www.conservapedia.com
I listened to a story on yesterday's All Things Considered (NPR), that I think will get many of you fired up. A group of "conservatives" (read: religious right), have set up a competing web encyclopaedia to Wikipedia. One example of the difference between the two is that Conservepedia uses Creationism to explain just about everything. They say that Wikipedia is too "liberal" in its approach. I'm sure that many of you are going to hate it, and a few will love it. They even stole Wikipedia's design! As much as I have doubts about Wikipedia, I find this new site quite disturbing. :(
www.conservapedia.comI don't hate it; it's hilarious.
It's WONDERFULLY hilarious, especially all the invaders articles that they dont notice and forget to delete. There're more liberals posting there than conservatives.
They deleted my article on the handicapped, though...
This is outta control..
I've seen that before.
Pretty funny.
"Minors under 16 years use this site. Posting of obscenity here is punishable by up to 10 years in jail under 18 USC § 1470. Vandalism is punishable up to 10 years in jail per 18 USC § 1030. We will trace your IP address if necessary."
Yeah, I noticed that warning on their main page. Can they actually take any action under US law?
Read the selection on the Patriot acts... too funny!!!
They can; however, there's no way it'll succeed.
Read the selection on the Patriot acts... too funny!!!
Did they take it down?
Liberal is a term used in US politics to describe a person who generally is left-wing in his attitudes towards the government, establishment, and many other laws. The term was first used in reference to a political opinion c. 1801 A.D., in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when it meant "tending in favor of freedom and democracy" — at that time the liberal party was the party of individual political freedoms.[1]
The term liberal is used in the United States to characterize the following set of beliefs:
support of gun control
taxpayer funding of abortion
prohibiting prayer in school
equal rights for men and women, including participation by men and women in the military
distributing wealth from the rich to the poor
government programs to rehabilitate criminals
same-sex marriage
amnesty for illegal aliens
teaching of evolution
increased taxpayer funding of public school
protection of all of God's creation
taxpayer-funded rather than private medical care
increased power for labor unions
disarmament treaties
increased taxes
support of government programs such as welfare
reduction of military expenses
support of affirmative action
government-sponsored education about human reproduction
Liberals in the US typically align themselves with the Democratic Party. Note, that liberal in the European context refers to moderate and center-right parties, often with a pro-business stance.[2] The same holds for many liberal parties throughout the world.[3]. The US definition of liberal is much more similar to the politics of European socialist or social democratic parties.[4].
An alternative definition of liberal is anything that is not conservative. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary includes this definition of "liberal":[5]
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas ...
Is conservapedia a Rupert Murdoch production? :rolleyes:
I was thinking we should do a parody thread but it looks like that won't be necessary.
people like that scare me.
I was thinking we should do a parody thread but it looks like that won't be necessary.
I think you're right. :crazy:
The Patriot Act (formally, the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001') was an act passed by the Republican congress following the 2001 attacks on World Trade Center. It removed a certain number of liberties from American citizens, including such things as the right of habeas corpus and the requirement for a search warrent, since of course freedom might be used by terrorists against America, and hence freedom is the enemy of security.
Long ago patriots said things like "Give me liberty, or give me death", but today we say "take away my liberties, that's ok, patriotism means security not liberty."
The Patriot Act seems to indicate that safety holds a higher value than liberty, which is a very strong argument in favor of gun control, something that followers of the Patriot Act seem strangely opposed to
Read the page on Earth's moon if you feel like a hearty laugh
Does this seem phobic to you?
Homosexuality
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Homosexuality is a sexual attraction between members of the same sex. It is condemned by the Bible as explained below. ...
Yes, yes it does seem phobic.
It's WONDERFULLY hilarious, especially all the invaders articles that they dont notice and forget to delete. There're more liberals posting there than conservatives.
They deleted my article on the handicapped, though...
They missed this one:
As part of changes proposed by the USDA and implemented into law, ketchup was declared a vegetable by the Republican Reagan administration on March 9, 1981. Ostensibly, this was "so public schools could include it in their balanced meal plan," However, critics charged that it would allow schools to count ketchup as a vegetable in place of so-called "real" vegetables like potatoes and the like. After a volcano of negative publicity, this was quickly changed.
They miss a lot. I wonder why the conservatives seem so outnumbered?
Oh wait.
Read the page on Earth's moon if you feel like a hearty laugh
That's awesome.
Read the page on Earth's moon if you feel like a hearty laugh
Read the page on Earth's moon if you feel like a hearty laugh
It's kind of fun editing the pages there!
