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46th Skeptics’ Circle – On a mission from God

26 Oct

Its always the same. I volunteer to do something because its a worthy cause or I really like the thing in question – or both – and then I put it off and put it off and end up scrabbling about at the last minute to sort it out.

So, when I volunteered to host this Skeptics Circle three months in advance I knew that this time I wouldn’t need to put it off again and again as this time I had plenty of time to get organised.

Unfortunately, the bit of my brain that reassures me there’s plenty of time is broken and thats why with less than 30 minutes to go I’m scrabbling about getting the bloody thing organised. Getting a spectacular venue at such short notice is tricky. I do have a few contacts though. Which was good. Skeptics’ would be arriving in about 20minutes time demanding in their evidenced-based ways to be plushly seated and fed.

“Hi, Colnel Jack O’Neil please….look I know it exists….oh for…look, just tell him that Kev rang…yeah, I want to use the conference room for a meeting. What? Promoted? Well…OK…is Daniel Jackson there? Smart arse…not as funny as he thinks. No? Shit. OK…what? Teal’c? Big guy, funny looking. Big on hats. Oh forget it.”

Next try.

“Satan? No? Whoops, sorry Gabriel…wrong fast dial number…hahahaha!”

Try again. Press right key this time.

“Lord of Darkness? Heeeeyyy…how’s it going big guy? Yeah, aside from hot…..oh really? Well if it says a thousand years and you signed it I don’t see how you can moan about it feller. Hey, I’m just saying! Look, shut up a minute – you know that favour you owe me?…..Yes you bloody do!….no *you* look – if it wasn’t for me that Bryan Adams record would still be No.1….look, look, stop it….all I want is the big conference room….what? No the one on the Ninth Circle…..whaddya mean ‘booked’? By who? Oh yeah? Well, you tell Tom Cruise from me that….that….hello? Hello? Bugger!”

This was getting slightly annoying.

“Hey Doc! It’s Kev….Leitch. Kev leitch. Kevin Leitch. I was your assistant just before Billy Pip…uh, I mean Rose. Well, thanks! Nice to know I made an impression! How come you don’t remember me? I was the guy who broke the uppy-downy thing in the Tardis engine room. Yeah…ever get it fixed? Well, thats good…uh…listen, I know I kind of wrecked your only viable mode of transport but I was hoping for a favour…? Just one room for a few hours for me and a few pals….what? No no no, nothing like that….well maybe some beer….whaddya mean ‘how big’? It’s a bloody Tardis! Small outside, massive inside…..look, just for an hour and no beer…well thanks for nothing! I always preferred The Master anyway!”

Dammit.

“Hi…Is that The Others? It is? Cool. Can you just kill Charlie? Yeah, the guy from the Lord of the Rings. Yeah, thats it. Bye”

OK, so I get a little sidetracked sometimes. Back to it…and there was only one thing for it…

“Gabriel? Gabe! Hi! yeah, sorry about before….yeah I spoke to him….he’s fine – well, hot – y’know how it is…..no, no, I guess you don’t…erm…listen I need a favour. No from you, not the big guy. No, no, I’ve got nothing against him….yeah, the beard’s a bit much…look, look, listen – I need a conference room. No, no catering Gabe. I haven’t got the touch the big guy has – two loaves and a couple of fish don’t go very bloody far for me. I dunno….Burger King maybe. Oh for…yes, yes, there’s only one King…Jes- I mean, Chri- I mean for goodness sake, he’s really touchy for an all powerful being isn’t he? Ok, no bloody Burger King….I can? Nice one Gabe! Just a couple of hours. Eh?….for the Skeptics Circle…..hello? Hello? Gabe!? Damnation!”

Re-dial.

“Gabe? Don’t put the phone down! Whats wrong with the septic circle? Hmmm? No, no, *septic* circle. What? ‘Skeptic’? Ha! No way – those guys are losers. No, this is the Septic Circle. We discuss, uh, Septic tanks and the latest news regarding all things, er, septic…wounds…umm. Treatment? Oh, umm, laying on of hands mostly…..No – wait! Prayer, I mean! So – can I have the big conference room? Cheers Gabe you always were my favourite!”

