who reverted my edits even reverted my italicization of movie titles in Essay:Greatest Conservative Movies in line with the convention adopted by the rest of the article's table entries. What could he or she have against italics except for the presence of my name in the edit log?

Additionally, my addition to Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist? was reverted. I can't see what problem anyone is supposed to have with the addition, other than my name on the edit log.

As you can see my ban was personal and nothing to do with proper running of the encyclopedia. I waited to see if the other users of the User:Conservative account would have a word with the errant one but they remain silent! Clearly they are a tight-knit group, and while that is not a bad thing in itself it should not take precedence over the correct running of Conservapedia.

(signed) ConsMoviesAppeal 11:04, 3 March 2015 (EST) (ConsMovies)

ConsMoviesAppeal, create 10 solid new articles that are at least 2,400 words in length to show good faith. The articles must be articles that need to be written for the Conservapedia atheism project.
Given your British IP address (a British atheist from London is obsessed with me) and your parodist type edits, I doubt you will take me up on this offer. (signed) Conservative 00:12, 4 March 2015 (EST)
I have reconsidered. If he does an article on Lee Rigby and creates 2 new articles for the Conservapedia atheism project of at least 2,400 words in length and are of good quality, he can edit Conservapedia for the foreseeable future barring any subsequent ill-behavior. This is my final offer and no counter offers will be accepted. (signed) Conservative 11:04, 4 March 2015 (EST)
Conservative, I came here not to appease you, but to warn the other admins and other users of your account about you. I assume I am speaking to the same user who blocked me, who did so for personal reasons, and who can apparently do whatever he or she wants with the User:Conservative account while the other users of that account turn a blind eye.
I have made no "parodist type edits." As I said, you reverted the edit where I fixed the italics in an article. Why? I can see no reason other than my name being on the edit.
Also, you have failed to explain why you reverted my edits to the article Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?.
Additionally, have you actually seen Robocop?
Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that the true conservative members of the group that uses the User:Conservative account are in fact no longer here, and that you are the parodist/parodists.
(signed) ConsMoviesAppeal 14:47, 7 March 2015 (EST)
Conservative, rather than answer my questions, which you can not do, you blocked me again. You can't explain the reverts that you did. You reverted good edits only because you have a personal grudge. And you call yourself a conservative! (signed) ConsMoviesAppeal2 13:01, 10 March 2015 (EDT)

From SamHB

Andy: A serious case of abuse has unfolded just above on this talk page. It refers to the block, by Cons, of the user "ConsMovies", apparently relating to some edits made to the Essay:Greatest Conservative Movies page.

I'm not going to support or oppose those edits, as I don't watch many movies, and have probably not seen any of the movies involved. But, whatever the merits of the actual edits, Cons's actions are utterly inexcusable. They appear to be some kind of emotional outburst, the reason for which I don't understand (and I know Cons well.) He also seems to have reverted all of ConsMovies' edits, based entirely on the fact that they were made by ConsMovies and without regard to the actual substance. He even reverted some italicization of a few movie titles. The convention appears to be that movie titles are supposed to be in italics. A few were not, and ConsMovies fixed that. Cons reverted even that change. That can't be simply an accident; ConsMovies brought up that very issue in the section above, and Cons still took no action. I would have fixed it myself, but the page is locked.

Cons's actions constitute a blatant abuse of his administrative powers. He is carrying out a brutish personal vendetta against someone for reasons that I don't understand. ConsMovies' edits may be worthy of a revert—I can't judge—but this is simply an abuse of power.

A rather disturbing aspect of this has been the discussion that you can see in the section above. ConsMovies created a new account to appeal the block (against the rules, but there is no other way to do it, so it's a good thing that that rule is not enforced), and Cons issued some demands that are nothing but an abusive power trip. He demanded that ConsMovies write 10 articles, meeting certain demands on size, and demanding that they must be on a specified topic! In all my time here I have never seen a demand of that type. Furthermore, the demand was couched in particularly abusive terms—"This is my final offer and no counter offers will be accepted" that are reminiscent of the Postsdam Declaration of World War 2.