My contribution:
1 moon; 1 earth = 1 God?
1 web site; one nutcase writer = 1 screwed up view of the world.
5. Our solar system is one of the few that has only one sun. Only one sun and only one moon: this uniqueness may reflect the existence of only one God.
that's one hell of a "may"!
but..if.. there's only one god.. and 'he' is running the whole schebang then wouldn't all the solar systems in all the universe have only one sun?.. oh! right! because we're the only inhabited planet in the whole infinite universe! sorry... I forgot.
wow... look up dinosaurs.. back in kansas the prevailing theory among the whack-jobs.. er.. I mean religiously hardcore (by which I mean the neo-christians) is that dinosaur bones were placed in the earth by the devil to test our faith.. haven't found if crapopedia here espouses that theory yet..
Have fun and read the article on Ann Coulter, it's defense of the 'faggot' remark, and complaints about the double standard held by the press in protesting those remarks.
c. 1801 A.D.
I don't know about you, but it really irks me when people use A.D. incorrectly. It goes BEFORE the date. B.C. comes after.
Who made that rule, I've never heard it before, which doesn't have any bearing, but strange nobody has mentioned it. I know you are a repository for a wealth of stuff we mortals don't know. :D
You have to log in to edit pages.
Oh dear. I wonder why that is? Perhaps they don't want anonymous users slapping {{dubious}}, {{false}} and {{NPOV}} tags all through the articles?
The article on the Moon is so hilarious. The sad bit, however, is that some people might actually take it seriously.
A.D. means "Anno Domini" or "In the Year of Our Lord" as in "On the 14th of May in the Year of Our Lord 1607 the Jamestown Colony was established."
B.C., meaning (years) Before Christ, comes after the date, as in "Cleopatra reigned in Egypt from 51 to 30 B.C."
If you're using B.C.E. and C.E., (Before Common Era and Common Era), those both come after the date.
As usual, Wikipedia has more complete poop.If you're using B.C.E. and C.E., (Before Common Era and Common Era), those both come after the date.
As usual, Wikipedia has more complete poop.
Exactly why we scientists view Wikipedia with some measure of distrust. Apart from being a scientist, I have also had a life-long love of history. I am a member of
The Australian Centre for Egyptology, and BCE means before Christ (ie. up to and including 1 BC), and CE means
after Christ (ie. from 1 AD on). There is no year zero - that is why 2000 was the last year of the 20th century, and 2001, the first of the 21st. The "common erra" terms came into affect due to "religious sensibilities" - that is, not wanting to offend non Christians. The fact that the date of Christ's birth was calculated (as it has turned out, incorrectly), several centuries after the fact, does not mean that the Common Erra starts from the date of calculation - it replaces AD.
From the Oxford dictionary:
BCE
• abbreviation before the Common Era (indicating dates before the Christian era, used especially by non-Christians).
CE
• abbreviation 1 Church of England. 2 Common Era.
You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise, clean answers free of "political correctness".
"Much prefer?"
For "ketchup"...emphasis mine:
As part of changes proposed by the USDA and implemented into law, ketchup was declared a vegetable by the Republican Reagan administration on March 9, 1981; this was "so public schools could include it in their balanced meal plan," However, liberal critics charged that it would allow schools to count ketchup as a vegetable in place of "real" vegetables like potatoes and the like. After a volcano of negative publicity, the USDA and the Reagan Administration stopped refering to condiments as vegetables.
Exactly why we scientists view Wikipedia with some measure of distrust.
:rolleyes:
B.C. and A.D. only exist in Christainity as numerous ego-maniacs have tried to stop / change tiime.
for instance, September would have been the 7th month, October the 8th month, November the 9th month, December the 10th month.
As i am not a scientist, i present this in laymens' terms. :p
for instance, September would have been the 7th month, October the 8th month, November the 9th month, December the 10th month.
As i am not a scientist, i present this in laymens' terms.
As I recall, Julius Caesar added "July" and Augustus added "August," right?
For "ketchup"...emphasis mine:
As part of changes proposed by the USDA and implemented into law, ketchup was declared a vegetable by the Republican Reagan administration on March 9, 1981; this was "so public schools could include it in their balanced meal plan," However, liberal critics charged that it would allow schools to count ketchup as a vegetable in place of "real" vegetables like potatoes and the like. After a volcano of negative publicity, the USDA and the Reagan Administration stopped refering to condiments as vegetables.
