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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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Register for the Atheist Convention Melbourne 12-14 March 2010

I reserve the right to publicly post, with full identifying information about the source, any email sent to me that contains threats of violence.

I support Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Random Quote

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.

[George Santayana 1863-1952]

Other Information

2005 Koufax Award
Best Expert

2006 Weblogs Award

Pharyngula has a spam filter to keep out undesirables, and I do use it to block some of the more tedious or nasty denizens of the internet. In the interest of being completely transparent about it, I'm listing here the current residents of the Pharyngula filter file, other than the long list of spambots. For another example of this sort of action, I'll refer you to the infamous Tim Skirvin's Killfile Dungeon, an old institution on usenet, in which Skirvin announced the list of usenet commenters he had as entries in his personal killfile, which meant he wouldn't be reading them.

My killfile is more powerful. Being entered here means your comments won't make it to the pages of Pharyngula, and no one will see them. Just to be fair, though, if such people have a web page or blog of their own, I'll note it here. You can go elsewhere to read their foolishness, but you won't find it on Pharyngula.

By the way, if you want your own personal killfile for your browser, try Daniel Martin's killfile script for Firefox.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

What gets people put into the Pharyngula killfile dungeon? This is a list of annoyances; it usually takes more than one incident to get thrown in the slammer, though. The people who've been incarcerated are typically persistent and have a known history of pulling these stunts over and over again.

Concern trolling	A particularly annoying form of trolling in which someone falsely pretends to be offering advice to favor a position they do not endorse; a creationist who masquerades as someone concerned about the arguments for evolution as an excuse to make criticisms.
Godbotting	Making an argument based only on the premise that your holy book is sufficient authority; citing lots of bible verses as if they were persuasive.
Insipidity	A great crime. Being tedious, repetitive, and completely boring; putting the blogger to sleep by going on and on about the same thing all the time.
Morphing	Changing pseudonyms to avoid killfiles.
Slagging	Making only disparaging comments about a group; while some of this is understandable, if your only contribution is consistently "X is bad", even in threads that aren't about X, then you're simply slagging, not discussing.
Sockpuppetry	Like morphing, but with a specific intent: creating multiple identities supporting a position to create a false impression of popularity
Spamming	Using the comments to sell real estate, mortgage assessments, little blue pills, porn, or Russian mail-order brides. Spammers are not tolerated at all; they are expunged without comment.
Stupidity	Some people will just stun you with the outrageous foolishness of their comments; those who seem to say nothing but stupid things get the axe.
Trolling	Making comments intended only to disrupt a thread and incite flames and confusion.
Wanking	Making self-congratulary comments intended only to give an impression of your importance or intelligence.

Just for clarification: being a Christian or a Republican is not grounds for being banned, nor is disagreeing with your host. Try it, you can call me all kinds of names while praising Jesus and GW Bush, and I won't care…unless you turn it into a crusade and disrupt threads with constant iterations, of if you bore me by saying nothing else but jingo.

Index of the Banned

These are the people who have earned a place in the blog's filter settings. They are not allowed to post here any more, although some also have a predilection for morphing and sneak in now and then.