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this is Cons's demands that the articles (which of course ConsMovies couldn't create in any case since he is blocked) be in a topic category that is of particular interest to Cons. (The "Atheism Project", which is essentially owned by Cons.) Cons is effectively demanding that ConsMovies do his bidding, as a condition for being allowed to edit at Conservapedia.

There are some very crude contemporary slang terms that are sometimes used to describe the relationship that Cons is demanding that ConsMovies enter into. I don't endorse the language at all, but one of the terms I can think of relates to a female canine, and the others relate to an extremely old profession.

I have been trying to work with Cons both on his writing style and on his efforts to interact with others in a straightforward and sensible manner (see my talk page), but have made only slight headway. You need to intervene. Please unblock ConsMovies, and admonish Cons on acceptable standards of behavior for an administrator.

Sincerely, (signed) SamHB 17:52, 12 March 2015 (EDT)

Hi, I'm a new editor here. I just wanted to let you know that I think User:Conservative is completely innocent. Thanks. (signed) ZDean 19:24, 12 March 2015 (EDT)
You seem awfully new to be jumping into such a complicated issue. I assume you are familiar with the many dozens of controversies that Cons has been involved in over the years, many of which I am very familiar with. I also assume that, in what you wrote just above, that you were specifically referring just to the "ConsMovies" incident. And that you are aware that it is a more isolated and simple issue than many of the others. Why don't you, off the top of your head, render your opinions on some of the others?
Or perhaps you would like us to believe that you are another member of Cons's fictional "collective". You must know that that is not his modus operandi.
Andy: Please don't delete ZDean's comment (or mine) above. People need to see this kind of stuff.
(signed) SamHB 22:36, 12 March 2015 (EDT)
Whenever a liberal cannot pin anything on a conservative (or conservative organization), often they resort to calling the person/organization "controversial" (see: Liberal Style).
Given SamHB's/Conservmoviesappeal's high words/substance ratio, I doubt Mr. Schlafly read their long screeds. At most, he skimmed them. (signed) Conservative 00:18, 13 March 2015 (EDT)
Before I had even posted on Conservapedia I had contacted Andy by email to get his advice on anti-abortion and pro-life topics for setting up a pro-life project of my own. Andy invited me to post here and advised me, and I paraphrase "Do not take much notice about what is said on talk pages". Since then I have been blocked twice by Conservative simply for disagreeing with him, despite being told I would not be blocked. As I had misplaced Andy's email address I had no way of contacting him for advice I really did need. I have come to the conclusion that Conservative is always right, never bullies or intimidates people and never uses a high word to substance ratio despite publishing dozens of atheism articles, many of which are close facsimiles of each other based on one Barna Group report many years ago. Conservative holds the axe here and there is no point in opposing him if you do not want it to be bought down on your neck.--(signed) Tomqua 10:22, 13 March 2015 (EDT)
To illustrate my point look at the deletion of my talk page[3]. You will see that despite my posts being accepted and me showing some contrition I was still blocked. It does not show it here but after I had written "Ok, but so far my posts have been accepted" the next line was , again I paraphrase "You were warned". followed by the block. I can only conclude the real reason for the block was spite.--(signed) Tomqua 10:50, 13 March 2015 (EDT)

Tomqua, are you an atheist? Your past complaints at this wiki would indicate you are an atheist.