Hmmm, how did the word liberal disappear the first time this paragraph was posted? :cool:
The funny thing about this idea, that Wikipedia is a biased, Liberal source, is that Wikipedia is a collective repository of knowledge into which all are welcome to make additions. Conservative viewpoints, such as they exist in society, have exactly the same chance of being represented in Wikipedia as any others.
What we have here is a lack of bias being misrepresented as a bias because a certain group of people are resentful that their own bias is not represented.
Furthermore, what Wikipedia represents, on one level, is a toppling of the old standard information model: that message control can be coordinated through a few central sources, IE mass media outlets. In this case, a small group, whose wacky ideas have been over-represented in the past, are finally seeing a realistic balance of ideas, and they don't like it because it exposes them as the fringe group that they are.
Somebody call that waaahmbulance. We're gonna need it more and more frequently, it appears.
What we have here is a lack of bias being misrepresented as a bias because a certain group of people are resentful that their own bias is not represented.
Very good thinking.
I was just going to say if you are bias towards a topic, wouldn't even a nonbias article seem bias.
Americans have to remember that the middle for America is very right leaning in world politics.
And it's biased, while we're at it.
Hmmm, how did the word liberal disappear the first time this paragraph was posted? :cool:
Oh wow...I forgot that Rich posted this initially. I swear I didn't add "liberal," nor did I change it on their site...here's a screenshot:
Here's the diff. Thank "Godman".
Oh wow...does Wikipedia have a similar function? I've never delved that hard into it to notice.
Yup, that's wiki functionality. Without something like that, recovery from vandalism would be virtually impossible.
B.C. and A.D. only exist in Christainity as numerous ego-maniacs have tried to stop / change tiime.
You are correct that the concept of BC and AD came out of Christianity, and that there is a certain level of insanity in trying to manipulate our time-line, but some method of independent dating was needed. At the time that the idea of BC and AD was put forward, no one had an "earliest" starting date (yes, I know, several were "calculated"). Different societies and religions had (and still have), their own calendars, and starting dates. I am not a Christian, though I believe most strongly that Jesus lived, and was a great man.
Historians for centuries have accepted year one AD as a starting point to move forward, and this coincidently gives year one BC a starting point moving backwards, that has no artificial limit. So being tied to some calendar that starts at 1, but does not recognise anything before that date, would be like tying our hands behind our back.
It does not matter that the Christian method was adopted. It does not matter that Jesus was likely born somewhere between 4 BC and 7 BC. The BC/AD system has worked. Personally, I would prefer to stick to BC/AD rather than BCE/CE, but as I said previously, historians decided that the old terminology was offensive to too many people, so they changed it.
BTW, I started this thread saying that the conservapedia worries me. I do not support it in *any* way. My concerns with Wikipedia are that entries can be added and modified by anyone, regardess of the validity of what they write. The "editors" are just random people on the Net. There is no vetting of their knowledge or experience. Jim Wales admitted this in an NPR interview some weeks ago.
Here's the diff. Thank "Godman".
Thanks for pointing that out. All I saw was the "This page was last modified 23:23, 18 March 2007." tag at the bottom of the page.
Is it possible my post led him to make the change?
As I recall, Julius Caesar added "July" and Augustus added "August," right?
quite so.
You are correct that the concept of BC and AD came out of Christianity, and that there is a certain level of insanity in trying to manipulate our time-line, but some method of independent dating was needed. At the time that the idea of BC and AD was put forward, no one had an "earliest" starting date (yes, I know, several were "calculated"). Different societies and religions had (and still have), their own calendars, and starting dates. I am not a Christian, though I believe most strongly that Jesus lived, and was a great man.
Historians for centuries have accepted year one AD as a starting point to move forward, and this coincidently gives year one BC a starting point moving backwards, that has no artificial limit. So being tied to some calendar that starts at 1, but does not recognise anything before that date, would be like tying our hands behind our back.
It does not matter that the Christian method was adopted. It does not matter that Jesus was likely born somewhere between 4 BC and 7 BC. The BC/AD system has worked. Personally, I would prefer to stick to BC/AD rather than BCE/CE, but as I said previously, historians decided that the old terminology was offensive to too many people, so they changed it.
