Submitted to a Candid World


Where Conservapedia Went Wrong – From the Inside
March 25, 2009, 1:19 am
Filed under: Author - ACG, Religion, Science | Tags: , ,

Flash - Conservapedia is intolerable. Even for creationists & conservatives. Or so writes Philip J. Rayment, ex-administrator and Australian creationist, in his tell-most web memoir. There he documents the double standards, factual relativism, and bizarrely churlish behavior that have made Conservapedia not just a failure in its own right, but a macrosm of the failures of the American far-right. No governing philosophy so steeped in dogmatism can long survive, or retain its adherents.

To be sure, Philip is an imperfect hero in this little tale. While he’s rightly rejected an organization of theocrats and thugs, Philip is an unapologetic young-earth creationist, with presumably similar opinions on gay rights, etc., etc. But he differs from the organization he left, and indeed the majority of his fellow-travelers, in two significant ways: he has a decent respect for the rest of humanity, and a desire to debate rather than dictate. This, as they say, is not nothing. If opponents we must have, we should hope for such individuals.

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Short Note: Last Vestige of Sanity Departs Conservapedia
March 22, 2009, 6:46 pm
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics, Religion, Science | Tags: ,

Yesterday, Conservapedia lost its last claim to sanity when Philip J. Rayment, longtime administrator, resigned, saying only “enough is enough.” Philip was for some time the only administrator who even entertained the idea that non-fundamentalist Christians were human. For those of us who briefly had an account on Conservapedia back in the day, he was a pleasure to debate with, and always genial, especially to his opponents. This basic human decency bought him suspicion and contempt from Conservapedia’s more hardline elements – and thus his departure.

To be sure, Philip shares a few negative traits with those he leaves behind, notably, adherence to a narrow and exclusionary view of religion that threatens all of western civilization’s post-1700 gains. But his consistent composure, decency, respect, and genuine interest in debate should serve to remind us that just because we have such glaring differences with our ideological opponents doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t discuss them like adults.

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Conservapedia Has a YouTube Channel!
March 18, 2009, 6:13 am
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics, Religion | Tags: ,

Good news, everyone! Conservapedia, the “trusworthy” encyclopedia, now has its very own YouTube channel! Now you can look forward to more gems like this little wonder:

From Andy Schlafly comparing “liberals” to lynch mobs, to Conservapedians bragging about their site outpacing Rush Limbaugh’s (o rly?), this channel clearly promises to be the gift that keeps on giving. God willing, they’ll expand into Twitter, too…

Oh glorious day. Do what you must with this information.

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Updates on Conservapedia, Futurama, and Lost
February 25, 2009, 7:14 pm
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: , ,

Conservapedia: Andy Schlafly WILL seek state funding to provide Supplemental Education Services, and plans to submit his application today. I have an e-mail in to the New Jersey Department of Education asking where to send my list of “recommended reading” on Schlafly. I’ll update when (if) I hear back.

Futurama: one of my favorite shows, canceled a while back by Fox (a surefire sign of its greatness), just put out its last of four planned straight-to-DVD movies. Of the three already out, two were great, and this recent release (”Into the Wild Green Yonder”) has gotten great reviews. Without being able to verify that report (yet), I recommend you BUY IT anyways: apparently, stellar DVD sales have prompted Fox to at least open dialogue with Matt Groening over the possibility of a formal Futurama season six. In other words, $30 buys you a probably-good DVD and a “yes” vote for Futurama’s… umm… future.

Lost: tonight’s episode focuses on John Locke (aka “Jeremy Bentham”), and owing to its subject matter, will go a long way towards proving or disproving my theory that the show has gotten a little preachy.

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Conservapedia Wants State Funding to Teach Your Kids
February 19, 2009, 6:26 am
Filed under: Author - ACG | Tags: , , , ,

A while ago, we reported on the gross disservice putative “educator” Andy Schlafly is doing to his homeschooled students, and the parents that rely upon him. Far from giving te children a leg-up in the world through superior and rigorous education, a Schlafly education sets the bar incredibly low, both for instrutor and student, and clearly prizes ideological conformity far above intelligence, independent/critical thinking, or effort.

Sadly (and one would think impossibly), things have only gotten worse since then. In his latest course (World History), Andy explains away prehistory by saying, “There is no reason to think that man existed for thousands of years without ever expressing himself in written form,” and rewards students for explaining that Plato’s “Republic” is “the basis for our form of government in the U.S.” Interesting, because I don’t recall reading anything in the Constitution about philosopher kings…

Now Andy Schlafly wants to take his show on the road – at your expense – by getting himself accredited as a “Supplemental Education Service” for New Jersey. No Child Left Behind requires each state to develop these SES programs to function as private adjuncts to the public school system, funded and promoted by the state, charged with bringing remedial students up to speed. Given Andy’s noted distaste for public schools, this little stunt (if he follows through on it) is properly seen as his attempt to funnel the godless into his waiting hands, where they can be more easily converted: for the sake of New Jersey’s children, this can’t be allowed to happen.

