Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
• a longer profile of yours truly
• my calendar
• Nature Network
• RichardDawkins Network
• facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• the Pharyngula chat room
(#pharyngula on irc.synirc.net)
There’s something about the term Homeland Security that is reminiscent of Hitler’s Fatherland; and when Moslems and Jews are attached respectively, it gets even worse.
Two-legged goats and developmental variation
The burden of bearing a massive penis
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
« Anti-Stein | Main | Another interview with Michael Edmondson »
Category: Weblogs
Posted on: April 28, 2008 8:18 AM, by PZ Myers
Lots of you have noticed that the ERV blog is currently inaccessible. Abbie can't get to it either, and something is very, very wrong — either a random glitch or some peckerwood reported her site to the powers-that-be at google and a kneejerk pulled the plug. She is going to be trying to get it reinstated, so be patient for a little while. I'll let you all know if any news develops.
(TrackBack URL for this entry: )
YES! Send me a free issue of Seed.
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $14.95. That's 50% off the cover price! If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep.
(Non-U.S. subscribers, click here.)
Comments
What bunch of idiots. If you can't win the war of words and logic, then just take away the right of the other side to try. Jerks. I hope she finds a better host ASAP.
Posted by: Colin J | April 28, 2008 8:27 AM
It's slightly premature to smear google before we know any relevant facts.
Posted by: Lev | April 28, 2008 8:29 AM
Just for my own information, does anybody know how many times you can call a state Senator a putz and a grade-A moron before a blog will get pulled? Purely hypothetical, you understand.
Hope Abbie is back soon.
Posted by: UprightAlice | April 28, 2008 8:30 AM
Just noticed ! I usually eat my lunch at my desk and read the latest at Pharyngula, ERV, Black Sun, bad science etc etc, and found she'd vanished ! - hope its a glitch rather than an actual attack. ERV - see you soon !
Posted by: synthesist | April 28, 2008 8:32 AM
I just looked at their Terms of Service, and they say they only take down blogs if they promote hateful material or spam.
Posted by: Matt | April 28, 2008 8:34 AM
It isn't registering on Google, either, but apparently it has been like that for a couple of days.
Does anyone know if you can access a cache of the blog using another search engine, or something similar? Abbie says that she really wants to save some of her posts.
I'm crap with this computer stuff. Any help would be appreciated.
Posted by: Damian | April 28, 2008 8:39 AM
If teh google did pull the plug, bring her over here.
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | April 28, 2008 8:50 AM
Define peckerwood.
Posted by: O-dot-O | April 28, 2008 8:52 AM
The only other way I know to access a cache of a site is through http://www.archive.org
It's certainly not comprehensive, though.
Seems to be down at the moment.
Posted by: UprightAlice | April 28, 2008 8:52 AM
In #8 I was trying to post a link and apparently blew the tags.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=define%3Apeckerwood&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
Posted by: O-dot-O | April 28, 2008 8:54 AM
If ERV hadn't keep copies of her posts, she really ought to have done so.
To reclaim posts I would suggest trying the Way Back Machine at Internet Archive (www.archive.org), but that also seems to be down at the moment.
Apart from that, I seem to recall that some of PZ's posts on the Warda & Han paper were republished on other sites. If the same happened for any of ERV's posts then feeding suitable keywords into Google may do the trick. If you want to try another search engine, then, assuming my web site is typical, Google, Yahoo and MSN are the big three spiderers.
Posted by: alias Ernest Major | April 28, 2008 8:58 AM
In the eyes of the god-soaked rubes with their endless whimpering and persecution complex, everything that does not directly kiss their self-righteous asses is considered hateful.
Posted by: Dan | April 28, 2008 8:58 AM
I found a couple of pages cached on the Clusty search engine - "Second EXPELLED Copyright Case 'Resolved'" and "Michael Behe, please allow me to introduce myself".
Posted by: Vole | April 28, 2008 8:59 AM
@#6
Alas, only one rather old result on the Wayback Machine, but at least it's something. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Ted D | April 28, 2008 8:59 AM
@#7, motion carried!
