Okay, so, everyone has been crowing at how "Fellowship University" isn't listed on Google. Fine.
So I decided to go to Google and hold my own little Safari of Fun.
I'll list to you all the links I followed [and apologize in advance if I kill anyones' sites]. It took awhile before I got anything out of google. My first mistake was searching for "Fellowship University" -- all you get from that is the ability to hate search engines for not allowing you to exclude punctuation marks from a quoted string. I know why, I understand lexigraphical indexing (mostly), I still don't like it, and a second-pass process for punctuation marks should still go fast. So nya! Are you listening, Google?
Now, unfortunately, www.ilovejesus.com (which I'm very familiar with, it's NOT a hoax site, more's the pity) says that jimcarlson is a 404. Does that mean ilovejesus found out about him and booted him?
"It is unacceptable that innocent and impressionable children should be exposed to the sort derogatory depictions of Christians that are becoming all too common on the 'Net," stated Dr. Andrew Miller, pastor of Mt. Fellowship Baptist Church and a member of a group opposing the Landover site, "It is imperative that we as Christians act now to keep these people in check before another incident like the one that happened at Wedgewood Baptist Church happens again.".
More than that, there's a link to the "OBJECTIVE: Ministries" on that page.
But, well, let's face it. As Abercrombie and Fitch learned to their supreme disgruntlement, two Wongs do NOT make a White. Two other sites may have been easily duped by this hoax. Or I might have better evidence that it's real. Goddamnit (no pun intended).
The good link from there is:
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/ninglun/fundamental ist.html Here's some correspondence with the author of the site with Carlson. Of course, this also has a letter back from the Landover people, calling Mr Carlson a 16 year old kid. Which is fine... except 16 year old kids don't make nice happy websites like that. If they do, I want to hire him as an intern. [DON'T SEND ME EMAIL, THAT'S A !@!?! JOKE, YA MOPE]
They list there that they were once on the ilovejesus page, and had to flee. So at the worst, we could write the ILJ freekies and ask them for the real poop. But that's too much like real work.
Anyhow, even more vaguely-subtle "quite probably hoax but not quite sure" stuff on that page. Like changing the purple bear to a rainbow bear to keep people from thinking it's homosexual.
Dear god.
March 24, 2000, however....
Okay, who is good at spotting badly photoshopped text on signs? (sigh)
I love this guy.
I hate this guy.
He makes my head hurt.
And I mean that in only the best way.
Have I fallen for a troll? Do I care? I wonder if he'll marry me?
How about if he'll feed and support me because I didn't get enough work done tonight and I got fired for having so much brainfire over this silly little site?
I suppose the whole point is that we're all more than prepared to accept that these people really DO exist even when we don't want them to.
Oh well. For a bonus, if you don't mind waiting for the site to log (it's now late enough that the site is readable again if you're patient), here's all his groovy advertising links. Afaict, a random sampling mostly match against WHOIS registrations. But I'm lazy, so don't take my word for it.
Click on the THIRD link on the page (served through "turn.to"). The cache entry doesn't work, but the current entry comes in LOUD and CLEAR (if I need to be more obvious: "don't follow those links if you're at work").
I was very ALOT curious about whether or not it's a hoax site. I read most of the other poo in there. Especially the "Game Theoretician" section from the silly old DOD guy.
That's the section that made me come to believe it wasn't a hoax.
How many people know the two formal arguments against Pascal's Wager? Anybody?
I do. Of all the people I know 2 others, ever, also knew them before I told them to them.
There's nothing funny in that section. There's no comedy, there's no nothing. I _like_ to think I'm hip enough on the basics of game theory that I'd get any satirical jokes in that section. I don't.
I sent this at 6am this morning after having fun with their site all night long. It's not often that I beat slashdot to the punch by 15 hours, but here's the email I sent them, verbatim:
Subject: Dear Dr Paley and Mr Carlson, Thank You.
Michael Gerard wrote:
So I was reading my blissful little heart through the internet this evening, and I came across this article:
Interesting little read, altho I'd agree with PBS's assertion that Darwin's claims were as welcome to The Church of his day (the Episcopalian C of E, of course) and brought him as much joy and happiness as Galileo's claims did for him back in "renaissance times" (under the rigid hand of Roman Catholicism). That discussion is probably beyond the scope of this email, however, but do try to keep those two people and what happened to them in mind as we keep thinking forward through my point, please?
Wandering through the rest of the article, however, past the suggestion that people should not support public television, really made me start to giggle.
Hah! Wonderful Silliness! Oh yah. Apple is in league with the devil. Hee hee hee.