Miscreant	Crime	Comments
Larry Fafarman AKA Larry Farma, many others	Stupidity, Morphing	This fellow is probably mentally ill, but he's able to maintain a blog that is a bottomless pit of stupidity. Also banned at the Panda's Thumb.
Jason AKA Jinxmchue, Jinx	Slagging, Stupidity, Trolling	A Christian creationist who is a bit obsessed; has an anti-PZ blog, which is no crime here, but is indicative of his mentality.
Robert O'Brien	Stupidity, Stupidity, Stupidity, Stupidity, Trolling, Wanking	This fellow has an awesome reputation all over the web as one of the dumbest commenters ever. I concur. Has a stupid blog, too. Banned at numerous sites. Mocked everywhere.
John A. Davison	Stupidity, Wanking, Insipidity	A Legend. Has set up multiple blogs; each one consists of one post, inviting comments. Most of the comments are from himself. When he feels like that blog is "full", starts another one. Here are some links, and a perfect parody of his style.
VMartin AKA Huslista, jenik, janko, anodano, Pjetiir, DobzhanskyisInvalidFly, Pjeter, pjotr, FRANK2, SKAS, skuska, deletedtext, John's friend, ForbiddenTruth, anti-darwinians, Peppered-antimoth, CharlatanDarwin, Anti-darwin, skusto, zakazaneovocie, and others	Stupidity, Insipidity, extreme Morphing	A John A. Davison sycophant. Tried reposting Davison screeds after they were deleted; basically talks about nothing but Davison, bringing up his name in irrelevant threads. They belong in the dungeon together, sharing a cell. VMartin has lately increased his activity, morphing at a frantic pace to try and get past the filters—he's exceeded Charlie Wagner's efforts, hard as that may be to believe. He has also done something particularly contemptible: using other people's username and email address to try and sneak past the filters. Saddest, most pathetic part of it all: he's still only doing it to write sycophantic praise of John A. Davison. I think he needs to get a real room with his idol.
Hoody AKA DemolitionMan	Slagging, Insipidity	Tiresome one-liner troll who regularly buzzed in with stupid short whines. Has his own blog, if you like that sort of thing.
Drew A. Hempel AKA Dru	Insipidity, Morphing, Wanking	Space cadet from the U of Minnesota. Tends to make long-winded New Agey rants that everyone ignores; gets angry that we do not pay attention to him. May slip through now and then since he does like to change pseudonyms.
Charlie Wagner AKA Little Blond Girl, Militant Agnostic, many others	Wanking, Morphing, Stupidity, Insipidity, Spamming	Weird anti-evolutionist with delusions of intelligence. Commonly popped up in response to any science post to claim that it showed evolution was wrong. I put up with him for many years; when he rejected my request to make only constructive comments in a particular thread, he defied me and posted the same insult repeatedly, and then insisted it was his privilege, went on a morphing spree, and threatened to spam the site every time my back was turned. Complete ass.
The Kansas Troll(s) AKA too many pseudonyms to list	Slagging, Stupidity, Morphing	Frantic morpher(s); I don't know how many there are, and there could be just one guy. Anti-evolutionist fanatic(s) spawned out of the creationist chaos in Kansas; cut their/his/her/its teeth on the KFCS forums but have since moved on to plague many science blogs with fly-by one-liners cussing out science, evolution, atheism, etc.
Susan Williams	Godbotting, Insipidity	Fueled the longest comment thread on the old site with repetitive apologetics and bible verses. When she found her way here a while back and promised to do the same thing, I threw her out.
J.J. Ramsey	Slagging	Wouldn't normally have been subject to banning, but chose to insult my daughter here, several times, after being warned. If you must insult my family, do it to their faces so they can kick your ass; it's cowardly to try and do it in front of me.
Yamil Luciano AKA A Good Christian Man, Weapon of Mass Instruction	Slagging, Godbotting, Stupidity, Morphing	An appalling far right-wing Christian bigot who repeatedly declared that the students at my university (all secular universities, actually) were STD-infected whores, among other pleasantries. Another obsessive; has a blog at pharyngulatopics.blogspot.com.
Swiftee	Slagging, Stupidity, Insipidity	Illiterate thug. Has a blog at Pair 'o Dice (yes, that's how he spells it).
Alexander Vargas	Slagging, Insipidity	He's been banned before, but like Charlie Wagner , believes it is his right to post on Pharyngula. Can be sensible, but prone to obsessive fits where he can't do anything but constantly slag people for being "Dawkinsites" or "Dawkobots".
cmf AKA skinfixxix, newKosfan, and austingrrrrl	Stupidity, morphing, sockpuppetry	Rambling nutcase and misogynist. Exhibited his incoherence and obnoxiousness on a thread, got disemvoweled, and then invented a few transparent pseudonyms to try and continue; "austingrrrl" even tried to claim that cmf had "sent" her to the thread. It's funny how even all of his female friends sound like woman-hating schizophrenic dorks.
