If I were the optimistic sort I'd say that at least they're going to Wikipedia and educating themselves, but these idiots clearly aren't taking in what they're reading. What they're doing is skimming enough to see if it fits their needs and then copy and pasting it into whatever homework assignment they've been given. They don't use Wikipedia to educate themselves, they use it as a shortcut on assignments. #seb #stupidity #Wikipedia #morons
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Got the following epistle this evening:
From: Ben Z <lbwbap@yahoo.com>
Subject: Horos vc. Jesus
You Sir are an Idiot:
Be happy that I do not send this answer into your blog:
You made a 100% copy of
http://creativecounterpart.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/ending-the-myths-of-horus-jesus/
you are a fake!
Be
I love the fact that this guy is so smart he can’t even be bothered to write his name out completely at the end of the email. He’s referring to a very old entry by a former SEB regular, Consigliere, called Ending the Myth of Horus which the folks at the Creative Counterpart, a Christian blog, lifted from SEB in its entirety. (They did, at least, link back to us.) Its arguably one of the most popular entries on this site with Google ranking it as the number 2 most visited page here. But we couldn’t fool old Ben.
Here’s the reply I sent back:
Ben,
Wow. You caught us. We totally copied that entry from the Creative Counterpart blog. Except, if you’ll look closely, you’ll note that the CC blog entry is dated January 10, 2008 whereas the entry on Stupid Evil Bastard is dated January 10th, 2005. Some three years before the folks at CC posted it on their site. You’ll also note that they link directly to our content in their repost of the material. See the following quote taken from that entry at CC:
Here is the link, although I am not recommending this blog to everyone. The name of the blog is not very nice, let alone some of the other language there. Though, if you are an adult, i’m sure you can handle it.
Is that a link to SEB’s original entry? Why yes, yes it is!
But don’t worry about “sending this answer” into my blog. I’ll do it for you by reprinting your email verbatim. I wouldn’t want to let brilliance such as yours be limited to only enlightening me.
Thanks!
Les
It’s a good thing we have people like Ben policing the Internet looking for people stealing content from good, upstanding, Christian blogs.
Way back in August of 2003 I wrote an article about a craptastic product known as the Philip Stein Teslar watch. Since then I’ll occasionally get an email from someone who either sells the watches or has owned one and is incensed that I would call them bullshit.
Now, almost eight years to the day that I published the original entry, we have this amazing bit of logic sent in by another fan:
From: Norman Snyder (nshandimon312@hughes.net)
Subject: ! CHEAP FUCK THAT’S ALL
You sound like the kinda person that would drop a dollar to pick up a dime, I’f you dont agree with the statements made by Phillip Stein don’t fuckin buy it. keep wearing your mickey mouse watch and be happy. Just because someone can afford to toss money around, shound;nt be of any of your concern, they earned it and can do what ever they wish to do with it! Poor Poor Les NO MONEY FOR ME …. EVERYONE SHOULD LIVE LIKE POOR ASS LES.
You’ll note right away the subtle, but effective use of ALL CAPS as a persuasion technique. The irrefutable logic of “if you can’t afford to wear bullshit you shouldn’t talk about those who can.” His grasp of the finer points of argumentation are undeniably amazing. I am humbled and chastened by his stunning rebuke.
Norman Snyder, making the world safe for douchebags with more money than common sense.
Got the following earlier today:
From: Buck Yancey buckyancey@comcast.net
Subject: The peanut butter argument
Let’s see: you believe that there was nothing, and then it exploded. [Wow!]He believes that, if you guys are right then there should and could be new life forms popping up everywhere, even from a glob of peanut butter. Do you not understand that he has really pulled your chain, but you are so up tight that you didn’t even catch the sarcasm?
Buck
I responded with the following:
Buck,
You don’t start off well when you begin with making assumptions about what I believe. That just makes you look arrogant. It also makes you look ignorant because it’s clear you don’t understand the theory you’re attacking.
Einstein showed us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore to say that “nothing exploded” is, quite simply, wrong. The theory doesn’t even come close to claiming that’s what happened.
Sarcastic or not, the peanut butter argument is based on a strawman that has no basis on what the actual theory says. Not to mention that abiogenesis and The Big Bang Theory are two entirely different and unrelated theories.
Go off an read up a bit on the actual theories from actual scientists and not creationists before you open your mouth and stick your foot in it again. You’ll find there’s no unpleasant aftertaste that way.
Les
As per usual, Buck felt he already knew the theory well enough to not require studying up and opted to reply right away. I’ll post it below the fold.
Being a single mom raising an autistic daughter is hard enough to begin with and having to deal with stupid shit like this only makes it harder. Colleen Leduc had just dropped her autistic daughter, Victoria, off at the school and was headed to work when she got a frantic phone call saying she needed to come back to the school immediately. Upon arrival she was greeted with the following news:
“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.’”
Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the ‘attack.’
Leduc was shaken by the idea. “It’s actually your worst nightmare your child being violated,” she admits. “So for them to even suggest that, and that be my worst nightmare, it was horrific.”
But things got worse when school officials used the “evidence” and accepted the completely unsubstantiated word of the seer by reporting the case to Children’s Aid, which promptly opened a file on the family.
