Post Number 6,000 — Free Fire Zone

This is our humble blog’s 6,000th post. We know that no one cares, especially our regular readers who have been through these things before, but we’re announcing it anyway. It’s what we do every 500 posts.

Here is the list of our prior numerical milestones: This was Number 5,500, and before that Number 5000, and before that Number 4,500, and before that Number 4,000, and before that Number 3,500, and before that Number 3,000, and before that Number 2,500, and before that Number 2,000, and before that Number 1,500, and before that Number 1,000, and before that Number 500 (approximately), and before that, this was Post Number One — Clarke’s First Law and Intelligent Design.

If you’re not already bored, we’ll give you some statistics. The cumulative total of page-views for our humble blog is about a couple of days away from 4.2 million. It was 3.8 million at post 5500. Traffic has been a bit lower than usual for the past few months. That may be partly due to Google, which has been strangely slow to index our new posts. Sometimes it takes a day or two, and we have no idea why. But reduced traffic is understandable in the second half of the year, because there are no legislative battles going on. State legislatures get started up after the first of the year. Also, there appears to be no creationist courtroom activity — but that could change at any moment.

“Page-views” is a statistic of interest to advertisers, of whom we have none. We pay WordPress to keep the place ad-free. Because your Curmudgeon receives nothing from advertisers, we don’t worry about statistics. Besides, page-view numbers don’t tell the whole story. They don’t include RSS subscribers and others who read us in various ways without actually visiting here, but we think they add another 20% to our readership.

The cumulative total of comments here is over 83,000. That’s roughly 2% of the page-views, better than most blogs experience. It’s rather remarkable, because unlike many who blog about creationism, we don’t welcome creationists who show up to start food fights. Maybe that’s why this humble blog has so many high quality comments. We’re always delighted to hear from you, because it’s your input that keeps us doing what we do.

None of this information is newsworthy (indeed, it’s shamelessly self-indulgent), so feel free to use the comments section as an Intellectual Free Fire Zone. Talk about whatever you think is interesting — science, politics, philosophy, etc. You know the rules, and you know about our profanity filters. But before we throw open the comments, we’ll conclude with a warning, followed by our famous guarantee of quality:

Warning

Creationists who read this blog may experience some or all of these symptoms: headache, fainting, dizziness, shortness of breath, rapid breathing, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, high blood pressure, mood swings, paranoia, delusions of persecution or martyrdom, chronic fatigue, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, slowed thinking or impaired concentration, speech impairment, sexual dysfunction, memory loss, hypertension, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, and panic attacks due to lake of fire phobia.

If you experience any of these symptoms while reading this blog, and such symptoms last for more than four hours, it is strongly recommended that you discontinue reading and promptly seek professional assistance.

And now the quality guarantee:

Self-Proving Truth Certificate

Everything written by the Curmudgeon in this blog is true. The presence of this Certificate is your proof. Our logic is undeniable.

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Monday Free Fire Zone

This is very unusual. Our kind of news is often slow on weekends, but things always get busy again on Monday. Not this Monday. Our exhaustive news sweeps haven’t found anything.

Actually, that’s good news. The less noise made by creationists, the better. If we never heard from them again, we’d be delighted. But then, what would become of our humble blog? We would retire it, with a final post titled Mission Accomplished! But we don’t think that will be happening any time soon.

So until we find something worthy of our time, we hereby declare another Intellectual Free-Fire Zone. We’re open for the discussion of pretty much anything, science, politics, economics — even astrology, theology, mythology, and sociology — as long as it’s tasteful and interesting. Banter, babble, bicker, bluster, blubber, blather, blab, blurt, burble, boast — say what you will. But avoid flame-wars and beware of the profanity filters.

We now throw open the comments to you, dear reader. Have at it.

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Political Wilderness Free Fire Zone

The Republican National Convention has just ended, and the Democrat Convention starts tomorrow. The news seems to be almost entirely about that, and to make it worse, neither candidate seems to be a creationist, so that subject isn’t being mentioned.

Your Curmudgeon is more opposed to one candidate than the other, but we aren’t excited by either of them — at least for now — so we’re not going to post about politics. Maybe later. But if you want to talk about politics, that’s fine with us.

Therefore we hereby declare another Intellectual Free-Fire Zone. We’re open for the discussion of pretty much anything — science, politics, economics, or even astrology, theology, mythology, and sociology — as long as it’s tasteful and interesting. Banter, babble, bicker, bluster, blubber, blather, blab, blurt, burble, boast — say what you will. But avoid flame-wars and beware of the profanity filters.

We now throw open the comments to you, dear reader. Have at it.

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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12 YEARS A KNAVE, by Dr. Swinefat Pink

More than two years have passed, dear reader, since we brought you a new work by this blog’s most popular (and only) guest author — the esteemed “Dr. Swinefat Pink.” His previous work is memorialized in a permanent sidebar of this humble blog.

The good doctor never explains his absences. It’s been rumoured that this time he was imprisoned in an undisclosed country because of his work on a secret mission. We may never know. Anyway, we are pleased to report that Dr.Swinefat Pink is back again! He introduces his latest in his own words:

At last it can be told! From the studios of Retro-Boldfib-Liar (“Ars Gratia Darkness”) comes the cinema event of the century!

With no further introduction, we proudly present Dr. Pink’s latest:

12 YEARS A KNAVE

The Extraordinary TRVE story of Gerbilman Throwup

Our story opens in San Diego, where young Gerbo, a squeaky-voiced geology student and accomplished word-fiddler, is beavering away at his MA in Earth Science. When he receives an invitation to lecture on paleo-magnetism at a local IDEA Club, the unsuspecting Gerbo is delighted and, armed with a newly-minted powerpoint presentation, eagerly trots along for the event — but only to discover it’s a trap set by cunning crypto-Creationists, who gerb-nap the hapless budding geologist and sell him up the river!

Smuggled in manacles to Seattle, Gerbo vainly protests that he is a freethinker, but to no avail: he is sold to Westie Gored, the brutal master of the notorious Tooter Plantation. Given the slave name of ‘Prat’ and bludgeoned almost senseless by their blather, Gerbo is forced to toil 16 hours a day chain-ganged in the insalubrious Quote-Mines of ENVy, wrenching data points out of context from PLOS ONE with his bare hands. And woe betide the slave who does not fill his daily quota of distortions and misrepresentations — for such must then face a brutal flogging from the Behe Cat o’ Nine Flagella!

Fed on nothing more than the thin gruel of junk DNA, and barely able to cover his intellectual nakedness with threadbare scraps of religious apologetics, Gerbo almost loses the will to live. But his word-fiddling talent for fashioning unfathomable pretzels out of distorted logic has come to the attention of another Discoveroid, Judge Klingon, who sets him a new and even more arduous task: rewriting the Dover decision into a Creationist victory!

And while working on this interminable screed, Gerbo falls in love with Annie, the lab-slave forced to pleasure the Tooter masters in the unspeakable Greenscreen Cabin. Desperate to win his own freedom and hers, Gerbo writes increasingly bizarre and incomprehensible blog posts in the hope that their very incredulity will alert someone — anyone! — in the outside world that such tosh could only be penned against his will by a man held in bondage. But alas, Gerbo finds that he can’t out-crazy the Tooter masters.

And finally, Gerbo goes completely deranged himself. Reduced to a gibbering wreck by 12 years of churning out asinine analogies, insane syllogisms, Byzantine legal arguments, obtuse opinions, idiotic intuitions and moronic metaphysics, Gerbo is discarded by the heartless Tooters as a worthless, burned-out husk.

History does not record under which rock Gerbo then crawled to hide his shame …

Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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