The "flying leaps of assumption" by which any word, deed, trademark, or othersuch entity vaguely resembling Something of Naughtiness to be prima facia evidence of wrongdoing is simply taken to such an extreme in this article that I couldn't help but laugh and laugh (and laugh and laugh). Especially when you start talking about things like BSD under the covers. Makes me wonder what OS your websites run on. Looks like apache on linux (with all of the "daemons" that run equally well under linux as they do on BSD... as they have on every unix system since the dawn of modern computing.... oops!). And, well, yes, there's enough stupid bits and pieces like that through the whole article that I just couldn't keep from rolling and rolling on the floor with laughter. My proverbial ass was quite fallen off and nowhere to be found.
What a wonderful work of satire!
I realized I must, of course, be reading a parody site! A site not unlike the myriad other parody sites which pretend to have Christians writing about how "Star Wars," "Valentine's Day," "Pepsi Cola," or "The
Entire Fall Primetime Lineup On UPN" are such "obvious" anti-Christian works of He Who Must Not Be Named and must therefore be shunned! I smiled at the concept, and passed the link along to many of my friends. Looking at the navbar on that page, I saw another link that said "Landover Baptist Shutdown." Ah, of course, those silly boys over at Landover
Baptist! This seemed to obviously be some of their handiwork, so I clicked that link and arrived at this page:
Now, let's stop right there, for right about then is when I must confess I became rather confused.
Having a parody site recursively bash itself is, uhm, well, to be honest, more obtuse humor than even I usually engage in. And I'm one to always like the weirder side of the funny pages.
Maybe.... maybe that wasn't a parody site? Maybe people actually do get on the internet and type stuff like that?
And honestly mean it? (So, by the way, if it really is a parody site, I think you guys are a little too subtle... but, anyhow,
operating under the assumption that that is not the case...)
So.:)
Let me smile nicely at you and give you a free legal opinion from someone who doesn't know anything about how the law in this country actually works, but who thinks they are in tune with the way it's supposed to:
Landover Baptist has a stronger legal defense against you than you do against Apple Computer. Why? Because The Law of The Land respects the rights of people seeking to entertain via satire far more than that of people who seek to damage a business's revenue stream by engaging in insulting innuendo about having gone over to The Dark Side Of The Force.
The very horrible nasty secular laws that protect Landover Baptist from your righteous crusade against its "blasphemous atrocities" are the same
"god-given rights" that you would hope would protect you from Apple Computer after doing something reporting that they must "obviously" be in league with the Powers of Darkness in making a product both "anti-Christian and cultish."
I'd agree with the latter, of course... cultish in the extreme!
Have you ever seen some of those weird freaky Mac users who walk down the street with shaved heads wearing peach bedsheets wrapped
around them, beating on drums and tambourines, chanting "MOOF! MOOF! MOOF!" everywhere? Frightening! Mothers should cover the eyes of small children, I wholeheartedly agree, but that doesn't mean they're automatically
going to spend their Eternity in the Pit, does it?
Since you seem to be acceptingly fond of quotes from places other than the Bible (especially from our Founding Fathers, and the Constitution), let me give you an additional one you might want to consider as important as the other ones that assist your faith in the fact that our nation was founded in the Name of Christ:
"I cannot agree with your words, but I will defend to the death your right to say them."
Too bad I can't remember who actually said it. But, actually, the fact I can't makes me chuckle. I think it's very funny I can't
remember who said he'd defend my right to say whatever the hell I please. That's just my warped sense of humor (which only proves yet again I'm an obvious danger to myself and others, I recognize that, but it doesn't make my argument any less valid -- just more incoherent).
Now, if Apple decided to sue the living snot out of you for "Libel and Defamation," how would you defend yourselves? If they decided to
play hardball, would you hire a lawyer or would you assume that God would intervene? Ah. Well, of course, I'm sure you have plenty of
lawyer friends who would cut you a deal to stop that horrible evil Apple
Computer Corporation from censoring the important message
that you have to get out to the public at large about how everyone's everlasting
salvation is in grave (a pun! hah! see, I do
have a sense of humor!) peril from the evil brainwashing secularistic vibrations
that originated from the drug addled brains of a couple of hippies in the
70's and now resides in Cupertino, CA.
Yes, indeedy! We must get a campaign going immediately
to inform the public that "Think Differently" is just another noisy gravel-slide
on the vast slippery slope into The Abyss.
Of course.