Conservapedia is never going to whitewash atheism. (signed) Conservative 14:13, 13 March 2015 (EDT)

My religious views are not your concern.--(signed) Tomqua 15:58, 13 March 2015 (EDT)
Given the folly and shamefulness of the atheist worldview, I can understand your reluctance to admit you are an atheist. Many atheists are closet atheists and find it difficult to support their atheist religion (see: Atheism and cowardice).
Jesus set the highest moral standards (Sermon on the mount, etc.) and there is an abundance of evidence supporting Christianity, so there no reason for a Christian to be ashamed of being a Christian. (signed) Conservative 16:17, 13 March 2015 (EDT)
It has nothing to do with cowardice. Think along the lines of your past record of bullying and belittling not just atheism but any form Christianity you find too liberal, see Liberal Christianity and marital infidelity.--(signed) Tomqua 16:35, 13 March 2015 (EDT)
I find that a strange remark, for a number of reasons. Only one of which being that the article doesn't strike me as a particularly vivid example of the point you were professing to demonstrate. (signed) VargasMilan 17:01, 13 March 2015 (EDT)

A note on the second law of thermodynamics

There seems to be a good deal of confusion and unclear writing in the article.

The subject of thermodynamics, including the second law, was well established during the 19th century, by such people as Carnot, Gibbs, Clausius, Clapeyron, Maxwell, Helmholtz, and Thompson (Lord Kelvin). This long predates the advent of quantum mechanics. The subject of statistical mechanics, and the "randomness" or "uncertainty" were well understood. It does not depend on the uncertainty (the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle") of quantum mechanics.

There are two generally recognized types of "perpetual motion machine." A "perpetual motion machine of the first kind", which is what people generally mean when they use this term, is one that violates conservation of energy. Since the first law of thermodynamics is just conservation of energy, such a machine would violate the first law.

Such a perpetual motion machine is generally taken to mean one that actively gives out nonzero energy (you can see ads for these things on the internet[23][24][25]), rather than one that simply holds its own, even though a machine that holds its own, that is, never runs down, could obviously be considered a "perpetual motion machine."

Entities that hold their own and never run down actually do exist. Atoms are examples of them. The electrons orbiting the nucleus, if they are in their ground state, never stop. They never lose energy at all. (OK, the fact that they never lose energy depends on quantum mechanics, and I said above that quantum mechanics isn't involved, but the radiation from accelerating charges was unknown when thermodynamics was formulated.) Other things that never stop are quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillators, and gas molecules in their random motion. The latter was central to the kinetic theory that led to the development of thermodynamics. That is, the people developing thermodynamics were aware of the perpetual, never running down, nature of gas molecules. They postulated, correctly, that gas molecule collisions are perfectly elastic and never lose energy. They really are "perpetual motion machines."

The second law of thermodynamics relates to a more obscure fictional device, a "perpetual motion machine of the second kind." This would be something that violates the second law by causing heat to travel, without introduction of energy from an external source, from a colder body to a warmer one. In fact, it can be shown (and was shown in the 19th century), that any heat engine more efficient than that required by Carnot's law is impossible, because it would permit the construction of a machine that moved heat from a colder body to a warmer one.

From looking at the edit history of the article, there seems to be something of an edit war involving an insistence that the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine be described using the word "derail". This is an extremely unhelpful word, suggesting a similarity with a railroad train running off its tracks, and seems to be an attempt to evoke the commonsense notion of macroscopic mechanical devices wearing out due to friction. The second law is actually very clear in what it states and does not state. The article also muddies the thinking by including a folksy and cute, but woefully imprecise, layman's description by a famous science fiction author. While it is true that a person's room will tend to get messy if not attended to, and shuffling a deck of cards leads to more disorder, this is related to statistics, and involves an entropy change that is utterly minuscule compared with what goes on in thermodynamics. The "intelligent intervention" that the article describes (cleaning up the room, or sorting the cards) is statistically infeasible in the thermodynamics case. In fact, the scientists formulating the second law of thermodynamics considered this, in the form of a "Maxwell's demon", and showed that it was impossible.

The claim that the second law of thermodynamics disproves relativity or evolution is too preposterous to reply to.

When I get the time, I will probably write some articles on thermodynamics elsewhere on the internet.

My Past Contributions

I have contributed to the following articles. Some contributions were minor, but most were major, and many of these articles were created by me. Some got moved from my "sandbox" pages into article space by other people.

