On the continuing drama of a trainwreck website; a lunatic who became a sacred cow; a pallet of "satires" that would make Swift spin in his grave; a debate challenge that backfired; and why I find all of this hilarious.
Normally, I would use this space to expound further on an idea touched upon in the episode, or to bring up something I missed. Today, however, I'm going to skip that jazz and tell you that Ken DeMeyer is not the only person who thinks "PZ Myers is fat" is a valid argument.
Because I have no intention of adding to this site's value with an inbound link, here's a screen capture. A sample:
But what are we too make of the fact that the man is a tub-of-lard? Is it possible Pig Z Myers eats like a grunting hog to cover up his insecurity, ignorance, and inferiority complex with layers and layers of fat? "Fat not facts", is this really his motto? Is that why this chunky piggy slanders legitimate scientists who make him feel inferior? Well, so what? He's got serious problems so just lay off OK? Piggy Z Myers needs those layers of lard to protect him -- poor little lard belly is sensitive and is likely to begin hooting and grunting in fear, so be careful. He frightens easily. So Stop it, before he goes "oink oink oink" all the way home and gets out his torches and pitchforks. Have pity on this pathetic lard ass. Give the man a cheeseburger and a pizza and shut up.
It goes on like this for close to 800 words.
The site itself is a bit of an oddity. It looks like a squatter site, as it contains nothing but an estimate on the domain name value and the above article. The design is ridiculously sparse - clearly made in a short period of time by someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of HTML. However, doing a Google search for the site name turns up a number of articles that are still on the server, despite not being linked anywhere.
The site blocks spiders, so nothing turns up in the Wayback Machine. However, the Google Cache paints an interesting picture. As recently as the 16th, it was a fully functional website (albeit one that screams "GeoCities circa 1996") and the home of the "Journal of Cosmology." That's a bit odd, given that the site currently alleges that it "is independent of the Journal of Cosmology which has a different publisher and owners." The official Journal of Cosmology site has most of the same content as the Cache of the other site, including the same 90's web aesthetic.
All this leads me to believe that the older site was either a partial mirror for the Journal of Cosmology or (more likely) an older domain that the JoC is no longer using. Fair enough, but why the stab at PZ Myers?
That one's easy - Myers has criticized the JoC before. The JoC was the source of the "bacteria found in a meteorite" article that the media loved so dearly a few months back (I mentioned it in Episode #8). The story started to fall apart once critics began pointed out the many flaws in the paper. The final blow was the revelation that the "Journal of Cosmology" was not actually a scientific journal and the discovery that the "NASA Scientist" wasn't actually a scientist (He was an engineer, for what it's worth).
Not only was Myers one of those critics, he also made jokes at the JoC's expense after it published an article which featured softcore stills and cheesecake photos among its scientific illustrations (NSFW). That article is now gone, though the nudie shots remain on their servers.
To sum up: A site owner with a pair of redundant domain names decides to sell one of them, and uses the opportunity to take one last stab at someone he doesn't like.
Listen to the full archive at Dramatis Interruptus.