“They reported me to Children’s Aid,” Leduc declares, still disbelieving. “Based on a psychic!”
It’s bad enough that the teacher’s aid was credulous enough to buy into this story, but the fact that everyone else bought into it enough to take it seriously is just amazing. They must have some very incompetent people running the Terry Fox Elementary school. A possibility backed up by the fact that Leduc had to take steps to safeguard her daughter after the school repeatedly “lost” her at various points. Steps that would, in fact, pay off in this new situation:
As a result, the already cash strapped mom had spent a considerable sum of money to not only have her child equipped with a GPS unit, but one that provided audio records of everything that was going on around her.
So she had non-stop taped proof that nothing untoward had ever happened to her daughter, and was aghast that the situation had gone this far. But under the Child and Family Services Act, anyone who works with children and has reasonable grounds to suspect a youngster is being harmed, must report it immediately – and the CAS has an obligation to follow up.
The key words above should be reasonable grounds and the word of a supposed “psychic” who claims to have gotten the knowledge through her extra sensory powers and not, say, as an eyewitness to the crime should never be considered reasonable grounds. Not only should the teacher’s aid be fired, assuming she’s not a volunteer, but probably the principal as well for letting this idiocy happen in the first place.
Most of the time when I tell someone they’re stupid I don’t mean it literally, but rather that they’re acting in a stupid manner. That’s not the case with this would-be robber. He’s definitely literally stupid:
18-year-old Ruben Zarate, entered a muffler shop in the 2600 block of North Laramie Avenue yesterday and declared a robbery. He allegedly waved a gun around and demanded money, according to police.
When he was told the money was in a safe and that the manager who knew how to open it was not there, the suspect had a brilliant idea; at least he thought it was brilliant.
He gave the shop employees his cell phone number and asked them to call him when the manager arrived so he could open the safe for him.
He left and the employees opted to call 911. Authorities stationed plain clothes officers in the shop and called the would-be robber back.
Zarate, showed up again, and waved his gun around again, but this time was shot in the leg by an officer.
That’s just amazing. On the plus side you can at least say that he’s a very trusting fellow.
The state of Florida has a reputation among some people as being full of brain-dead morons. News stories like this Orlando Sentinel article do nothing to change that impression:
When Evans High School students bend their heads to take the 2008 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, dozens of community members will bow their heads, too—in prayer.
A group of about 40 churchgoers hopes that God’s power will do what studying has not for the struggling Pine Hills school: raise its state-issued letter grade above the F it received the past two years.
“Once you’ve done all you can do, you put it in the Lord’s hands,” said the Rev. Michael Kimbrough, pastor of Rising Sun Baptist Church in Pine Hills, who is organizing the prayer chain.
Florida has been in the news recently as the state Board of Education debated over new science standards that would require teaching the Theory of Evolution for the first time (it wasn’t a requirement previously). Around a half-dozen local school boards had folks pushing to have Evolution banned and/or ID/Creationism inserted into the science curriculum. Is it any wonder then that when faced with schools not making the grade the solution some folks come up with isn’t to improve the quality of the education, but to throw up their hands and declare they’ve done everything they can do and it’ll take a miracle from God to keep their kids from being total idiots?
Every now and then someone asks me, “What’s the harm in letting people believe what they want to believe?” I’d say the above is at least one very good example of the harm.
Just, you know, saying…
Why? Well the ride into work today was a nightmare as there was no less than three different accidents on the freeway making me a half-hour late to work. Apparently some folks heard we were supposed to get a rain and snow mix today and decided to start driving like complete morons before the pavement ever even got wet. Then the ride home took almost exactly two hours even though, as near as I could tell, there was never an accident anywhere on the freeway in spite of the fact that it was snowing at the time.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Then, just to put the icing on the cake, I had the ultimate example of just how idiotic the PC move process I have to engage in for my job is today. I was sent up to pack up a PC to move from Cube XYZ-20 to Cube XYZ-19, literally one cube to the right. A total of three feet. There isn’t even a dividing wall between the two seats. They couldn’t possibly be so stupid as to make me call for a Union member to do the actual move, could they? They’re not going to expect me to wait for some Union dude to find the time to fit a three foot pick-up-and-drop move in among all the other crap he/she has to do, are they?
Damn straight they are.
So what should have been a 15 minute move will end up being, at a minimum assuming someone actually attempts to do it tonight, a 24 hour job and possibly longer if they can’t be bothered to stop by. All because the Union rules say I’m not allowed to do any actual moving of PC equipment even though I work on the PC Move Team. I’m only allowed to move objects within the confines of their cubes, never from one cube to another no matter how short the distance may actually be. If I break that rule I could be fired and my company fined a ridiculously large sum of money.
Stupid doesn’t begin to describe.
Latest from the mailbag. I’ll let it speak for itself:
From: Mike Jelinski uwmikey@charter.net
Subject: [He couldn’t think of a subject for the email]hey satan Wannabe/poster child for hemorrhoids.
God Bless you! Jesus/God Loves You
You’re picture/upside down Chia pet distant from the site.
Jesus Loves you anyway!
Well, I’m convinced. Where do I sign up to be a Christian?