One of the funniest things about this, which no one seems to be talking about, is that Deignan is still using the 14-year-old girl blog design.
Chris Burden isn't dead, yo. I saw a sculpture of his from his post-getting shot period and was surprised at how effective it was. But I should defer to Armsmasher on this issue.
But hasn't Deignan now actually succeeded in what he set out to do? If this was all about revenging himself against Hettle, which surely it must have been, then he's won. Hettle has now been exposed in Inside Higher Ed. as one of the biggest assholes in the world. That would not have happened if Deignan hadn't turned this teapot into a tempest. Sure, Deignan may have taken himself down too. But if you believe, as I do, that revenge is worth any personal sacrifice, then Deignan emerges as the big winner. He is The Underground Man of the internet age.
But what effect can such exposure have on Hettle? He has tenure. Isn't he allowed to be an ass? Jeebus. I feel worse and worse for Deignan. The whole thing makes you realize how strange and painful life must be if you are total social maladjust. God willing, everyone will forget about this is a few years (though I doubt it). But he must make large-scale social mistakes all the time, and he must find the world a really hostile place.
He's the Seth Roberts of info theory. Maybe he needs to try some self-experiments in sensory deprivation. Though that will leave FL without any blogging material. Back to open threads.
Last year Chris Burden (and his wife) resigned from UCLA in a flap over a student who fired a gun in a classroom, apparently in an homage to Burden. Shockingly UCLA didn't scold the student, leading Burden to resign in protest. His complaint was that the student did not seek oversight for the project and caused undue stress on the students who were unaware that they were participating in an performance piece. Also, that it's crazy to have guns fired in classrooms and administrators not swarm the art building.
So that does kind of track the P. Diddy/Dr. B fiasco.
P. Diddy
OK, now I'm envisioning the info theory guy firing a gun into the air after Hettle tosses money at him to make fun of him for selling out, and bphd is the one the bullet comes down on....
And now I'm envisioning PD at the club before the shooting. Specifically, to the tune of 50 Cent's "In the Club."
I believe Paul's blog response to the Inside Higher Ed article may be in violation of copyright.
He's cut and pasted the entire article.
He quotes an awful lot of it -- maybe the whole thing? I haven't checked. But it's the kind of copyright violation (assuming he is over the 'fair use' line) that's a dime a dozen on the Internet; I can't see it leading to interesting consequences.
I agree, LizardBreath. But as long as we're all looking for ways to file frivilous lawsuits ...
A friend of mine saw a band recently that played and gestured as though they were ROCK GODS but were wearing ordinary-guy clothes and haircuts, which made for teh funny. I'm finding that imagining Paul Deignan as a gangsta to be enjoyable in the same way-- sort of like the Herbert Kornfeld thang.
I keep tha IP hangin out my backsidebut only on the left side
yeah 'cause that's the Crip side
ME in tha house.
Yeah, no one will sue for 0.83¢ of damages.
He's a hell of a writer, isn't he? I've been reading his site, and for half his posts I can't figure out what he's trying to say, beyond the general atmospherics.
He manages to get his righteous indignation across pretty clearly.
But something like this:
Also, it is very interesting how this issue is resonating with people according to the way they process information. If you are a feeler, you may focus on this nonsense of "outing" as a threat. The requirements of the law however, are not so empathetic. The thinker knows that A->B->C. We condition the information in characteristic methods and have divided ourselves up into groups (political affiliations) in accordance. So, as a moderately empatheic person, while the defendants have caused me great defamation and seemed determined to add insult to injury, I have not released the name of the defendant. This allows her the opportunity to save what she can of the reputation that she seems unwilling to respect in my case. As for Wally, I tried.
The 'So', halfway through the paragraph, would indicate to a conventional reader that the first few sentences support the rest of the paragraph. This does not appear to be what's going on.
And "condition the information in characteristic methods"?
This is one of my favorites:
"Judging by the complaints, whines, name calling, etc. of the people whose refusal to think or to rationally debate speaks for itself."
My earlier comment was slightly misworded; I intended to bemusedly agree with your "general atmospherics" remark.
18, that sentence is bizarre. He means, roughly, So, because I am a, I did A, despite the fact that defendants did B to me. But his syntax is so weird that reading that sentence is a bit like working through a sentence in a foreign language.
"Sometimes experiments have unintended consequences, but this is how penicillin was discovered."
Meaning that despite potential unintended consequences, one should keep up one's experiments. Dude has a problem with conjunctions.
The thinker knows that A->B->C.
Oh, Gawd, I smell Rand somewhere. At what point do we disinter her bones and throw them out of the country for the harm she has caused? Or at least build out her grave site so that it acts as a massive public urinal?
...I think that also justifies the invasion of Iraq.
the sentence quoted in #23, that is...
The defendants seem to look at the web as places to hang out and be reaffirmed to the exclusion of much else. That is a common downside in indulging in too much feeling. ... I seek out smart interlocutors with divergent opinions because this is the most efficient technique for thinkers to learn. Sometimes experiments have unintended consequences, but this is how penicillin was discovered.
So, thanks defendants. I learned a lot. Now I will share the benefit of my education with you as well as the rest of the world. Care to make penicillin? Please e-mail me directly that we might come to terms. It would be a shame for us academics to waste this golden opportunity for professional development.
