Where's Erik?

[Oxyaena]

Anyone know?

[erik simpson]

On Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2:12:14 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
> Anyone know?

I'm here. Just had a vacation.

[Oxyaena]

This should come as no surprise, but Peter had it wrong when he said
that he though what he wrote to you caused you to have a moment of
"self-reflection". Dunning-Kruger in action.
>

[erik simpson]

? There was a lot of stuff I haven't (and don't intend to) read that I missed
when I was blessedly away from the internet. I just checked some of the last
posts on some threads. As far as I can see, nothing world-shaking has emerged.

Correct me on this if I did miss something important. (Not Super Mario. That I
don't need.)

[Oxyaena]

Nothing. You've missed nothing of any relevance.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, September 4, 2018 at 4:04:10 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 9/3/2018 6:59 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2:12:14 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
> >> Anyone know?
> >
> > I'm here. Just had a vacation.
>
>
> This should come as no surprise,

At Erik's age, surprise is appropriate when the vacation is as completely
unannouced as in Erik's case. Have you ever tried to find
out what happened to Richard Norman? He's been gone for at least
a year now, and he was less than a decade older than Erik IIRC.

> but Peter had it wrong when he said
> that he though what he wrote to you caused you to have a moment of
> "self-reflection".

A lot of self-reflection can take place in a day, and Erik was
away for over three weeks here, and about five weeks in talk.origins.
[Last post there was Aug. 2, unless he's made some on his return
that I haven't caught yet.]

So you have posted a gross *non sequitur*.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

I think my 2+1/2 week (so far) moratorium, updated in Aug 29 and Aug 30
posts to the thread where the following reply to Oxyaena appears, is
pretty important.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/temctjrIx0Q/8FYgQdthAQAJ
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 08:44:24 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <a65ab3fa-c2d7-416a...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: OT: Partial Moratorium On Replies to Oxyaena (Phase 2)

Oxyaena evidently disagrees with my assessment.


Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

What is this "self-reflection" you're talking about? I wasn't aware that my
personal activities were of such concern.

[John Harshman]

I was just wondering if anyone here had any interest in paleontology.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[Peter Nyikos]

All Erik has to do is to look at the thread to which he did
his last August post to s.b.p., preceded by three days of silence from him,
and he'll know what this is all about.

> I was just wondering if anyone here had any interest in paleontology.
> Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

We do. And chill: you were gone for about two weeks earlier this year
yourself. That's a lot longer than anyone on this thread besides
Erik was gone in the days immediately preceding Oxyaena's OP.

Peter Nyikos

PS Did you ever try to find out what happened to Richard Norman?
He was one of the original cosigners to our 4+ year old agreement.
And IIRC he was one of the three of us who, back in December 2010,
made a commitment to bring sci.bio.paleontology back from the
brink of extinction.

[erik simpson]

I do. In fact, my recent travels included a visit to Drumheller, Alberta to see the Royal Tyrrell Museum there. Very impressive displays of Ceratopsian dinosaurs, which are apparently an Alberta specialty. A recently acquired new knee limited how much time I could spend standing and slowly walking about, so I may have to go back.

[John Harshman]

Never been to Drumheller, but last year I was able to visit the Mt.
Stephens trilobite beds, where I found a couple of Anomalocaris claws in
addition to the plentiful trilobites. Nasty hike, not for the faint of knee.

[erik simpson]

I visited the Stephens site, I think sometime in the 90s. An Anomalocaris claw
was the star discovery then too. The next day I visited the original Walcott
site, where Des Collins was currently collecting. The highlight of that
occasion was the discovery of a whole Anomalocaris in a large slab that I
watched being split. Exciting times.

[John Harshman]

The Walcott site is open for guided hikes, but it's a much longer walk.
Maybe next time.

[erik simpson]

It's a longer walk, but not nearly so steep. Yoho Park isn't making such a big
deal of the Burgess Shales as it was in the years immediatly following the
publication of "Wonderful Life", but the visitor center in Field has a small but
nice collection of fossils, well lit. That was one aspect of the Tyrrell museum
that failed. They also have some Burgess specimens, but impossibly lit. You
can't see anything, the fossils being black in dark gray rock.

[John Harshman]

Hey, the Smithsonian still has a Burgess diorama showing Hallucigenia
upside down and backwards. Last I saw.

But the Field Museum has an amazing animation of a Burgess sea floor, in
which all the animals wander around, eat each other, and generally
behave. It's a long loop. I've always wanted to find it offered as a
screen saver. It's not there, but if you google "field museum burgess
shale video" you get several views people have apparently done with
their phones.

[Oxyaena]

On 9/5/2018 11:30 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 4, 2018 at 4:04:10 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 9/3/2018 6:59 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2:12:14 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>> Anyone know?
>>>
>>> I'm here. Just had a vacation.
>>
>>
>> This should come as no surprise,
>
> At Erik's age, surprise is appropriate when the vacation is as completely
> unannouced as in Erik's case. Have you ever tried to find
> out what happened to Richard Norman?

Yes, I have, I posted something to that effect months ago and no one
replied.

>
>
>> but Peter had it wrong when he said
>> that he though what he wrote to you caused you to have a moment of
>> "self-reflection".
>
> A lot of self-reflection can take place in a day, and Erik was
> away for over three weeks here, and about five weeks in talk.origins.
> [Last post there was Aug. 2, unless he's made some on his return
> that I haven't caught yet.]

Nothing you posted caused any sort of "self-reflection" in Erik, you
self-righteous prick. At least, none can be inferred from what he wrote.
You obviously aren't the most self aware, are you?

>
> So you have posted a gross *non sequitur*.

Like what you do all the time, you hypocritical neo-Machiavelli?


>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>


--
"A wizard did it." - Ancient proverb

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 11:51:53 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena
<oxy...@ascended.to.godhood> wrote:

What's with the e-mail spoofing, Oxyaena? Did you know that
New Google Groups treats each spoofed e-mail address as a separate person?

For example, on the thread on my partial moratorium, I see at the top:

9 posts by 5 authors

But there are really only two of us authors, aren't there? Besides
myself, the four authors *sensu* NGG are:

From: Oxyaena <oxy...@piss.off>
From: Oxyaena <perad...@gmail.com>
From: Oxyaena <oxy...@was.here>
From: Oxyaena <oxy...@isnt.here>

Each of these the "From" line of a post, and can be seen among the
umpteen lines at the tops of posts with urls in the format with
forum/#!original/ in the middle, such as:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.bio.paleontology/nNhyCBvm_9k/DSQ8W5LSCQAJ


Such trivia aside, there is an "advantage" any person obtains
from such e-mail spoofing: when someone clicks "show activity"
on a post, it ONLY references those posts that were done under that
e-mail address. And so people are thwarted from obtaining a well
rounded picture of how that particular poster has behaved in the past.

I have never spoofed e-mail addresses, and never will. I have
nothing to hide, and I want people to have access to anything about
me that is a matter of public information.

And now, on to the text of your post:

> On 9/5/2018 11:30 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 4, 2018 at 4:04:10 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >> On 9/3/2018 6:59 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> >>> On Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2:12:14 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
> >>>> Anyone know?
> >>>
> >>> I'm here. Just had a vacation.
> >>
> >>
> >> This should come as no surprise,
> >
> > At Erik's age, surprise is appropriate when the vacation is as completely
> > unannouced as in Erik's case. Have you ever tried to find
> > out what happened to Richard Norman?
>
>
> Yes, I have, I posted something to that effect months ago and no one
> replied.

If I can find Norman's old e-mail address, I will try to contact him.

I hope he didn't use spoofed e-mail addresses. :-(

> >> but Peter had it wrong when he said
> >> that he though what he wrote to you caused you to have a moment of
> >> "self-reflection".
> >
> > A lot of self-reflection can take place in a day, and Erik was
> > away for over three weeks here, and about five weeks in talk.origins.
> > [Last post there was Aug. 2, unless he's made some on his return
> > that I haven't caught yet.]
>
> Nothing you posted caused any sort of "self-reflection" in Erik,

How do you know? did you exchange e-mails with him?

Oh, wait, you do qualify what your wrote, the deleted end of your
preceding sentence notwithstanding:

> At least, none can be inferred from what he wrote.

Erik has a track record in talk.origins, and more recently here in s.b.p.
(more recently = in every post this year)
of playing with the cards very close to his chest.

Notice, for instance, that he hasn't responded yet to the
only reply I've done to him so far, made yesterday.
OTOH he and Harshman have had a good bit of back-and-forth
between them on this thread.


Nor do I ever expect Erik to reply to this one reply -- he sees
that you and I have a divergence of opinion about the importance of
my moratorium.


I wonder how John feels about it.

John hasn't replied to any of the 5 "authors" ;-)
on the thread where I've been keeping people updated on
my policy wrt your posts.

And yet he was the one most pushing for such a moratorium.
He, too, plays with the cards close to his chest, though
not as consistently as Erik.

> > So you have posted a gross *non sequitur*.

You gave no indication of disputing this, and you do show
some signs of realizing what you did, by your qualifier "At least..."
this time around. Good show.

Peter Nyikos

PS I hope by now you DO realize that you are NOT following suit with my
revised policy on the partial moratorium. I made you aware of that in
the following reply to your post with

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.bio.paleontology/temctjrIx0Q/8FYgQdthAQAJ

[erik simpson]

Sorry, I missed this. No, I don't think your moratorium is important.

[Oxyaena]

On 9/6/2018 1:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 11:51:53 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena
> <oxy...@ascended.to.godhood> wrote:
>
> What's with the e-mail spoofing, Oxyaena? Did you know that
> New Google Groups treats each spoofed e-mail address as a separate person?
>

Because every time I turn off my computer all of my data is lost and I
get placed on a temporary account. Another reason is because the emails
I spoof are usually humorous in nature, such as
"oxy...@invalid.address" (a play on the word "invalid", which has two
separate definitions), which I used several times. And of course, I
don't give a flying fuck about NGG because I don't use it, so any
problems you may have with my numerous different emails are on your end,
not mine, and I use the same nym for all of them, anyways. It would do
you (and the rest of us) wonders to stop being so paranoid and
suspicious of everyone.

> For example, on the thread on my partial moratorium, I see at the top:
>
> 9 posts by 5 authors
>
> But there are really only two of us authors, aren't there? Besides
> myself, the four authors *sensu* NGG are:
>
> From: Oxyaena <oxy...@piss.off>
> From: Oxyaena <perad...@gmail.com>
> From: Oxyaena <oxy...@was.here>
> From: Oxyaena <oxy...@isnt.here>
>
> Each of these the "From" line of a post, and can be seen among the
> umpteen lines at the tops of posts with urls in the format with
> forum/#!original/ in the middle, such as:
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.bio.paleontology/nNhyCBvm_9k/DSQ8W5LSCQAJ
>
>
> Such trivia aside, there is an "advantage" any person obtains
> from such e-mail spoofing: when someone clicks "show activity"
> on a post, it ONLY references those posts that were done under that
> e-mail address. And so people are thwarted from obtaining a well
> rounded picture of how that particular poster has behaved in the past.

