Entropy

Oh dear... Well, Gunjaman did ask. Yes there is. Just - you know - don't watch 60 Minutes. Because I'm not a barrel of laughs, remember. No idea, sorry.

Actually, creationism isn't an old idea, it's quite modern. "Scientific creationism" as we know it today dates back to the 1960s, and the latest incarnation, intelligent-design creationism, started in the late 1980s or thereabouts. The notion of biblical creation being the correct way of viewing the world is a lot older, of course, but it wasn't until about 50 years ago with the publication of "The Genesis Flood" by Whitcomb and Morris that creationists started claiming that creationism was legitimate science and should be taught as such to schoolkids. Intelligent-design creationism is an attempt to get round the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard Sipreme Court decision that creationism was basically religious and hence unconstitutional to teach in govenment-run schools in the USA. Creationism isn't as much flawed as dead wrong. And deeply dishonest as well. As far as constitutional monarchy is concerned, it can't be that terribly bad. If you look at the UN list of countries with the highest quality of life, constitutional monarchies are a majority in the top ten and have been for years. To me, the great advantage of a system like that is that it takes the head-of-state job out of the clutches of a party politician. I think we've seen over the last few years what can happen when a head of state is also a partisan party politician and doesn't hesitate to blend the two roles, insisting that if his policies as a politician aren't supported, the critics are unpatriotic. This is especially a problem during wars, again as we've seen over the past few years. A person can disagree with Tony Blair without being branded as a traitor, because people know that Tony Blair's interest is himself and his party and that the head of state is not a party politician. It's getting a bit hard to disagree with George Bush without being accused of being unpatriotic. Many people in the USA are being made to feel that they're anti-American because they're not Republican. I don't think that's a healthy state of affairs. It also means that an executive president can insulate himself from critics; the Vice President is the President's choice, as are all the major figures like Secretary of State, Secretary of Defence, National Security Advisor. as we've seen after Hurricane Katrina, he can appoint just about any idiot into a high-level job if the idiot is a good enough friend of his. At the moment, some of his high-level appointees in public health are there because they toe the Republican party line on health insurance and abortion, not because they have the first notion about infectious diseases like avian flu. The president doesn't have an opposition like the prime minister does, there's no weekly question time, and press conferences are carefully orchestrated to not be too critical. There's little continuity between a Republican and Democratic president; in fact, when the administration changes parties, the outgoing one tries to make things as hard as possible for the incoming one. In contrast, when you have an experienced monarch, the prime minister knows s/he has one colleage who isn't motivated by ambition or ideology, and just about every prime minister for the last half century, including Labour ones (but no doubt excluding Tony Blair) has said how helpful it was to know they had the Queen there to listen to their concerns and give advice about things. I think you'd have to be careful, if you were replacing a constitutional monarchy, that you didn't make things worse simply out of a desire to do away with something that has a long history. It's working as well as any other form of western government these days. I thought the Japanese just thought the emperor was descended from god? For all we know, he might be. Gods can be a bit eccentric sometimes.

Sorry - the above two posts are mine. Somehow this bloody computer doesn't like remembering passwords. Oh, and windsor, if you want me to respond to your PM, you're going to have to clear out your inbox.

Kneecap him. Now there's an idea...

We tolerate all sorts of different ideas. We don't tolerate people causing trouble for the sake of causing trouble. The Diana thread here is full of comments like this: "Anyone up for a 'Deathlist guerilla raid' a la the BBC Derby Dead Pool page?" "I think the prize goes to whoever lasts longest, undetected, whilst still taking the royal p***!" "PS: if someone wants to post URLs to that site, please use http://tinyurl.com/ to hide direct links. It may help hide our business just a tad longer." "So is this the new DeathList hobby - acting as an internet commando force to disrupt forums we don't like." "hope they accept though, can't wait to have some fun with those saddos" etc etc That last comment was yours, by the way. And now you're trying to claim that you were all just over there to have an interesting exchange of opinions about royalty? Whatever.

