Pharyngula

Posted by: Kobra | June 16, 2009 12:05 PM

There is no way Salt Shakers is not sexual innuendo. Sorry, but if your organization is a named after something that expels white stuff after being jerked back and forth, you don't get to be anti-gay and expect to be taken seriously. It's totally a rule.

Posted by: Dahan | June 16, 2009 12:07 PM

My vote is but a pebble in the landslide that is coming. Still, it is cast.

Posted by: Chad Brown | June 16, 2009 12:12 PM

yes 45%
no 54%

Gr.. this one may be tough

Posted by: Bostonian | June 16, 2009 12:13 PM

The Salt Shakers: "dedicated to helping Christians understand the times and equipping them to be salt and light"

How can you be both salted and light? This is false advertising. I bet they contain high fructose corn syrup as well. Decreasing one's salt intake is a noble goal that shouldn't be confused in this way.

Posted by: Nick | June 16, 2009 12:19 PM

Ah, classic wackloonery. The Salt Shakers also have a nice big section on global warming denialism on their website. Like they say on the farm, same shit, different pile.

Posted by: Victor | June 16, 2009 12:25 PM

You can vote repeatedly, so keep clicking!

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | June 16, 2009 12:27 PM

The way the numbers are jumping, it would seem that the poll may have turned into a bot-race...

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 16, 2009 12:30 PM

An industrial democracy with no bill of rights where consensual sex between adult relatives carries a prison sentence comparable to murder is ahead of us here?

That's...rather embarrassing, actually.

Posted by: Reynold | June 16, 2009 12:33 PM

Unbelief.org, a pro-reason group in Australia has some basic info on that group. If you go look around their site you'll find even more.

Within the first post in that link you'll find a very intersting blog by a guy named Bill...

Posted by: Rufus | June 16, 2009 12:43 PM

Still not moved:

44% (8744) to 55% (11081)

Total 99% (19825)

Posted by: Lynna | June 16, 2009 12:44 PM

Are we sure this poll is working properly as far as recording results? Maybe we do need backup on this one.

Posted by: Jason | June 16, 2009 12:49 PM

Can you imagine the damage if we hadn't voted!?

Posted by: Yossarian | June 16, 2009 12:51 PM

For everyone saying you don't have to clear cookies - I think you do. I get a note that says "You have already voted!" on the results page that comes up.

So don't be lazy! Take the extra step to make sure they count!

Posted by: Walter Silveira | June 16, 2009 12:57 PM

BROTHERS! FOR SANITY! IN REASON BE STRONG!, IN VALOR BE SURE! IN VENGEANCE BE FOREMOST! IN SUFFERING! IN GLORY! CHARRRRRGEEEE!!

=p heheheh, ah man, I hate multi-voting polls because the fundies have nothing better to do but sit there and spew their bigotry over and over again, whereas in a basic numbers game Pharyngula would snow them utterly. Ah well, here's to multiple deletion of cookies!

Posted by: Lilith | June 16, 2009 1:04 PM

Finally I get to vote on someothing in my own country!

I'm not surprised that the results are going for No. The HeraldScum is a right-wing sensationalist tabloid aimed at the lowest common denominator.

I voted twice without needing to clear cookies, but I did tab back to Pharyngula between votes, so maybe I snuck up on it.

The ACT Assembly voted to introduce same-sex marriage here in Our Nation's Capital(tm) a few years ago, only to have it quashed by the Federal government. That's the problem with being a Territory, rather than a State, you get your legislation overthrown very easily.

I'd better get back to voting early and often...

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | June 16, 2009 1:09 PM

As PZ said... the point behind the poll crashing is to point out the stupidity of internet polls to begin with. Accomplished and then some.

And yeah, the liars for jeebus are clearly botting the poll, as it appears to be getting about 100 "no" votes per second at the moment.

Remember, it's not a sin if it's done for the glory of holy undead...

Posted by: Daenyx | June 16, 2009 1:15 PM

The "no" votes are up to 57%. Dayum.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | June 16, 2009 1:26 PM

Yeesh. For a few seconds, I thought this was an Australian poll about the the Pepper Ann TV show. I need a nap. (And to watch fewer cartoons, maybe?)

Posted by: Vidar | June 16, 2009 2:28 PM

Hell no, we just have to vote more! Tell all your friends about this poll, spam the bastions of reason with this poll. We shall not be defeated!

btw, 44% on yes.

Posted by: cousinavi | June 16, 2009 3:40 PM

This is a TOUGH poll, man...

Cuz, like...two CHICKS is cool. Sorta hot, y'know...

But two GUYS? That's just fucked UP, man.

Posted by: James Sweet | June 16, 2009 4:12 PM

Don't give up now, it's swinging back the other way. 48-52 right now.

Apparently they ran out of salt.

