Yikes.
Grant crunch time or no grant crunch time, I couldn't let this pass.
This week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Skeptico, has been one of my favorite skeptical bloggers for a long time now. As a measure of how good he is, he now has a doppleganger blog.
Damn, I'm a bit envious. No one's seen fit to try that with me, other than J. B. Handley's rather pitiful attempt at cybersquatting the domain oracknows.com.
On the other hand, it's a creationist using Skeptico's name. Besides, spouting bogus "critiques" of Darwin (just how tiresome, bogus, and unoriginal, Bronze Dog shows here) this False Skeptico has been leaving comments on other blogs as "Skeptico." How lame can you get? It's not as if he's even posting interesting or even slightly original creationist twaddle. As The Real Skeptico says:
What a lame-ass - can't even use his own blog name. What does he hope to achieve? To confuse people into thinking I favor intelligent design? To generate extra traffic to his lame site? Clearly, he doesn't think that rational argument and evidence will be enough to convince people that ID is valid.
Or, even better, as Skeptico puts it in his Blogger profile:
I am the real Skeptico - unlike the lame creationist twit Kennesaw Williams who posts pro-creationist comments on the web using my name. Kennesaw Williams is Skeptico in the same way that Intelligent Design is science - ie he isn't. Accept no substitutes.
Indeed. Well, it succeeded in generating traffic to his site, but perhaps not in the way he expected.
In response to this creationist troll, I humbly request one little thing from my readers:
Deluge The Real Skeptico with submissions for The Skeptics' Circle by the deadline Wednesday evening to make it the biggest and best Skeptics' Circle yet. Show The False Skeptico what real skepticism is, as opposed to the "skepticism" of Darwin he is posting about.
How's that for turning a creationist annoyance into yet another shameless plug for the Skeptics' Circle?
You know, this whole thing gives me an idea for a theme for the next Skeptics' Circle. I know how I would approach hosting this week, if I were Skeptico. Let's see what he does with it.
I've already sent in four entries. Didn't expect myself to be so productive. He said 3 was probably enough. I'll let him pick, since he's running the show.
Back to Donkey: Thanks for pointing out his stupidity on Hallq's blog, Orac.
"Impossible."
Sounds like a word worthy of Doggerel #6.
I've got Chu-Chu Rocket! for my Gameboy. It has a puzzle mode. Some of those puzzles are hard. One in particular looked completely impossible. I mean it. I was contemplating the possibility that they stuck it in the game specifically to make me pull my hair out for the rest of my life. I couldn't think of any solutions, so I dinked around for five minutes. Then I solved it when said dinking gave me a giant lead, not to mention a very nifty new trick.
IDers are like little kids who'd rather give up and declare something impossible than dink around for five minutes. Not only that, when they're handed the answer on a silver platter, they reject it.
Among the comments at the real Skeptico site:
Just a hint. Append a rel="nofollow" attribute to the html link to the donkey's web site. This way, the search engines won't count the link when calculating page rank.
"Donkey" is the false Skeptico.
> Damn, I'm a bit envious. No one's seen fit to try that with me
Cheer up! Fake Orac:)
http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2004/06/09/orac3_part5/21.html
In memorial commemoration of today's passing of former US Treasury secretary, VP candidate, and Texas Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, I offer the following:
"Sir, I served with Skeptico, I know Skeptico, Skeptico is a friend of mine. Sir, you are no Skeptico."