You're a paranoid fuck, none of what you wrote above is true. Stop
pretending you can read my mind or you have any ideas of my motivations,
as far as you're concerned I`m inscrutable, and I prefer to keep it that
way.

>
> I have never spoofed e-mail addresses, and never will. I have
> nothing to hide, and I want people to have access to anything about
> me that is a matter of public information.
>
> And now, on to the text of your post:

Go fuck yourself, you paranoid turd. And stop with the
passive-aggressive nature of your posts, you aren't as innocent as you
think you are, most of my nastiness towards you is in response to the
nastiness you perpetrate towards me. If you were actually capable of
acting like a civilized human being towards you I wouldn't be so
antipathetic towards you.

>
>
>> On 9/5/2018 11:30 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, September 4, 2018 at 4:04:10 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>> On 9/3/2018 6:59 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2:12:14 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>>>> Anyone know?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm here. Just had a vacation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This should come as no surprise,
>>>
>>> At Erik's age, surprise is appropriate when the vacation is as completely
>>> unannouced as in Erik's case. Have you ever tried to find
>>> out what happened to Richard Norman?
>>
>>
>> Yes, I have, I posted something to that effect months ago and no one
>> replied.
>
> If I can find Norman's old e-mail address, I will try to contact him.
>
> I hope he didn't use spoofed e-mail addresses. :-(

He didn't, it was rno...@comcast.net. Or maybe rsno...@comcast.net, I
don't remember exactly but it was something along those lines, and as I
said above, stop with the passive-aggressiveness.

>
>
>>>> but Peter had it wrong when he said
>>>> that he though what he wrote to you caused you to have a moment of
>>>> "self-reflection".
>>>
>>> A lot of self-reflection can take place in a day, and Erik was
>>> away for over three weeks here, and about five weeks in talk.origins.
>>> [Last post there was Aug. 2, unless he's made some on his return
>>> that I haven't caught yet.]
>>
>> Nothing you posted caused any sort of "self-reflection" in Erik,
>
> How do you know? did you exchange e-mails with him?
>
> Oh, wait, you do qualify what your wrote, the deleted end of your
> preceding sentence notwithstanding:
>
>> At least, none can be inferred from what he wrote.
>
> Erik has a track record in talk.origins, and more recently here in s.b.p.
> (more recently = in every post this year)
> of playing with the cards very close to his chest.

He specifically stated he didn't know what the fuck you were talking
about, and if you haven't noticed I play my cards even closer to my
chest than Erik does, I haven't even released my name. None of what you
think you know about me is verifiable, it could all be bullshit, it
could all be true, you'd never know, and I have a very good reason for
that, which I won't tell you anyways.

>
> Notice, for instance, that he hasn't responded yet to the
> only reply I've done to him so far, made yesterday.
> OTOH he and Harshman have had a good bit of back-and-forth
> between them on this thread.

That's less a habit of him "playing his cards close to his chest" and
more him not wanting to feed your trolling, which I admittedly all-to
readily do.

>
>
> Nor do I ever expect Erik to reply to this one reply -- he sees
> that you and I have a divergence of opinion about the importance of
> my moratorium.

I don't think he gives a shit.

>
>
> I wonder how John feels about it.

I don't think he gives a shit, both of them would rather discuss
on-topic paleontology than engage in your soap opera-like escapades.

>
> John hasn't replied to any of the 5 "authors" ;-)
> on the thread where I've been keeping people updated on
> my policy wrt your posts.

No one here gives a shit.

>
> And yet he was the one most pushing for such a moratorium.
> He, too, plays with the cards close to his chest, though
> not as consistently as Erik.

John has explicitly stated he doesn't want to feed your trolling.

>
>>> So you have posted a gross *non sequitur*.
>
> You gave no indication of disputing this, and you do show
> some signs of realizing what you did, by your qualifier "At least..."
> this time around. Good show.

I never posted any gross non-sequiter, unlike yourself, I merely told
Erik what you thought of his absence, and it was entirely on-topic to
the point of this thread, if not the newsgroup.

>
> Peter Nyikos
>
> PS I hope by now you DO realize that you are NOT following suit with my
> revised policy on the partial moratorium. I made you aware of that in
> the following reply to your post with

I never saw it.

>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.bio.paleontology/temctjrIx0Q/8FYgQdthAQAJ
> Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 08:44:24 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <a65ab3fa-c2d7-416a...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: OT: Partial Moratorium On Replies to Oxyaena (Phase 2)
>

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 11:55:20 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 8:30:08 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 4, 2018 at 4:04:10 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> > > On 9/3/2018 6:59 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 2:12:14 AM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
> > > >> Anyone know?
> > > >
> > > > I'm here. Just had a vacation.
> > >
> > >
> > > This should come as no surprise,
> >
> > At Erik's age, surprise is appropriate when the vacation is as completely
> > unannouced as in Erik's case. Have you ever tried to find
> > out what happened to Richard Norman? He's been gone for at least
> > a year now, and he was less than a decade older than Erik IIRC.
> >
> >
> > > but Peter had it wrong when he said
> > > that he though what he wrote to you caused you to have a moment of
> > > "self-reflection".

I never "thought" that. I had said you...

may have done a lot of it since I replied on Aug 14 to his
Aug 13 post to this thread.
...
a long period of self-reflection by him may be appropriate, in view of
the contents of my Aug 14 reply.

> > A lot of self-reflection can take place in a day, and Erik was
> > away for over three weeks here, and about five weeks in talk.origins.
> > [Last post there was Aug. 2, unless he's made some on his return
> > that I haven't caught yet.]
> >
> > So you have posted a gross *non sequitur*.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> What is this "self-reflection" you're talking about?

It's in that Aug. 14 post, the relevant portion being:

__________________________ repost _________________________

> Chill, Oxy. He isn't worth the aggravation you're seeming to feel.

If what Oxyaena wrote were true, my charges would jolly well be
worth the aggravation of typing what 'e typed.

Just look at your own aggravation over my characterizing a post
you did as "counterproductive." You even reopened that old wound
of yours after over a month had passed, because the memory of it was
so aggravating.

Do you have a weird system of morality whereby my characterization
was worse than multiple slanders?

Or do you have a system (all too common, alas) of subjectivistic
morality whereby things are either good or bad on the basis of
whether they are favorable or unfavorable for yourself and those
people (if any) about whom you really care?

================================ end of excerpt
from
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/65-DxCJ4DwAJ
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2018 04:55:46 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <f28e0c13-bad1-458a...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Pterosaur dietary hypotheses

In all the myriads of posts I've seen on the internet, I've never
read anything resembling my opening sentence above. But its significance
seems to have been totally lost on Oxyaena, and I suspect it will
be lost on you too.

> I wasn't aware that my
> personal activities were of such concern.

After seeing your lack of interest in my moratorium, I think you
will also find the challenge to you to be uninteresting,
and not worth a moment of attention or even of self-reflection.

In fact, I doubt that you will even reply to this post, much less
address the challenge in the reposted material.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 9/7/18 9:01 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Hey, how about something on-topic?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 7, 2018 at 12:53:53 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/7/18 9:01 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Hey, how about something on-topic?

Take a look at my post of a few minutes ago to the "Penguin, kangaroo"
thread. Actual paleontology near the end, unlike what I saw from
you there.

I think you will be disappointed by it, though, for other reasons.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Consider your recent ratio of off-topic to on-topic posts. Consider
bringing that ratio down.

[Peter Nyikos]

Done. Now, ten days later, it's your turn. See:


https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wA3EJfvKogY/UCW9JBDhBwAJ
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2018 07:05:26 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <27d10995-cfff-4917...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Penguin, kangaroo
Excerpt:
One more question: might this post motivate Harshman to break his boycott
of on-topic posts to this "Penguin, kangaroo" thread?


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

On 9/17/2018 11:17 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, September 7, 2018 at 5:32:44 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 9/7/18 12:19 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Friday, September 7, 2018 at 12:53:53 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 9/7/18 9:01 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey, how about something on-topic?
>>>
>>> Take a look at my post of a few minutes ago to the "Penguin, kangaroo"
>>> thread. Actual paleontology near the end, unlike what I saw from
>>> you there.
>>>
>>> I think you will be disappointed by it, though, for other reasons.
>>
>> Consider your recent ratio of off-topic to on-topic posts. Consider
>> bringing that ratio down.
>
> Done. Now, ten days later, it's your turn. See:

Now if only someone would reply to my *on-topic* posts.

[Peter Nyikos]

Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.

On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 4:13:24 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 9/6/2018 1:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 11:51:53 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena
> > <oxy...@ascended.to.godhood> wrote:
> >
> > What's with the e-mail spoofing, Oxyaena? Did you know that
> > New Google Groups treats each spoofed e-mail address as a separate person?
> >
>
> Because every time I turn off my computer all of my data is lost and I
> get placed on a temporary account.

This claim looked highly suspicious on the face of it -- why would
a private computer of yours do any such thing?

I suspect "my" was a falsehood, and you are only affectionately
referring to a computer in a public library that you use that way.

Why would you do such a thing? Obviously, because you are "a very
private person" who takes extra precautions to avoid being traced.

And one reason you are "very private" is that you
are a fraud who is no more of a paleontologist than I am, what
with your MS in biology having been obtained from a diploma mill
-- assuming you were industrious enough to go for one instead
of simply lying about having an MS in biology. RIGHT?


are highly dishonest, hypocritical, and cowardly and ]

> Another reason is because the emails
> I spoof are usually humorous in nature, such as
> "oxy...@invalid.address" (a play on the word "invalid", which has two
> separate definitions), which I used several times.

And you share with jillery the attitude that oxy...@fuck.you
is hilariously funny. [Any time a movie is billed as "hilariously funny"
it's a near-certainty that there is plenty of sex, probably including
raunchy sex, featured.]


> And of course, I
> don't give a flying fuck about NGG because [the people who
> do use it can take a flying fuck unless they kowtow to me, Oxyaena]

Fixed it for you.

> It would do
> you (and the rest of us) wonders to stop being so paranoid and
> suspicious of everyone.

"everyone" = a fraud who goes by the nym Oxyaena and who used
to go by Thrinaxodon until that nym was banned by DIG and
will forever live in infamy in talk.origins.

But not in sci.bio.paleontology, unless John Harshman stops
treating you with blatant favoritism like he has been all through 2018.