Posted by: JackC | June 16, 2009 4:44 PM

Yes: 50%
No: 49%

Not much of an edge.

JC

Posted by: karen | June 16, 2009 4:49 PM

Yes 51%
No 48%

The little Pharyngula that could has chugged over the top of the mountain! Keep feeding the engine!

Posted by: Greg | June 16, 2009 4:50 PM

It's well past the Ozzie Christian's bedtime

51% to reason

Posted by: Geoff | June 16, 2009 5:01 PM

Looks like the Australians have gone to bed.

Time to ramp it up.

Posted by: Pascalle | June 16, 2009 5:15 PM

@42.
that's a good one.
I have an automatic page reloader. I'm off to sleep soon, but my pc is on all night. I'll just leave it running on 10 sec interval.

Posted by: Bostonian | June 16, 2009 5:31 PM

Don't worry about getting the numbers to go our way -- that they're botting it already accomplishes our aim of discrediting goofy internet polls.

PZ, we won't be able to thoroughly discredit Internet polls until both sides have botted it to death.

I like Zack's script (#42) a lot. I had to remove the .request in my version of Python, both from the import statement and from the calling of the urlopen() function. Also, there's no way to tell if it worked. Objects are referenced, but who knows if the poll is accepting or rejecting my "votes?" The reason I harbor some doubt that it's working is that when I go in a regular browser it tells me I already voted, even if I cleared the cookie it created and start a new browser session. (OTOH, I was able to vote twice by going in both Firefox and IE, so who knows?)

All this tinkering has made me wonder if there might be one positive application for Internet polls after all: Iranian elections. They could only improve things.

Posted by: caveman73 | June 16, 2009 6:01 PM

Just voted. It is now:
52% yes
47% no

Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | June 16, 2009 6:39 PM

Lilith! Home-girl! I bet we could have enough Canberrans for a pharyngufest.

53% overnight... needs more work.

Posted by: Uther | June 16, 2009 7:18 PM

Once you have the results up you can just spam F5 to vote over and over again :D

Posted by: Coran | June 16, 2009 8:40 PM

Lilith, IIRC, it was 'civil unions' that would be allowed, to get around the fed govt definition of 'Marriage', but even that was too liberal for fed govt.

Cath, Yay! Where and when?

Ugh, shouldn't have looked at the salt shakers web site. They reference WingNut Daily.

Posted by: BetaMale | June 16, 2009 9:29 PM

@Zack, The "syncopator=pkgtbb2n" part of the string is an identifier generated in the sites javascript, which probably gets validated on the other end to make sure the vote is unique.

You're going to have to generate a random 8 digit alphanumeric key for the vote to be counted. I've got a cron job running a bash script once every 5 minutes to submit it with curl.

Posted by: plucky | June 16, 2009 9:36 PM

Australia has woken up, an it's started to slip. No is getting 2:1 at the moment. Still I don't believe 46% of people here believe this. Of the people I know in Brisbane it 0% No.

Yes
53% (24671 votes)
No
46% (21054 votes)
Total votes
Total of 45725 votes

Posted by: src | June 16, 2009 10:33 PM

# This doesn't seem to be working, but
# in case anyone wants to play with it...

import string, urllib, threading, random
rand = lambda: random.Random().randint(0,56)
s = string.digits + string.letters

strrand8 = lambda: ''.join(s[rand()] for i in range(8))
foo = lambda: urllib.urlopen('http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/poll/process/1,21337,5040217-661,00.html?option=5061010&syncopator=' + strrand8())

ths = [threading.Thread(target=foo) for i in range(100)]; [t.start() for t in ths][0:0]
[t.join() for t in ths][0:0]
print "\nJob done!"

Posted by: Agersomnia | June 16, 2009 10:49 PM

That's a lot of votes, there

Yes
54% (25709 votes)
No
45% (21659 votes)
Total votes
Total of 47368 votes

Posted by: Jason | June 16, 2009 11:25 PM

Good work guys! Go team Pharyngula!

Posted by: Bruce | June 17, 2009 12:09 AM

Ah, poll skewing by Salt Shakers.

I don't know why for a not-overtly religious country like Australia, but we seem to have a lot of polls being hit by our religious right. All you have to do on Australian Idol for example, is say you are Christian, and the phone lines will be your friend.

Leheny:

I lost all the respect I had left for Penny Wong when she spoke against gay marriage on Q&A in a waffle of politicianspeak.

I got to meet her duing the 2005 election campaign where she hitched up with my union of the time (which was quite a left leaning one.) She's got real principals. Principals which she seems hell-bent on burying beneath real politik.

She's become the Ruddock of the Rudd government - appointed to portfolios to deliver broken promises and mean spirited, ethically dubious policies.

Posted by: Don Rowe | June 17, 2009 1:01 AM

Thanks for posting this one, PZ.