Fortunately, there’s no reason to think he’ll pass the accreditation process. Most obviously, he seems to be on the “supply” side of the remedial students equation: the only difference between Andy Schlafly and an utterly incompetent teacher is that Andy uses religion to disguise his incompetence as “faith.” The extensive application for certification (PDF), we should hope, aggressively screens out such failures.

Even if Andy doesn’t flunk the certification based on soft estimates of his competence, a number of objective barriers stand in his way. Federal law requires SES providers to be “secular, neutral, and nonideological,” none of which are words that describe Andy, Conservapedia, or his “lectures.” ((See 20 U.S.C. § 6316(e)(5)(D) (2008) and 34 CFR 200.47(b)(2)(B)(ii)(D).)) Nor could Andy make the required certification ((Application p. 12.)) that, as an SES provider, he would live up to New Jersey’s Core Curriculum Content Standards. These standards would require that his students either understand ideas he doesn’t credit (evolution, the science explaining life’s origins, deep-time geology, hominid development), or learn methodologies he doesn’t teach (critical thinking in American and world history). Andy’s entire motivation for homeschooling is to enable him to legally ignore these standards: why he thinks they won’t apply to him the second he tries to step back into the public school system is beyond me.

A prediction: Andy knows this, and won’t follow through. When the deadline for applications rolls around on February 27th, he’ll either forget to file and subsequently pretend the whole thing never happened, or file a truly slipshod document and, when it’s inevitably rejected, blame liberals. If he takes the latter course, he’ll whine for a few weeks, gloat in the web-traffic he gets from gawkers based here or at similar blogs, and then pretend the whole thing never happened. Laughs will be had all around.

That said, there’s no accounting for government incompetence. Acccordingly, we’ll report back as this story develop, with contact information for New Jersey Department of Education officials if necessary.

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Possible New Evidence for Abstinence: The Shot HURTS!
February 9, 2009, 2:00 pm
Filed under: Author - didionsmommy, Religion, Science | Tags: , , , , ,

(Note: Ames comes back tomorrow. In the meantime, I am making my first foray into the magical world of Conservapedia.)

Conservapedia’s main page presented a news headline on Sunday evening:

“New Worries About Gardasil Safety”

Gardasil is the vaccine administered to women and girls to protect against several strains of HPV that are a direct cause of cervical cancer. I clicked the link and read:

As of June 30, 2008, there have been 9,749 adverse reactions occurring after administration of the HPV vaccine, including twenty-one deaths, reported to the CDC since the FDA approval on June 8 2006.[6] Of the the first fifteen deaths, ten were confirmed; the CDC claims that none of these were caused by the vaccine. [7]

In addition to the above referenced injuries and deaths, many girls who receive the HPV vaccine say that it is the most painful of all injections they get, and that the vaccine itself burns, unlike the “other shots [that] tend to hurt only at the moment of the needle stick, and not after the vaccine plunges in.” Many girls have passed out from the pain.[8]

The FDA approved this HPV vaccine without reviewing any epidemiological studies, and after monitoring for only a brief period elevated antibody levels in recipients of the vaccine.[9] No tests were done, for example, to see if the vaccine causes cancer or birth defects in rats, though such tests would be easy for the FDA to require, if it weren’t for the possibility that it might cause disapproval of the vaccine.[10]

The long-term consequences of the HPV vaccine are not known. Children in the 9-year-old age group have been monitored for only 18 months, and there have been no studies of possible longer-term risks of the vaccine, such as infertility, cancer, or autism.

I thought, “JACKPOT!” … Merciless pain!!! Unethical and sloppy researchers!!!!!! An open-ended question of whether the vaccine causes all sorts of other ills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the sort of conspiratorial denial Ames loves to expose. There is also subtext: About one-third of HPV strains are sexually transmitted (including those related to cervical cancer), and about 75% of sexually active people in the U.S. will contract at least one form. The only 100%-effective way to avoid many HPV strains is to avoid all genital contact. It’s easy to see the threat of HPV on the one hand and a scary shot that hurts on the other as yet another instrument in the abstinence-only education toolbox.

