Updates made to The Millenium Project in August 2000

The Millenium Project gets recognition … (1/8/2000)
I just had to share this with you. The Millenium Project has been included in the Top Ten of Hate. Twice! The notification of these honours appears below. Of, course I would be even more excited if I had been told about the awards by someone who was less gutless, less anonymous, and less of a liar. So, come on GAL, give us the links.

Subject: You have made the Top Ten List
From: Anonymous <anonymous@anonymizer.com>
Date sent: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 11:06 -0700

Congrats:

You made it into the Top Ten List of 2, count 'em, 2 Hate Watch sites.

And by the way, one of your compadres was just charged, and soon to be convicted (we're sure)of a HATE CRIME.

Ta Ta.......Mr. Peter K.K.K. Bowditch?

It's been a busy week … (5/8/2000)
On 4th July, the Gutless Anonymous Liar said, in an email to me: "14 days and counting......". Well, more than fourteen days have now passed and I am still here, this site (with its four clones) is still here, and nothing has happened. However, by remarkable coincidence and after a hiatus and detumescence of a few weeks, both Mr William O'Neill and the Gutless Anonymous Liar wrote to me on the same day. I was really pleased to hear that The Millenium Project has been included in the Top Ten of Hate. Twice! (See the CCRG Correspondence File and The GAL Chronicles for the latest updates.)

A contest (5/8/2000)
Win free tickets to the World Skeptics' Convention – see the Mailbox page for details

However … (5/8/2000)
Mr William O'Neill is not eligible for the free ticket to the Skeptics' Convention, because he has had too much practice. See the CCRG Correspondence File for an explanation.

Missing links (5/8/2000)
With 1000 links on this site and the changeable nature of the web, it is almost inevitable that there will be some broken links here somewhere. I thought I would explain what I do to minimise the problem so that you don't think I'm a slacker. The links are checked every two weeks to identify broken links. The problems fall into two areas – pages which no longer exist and sites which cannot be reached. For a missing page, I have a look to see if the author has just renamed it or moved it. If I can't find it, it is removed from the list here immediately. Unreachable sites are more of a problem because there are a number of possible explanations – site getting updated, moving to another ISP, nuked because an ISP doesn't like it, forgot to pay for hosting or domain registration, etc. It seems that there are about 30 of these at any time and I give them three chances. If they remain unreachable after about six weeks they get dropped. Some sites come and go on a regular basis as they offend one ISP after another, but they stay in the list if they keep reappearing.

Site updates (past and future) (11/8/2000)
Because only one person has ever submitted a serious (and polite) objection to being listed here, I have taken away the page specifically about objections and replaced it with one which includes that topic together with some other site administration matters. Over the next few weeks I will be explaining what the various site categories mean and I will be going through the "Liars" category and either removing listings or adding a commentary to say why each site is in there. The "Liars" page has a brief explanation now of why things get listed there.

World Skeptics Convention (11/8/2000)
The Australian Skeptics will be hosting an international convention in Sydney on 10-12 November, 2000. Each of the three days will be devoted to a specific topic. Friday will look at financial scams and ways of separating people from money. Saturday will be about critical thinking and how important that is to knowing what goes on in the world, and Sunday will consider health fraud and quackery. The convention dinner on the Saturday night will be on a boat cruising around the best harbour in the world. I'll be there. You should be there too.

Don't forget the contests (11/8/2000)
You can win a free ticket to the World Skeptics Convention for writing an original piece of hate mail or you can be nominated for a Nobel prize for curing cancer. See the Mailbox page and the Cancer 100 Challenge for details

Or the book shop … (11/8/2000)
Sometimes I get surprised by something. Amazon have told me that more people click on books from my not-recommended list than they do on the books I WANT you to buy. Nobody has actually bought a Hulda Clark book yet so my conscience is still untroubled, but I am sure that the time will come when I learn the reality of what my psychology lecturers called "cognitive dissonance". You can see the full list of both recommended and not recommended books at the Bookshop page.