Abbie, we love you and we miss you and we wants you back!
Posted by: Dana Hunter | April 28, 2008 8:59 AM
We've managed to use Yahoo to find cached versions of the site. Hopefully some of the content will be saved that way, if Abbie cannot get it restored. Bugger!
Posted by: Damian | April 28, 2008 9:00 AM
ERV at antievolution.org:
I think we will be getting a new scienceblogger soon.
Posted by: Nerull | April 28, 2008 9:00 AM
To Matt #5 - my blog vanished mysteriously, almost certainly because it got pulled.
It's been explained to me that Google will pull a blog if they receive a small number of complaints, and that they might get round to investigating whether the complaints are justified eventually. I heard of one blog being reinstated months later, with no explanation from Google. I switched providers, lost all my past posts, and started again.
I have no idea who I pissed off and how. I'm just an ordinary atheist, evolution-touting homeschooler, who slags off McDonalds and plastic toys regularly, and manifestly annoyed some Middle-Easterners by giving a positive review to a child's animated movie, set in Tunisia! Who could hate me?
Posted by: Penny | April 28, 2008 9:04 AM
AHA! Quite a few chached pages form ERV here:
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu70PyxVIbvsAOUyl87UF?p=http%3A%2F%2Fendogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com%2F&ei=UTF-8&iscqry=&fr=sfp
Posted by: Ted D | April 28, 2008 9:04 AM
Can someone send O-Dot a lesson on simple HTML?
Posted by: Dan | April 28, 2008 9:07 AM
If the Creo's (William Effin' Wallace) ARE responsible, then good on Abbie - More proof that she is doing something right.
Posted by: J-Dog | April 28, 2008 9:13 AM
Yoo-hoo ScienceBlogs: invite ERV into your fold, and do it now. *frantically scrambles to back up The Beagle Project Blog*
Posted by: Karen James | April 28, 2008 9:17 AM
So the creationists may have had ERV expelled? That figures. Should we start an email campaign?
Posted by: Taz | April 28, 2008 9:21 AM
Just a shot-in-the-dark, but I wonder if Mark over at Good Math, Bad Math can find out anything?
Posted by: NoAstronomer | April 28, 2008 9:21 AM
Time for Abbie to find another host. If ScienceBlogs doesn't take her on, I know of hosts that charge fees low enough that even a grad student could afford them.
Maybe we can blanket Google with a barrage of emails supporting her.
Posted by: wheatdogg | April 28, 2008 9:31 AM
Has anyone noticed that, since the ramp-up to and premiere of Expelled, there's been a real spike in the number of threads that have fallen prey to "link too long" syndrome? Eighty percent of the time now, I have to scroll down five or six pages just to get to the top of the post. This is particularly inconvenient when I'm trying to traverse a series of posts, either backwards of forwards, to find a particular entry.
On the list of Things That Are Wrong With The World, this is pretty much at the bottom, but still - it's easily remedied. A long URL can be contained thus:
Which shows as:
Posted by: Kseniya | April 28, 2008 9:32 AM
Another creo persecution victim? Probably. ERV has been Expelled from the blogoshere. Previous victims are listed below. She got off easy so far. One guy was knifed to death. It is a fundie Death Cult thing. You wouldn't understand. Or want to.
Posted by: raven | April 28, 2008 9:35 AM
My apologies.
Posted by: O-dot-O | April 28, 2008 9:39 AM
My money is on Behe and Dembski being the responsible parties. Ya how they just can't take being out classed by a woman
Posted by: firemancarl | April 28, 2008 9:49 AM
I like ERV. Stop jumping at shadows. Cock up before conspiracy etc.
Posted by: tincture | April 28, 2008 10:00 AM
Pretty much all of Abbie's posts are cached at Yahoo, so any losses are minor. If she does come over to SciBlogs (which I think would be excellent) she could import them too, perhaps even with comments intact.
