October 19, 2007

Time to get creative

Since so many commenters on this blog have a (quite reasonable) fear of getting Watsoned or Summersed down the road if they used their real names, my comments section often consists of a horde of people with the same name ("Anonymous") arguing with each other. It can be as hard to follow as the transcript of a South Korean presidential candidates' debate.

Therefore, may I suggest that each of you Anonymouses choose a nom de plume and more or less stick with it. It's a chance to display some personality and creativity. Think of the possibilities! Here are a few I've come up with:

Planetary Archon
False Messiah
Partly Inbred
Whooping Crane or Whooping Cough?
Coolidge Effect
Evilcon
Great White Defendant
Editor of "Commentary"

I'm sure you can do better!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope never to be Watsoned. It is amazing what contortions people must go through to do so. Worse than Orwell.

Anonymous said...

I pwn this name.

Someone else can be Titus Pullo.

Anonymous said...

I claim this name.

Anonymous said...

I remember a few years ago when he gave another speech outlining his belief that overweight people were happier than thin people and thus more lazy and that he wouldnt hire any of them to work for him. He also shot himself up with melanin and told people that suntans make you horny. But he didnt get fired then. So I was really surprised even when I heard the beginnings of this story ... I was thinking "what's the big deal? He's done this before!" I guess maybe what he said was OK before because he didnt directly imply anything about the intelligence of Africans.

Well, anyway, this makes me depressed but I wont let it bother me.

I hope never to be Watsoned. Honestly, I know it sounds like i'm just saying this, but I would love to end my career on a note like that. Fame is far more important to me than wealth or money or power, even if it's Infamy. Yet here I am hiding behind a screen name on the Internet because I dont want potential employers to know it's me. So maybe I'm just kidding myself.

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear! Please have the courage to be something more than "anonymous".

To you anonymous liberals, you are Modern Orthodox and therefore have absolutely nothing to fear in the real world. Grow some b@lls and at least post with a consistent nom de guerre.

To you anonymous conservatives, you know you will be "watsoned" if your name is known (or even imprisoned if you travel to Europe). So pick a "Sailer name" just for this blog. Since your IP address is not published, there really is no way for the liberals to trace your comments to you and get you fired no matter how much they want to.

Just be very very careful if you communicate via email with the liberals that post here. As ideologues, they really cannot be trusted. Given a real email address, they have the organizational ability to sniff you out. For them it is a moral crusade -- an Inquisition -- to destroy you, always remember that. So if you must communicate with them, use a disposable email address from mailinator.com.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to choose something unassuming like...GALACTUS.

Anonymous said...

From now on I'm Big John Bagshaw.

Anonymous said...

The BBC is publishing lies:

When, some 40 years later, scientists were finally able to read all of the DNA in our cells they were able to show that there was no scientific basis for the concept of race.

And half truths:

People from different racial groups can be more genetically similar than individuals within the same group. Genetic studies show that there is more variability in the gene pool in Africa, than outside.

Again.

eh

Tom Merle said...

Glad you adopted this policy Steve, which Gene Expression put into practice awhile ago. It has the effect, among others, of keeping the hit and run folks at bay. I've had my moniker for some time, stemming from own blogger spaces: http://cultureplaces.blogspot.com http://sfweg.blogspot.com

Epi

Anonymous said...

Just to wonder: say instead of Watson this had been a 40-something tenured professor at a major university - say like CU Boulder. What would be the ramifications?

It's odd because we keep hearing about the need for open debate and how tenure protects "academic freedom" - and that's why it took years to fire guys like Ward Churchill at Boulder and Michael Belleisles at Emory; and that's why (untenured) Nicholas de Genova is still employed at Columbia.

So what this whole fiasco represents isn't just their intolerance of debate - it's their complete, total, sheer, baldfaced hypocrisy.

Anonymous said...

Monster from Polaris: are we related?

Anonymous said...

brevity is the soul of... ooh, doughnuts!

PRCalDude said...

Dumb-dumb,

The only thing the Summerses and Watsonses of the world haven't yet tried is showing some spine: making a statement and then standing behind it unapologetically. If one did, it would set off a cascade of people doing the same.

Anonymous said...

I'll stick with my own name. I don't think I'll ever be important enough to be Watsoned on the world stage. Whatever the case, we young white guys have pretty much been "Watsoned" from birth onwards, so it makes no difference as far as I'm concerned.