>
>
> > For example, on the thread on my partial moratorium, I see at the top:
> >
> > 9 posts by 5 authors
> >
> > But there are really only two of us authors, aren't there? Besides
> > myself, the four authors *sensu* NGG are:
> >
> > From: Oxyaena <oxy...@piss.off>
> > From: Oxyaena <perad...@gmail.com>
> > From: Oxyaena <oxy...@was.here>
> > From: Oxyaena <oxy...@isnt.here>
> >
> > Each of these the "From" line of a post, and can be seen among the
> > umpteen lines at the tops of posts with urls in the format with
> > forum/#!original/ in the middle, such as:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.bio.paleontology/nNhyCBvm_9k/DSQ8W5LSCQAJ
> >
> >
> > Such trivia aside, there is an "advantage" any person obtains
> > from such e-mail spoofing: when someone clicks "show activity"
> > on a post, it ONLY references those posts that were done under that
> > e-mail address. And so people are thwarted from obtaining a well
> > rounded picture of how that particular poster has behaved in the past.
>
>
> You're a paranoid fuck, none of what you wrote above is true.

You are a pathological liar, all of it is true and you know it.
It is because you hate that truth that you now post something
that shows you were projecting when you called me a "paranoid fuck":

> Stop
> pretending you can read my mind or you have any ideas of my motivations,

What I wrote in the above paragraph was 100% factual and had
NOTHING to do with your motivations.

You are a despicable troll.

> as far as you're concerned I`m inscrutable, and I prefer to keep it that
> way.

The real YOU may be inscrutable, but your Oxyaena persona has been
intensively scrutinized in the 5+ weeks since you did the post to
which I am replying, and I've learned plenty about "Oxyaena" since then.

>
> >
> > I have never spoofed e-mail addresses, and never will. I have
> > nothing to hide, and I want people to have access to anything about
> > me that is a matter of public information.
> >
> > And now, on to the text of your post:
>
> Go fuck yourself, you paranoid turd. And stop with the
> passive-aggressive nature of your posts,

You need to look up the term "passive-aggressive." It applies FAR more
to your protector and protege Erik Simpson than it does to me.

You are a flop even when it comes to pop psychology.

> you aren't as innocent as you
> think you are, most of my nastiness towards you is in response to the
> nastiness you perpetrate towards me.

value-free use of "nastiness" noted. Your Oxyaena persona gives every
sign of being an ethical nihilist, but also sends up smokescreens
to hide that fact, unlike the zencycle persona in talk.origins.

> If you were actually capable of
> acting like a civilized human being towards you I wouldn't be so
> antipathetic towards you.

Bullshit. I hereby charge you with having deliberately
singled me out for attack in talk.origins in the "Witch Hunt"
thread I did ca. 5 years ago BECAUSE you saw that I was a person
with high moral standards.

And so you have played to my big weakness ever since: concern that
I be seen as such a person. Except for brief respites [1] you have
therefore hit me with thousands of documentable falsehoods, some of them
outrageous libels like "[snip mindless bullshit]", not caring
one bit how "Oxyaena" is seen by the regulars of talk.origins
and sci.bio.paleontology [2].

[1} Even during the "let bygones be bygones" respite, you
showed blatant favoritism towards Erik Simpson, thereby
also ingratiating yourself with his best buddy, John Harshman.

[2] After all, any opprobrium sticking to the dummy-analogue
"Oxyaena" cannot touch the "very private" ventriloquist-analogue
who does the typing for posts appearing under the "Oxyaena" [and,
earlier, the "Thrinoxodon"] byline.

How do you plead to the charge?


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.

No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama. You are polluting
the newsgroup. And if your impulse is to respond "Oxyaena does it too
and he/she is much worse", resist that impulse. Just stop.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:40:51 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
> > and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
> > and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
>
> No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama.

Sorry, John. You went on record as saying that JTEM is more of
a troll than Oxyaena, and I am in the process of posting massive
evidence of how much of a troll Oxyaena really is.

In the post where you made this claim, you even recommended that I ignore
trolls -- and then you promptly "fed the troll *sensu* Harshman"
in a back and forth with JTEM himself.

To make it more interesting, you stubbornly insisted that JTEM tell
you where he had posted something on the SAME thread,
with JTEM stubbornly insisting that you "do your own research"
[or words to that effect].

There's plenty of unresolved drama on the thread where
this happened, and it looks like it's up to me to ask
JTEM to "Please" tell us where to find it. The carrot
will be that even if the post where he tells us is
one of the hundreds of posts that you "don't see because
you don't want to see it," *I*, myself, will make sure
to record it and to remind you of it whenever appropriate.

> You are polluting
> the newsgroup.

You are treating Oxyaena with blatant favoritism, as you have
been doing all through 2018 -- and even more so with Erik Simpson.
Erik has twice been the beneficiary of "do as I say, not as I do"
requests for ME to post exclusively on topic, under hauntingly
similar circumstances to this one.

> And if your impulse is to respond "Oxyaena does it too
> and he/she is much worse", resist that impulse. Just stop.

I don't take orders from you, and I will only honor
this "request" from you if you acknowledge that Oxyaena
IS a lot worse than myself.

However, I suspect that your grasp of morality is too weak for you to
be able to admit that, even to yourself.


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

[snip mindless bullshit]

Please stop cluttering the newsgroup with your spam, it eats up bandwidth.

[Oxyaena]

On 10/15/2018 12:33 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Some real game-changing

By "real game-changing" you mean "Oxyaena made a few mistakes showing
that they are not omniscient, so therefore I have to be an ass about
just to fuck with Oxyaena."

At least be honest with your vitriolic, hate-filled paranoid spam.

events have taken place in both talk.origins
> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
>
> On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 4:13:24 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 9/6/2018 1:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 11:51:53 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena
>>> <oxy...@ascended.to.godhood> wrote:
>>>
>>> What's with the e-mail spoofing, Oxyaena? Did you know that
>>> New Google Groups treats each spoofed e-mail address as a separate person?
>>>
>>
>> Because every time I turn off my computer all of my data is lost and I
>> get placed on a temporary account.
>
> This claim looked highly suspicious on the face of it -- why would
> a private computer of yours do any such thing?

Hint: It's broken. Hint: I don't want to fix it.

>
> I suspect "my" was a falsehood, and you are only affectionately
> referring to a computer in a public library that you use that way.
>

Then you are, as usual, wrong. Is talking out of your ass your favorite
past-time? Because it sure seems that way. And before you bang me over
the head with your usage of the phrase "I suspect" in order to give you
some wiggle room to weasel your way out of it, don't, because that's
simply cowardly.

> Why would you do such a thing? Obviously, because you are "a very
> private person" who takes extra precautions to avoid being traced.
>

This is pathological by this point. Do you really think Mark has no
merit when he says you should see a psychiatrist?

> And one reason you are "very private" is that you
> are a fraud who is no more of a paleontologist than I am,

Baseless conjecture asserted as fact without evident basis noted.

what
> with your MS in biology having been obtained from a diploma mill
> -- assuming you were industrious enough to go for one instead
> of simply lying about having an MS in biology. RIGHT?

WRONG. I have a Masters in biology, my sister is a psychiatrist, and my
uncle is a professor of civics somewhere in Missouri. Care to try again?

>
>
> are highly dishonest, hypocritical, and cowardly and ]
>
>
>> Another reason is because the emails
>> I spoof are usually humorous in nature, such as
>> "oxy...@invalid.address" (a play on the word "invalid", which has two
>> separate definitions), which I used several times.
>

[snip irrelevant bullshit]

> "everyone" = a fraud who goes by the nym Oxyaena and who used
> to go by Thrinaxodon until that nym was banned by DIG and
> will forever live in infamy in talk.origins.
>
> But not in sci.bio.paleontology, unless John Harshman stops
> treating you with blatant favoritism like he has been all through 2018.

"Nyikos" is a name that will forever live in infamy among Usenet in
general. Have you ever wondered why so many people think you're a dick?
I can name several dozen off the top of my head. Have you ever wondered
why Burkhard had you killfiled for so long?

>
>>
>>
>>> For example, on the thread on my partial moratorium, I see at the top:
>>>
>>> 9 posts by 5 authors
>>>
>>> But there are really only two of us authors, aren't there? Besides
>>> myself, the four authors *sensu* NGG are:
>>>
>>> From: Oxyaena <oxy...@piss.off>
>>> From: Oxyaena <perad...@gmail.com>
>>> From: Oxyaena <oxy...@was.here>
>>> From: Oxyaena <oxy...@isnt.here>
>>>
>>> Each of these the "From" line of a post, and can be seen among the
>>> umpteen lines at the tops of posts with urls in the format with
>>> forum/#!original/ in the middle, such as:
>>>
>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.bio.paleontology/nNhyCBvm_9k/DSQ8W5LSCQAJ
>>>
>>>
>>> Such trivia aside, there is an "advantage" any person obtains
>>> from such e-mail spoofing: when someone clicks "show activity"
>>> on a post, it ONLY references those posts that were done under that
>>> e-mail address. And so people are thwarted from obtaining a well
>>> rounded picture of how that particular poster has behaved in the past.
>>
>>
>> You're a paranoid fuck, none of what you wrote above is true.
>
> You are a pathological liar,

Stop projecting your own faults unto me. It's pathetic.

all of it is true and you know it.
> It is because you hate that truth that you now post something
> that shows you were projecting when you called me a "paranoid fuck":

Stop with the projection, it's annoying and repetitive.

>
>
>> Stop
>> pretending you can read my mind or you have any ideas of my motivations,
>
> What I wrote in the above paragraph was 100% factual and had
> NOTHING to do with your motivations.

Complete and utter bullshit. You're not a telepath, dipshit, get over it.

>
> You are a despicable troll.

If I`m a troll, then you're a far worse one, because I don't go out of
my way to fuck with people. This is a month-old thread that you for some
reason had to revive, simply to fuck with me. It's like every post I
make has to receive a hate-filled, vitriolic, paranoid rant of yours in
return. It's obnoxious.

>
>
>> as far as you're concerned I`m inscrutable, and I prefer to keep it that
>> way.
>
> The real YOU may be inscrutable, but your Oxyaena persona has been
> intensively scrutinized in the 5+ weeks since you did the post to
> which I am replying, and I've learned plenty about "Oxyaena" since then.

You've learned absolutely nothing, only what I've told you that has no
way of being independently verified, and the rest only comes from your
IMAGINATION.

[snip paranoid, vitriolic, hate-filled screed by Nyikos]

[John Harshman]

On 10/15/18 10:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:40:51 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
>>> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
>>> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
>>
>> No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama.
>
> Sorry, John. You went on record as saying that JTEM is more of
> a troll than Oxyaena, and I am in the process of posting massive
> evidence of how much of a troll Oxyaena really is.

Would it help if I retracted that claim? I still think so, but I'm
willing to stop if you will just stop the nonsense.

