Win Ben Stein's Movie

Posted 27 June 2011 by Reed A. Cartwright

This afternoon is the last chance that you will have to donate to TalkOrigin's effort to win Expelled at auction. Professor Richard Dawkins has chipped in to help the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation "Win Ben Stein's Movie". If you haven't taken a moment to visit the Foundation's donation page and chip in your own stake, remember that our bid amount tomorrow (Tuesday) will be based on what can be cleared through the system into our bank account today (Monday). http://talkorigins.org/foundation/donate.html

7 Comments

Doc Bill · 27 June 2011

The bidding is up to $25,000! Could be that a creationist sugar daddy is waiting in the wings for the final minutes of the auction.

mrg · 27 June 2011

This is actually exciting! "The thrill of victory! The agony of defeat!"

Brian · 28 June 2011

And now for the obvious question: How soon do we find out who won?

Reed A. Cartwright · 28 June 2011

The auction ends tomorrow. We will be able to report if TOAF won it or not, but all bidders are identified by numbers. And who knows, if TOAF doesn't win tomorrow, the winner might be a troll who won't pay up, and the final winner might be lower bidders.

Ron Okimoto · 28 June 2011

Reed A. Cartwright said: The auction ends tomorrow. We will be able to report if TOAF won it or not, but all bidders are identified by numbers. And who knows, if TOAF doesn't win tomorrow, the winner might be a troll who won't pay up, and the final winner might be lower bidders.

What are the legal ramifications of being such a troll. The person could be party to the transaction whose only function is to try to boost the sale price. They only get caught when they get stuck with the high bid.

Kenneth Fair · 28 June 2011

The Foundation did not have the winning bid, which was $201,000. More on this in a moment.

Joe Felsenstein · 29 June 2011

Uncommon Descent is now reporting that

Update, just in: Walt Ruloff and his associates, who were the original producers of EXPELLED, won the auction. More later.

Perhaps the TOA efforts cost Ruloff money. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, as they say (sarcastically). And the UD report, which is signed by "News", which usually but not always means Denyse O'Leary, has the following amazing statement. In the midst of a "timeline" of events involving the film "News" comments that

There is a hiatus in significant coverage at this point because the companies that owned various aspects of Expelled lost touch with the people featured in it – for reasons still unexplained – despite the fact that the film was doing well.

If you count opponents of creationism who were interviewed in the movie as "featured", they were "lost touch with" right at the beginning when they were lied to about the nature of the film and even excluded from seeing previews of it. And since that was done by Ruloff himself, it doesn't look as if Ruloff's purchase of the distribution rights was done to rectify the situation.