Algebra, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, exponent of "r" in Newtonian gravity, Calc3.1/2/3/4/5, tensor, wave equation, e (mathematics), vector, vector space, vector field, conservative vector field, irrotational vector field, Maxwell's equations, Hodge star, exterior derivative, Cramer's rule, Riemann integral, Green's theorem, dense subset, limit (mathematics), boolean algebra, mathematical paradoxes, function, complex analytic function, continuity, countable, group, real number, rational number, complex number, Cauchy sequence, Dedekind cut, bijection, injection, surjection, ham sandwich theorem, two-pancacke theorem, divergence, curl, cross product, dot product, infinity, functor, continuous function, Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem, principle of induction, general relativity, real analysis, Pierre Simon Laplace, diagonalization.

My Future Plans

This section . I may need to consult with some sysops on this. Fixing the Compass and straightedge article is an important item.

The comment above, about consulting with sysops, referred to the fact that I was blocked and reverted by Daniel Pulido after an earlier attempt to discuss math, so I wanted to contact him by email to get his approval. But he has himself been blocked, so maybe things are OK.

While there are a huge number of things that need in the mathematics area, I've picked out four that would be good to on. I want to collaborate on these with Ed Poor, who is the other math expert currently around, so I have placed and extensive discussion on his talk page, which see. I'm also going to bring this to the attention of User:JamesWilson, who may be another up-and-coming math contributor.

  • Compass and straightedge—This has been rescued from "parody hell", but it needs much more work to present the material in a way that is logical and understandable to the target audience.
  • Elementary Algebra—This has been a topic of discussion between me and Ed for quite some time, generally centering on the question of "how do you explain to an elementary student what the question 'x+3 = 7' is really asking?"
  • Peano axioms—The fundamental logical basis for all of arithmetic. I dimly recall a discussion between Ed and someone else on this topic; it didn't seem to get anywhere. It is an extremely fascinating topic for the target audience!
  • Center—This has been a disaster for a long time. I really don't know how to write the "headline" sentence for this; that is, what's the first thing you say about what the "center" of a geometrical shape is? I solicit any insight that Ed (or anyone else) can provide.

More thoughts on math

Since there is a renewal of interest in writing mathematical articles, I'd like for people to feel free to use my talk page for discussion of math articles, if they so desire. I may be able to offer advice or guidance, or suggest fruitful topics.

People should also feel free to discuss math writing in general, including the topic that is near and dear to me—setting the right educational level for our expected audience. I only ask that:

  • Do not tell me we need extremely advanced articles at the college level. See here for the latest example of misguided advice along these lines. Just don't ask. I'm not interested.
  • If criticizing my or anyone else's writing level or style, please provide a link to a sample of your own writing on the same or equivalent topic and at the same depth, so that we can see just what you have in mind.

I see AlanS's talk page has finally been deleted

He seems to have made his last contribution on December 26, 2008. He was blocked at 19:19 on December 31, two minutes after I was blocked for being a sock of him. I never knew who he was. Looking through his block log, he seems to have gotten into fights with sysops and admins to an astounding degree, suggesting that he was, at heart, just a troublemaker. He seems to have dabbled in "light science" topics, but our paths don't seem to have crossed.

The Bugler/LowKey incident

User "Bugler" was an extremely brutish user who climbed the status ladder at Conservapedia rather quickly, developing a reputation for blocking people and generally being destructive. He very nearly made it to "administrator", the rank currently held by only a few people—Andy, Ed Poor, Karajou, JPatt, Conservative, and a few other inactive people. At the end of the process, while being interviewed by Andy and asked his real name, he apparently said it was "Brian Ugler", thereby unmasking himself as a vandal and parodist of the worst kind. He was immediately banished, of course.

User "LowKey" was one of Bugler's frequent victims, and complained at length on his user page, before Bugler's fall. Lowkey's user page, as of 12 January, 2009, may be found here. I am saving it because it is in danger of being vaped.