I've attempted, fruitlessly, to get JTEM to back up something he said. I
did it simply by asking him for a reference. I don't consider that
feeding a troll.

[Oxyaena]

On 10/15/2018 7:08 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/15/18 10:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:40:51 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>> On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
>>>> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was
>>>> made,
>>>> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
>>>
>>> No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama.
>>
>> Sorry, John. You went on record as saying that JTEM is more of
>> a troll than Oxyaena, and I am in the process of posting massive
>> evidence of how much of a troll Oxyaena really is.
>
> Would it help if I retracted that claim? I still think so, but I'm
> willing to stop if you will just stop the nonsense.
>

So am I. Please *do* retract that claim, if only to get Peter to stop
this nonsense. It's tiresome and I really, *really* just want to get
back to discussing paleontology without fear of being flamed and trolled.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 7:06:57 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/15/18 10:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:40:51 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
> >>> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
> >>> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
> >>
> >> No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama.
> >
> > Sorry, John. You went on record as saying that JTEM is more of
> > a troll than Oxyaena, and I am in the process of posting massive
> > evidence of how much of a troll Oxyaena really is.
>
> Would it help if I retracted that claim? I still think so, but I'm
> willing to stop if you will just stop the nonsense.

It's too late to retract the claim, John. I learned something
yesterday that is as much of a game-changer as the things
whose game-changing nature you arrogantly sidestepped above.

> I've attempted, fruitlessly, to get JTEM to back up something he said.

Once, and then you proceeded to troll him. And he kept feeding you.
You got great trolling mileage out of two question marks. That
is truly expert trolling.

And Oxyaena joined in the trolling fun, and I think it was only
my intervention that kept JTEM from feeding that trolling as well.

> I did it simply by asking him for a reference. I don't consider that
> feeding a troll.

Actually, as I told JTEM last night, I had it backwards when I thought
he was trolling you and you were feeding him. When I took
a closer look at everything that had transpired between the two
of you, it became clear that the REAL issue is not whether
Oxyaena is a bigger troll than JTEM, but whether YOU are
a bigger troll than JTEM is.


By the way, do you think Oxyaena is MUCH more of a troll than you
are, or is the solidarity between the two of you so important that
you don't dare say even that much publicly?


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 10/16/18 10:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 7:06:57 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 10/15/18 10:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:40:51 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
>>>>> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
>>>>> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
>>>>
>>>> No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama.
>>>
>>> Sorry, John. You went on record as saying that JTEM is more of
>>> a troll than Oxyaena, and I am in the process of posting massive
>>> evidence of how much of a troll Oxyaena really is.
>>
>> Would it help if I retracted that claim? I still think so, but I'm
>> willing to stop if you will just stop the nonsense.
>
> It's too late to retract the claim, John. I learned something
> yesterday that is as much of a game-changer as the things
> whose game-changing nature you arrogantly sidestepped above.

And, true to form, you don't say what that was.

So do you know of a reference that would support JTEM's claims? Any of them.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 4:32:26 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 10/16/18 10:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 7:06:57 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 10/15/18 10:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Monday, October 15, 2018 at 12:40:51 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 10/15/18 9:33 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> Some real game-changing events have taken place in both talk.origins
> >>>>> and sci.bio.paleontology since the post to which I am replying was made,
> >>>>> and now the time is ripe for finally dealing with it.
> >>>>
> >>>> No it isn't. Please stop with all the off-topic drama.
> >>>
> >>> Sorry, John. You went on record as saying that JTEM is more of
> >>> a troll than Oxyaena, and I am in the process of posting massive
> >>> evidence of how much of a troll Oxyaena really is.
> >>
> >> Would it help if I retracted that claim? I still think so, but I'm
> >> willing to stop if you will just stop the nonsense.
> >
> > It's too late to retract the claim, John. I learned something
> > yesterday that is as much of a game-changer as the things
> > whose game-changing nature you arrogantly sidestepped above.

The word "sidestepped" was carefully chosen, blunting your
next comment:

> And, true to form, you don't say what that was.

Correction: true to form, you snipped it from your first reply,
when you dismissed a searing indictment of Oxyaena as mere "drama".

If a policeman stops you for an act of reckless driving, would
you characterize whatever he tells you as "drama" and "nonsense"
that you wish he would cease and desist from?


The following diversionary tactic looks like the kind of trolling
by you whose description you snipped this time around:

> So do you know of a reference that would support JTEM's claims? Any of them.

You're behaving like an amateur instead of like a professional:
I'm waiting for JTEM to provide me with a GOOD reference, based
on long experience in sci.bio.anthropology and his own study
of the literature.

OTOH I might have a lot of trouble hunting one down myself [1]:
I have not studied sperm competition, nor detailed descriptions
of chimp behavior like the comment he made on gorillas. You
ignored that comment in your reply to that post.

You later claimed to have missed that post. Another symptom of
mild Alzheimer's?

Please refrain from snipping the preceding paragraph and perversely
labeling it an accusation of "dementia". If you can't remember
my objections to that perverse substitution, you'll just
be reinforcing my concern for your well-being.


[1] I certainly don't want to use a Wikipedia reference that could
be way off the mark, like the one on slime molds that seems
very deficient as to when they are haploid and when they are
diploid. I noted this deficiency on another thread a few minutes ago:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/i7g8TrVtK6c/aqdVDYRpBwAJ
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 07:28:23 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <b02db15f-2269-4636...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Molecular paleontology: Dickinsonia is an animal


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Oxyaena]

On 10/17/2018 11:01 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip trolling by Nyikos]

It'd be really nice if you stopped all of this off-topic bullshit. I`m
willing to stop, why aren't you?

[John Harshman]

On 10/17/18 8:01 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 4:32:26 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

>> So do you know of a reference that would support JTEM's claims? Any of them.
>
> You're behaving like an amateur instead of like a professional:
> I'm waiting for JTEM to provide me with a GOOD reference, based
> on long experience in sci.bio.anthropology and his own study
> of the literature.

So the answer would be no, then.

> OTOH I might have a lot of trouble hunting one down myself [1]:
> I have not studied sperm competition, nor detailed descriptions
> of chimp behavior like the comment he made on gorillas. You
> ignored that comment in your reply to that post.

There is no question that chimps show clear evidence of sperm
competition but gorillas do not. That's not the point that JTEM has to
support. He has to support the claim that chimps have unusually diverged
Y chromosomes and that sperm competition has something to do with that.

> Please refrain from snipping the preceding paragraph and perversely
> labeling it an accusation of "dementia".

Nope.

[JTEM]

nyik...@gmail.com wrote:

> To make it more interesting, you stubbornly insisted that JTEM tell
> you where he had posted something on the SAME thread,
> with JTEM stubbornly insisting that you "do your own research"
> [or words to that effect].
>
> There's plenty of unresolved drama on the thread where
> this happened, and it looks like it's up to me to ask
> JTEM to "Please" tell us where to find it. The carrot
> will be that even if the post where he tells us is
> one of the hundreds of posts that you "don't see because
> you don't want to see it," *I*, myself, will make sure
> to record it and to remind you of it whenever appropriate.

What the HELL is all this about?

This is usenet. It's not uncommon for people to stubbornly REFUSE
to read posts with a thread they inflict themselves on, only to
demand "Proof" that any posts exists.




-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/696644730120994816

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 1:38:26 PM UTC-4, JTEM wrote:
> nyik...@gmail.com wrote:

...to John Harshman:

> > To make it more interesting, you stubbornly insisted that JTEM tell
> > you where he had posted something on the SAME thread,
> > with JTEM stubbornly insisting that you "do your own research"
> > [or words to that effect].
> >
> > There's plenty of unresolved drama on the thread where
> > this happened, and it looks like it's up to me to ask
> > JTEM to "Please" tell us where to find it. The carrot
> > will be that even if the post where he tells us is
> > one of the hundreds of posts that you "don't see because
> > you don't want to see it," *I*, myself, will make sure
> > to record it and to remind you of it whenever appropriate.


> What the HELL is all this about?

Try and look up the thread to which I was referring. On it,
I decided not to press you to tell where to find the post, but
to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of you making Harshman
look like a troll, and making yourself look like you were
"feeding the troll," but not enough to make him stop looking like a troll.

> This is usenet. It's not uncommon for people to stubbornly REFUSE
> to read posts with a thread they inflict themselves on, only to
> demand "Proof" that any posts exists.

It is uncommon for any s.b.p. regular [which Harshman is, and you are not]
to get into such pointless back-and-forth in s.b.p. There is quite a
difference between s.b.p. and talk.origins, although Harshman and
Simpson are two regulars who have done a lot to reduce the difference on a post-by-post basis.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Can you not do a single post without detailing your various grievances?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 7:55:30 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/28/22 4:33 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 1:38:26 PM UTC-4, JTEM wrote:
> >> nyik...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > ...to John Harshman:
> >>> To make it more interesting, you stubbornly insisted that JTEM tell
> >>> you where he had posted something on the SAME thread,
> >>> with JTEM stubbornly insisting that you "do your own research"
> >>> [or words to that effect].
> >>>
> >>> There's plenty of unresolved drama on the thread where
> >>> this happened, and it looks like it's up to me to ask
> >>> JTEM to "Please" tell us where to find it. The carrot
> >>> will be that even if the post where he tells us is
> >>> one of the hundreds of posts that you "don't see because
> >>> you don't want to see it," *I*, myself, will make sure
> >>> to record it and to remind you of it whenever appropriate.
> >
> >
> >> What the HELL is all this about?
> >
> > Try and look up the thread to which I was referring. On it,
> > I decided not to press you to tell where to find the post, but
> > to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of you making Harshman
> > look like a troll, and making yourself look like you were
> > "feeding the troll," but not enough to make him stop looking like a troll.

Note the words "enjoy the spectacle", John. Calling this a "grievance,"
as you seem to do below, makes you look like a complete fool.

> >
> >> This is usenet. It's not uncommon for people to stubbornly REFUSE
> >> to read posts with a thread they inflict themselves on, only to
> >> demand "Proof" that any posts exists.
> >
> > It is uncommon for any s.b.p. regular [which Harshman is, and you are not]
> > to get into such pointless back-and-forth in s.b.p. There is quite a
> > difference between s.b.p. and talk.origins, although Harshman and
> > Simpson are two regulars who have done a lot to reduce the difference on a post-by-post basis.

> Can you not do a single post without detailing your various grievances?

These are not "my" grievances. They are charges of you and Erik falling far short of acting
like responsible adults. You made that abundantly clear by your obsession with trying to paint Glenn
in July as being anti-science on the basis of perfectly natural comments.

You tried to justify your obsession by saying that you were basing these *non sequiturs*
on past behavior by Glenn, but when I asked for examples, you couldn't identify a single one.
I suggested that you post to talk.origins to ask others to provide them, but you
didn't want to do that either. But you did not want to retract your claim either.