If you decided to play hardball with the "Landover Baptist" site, would
you hire a lawyer, or would you just assume that now that you've seen the
site and that you're praying about it, God will just take care of the rest
for you? Ah. Well, of course, I'm sure you have plenty of lawyer
friends who would cut you a deal to help you censor that horrible evil
Landover Baptist site (do your lawyers give 10% off on instant conversions,
too? do I get to mutter under my breath about "moneychangers in the
temple" for that slap in the face at anyone who actually has TRUE faith?
no... the email is getting long enough without going into that).
Luckily, so far, the America I've been blessed to have been born and
grow up in and learn so much about has done a fairly decent job over the
last few centuries at protecting both "the many" from "the few" AND "the
few" from "the many."
Tell me, is the same thing true for the America you live
in?
Or maybe I just find it moderately, hmmm... stupid? typical?
ironic? Well, none of those are quite the appropriate word to describe
the manner in which your own article is so easily mistaken for the others'
parodies which you would point at and call "hatespeech." ``Sanctimonious``
gets even closer still, but still isn't quite on the nose. What word
do you think would go best there?
I'm just curious, of course.
I'm even more curious to see if anyone will bother to answer this letter,
or if I'll just be immediately dismissed as something worthy of nothing
more than your pity because I will, obviously, Burn in the Lake of Fire
because I Think Differently than You. (I don't personally believe
I Think Differently than Him, but that's not the point of this email, now,
is it? I mean, you weren't attacking me, personally, were you?
yet?)
Speaking of personal attacks, let's get back to what happened to Darwin
and Galileo... which entity do you think is most likely to be rejected
and villified by the "entire" (read: "entrenchedly secular") population
at large, this upcoming century: Apple Computer, Landover Baptist,
or You?
Who shall be the one to be accused of engaging in writing "such that
they look arrogant, hateful, or just idiotic?" Chris Harper?
Dr Paley? Both? Neither? (My personal money is on ``C``
-- but you should already have guessed that, otherwise I wouldn't be writing
this email. Right?)
Think carefully (certainly not differently!), and make sure you've legibly
written your response before the "Jeopardy Theme" completes.
Or, maybe, the whole problem with "parody sites" is that
the people being parodied are too often incapable of realizing the underlying
reason for which satirists find them to be such a juicy target for their
irreverent wit. Nobody ever thinks it's funny when the people are
actually laughing at them. That might be it.
I'll have to include that question in my prayers before bed this evening.
Yes. God promised me he'd give me 10% off any answers asked if I
was willing to convert on the spot.....
(Okay, I lied. I can't help it. I must talk about this!
YOU'RE THE ONES who got upset at the Landover site for, in your own
words: "offering a free cellphone as a reward for those who become
saved - demeaning the value of Salvation to that of some material trinket."
-- What would your good Timothy Allmon think about such marketing tactics?
Think, people! You're really alot making the rest of us just look
bad in general as human beings. http://members.truepath.com/objective/members.html
)
By the way, to make a "small" correction, and just to beat this lovely
dead horse into a long crimson smear across the asphault, any good sysadmin
should (and, hopefully, would, but some are anti-Christian bigots, I think)
inform you that `chmod 666` is just about the stupidest and most unsecure
thing you could do to random files on your filesystem, especially executable
binaries. Well, almost. You could delete them. That would
be worse. Probably. Most of the time.
You're far better off using `chmod 755` if an executable, `chmod 644`
if not, and `chmod 600` or `chmod 700` if you have secrets to keep from
the other users on your box. Obviously, you're not going to be able
to keep secrets from root or from God, so limiting all the other users'
access isn't quite as important for a Christian admin as for an anti-Christian
(by definition) BOFH.
If some unsuspecting user, Christian or anti- (since they
who are not with us must be against us, and your computer doesn't really
know or care), were to do a chmod 666 like you suggest (and while `chmod
777` exists as a command, keep your numerological lusts in control and
just trust me that it is even worse than `chmod 666`), they're very likely
going to hurt their operating system. And then at least one of them
will hire a lawyer and probably sue you, too.
Unfortunately, some things about America still do Suck. Right?
How'd you like to be McDonalds paying someone $3,000,000 because they weren't
smart enough to protect a stupid woman from herself? In America,
you always have to ask yourself: "in what way could my actions
cause someone to hurt themselves in a manner which leaves me open to lawsuit?"
Does that make you think twice before randomly posting commands that you
don't understand onto the internet? Or would you argue in court that
whatever happened to a user attempting to do such things was really just
the Inevitable Will Of God for using such a Beastly OS?