No, I don't want to play

On 28 July, one of the operators of the User:Conservative ("Cons") account, during an extensive nationwide controversy over the cleanliness of Baltimore, specifically referring to rat infestation, created the article Essay: The unfree city of Boston, Massachusetts and its rat infestation problem. The city at the center of the nationwide controversy was Baltimore, and only Baltimore. Boston was never mentioned, by Donald Trump, Elijah Cummings, or anyone else in the news cycle. But Cons created an article about Boston, of all places. No other cities. That is rather peculiar. One could suspect that it relates to some playful banter that the Cons folks apparently like to engage in with me on the topic of Massachusetts and Boston, including the use of the word "unfree". One can see an example of this at [4]. (The use of the word "unfree" may be a reference to my past efforts to clean up "TAR".)

Cons may believe I live in Boston; I don't. They may think this amuses me; it doesn't.

Just to make sure that I was made aware of this invitation to play, the Cons folks brought it to my attention on my talk page: [5]. This was rather peculiar. So much so that I put the following note on Mainpage talk. It was vaped by Cons at approximately 03:00 on 29 July, 2019.

So you went and created an article about rats and Boston???? Boston, of all places? I would have thought an article about rats and Baltimore would be more timely, since that issue has been in the news lately. Boston? No other cities? And you placed a reference to it on my talk page, and no one else's? As though you think I would be amused? And you used the word that you have used before in discussion with me—"unfree"? Do you think this amuses me?
This seems to be the social/interpersonal/emotional equivalent of an 8-year-old kid going to a neighbors house and asking the neighbor if he wants to come out and play.
  • Hey Sammy! Wanna come out and play?
  • Hey Johnny Z! Wanna come out and play?
  • Hey Mercian! Wanna come out and play?
  • Hey Ace! Wanna come out and play?
No, Kenny, I don't want to come out and play. I'm way too busy trying to correct misinformation about radioactive decay rates, and trying to keep the patriotism page from being deceitful.

SamHB (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2019 (EDT)

Gay conversion therapy

I have no personal stake in this (I'm straight) but I've been aware for some time that there's this concept of Gay Conversion Therapy, and that there's some controversy about it, often along political or religious lines. There has been extensive discussion of it here at Conservapedia.

I haven't been paying much attention to the controversy, but something came up just last night on the Washington Post news site about McKrae Game, one of the leaders of this practice, coming out as gay himself, and saying that he was wrong about the whole thing. People who don't want to accept the Washington Post's account can go straight to Mr. Game's [26] Facebook page.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, and Adam Schiff's body fluids

On October 31, 2019, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, said, on his prime-time program:

"Adam Schiff, meanwhile, the congressman from Burbank, was ecstatic. Schiff has spent years obsessing over impeachment like it was a young Jodie Foster. Colleagues say he has pictures of impeachment taped to the walls of his bedroom. He is believed to have written it steamy, unhinged letters, using his own body fluids. So, for Schiff, today's vote was thrilling, in ways that only a court-appointed psychiatrist could appreciate." [27][28]

The "phony Emoluments Clause"

On October 21, 2019, while defending his (later rescinded) decision to use his own property to host the G7 conference, Donald Trump dismissed the emoluments clause:

"You people with this phony Emoluments Clause"[29]

The "Foreign Emoluments Clause" is:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

It is Article I, Section 9, clause 8 of the Constitution of the United States of America, which is the principal instrument of government of the United States.

According to Article II, Section 1, clause 8 of the Constitution, the President, at the time of his inauguration, swears (or affirms) that he will to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The preservation, protection, and defense the Constitution is about as conservative a stance as one can imagine.

Merry Christmas

Everyone have a blessed Christmas.

God bless us, everyone

—Tiny Tim, in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Stupid YouTube videos

I think Youtube videos are for illiterate losers, and I generally pay them no mind, except insofar as they remind me of the intellectual level of a certain web site, and of certain people's approach to science. But this one caught my eye, relating to all the "15 questions that evolutionists can't answer" stuff, or whatever that stupidity is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QSxe7TDF30

Don't bother replying, or otherwise trying to engage me on the subject of evolution; I'm not interested.