That is not the kind of behavior one expects from a responsible adult. Far from it.


Peter Nyikos

[JTEM]

Harpman, Heartman, Hashman or John Harshman wrote:

> Can you not do a single post without detailing your various grievances?

Have you recently had your meds adjusted, or are you as bad as ever?

Are you even the real Harptan?





-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/tagged/Neanderthals

[John Harshman]

Your catalog of grievances just gains entries by the day. Is this
worthwhile spending sci.bio.paleontology posts on? Does it help to
produce a more congenial newsgroup? Or does it just help you feel more
virtuous?

Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?

[Glenn]

If you are interested in seeing gains of entries on the subject, let's start somewhere, How about here?

"How can anyone be at once so condescendingly smug and so mindlessly wrong? Oh yeah: he's an IDiot. "

https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html

Never mind that Berlinski is far from mindless, you appear to think of yourself as being 'right" and so not condescending or smug, when you call someone who isn't even part of the conversation an "IDiot" - and without any support!

The irony, it burns. You.

[John Harshman]

Obviously you haven't read the blog post that quote mine of me is
referring to. Nor have you read the context on Sandwalk, in which it's
explained how mindless Berlinski's post is, notably on the meaning of
rotated branches on cladograms. I'm guessing you would not be capable of
understanding how stupid that post is, even when it was explained to you
in detail. But who knows? And maybe Peter would be capable.

But here's a link:
https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/

The rotational bit is fairly far down the page. If anyone needs an
explanation of its sheer stupidity, I would be willing to supply one.

As usual, I ask if you had a point to make and if so what it was.

[Glenn]

[*Hemidactylus*]

He misplaced his rose colored glasses. At least he seems to have clued in
on JTEM. Baby steps.

[Glenn]

Mr Congeniality is back. Enjoy:

"All godbots are fundamentally dishonest. Elsewhere this hypocritical piece of garbage speculates that Muslims may have burned Notre Dame."

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/06/meyers-hopeless-2.html

[Glenn]

seemingly from a moderator with hammer power:

'Blocked for the strawman, the tu quoque fallacy, etc."

Lovely people, these.

[*Hemidactylus*]

What the hell does comments on some website have to do with the price of
milk. OTOH what was it you recently called Nando on t.o.?

[Glenn]

You tell me.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Are you proud of using that sort of bigoted language?

[Peter Nyikos]

You show no regret for the behavior I describe: instead, you try to shame me for having
described it:

> Your catalog of grievances just gains entries by the day. Is this
> worthwhile spending sci.bio.paleontology posts on? Does it help to
> produce a more congenial newsgroup? Or does it just help you feel more
> virtuous?

Like I told Erik, you and he have only yourselves [1] to blame for what you are
whining about. You not only do not regret having destroyed
a ca. 2.5 year era of sci.bio.paleontology where nothing like this this happened,
you are happy that s.b.p. is in its present sorry state.

You made that very clear on another thread.
Would you like to know how?

[1] and Oxyaena, who backed you two for all she was worth, and then some.
I think sci.bio.paleontology has become a less inhospitable place
since she disappeared late last year. Do you wish she were still posting?

> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?

You keep ignoring the posts he is doing on the thread,
Re: Deep diversity in Lophotrochozoa.

You even asked about this there, and I replied here:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/OpvUV-GjX0g/m/7efb6M2gBgAJ
[excerpt:]
> Have you read anything he's
> posted in the past week or two?

Yes. He posted on this thread yesterday. Why aren't you showing any awareness that?
[end of excerpt]

Glenn did a longer post today on the same thread, and I replied. You have shown no awareness of
either post, nor of my answer to your question above.

Have you been on drugs lately?


Peter Nyikos

PS Hurricane Ian is predicted to be a Tropical Storm when it hits Columbia starting
tomorrow morning, with winds gusting up to 60 mph. If electricity or internet
is down tomorrow, I might have an enforced 3-day break from posting.

[John Harshman]

Unfortunate for many reasons, but an enforced break from posting is not
among them. Sadly, as your obsession with imagined wrongs the way it is,
your absence can only improve the newsgroup.

[Glenn]

What kind of question is that?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 3:50:38 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/29/22 10:03 AM, Glenn wrote:
> > On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 6:42:16 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:

> >> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
> >
> > If you are interested in seeing gains of entries on the subject, let's start somewhere, How about here?
> >

I prefer to start here:, same reference as below, where I continue at tra:

"It's quite uncontroversial that there are no lagerstätten of comparable preservation to the Chengjiang known for the Ediacaran or early Cambrian before the Chengjiang."
[same reference as Glenn's below]

That was you talking, John. Did you forget about the Newfoundland lagerstätten with their exquisite
fossils of rangeomorphs?

> > "How can anyone be at once so condescendingly smug and so mindlessly wrong? Oh yeah: he's an IDiot."
> >
> > https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html

That is pure *argumentum ad hominem*, but it is nothing compared to the condescendingly smug
article by Moran, which is one solid mass of *ad hominems* with not a single attempt to refute
anything the "IDiot" Luskin says in the linked article.

Luskin warmed up nicely with:
"As I showed in a previous response to Matzke, Matzke repeatedly misquoted Meyer, at one point claiming he referred to the Cambrian explosion as “instantaneous,” when Meyer nowhere makes that claim."
https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/how_sudden_was_/

There is a link to the "previous response":
https://evolutionnews.org/2013/06/rush_to_judgmen/

There is a lot of stem group talk there, which indicates that you are blindly
relying on Matzke in a bizarre response to my question,

Just what do you mean by "intermediates"?

You never gave anything like a definition, but went into a spiel
about lobopods being "stem-members of different ecdysozoan phyla"
and another comment which I critiqued as follows:

[begin repost]
> Halkieriids and/or tommotiids may (i.e., less certainly) be stem-lophotrochozoans.

IOW, they may be outside the crown group of all lophotrochozoans.
The following analogy comes to mind: the Sparassodonta, a clade which
includes the formidable saber-tooth Thylacosmilus, are stem-marsupials.
But no paleontologist would claim that they shed any light on the
relationship between marsupials and eutherians, or between the
various (crown) marsupial orders.
[end repost]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/OpvUV-GjX0g/m/nPHcf7WKAAAJ

Re: Deep diversity in Lophotrochozoa.

Your lame response to that was:
"They might help, though, if they show what characters are primitive for the clade."

Here, you forgot a fundamental slogan of cladists, formulated decades ago: plesimorphies are
useless for establishing relationships.

And so you completely lost sight of my question,
Just what do you mean by "intermediates"?


Meyer spends something like 20 pages of DD 2nd edition critiquing this use of stem taxa,
beginning on p. 418 where he quotes Matzke as saying:

"Meyer never presents for his readers...the fact that stem taxa are the transitional fossils the creationists are allegedly looking for"

You seemed to be mindlessly aping this with the following statement on the same thread:

"And these are all the animals Steven Meyer and the creationists claim don't exist."


Unfortunately, Meyer's knowledge of paleontology is too narrow for him to give
an example like the one I gave, which would have illuminated the tedious 20 pages.
The same applies to Luskin's briefer treatment.

> > Never mind that Berlinski is far from mindless, you appear to think of yourself as being 'right" and so not condescending or smug, when you call someone who isn't even part of the conversation an "IDiot" - and without any support!
> >
> > The irony, it burns. You.
> Obviously you haven't read the blog post that quote mine of me is
> referring to. Nor have you read the context on Sandwalk, in which it's
> explained how mindless Berlinski's post is, notably on the meaning of
> rotated branches on cladograms. I'm guessing you would not be capable of
> understanding how stupid that post is, even when it was explained to you
> in detail. But who knows?

Glenn isn't big on details, but that's where the devil is. On the other hand, he sees
cherry-pickings easily.

> And maybe Peter would be capable.

There's no "maybe" about it.

> But here's a link:
> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/
>
> The rotational bit is fairly far down the page. If anyone needs an
> explanation of its sheer stupidity, I would be willing to supply one.

I don't know why Berlinski thought that the rotation made a difference
in the sheer stupidity that EITHER diagram showed A to be ancestral to B,
or B to be ancestral to C. It's as idiotic as using cladograms
to deduce that Thylacosmilus is ancestral to any (crown group) marsupial.
[see the analogy above]

And that was Berlinski's point all along: you cannot infer ancestry from cladograms.

> As usual, I ask if you had a point to make and if so what it was.

I have one: you cherry-picked the rotation as a sample of Berlinski's mental caliber.
Clue: there is a reason why "The rotational bit is fairly far down the page."


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

[Peter Nyikos]

<crickets>

> > [1] and Oxyaena, who backed you two for all she was worth, and then some.
> > I think sci.bio.paleontology has become a less inhospitable place
> > since she disappeared late last year. Do you wish she were still posting?
> >
> >
> >> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
> >
> > You keep ignoring the posts he is doing on the thread,
> > Re: Deep diversity in Lophotrochozoa.
> >
> > You even asked about this there, and I replied here:
> > https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/OpvUV-GjX0g/m/7efb6M2gBgAJ
> > [excerpt:]
> >> Have you read anything he's
> >> posted in the past week or two?
> >
> > Yes. He posted on this thread yesterday. Why aren't you showing any awareness that?
> > [end of excerpt]
> >
> > Glenn did a longer post today on the same thread, and I replied. You have shown no awareness of
> > either post, nor of my answer to your question above.
> >
> > Have you been on drugs lately?
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> >
> > PS Hurricane Ian is predicted to be a Tropical Storm when it hits Columbia starting
> > tomorrow morning, with winds gusting up to 60 mph. If electricity or internet
> > is down tomorrow, I might have an enforced 3-day break from posting.

> Unfortunate for many reasons, but an enforced break from posting is not
> among them. Sadly, as your obsession with imagined wrongs the way it is,

"imagined" is grossly dishonest, as a perusal of the text preserved above will show.

It is also a crude form of gaslighting.

According to the Newport Institute, gaslighting is a form of manipulation
where the manipulator attempts to make their victim believe what’s
happening isn’t actually happening, and that therefore their reality is untrue.

The Newport Institute says the origin of the word gaslighting
comes from the 1938 play "Angel Street." Alfred Hitchcock
eventually turned the play into the 1944 film "Gaslight."
The story follows a man convincing his wife she is going crazy
so he can steal from her. When he turns on the lights in the attic
to look for his wife’s jewels, the gas light downstairs starts to dim.
He tells his wife it’s all in her imagination,
gaslighting her into believing the lights were not dimming.

> your absence can only improve the newsgroup.

Only for the likes of you.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

I think it should have been obvious that I wasn't interested.

