It's Not Parody... Promise!

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Conservapedia - putting the "mental" into "fundamentalist" since 2006.

No, there's no big news story (will there ever be another one?) - I just felt like saying that.

Fields Medal Update

Well, the news just in is that a woman didn't win the Fields Medal, which will no doubt have Andrew Schalfly crowing that "conservative values" triumphed in the end.

Oh, but the "communist-trained" Vietnamese guy did... except for the fact that he lives in France, is a naturalised French citizen, did his under-grad studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure and obtained his PhD from Universite Paris-Sud.

Then again, if you're Andrew Schlafly, everybody else is either a commie liberal, or is suspected of being a commie liberal.

Misogyny, Racism & Insanity in One Easy Step

Andrew Schlafly really needs to think before he speaks. These days all he seems to do is dig himself deeper in a hole. Ever since he went batshit insane over his former boss at the Harvard Law Review becoming President of the US, he seems to be on a mission to make himself look more and more ridiculous. The really fun bit, is watching his fellow administrators - a more craven bunch of cowards you will never meet - standing back and letting Andy's rant build impetus and become more crazy as each day passes.

Not content with the Lenski affair, or another letter (sadly ignored) to Prof Moo; the Conservative Bible Project; Best of the Public and God knows what else, Andy has now shifted his vision to mathematics. Now this is a somewhat dodgy area of expertise on CP, given people like Ed "if I don't understand it, I delete it" Poor and Andrew "the Axiom of Choice is a liberal plot" Schlafly. To save time, have a look at this indepth analysis of Conservapedia Mathematics.

Terry Hurlbut - Busted!!

(h/t to EddyP)
Oh, happy day!

Readers of Conservapedia might be familiar with one of Andrew Schlafly's rally calls, 'We don't censor the truth here." Of course, that means, along with "Open your mind," that you had better not challenge whatever bullshit theory he's putting forward today. Of course, it's also one of his criticisms of Wikipedia. They censor edits on Intelligent Design and other creationist claptrap, not to mention that classroom prayer is censored. So, despite the actual goings-on on CP, you'd be of the opinion that they're pretty anti censorship. Just running a search on "censor" pulls up a pretty comprehensive list.

Of course, they get around deleting everything they disagree with by claiming it's "lies," "deceit," or "liberal claptrap" - a personal favourite of Andrew Schlafly's.

Now, a story broke on 5th August, about a conservative cabal on media site Digg, who actively engaged in censoring Digg'd articles that they did not like. They called themselves Digg Patriots (or DP... which has an entirely different snigger-worthy connotation to the more *ahem* open-minded) To quote from AlterNet:

A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.

As one of their members was caught saying:

The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

Now you might be asking yourself what this has to do with Conservapedia. You know, that bastion of free speech and arch-enemy of censorship. Well, the article goes on to list the names of the Digg members involved. And there, right down the bottom, we come across the name Temlakos.

Who is none other than Terry Hurlbut (try saying that name without smiling) otherwise known as Conservapedia administrator TerryH. So it would appear as if one on Andy's hand-picked henchmen is in fact, a duplicitous cur, who - despite being a member of a site that deplores censorship (excuse me whist I laugh like a hyena for 5 minutes) - actively engages in censorship.

Then again, did we expect anything else from the merry crew of the "Trustworthy" encyclopaedia?

I Saw What You Did There, Andy

Now I know I have already spoken about Andrew Schlafly's "Best New Conservative Words" nonsense. Still, Andy keeps on coming back to it, in much the same way you can't help playing with a rotten tooth. As you may, or may not, know Andy has surmised that ever since the 17th century, more and more conservative words have been created, essentially doubling in number every century.

There are, of course, two problems with this:

• The so-called "conservative words" appear to be a random collection of terms pulled out of Andy's ass, and augmented by several parodists. Thus we get such entries as "Radar" and "transistor" being conservative terms.


• Andy applies his own selection bias to the project. Thus if the 1700s had 5 new "conservative" words, the 1800s must have 10. So, Andy stops counting when the words he has decided on match his criteria. He hardly ever goes further back, because finding a new word in 1600 would mean 2 new 1700s words, 4 new 1800s words, 8 new 1900s words and 16 new 2000s words. And even Andy could have trouble coming up with so many words.

Still, despite the unscientific nature of the whole thing (but then we all know science is the Devil's work!) Andy has issued a challenge on Conservapedia's font page, which reads:

"Liberals doubt our observed doubling per century for these words, yet every layer reproves the remarkable growth pattern. Still looking for 6 more. Can any liberals disprove the pattern?"