But even while the computer illiterate population mobilize to sue you,
the computer savvy reader, Christian or anti-, is just going
to think... well... let's hypothesize that, say, 50% of the pieces of information
presented as "evidence" are as ludicrously and hilariously wrong as your
little "fun with chmod" paragraph. If that _were_ true,
even if you were a devout Christian computer user (and I know how patronizingly
"rare" you believe such people must be), you'd think the person writing
that nonsense, well, you'd probably believe that they Suck. Maybe
you'd think you were just reading another parody site because you wouldn't
want to have to believe that there were actually people out there who did
stuff like that. Maybe it's all just, you know, ``psychological.``
It is left as an exercise for the reader to go back and actually and
objectively research the origin, status, context, and any other necessary
bits of needful information to be able to properly determine if the validity
of your article about Apple computer remains above the 50% "does not Suck"
margin.
Luckily, in America, all of us irrespective of race, color,
or creed have the ability to know for an undying fact deep in our immortal
(or otherwise) souls that WE do not, at all, personally Suck, even without
having to prove it when odd gentlemen send us long and confusing emails
asking us to do so! It is, of course, only everyone else who is not
us or like enough to us that are responsible for how much everything does
Suck. Yes, of course, that must be it.
Isn't it neat how human nature works? There's enough of that kind
of nonsense to make each man woman and child on earth act like an egotistical
hypocrticial moron 5 or 6 times a day and still provide enough energy left
over to comprise a viable alternative to Fossil Fuels (if only the damn
Oil Cartels wouldn't spend so much time and money on their vast conspiracy
to discredit a perfectly valid scientific theory that would so wonderfully
benefit all of mankind! Quo vadis, baby! Quo
vadis!).
Shameful, don't you think?
Yours, cheerfully, nigh gleefully,
mig
Favourite Passage From Scripture -- Leviticus 16:2
"And The Lord said unto Moses: ``Tell Aaron to quit coming into my
room
whenever he feels like it, or I'll kill him. He might see me!``"
ps: That was fun! Write another article making fun of, ah,
excuse me, I mean righteously exposing to the world the subltly seductive
evil anti-Christian ways of the WWF, or maybe the Kellogg's Cereal characters,
next!
Or how about how I show that Pascal's Wager is an horrifically bad evangelical
tool because 1) believing in God should be for the sake of God, not "just
in case I might be wrong" (ie: if you were told pascal's wager, said "yes,
that makes sense," and were then shot in the head, you'd still not be Saved,
and you'd still go Into the Pit) and 2) because Pascal's Wager is equally
valid for any other religion as well, so your evangelical target could
possibly be captured back by any further evangelical contacts from, say,
Islam or Baha'i.... well, then again, Baha'i wouldn't be likely to use
Pascal's Wager as an evangelical tool... but I think you see my point,
anyhow, right? I could write it up better than that, of course, if
you'd want me to.
Hey, like, wanna make this like a weekly thing or something, guys?
Guys?
Hello?
Well, if you're still with me, feel free to forward this to anyone you
think might also need or want or hate to read it.:)
What do you think will happen if they look my picture up on the team
page?
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, so, everyone has been crowing at how "Fellowship University" isn't listed on Google. Fine.
So I decided to go to Google and hold my own little Safari of Fun.
I'll list to you all the links I followed [and apologize in advance if I kill anyones' sites]. It took awhile before I got anything out of google. My first mistake was searching for "Fellowship University" -- all you get from that is the ability to hate search engines for not allowing you to exclude punctuation marks from a quoted string. I know why, I understand lexigraphical indexing (mostly), I still don't like it, and a second-pass process for punctuation marks should still go fast. So nya! Are you listening, Google?
Anyhow, my first paydirt didn't hit until I used a search of:a ptist+anti-Christian
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=B
Toward the bottom, I got this link (to the australian broadcast servers):
http://www.abc.net.au/compass/explore/anti.htm
Amusingly, they have both the Landover site, and then this other "anti-anti-baptist site" which links to:
http://www.ilovejesus.com/myhome/jimcarlson/
Now, unfortunately, www.ilovejesus.com (which I'm very familiar with, it's NOT a hoax site, more's the pity) says that jimcarlson is a 404. Does that mean ilovejesus found out about him and booted him?
How about "Mt Fellowship Baptist" (which is a good quote from their own pages) ???h ip+Baptist%22
http://www.google.com/search?cat=&q=%22Mt+Fellows
That gives us the OBJECTIVE links and this:
http://www.orgsites.com/mi/cudi/news.html
Read down to 03/07/2000 for the pertinant info:
More than that, there's a link to the "OBJECTIVE: Ministries" on that page.