>>> [1] and Oxyaena, who backed you two for all she was worth, and then some.
>>> I think sci.bio.paleontology has become a less inhospitable place
>>> since she disappeared late last year. Do you wish she were still posting?
>>>
>>>
>>>> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
>>>
>>> You keep ignoring the posts he is doing on the thread,
>>> Re: Deep diversity in Lophotrochozoa.
>>>
>>> You even asked about this there, and I replied here:
>>> https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/OpvUV-GjX0g/m/7efb6M2gBgAJ
>>> [excerpt:]
>>>> Have you read anything he's
>>>> posted in the past week or two?
>>>
>>> Yes. He posted on this thread yesterday. Why aren't you showing any awareness that?
>>> [end of excerpt]
>>>
>>> Glenn did a longer post today on the same thread, and I replied. You have shown no awareness of
>>> either post, nor of my answer to your question above.
>>>
>>> Have you been on drugs lately?
>>>
>>>
>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>
>>> PS Hurricane Ian is predicted to be a Tropical Storm when it hits Columbia starting
>>> tomorrow morning, with winds gusting up to 60 mph. If electricity or internet
>>> is down tomorrow, I might have an enforced 3-day break from posting.
>
>> Unfortunate for many reasons, but an enforced break from posting is not
>> among them. Sadly, as your obsession with imagined wrongs the way it is,
>
> "imagined" is grossly dishonest, as a perusal of the text preserved above will show.

It only shows that to you. I say "imagined", and I mean "imagined".

> It is also a crude form of gaslighting.
>
> According to the Newport Institute, gaslighting is a form of manipulation
> where the manipulator attempts to make their victim believe what’s
> happening isn’t actually happening, and that therefore their reality is untrue.
>
> The Newport Institute says the origin of the word gaslighting
> comes from the 1938 play "Angel Street." Alfred Hitchcock
> eventually turned the play into the 1944 film "Gaslight."
> The story follows a man convincing his wife she is going crazy
> so he can steal from her. When he turns on the lights in the attic
> to look for his wife’s jewels, the gas light downstairs starts to dim.
> He tells his wife it’s all in her imagination,
> gaslighting her into believing the lights were not dimming.
>
>
>> your absence can only improve the newsgroup.
>
> Only for the likes of you.

Just ask yourself whether anything you say above is in any way about
paleontology and, if not, whether you should be saying it.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Imagine if he had more time to post. You should be honored and thankful he
prioritized you given the hazardous weather circumstances.

[Peter Nyikos]

> >>> a ca. 2.5 year era of sci.bio.paleontology where nothing like this happened,

> >>> you are happy that s.b.p. is in its present sorry state.
> >>>
> >>> You made that very clear on another thread.
> >>> Would you like to know how?
> >
> > <crickets>

> I think it should have been obvious that I wasn't interested.

Do you sincerely think it is obvious? When you gaslighted me [see definition below]
with multiple asinine charges of megalomania in talk.origins,
you sang an entirely different tune:

========================== excerpt ===================

> You really have to stop interpreting silence as agreement. It isn't.

This pretense at being able to read my mind may indicate a tendency
towards REAL megalomania.

In a polemically saturated forum like talk.origins, the correct interpretation
of silence in the face of such a provocative statement is almost always,
"[S]he couldn't think of a good comeback." And that's the way I interpreted it
each time you fell silent in the wake of my "translation".
======================== end of excerpt
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/exNELbZoE1k/m/bHyj_wb3CQAJ
Re: Hole In One . . Sep 7, 2022, 10:10:05 AM

> >>> [1] and Oxyaena, who backed you two for all she was worth, and then some.
> >>> I think sci.bio.paleontology has become a less inhospitable place
> >>> since she disappeared late last year. Do you wish she were still posting?

See above about your failure twice now to respond to that last question.

> >>>
> >>>> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
> >>>
> >>> You keep ignoring the posts he is doing on the thread,
> >>> Re: Deep diversity in Lophotrochozoa.
> >>>
> >>> You even asked about this there, and I replied here:
> >>> https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/OpvUV-GjX0g/m/7efb6M2gBgAJ
> >>> [excerpt:]
> >>>> Have you read anything he's
> >>>> posted in the past week or two?
> >>>
> >>> Yes. He posted on this thread yesterday. Why aren't you showing any awareness that?
> >>> [end of excerpt]
> >>>
> >>> Glenn did a longer post today on the same thread, and I replied. You have shown no awareness of
> >>> either post, nor of my answer to your question above.
> >>>
> >>> Have you been on drugs lately?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Peter Nyikos
> >>>
> >>> PS Hurricane Ian is predicted to be a Tropical Storm when it hits Columbia starting
> >>> tomorrow morning, with winds gusting up to 60 mph. If electricity or internet
> >>> is down tomorrow, I might have an enforced 3-day break from posting.
> >
> >> Unfortunate for many reasons, but an enforced break from posting is not
> >> among them. Sadly, as your obsession with imagined wrongs the way it is,

> > "imagined" is grossly dishonest, as a perusal of the text preserved above will show.

> It only shows that to you. I say "imagined", and I mean "imagined".

You are just going into a broken record routine. You could easily have written,
"I don't think any of the things you describe Erik and Oxyaena and me doing were wrong,"
but that would be too straightforward for a devious person like yourself.

> > It is also a crude form of gaslighting.
> >
> > According to the Newport Institute, gaslighting is a form of manipulation
> > where the manipulator attempts to make their victim believe what’s
> > happening isn’t actually happening, and that therefore their reality is untrue.
> >
> > The Newport Institute says the origin of the word gaslighting
> > comes from the 1938 play "Angel Street." Alfred Hitchcock
> > eventually turned the play into the 1944 film "Gaslight."
> > The story follows a man convincing his wife she is going crazy
> > so he can steal from her. When he turns on the lights in the attic
> > to look for his wife’s jewels, the gas light downstairs starts to dim.
> > He tells his wife it’s all in her imagination,
> > gaslighting her into believing the lights were not dimming.
> >
> >
> >> your absence can only improve the newsgroup.
> >
> > Only for the likes of you.

> Just ask yourself whether anything you say above is in any way about
> paleontology and, if not, whether you should be saying it.

You are just showing what a hypocrite you are about on topic posting.

I purposely waited for almost seven (7) hours after posting a solidly on-topic
post on this thread to see what you might say about it. Only then did I compose
the post to which you started replying almost instantaneously. Compare:

My on-topic post: 8:36 AM EDT

My off-topic post: 3:09 PM EDT

Your reply to the latter post: 3:17 PM EDT

And you still haven't replied to the former post. But then, you've been
a hypocrite about on-topic posting for many years, and see nothing
wrong with that, and maybe you are even proud of your hypocrisy.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

It's not really on-topic. It's mostly just invective, and on peripheral
matters at that. But if you insist I'll try it.

[Peter Nyikos]

What do you expect a person so deficient in imagination as John to imagine about that?
Just look at the on-topic post that I did almost 7 hours before John sprang,
"lithe and agile as a tiger" [1] on the next post on this thread, also by me.

I suggest you read that earlier on-topic post [2] and note how he unimaginatively
follows Matzke, to the point of completely losing sight of the question,
`Just what do you mean by "intermediates"? '


[1] Are you old enough to remember the movie "Z"? I'm quoting the English
subtitles, having forgotten the original spoken French.

[2] https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/s4GvNGVaSWg/m/wTDt1Hw0FAAJ
Re: Where's Erik?

> You should be honored and thankful he
> prioritized you given the hazardous weather circumstances.

You'd add weight to this statement if you responded to that on-topic post,
however minimally. Here is one possibility: take a look at Berlinski's
two trees exhibiting "rotation" and pick which of the two

(a) makes B look like a descendant of A to someone who is stupid enough to
think that cladograms show ancestry and

and which of the two

(b) makes A and B look like two descendants from a cladogenesis at their LCA.

The trees can be found fairly far down in the following webpage:

https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

PS If you do the exercise correctly, you will see how, although
Berlinski's rotation looks like madness, there's method in't.

This, too, shows Harshman's deficiency in imagination.
He was merely following the lead of Matzke, who called
Berlinski's rotational example "hilarious" and botched the
real message by talking about "left" vs "right". This happened on the blog,
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html

[John Harshman]

On 9/30/22 5:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 3:50:38 PM UTC-4, John Harshman
> wrote:
>> On 9/29/22 10:03 AM, Glenn wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 6:42:16 PM UTC-7, John
>>> Harshman
wrote:
>
>>>> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
>>>
>>> If you are interested in seeing gains of entries on the subject,
let's start somewhere, How about here?
>>>
>
> I prefer to start here:, same reference as below, where I continue at
> tra:
>
> "It's quite uncontroversial that there are no lagerstätten of
comparable preservation to the Chengjiang known for the Ediacaran or
early Cambrian before the Chengjiang."
> [same reference as Glenn's below]
>
> That was you talking, John. Did you forget about the Newfoundland
lagerstätten with their exquisite
> fossils of rangeomorphs?

Not comparable preservation. Different sorts of things are preserved in
different preservational regimes.

See Butterfield N.J. Secular distribution of Burgess-Shale-type
preservation. Lethaia 1995; 28:1-13.

This is off-topic.

>>> "How can anyone be at once so condescendingly smug and so
>>> mindlessly
wrong? Oh yeah: he's an IDiot."
>>>
>>> https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html
>
> That is pure *argumentum ad hominem*, but it is nothing compared to
the condescendingly smug
> article by Moran, which is one solid mass of *ad hominems* with not
> a
single attempt to refute
> anything the "IDiot" Luskin says in the linked article.

This too is off-topic. But since you mention it, that wasn't an ad
hominem argument. It wasn't an argument at all. It was an opinion based
on reading Berlinski's thing.

> Luskin warmed up nicely with: "As I showed in a previous response to
> Matzke, Matzke repeatedly
misquoted Meyer, at one point claiming he referred to the Cambrian
explosion as “instantaneous,” when Meyer nowhere makes that claim."
> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/how_sudden_was_/
>
> There is a link to the "previous response":
> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/06/rush_to_judgmen/
>
> There is a lot of stem group talk there, which indicates that you
> are
blindly
> relying on Matzke in a bizarre response to my question,
>
> Just what do you mean by "intermediates"?

This has nothing to do with Matzke or Luskin or Berlinski or Moran.

> You never gave anything like a definition, but went into a spiel
> about lobopods being "stem-members of different ecdysozoan phyla" and
> another comment which I critiqued as follows:

Do we really need a definition of "intermediate"? OK, sure: an
intermediate fossil has either a combination of primitive and derived
character states or intermediate character states or some of both. Stem
taxa commonly display such states.

What's your definition of intermediate?