Posted by: MH | April 28, 2008 10:02 AM
It's slightly premature to smear google before we know any relevant facts.
Posted by: Lev | April 28, 2008 8:29 AM
Not really. It's what Google does. Some crank complains, lies on the complaint and Google just kills the blog because it's easier BECAUSE THEIR CUSTOMERS DON'T MATTER to them.
ERV isn't the first, ERV won't be the last.
Posted by: Moses | April 28, 2008 10:04 AM
You can host your own blog for under ten bucks a month. I have a few blogger accounts from when they were Pyra Labs! I never rely on any single host. I pretty much abandoned my blogger accounts and use my own site now. I also comment all over the blogosphere, leaving a lot of electronic errata in my wake. Bad sign of the times however. This is the danger of the Christian Reconstructionists in our midsts.
Enoy.
Posted by: Tim Fuller | April 28, 2008 10:05 AM
Well let's be fair: It's a free service. You can NEVER trust free services because they are well... free and you're not in control. So pretty often you get knocked dead by 'em with a couple lies. There are so many accounts that you just can't look in depth at each little complaint. So frankly, I'm not sour at Google.
If you don't want such accidents... Think about putting a few bucks into a real server.
Posted by: Michelle | April 28, 2008 10:17 AM
Google has its faults, but I really don't see them intentionally shutting down a Blogger site in this manner.
There was an article on Slashdot just yesterday, lamenting how much trouble people are having with Blogger as of late. I'd have to assume that this is just a bizarre error until we find evidence to the contrary.
Posted by: Mark | April 28, 2008 10:17 AM
I'm inclined to agree, Mark (#35). If Blogger deleted it for a reason, they would have informed the blog owner. This looks like it's a glitch. Unless we have evidence of wrong-doing, we should leave the paranoia to the pseudo-scientists.
Posted by: MH | April 28, 2008 10:24 AM
Kseniya:
Eh? What browser are you using? For me (with Firefox 2), the long URLs just run out of the box to the right, creating a bottom scrollbar, but not messing up the formatting of the rest of the page.
Of course, I agree with your suggestion; I'm just curious.
Posted by: Nemo | April 28, 2008 10:30 AM
i can read quite a lot of her posts on my google reader. want me to copy/paste them somewhere?
Posted by: toomanytribbles | April 28, 2008 10:36 AM
There's 60 odd posts cached at *spit* Microsoft's search engine:
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=site:endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com&lf=0&rf=0&FORM=MSRE
Posted by: Chris Hall | April 28, 2008 10:38 AM
Why anyone would use Blogger rather than Wordpress is something I really don't understand.
Posted by: PhysioProf | April 28, 2008 10:48 AM
ScienceBlogs would never bring in someone like ERV. Never gonna happen.
Posted by: PhysioProf | April 28, 2008 10:53 AM
Yeah, and PhysioProf would know -- loud, profane, passionate people are discouraged from joining the Sb community.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 28, 2008 11:01 AM
PhysioProf wrote "ScienceBlogs would never bring in someone like ERV. Never gonna happen."
Abbie wrote "I was going to wait until school was over to move to SciBlogs, but now Im going to ASAP."
Posted by: MH | April 28, 2008 11:02 AM
I snuck in under DrugMonkey's hem! He's a sneaky fucking bastard!
Posted by: PhysioProf | April 28, 2008 11:34 AM
Hey I got bored at work and wrote a script that ripped the ERV stuff out of cached yahoo.. I have it all zipped up. If Ms. Smith would like it just drop me a line at kingjoebob (a.t) gmail (d.o.t) com Ill be happy to email it its not everything but its probably about 90% what yahoo said they had.
Later and hope you get back soon.
Thanks and Regards,
kjb
Posted by: joebob | April 28, 2008 11:45 AM
I've forwarded your message to ERV -- if she can't get it back otherwise, i'm sure she'll be in touch.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 28, 2008 11:56 AM
Well actually we can start jumping. When you access it from the Netherlands, Blogger responds with the message that the blog has been deleted. I think that probably says it all.