BTW, I started this thread saying that the conservapedia worries me. I do not support it in *any* way. My concerns with Wikipedia are that entries can be added and modified by anyone, regardess of the validity of what they write. The "editors" are just random people on the Net. There is no vetting of their knowledge or experience. Jim Wales admitted this in an NPR interview some weeks ago.
i agree, but there is also evidence that the time-line has also been cocked up by historians who misunderstood the Egyptian dynasties and as a result lost a few hundred years. i dont know the details of it, but i was interested in Egyptology for a while.
i'm an atheist, but i also agree that Jesus did exist, was not the son of god, but was a cool character i would have liked to have known.
Government types are just compelled to fool with time. ;)
Bluesdave, I missed something back there. What was your beef with wolf's and/or wikipedia's version of the labelling of dates?
all governments are warmongers.
there is no such thing as "in the public interest" : politicians pursue their own agendas.
the national health service in the UK is suffering due to Thatcher bringing in the Nuclear War Strategist from the cold war (forget his name) to overhaul the service and set targets and performance criteria etc. to be achieved by any means.
the colour of skin doesnt matter to me ; the person and their culture does.
kids should be seen and not heard.
Given the simple linearity of the BC/AD system, I'll stick with it, rather than something on the order of "In the fifth month of the third year of the Reign of Elizabeth II ..." Dating based on monarchs gets very confusing, very quickly.
Bluesdave, I missed something back there. What was your beef with wolf's and/or wikipedia's version of the labelling of dates?
I thought that Wolf was saying that the Wikipedia said that both BCE, and CE were after 1 AD, but now that I have re-read her post I realise that she is talking about the placement of the letters AD and BC, relative to the date.
BTW, I don't recall seeing AD placed before the date. As far as I recall it is always after the date, just like BC, so you would say 2007 AD. Note that I am *not* an historian, I just have an interest in history, so I could be wrong. I have a heap of history books. I will have a look through some of them later in the day.
all governments are warmongers.
there is no such thing as "in the public interest" : politicians pursue their own agendas.
the national health service in the UK is suffering due to Thatcher bringing in the Nuclear War Strategist from the cold war (forget his name) to overhaul the service and set targets and performance criteria etc. to be achieved by any means.
the colour of skin doesnt matter to me ; the person and their culture does.
kids should be seen and not heard.
Was this meant for the unpopular op thread?
I've done this before.
Was this meant for the unpopular op thread?
I've done this before.
whoops! :o
I was wrong. I have flicked through several of my books on Ancient Egypt, and they all place the AD before the year. My apologies to Wolf. :thepain:
My interest in Ancient Egypt really decreases after the end of the New Kingdom, so I am used to reading BC and BCE, not that this gives me any excuse. :yeldead:
I just checked with the Oxford dictionary, and here is a snippet:
— USAGE ad is normally written in small capitals and should be placed before the numerals, as in ad 375. However, when the date is spelled out, it is normal to write the third century ad.
That last bit could explain the confusion.
It's
almost enough to make me wonder if Andy Schlafly is a Poe (
[SIZE=1]Poe's law - religious fundamentalism[/SIZE]):
The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.
The only reason it's "almost," HM, is that you are willing to remain deceived about conservatism, in spite of all I can do showing off our smarts and our ability to get at the heart of things. Calling it "conservapedia" when it's more nearly "yahoopedia" suffices to deceive some, and reinforce their shallow, specious views about anyone to the right of Woodrow Wilson. Need that include you? Christ almighty -- why?!
Something very few Dwellars consistently understand is that anti-scientism is not a good litmus test either for Conservatives or for Christians. It is primarily an indication that somebody didn't get any science to speak of, or couldn't handle the amount he did. The lack of understanding calls, as always, your degree of enlightenment into sharp question.
For just one unconsidered assumption, is it necessary to reject evolutionary theory to see truthful things in Genesis? Is the converse necessary? Neither is: consider when Genesis was written and who it was written for -- a people who hardly had writing, let alone any science whatsoever, and it was written for the first time in the Bronze Age. That's damned early. And Genesis can be read from an evolutionary viewpoint and taking inspiration from evolutionary understanding too -- try it for yourself if you are constitutionally indisposed to accepting UG's words on their face; if you can show you understand it better than UG does, good for you. (Now UG better lay off the third person -- his hair's thinning enough as it is.) The remarkable thing is not the details that Genesis got wrong, but the quite-a-few details Genesis got right.
"Let there be light." How's that for a poetic, yet simple, reference to a Big Bang? Sure, the inspiration for the thought came from late in Dark Star, and I can't deny it, but really! The worst you can say of it is it's concise.
Minuscule-letter AD? First I've heard of it, and it seems to me infelicitous. Writing it out in full in lowercase seems happier. It is an abbreviation, and are not abbreviations usually capitalized?