Scotty AKA davescot (not the real thing), many other aliases	Stupidity, morphing, slagging, insipidity	Weird troll who showed up and posted nothing but links to soft-core images of women with large breasts, and obsessed over having sex with celebrities. Thrown into the dungeon because he's too pathetic to have out in public.
Mr G	Insipidity, trolling, wanking	Tiresome pseudo-intellectual who popped into a thread about the mind-body problem and started insisting…what? Nobody knows. He was darned sure his opinion was superior to everyone else's, but we couldn't get him to explain what his position was. Maybe a few years in the dungeon will give him time to organize his thoughts.
philos	Being a demented fuckwit and world-class asshole	In an unbelievable act of crass, vile smugness, this petty twerp rushed to my site after the fatal 35W bridge collapse to sneer at atheists. "Contemptible" isn't a strong enough word for vermin like this, who use tragedy to push their lies on the bereaved. His kind are what make me despise religion.
Caledonian	Insipidity, trolling, wanking, slagging	Years of smugly tedious comments from this obsessive passive-agressive whiner are enough. The guy puts up 25-30 comments a day, all calculated to annoy and fuel long drawn-out threads where he offers nothing but snideness — he's nothing but a bitter noise-maker who poisons discussions.
island	Insipidity, stupidity	Boring crank.
ForTheKids, FtK	overwhelming creepiness	I put up with this slimeball for a long time, since she rarely commented on Pharyngula; her wretched insinuations against my daughter, though, were too much. I think her pseudonym of "For the Kids" means she likes to prey on younger people with her lies and innuendo.
Jamie	Trolling, slagging, insipidity, stupidity	Strange little ranter who exhibited petty temper tantrums over poetry, of all things, which he thinks no true scientist should enjoy. Self-confessed troll; claimed to be leaving, but of course he couldn't stay away, so I'm helping by throwing him in the dungeon for a time-out. Yeah, he seems to about 12 years old, and spoiled.
William Wallace	Insipidity, stupidity	Extremely tiresome whiner. Insisted on telling me over and over again about the actual events that transpired at the screening of Expelled, never mind that I was there and he was not. Also banned at the Panda's Thumb.
dsmvld	Insipidity, stupidity, slagging, trolling	Obsessive loser; typical comment would be a sneering one-liner, and he would never discuss anything of any substance. The pseudonym is a dead giveaway that we're dealing with a troll.
Joe Blow	Insipidity, stupidity, slagging	Another brainless one-note. Never contributed to the discussions, just showed up to make sneering remarks … thrown in the dungeon for excruciating tiresomeness.
PlanetKiller, AKA "James", "Bob"	Insipidity, stupidity, slagging, morphing	Creationist with a chip on his shoulder. Final straw: showing up on my blog to tell me to leave. That's just too stupid to bear.
Hugh Slaman	Stupidity	Persistent world-class stupidity. An astonishingly obtuse dimbulb — he had to go. We do have standards on Pharyngula.
David Mabus	INSANITY	Deeply deranged, disturbed individual who believes James Randi has cheated him out of a million dollars, and who vents by spamming websites and email with his angry tirades. Certifiable. Needs immediate mental health care. His real name is Dennis Markuze, and he lives in Montreal, Canada.
Some Dude	Slagging, insipidity	Yet another angry kook. Blew in one day and started accusing everyone of a liberal bent of being PZ Myers' sockpuppet (it's not clear that he even understands what "sockpuppet" means). Sounded an awful lot like Joe Blow, and had to be incarcerated for the same reasons.
Kenny	Godbotting, insipidity	What can one say about dear Kenny? Persistent. Awesomely stupid. Tedious. Annoying. He posted 273 comments, and he never learned a thing.
Shas, Scrote	Sockpuppetry, insipidity	This is one of those hypocritical trolls: they come on, they whine in a superior manner about how everyone here is wasting their time, and then they keep whining the same thing over and over again under multiple aliases. I've done Scrote a favor by preventing his continued waste of time.
Jack	Godbotting	Spamming godbot who would just copy and paste bible verses into comments.
Ostiarius	Slagging	Nasty little coward who waited until I was out of town to start spewing misogynistic insults at everyone. Petty little bugger.
Sinbad	Insipidity, trolling	Annoying git with a long history of tedious trolling; rarely substantive, routinely and persistently obnoxious, mindless defender of christianity.
John Best	Stupidity, slagging	Obsessed anti-vaxer with a foul-mouthed misogynistic/anti-gay streak. Locked up with no regrets. Key has been melted down and thrown away.
Stan, and various permutations of that name	Insipidity, slagging, morphing	Weird little drive-by troll who goes into posting fits. Never says anything of substance, just insists that change is preprogrammed into genomes, and natural selection doesn't work, and babbles, babbles, babbles. I'm giving him a special cell, with padding and straps.
