Commentary on the so-called Creation/Evolution/Intelligent Design Debate and Right-Wing nuttery in general - and please ignore the typos (I make lots!)

Friday, January 06, 2006

Wow... And I thought I could be a bit over the top...

Over at Telic Thoughts, "Joy" had the following to say in regards to skiddum's attempt to discern the identity of "Mike Gene" (interspersed with my comments):

But I've encountered cyber-stalkers before. I've lost more than a couple of computers to targeted hacks as well. I even had one attempt to "out" me on the ARN forum based entirely on the Googled clown image I chose as my atavar


'Lost more than a couple of computers' to hackers? Cyber stalked? Now, I have read many of Joy's posts at ARN and elsewhere, and besides being unnecessarily condescending (a common trait in those that have convinthemselveseves they know and understand more than they actually do*), annoying, phony, and rude, I haven't seen her write anything that might warrant being stalked or hacked. I have gotten in numerous cyber-shouting matches with people, have been threatened, and have had people question my professional competence, but I have never been hacked or 'cyber-stalked'. Methinks Joy is doing some fabricatin'.


If you became obsessed with me, followed me from forum to forum, and went to a lot of trouble to try and "out" me (whether or not you've managed to actually find me), I'd sue your ass so big time you'd never get out of debt. Not a threat, a promise. A fine way to "get acquainted" in real life, n'est ce pas? The name will be right there in all caps atop the subpoena, btw


Sued? For what? Trying to find out who an anonymous arrogant malcontent is on the internet? That may be against 'netiquette', but unless some actual harm is done, I really do not think it would be an actionable offense. Looks like Joy is grandstanding.


I hope that if there are professional ramifications to the individual you identified (not the Mike Gene pseud you've stalked), he'll do the same. I would certainly advise him to do so.


Oh, right - because all those poor ID 'scientists' get fired and harrassed when their colleagues find out they reject the central theory of biology.
And enough with the 'stalking' garbage, eh?


*Joy once got involved in some discussions at ARN on the Delbruck-Luria experiments. She made several conceptual errors, was corrected (by a microbiologist), yet continued engaging in that classic condescension that many under-informed creationists do.
It is pretty long and excruciating to read sometimes - why, for example, is 'mturner' still posting anywhere? Not to belabor the points, but I did want to mention - in that thread, one of the big running 'problems' that Joy and mturner have is the fact that nobody will post for them the entire D-L paper, despite the fact that a link TO the whole paper was provided to them. Incredible...

1 comment:

nsfl said...

I think a serious question to consider is--once information is gathered that indicates a particular person is behind a particular pseudonym, is there a moral/ethical obligation to not divulge this information? The obvious answer is "yes" IF you KNOW that in doing so, you will bring some form of harm to a person. The obvious answer is "no" IF you KNOW that in doing so, you will bring no harm whatsoever to the person.

But do we ever deal in such certainties? I think the reasoning of this argument would closely follow the "are gunmakers responsible for what others do with guns?" question--are reporters/outers of internet anonymous personas responsible if others use the identification in an unethical/immoral way?