Bloody hell. A skeptics circle in heaven. For a minute I thought the paradox might make my head implode or some such thing but then I remembered to just believe in the power of dreams or whatever and everything was fine.

Next problem – how do you get yourself and several skeptical people into Heaven?

Luckily, we have Google these days so I searched for it.

According to this guy what you needed was:

If you ask most people this question, they will say something like, “If you do more good things than bad things, God will probably let you into heaven.” The above thinking will reserve your place in hell. You need FAITH IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS.

Hell was no good – Tom Cruise had booked the only conference room big enough, the short-arse git. So all I needed was to persuade a bunch of Skeptics to have faith in the blood of Jesus. Should be pretty straightforward.

This was getting silly.

Then I remembered that ‘clapping’ song:

Three, six, nine, The goose drank wine, The monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line. The line broke, the monkey got choked And they all went to heaven in a little row boat.

Frankly, I was dubious. What the hell is a ‘street car line’? And ‘choking a monkey’ sounded suspiciously like something my Grandmother told me would make me go blind. I thought it best to stick to the blood of Jesus thing. A _little_ row boat would never hold *all* the skeptics anyway.

Decision made, I was calm and sanguine when the doorbell rang. I could see the shape of a phalanx of Skeptics through the net curtains and hear the sardonic patter of sarcasm as it echoed down the cul-de-sac I lived in. Game on.

“Welcome all,” I gushed, “come in, take a seat, just a few short words from me and we’ll be off to our scheduled meeting point.”

The phalanx trooped in – I spotted a few familiar faces (Diva, Skeptico, DoC and the sharpshooter eyes of Orac met mine for a minute) and a few people I didn’t know who offered a polite introduction as they came in…Dr Charles, Runolfr, Paul….skeptics’ so hardened and long serving that a permanent air of critical irony came off them like a deeply sarcastic mist.

“OK, everyone in? Good. So, a bit of a change of pace this time….I’ve arranged for us to meet in Heaven.”

Silence. And then Orac asked: “You want us to hold a Skeptics’ Circle in a place that – lets be honest – doesn’t exactly lend itself to critical thinking.”

I nodded. “And to get there, according to some guy on a website, all we need to do is all believe in the blood of Jesus.”

“Seriously?” Said a Skeptic near the back.

I nodded again. “Easy, right?”

Someone laughed nervously (and yet logically). Orac closed his eyes and rubbed his brow. “OK, what do we need to do?”

With a confidence I really didn’t feel, I explained that if each of us expressed our carefully examined and well researched opinion that there was such a thing as the blood of Jesus then we would all be instantly transported to the opulence of the conference room in Heaven I booked with Gabriel awhile before.

“Seriously?” Said all the Skeptics.

“Well, yeah….”

Orac muttered a fairly appalling word and then said, “Right, OK, lets give it a go.” He cleared his throat nervously. “All together…..”

It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Persuading a bunch of Skeptics’ to affirm their belief in the blood of Jesus in order to attend a conference in Heaven. Admittedly, they didn’t look very happy about it, but it worked. Skeptics’ in Heaven. Marvellous.

Once the assembled Skeptics’ had recovered from the shock of being in a place they didn’t believe existed (I explained that Chaos Theory would probably throw up a new type of science at some unspecified point in time called Paradox Theory in which events like this would be commonplace) we settled down to business.

Dr Charles stood up (after he’d finished poking the table with unbelieving pencil prods to establish it was really there) and told the assembled Skeptics’ about the evils of chain letters and how one chain letter in particular had affected his practice in terms of some of his patients feeling the chain letter in question was an excellent diagnostic tool for ovarian cancer. We were off to a good start.

Next, Lord Runolfr told the assembled ranks of Skeptics about how Reiki was not actually ‘spiritually guided life force energy’ at all – an announcement that caused a rumble of appreciation to echo around the room. As an encore, Lord Runolfr explained to everyone just how bad science was abused in Hollywood.

The brilliance of a thousand tiara’s announced the proclamations of Autism Diva. She explained to the assembled ranks that for some institutions, ‘distinguished’ seemed to be a relative term, including people who think Gaia is suffering and that’s why we have autism, or that autism is actually demonic possession.

