I'm off to the UK tomorrow for work. Lube vendors to visit, dildo makers and smut toy company owners to interview (that's the theory, at least). The other theory is that I'll replace my old Nokia 7110e with this PDA, just switching the SIM as required. Brave new world of global roaming.

Please remove me from all mailing list.

Due to the anti-military, anti-American, pro-terrorism policies of the people of San Francisco. I will no longer purchase from merchants from your traitorous city.

Very, very disrespectfully

Some I. (for Idiot) Customer

Promise?

The Senate has passed legislation banning torture, but the Bush administration is seeking an exemption for the CIA spy agency.

"We do not torture and therefore we're working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it more possible to do our job," Mr Bush said.

That makes sense. We do not torture, so we need an exemption for the CIA so that they could torture to do their jobs, even though they don't.

Despite what the last commenter says, I'm very sympathetic with CSRs, given that I run a customer-facing business myself. While most of the calls we get are from nice people who just want their reasonable problem sorted out, we do get a certain number who are... Well. My feeling is that they have discovered they can no longer beat servants, so they try to beat people in retail, instead.

Largely, these calls come down to one of two things:

• I don't like your policy, so it shouldn't apply to me.
• I screwed up, and I expect you to do everything humanly possible to save me from the consequences of my actions.

That being said, companies can be pathological. Sprint's "our billing specialists are too good to talk to you" attitude is particularly bad: First, it wastes the cusotmer's time, and second, it guarantees the customer is already going to be a bit cranky when they finally do get through to a billing person. Why not just take the call and get it over with?

Dear adulterers of either sex,

Blowfish is nothing if non-judgmental. Therefore, the fact that you are cheating on your spouse is of no concern to us. Conversely, we are not specifically set up to make cheating easy and convenient.

Thus, we would like to offer you some tips on making your adultery experience much more enjoyable in the long-term:

• Get a separate address for your orders — You would be astonished how many people have their lover's order shipped directly to their home, in the assumption that their husband/spouse/partner will not be home or will simply not be curious about this box. This assumption is very, very wrong. PO boxes are available from just about evey post office. Private Mailbox firms (PMBs, for those in the know) have long experience in the area of people doing things they ought not to be doing. Avail yourself of their expertise.
• Get a separate credit card for your orders — Our rule is that, if a caller can give us a complete credit card number, we will tell that caller about any order placed using it, including the harness and dildo you had sent to Peggy in Pismo Beach, or the Aneros you had sent to Carl in Carlsbad. We will give them, happily (perhaps even gleefully, depending on the call), the full delivery address and telephone number. A moment's thought will reveal how this might be a bit awkward.
• Once you have this separate credit card, have the bill sent to the above PO Box or PMB — You would be astonished how many people have the credit card bill, full of hotel room rentals on nights they were working late, purchases from fine firms such as us, and other information that had not been disclosed to their spouse, sent directly to the home that they share with this spouse. If you think that the spouse will not open this bill, see the first point. If you are curious what will happen when the spouse calls our 800 number to ask about these charges, see the second point.
• No, we won't promise that nothing will ever be sent to your billing address — One of our Fundamental Rules is that, if you ship an order to an address other than the billing address of the credit card, we may (or may not) send a receipt to the billing address. We do this because, in the case of credit card fraud, it lets the would-be fraudster know that the person whose card it is might be informed of the charge. To be blunt, our fraud control is more important to us than your affair. Consider this little bit of education in how to take responsibility for your own privacy to be just one more service we offer you, at no additional charge.
• We understand your marriage is important to you (you wouldn't be cheating on your spouse if it wasn't, right?), but please don't lie to your spouse when confronted — A not-inconsiderable portion of the disputed credit card charges that we receive follow the pattern of: "I found this charge on my credit card and my husband says he never placed that order and we'd never buy anything so filthy and perverted and we want the charge reversed now, you horrible people!" "OK, Ma'am, let me look that up. (clickity, click click click) Do you know a Tina Tartt in Toluca Park?" (awkward pause) "I'll call you back." We always win those disputes, and you've just made a bad situation worse.