Harassment update (11/8/2000)
It's been a quiet week and the only activity has been a postcard from Mr O'Neill. One of the forms of harassment has been to suggest that this site is being closed down. Every time this happens now, I create another copy of the site somewhere and register it with the major search engines. I won't say where these mirror sites are, but each one increases the probability that people will come across whatever it is that the critics don't want them to see. If you have found this site at anywhere other than www.ratbags.com, you can click on the link to get to the real thing. (See the CCRG Correspondence File and The GAL Chronicles for some background.)

Strange happenings (17/8/2000)
A site called "Java for Jesus" has a link to The Millenium Project which says "this man and his site need to be redeemed -- please help this man". I thank them for their concern. In another strange happening, someone known only as "mosc" wrote to me with what appeared to be the first part of a commentary on what is right and wrong with the Bible. I assume there is much more to come. In a odd twist, mosc's web site at www.hollyland.com is now unreachable, so I can no longer read about how Hitler conspired with the Jews to establish the state of Israel.

Harassment update (17/8/2000)
Showing a fine grasp of reality, the Gutless Anonymous Liar told me to give up smoking and miscounted my children. Perhaps it knew me back in 1975. For an additional dose of fun, it (or a close approximation) even pretended to be me and issued a statement on my behalf. The foolishness builds at The GAL Chronicles. In a totally-unrelated incident, some fool rang my ISP and said that they were a client of mine and I had told them to change ISPs because this one was going broke. What the idiot hadn't figured out was that he had to be their client as well as mine for the story to be true. He wasn't, and we all had a good laugh.

What's in the mail? (25/8/2000)
I have received a couple of challenging emails in the last few days. Frank Jones sent me a message with the subject "Boy" containing only the single word "Idiot". I don't know whether this was referring to me, was a comment on one of the sites listed here, or was Frank's email signature. A mystery. Oleg Volk thanked me for including his site in the "Baffoonery" (sic) category and said: "The honor you do me is very amusing". Thank you for your thank you, Oleg, but just which site is yours? Rob Kall wants me to define quackery before I say I don't like it. I will write an essay on this over the next week or so and post it as a commentary. I should have a bit of free time now that the Gutless Anonymous Liar has had his crayon taken away (see the Harassment update below for details). Also, I received two postcards. I have no idea who sent them to me, but you can see them here.

Harassment update (25/8/2000)
The Gutless Anonymous Liar really produced a whopper this week. It told me that search engine operators had agreed to delist The Millenium Project. When I asked it for proof of this ridiculous statement it was unable to provide it. Of course. It also claimed to have made a web site about me, full of rude words and silliness. I want to put a link to it from here but it won't tell me where it is, which probably means that it doesn't exist. To punish its lying, I have told my email program to delete its finger-paintings unread for the next week.

Saying that the search engines are going to deregister this site is the same as saying the site is closing down, so I have created another mirror of the site to add to the four which existed before.

Subject: News
From: Anonymous <anonymous@anonymizer.com>
Date sent: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 12:50 -0700

I noted many of your fans have pseudo-ized your name, so in keeping with this ever so enchanting fad, we shall engage.

Hey Mr. Fucked-In-The-Head-Ditch:

We've reached agreement with many search engine proponents to de-spider your site. What this means, you fucking asshole, is that your site(s) will only be available by direct address (this includes that aptly named icon of commerce of your gebesse...)

Future submissions by you or to your sites will be rejected. We're sure you'll want to register new domain names, so we'll just keep monitoring and advising.....

Hey peter!!!!......fuck off....

Convention reminder (25/8/2000)
Put a note in your diary now to remind yourself to come to the World Skeptics Convention to be held in Sydney, Australia, from 10 to 12 November. More relaxing than a reiki bath, more nourishing than a bacon and treacle diet, more rewarding than a hog-bristle MLM, more fun than a champagne ear cleanse. Be there!