Tuesday, 4 August 2015

Skeptical Science authors photoshopped themselves in SS costumes.

The UNSkeptical UNScience (SS) correspondents liked to photoshop their images as members of the other SS (Schutzstaffel)

There is a picture of John Cook in a SS Uniform which was taken from UNSkeptical UNScience (SS)'s old pages. It WAS available at archive.org (Wayback Machine)

- http://web.archive.org/web/20130806172838/http://www.sksforum.org/images/a11g0n3/

and the page was

http://web.archive.org/web/20130806182917/http://www.sksforum.org/images/a11g0n3/1_herrcook.jpg

Unfortunately, even the Wayback Machine can be got at and now THAT image has been eradicated:

The requested URL /images/a11g0n3/1_herrcook.jpg was not found on this server.

Joanne Nova explains:

Was someone at SkepticalScience plotting to pretend evil skeptics created these pictures? (… surely not.)

Brandon Schollenberger found them on the SkS forum. Admire the effort taken to get the SkS penguins, the leaf insignia on the hat, the lapels, the button…

Reichstuhrer SS J.Cook

Or lo, is this just the weekend fun of teenagers let loose with photoshop? Looks like.

Spartans for Science, Watts, Monckton and Delingpole

Anthony Watts has a larger set (and a pretty good six-pack too) which is “lucky” (sort of), because not long after he posted the first few, the images disappeared from their original links. In a true SkS logical maneuver they were moved to …/images/a11g0n3 (images “allgone”), which took real skeptics about five minutes to find. That set have gone too now (except for the 400 copies placed all over the Internet). (bold added)

Skeptical Science takes ‘creepy’ to a whole new level

But wait. The SS crew failed. They failed to exterminate another image of Reichsführer SS J Cook:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130806172918/http://www.sksforum.org/images/a11g0n3/herrcook.jpg

A fresh look at the Wayback Machine finds some more of SS's SS images have not yet been erased, (but be quick! These too will disappear) including the self-described image of Herr Cook (above) and a pointer to Herr Cook on the platform of a Nazi rally (below). All found on the Wayback Machine and showing the original site was http://www.sksforum.org/images/a11g0n3. (images allgone)