So what about Gardasil? After recovering from Conservapedia’s ridiculously alarmist take, I checked Wiki. In part:

As of 30 June 2008, out of over 16 million doses[29] of Gardasil distributed in the United States, there have been 9,749 reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following Gardasil vaccination.[30] Gardasil has less than half the average percentage of serious reports.[30] “It is important to note that a report to VAERS does not mean there is a connection between the vaccine and the event. It means the event took place following vaccination.”[30] The FDA and CDC said that with millions of vaccinations “by chance alone some serious adverse effects and deaths” will occur in the time period following vaccination, but have nothing to do with the vaccine.[31] Although at least 20 women who received the Gardasil vaccine have died, there is no evidence that deaths or serious outcomes were connected to the shot.[31] Where information was available, the cause of death was explained by other factors.[29] Likewise, although a small number of cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) have been reported following vaccination with Gardasil.[30][32], there is no evidence linking GBS to the vaccine.[30]

Basically, we have the same old story in the vaccine debate. This time, though, there is a bonus: S-E-X!

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Conservapedia Sysops Address Critics & Prepare to Implement “FlaggedRevs”
January 31, 2009, 1:44 pm
Filed under: Author - ACG, Culture, Politics, Religion, Science | Tags: , ,

Frequent readers of this site, and followers of the Internet dark comedy that is Conservapedia’s day-to-day existence, will know that Conservapedia’s handpicked administrators (”sysops”) scrupulously avoid contact with the outside world, battling even the incursion of new ideas with a zealotry typically reserved for suicide bombers. Indeed, the nerdier among us (like yours truly) could say that a discussion with a Conservapedia sysop is rarer than news from Gondolin.

Credit where it’s due, then, to Tony Sidaway,  whose two-article coverage of Conservapedia drew responses from two members of Conservapedia’s higher echelons, igniting a battle with Conservapedia critics taking advantage of this rare opportunity for mutual discussion. Both of Tony’s articles (the first on the site in general; the second on its recent parody affliction) and the comments sections are must-reads for interested parties. To be sure, Tony gets a lot wrong, particularly in his pigeonholing of RationalWiki – that is, after all, what happens when you walk into a show at intermission – but the dialog elicited is valuable for clearing up several misconceptions, and exposing the depths of Conservapedia’s delusions of grandeur.

In bigger news, per discussions with some of the same sysops, we have reason to expect that Conservapedia will further “circle its wagons” by implementing the “flagged revisions” MediaWiki extension sometime next week. To the uninitiated, “FlaggedRevs” is a means of ex ante quality control, whereby edits to popular, controversial, or newsworthy articles are screened prior to being made visible. Wikipedia is in the process of implementing the same, to meet the embarrassing problem of nefarious editors misrepresenting breaking news. Ironically, Conservapedia roundly condemned Wikipedia for going down the FlaggedRevs route, characterizing it as a means of entrenching Wikipedia’s “liberal bias”… when we can be certain that Conservapedia’s FlaggedRevs implementation would be complete,  and leveraged to utterly eliminate any “liberal” edits to their putatively “objective” compendium of knowledge.

Upon information from the same sources, FlaggedRev’s appeal to Conservapedia’s administration stems from its perceived ability to completely eliminate “vandalism,” which they define roughly as “any edits which dare conflict even incidentally with Andy Schlafly’s worldview.” This modest goal it would probably accomplish. But if implemented cross-wiki and deployed as “liberally” as their blocking and protection policies, it would also cut the editing population of Conservapedia down to a handful, prove once and for all that the values cherished by the Conservapedia population simply cannot withstand meaningful ideological challenge, and entrench rather than solve Conservapedia’s inability to distinguish legitimate fundamentalist editors from parodists. This – not “vandalism” – has always been the greatest danger to Conservapedia’s existence, as proved by the half-dozen trusted editors who’ve turned out to be subversives bent on driving away productive-but-moderate editors (Richard, MexMax, Bugler, Rodweathers, SSchultz, JJacobs, etc.). But Conservapedia’s susceptibility to parody stems not from its software, but from its worldview: and lord knows that’s not going to change.

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Conservapedia: Obama Still a Secret Muslim
January 29, 2009, 3:08 pm
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: ,

President Obama’s election seems to have done a number on the power-accustomed brains of more than a few paleoconservatives, whose reactions have ranged from the sad (Brad Blakeman, ex-Bush staffer, ranting incoherently on NPR yesterday) to the delusional. As usual, for the latter, we go to Conservapedia, where Andy Schlafly has built his article on the President around a bullet-point list that purports to prove that Obama is, somehow, a Muslim. See for yourself – you just can’t make this stuff up.

  • Obama’s background, education, and outlook are Muslim, and fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.[27][28] [. . .]
  • Obama recently mentioned his religion as “my Muslim faith.”[31] [. . .]
  • Contrary to Christianity, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam.
  • Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for “Pakistan” rather than the common American one.[38] [. . .]
  • Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name “Renegade”. “Renegade” conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning “Christian turned Muslim.”[41] [. . .]
  • “President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend [Sunday] church services since winning the White House earlier …, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.”[44]

But the real slam-dunk, in Schlafly’s mind? Obama fumbled the oath of office when he had his hand on the Bible, and his second oath was conspicuously Bible-less. Gotcha!!! Oh, and let’s forget that he only won because he’s black. Remarkable how quickly the “we must always respect the President” narrative disappeared.