I wonder how this kind of empty posturing will play out in 20 years when guys my age, who got Watsoned en masse in grade school, are confronted with it?

Will my generation fold like a deck of cards, too? I kind of doubt it, actually, but we'll see.

Anonymous said...

The humiliation of Watson, not what he said, is a disgrace. But he should have stood by his words. This was another defeat for science and another victory for the irrationalism of PC-fascists. "Equality" is the new religion of former Christians, and more harmful to reason and research.

Anonymous said...

They used to call me tommy. That wasn't my real name anyway.

Anonymous said...

I would like to be "Noose on the Loose."

Anonymous said...

Since you mentioned evilcons...

The artist formerly known as tommy.

Anonymous said...

What, anonymous is not just one person? This explains a lot.

Luke Lea said...

Well, at least we are developing a more effective language to talk about the problem. I like the phrase "Watsoned and Summerized."

Anonymous said...

I think what Watson might have been trying to say in his apology was something like "I was mortified to hear what I had said out of context, when we all know full well, scientifically and otherwise, that the success shown by people of color in Africa and indeed in every counrty in which they have settled, or been settled, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are intellectually fully identical to every other race on this planet." Or something like that.

Anonymous said...

I thought you had the copyright on "Evilcon", Steve.

PRCalDude said...

Well, at least we are developing a more effective language to talk about the problem. I like the phrase "Watsoned and Summerized."
It should integrate handily with another word we'll be using more often in the future due to current demographics: "Nifonged."

Anonymous said...

If Steve has a copyright on "Evilcon" then might I suggest the following B-grade substitutes:

Nastycon
Vilecon
Twistedcon
Bitchycon
Grosscon*
Acerbicon
Causticon
Raunchycon
Ornerycon
Lousycon**
Psychocon
Beastlycon
Grungycon
Yuckycon
Rottencon
Ickycon
Uglycon
Fuglycon
Uncompassionatecon

or

GenghisCon
KublaiCon
ChakaCon

* May be reserved by the new editor of Commentary.
** May be reserved by the current President of the United States.

DissidentMan said...

I find this whole episode very very disturbing and depressing...Just the idea that its considered immoral to have differences of opinions on an empirical question is prima facia evidence that race realists are right. I just read this little gem from doing a google.

From Watson's Words, Newsday.com.
In case you think he just blurted that out but didn't really mean it, here's what he says in his book: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Well, this page doesn't have a Nobel, but we think it's elementary, Dr. Watson: Human talent and intelligence are distributed randomly throughout all human populations. Period.


I guess we have gone back in time to the days when these questions were settled by theologians and religious texts.

In England I hear they've got a commision for "racial equality". Even contemplate the negation of the statement "all races are equal" for a nanosecond and you are breaking the law. We should all turn ourselves in and get it over with.

This is related to the Glileo contraversy in more than one way. One of the reasons the church hated Galileo is the theological implications. The Copernican theory Gallileo was championing, by reducing the cosmic importance of the earth, was thereby reducing the importance of the church. Now we have a bunch of good-for-nothing holy-men types demanding that we all believe yet another stupid theory involving man occupying a special place in the universe (exempt from Darwin's law). When will they stop?

Anonymous said...

How about "Stephen Jay Bad?"

Anonymous said...

I've been hoping to see this post for some time.

Anonymous said...

Just be very very careful if you communicate via email with the liberals that post here. As ideologues, they really cannot be trusted. Given a real email address, they have the organizational ability to sniff you out. For them it is a moral crusade -- an Inquisition -- to destroy you, always remember that. So if you must communicate with them, use a disposable email address from mailinator.com.

I could say the same about conservatives. He's right: I don't care what your politics are, never trust anyone on the Internet.

Anonymous said...

Hell, why limit it to coming up with a fake name when you can have an anonymous blog? You could potentially be more daring than Sailer online and more respected by the chattering classes in meatspace.

Anonymous said...

I am Lugash.

Steve, moving the entire blog to blogspot is a good idea. It's much easier to comment, and more people comment on you stories.

I am Lugash.

Anonymous said...

Just know me as Vanilla Thunder


-Vanilla Thunder

Anonymous said...

Well, you are rather thick, dumb-dumb. Rather thick, racist, umcultured and completely immoral, not unlike our dear Mr. Watson.