Some inspirational quotes

(lifted from someone's user page)

"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate." - Sun Tzu
"After looking at the available evidence, when it comes to having a fit and trim physique, Jesus Christ most definitely won the Battle of the Bulge and the atheist and evolutionist PZ Myers was utterly defeated." - George S. Patton

For more information, please see: Battle of the Bulge: Jesus vs. PZ Myers

The George Patton quote above is particularly prescient, since he died in 1945 and PZ Myers was born in 1957.

Something from User:Conservative put on his incoming mail page. I'll have something to say about this soon, but for now I just want to save it, especially since Cons is fond of vaping his writing.

User: SamHB, my favorite two sentences of my recent essay: "And your wiki's failure to identify my multiple sockpuppet posts at your website is another brick in the high wall of evidence I have provided that more than one editor has edited using the User: Conservative account. And yet, many of the prideful, godless men at your website continue to double down on their pigheaded denialism about this matter." See: User:Conservative's essays

Real Men Know How and When to Kneel

(Lifted from the George Washington page.)

"I was riding with Mr. Potts near to the Valley Forge where the army lay during the war of ye Revolution, when Mr. Potts said, 'Do you see that woods & that plain? There laid the army of Washington. It was a most distressing time of ye war, and all were for giving up the Ship but that great and good man. In that woods (pointing to a close in view) I heard a plaintive sound as of a man at prayer.... To my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was ye Crisis & the cause of the country, of humanity & of the world. Such a prayer I never heard from the lips of man. ".[30]

Helpful stuff

To mark a page for deletion

Use {{Delete Notice}} The explanation is not an argument; it is in the following text.

Or {{speedy}} to explicitly diss it for being "obvious vandalism, sarcastic mockery, or inappropriate".

Also {{db|whatever}} The explanation is in the argument. This method seems less effective at being noticed.

To make a nice quotation block

blah blah

Indented quote, but without the big quote marks. (You can get pretty much the same thing with colon.)

blah blah

To put in footnotes etc.

See How to put links and footnotes into your articles.

To welcome a new user

{{welcome|sig=SamHB}}

References

  1. http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Pseudoscience.html
  2. http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Counterexamples_to_Relativity&oldid=852797
  3. https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3985v1
  4. http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-discovery-now-officially-dead-1.16830
  5. http://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
  6. http://www.ligo.org/news/pressreleases.php
  7. http://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
  8. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20160211a
  9. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20160211v2
  10. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/gravitational-waves-ripples-space-time-detected-first-time-n516566
  11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEPIwEJmZyE
  12. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/it-wasn-t-fluke-scientists-see-black-holes-collide-again-n593156
  13. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-detect-second-gravitational-wave-einstein-predicted/
  14. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160615
  15. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html
  16. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20160615v2
  17. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-gravitational-insight-black-holes.html
  18. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36472434#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
  19. http://questionevolution.blogspot.com/2012/05/internet-atheism-and-skepticism-thrill.html
  20. http://questionevolution.blogspot.com/2013/07/christianity-is-taking-huge-bite-out-of.html
  21. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/06/30/atheism-is-rising-but/
  22. User Conservative, affectionately called "Cons"
  23. http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk/
  24. http://www.fuellesspower.com/
  25. http://www.magniwork.com/
  26. https://www.facebook.com/mckrae/posts/10157639329596563
  27. https://www.facebook.com/TuckerCarlsonTonight/videos/2420222244700108/
  28. https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-gets-really-strange-adam-schiff-wrote-steamy-impeachment-letters-with-his-own-body-fluids
  29. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/21/donald-trump-mocks-constitution-emoluments-clause-phony/4055162002/
  30. From Diary and Remembrances, by Rev. Nathaniel Randolph Snowden (1770-1851), who received it from an eyewitness to the scene, Valley Forge resident Isaac Potts