Pot. Kettle. Black. I could say that you've been trolling around our fora. Windsor hasn't been encouraging our members to troll around yours recently, yet you seem to think it's O.K to spy on us. Windsor has been causing problems for us on an ongoing basis; it's part of the job of administrators at the Royal Forums to keep tabs on trolls. If you think I'm trolling here, feel free to ask your admins to ban me. Since I've said from my first post here that I'm one of the Royal Forums administrators, and since one of the other administrators confirmed it to windsor at our Support Desk, this would appear to be stretching the definition of "spying."

Because it leads to interesting and lively discussions, no one wants to read a one-sided argument, surely it is more interesting to take all points of view, then you can defend what you believe in and explain it properly instead of recruiting just 'yes men'. When people have different ideas about things, it leads to interesting discussions. When a person isn't acting in good faith, it leads to problems. Windsor was perfectly welcome at the Royal Forums until we realised that not only was he the cause of the invasion of troll attacks on our threads but was egging the rest of you on while you were playing over there. In the meantime he's posted here that he doesn't think the Royal Forums are good enough for him and that we're a bunch of obsessed idiots and so on; that doesn't sound like the sort of attitude that would lead to anything but problems. Why would a person continue to post at a forum he despises unless he was trying to do damage?

And I should believe this because why, exactly? Are you expecting me to ban just anybody on your word that they're a member here?

Well, windsor, if you'd stop running around creation trying to get people to join the Royal Forums for the sole purpose of trolling, you'd have stood a far greater chance of being allowed to stay. When we have a member who is overtly not acting in good faith, why should we keep him on?

Of course I did, along with the other administrators. Once we realised that windsor was still running round the internet trying to recruit trolls to come and disrupt the forum, there didn't seem to be any particular reason to carry on letting him post there.

It might interest you to know, windsor, that people talk about lists of things fairly often over there; not everyone talking about lists for next year is a troll from here. We're not about to start overreacting and banning large numbers of people without cause just in case they might be one of you lot. That would damage the forum far more than cleaning up after one of your tiresome invasions. We've been wondering for a couple of days whether to ban your latest ID immediately or just let it carry on while you were behaving at least reasonably well; since you're still going around other forums trying to get people to come and cause problems at the Royal Forums, the administrators decided that you weren't worth giving the benefit of the doubt to. Considering your posts on threads here about how we aren't good enough for you and all that sorry nonsense, it didn't appear that you'd rejoined for any reason than to continue to cause trouble. By the way, it doesn't hurt to try telling the truth, you know. In that other forum where you were trying to get people to come over to the Royal Forums and start causing problems, you said you were banned for being too outspoken. You weren't. You were banned for instigating a troll invasion, which is exactly what you were trying to do with your post in that other forum too. Elspeth

I think the Council for Secular Humanism and American Atheists might be the equivalent societies in the USA, but considering how religious the country is, they don't have a high profile. Most of the fights against religious extremists and their attempts to subvert the Constitution are led by the American Civil Liberties Union. As far as science is concerned, the organisation giving the greatest support to scientists in the fight against creationists is the National Center for Science Education. http://www.ncseweb.org/ As far as having a sense of humour is concerned, sometimes the antics of the religious zealots make it very hard. These people, and the flagrant dishonesty of so much of what they do to impose their religion on the rest of us, make me really angry a lot of the time. And trying to explain even basic science to some of them is extremely frustrating because they've been brainwashed since young childhood to believe that their pastors and ministers always tell the truth, scientists are evil atheists trying to send childrens' souls to Satan, and their biology teachers are lying to them if they don't toe the creationist line. These people, who admit on the one hand to not really know much about science, are very ready to dismiss the entire body of work in the biological sciences if that's what it takes to shore up their beliefs. There are some significant creationist inroads in the UK at the moment too, especially with the Vardy schools and with Tony Blair's insistence on these bloody faith-based schools everywhere. Answers in Genesis, a major US creationist organisation, has offices in the UK. And then there's this wish-list for Bible-based education in the UK: http://www.christian.org.uk/html-publications/lectures.html and their science one, which they took off the website after the Emmanuel College publicity a few years ago but which was saved as a cached version: http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/liars/layfield.html Anyway, sorry for the digression. It's not safe to get me started on this subject, except that religious extremism is sort of relevant where Ian Paisley is concerned.