The tide has shifted considerably since your original post and I would think the folks here have a significant amount to do with that, so thank you to all the voters as well. :)

Australia is generally a very open and tolerant country. We need to be having been built on the backs of so many ethnicities.

I'd like to see gay couples have all the same rights as opposing-sex couples. It would be one more prejudice overcome and another nail in the religious coffin.

Posted by: DebinOz | June 17, 2009 9:11 AM

Help me folks - I have been voting for the past hour, but it is clear that someone else is doing likewise for the other side. I'm outvoting them about 2:1 but I'm getting bored.

Still at 55:44 (?)

Posted by: Wakefield Tolbert | June 17, 2009 4:16 PM

It is to be opposed for no other reason, if need be, than it means nothing.

"same sex marriage" is akin to saying "joy drop zipper fliff just past the fourth moon of Zantar"

It is the Left's attempt to legitimize something that has no meaning. After decades of govermnet stepping in, in an overcorrection for family destroying policies inculcated by other government policies, and the highbrow left telling people that families and certainly fathers are redundant measures of little value next to the power of the State----we now have people telling us about the inherent value and "right" of marriage of some other shade?

Asinine. (yeah--even with Astroglide, brother PZ)

Yeah, ya love the polls until the Saltshaker is not tilted in your direction. Then it's time to harass people and use the black robed power of busybody courts to get the deed done, so people can pretend to screw and pretend to marry.

Even in a purely secularist take (if ye like, and ya do!), marriage was a socially engineered product having nothing to do (in the beginning) about "relations" and "love" and all that other poppycock Hollywood rot. Teens in the backseat of the Chevy can have love and relations. So can gays, come to think of it.

And if they want to visit their pals in the hospital (contra what is commonly claimed) they can. If they want to bequeath their property and pet cat Felix all the same, they can do that to.

This sudden Left wing paean to the joys of married life that came about like bolts from the blue is phony, and we all know it.

A good time to knock it off and worry about other demographic woes, or perhaps the Bambi administration's many Kim John Illnesses, might be now...

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 17, 2009 4:24 PM

WAHHHH.

White Hetro Males are losing some of their power and their ability to keep power from others.

WAHHHHH

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 17, 2009 11:58 PM

"joy drop zipper fliff just past the fourth moon of Zantar"

hey, fuck you, pal!

who are you to say my zipper fliff has no meaning beyond the fourth moon?

I'll have you know that I am currently utilizing my zipper fliff to great effect beyond the sixth moon!

oh, and seriously...

you presented the lamest argument in this thread, and that's saying something. Moreover, you even managed to present it twice.

btw, if it's all such meaningless terminology TO YOU, I suppose you haven't even bothered to consider why you seem so concerned about it.

methinks thou dost protest too much.

Posted by: Wakefield Tolbert | June 22, 2009 10:20 PM

I said the terminology was lame, Mr. Lamo.

I also pointed out the utter hypocrisy of decrying the very need for marriage that came from the mouths of the learned highbrow liberals who told us government made as good a dad as Dad--and about the predictible ugly results that followed, but that now marriage is suddenly in style again! WOW!

I did NOT say the results of failing either to use the King's English in said matters of "gay marriage" or of the cultural consequences would be meaningless.

Obviously, the use of horrid terms that mean little other than "if you fail to meet our demands, you're on the baddy-bad side of thingys" DO have consequences. One would think the context of the posts--seeing that you found the accidental one as well--would have sunk in. But I guess that's asking one step far too damned much.

One being that the reality is that "gay marriage" is merely a pretend right concocted from whole cloth from a void in order to actually destroy what might happen to be left of REAL marriage so that government authority can be the final arbiter of life. So that's far from non-consideration. Marriage was engineered socially for procreation for the next generation, and that involves quite a bit, even if some sociologists and government nannies and ninnies think men are disposable and the best game running is merely the requisite money for the advancement of the Welfare State.
The Constitution is not some grab bag or goody bag of "rights" that somehow pop out of a "penumbra" of other allegedly "implied" rights, nor does it mean "that which liberals would like to have or see happen."

Nor--other than sheer mockery until the day it, ooops, actually came to court in some areas like Calgary--did the libs have an adequate answer for polygamy and something nifty and even more hippy called "polyamory." Those are coming in to vougue again as well. And why not? If two people can pretend or play house, why not take on extra wives.

HERE COME THE BRIDE(S)?

Then we'll have all manner of social ills.

Sorry chief, the world does not revolve around the primitivistic hump reflexes and amorous desires of the loins, even if some looney judges still reeling from the days of Woodstock think so now that they've gotten gussied up in dark robes and somewhat shinier shoes.

(As far as a double posting: That was an error, not an intention, as surely you know. This site is horribly slow, so yeah I got impatient.)

Posted by: Pete H | June 23, 2009 2:41 AM

Take a leaf from Saltshaker's book - vote early, vote often.