> [begin repost]
>> Halkieriids and/or tommotiids may (i.e., less certainly) be
stem-lophotrochozoans.
>
> IOW, they may be outside the crown group of all lophotrochozoans. The
> following analogy comes to mind: the Sparassodonta, a clade which
> includes the formidable saber-tooth Thylacosmilus, are
> stem-marsupials. But no paleontologist would claim that they shed any
> light on the relationship between marsupials and eutherians, or
> between the various (crown) marsupial orders. [end repost] from
>
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/OpvUV-GjX0g/m/nPHcf7WKAAAJ
> Re: Deep diversity in Lophotrochozoa.
>
> Your lame response to that was: "They might help, though, if they
> show what characters are primitive
for the clade."
>
> Here, you forgot a fundamental slogan of cladists, formulated
> decades
ago: plesimorphies are
> useless for establishing relationships.

But they aren't, exactly. Every plesiomorphy is a synapomorphy of a
larger group and can show that the taxon in question is a member of that
larger group.

> And so you completely lost sight of my question, Just what do you
> mean by "intermediates"?
>
>
> Meyer spends something like 20 pages of DD 2nd edition critiquing
this use of stem taxa,
> beginning on p. 418 where he quotes Matzke as saying:
>
> "Meyer never presents for his readers...the fact that stem taxa are
the transitional fossils the creationists are allegedly looking for"
>
> You seemed to be mindlessly aping this with the following statement
> on
the same thread:
>
> "And these are all the animals Steven Meyer and the creationists
> claim
don't exist."

I haven't seen this second edition, nor does anything I've said here
have anything to do with Matzke. But how does Meyer deal with that
criticism?

> Unfortunately, Meyer's knowledge of paleontology is too narrow for

> himto give an example like the one I gave, which would have

> illuminated the tedious 20 pages.
> The same applies to Luskin's briefer treatment.
>
>
>>> Never mind that Berlinski is far from mindless, you appear to

>>> thinkof yourself as being 'right" and so not condescending or

>>> smug, when you call someone who isn't even part of the
>>> conversation an "IDiot" - and without any support!

>>> The irony, it burns. You.
>> Obviously you haven't read the blog post that quote mine of me is
>> referring to. Nor have you read the context on Sandwalk, in which
>> it's explained how mindless Berlinski's post is, notably on the
>> meaning of rotated branches on cladograms. I'm guessing you would
>> not be capable of understanding how stupid that post is, even when
>> it was explained to you in detail. But who knows?
>
> Glenn isn't big on details, but that's where the devil is. On the
> other hand, he sees cherry-pickings easily.

You mean he does cherry-picking easily, as he just inserted a single
sentence of mine, cherry-picked from a longer discussion and irrelevant
to anything here. And so we're off on a long, irrelevant digression.

>> And maybe Peter would be capable.
>
> There's no "maybe" about it.

You mean you are capable of understanding how stupid that post is?

>> But here's a link:
>> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/
>>
>> The rotational bit is fairly far down the page. If anyone needs an
>> explanation of its sheer stupidity, I would be willing to supply
>> one.
>
> I don't know why Berlinski thought that the rotation made a
> difference in the sheer stupidity that EITHER diagram showed A to be
> ancestral to B, or B to be ancestral to C. It's as idiotic as using
> cladograms to deduce that Thylacosmilus is ancestral to any (crown
> group) marsupial. [see the analogy above]

Now that's a fine example of sea-lioning. You attempt to distract from
Berlinski's clueless claims by pointing at what Berlinski imagined to be
someone else's clueless claims.

> And that was Berlinski's point all along: you cannot infer ancestry
from cladograms.
>
>
>> As usual, I ask if you had a point to make and if so what it was.
>
> I have one: you cherry-picked the rotation as a sample of
> Berlinski's
mental caliber.
> Clue: there is a reason why "The rotational bit is fairly far down
> the
page."

I cherry-picked nothing. That was the subject of the discussion at
Sandwalk. I asked a question about it, I was informed of what was said,
I looked, and yep that's what he said. Now, if you would like to start a
new thread for a discussion of Berlinski's article, feel free.

[Glenn]

Everything you do they blame on you.

"All I was asking for was the reference, which Piotr supplied. When I read it, it was all you implied and more. How can anyone be at once so condescendingly smug and so mindlessly wrong? Oh yeah: he's an IDiot. "

"Berlinski displays all the symptoms. And he's proud of it, too."

"I suspect he understands only as much as he thinks necessary, which is very little. I don't think he's lying, just conveniently deluded."

"Is Casey Luskin a YEC as claimed by Michael Fisher? It's often hard to tell with IDiots."

"Meyer's book has nothing to do with any scientific controversy, just creationist apologetics."

All this from one discussion on
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html

You could easily be the author of this rant. Pomposity indeed!

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2018/04/30/david-berlinski-makes-a-pompous-fool-of-himself-again-about-science-and-evolution/

[erik simpson]

I looked at the Berlinski reference, and noted that DI lauds him (among other things) as a
"raconteur". Just to make sure I knew what that meant, I looked it up. Sure enough, it
means he tells good stories. If that "one man clade" story is a characteristic
example, DI is even more screwed up than I thought.

[Glenn]

You mean if the "story" is an example of your idea of "raconteuring". Yours is not so good a story, Erik.
Berlinski "lauds" himself, as do others, as a raconteur, as well as other characterizations.
But you do an injustice to the word "raconteur", as you do to Berlinski.

https://davidberlinski.org/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 30, 2022 at 4:47:54 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/30/22 5:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 3:50:38 PM UTC-4, John Harshman
> > wrote:
> >> On 9/29/22 10:03 AM, Glenn wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 6:42:16 PM UTC-7, John
> >>> Harshman
> wrote:
> >
> >>>> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
> >>>
> >>> If you are interested in seeing gains of entries on the subject, let's start somewhere, How about here?
> >>>
> >

> > I prefer to start here:, same reference as below, where I continue [later on].

> >
> > "It's quite uncontroversial that there are no lagerstätten of
> comparable preservation to the Chengjiang known for the Ediacaran or
> early Cambrian before the Chengjiang."
> > [same reference as Glenn's below]
> >
> > That was you talking, John. Did you forget about the Newfoundland lagerstätten with their exquisite
> > fossils of rangeomorphs?

> Not comparable preservation. Different sorts of things are preserved in
> different preservational regimes.
>
> See Butterfield N.J. Secular distribution of Burgess-Shale-type
> preservation. Lethaia 1995; 28:1-13.

Does it assert that volcanic ash at Mistaken Point does not preserve as fine detail
as the Burgess shale? Why not?

Both are listed along with the Chengjiang as Konservat-Lagerstätten:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagerst%C3%A4tte


>
> This is off-topic.

For what? certainly not for sci.bio.paleontology.


Is THIS what you think of as "on topic"?

> >>> "How can anyone be at once so condescendingly smug and so
> >>> mindlessly wrong? Oh yeah: he's an IDiot."

Are you man enough to admit that you were indulging in "trash talk" here?

> >>>
> >>> https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html
> >
> > That is pure *argumentum ad hominem*, but it is nothing compared to
> the condescendingly smug
> > article by Moran, which is one solid mass of *ad hominems* with not a single attempt to refute
> > anything the "IDiot" Luskin says in the linked article.

> This too is off-topic.

Why? because you are enamored of an exchange you
had with Matzke that you wildly distorted below?

> But since you mention it, that wasn't an ad
> hominem argument. It wasn't an argument at all. It was an opinion based
> on reading Berlinski's thing.

A wretched opinion it was too.


<snip of things to be dealt with in a separate reply>

> >>> Never mind that Berlinski is far from mindless, you appear to

> >>> think of yourself as being 'right" and so not condescending or

> >>> smug, when you call someone who isn't even part of the
> >>> conversation an "IDiot" - and without any support!
>
> >>> The irony, it burns. You.

> >> Obviously you haven't read the blog post that quote mine of me is

> >> referring to. Nor have you read the context on Sandwalk,in which

> >> it's explained how mindless Berlinski's post is, notably on the
> >> meaning of rotated branches on cladograms.

Why "notably"? you seem to not want to talk about the rest of the "post"
(article) at the end of your post.

But the bottom line is, you are putting a huge spin on what Matzke told you. See below,
where he talks about some simple mistakes students and some
biologists make in interpreting cladograms, and why rotations
can trip some up. Here is another on a slightly higher level.

If you look at the two cladograms Berlinski provides, the second makes it *look* like
there is a synapomorphy involving A and B, while the first makes
it look like there is a synapomorphy between A and a clade
in which B and C are synapomorphic. Perhaps neither is true,
but perhaps one interpretation is true and the other false.

The thing is, cladograms don't distinguish between a case where
two new species are formed, and the more common case
where a new species splits off from an old one while the
old one continues to be in stasis. This is right at the foundation of
Punctuated Equilibrium theory.

This may be why you dislike PE: it spoils the pretty "legal fiction"
of two new taxa coming off at each node.

But back to what Berlinski actually said. He was talking about
direct ancestry, and these were cladograms, not phylograms,
and so the first could really have A being ancestral to B,
if there were 0 apomorphies between A and the LCA of A and B.
But the second cladogram makes such a possibility look remote.

<snip for focus>

> >> But here's a link:
> >> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/
> >>
> >> The rotational bit is fairly far down the page. If anyone needs an
> >> explanation of its sheer stupidity, I would be willing to supply
> >> one.

Please do, in a way that deals with what I wrote this time around.

> > I don't know why Berlinski thought that the rotation made a
> > difference in the sheer stupidity that EITHER diagram showed A to be
> > ancestral to B, or B to be ancestral to C. It's as idiotic as using
> > cladograms to deduce that Thylacosmilus is ancestral to any (crown
> > group) marsupial. [see the analogy above]

> Now that's a fine example of sea-lioning. You attempt to distract from
> Berlinski's clueless claims by pointing at what Berlinski imagined to be
> someone else's clueless claims.

Now there's a fine example of trash talk. There are lots of
ways to misread cladograms, and you are pretending that there is
"someone else" to whom Berlinski was referring when he was obviously
lecturing about one kind of misreading into which plenty of people could fall.

Matzke tried to make it clear to you that there are lots of people who fall into
misreadings of cladograms [see below], but you are ignoring that in order
to score worthless debating points against me and Berlinski.

> > And that was Berlinski's point all along: you cannot infer ancestry from cladograms.
> >
> >
> >> As usual, I ask if you had a point to make and if so what it was.
> >
> > I have one: you cherry-picked the rotation as a sample of
> > Berlinski's mental caliber.
> > Clue: there is a reason why "The rotational bit is fairly far down
> > the page."
> I cherry-picked nothing.

As jillery loves to say, that's a distinction without a difference.

You converted a tidbit that Matzke found "hilarious" into something quite different
with the comment that Glenn quoted from you.

> That was the subject of the discussion at Sandwalk.

How egocentric of you to talk about a tiny fragment of the comments
section, and nothing about Moran's article at all! And to pay so little
attention to what Matzke told you [see below].