Mr. Watson shall never rub the stain of his own ugly words from his reputation, and I fear shall never again move in the polite society that his moral and intellectual superiors exist in.

Between you and I, I quite enjoyed laughing at his ignorance at a party I hosted this evening.

We all laughed, and expect to do the same at his expense again and again.

ta ta

Anonymous said...

I call LDS on LSD.

Anonymous said...

And the Moral of the Watson story is:

Be a distinguished, successful, Nobel Prize winning scientist who discovered something fundamental, like DNA, and you can lose your job for saying something with loads of research to support it.

But call thousands of Americans "little Eichmanns," or publicly wish death upon millions of US soldiers and you get to keep your job at a university that gets hundreds of millions of taxpayer subsidies.

What a great country we live in.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone find it funny that the demonization of James Watson, Nobel Laureate, comes right after that darling of the left, Al Gore, just received a Nobel Peace Prize for his "contributions" fighting global warming?

The left would use Al's and Jimmy's Nobels as unassailable proof of their moral superiority, not to mention they're being right - but they don't give a crap about a Nobel received by a guy for something that's been scientifically validated to be true.

Of course the left doesn't care about their hypocrisy - but it's nice to point it out.

Glaivester said...

People should choose a name that harkens back to an obscure movie they liked. Like for example, taking one of the weapons in a 1983 science fiction/fantasy story and adding "-ster" to it.

Anonymous said...

People should choose a name that harkens back to an obscure movie they liked. Like for example, taking one of the weapons in a 1983 science fiction/fantasy story and adding "-ster" to it. - glaivester

Oh, I always assumed that "glaivester" was the name of some town in England.

So you mean to say you're named after the great and sacred bandsaw of death?

I prefer to name myself after the greatest frickin' scifi show ever made.

Anonymous said...

I am Lugash.

Steve, moving the entire blog to blogspot is a good idea. It's much easier to comment, and more people comment on you stories.

I am Lugash.


I agree, even though I wish he'd move to Wordpress. It has css customization options, better user support, and the ability to create separate pages. Also, Google is turning into the new "Evil Empire" of the computing world.

Seriously, it might be a good idea to back the stuff up, because Google might decide one day to simply Watson this blog and terminate it without warning.

With Wordpress, you use their software, but they don't have to host your blog, so that wouldn't be an issue.

Anonymous said...

I'm usually too lazy to be anonymous, but let's try it.

I really, really enjoy this blog. But I do worry it is turning me into a Nazi.

It's probably better to be sane than to be right.

Still, I'll keep reading.

Anonymous said...

Steve's friend Vladimir summed it up nicely discussing crime by ethnicity in the US:

Vladimir (audibly relieved): "You mean, he's hypocrite?"

Me: "Yeah, exactly. It would hurt his career to write for the public what he thinks in his private life."

Vladimir: "Thank God!"

Me: "Huh?"

Vladimir: "Hypocrite I understand. I grow up in Soviet Union. Lying to save your job, that's life. No, I was very worried smart people in America weren't hypocrites. You know, this country is supposed to be land of free, home of brave. I was scared that smart Americans weren't hypocrites, but instead were hallucinating. I am very happy to hear they're just hypocrites. Hypocrisy much less scary than mass hallucination."

Anonymous said...

k. dick, Steve is rather small potatoes when it comes to nazification. James Burnham and his succesors are better representatives of the dark-side of the right, though Keith Preston brings a similar message from the far-left.

Anonymous said...

"I find this whole episode very very disturbing and depressing...Just the idea that its considered immoral to have differences of opinions on an empirical question is prima facia evidence that race realists are right."

I totally agree. It's so depressing that people can see the the problem with the Church persecuting heretics, but can't see that this is essentially the same thing.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree. It's so depressing that people can see the the problem with the Church persecuting heretics, but can't see that this is essentially the same thing.

Well the comparison to Galileo is obvious and useful.

But as I've said above, it's also useful to compare the treatment Watson has received to the treatment given that Columbia U. professor who publicly wished for the death of millions of American soldiers. Watson, a first-rate scientist, has been suspended from his job in the US and threatened with criminal prosecution in Britain - just for offending some group of people. De Genova received no punishment at all and is still employed at Columbia - after calling for the murder of millions of Americans.

I think the Watson/De Genova is far better for revealing the motives of the left.