Notably, Schlafly’s disdain for Obama may not be completley political. Obama and Schlafly were classmates at Harvard Law, and colleagues on the Law Review, until Obama beat out the conservatives’ slate (which may have included Schlafly) to become President of the Law Review. Sour grapes would explain a lot, but excuse little.

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Conservapedia: Breaking the Wall Between Parody & Reality Since 2006
January 25, 2009, 10:50 am
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics, Religion | Tags:

Somedays, it’s particularly hard to tell whether Conservapedia is serious about itself, or whether it’s just a cruel, incredibly long-term, drawn-out parody of Christian fundamentalism. Pictures like this one (right) make it particularly difficult to tell: in case you can’t tell, yes, that’s a picture of Charles Darwin sitting on Hitler’s shoulder like a parrot, and it’s currently the headline of Conservapedia’s “article” on evolution. See what I mean?

Well, this past Friday, Wonkette discovered a real hidden gem on Conservapedia: a list of “Senate Democrats from States with Republican Governors,” containing a gentle reminder that if any of those Democrats were to *ahem* “disappear,” the Republican governors in charge of the state could promptly fill their seats with good, old-fashioned conservatives, and Obama’s Senate majority would be quickly subverted:

picture-21

Yes, that’s right: Conservapedia, the “family friendly” encyclopedia, would like to gently encourage you to bump off your Senators. It’s the only way to stop that secret Muslim (”Obama may be the first Muslim president”) dead in his tracks!

Unfortunately Conservapedia has since pulled the article, referring to its creation as “the work of political terrorists, [] intent upon and dedicated to mocking our conservative, Christian-friendly encyclopedia.” The obvious inference that Conservapedia wants you to draw is that it’s against violence, political or otherwise, but the fact is that this article lasted on Conservapedia so long only because it fits within Conservapedia’s paradigm of politicizing some violence, and blaming it on liberals (“school shootings are the fault of liberal public schools”), and apologizing for other violence, where appropriate (”abortion clinic bombing is NOT ‘bigotry,’ it’s just misguided”). So don’t be fooled. This is only “parody” because Conservapedia’s administrators realized it might make them look bad – not because they don’t believe it.

Thanks to Oneiroi for the tip!

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Homeschooling Fail: a Case of Educational Malpractice
December 23, 2008, 12:57 pm
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: , , , ,

At Conservapedia, the un-thinking man’s answer to Wikipedia, you’ll recall that founder Andy Schlafly doubles as a teacher for homeschooled children, whose homework is submitted to and graded on the wiki. Setting aside the student’s privacy interests, which Schlafly apparently considers waivable, we’ve once before taken the opportunity to analyze Schlafly’s objective efficacy as a teacher. Results were not encouraging.

But, now that the “semester” is over, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate. What did the students learn in their course? Are they prepared for the SAT II American History test, as Schlafly promised them they would be? Judge for yourself (Schlafly’s comments in bold):

Homework 13, Question #2: “Contrast President Ronald Reagan with President Bill Clinton.”

  • Reagan was a republican, Clinton was a democrat. (“Good.”)
  • Clinton took away our guns and Reagan gave us SDI. (“Model answer!”)
  • Reagen possessed some semblance of moral characters and had decent politics, while Clinton let everything go wrong. (“Superb.”)
  • Ronald Regan failed at almost everything he did, while Bill Clinton succeeded at most things. (“Interesting summary!”)
  • Ronald Reagan had morals and did not have sex with an intern; President Bill Clinton did not have such great morals and had sex with an intern. (“Superb contrast.”)

Homework 13, Question #4: “What is the most important threat to the future of America?”

  • Atheism is more destructive than almost any political ideology or foreign threat. (“Terrific analysis.”)
  • Barack Obama. First of all, we don’t even know if he was actually born in America. (“Don’t lose heart.”)
  • With the theory of evolution, many people are reduced to believing that they are “accidental” creations that have no moral values. (“Excellent.“)
  • Sin. (“Superb.”)
  • 9/11. (“Concise and persuasive.”)

Totals: 26 students, only 2 got below 98%, nobody lost any credit for misspelling “Reagan.” (Hat tip: anonymous RationalWiki editor).

Let me be perfectly clear: I have nothing against the concept of homeschooling, or even the idea of educating one’s children with an eye towards ensuring the propogation of one’s own ideology. But where the latter goal reaches a complete, objective subversion of the student’s intellectual development, both processes have gone too far. Andy Schlafly is doing nothing more than ensuring that his students bomb their first year of college in an ideologically appropriate way. Parents: pay attention to what your kids are learning in school, wherever they’re educated. But especially if you live within walking distance of Andy Schlafly.

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