“I actaully wouldn’t use the word ‘demon’ around here if I were you”, I muttered to Diva as she sat down but she simply threw a spare tiara at me.

Dad of Cameron rose and told the assembled skeptics that despite the assembled scientific might of RFK Jr, jouranlist David Kirby and various other liggers – the mercury-in-vaccines-causes-autism hypothesis was still dead as the rate of autism was still rising even after a few years of mercury-free vaccines.

As DoC sat back down, I remembered who was next up. I rose quickly.

“Um, next up is…uh….Hell’s Handmaiden….” I said, ducking in anticipation of a thunderbolt from our host…..nothing….cool.

The Maiden stood and expounded thoroughly on the formula used by the more credulous examples of creationists to be found littering the web. Was it me or was the sky of Heaven darkening outside?….oh dear….how embarrassing it would be if a bunch of creationist-rejecting skeptics were smitten by a thunderbolt from God.

Luckily, Dr David decided to inject a bit of class into proceedings and started to recite a bit of poetry called I.D. On the Stand. Hmmm….maybe Heaven really hadn’t been the best venue for a Skeptics Circle after all….I shifted uncomfortably as Dr David recited:

…Creationism in the schools had died a legal death…And now as Rothschild rose, Gishville IDers held their breath.

I struggled to recall exactly what God had done to non-believers in the Old Testament. I couldn’t remember but it probably involved boiling oil and pointy sticks and squidgy parts of peoples anatomies. Note to self: next time, if you _must_ do this in a religious setting, try Bhuddist Nirvana. They’re a lot less wrathful and vengeful.

I popped a couple of Rennie’s and munched fretfully as Stuart Coleman stood and asked the assembled skeptics if religion benefited society – and just to really get my stomach acid rising, Stuart went on to comment on the need to create ‘ghosts’ from random shapes.

My indigestion eased somewhat as Archy recounted his look at some incredibly lazy science reporting centered around yet another Atlantis theory. Damn you and your poor attempts at fiction Plato! But at least we were moving away from subject matter likely to cause annoyance in our all-knowing host.

Skeptico stood and pointed out the tired old repetitious fallacies that ID proponents wheel out at the vaguest hint of patterns in nature. Veering close to holy criticism I grant you, but Skeptico took pity on my nerves with lots of fascinating references to the SETI project. He then when on to make the Circle laugh by recounting the time a few days ago when we were all bathed in an ultraviolet pulse beam from higher dimensions. An event so earth-shaking that had Skeptico not told me about it, I don’t think I would ever had known it had happened. Certainly the ‘jump-start in manifesting the things we would like to cocreate in our own lives’ must’ve passed me by.

Next up, the guys from Humbug Online told everyone about some of the best Shonky stuff around including bio-available Oxygen and the Magnetic Laundry System, thus establishing that Aussie punters are just as credulous as Yanks and Poms.

Interverbal rose and clearly and concisely decimated the arguments of some ‘autism epidemic’ apologists by expanding on DoC’s earlier points to show that no matter how one attempted to twist the stats, the CDDS is never going to be a good source of data for autism prevalence.

Orac slapped the table to show his appreciation of Interverbal’s clinical smackdown and then went on to tell the assembled skeptics just exactly what the problem with Deepak Chopra was, coining the marvellous phrase ‘Choprawoo’ into the bargain.

Once the Skeptics had all finished giggling at the phrase ‘Choprawoo’ (personally I doubted I’d ever get tired of it), Seth from a Whiskey Before Breakfast staggered unsteadily to his feet and slurred his way through not one, but two pieces on why magical thinking was bad for people and how magical thinking did not equate to skeptical thinking.

And talking of magical thinking, EoR from The Second Sight told everybody that nothing – quite literally _nothing_ – worked like Homeopathy.

Martin from Salto Sobrius rose next and explained how puzzled he was when people said they weren’t religious but were spiritual and how it seemed to him that the word meant nothing and anything….verging on dangerous ground again – didn’t these skeptics know I had high blood pressure? Luckily my chelationist was waiting for me in his custom 15 door limo-cum-consulting rooms-cum-hyperbaric chamber after the Circle meet up was finished so I knew I’d be all right.