No, it's a subtle reference to the majority of my on-line life and an increasing amount of my off-line life, which involves trying to stop creationists taking over science education in the United Kingdom and the United States. I get consigned to hell at least once a month - sometimes more often during particularly intense battles.

Good.

Argh! Forgot to log in again. Sigh. I've been fighting the forces of religious bigotry and fundamentalism, thank you for asking. So I'm quite used to being consigned to hell; it happens on a tediously regular basis.

Whatever floats your boat, dear. I suppose that, given your obsession with death, it'd be a waste of time to suggest that you get a life.

Oh, yes - I love you lot to death. Absolutely. Elspeth

Very well noticed. Full marks for observation. Insult the lot of them and leave? You consider that sort of thing a valuable use of your time, do you? Whatever. Or not. *shrug* But I suppose you have to justify the time you spend trolling other boards somehow, don't you? Don't give up your day job. Elspeth

Indeed not. God would be most welcome at The Royal Forums as long as he behaved himself. Elspeth

Not that I know of. Want me to ask the other admins and mods and let you know what they say? Well, you should have been a bit more vocal in opposition when your friends here decided to show up over there and start playing silly buggers, then, shouldn't you? I did. Please don't tell me you didn't notice. I'm British, dear. A sense of humour is part of the package. Elspeth

Sigh. Could a moderator please delete my previous post? I didn't realise I wasn't signed in. (Done-Notapotato) Oh, I dunno - maybe the people who were complaining about it? Nor do we. We just don't let criticism sink to the level of gratuitous insults of the subjects of the threads or of other participants. And we don't encourage trolls. Same for us, except that we also act to nip obviously disruptive behaviour early. There isn't much mileage in letting a conversation like "Diana was a cow!" "Well, Camilla's a bitch! Yah!" go on for a dozen more posts to see how disruptive it gets before stopping it. There's such a thing as experience, you know. There's also such a thing as knowing your membership. We have a lot of youngsters and a lot of people who aren't native English speakers, and things can get out of hand in a hurry when people start misunderstanding each other. Oh, please. I have read your Diana thread, you know. You weren't at the Royal Forums to provoke anything healthy. If you had been, there were places where you could have done so. Indeed. Good.

I'd never have guessed.... And you lot think we're the weird ones, spending time posting about royalty? Pot, meet Mr Kettle. The King of Bahrain is a celebrity? I think that's just the forum default; I didn't do anything to it when I registered. BTW, if you don't like having strangers come along and post insults, why do you let unregistered guests post on the site at all? That is sort of asking for it, isn't it? Elspeth

No. Please don't project the behaviour of this forum, where moderators see nothing wrong with encouraging and participating in invasions of other boards, onto us. We're not remotely interested in playing this particular game of yours. Elspeth

No, Windsor, you took it too far when you encouraged your pals at this forum to join The Royal Forums and start trolling the threads. It doesn't matter how serious your opinions are about royalty; as I've already told you in one of the threads there, it's your behaviour that got you into trouble, not your opinions. Apart from being part of a group intent on disrupting our forum, you mean? Well, it's certainly true that the Royal Forums moderators don't use the threads there to encourage and participate in troll attacks on other forums. Whether that constitutes better or worse behaviour depends on your standards, I suppose. And now you've received them. Lucky old you. I'm so glad. Hello, Tempus Fugit. Thank you for all those clues that led us here. Elspeth Royal Forums administrator (the one who isn't a barrel of laughs)