> I asked a question about it,

About a comment by Matzke ("NickM") that mystified you,
and you had to ask twice about it. Matzke was
surprised that you weren't familiar with the old rotation business:

"Hi John -- I'm not getting what you're not getting. It is common for e.g. students (and certain sorts of insufficiently educated biologists) to misinterpret cladograms (usually upwards-pointing ones) by giving significance to the left-to-right order of the tips at the top."

Matzke may have been unaware of how little, if any, teaching
experience you have had on that level, but he went on to give you quite a long talk instead
of the misleading description that you are giving here:

> I was informed of what was said,
> I looked, and yep that's what he said.

> Now, if you would like to start a
> new thread for a discussion of Berlinski's article, feel free.

Feel free yourself, if you take your use of "notably" up there seriously.

I'd like for you to address "what he said" about the rotation,
instead of talking all around it.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 10/4/22 7:30 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, September 30, 2022 at 4:47:54 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 9/30/22 5:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 3:50:38 PM UTC-4, John Harshman
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 9/29/22 10:03 AM, Glenn wrote:
>>>>> On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 6:42:16 PM UTC-7, John
>>>>> Harshman
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
>>>>>
>>>>> If you are interested in seeing gains of entries on the subject, let's start somewhere, How about here?
>>>>>
>>>
>>> I prefer to start here:, same reference as below, where I continue [later on].
>>>
>>> "It's quite uncontroversial that there are no lagerstätten of
>> comparable preservation to the Chengjiang known for the Ediacaran or
>> early Cambrian before the Chengjiang."
>>> [same reference as Glenn's below]
>>>
>>> That was you talking, John. Did you forget about the Newfoundland lagerstätten with their exquisite
>>> fossils of rangeomorphs?
>
>> Not comparable preservation. Different sorts of things are preserved in
>> different preservational regimes.
>>
>> See Butterfield N.J. Secular distribution of Burgess-Shale-type
>> preservation. Lethaia 1995; 28:1-13.
>
> Does it assert that volcanic ash at Mistaken Point does not preserve as fine detail
> as the Burgess shale? Why not?

It's not a question of detail. Different preservation types preserve
different things. Burgess-type preservation is really good for taxa with
organic cuticles. Mistaken Point-type preserveration might not be.

> Both are listed along with the Chengjiang as Konservat-Lagerstätten:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagerst%C3%A4tte

You understand that different preservation regimes can preserve
different things, and that even Konservat-Lagerstätten differ in what
they preserve. I hope.

[snipping off-topic stuff]

> If you look at the two cladograms Berlinski provides, the second makes it *look* like
> there is a synapomorphy involving A and B, while the first makes
> it look like there is a synapomorphy between A and a clade
> in which B and C are synapomorphic. Perhaps neither is true,
> but perhaps one interpretation is true and the other false.

Berlinski provides three cladograms, not two, and none of them makes
anything look like what you describe, so it isn't clear what you're
talking about. Nobody does what Berlinski describes, and there is no
implication that the left to right orientation of terminal taxa means
anything.

> The thing is, cladograms don't distinguish between a case where
> two new species are formed, and the more common case
> where a new species splits off from an old one while the
> old one continues to be in stasis. This is right at the foundation of
> Punctuated Equilibrium theory.

You have no evidence that your scenario is more common than otherwise.
If a case were as you describe, it would of course show up on a
phylogram as a zero-length terminal branch. Cladograms of course have
meaningless branch lengths, so you're right that the scenario wouldn't
show up. But what does that have to do with Berlinski's bizarre
understanding?

> This may be why you dislike PE: it spoils the pretty "legal fiction"
> of two new taxa coming off at each node.

Please stop your groundless speculations regarding my motives.

> But back to what Berlinski actually said. He was talking about
> direct ancestry, and these were cladograms, not phylograms,
> and so the first could really have A being ancestral to B,
> if there were 0 apomorphies between A and the LCA of A and B.
> But the second cladogram makes such a possibility look remote.

If you think so, you are as confused as Berlinski. I think now that you
are comparing the second and third cladograms. But to a person who can
actually read them, they convey identical information. One possible
interpretation of any cladogram is that a terminal branch is of zero
length. But since in each cladogram the same branches descend from the
same internal nodes, such an interpretation would lead to the same paths
of ancestry. There is by no stretch of imagination any other than a
meaningless graphic difference between those two trees. I am not seeing
how you could understand otherwise.

> <snip for focus>
>
>>>> But here's a link:
>>>> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/
>>>>
>>>> The rotational bit is fairly far down the page. If anyone needs an
>>>> explanation of its sheer stupidity, I would be willing to supply
>>>> one.
>
> Please do, in a way that deals with what I wrote this time around.

I have, above. Again, the implications you and Berlinski get from
rotating branches are illusions caused by misunderstanding what
cladograms show.

>>> I don't know why Berlinski thought that the rotation made a
>>> difference in the sheer stupidity that EITHER diagram showed A to be
>>> ancestral to B, or B to be ancestral to C. It's as idiotic as using
>>> cladograms to deduce that Thylacosmilus is ancestral to any (crown
>>> group) marsupial. [see the analogy above]
>
>> Now that's a fine example of sea-lioning. You attempt to distract from
>> Berlinski's clueless claims by pointing at what Berlinski imagined to be
>> someone else's clueless claims.
>
> Now there's a fine example of trash talk. There are lots of
> ways to misread cladograms, and you are pretending that there is
> "someone else" to whom Berlinski was referring when he was obviously
> lecturing about one kind of misreading into which plenty of people could fall.

Note that he doesn't present any examples of a real person doing that
misreading. And he implies that evolutionary biologists themselves
misread their trees.

> Matzke tried to make it clear to you that there are lots of people who fall into
> misreadings of cladograms [see below], but you are ignoring that in order
> to score worthless debating points against me and Berlinski.

Lots of people, including Berlinski and, perhaps, you. But not the
people Berlinski was attacking.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, September 30, 2022 at 6:11:43 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Friday, September 30, 2022 at 1:47:54 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
> > On 9/30/22 5:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 3:50:38 PM UTC-4, John Harshman
> > > wrote:
> > >> On 9/29/22 10:03 AM, Glenn wrote:
> > >>> On Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 6:42:16 PM UTC-7, John
> > >>> Harshman
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >>>> Incidentally, have you read any of Glenn's recent production?
> > >>>
> > >>> If you are interested in seeing gains of entries on the subject,
> > let's start somewhere, How about here?

<snip of things I dealt with in my reply to Harshman>

> > >>> "How can anyone be at once so condescendingly smug and so
> > >>> mindlessly
> > wrong? Oh yeah: he's an IDiot."
> > >>>
> > >>> https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html
> > >
> > > That is pure *argumentum ad hominem*, but it is nothing compared to
> > the condescendingly smug
> > > article by Moran, which is one solid mass of *ad hominems* with not
> > > a single attempt to refute
> > > anything the "IDiot" Luskin says in the linked article.

> > This too is off-topic.

The egocentric Harshman ignored what I wrote about Moran, but
that is not obvious from his next two sentences; only from the third.

> > But since you mention it, that wasn't an ad
> > hominem argument. It wasn't an argument at all. It was an opinion based
> > on reading Berlinski's thing.

<snip of things to be dealt with in separate reply to John's post>

> > >
> > >>> Never mind that Berlinski is far from mindless, you appear to
> > >>> thinkof yourself as being 'right" and so not condescending or
> > >>> smug, when you call someone who isn't even part of the
> > >>> conversation an "IDiot" - and without any support!
> >
> > >>> The irony, it burns. You.

<snip of things to be dealt with in separate reply to John's post>

> > >> But here's a link:
> > >> https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade/
> > >>
> > >> The rotational bit is fairly far down the page. If anyone needs an
> > >> explanation of its sheer stupidity, I would be willing to supply
> > >> one.

<snip of things dealt with in my reply to John yesterday evening>

> >> > As usual, I ask if you had a point to make and if so what it was.
> >
> >> I have one: you cherry-picked the rotation as a sample of Berlinski's mental caliber.
> >> Clue: there is a reason why "The rotational bit is fairly far down the page."
> > I cherry-picked nothing. That was the subject of the discussion at Sandwalk.
>

And now we come to your contribution, Erik:

> I looked at the Berlinski reference, and noted that DI lauds him (among other things) as a
> "raconteur". Just to make sure I knew what that meant, I looked it up. Sure enough, it
> means he tells good stories.

Stephen Jay Gould was a great raconteur, as great as they come in biology.

> If that "one man clade" story is a characteristic
> example, DI is even more screwed up than I thought.

You are being led by the nose by Harshman here.
Take a look at the reply to him by Matzke ("NickM") that he
grossly under-represented [1]:

"Hi John -- I'm not getting what you're not getting. It is common for e.g. students (and certain sorts of insufficiently educated biologists) to misinterpret cladograms (usually upwards-pointing ones) by giving significance to the left-to-right order of the tips at the top. This is the origin of myths like "rats are more closely related to humans than mice are", I think.

"It is also common for us evolutionary biologists to correct our students and to make the point that the branches can be rotated about the nodes without effecting the information in the cladogram, which is just the information of grouping relationships and sometimes the order of character state changes, if that is plotted. There are even several articles in education journals pointing this out and making exercises of this activity.

"But, Berlinski goes and does some node rotations and thinks he has a serious point, which I think is hilarious.

"You presumably know all of this already so I'm not sure what you're looking for from me. The Berlinski post is at the DI's Evolution News and Views."
-- https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiot-irony.html
--comments section, Monday, July 22, 2013 1:10:00 PM

[1] The following half-truth is what John said about the above reply by Matzke:

"I was informed of what was said, I looked, and yep that's what he said."

Before you stick to your guns, Erik, take a good look at my reply to John yesterday evening;
it was built in part on Matzke's full reply above, not just the first two sentences that I quoted back then.

Oh, and before you decide Harshman's reply of a few minutes ago lets you off the
hook on what I wrote, note that it can (charitably) be interpreted as stalling for time until he can
look things up. In no way does he attempt to prove that Berlinski was being stupid;
he doesn't quote a blessed thing from Berlinski's article.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

P.S. Note, by the way, how Matzke was suitably impressed by Harshman's
credentials [Ph.D. from a "top ten" university, article in PNAS with 18 co-authors]:
"You presumably know all of this already so I'm not sure what you're looking for from me."

The unrelievedly credentialist *ad hominem* article by Moran was paying
handsome dividends for our own John Harshman.

[erik simpson]

You speak from an ignorance that I have no interest in addressing.

[Peter Nyikos]

You keep exemplifying the expression, "sour grapes".

Here is another example, from yesterday:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/X2eRy1wQf8U/m/cE_mm0l8FQAJ
Re: Were Ichthyosaurs Ovoviviparous, or Viviparous?
Oct 4, 2022, 12:43:13 PM


Peter Nyikos