P cleared his throat and proceeded to remind the assembled skeptics about the Strawman fallacy and what a first class example of one he’d come across recently whilst attempting to debate a Christian. ‘Thanks, P’ I thought to myself as I popped another brace of Rennie’s.

Bronze Dog also decided to my indigestion by talking about the appeal to ridicule gambit and, much to my horror, directly addressed the idea of ‘God’ as doggerel…..a definite rumble of celestial thunder sounded outside the door and the room briefly shook. This was going pear shaped. Fast. I needed a safe pair of hands…

Tara stood and told the circle about The failure of alternative medicine – a subject I was profoundly interested in _and_ relieved to be talking about.

Tara indicated she’d finished.

I stood up. “That’s it – everyone’s presented. I’ll close by saying that

a) The Next Circle is at Polite Company on November 9th

b) By way of a party favour, I have this modest bit of fun for you all and

c) I have no idea how to get out of Heaven.”

Megan’s Private Blog Has A New Author

15 Oct

For those people who have access to Megan’s private blog, you’ll know that I’ve failed to keep it as up to date as I should. Time pressures and all that.

Anyway – that blog now has a new author – my wife :o)

Naomi and Megan hugging

The access codes are exactly the same as they were before but if anyone has lost/forgot them then just let me know and I’ll mail them to you again and if anyone wants to join that private list, feel free to ask and I’ll post you the details you’ll need to access it.

Skeptics’ Circle 46 – My turn in the barrel

13 Oct

As Orac has announced I’m next up for hosting the Circle on the 26th October. I’ve started to receive submissions already and if anyone else fancies submitting their best skeptical blogging then please mail me.

Site Housekeeping

8 Oct

A bit more site news on a general scale.

Firstly, concerning the Hub, following consultation with my fellow Hub members the strapline has now been changed. It was felt the old one (we don’t need no stinkin’ cure) whilst nice and pithy and punchy wasn’t really representative of _all_ of the ideas, beliefs and concepts the Hub membership had so a new one, written mainly by Dad of Cameron, has taken its place. It reads:

Autism Hub promotes diversity and human rights, with ethics and reality as the core guiding principles; aspects include empowerment/advocacy, acceptance, and a positive outlook.

which is much more comprehensive.

Secondly, I’ve made two changes to this site. The first change is the new ‘media’ page which I’ll use to collect interviews/articles etc as they happen.

The second change I need some help with. Your help Constant Reader.

I’ve introduced a wiki (see link in main navigation section at top of page) which will be used to collect, collate, explain and centralise a lot of the issues surrounding autism from both an anti-quackery standpoint and an advocacy standpoint.

Myself and a few others have made a start in bringing this material together but the more people we have contributing, the faster this project builds. Anyone who’s interested in exposing quackery relating to autism or interested in advocacy for autistic people to lead the autism community should please email me for details of how to edit the Wiki.

In My Unending Quest

15 Sep

To turn the web purple (must be a phase) I’d like to introduce you to my latest redesign. Lets face it, the site needed it. It was getting just a tad ramshackle around the edges.

Where the old design was heavy on colour, this goes back to my more minimalist roots. I’ve ditched SIFR in place of dynamically generating images for headings on the server. I’ve made sure shorter blog entries don’t look like crap, the underlying code is tighter and more robust and generally its all a bit spick and span.

The biggest change was upgrading from my creaky WordPress 1.5 admin engine to this sleek lovely WordPress 2.0 admin engine. Its a big improvement and was really the main reason this whole redesign was done. Thought I might as well tart up the whole thing.

For those of you with the new Windows Vista default font sets installed you should be seeing them. For those visiting in Firefox, Moz and Safari, things are golden. For those visiting in IE6 and 7 there are minor layout issues with the right column. Same for Opera. If this was a clients site, it wouldn’t be OK to leave these things unaddressed. But its not. And frankly, I can’t be bothered :o)

Have a dig around, let me know if anything’s broken.

