Of motes and logs, pots and kettles, and highly polished mirrors

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK) comes this headline: Conservapedia - the US religious right's answer to Wikipedia.

From the article:

Although entries on Wikipedia are open for anyone to edit, conservative campaigners say they are unable to make changes to articles on the site because of inherent bias by its global team of volunteer editors. Instead they have chosen to build a clone which they hope will promote Christian values."I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found that the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views," Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia, told the Guardian. "In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds - so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach."

Whereas no one is permitted to sign up to edit Conservapedia at all. I know; I've tried. Oh, and check out this comparison between some descriptions given at Wikipedia and their counterparts at Conservapedia (from the Guardian article):

Dinosaurs

Wikipedia: "Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years, first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia: "They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs."

US Democratic party

Wikipedia: "The party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention."

Conservapedia: "The Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt for America's founding principles."

No, they're not biased at all, are they?



Just for the sake of interest, here are Wikipedia's entry about Conservapedia and Conservapedia's article about Wikipedia.

Religious Literacy

Test your religious literacy

I got an “A” - 100%. Though I will note that the quiz is top-heavy with references to the “Big Three” Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There were a couple of questions each about Buddhism and Hinduism, and nothing at all about any other religions. Still, it covered a decent bit of information that one might suppose, or hope, that the average American would know with regard to religion.

Take it, and tell me how you do.

Some people!

I post on a number of discussion forums online. It's a hobby, of sorts. I run into all sorts of people in the process, many of them decent folks. Some have even become good friends of mine over the years.

But it's the idiots that make me want to hurl my laptop out the nearest window.

What is it about online discussion that brings every shortsighted, one-note moron out of the woodwork? And why is it that they invariably pick me to try to foist their low-wattage viewpoints on? Anyone who knows me well, be it in "real" life or online, knows that I do not suffer fools gladly. Oh, I try to be nice, but after a while, I have to just tell them the truth: that they couldn't find their asses if you spotted them a map and both hands. Really, shouldn't the internet have something along the lines of those signs you see at amusement parks, showing the minimum height one must be to ride certain rides? You know, like, "Your IQ must be at least room temperature for an igloo in the Arctic Circle in January if you want to join in Discussion X." Seems to me that this would be kinder not only to those of us with the intelligence to engage in actual meaningful discussions, but also to those who would be spared having to be told a dozen times a day what morons they are.

At the very least, it would save them having to continually look up "ignoramus" in the dictionary to figure out if I was paying them a compliment or not.