Pharyngula::Pissant of the Week

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Monday, November 07, 2005

Pissant of the Week

PZ Myers • 132 Comments (last page)

This little pimple rather pompously trolled Bitch Ph.D., and one commenter ("Wally") sent an email to his advisors, and Dr B chopped out some of his comments and banned him. His response? He's trying to puzzle out Dr B's identity so he can reveal it and use it in his lawsuit against Wally.

That's right. Lawsuit. Over blogging.

The story is pretty damned stupid already, and Mr Deignan is looking like a whiny little wanker with an elevated sense of entitlement, but what really blows the story into a major league example of assholishness and hypocrisy are his dimbulb rationalizations for doing this:

1. To make an example out of miscreants. The internet should be a place where free speech is respected.

Whaaa…? Who is trying to silence his critics with a nuisance lawsuit and an attempt to intimidate by exposing a pseudonym here? He is no friend of free speech, obviously.

2. Because, I am a nice guy. I am allowing Wally one more opportunity to save himself and his friend a lot of grief. Ever been sued Wally? It goes on forever and it is no fun at all (except for me). And I'm going to enjoy spending a lot of money in attorney fees because I like lawyers.

He's also trying to extort Wally by threatening to sue Dr B:

Remember, if I sue you, I sue your friend. It's a twofer.

Nice guy, huh? I think a declaration that he enjoys harrassing people with lawsuits, and is also willing to lash out at people's friends to get them to obey his demands, pretty much closes the book on that claim. Oh, and one more example of Deignan's hypocrisy:

Apparently, this professor has nothing better to do with his time than to go on a witch hunt (and not a very smart one at that).

That's in the middle of a long post with sitemeter screenshots and obsessive nitpicking over comments…by Deignan. I guess Ph.D. candidates in Indiana have even more free time.

You know, for such a self-declared smart guy, you might think he'd realize that this kind of outrageous excess is going to attract links to his behavior, and Google is going to remember who Paul Deignan is. What's going to hurt his reputation isn't an email to an advisor or an edited comment on a weblog…it's his own ugly, petty response.

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/3323/LvRj0VSD/

Comments:

#47586: — 11/07 at 11:42 PM
Well, because his website is declaring that he's the freaking vanguard of "The Application of Information Theory to the Political and Social Problems of our Day", you just know this turdburger has got a future with the Discovery Institute.

I'd just like one day to go by without one of these junk scientists popping up from beneath the floorboards.

#47587: Matt Dunn — 11/07 at 11:42 PM
Hey now, not all PhD. candidates in Indiana have so much free time...or at least not more than's required to read Pharyngula now and again.

#47592: Lauren — 11/07 at 11:56 PM
Don't go bashing all of us Purdue people, now. What is this, some kind of LEFTIST CONSPIRACY?

#47594: PZ Myers — 11/08 at 12:05 AM
Oh, no. I'm sure they're all raging liberals at Purdue, so we've got no beef with them.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#47595: Lauren — 11/08 at 12:11 AM
Okay, don't go that far. I'm a veritable black sheep on this campus.

#47596: — 11/08 at 12:20 AM
Well, since his idea of a fun evening is, evidently, sitting around watching his hit counter, I'm sure he'll soon realize that you've linked to him.

Then he'll sue you for calling him a pimple.

#47600: coturnix — 11/08 at 12:30 AM
Guy is a nut. He should be sued for cyber-stalking...and for stupidity.

#47602: Kip Manley — 11/08 at 12:45 AM
Dost thou not suspect my place? dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an officer,
and, which is more, a householder, and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him. Bring him away. O that I had been writ down an ass!

#47603: — 11/08 at 12:52 AM
Someone said something bad about me on the internets. I know i'll sit around all night and stare at my site meter. Then everyone will fear me. I thougth my glasses would ward them off. But i was wrong. But the knowledge that i might identify them. DuNuNuNuh... And then tell people about it. DuNuNuNuuuuuHHHHHH!!! And threaten a lawsuit. DUNUNUNINAH!!!!!
Then people will stip kicking sand on me at the beach.

#47604: — 11/08 at 12:55 AM
Honestly, if he were in my math department, and someone showed any professer in the department this little gem:

http://info-theory.blogspot.com/2005/11/agents-of-chaos.html

Our friend would find himself an instant pariah. I'm not sure how they do things out there, but in the CU system we like to approach things with a certain degree of rigor. That pretty much precludes making bizzare associations between the mandelbrot set and political affiliations.

It's funny, one of my friends managed to get me talking about the time complexity of various methods for computing matrix determinants after I'd downed a third of a litre of vodka -- and then he got it all on his tape recorder. The sad part is that I made more sense then than this guy does now.

#47605: Scot Lemieux — 11/08 at 01:01 AM
Also note his following comment about Prof. B in the comments:

"BTW, reading the blog in question was a troubling experience. I really feel badly for that child. It was like swimming in a sewer. How can a woman put her son through that?"

Yeah, that's about the level of discourse you'd expect from a guy bidding to become the poor man's Don Luskin...

#47606: — 11/08 at 01:07 AM
Funny, I was thinking he's some kind of bastardized cross between Jack Thompson and William Dembski.

But, I fear that I have already expended too much energy on the accord of this wingnut. I shall say no more. It's time for some imported Ukranian pepper vodka, and then bed.

(Yeah, nightcapping is antisocial, but god-damn if Ukranian pepper vodka isn't the best stuff on earth)

#47607: coturnix — 11/08 at 01:33 AM
His head will fall of in the morning when he checks his sitemeter and sees something like a thousand hits from Pharyngula. Several other Lefties have already linked to him (googlebombed is a better term) and more should do so. A Google search for "moron" should bring up his pitiful blog up to #1 position. Let's make it easy for everyone to find his idiocy on websearches.