Indefensible And Unprotested

26 Jun

The McCarron family and the Leitch family have become close over the last few weeks. We have never met. We have never heard each others voices. We have only seen pictures of each other and communicated by email but in that communication has been a sharing of warmth, emotion and desire to connect such as some people never seem to get in their lives. We have swapped addresses as well as photos and they know should they ever want to come to the UK they have a home here. We know that the reverse is true also.

And yet I wish it wasn’t so. A part of me heartily wishes I’d never spoken with Mike. I’m sure he feels the same. This is because of the circumstances that led to us meeting. The murder of his granddaughter, Katie McCarron. If I could ensure a return to life in the arms of her dad, sister and grandparents by swapping that for the friendship of one of the kindest, bravest families I’ve ever met then I would do it in an heartbeat.

Mike refuses to see Katie portrayed as a burden, or as someone in pain. This is because she wasn’t. He also refuses to let people directly or indirectly attempt to absolve Katie’s killer by making murder the responsibility of an uncaring society. This is because it wasn’t. It was murder.

Recently, Stephen Drake of Not Dead Yet, wrote a press release calling for restraint when reporting these kind of murders – i.e. murders of disabled kids.

Researcher Dick Sobsey has documented an increase in the murders of children by their parents in Canada in relation to well-publicized and sympathetic coverage of the murders of children with disabilities. Articles about the alleged murder of a person with a disability should not contain more about the disability than about the victim as a person. More space should be devoted to grieving family members than sympathetic friends of the accused killer.

And yet, yesterday, the Chicago Tribune released a piece of journalism that can be best described as callow.

The piece starts off by portraying members of the mercury/autism connection as the inheritors of the sort of stigma that those who actually were persecuted by Bettlehiem underwent:

It has been nearly 50 years since mothers shouldered the blame for their children’s autism. Yet for many parents, echoes of that painful era remain……

In the 1950s and ’60s, the medical community accepted University of Chicago psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim’s assessment that “refrigerator mothers”–those with a supposedly cold, unloving demeanor–brought on their children’s disorder.

Although we now know that autism is a neurological disorder and not the result of bad parenting, the exact cause remains a mystery.

Many parents, however, are convinced they’ve found the answer. And most experts are on the opposing side.

Indeed, few medical battles are more charged than that between parents who believe mercury in their children’s vaccines brought on autism and the medical establishment that has found no evidence to support that claim.

Where the ground really starts to shift is the next association made – that it was this society induced guilt that led poor heroic Karen McCarron into killing her vaccine-injured ‘heavy toll’ inducing daughter.

Some who knew McCarron through her work with an autism support group say the physician blamed herself for allowing her daughter to be vaccinated, and feared that the available remedies wouldn’t make enough of an improvement to her daughter’s quality of life. Others suggest that perhaps working among other doctors skeptical of the vaccine connection created an emotional tug of war for McCarron

I think I know Mike well enough now to be absolutely sure that he and his family would be _outraged_ at these utterly vacuous statements. To besmirch the memory of Katie McCarron by trying to empathise with her murdering mother and to try and absolve her and by implication blame the mainstream medical community is appalling.

In fact, the reverse is almost certainly true – the utter hopelessness that groups such as Autism Speaks like to foment are much more likely to have led to any depression Katie’s murderer might’ve had. And if she felt that vaccines caused her daughters autism then she long ago crossed the line into quackery. In this case, fatal quackery. There is still absolutely zero evidence that vaccines cause autism. Anyone – and I mean _anyone_ who has had a hand in perpetuating that myth bears some responsibility for the murder of Katie McCarron.

On the 22nd of June, Kellie A. Waremburg attempted to kill her four year old daughter. Thankfully she failed. Her daughter has cerebral palsy.

Shortly afterwards, the same barrage of testimonials commenting on how good a mother Waremburg was came out and how difficult it is to parent a child with cerebral palsy:

“She’s always been a good mom. She’s always interacting with her (daughter),” said next-door neighbor Katie Gardiner.

Families face challenges, there’s no question about it. Children have varying degrees of impairment. For some families, there is a minimal impact to families who need to take every aspect of their child’s care – feed them, dress them, toilet them,” said Morgan, who also is the chief of the section of child development within the Department of Pediatrics at University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.

So? So what? Get over it, get on with it. If you can’t, then hand your child over to family members or social services and let someone who doesn’t put themselves first get on with it.

