Open Mouth, Insert Brain


Some Intructions for Skeptics on How to Use Search Engines Effectively

James Patrick Holding


Perhaps, just perhaps, I have vastly overestimated average Skeptical intelligence. It wouldn't be the first time.

Little Stevie Carr popped into our Trophy Room and seems to have a little problem understanding why I expect my "gullible readers can find articles by entering words which exist in the articles that they have not seen! How exactly do people do that? For example, he expects his gullible readers to find links to an article by entering 'relevant psychological diagnosis identification divinity' into Google. What a weird way for [Holding] to salve his conscience from charges that he is too chicken to provide links!"

Poor Stevie, I really did underestimate his intellect. How do I expect them to do that? The same way any intelligent person uses a search engine. Let me use a non-topical example in context, and maybe, just maybe, little Stevie will learn something, as will all the other whining Skeptics out there.

There is a certain poem I recalled from many years back that I wished to see again. I remembered little of it, other than that it was a satire of poetic usages that particularly focused on Lord Byron's poem about the Assyrian attack on the Jews. How to find it? I only recalled one line from it for certain: It was a line that spoke of "purple and gold anythings".

Hard to find? Not in the Internet age. Put the phrase "purple and gold anythings" in Google (including the quote marks). What turns up? Ah. Several links which include copies of Ogden Nash's Very Like a Whale. Just what I wanted. So how did it find it? It wasn't hard. Google works upon a very simple principle of searching for words and phrases. Now of course the more words you put in, the narrower your search will be and the more likely you will be to hit a target you want. Thus when C. Farris McTill suggests one can search for one of his articles using the terms "Bible prophecy" he may as well hit himself with a large coral reef and go home. The principle of the searches I inputted in the Trophy Room entries is that I took unique words or phrases from the quotes I provided from the articles I responded to, and stuck them in Google's engine. With that in mind let's answer little Stevie's Stupid Skeptic Questions:

1) How can I expect my "gullible readers can find articles by entering words which exist in the articles that they have not seen!" It's simple, folks -- the words exist in the quotes from the articles which I provided. Now how hard was that? Too hard? How did I find Nash's poem if I could not remember all of the poem -- heck, only one line of it? It's enough, in plenty. Thus here is the whole poem up until that line (and it could have been written by Fundaliteralist McTill in seriousness!):

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for

Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and metaphor.

Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,

Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.

What does it mean when we are told

That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?

In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience

To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.

However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity.

We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.

Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,

Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wold on the fold?

In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are great many things.

But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.

Thus then 2) For example, he expects his gullible readers to find links to an article by entering 'relevant psychological diagnosis identification divinity' into Google. What a weird way for [Holding] to salve his conscience from charges that he is too chicken to provide links!" What a weird Skeptic it is who hasn't the intelligence to figure this out, as my readers have. How would you expect me to find Very Like a Whale by entering "purple and gold anythings" into Google? The same way I did above. D'oh! In all the links I either chose major distinctive terms from the articles or distinctive phrases. It need not have been "relevant psychological diagnosis" particularly; any set of unusual words (i.e., not common phrases) would have done in combination. To paraphrase Emeril Legasse: This is not rocket science, folks. It's also not a computer issue. You learn how to do this in elementary school when they give you a tour of the library for the first time. I guess the Skeptics were all too busy looking for the Playboy magazine or something.

And that, folks, is the way it is. All these years the "link" smokescreen has been foisted, and it's all because Skeptics like Stevie are too out of intelligence to even find their own backsides. Sorry -- but we're not into doing their homework for them.