For the Archives - The UCF (Original Version)

Friday, January 2, 2009
It appears that our current 'Tard of the Week, James Tankersley, rewrote his blog post about the Sooper-Sekrit Govmunt-Funded Hordes of EEEvil, otherwise known as the UCF. In his comments on the post, he indicated that he "didn’t want to provide TOO much entertainment for people clicking on the new “NOW WITH LESS SECRETS” UCF logo links."

What a spoilsport.

Fortunately for us, there is such a thing as caching. The original can be found here.

But I also screen-captured it:*

Uniformed (Currently or Formerly) Counter-Intelligence Force?

Of all the bloggers on line, I have never met a group like UCF. This is a group of primarily ex-Navy technical people (and a lawyer, a scientist and others) who have a uniquely vulgar and aggressive culture and act almost like a military unit on a mission. Are they?

This group calls themselves UCF which they say stands for Union of Collaborating Founders, but after a bit of investigation I suspect (purely speculatively) that the name might be a Navy acronym for something similar to Uniformed (Currently or Formerly) Counter-Intelligence Force.

Why do I suspect these bloggers might be paid by my tax dollars? A gut feeling based on a few clues make the speculation appear at least plausible.

First this is a fairly stable group of primarily ex-Navy technical personal including a lawyer (Eric), scientist (John)[1] and other technical people in an apparently well defined command structure with leader Nathan and apparently second in command Janiece Murphy.[2] Some of these widely geographically dispersed members have also met in person.

Secondly and most interestingly the group has engaged in at least one on-line counter-intelligence exercise (International Hijack Day).[3]

Third the group has their own aggressive and vulgar culture, as if they all attended the same course of instruction on how to be vulgar and aggressive on-line. While it may not seem unexpected for Navy enlisted personnel to be vulgar, it is a bit disturbing for a highly intelligent and clearly cultured lawyer to suddenly release a torrent of profanity for apparently no other reason than to show he is capable of being vulgar.

Fourth, and the reason I have any interest in this group at all is that they appear to be on a mission to “debunk” anyone who questions the management of safety concerns related to Europe’s Large Hadron Collider experiment.

I think this group’s focus is counter productive and a waste of tax payer money (if tax payers are funding this group) for a group to attempt to discredit honest scientists and concerned citizens who are trying to blow a safety whistle and bring some accountability to a global safety issue.

Ex-Navy Warrent Officer Jim Wright provides an example of aggression and threats this group is apparently capable of. Jim writes: “I’ll warn you once, and once only: You’re going to want to be real careful with that kind of bullshit, Wagner. I am a highly decorated combat veteran, who served honorably, who served in Iraq and elsewhere… and a number of folks that served with me, and that I got home alive, read my site every day, many come here to laugh at you - some, Walter, live in Hawaii. Don’t ever try that type of insinuation again.“[4]

Mr. Wright also states “I’m exceedingly familiar with the history of computer science and engineering and the associated names in the field, and hold a couple of advanced degrees in that field myself“.[4] Jim Wright did not state if these are accredited advanced engineering degrees or if he accomplished this while serving in the Navy, but he did recently retract statements against Walter Wagner only after threat of a libel suit.[5] (Contractors are responsible for their own legal defense).

Mr. Wright further states “I agree that there are legitimate concerns about safety. Those concerns have been addressed by actual qualified scientists. Neither Wagner nor Tankersley are qualified in any way to challenge those issues. Neither are scientists, neither are physicists…” Unfortunately Mr Wright fails to realize that legitimate safety concerns were addressed precicely because of Walter Wagner’s concern and brilliant discovery of fundamental flaws with CERN’s safety arguments.

But the comment that finally provoked me to respond with this article was from Janiece Murphy who yesterday called me Walter Wagner’s “butt monkey“.[6] (For the record, I strongly support Walter Wagner, I think he is a brilliant and selfless scientist and we are all indebted to him for discovering flaws with safety arguments that CERN was not even aware of, but I have never met Walter Wagner in person, I’m happily married and I have no interest in being anyone’s “butt monkey”, not that there is anything wrong with that as comedian Jerry Seinfeld famously said.)

JTankers
Administrator LHC Facts
Assistant Coordinator for Global Risk Reduction (a Special Interest Group of American Mensa)

[1] John the Scientist, UCF member, http://refugeesfromthecity.blogspot.com/2008/10/delusional.html

[2] Janiece Murphy, UCF 2nd in Command http://hotchicksdigsmartmen.blogspot.com/2008/06/im-geek-your-geek-everywhere-geek-geek.html

[3] Nathan, UCF Leader, International Hijack™ Day, Polybloggimous “Ideas get in but they don’t get out” (2008) http://polybloggimous.com/2008/01/announcing-international-hijack-day.html

[4] Jim Wright, Response (2008) http://refugeesfromthecity.blogspot.com/2008/10/response.html

[5] Jim Wright, Walter L. Wagner is Pitifully Insane, 2008 http://stonekettlestation.blogspot.com/2008/10/walter-l-wagner-pitifully-insane.html

[6] Janiece Murphy, Hot Chicks Dig Smart Men (December 29, 2008), http://hotchicksdigsmartmen.blogspot.com/2008/12/suing-scientific-method.html

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I'm going to be redirecting my Now with Less Secrets logo to this entry, so everyone can enjoy the original content in all its Mensa-certified glory.

*The content on LHCFacts has no copyright on it. However, since the default position for copyright protection is "on," I will delete the cut-n-paste if requested by the author. But I won't delete the link to the cache. 'Cause that's just the way the Internet works.

5 comments:

MWT said...

I also just grabbed it out of the Google cache, and now I'm trying to convince Shawn to put it somewhere where we can all link to it on the website. ;)

Nathan said...

::SNORT::

Janiece said...

Done.

Hehe.

Jim Wright said...

Did Tankersley's post come with a free tranquilizer dart full of Thorazine? Because it really should have.

If the guy was joking it would be funny. He's not, and that just makes it sad and pathetic.

Janiece said...

But Jim, it's funny!

Nevertheless, I'm incurring some bad Karma here for pointing and laughing at the mentally unstable, so I'm considering jumping on Eric's bandwagon.