I want to clue these killer parents and those parents and groups who ‘understand’ killer parents into something: Your child is not your property. You have no rights over them. You have an obligation to parent them, love them, feed them, clothe them, teach them and let them be who they are. When you have a child, you put yourself last. If your career suffers – that’s not their fault. If you can’t go out as much as you used to – that’s not their fault. If money is a problem – that’s not their fault. Stop transferring your unhappiness about the way your life has changed into excuses for killing, or understanding the killers of, children.

I’ve had two themes running through this blog of late. One is this one – the murder of disabled children. The other one is what’s going on at the Judge Rotenberg Centre where electric skin shock is used to punish autistic and non-autistic students. People who believe in the concept of neurodiversity have been outraged and blogged both of these events continuously and thoroughly.

There is however, one section of people who has remained utterly and totally silent on both issues. The self styled ‘autism community’ who perpetuate the ongoing myth of vaccines causing autism.

Autism Speaks released a short movie about the horrors of having to live life with an autistic child. I’ve seen no movies about the JRC, or investigations into electric shocks for autistic people.

The NAA who regularly (and falsely) denounce good science and promote bad released a damp squib of an online petition and then fell totally silent on the issue.

Safe Minds? Nothing.

ACHAMP? Nothing.

These, don’t forget, are the people who call themselves the autism community. Seems to me like they care about one issue and one issue only.

And how about the anti-mercury bloggers? The grass-roots ‘autism community’.

Adventures in Autism? Nothing.

UPDATE: Ginger informs me that she’s temporarily not blogging at all and hadn’t even heard of Katie McCarron. In this light, it doesn’t seem fair to place AiA here.

Injecting Sense? Nothing.

Whilst these people continue their obsession with trying to find some kind of spurious link between vaccines and autism the world continues to turn. Whilst they present themselves to politicians and media outlets as the autism community, the world continues to turn. Whilst they attend single issue conferences, the world continues to turn.

Unless you’re Katie McCarron. Then the world doesn’t turn at all.

Unless you’re Lexus Fuller. Her world is shattered as she must grow up knowing her mum tried to kill her.

Unless you’re a student at the JRC where the world and time must appear to stand still as you are electrocuted for non-compliance.

Meme Clobbered – Where Was I?

3 Apr

H has meme clobbered me and as I took the piss out of 37 Signals so mercilessly I can no loger cry off such things. Damn you karma!!

Where Was I One Year Ago?

One year ago I worked for a financial services company as their in house designer/developer. We were also getting our daughter established in a mainstream school, my wife was six months pregnant and I had gone through about 3 re-designs of this site in a month.

Where Was I Five Years Ago?

2001 right? Erm….I was working for a design agency (clients included Disney, Nat West, Jarvis and others) churning out very dodgy Flash based websites and living the dotcom dream. Shorlty afterwards I was laid off. The dotcom nightmare.

Where Was I Ten Years Ago?

Christ. In 1996 I was at University doing my degree and was doing a bit of web stuff to make ends meet. I had just met Naomi. I was thinner. I was fitter. I had a better blood pressure. Other than that I cannot remember/am not saying.

Its customary at this time for me to clobber three other people with this meme. I shall therefore choose one design blogger, one autism blogger and one skeptic blogger.

Announcement About Megan

21 Mar

As most of you know I stopped blogging about Megan publicly some time ago.

Well, I really miss it. It really irks me that I can’t tell people whats going on in her life and how she’s doing.

What I’m, going to do is set up a private blog which will require people to enter some sort of password to access. If you’d like to access that blog then please leave a comment below.

I’m also getting a bit ticked off with this design. It looks really poor on shorter posts like this. Thing is, I’ve customised WordPress so heavily I’m worried about screwing it totally. Damn. On the other hand Veerle has raised the bar and I’m getting a design itch that requires some scratching. It seems to be quite ‘cool’ to go for a dark bg so I probably won’t do that but all the blue on here is getting on my nerves a tad.

I’m thinking – background styled to look like a notepad and plenty of Comic Sans. Yummy.

