Some Creationist Gets Owned

http://www.badscience.net/2008/06/all-time-classic-creationist-pwnage/

Biologist Richard Lenski recently published a paper describing the emergence of new traits in bacteria (they evolved the ability to metabolise new food sources when kept in an environment without food they could already metabolise). Andrew Schlafly, founder of that paragon of scientific endeavour Conservapedia [1] [2], got very upset by this and demanded to see the evidence. Lenski responded quite politely, but after further demands, threats, and insults, replies with an impressively snotty letter.

[1]

He's also, apparently, teacher of "one of the largest homeschool classes in the country"; isn't that a contradiction of terms? When you're teaching 58 kids, that's not homeschool; that's actual school; presumably, the claim to be "homeschool" is to avoid the necessity of teaching the kids actual science.

[2]

Because we wouldn't want people to actually correct Conservapedia, it's actually very difficult to get to edit a page, despite the fact that it's a wiki; for example, the page on Phyllis Schlafly, mother of Andrew, is locked, preventing people changing the statement from the (true but inaccurate) "a fraction of people present protested her honorary doctorate" to the more-accurate "a third of people present, etc."; this despite that the numbers in question are in a news report cited elsewhere in the article. Hurray for selective blindness to the facts!