We hope you have found these instructions informative. Once you are divorced, we have a wide selection of toys suitable for masturbation, for both sexes. Let us know your new address, so we can keep sending you our catalog.

First step: The customer orders products from us, which we ship, which arrive. However, said customer is just horrified that he must pay both VAT and customs duties on an import, thus being, in all likelihood, the absolute last person in France to realize this. His reaction? He wishes to return the products, even though this means that he will have to pay:

• Shipping outbound from us to him, for the original order.
• VAT and customs duties.
• Shipping back to us.
• A 15% returns fee.

Well, OK, fine, who are we to stand in the way of principle? He returns the products, we issue the credit (satisfaction returns are for store credit only), and he places another order. We ship this one on September 2nd.

Now, today is what? September 13th. Let us count US working days between then and now: Six. So, what do we receive today? An angry missive from him demanding a full refund because his order hasn't been received. For crying out loud, orders shipped on the 2nd are just arriving in the East Coast of the US today. He also threatens us (don't they all?) with unspecified horrible, awful bad publicity. What-the-fuck-ever.

Relax, Monsieur. Your order will arrive soon. Sang froid and all that.

We have an option by which the customer does not receive item details in their confirmation emails. This particular customer wrote in asking that item details be turned off, which we did. The acknowledgment we sent back had our slogan, "Good Products for Great Sex" in the .sig line (just like all of our confirmation emails do). In reply, we receive this charming missive (James is the CS manager who sent the first email):

James you idiot: I sent y'all an email asking to exclude item details, for really obvious reasons such as privacy and discreteness. So you felt it necessary to send me an email that includes "Good Products for Great Sex." Surely if you just put your mind to it, you can come up with something even more obvious and entertaining for the two people with whom I share this computer at work. Would you like for me to give you their telephone numbers, so you can call them directly and tell them all about it? And it ain't like an entity named "Blowfish" isn't unusual or strange, in and of itself. So by all means, send me as many unnecessary emails as possible, until someone here gets curious enough to google "Blowfish."

And here is how I felt like replying . . .

Dear Moron,

Let me get this straight: You use a work email that you share with two other people to order sex products from us, and then you complain that we're not doing enough to keep your conversation private? When free email addresses are available by the wheelbarrow-load? And, then, you complain that someone might search for "Blowfish"? What, precisely, should we do? Get a fucking Hotmail account just to send you, personally, email? Maybe we could come up with our own personal little code to tell you about your order. Or maybe Pig Latin. Ouryay ugehay analway ildoday orfay ammingray upway ouryay atherray izablesay assholeway ashay ippedshay, oronmay.

Get a grip, please. And please remember that, among human beings, opening a conversation with "You idiot" is considered the sign of an idiot, you idiot.

Love and kisses,
Christophe,
President,
The Blowfish Corporation

So, instead, I called him, told him that I didn't appreciate my staff being addressed that way, and that I was canceling his order and we would not do business with him. He sounded flabbergasted. I felt much better.

But it's really not that complicated.

The core questions that one must ask about any theory, of any kind, that is proposing to offer a view of the world are:

• If this theory is true, what things that we do not already know would we expect to find out in the world?
• What things, out in the world, would convince us that this theory is false, if found?

For example, general relativity has proven exceptionally resistant to being tossed out the door by those criteria. It predicted gravitational lensing; gravitational lensing was dutifully found. Experiments were constructed that would falsify general relativity; those experiments did not come back with data that indicated that general relativity was false.

The problem with Intelligent Design is that the answers to those questions are, respectively, "Anything we find proves it" and "there is nothing that could possibly be found that would prove that it is not true, because it is." Thus, claiming that it is science (or, indeed, investigation at all) is absurd. If my theory is that the world is made up of some wonderful substance called Splorg, and every single fact that has or ever will exist demonstrates that the world is, indeed, made up of Splorg because that's the way I say it is . . . well, as a professor of mine once said, "Now that you know that, what do you know?"

As Simon Blackburn points out in his wonderful book Truth, one of the ways we know something is "true" is that it gives us purchase over the world. We know the germ theory of disease is true, in part, because assuming the truth of it has given us near-miraculous weapons against disease. We know that electrons are "true" because assuming that such things as electrons has given us astonishing ability to control electricity. And we know evolution is "true" because it has allowed us to explain things that were simply inexplicable before.