Wow -- Resurrect-o-Thread. Guess ideas spring forever green if they're deep enough.
"Let there be light" is as far as it gets before it gets everything else wrong (even while still in "day" one - day and night before planets? What does that even mean?). But I guess you could call everything else details.
Well, the "got wrong" or "doesn't square with the tale told in the rocks" seems mostly to be things of timing. Note the sketched idea Genesis has of a progressing development of things, and over time. Some insight, no? Was it sheer luck?
I know too much science to be a young-Earther or anything of the sort. Bishop Ussher's 17th-c. calculation of the Earth's age illustrates what the mind will try and do with the data it has. But that does not make me into some kind of nonbeliever, for I can always say to the fundie: "If you are capital-O Omnipotent and Eternal, and have literally all the time in the Universe -- where's the wrong in taking your time and doing it right? Is there no Divine Wisdom in a Creation that goes of itself? Think of the bother an automatic universe saves..." and I can go on.
Not just timing- order. Planets are made from ejected star material, but stars come after Earth in Genesis. The order of plants and various animals is all wrong, too. And that's just v1.0 of the creation story in the Bible. In v2.0, the order is human males, then all other species, then human females.
If they get a pass on timing and order, what are we applauding them for? Listing things that exist? Incompletely? Even then, you have to give them a metaphorical pass for "the waters above" that was split off from the oceans.
I could never figure that obscure phrase for anything but some metaphor anyway. Suppose it might have been from some legend about why we have rain?
Probably that combined with sky and sea color-matching and meeting at the horizon.
looks like it's HM's turn in the box. Give'em hell, Happy!
By coincidence, Conservapedia just got
a mention at New Scientist. They (CP, not NS) not only deny evolution, but also deny relativity, the E = MC2 business.
a page on the site titled "Counterexamples to relativity". It says: "The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world."
In a footnote, this comment is followed up by: "Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold."
SNIP
Read further and you will find this astonishing piece of information, clearly the smoking gun of the Einsteinian liberal conspiracy: "Barack Obama helped publish an article by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe to apply the relativistic concept of 'curvature of space' to promote a broad legal right to abortion".
Which is kind of true, although grossly misrepresented.. At the time, BHO was the editor of the journal, and thanks were SOP. The argument in the journal uses relativity as a metaphor or analogy for how every action affects things around it.
Classic, Lookout, even UG, are conservatives. These people are just idiots.
Classic, Lookout, even UG, are conservatives. These people are just idiots.
You won't get much disagreement here. :rolleyes:
But you're all vehemently "middle of the road" usually. :confused:
I think it's more we're such middle America.
It's all relative to your frame of reference, I guess... ;)
Well I'm on the right side of America so you're all left of me.
[COLOR="LemonChiffon"]Geographically speaking [/COLOR]
I could go 70 miles further left, but the family likes the PDX area.
They (CP, not NS) not only deny evolution, but also deny relativity, the E = MC2 business.
From Scientific American of Aug 2010 entitled "Faith and Foolishness":
Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly no. ...
When presented with the statement "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," just 45 percent of respondents indicated "true". Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69), and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that "the universe began with a big explosion."
The article discussed why the National Science Foundation is now avoiding to discuss this.
The National Science Board, which oversees the foundation ... claiming the questions were "flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs." In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, then board does not think it is appropriate to expose that truth.
I don't know what to make of these guys. Nearly everywhere, they equate science with atheism with lacks of morals.
I was born a Catholic. My own views over religion have changed significantly in 42 years. I'll say that I'm an atheist, maybe an agnostic.
I looked up their article on contraception and abortion (I know these are very controversial subjects in the USA).
My own position is the following :
Abortion is not a means of contraception and should be reseved for extreme cases (rape, foetus difformity, etc.)
Contraception should be teached in school along with the subject of human reproduction. The best way to have teenagers do something they should not is to tell them that it is not right. They'll go at it right away. Hence the rate of teenage pregnancy in the USA. I'll probably shock some people : the sex education I received was in a class of human biology when I was 14. My teacher was a NUN !!! It wasn't sex ed per se it was a class on the human anatomy. Following that class, she offered us advice on how to protect ourselves from STD or pregnancy.
It was in 1983. AIDS was making its debut in the media...
Since then I've always protected myself, and by doing it, my partners. Not that I'm profligate, even at 42, I can count them with less than my two hands.
That protection is not from pregnancy, but from death.