#171 Conserapedia, A Place for All of Your Dumbest Ideas

There is a new place for morons to look for "information." It's called Conservapedia. You'll find brilliant bits of nutty misinformation such as this description of "kangaroo": "Also according to creation science theories, after the Flood, kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land^[2] -- as Australia was still for a time connected to Europe by a land bridge similar to the one that connected Asia to America^[3] -- or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.^[2] Another theory is that God simply generated kangaroos into existence there."

Is that freakin' hilarious, or what? You'd think this was a National Lampoon joke, but conservatives aren't bright enough to have a sense of humor. It's not a joke, it's too stupid to be really funny. In case the site was in some way consistently wacky, I did a search on "monkey," "zebra," hippopotamus," and "panda," but found that conservatives have no opinion or information on those animals. Their entry on "gorilla" is predictably hilarious, though.

There's more. Here's the mission statement for the site, "Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we give full credit to Christianity and America. Conservapedia is student-friendly. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise, clean answers free of 'political correctness'." The incorrect use of punctuation is directly lifted from the geniuses at Conservapedia.

"Concise" it is. Some entries are so brainless that you'd think they were written by simpleminded children. This is the place where geniuses like Rush (da Doper) Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Willy O'Reilly go for reference material. Of course, no one is more politically correct than conservatives. With their thin skins, tiny minds, terror of everything complicated or real, and superstitions,

There is an upside to all of this, though. I was exposed to Conservapedia through a particularly stupid NPR interview with the doofus who funded the site. As you might expect, he's an idiot. However, he chanted some statistics that give me hope. The reason, he claims, for starting Conservapedia is that he claims Wikipedia's editors are 80% "liberal." Based on the nutty description of the kangaroo, we can all guess what his parameters for liberal might be: scientific, intelligent, sane, educated, and so on? 

The Conservapedia wacko said that the nation needed a conservative information resource because studies show that "two out of three Americans are conservative." Tending toward pessimism, I would have figured that nine out of ten of everyone is an idiot, so two out of three is substantially less depressing than my estimate. Public education must be doing some good if the country is 24% smarter than I expected.

Be honest and you'll know that conservatives don't want information, they want their pet fantasies repeated as often as possible. Conservatives don't have "theories" (as in "creation science" theories or God theories), they have dogma. They look at the world, see swirling shapes and colors, and interpret all that confusion in simple,  fantastic stories, in the same way their ancestors explained the earth, the stars, and space in terms of magic, irate and jealous gods, and sentient inanimate objects. Humans have been religious as long as we have had the ability to think about death, the past, the present, and the future. There must have been a million religions on earth by now and they've all been based on fear and ignorance. Until the next comet strikes the earth, wiping humanity from existence, I expect that we'll continue inventing gods and such. As long as there is a market for stupid ideas, there will be people to sell them. And Conservapedia will be there to document whatever insane meanderings that issue forth from those stupid ideas.

As a parting note, I thought I'd leave you with a few word definitions. Words are important. Their meanings are often lost in propaganda and political gibberish, but the actual meaning of words are more permanent.

Webster's Definitions:

Superstitious: 1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition 2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

Religion: 1 a: the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

Insanity: 1: a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia) 2: such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility

Science: 1: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding 2 a: a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology> b: something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge <have it down to a science> 3 a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science 4: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws <cooking is both a science and an art>

All study comes with homework. A word that gets drug through the mud an awful lot is "theory." On your own, I'd like for each person who reads this column to look up the word "theory" this week.

March  2007