But, well, let's face it. As Abercrombie and Fitch learned to their supreme disgruntlement, two Wongs do NOT make a White. Two other sites may have been easily duped by this hoax. Or I might have better evidence that it's real. Goddamnit (no pun intended).
Hmm... but there WAS a link to "OBJECTIVE: ministries" right? Okay, let's grep the internet for that:% 3A+ministries%22
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Objective
Besides the CUDI links the only other useful link is from www.metafilter.com and had to be gotten from the googlecache, but it's just talking about that site as hoax:: www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/16547+%22Objectiv e:+ministries%22&hl=en
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:kvVdd74wwaoC
Okay, let's try http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=Ba ptist+anti-Christian+objective
And we get:: www.geocities.com/hands_off_lb/index_old.html+Bapt ist+anti-Christian+objective&hl=en
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:SO6eFb9I3YAC
"Hands Off Landover Baptist" (google cache)
If the OBJECTIVE: site is a troll and a hoax, here's your index of all the other ones to go have fun with! (Also lists CUDI on there, w00t) (I think this would be properly described to be an anti-anti-anti-Baptist site?)
Okay, one more Run through the Google Sprinklers:2 2jim+carlson%22+landover
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=%
The good link from there is:l ist.html
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/ninglun/fundamenta
Here's some correspondence with the author of the site with Carlson. Of course, this also has a letter back from the Landover people, calling Mr Carlson a 16 year old kid. Which is fine... except 16 year old kids don't make nice happy websites like that. If they do, I want to hire him as an intern. [DON'T SEND ME EMAIL, THAT'S A !@!?! JOKE, YA MOPE]
Luckily for me, I can remember some of the ``offtopic`` pages well enough to find them in google cache: http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:V9xvB3hZdYcC: members.truepath.com/objective/progress.html+Fello wship+Baptist+-Medical+Jesus+anti-Christian&hl=en
They list there that they were once on the ilovejesus page, and had to flee. So at the worst, we could write the ILJ freekies and ask them for the real poop. But that's too much like real work.
Anyhow, even more vaguely-subtle "quite probably hoax but not quite sure" stuff on that page. Like changing the purple bear to a rainbow bear to keep people from thinking it's homosexual.
Dear god.
March 24, 2000, however....
Okay, who is good at spotting badly photoshopped text on signs? (sigh)
I love this guy.
I hate this guy.
He makes my head hurt.
And I mean that in only the best way.
Have I fallen for a troll? Do I care? I wonder if he'll marry me?
How about if he'll feed and support me because I didn't get enough work done tonight and I got fired for having so much brainfire over this silly little site?
I suppose the whole point is that we're all more than prepared to accept that these people really DO exist even when we don't want them to.
Oh well. For a bonus, if you don't mind waiting for the site to log (it's now late enough that the site is readable again if you're patient), here's all his groovy advertising links. Afaict, a random sampling mostly match against WHOIS registrations. But I'm lazy, so don't take my word for it.
http://members.truepath.com/objective/ads/
(Anybody want to research the CUDI site for hoax-or-notahoax? I'm tired and going to sleep)
Just to test who all is bothering to pay attention to all my slaving hard work and effort I've put into this damn article, I'll throw in one more punchline from google:% 3A+Christian+Ministries%22
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22OBJECTIVE
Click on the THIRD link on the page (served through "turn.to"). The cache entry doesn't work, but the current entry comes in LOUD and CLEAR (if I need to be more obvious: "don't follow those links if you're at work").
Cheers, folks!
mig
Well, of course, it's slashdotted all to hell.
I was very ALOT curious about whether or not it's a hoax site. I read most of the other poo in there. Especially the "Game Theoretician" section from the silly old DOD guy.
That's the section that made me come to believe it wasn't a hoax.
How many people know the two formal arguments against Pascal's Wager? Anybody?
I do. Of all the people I know 2 others, ever, also knew them before I told them to them.
There's nothing funny in that section. There's no comedy, there's no nothing. I _like_ to think I'm hip enough on the basics of game theory that I'd get any satirical jokes in that section. I don't.
Anybody who does, please do email me.
I don't want to be so frumpy and humorless!
mig
(That's "Before Slashdotted")
I sent this at 6am this morning after having fun with their site all night long. It's not often that I beat slashdot to the punch by 15 hours, but here's the email I sent them, verbatim:
Subject: Dear Dr Paley and Mr Carlson, Thank You.
Michael Gerard wrote: