People send me stuff.
Yesterday Skeptical Science owner John Cook announced to the world that he thought Willis’s open letter to the new editor of Science was “creepy” and “sexist”.
As is typical with the Skeptical Science kidz, it’s just projection. How much? You have no idea. But it turns out that when you scratch the surface of the SkS Forum, where the principals and moderators talk amongst themselves (seemingly unaware of others watching) you discover what creepy really is. For a supposed site about “climate science” it sure does look a lot like “high school climate science”.
Get a load of the pictures from the SkS forum website sent to me today. A friend of WUWT writes:
(Note: I’m leaving the author of this email private, lest he become another Photoshop victim. Note that all the links are in the open, there’s no hack or mole action going on here. BTW, each word highlighted below is a separate link to an image. – Anthony)
I found something I thought you might be interested in while looking to see what is publicly viewable on the new SkS forum’s website (www.sksforum.org). Little is, but there happens to be a viewable images directory that has a subdirectory, [http://www.sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded]. This directory has some… interesting images.
One [http://www.sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded/WeAreSkeptics.jpg] has several the heads of several skeptics photoshopped onto people from a movie about the 300 Spartans (300, perhaps?). I assume it was an attempt at humorously painting skeptics as few in number and dogmatic.
But the most interesting ones defy explanation at the moment. There are a number of images where the head of Dana Nuccitelli or John Cook appear to have been photoshopped onto images of [http://www.sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded/herrscooterboy.jpg]
[http://www.sksforum.org/images/user_uploaded/herrtankboy2.jpg]
It’s possible these images were taken from somewhere else and uploaded, but that seems unlikely as a couple of them show signs of further photoshopping done to improve them. To see what I mean, compare this image to this one.
Combined with the fact there are a number of similarly photoshopped images done to flatter Nuccitelli, it seems almost certain SkS members have photoshopped images of SkS members as Nazi soldiers. I can’t think of a single sensible reason they would do that.
I don’t think they dream of being Nazis, and I can’t imagine it was particularly fun to make those images. It’s possible they made these with the idea of a false flag operation in mind, but that seems ridiculous. It’s not more absurd than Peter Gleick’s behavior was, but it’s hard to believe anyone would consider doing that (especially on a forum which has been exposed once before).
[NOTE: Brandon Shollenberger decided that he didn’t care that his name was attached to the above, hence this update. – Anthony]
You have to wonder what motivates them to take the time do things like this, especially when they claim that global warming is accelerating, and there is precious little time left before we all roast.
SkS Kidz will be kids I suppose.
I haven’t looked this good since high school:
L-R: Watts, Monckton, Delingpole.
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UPDATE: 10:35 PDT About three hours later It seems that somebody at SkS has been embarrassed that they’ve been caught out, and they have comically simply moved the “user_uploaded” folder to one with a seemingly random (Ric Werme says: “Hey, a11g0n3 is leet-speak for allgone. Oh Lord, there be idiots over there.”) name: [http://www.sksforum.org//images/a11g0n3/]
Of course that breaks all the links in the story above.
Only problem is, it’s still open to the public there. All images are still visible: [http://www.sksforum.org//images/a11g0n3/]
Surely they know that the Internet has a permanent memory and all these images still exist elsewhere in folders that people have scraped from the original by now?
Amateur hour cover up tactics. – Anthony
UPDATE2: 11:07AM PDT It seems that they’ve taken down the “leet speak” folder as well, no matter, they still all exist in many places, and I’ll add a gallery shortly. -Anthony
UPDATE3: 11:19AM PDT here is a few of the images referenced above in the story and in comments. I also have a screen cap of the original folder listing at SkS which I’ll upload tonight when I get home.
UPDATE4: 5:31PM PDT, As promised earlier in UPDATE3 here is a PDF capture of the file listing from the original SkS forum snapped at 829AM PDT today.
Index of _images_user_uploaded (PDF)
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philjourdan:
re your post at August 13, 2013 at 10:39 am.
I reply only in hope of trying to help you.
Read your own words.
I am not “disingenuous”, not a “Naz1”, not a “communist”, not a “nut case”, and not “paranoid”.
You say you do not understand that calling me those things is insulting.
As I previously said, you really, really do need to learn the basics of ‘how to make friends and influence people.”
For the benefit of onlookers I state that I will ignore any further posts from you.
Others have questioned me and disagreed with me (some strongly). But you and DirkH have only provided abuse in this discussion. I see no reason to lower myself by treating such abuse with other than contempt, so I shall ignore any more of it.
Richard
In discussions of the word ‘racist’ I trot out my own definition: “If someone else’s race is important to you, then YOU are the racist.” I see now a similar definition of ‘sexist’ is needed. Since Willis *never* brings up the new Editor’s gender (indeed, Willis never even resorts to ad hominem attacks), but evidently it is important to Cook, I say: “Mr. Cook, if someone else’s gender is important to you, then YOU are the sexist.”