#47608: — 11/08 at 01:33 AM
I'm sure bitchPhd is a better judge of who to ban than I am -- I thought the exchange was pretty damn pedestrian, frankly. But to take a banning to the level the level of suing bitch, and for having someone email his adviser? If he's not willing to be scrutinized, then he shouldn't be online. Or, better still, he should go anonymously instead of playing "find the sausage" like Jeff Gannon did.

#47610: — 11/08 at 01:49 AM
it's funny how often the legal system seems to be designed to let the obsessive-compulsives try to work out their issues over trivial matters.

while I agree that the Deignan character is a pompous ass, I was also offended by the professor on Dr. B's site who thought it was appropriate to contact his advisors about his comments on her site. First, she was doing this while protected by her own anonymity, so it's a bit cowardly. Second, it's hard to imagine a situation where a student's advisors should be told anything about someone's postings in any context, short of his confessing to actual crimes.

He was an asshole, and she tried to make him pay a price for it. Probably surprising to her, now he's willing to go the full distance, and make himself a internationally-renowned asshole. Her best hope is that his advisors tell him to knock it off with the rarefied, pseudo-math bullshit where he tries to tie chaos theory to "the thinking conservative v. the feeling socialist" and get back to work.

to quote bugs, what a maroon.

t

#47611: — 11/08 at 02:01 AM
I agree with tlw. This Hettle person sounds a bit of an officious ass. A plague on both their houses.

#47613: coturnix — 11/08 at 02:09 AM
What does Hettle's behavior have to do with Bitch PhD? Why is this moron refering to her as "Wally's friend" and suing HER? He needs to get laid, methinks, but he cannot because he has 'issues' with women, and that's why he's a wingnut in the first place.

#47614: — 11/08 at 02:14 AM
I managed to read all three paragraphs of the Mandlebrot post (see Dustin's comment above) and in those lines was his real reason for the lawsuit!

So I propose to use the vehicle of the libel lawsuit against Wally and his friend as a means of discovery and exposition of larger political and sociological themes....

But wait! In a comment on his own blog, he writes,
http://tinyurl.com/b6ou2

Come January, I will need to support a family with a real wage. If I do not get the jobs that I have applied for, the results may be catastrophic to our financial well-being.

Suing Wally is the best investment I can make at this point. It is that critical. My hand is forced and he has every reason to know it. Every day that goes by converts to potentially tens of thousands of dollars in lost wages and opportunities.

Egads. So on one hand, he intends to spend his (apparently copious) time to expose large themes! Aren't we all so lucky. And yet on the other hand he's fretting over "tens of thousands" of dollars.

Maybe he wouldn't have to worry about playing the family patriarch if, rather than using a court of law as an heuristic, he'd do us all a favor and disappear back into the lab and get some actual research done instead.

#47615: — 11/08 at 02:24 AM
This situation is ridiculous from every angle.

I've looked at all the sites, and while I can safely say this guys a complete moron- his libel case is liable (ha!) to get him laughed out of court, assuming of course his lawyer doesnt mock him into submission first- I have to say bitch, PhD and more aptly, Wally, could have played this one better.

I mean, the guy trolled a blog- and a rather mild troll at that. Banning sure. Post deletion, ok. But he had a professor email his phd advisors? Thats just plain cold...

Of course, if you read his blog, you'll see a classic case of over-reaction.

#47616: — 11/08 at 02:31 AM
tlw,
Your facts are a little sckewed. There are three players here:

Paul Deignan (male): the grad student in question
Bitch PhD (female): blog host, also refered to as Dr. B
Wally Hettle (male): the cold-caller

Dr. Hettle, as far as I can tell, has no formal affiliation with BitchPhD, the person or website. He was just another visitor like all of us.

Dr. Hettle did not hide his identity when he contacted Paul's adivsors. See this comment on BitchPhD:
http://tinyurl.com/aetvl

He even goes so far as to offer up his University. So there is no cowardice here. And your genders are all mixted up.

Just a little correction.

#47619: — 11/08 at 02:59 AM
God, what a pompous little shithead.

Nominate him for a "Balsa Gavel" award.

-jcr

#47622: — 11/08 at 03:18 AM
it's funny how often the legal system seems to be designed to let the obsessive-compulsives try to work out their issues over trivial matters.

I was just thinking the same about the internet.

#47626: Nullifidian — 11/08 at 04:03 AM
Apparently Deignant has never heard of a motion for summary judgment or the words "dismissed with prejudice." But if he decides to pursue his lawsuit, he'll develop a firsthand familiarity with them.

"We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

#47627: Raven — 11/08 at 05:11 AM
From the professor's comment that set him off:

Troll boy is a student of the highly relevant field of mechanical engineering.

As a medical informaticist working to elucidate evo-devo anatomy and its implications for comparative pathology, I'm getting a little tired of every hallucinatory misapplication of mathematics by non-informaticists being labeled "information theory" or "informatics", rather than the more accurate "crackpot". The discipline of informatics ought to sue him for libel. (Mandelbrot Sets and "thinking conservatives"? At least I got to start the day with a good laugh.)

#47628: — 11/08 at 05:42 AM
To be fair to him, it's entirely possible the commenter did libel Deignan to his advisors - I can't see the e-mail he sent on either blog. That said, Deignan does seem to be pretty stupid, for a grad student - he talks of Dr B libelling him by accusing him of sending a threatening e-mail, and then links to the commenter accusing him of sending a threatening e-mail instead. I wonder if falsely accusing someone of libel is defamatory? Similarly he hopes the case can be tried in the US, which has probably the least plaintiff friendly libel laws in the world. And then there's the fact that he actually boasts of spending $1500 on the anti-Miers campaign - as if the fundies needed any help getting the world's worst nominee withdrawn.

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