Fester	Slagging, general vileness	Racist slimebag.
KC	Slagging, general vileness	Freakishly short-tempered misogynist and homophobe.
Pharynguphat, among other aliases	Slagging, morphing, insipidity	Tedious drive-by troll who uses other people's names to avoid killfiles, and to simply be obnoxious.
killedthesavages	Trolling, stupidity	Nazi.
hahajohnnyb	Too vile to be tolerated	Racist hatemonger; a member of Stormfront. No, we do not put up with that nonsense.
Robert Byers	Too stupid to be tolerated	Single-handedly bringing great shame to the good name of Canada. Incoherent, bigoted, insanely inane.
The Observer	Insipidity, acute racism	Yet another pompous pseudo-scientific racist.
Jim in Vermont, AKA Garfunkel, AKA JohnDoe, AKA Superman, AKA Jackie	Insipidity, morphing	A nuisance who used several aliases to post shrill tirades.
ZR	Insipidity, slagging	One of those vapid drive-by whiners.
pwl	Insipidity	Self-righteous, insistent, repetitive, BORING.
Global Warming is a Scam	Insipidity	He could have just posted his pseudonym once. He had nothing to add beyond that, ever.
Barb	Insipidity, Stupidity, Godbotting	Loser of the Survivor: Pharyngula! competition
Simon	Stupidity, Slagging	Loser of the Survivor: Pharyngula! competition
John Kwok	Insipidity, Stupidity	Loser of the Survivor: Pharyngula! competition
John Doe, JQisAwesom	Concern trolling, Insipidity, Stupidity, Morphing	Pathetic anti-atheist troll, who admitted to trolling on his own site.
derender	God-botting, Insipidity, Stupidity	Guess what? We really don't care what Jesus might have said here.
Chuck Windom, CW	Slagging, Insipidity, Stupidity, Morphing	Liked to make up words and assign them to people, then pretend to rebut them by criticizing his caricature. Major moron.
Pete Rooke	Insipidity, Stupidity	Perennial dullard, with an occasional penchant for truly disturbing analogies. Too stupid to take a hint to bugger off while I was in a cranky mood from cleaning up spam, and instead chose to feed the troll.
Facilis, FP, DembskiFanGirl	Insipidity, Stupidity, Morphing, Sockpuppetry	A truly stupid pest who finally crossed the line by posting as "DembskiFanGirl", a flaming creationist who was pushing the same positions as Facilis, which he then claimed was "satire". I should ban him for just being too dense to know what satire is.
Alan Clarke	Insipidity, Godbotting, Creepiness	A persistent and bizarrely ignorant creationist who fanned some of the longest running threads ever; all he had as evidence for his claims was the Bible, which is stupid enough, but what finally crossed the line was his decision to evade discussion of the science by reminiscing about his fondness for prepubescent girls. Creationists should thank me, since most wouldn't want this horrible little man representing them, anyway.
Jaygo, DR K	Godbotting	ALL CAPS BIBLE VERSES. Enough said.
Pez	Stupidity	We have a glitch where comment submission returns an error. The error message says, "Do not repost your comment", because it has been posted anyway. Pez did not read the error message. 15 times.
African Genesis	Insipidity	Pompous Libertarian fuckwit whose tedious drone finally compelled me to rid my blog of the nuisance.
karol	Slagging, stupidity	Raving homophobe who blew in shrieking all kinds of misinformation about "faggots".
Silver Fox	Inspidity	Finally bored me into exasperation. Gone. No loss.
Robert, Rob, Guardian of the Poll, Southern Pride, Sabretooth Tiger, Guradian of the Polls, Captain Right, Normal Person, Vlad the Impaler, Personal Defender of Vincent Fleury, Concerned Conservative, etc., etc., etc.	Morphing, Slagging, Inspidity	If you've noticed the multiple sneering stupid people who've been popping up intermittently over the last month or two to "defend" conservative values, it's probably been this one guy.
Pastor Tom Estes	Godbotting, Inspidity	Mildly retarded doofus on a mission from God.
Shaun	Godbotting, Inspidity, Slagging, Morphing	Persistent and not very bright troll; acolyte of Pasator Tom Estes. Chose to announce that Ted Kennedy was roasting in hell because he wasn't the same kind of Christian he is…a truly charming wanker.
Randy Stimpson	Inspidity, Spamming	Tiresome intelligent design advocate who repeatedly spammed some half-assed simulation he wrote that he claimed would show evolution can't work; really crossed the line when he lied in a comment and told other readers to visit his site because I was writing a rebuttal to his claims.
help ma boab	Inspidity	From the stupid pseudonym to the tiresomely pretentious content of his comments, this wanker was too stupid to bear.
Ga briel, James	Inspidity, Godbotting	Raging bigot whose previous appearance as "James" consisted entirely of Christian platitudes and damning everyone to hell — and as "Ga briel" spouted racist slime about Jews, blacks, and gypsies.
Bilbo	Inspidity	Standard tedious troll. Threw out insults, and claimed that replying to them would be proof of their validity. Don't you wish brain-damaged twits would learn to masturbate in private?