Hating Sanity: My Very Own Sockpuppet

13 Mar

Someone (and its really not hard to guess who) has created a little sockpuppet site for me. Whomever (ahem) it is has also started sprinkling the blogosphere with spicy comments from ‘me’.

How cool is this? Someone (ahem) is worried enough about what I say to start a whole new blog to sockpuppet me!

I could get annoyed about such a thing but really, we have to look at it this way – I must be making a much bigger impression on someone (ahem) then I thought I was. Enough for them to be really worried about the success I’m having in getting through to people.

But lets not ruin the possible fun here. Lets have a bit of a Cluedo type blog post to work out the suspects….who is ‘kev’????

Is it:

a) JB Handley?

Evidence for: He’s got form for trying to coerce people to his beliefs. He’s also good for a bit of name-calling.
Evidence against: Probably knows I wouldn’t be anything but amused.

b) SueM?

Evidence for: Has the wit.
Evidence against: Lacks the motivation.

c) John Best Jr?

Evidence for? Has been repeatedly made to look foolish by a myriad of people on his own blog and other peoples but as I have adopted a position of purposefully getting in his face, I’ve probably stuck in his brain longer than most. Possibly because I continually post his racist (equates Muslims to terrorists), homophobic (believes homosexuality is a perversion which can be cured by a dose of ‘self-respect’) illogic (believes autism was invented by Eli Lilly in 1931) back in his face.

Lately I pointed out to Joseph that attempting rational debate with John was useless. His two crowning moments for me were when he said that there was no autism in China prior to 1999 (whereupon he was deluged with comments pointing to the many studies that predate 1990, let alone ’99 in China) and that autism didn’t exist before 1931 (whereupon I pointed out the diagnosis for case studies stretching back to the 1880’s) and it was at this point that I referred to him as ‘spectacularly stupid’ by which I meant that I was occasionally in literal awe of how stupid he truly was.

Evidence against: Can someone that stupid have a mildly amusing idea like this?

d) Sigourney Weaver?

Evidence for: Took umbrage at my post disagreeing with her statement that autism is a gift. Also annoyed that I confessed to lusting after Gillian Anderson and Geena Davis as well as her.

Evidence against: Is quite obviously in love with me.

So there we have it. Put on your deerstalkers, sniff your class A narcotic of choice, play the stringed instrument you like the best, indulge in a same sex relationship and claim its platonic, be insufferably condescending all the time and inspire lots of really good black and white movies starring Basil Rathbone.

More Blog Housekeeping And Some Thanks

19 Jan

First the ‘thanks’.

I wrote a series of articles I collectively titled Project: New early last year. I wrote them to try and disseminate the idea of web standards to web developers who weren’t yet taking a standards based approach. The series takes you from taking an initial brief to cutting over the final project to the client – all with web standards, usability, accessibility etc to the fore.

After launch a few people emailed me to ask if they could thank me by way of making a financial contribution to which I replied that that was much appreciated but that I didn’t do it for the money but that if people really wanted to then they could buy me a little something from my Amazon wish-list.

Every so often then a little surprise package from Amazon drops through my letterbox and yesterday was no exception. I got back from work to discover a copy of The Elements of User Experience awaiting my return and a friendly anonymous note thanking me for my hard work.

So thank you Mr/Ms Anonymous, I’ll enjoy having a read of that, it was very thoughtful of you.

On a related note, I’ll shortly be starting work on Project: New Part II and will be again looking for expert contributors. I know Pierce from Distorte is up for it but if you, or anyone you know is also interested then I’d love to hear from you. This one’s going to be looking at server and client side scripting. You don’t need to be an out and out expert who knows everything – I want to discuss ways these things work for people new to them and how they can help a web designer/developer. Familiarity with Javascript or ASP or PHP or RoR is ideal.

Lastly, I’m afraid that I’ve been absolutely deluged with spam over the last few days. So much so that I considered turning comments off for a while but I think I’m getting on top of it now. This means that comment sensitivity is pretty high and thus you might stand an elevated chance of your comment being auto-deleted (in extreme cases) or moderated and placed in a queue. If your comments seems to disappear then give it a day in case I don’t get to it straight away. If its not there after a few days then its almost certainly been eaten – sorry in advance.

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