Oh dear, oh dear. I was on the verge of thinking it was all an elaborate troll on his part, but now I'm inclined again to SomCallMeTim's view. He's both convinced that he's a wholly rational thinker and wholly incapable of listening to people who rationally disagree with his "analysis" of things. He has no libel case. He is acting in a threatening manner. He is damaging his own professional reputation. His thinker/feeler + information theoretic analysis of politics stuff is just astonishingly, embarrassingly bad. And yet anyone trying to point any of this out to him is immediately classed as a "feeling-type," whereas "the thinker knows that A->B->C."
A real find.
Obviously that second paragraph in #27 should be italicized as well. I couldn't write in that kind of style if I tried.
Although I am feeling inspired to go home and whip myself up some home-brew antibiotics.
I don't know, Argle. The quote in 27 sounds like Diddy's way of backing down, maybe even reconciling. I know that when I'm fighting with my girlfriend and I hear, "Care to make penicillin?", I forget why we even started in the first place.
Hey LB, don't be a stranger. . . .
Shorter quoted in 18: I can't figure out who BPhD is, so I'm backing out of the lawsuit.
OT: Hil/lde Redeemed: MY is pwn3d by Al (yes, Al)!
I know that when I'm fighting with my girlfriend and I hear, "Care to make penicillin?", I forget why we even started in the first place
Are you sure she isn't actually saying "Care to take penicillin?"
19,
"condition the information in characteristic methods"
Possibly he's referring in a non-standard way to "preconditioning," a technique from numerical mathematics with which I have no doubt he's familiar with.
It's a way to accelerate convergence to solutions of systems of linear equations.
And we all know that nothing says romance like sitting around, intently watching a piece of bread for those first signs of mold.
Dammit, if you start calling him P-diddy, a totally appropriate thing to do, then I'm going to have to come up with another totally random psuedonymous handle! Damn you Fontana!!! [/jon stewart] I already dropped the P to be closer to my fans... now I have to drop the diddy too?
33: I was on that story a month ago. In fact it's a pattern.
But then again, maybe he's talking about something else, from economics.
Also, Deignan may have won the fight he ended up fighting, but he didn't win the fight he wanted to fight (ie to out BPhD). It's a very Bushian declaration of victory, another conquest in the war on straw.
I wouldn't call outing Hettle as a jerk much of a victory. Hettle's tenured, and is, I should expect, a self-evident jerk.
Having looked over Deignan's research sections briefly, it seems that by 'conditioning the data' all he means is something like 'liberals weight certain information more heavily than conservatives do when making decisions.'
Well, duh.
This of course doesn't point to any considerations about rationality; people can weight various norms more heavily and still be considered rational actors.
It seems his thesis is either trivially true or demonstrably false and dependent on a lot of equivocation around 'rationality.'
Also, he needs an editor.
"conditioning" might be meant in the bayesian sense (conditioning new data on existing knowledge, etc).
but we mustn't lose sight of the fact that he is a nutter.
It's not so much the use of the word 'condition', which could mean all sorts of things, it's the grammar of the sentence as a whole. "In characteristic methods" doesn't work, does it?
He still hasn't explained, by the way, how he is determining whether commenters are liberal or conservative.
Can we get a post about France or something meaningful to talk about?
"Characteristic methods" is a technical term referring to a set of techniques in applied mathematics and numerical analysis.
The defendants seem to look at the web as places to hang out and be reaffirmed to the exclusion of much else. That is a common downside in indulging in too much feeling.
Okay, now I think I get it. Let's cut through all of the academic pretension and just get down to the gooey, internety core. Spock or Kirk: who is teh more awesome?
Spock. Kirk relied on his emotions, and was therefore an evil liberal.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that Kirk would have been a proponent of strong reproductive rights.
46: Yeah, this is turning into the P. Diddy discussion blog.
Then again, maybe I'm just bored because being in law school, I encounter toolishness like this on a near-daily basis.
But the guy's glasses are truly awesome.
48: Don't most conservatives believe in a principle that might be expressed "if it's your blog, you get to do what you want with it"?
Or that has it as a special case--property rights and all.
Deignan posted the text of Hettle's email to D's advisors:
Yesterday and last night Paul Deignan spent in "trolling" a feminist academic web site with disruptive and abusive comments.
This is a highly visible liberal site. He was banned, but used his computer expertise to defeat the ban and taunt the host of the site.
This kind of behavior is not unheard of on the net. But Mr. Deignan chose to do this action from a homepage that claims you as a dissertation adviser.
Mr. Deignan has a right to free speech. He shouldn't disrupt the discussions of others--it is highly unprofessional. And it is linked to your name.
Might you please advise him to exercise a little discretion in the future. As matters stand, Mr. Deignan appears to be doing a bit more politicking than mechanical engineering.
Thank you,
Wallace Hettle
If accurate, that settles the "Is Hettle a dick, or was he responding to threatening emails" question on the side of 'dick'. Nothing in there approaches libel, of course, but Hettle sure is a dick.
Wow. A dick indeed. However, not libel; seems neither to be damning nor false.
53: There's a ghost in you machine, somwhere. There's no such thing as a conservative principle (or principled conservative, for that matter).
I'm pretty sure we'll all have forgotten this in a few months, never mind years. But Google won't. Happy future job interviews, Mr. Deignan!