It's impossible to decouple religion from Intelligent Design not because we're all trying to paint people who believe it in as some kind of religious weirdos, but because the argument is, in essence, a faith-based argument: It's true because I believe it to be true, and nothing will ever shake me of this belief, because I know it in my heart to be true.

That's a statement of faith, not science. Anyone who says that a theory must be true and nothing could possibly show otherwise isn't doing science.

Suppose Fred and Barney find a funny-shaped rock and Fred says that the rock is natural while Barney says that it is man-made. Fred can't just end the argument by saying, "I'm sorry, the theory that the rock is man-made is not falsifiable so that is not a scientific theory."

Is that right? If Fred does say that, is that science?

And by the way, do I have to be a raging fundamentalist Xtian to even pose the question?

While I'm sure that the illustration was well-intended, it doesn't really capture the argument in favor of Intelligent Design.

Allow me.

Fred and Barney, two associate professors of geology, are walking along the Giant's Causeway, looking at the amazing polygonal basalt pillars. Barney points out that so many exactly regular pillars must have an intelligent designer, because that kind of regularity is traditionally associated with man-made objects. Fred replies that while it is true that regular polygons are often made by humans, they can also be formed by processes that are entirely unintelligent, and in fact the mechanism by which these pillars formed into regular polygons is well understood. Fred goes on to point out that just because something "looks like it should be designed" doesn't mean that it must be.

Barney points to a particular column that has seven sides, instead of the usual six, and demands to know, then, why this particular pillar has seven sides instead of six, if a well-understood natural process created them. Fred says that he doesn't know why this particular pillar has seven sides, but the process by which the sides vary is not the least bit unusual.

Barney cries out in triumph! "Well, there's a huge gap in your theory, my friend! You can't explain why this pillar has seven sides, so your entire theory about crystalizing lava is full of holes, and isn't the least bit scientific! It's just dogma!" Fred, a very patient man, points out that even if this was an example of a gap in understanding, which it really isn't, a gap in knowledge is not the same thing as clear contradictory data, and that it would be absurd to throw out all of vulcanology because of a gap in data.

Further, Fred explains, even if a truly contradictory data point is discovered, it is rarely the case that such data requires an entire scentific theory to be discarded in its entirety, as Barney is proposing.

"Well, there's at least a controversy, and I demand that you teach the controversy!" Barney says. Fred points out that the only reason the "controversy" exists because Barney has created it, and that's not the same as an honest dispute between opposing theories. If every single possible supposition, no matter how, ah, non-standard was taught in school, science class wouldn't get beyond whether or not to do your exams in pen or pencil.

"You're just being blind and dogmatic!" Barney cries out, and races off to publish papers about how the pillars were clearly designed by intelligence because they look like they should be. Barney is denied tenure and the papers aren't published, because they don't add anything to the science of geology. Barney claims that this is a clear example of the dogmatic anti-Christianity of the scentific establishment, even though he's the one who brought up the whole Christian thing and he claims that his theory isn't the least bit Christian, anyway.

Barney does, however, go on Fox, where the interviewer pats him on the head and tells him how horrible it was that he was denied tenure because of anti-Christian bias, even though later in the same program the interviewer complains about "moonbat" professors that can't be gotten rid of because of the stupid system of "tenure."

The Missouri Board of Education passes a regulation requiring that both views of how the Giant's Causeway was created be taught in school. The Board claims this has absolutely nothing to do with religion, even though they have never expressed any interest whatsoever in any other scientific "controversy," real or imagined, and they kept trying to get the "God Created the Giant's Causeway" hypothesis taught before the Supreme Court slapped them down.

Fred, tired of spending his time explaining to reporters why there is no real controversy among scentists instead of actually doing research, moves to France. "Good riddance!" cry the Intelligent Designers. The USGS closes down its earthquake prediction programs due to lack of qualified geologists, and Missouri is devastated by an 9.0 earthquake on the New Madrid fault.

Scientsts everywhere, reading about this earthquake, wonder if there might be something to this intelligent design stuff, after all.