Posted by: laserboy | April 28, 2008 12:09 PM
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | April 28, 2008 12:13 PM
I get this message.
"Blog has been removed
Sorry, the blog at endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs."
Posted by: siddharth | April 28, 2008 12:18 PM
GAAAAAAK. So much for FrankenBen et al. and "they're trying to stifle free speech." From what I've heard, it's quite possible to hack a blog if you know what you're doing. I'm thinking maybe someone hacked ERV's password and yanked the blog themselves.
Just one more reason why I'm about 99 times more likely to trust an atheist than a FundyMentalist -- and I'm a Baptist.
Shenanigans! We declare shenanigans!
Posted by: themadlolscientist | April 28, 2008 12:25 PM
Why anyone would use Blogger rather than Wordpress is something I really don't understand.
If you've already got a GMail account, it beats having to set up yet another account...
Posted by: Interrobang | April 28, 2008 12:28 PM
I'm using... *cringe*... IE6. Serves me right, I suppose. :-)
While we're on the subject, the last thing I want is for anyone to feel... well, anything negative about posting long URLs that messes up the formating. I do like to promote education about the [a] tag, because it's handy (and fun!) but the syntax with respect to the embedded href= is a bit clunky and unintuitive, and I think that's what throws people off (or motivates them to avoid it altogether). YMMV. :-)
Posted by: Kseniya | April 28, 2008 12:29 PM
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ is a senior engineer at Google and appears very keen on their tagline, "do no evil". He's been known to help out people with problems - might be worth Abbie dropping him a line.
Posted by: DavidONE | April 28, 2008 12:30 PM
My Google Reader has all of her posts saved. Just tell me where to send them.
Posted by: Christopher Sisk | April 28, 2008 1:29 PM
It's slightly premature to smear google before we know any relevant facts.
Would the fact that Google delisted it from their search engine before they deleted the blog be a relevant fact?
When I'm on the uni library computers, I use Google to access the blogs, and when I went to find hers yesterday, there was no listing for her blog in the results for the search term "ERV", which had formerly been the very top listing.
Posted by: Nullifidian | April 28, 2008 2:20 PM
FWIW, ERV is the *second* blog I've seen "deleted" from blogger today -- the other was also one by a very active blogger who showed no inclination in any forum of quitting (hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com) ... I suspect some portion of blogger's network has melted down and the "deleted" message is the best the error-checking can come up with.
Posted by: Jim Flannery | April 28, 2008 3:01 PM
I blame google's corporate credulity, and the blandness, indifference and overconfidence that comes with oligopoly. They lost their benefit of the doubt years ago.
And I blame the IDiots who got ERV delisted once before. Remember this?
Posted by: zy | April 28, 2008 3:03 PM
http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/ seems to be up for the moment. Dont know if this is a glitch or just good luck. I would advise Ms. Smith to back up everything while its up.
kjb
Posted by: kingjoebob | April 28, 2008 5:00 PM
I was all set to blame Google until I did a little... erm.. Googling, and found reports of similar things happening to others with info on what may be going on behind it. It looks like it may be the result of an intentional exploit (hack), the search engine dropping the page may be a result of it detecting the exploit and blacklisting it, with blogger following suit later. I've found reports of people who first noticed something odd about something linking to their page in some manner beyond my understanding of how blogs work and then later they report being delisted from Google.
If it was an outside individual responsible for this then it's anybodies guess what their motivation was. It's sounding like this isn't only happening to blogs that get into controversial things, it may just be a campaign to try to exploit a weakness in Blogger to direct traffic to pop up advertising.
Still it may also have been intentional. ERV has made a habit out of posting content that a great many fundy denialists would just as rather pretend doesn't exist. It seems to be standard practice for the fundies to be almost incompetently unfamiliar with technology, it's par for the course when it comes to science denialism, but surely they must have a few script kiddies amongst them who consider themselves hackers for Jesus.
Or perhaps it was as simple as getting the faithful to all flag the blog as objectionable.
If it's either of those cases...
thpht! (that's supposed to be the rude noise by sticking your tongue between your lips and blowing)
She's back in action with a better host (a science specific host) and ready to resume making the fundies look like the gibbering idiots that they are.
And telling us how cute her pit bull is.
Posted by: Nomad | April 28, 2008 5:04 PM
I noticed it missing last night and this morning. I love checking for the latest round of Dembski stupidity, Expelled nonsense, etc. ERV just does such a wonderful job.
It is possibility that it was hacked and then smeared with offensive material. Otherwise, likely someone reported it and Google just pulled it without investigating.
In any case, the timing is just too convenient. It ranks amoung the top searches for "Expelled XVIVO", "Expelled Copyright", etc. It sticks out clearing in the faces of anyone Googling or Yahooing Expelled. It never ceases to amaze me that the IDiots say one thing and do the other. Lying, stealing, banning folks, filtering comments, etc. all show what they mean by an open discussion of ideas.
PZ. Please keep us informed on ERV's status. I'm sure she'll be back up again. IDiots just don't see how ultimately self-defeating such tactics are.
Posted by: BW022 | April 28, 2008 5:04 PM
Just to verify #58, I'm on erv's old site right now, wandering through comments and "Older Posts" without any problems.
Whatever the problem is, it has either been fixed, or it is inconsistent.
I'm also in the US, and I have an active gmail account, in case either of those impact anything.
Posted by: Joe | April 28, 2008 5:35 PM
Mark Chu-Carroll sent a note to the people in charge of the blogger side of business -- ERV was apparently flagged as spam, somehow. It's been corrected.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 28, 2008 5:46 PM
While we're on the subject, the last thing I want is for anyone to feel... well, anything negative about posting long URLs that messes up the formating. I do like to promote education about the [a] tag, because it's handy (and fun!) but the syntax with respect to the embedded href= is a bit clunky and unintuitive, and I think that's what throws people off (or motivates them to avoid it altogether). YMMV. :-)
for those that simply don't want to use [a href] tags, you might try using tinyurl for those big links:
http://tinyurl.com/
Posted by: Ichthyic | April 28, 2008 7:02 PM
Same for me with (brace yourselves) Internet Explorer 7.
I hate it, because I like to point at a link and see a meaningful page name. Tinyurl eliminates that -- and where will a completely disguised link lead me? To a spam site? Into popup hell (such as 0catch.com), where The Gator Corporation and worse will try to install spyware on my computer? The <a> tag is easy, see comment 26.
BTW, the old ERV site is up, and I'm in Paris.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | April 28, 2008 7:37 PM
My blog was flagged as potential spam a couple of years ago because I entered so many links (to evidence in molecular evolution that Michael Behe could have found had he looked for it). All that happened was that I had to enter a captcha phrase every time I posted or edited a post. Eventually I sent a message to the blogger folks and they reviewed my blog and whitelisted it. But it never disappeared. That suggests to me that someone actually complained about ERV, and I mean lied. I hate liars.
Posted by: Monado in Toronto again | April 28, 2008 10:01 PM
Except that captcha can be broken by machines now, so google can hardly use it to keep a machine from posting on a blog.
Posted by: laserboy | April 29, 2008 2:06 AM
34 "Well let's be fair: It's a free service. You can NEVER trust free services because they are well... free and you're not in control. So pretty often you get knocked dead by 'em with a couple lies. "
That's not just 'free' servers. It can and does happen with pay providers too, they have essentially the same clauses in their contracts and are as vulnerable to pressure (including the fact that they don't have to refund you)
Posted by: jayh | April 29, 2008 2:55 PM
Abbie sez,
Shady shenanigans — sigh.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | April 29, 2008 2:59 PM
Tinyurl eliminates that -- and where will a completely disguised link lead me? To a spam site? Into popup hell (such as 0catch.com), where The Gator Corporation and worse will try to install spyware on my computer?
*ahem*
Terms of Use:
Posted by: Ichthyic | April 29, 2008 10:18 PM