Perhaps the greatest internet warrior I ever saw. I first ran into Pim at ISCID. Like most internet warriors his real identity is unknown. In fact my debut on the internet at ISCID : Actual Demonstration Experiments, Appeal to Correlation had PvM attcking me early on! He almost ran me off the net with his initial posts both there and at ARN (a defunct thread on polymers). He did a good job preying on newbie IDists and intimidating them enough that they wouldn't feel like bothering with the net. But I suppose, my resolve to spread the truthfulnes of ID kept me from backing down.
PvM used to post vigorously at ARN. I recall he was a tough in debate. His favorite standard maneuvers from the infidels battle tactics manual were:
However, what set him apart was the stuff he used that wasn't in the manual. Really novel tactics that I never saw before or ever again. I mean, the guy was Top Gun. I finally figured a couple of ways to vanquish him.
I didn't spar with PvM intensely until after about 6 months of being at ARN. Before that, I was tied up in The Greatest Thread in ARN History, so he and I didn't spar too much until Formal Statement of ID. We had just little skirmishes up until that point.
The beginning of the end for PvM was when I challenged him to a debate, which he didn't even show up to: PvM and Rgd versus Salvador which originated from a post in William Dembski's thread : Who's Got More Religion, Post 104 .
Finally I vanquished PvM in Understanding and Using Avida, Post 10. He never came back to ARN after that. Hehehe! Too bad I was looking forward to taking on the greatest internet warrior I'd ever seen.
To this day he writes about me, bless his squishy little heart, at PandasThumb and his very own blog. Wedgie World. Here is my account of him describing me as his favorite IDists : Pim's Favorite IDist. PvM says of me:
"Sal is my favorite ID proponent, one could not hope for a better voice ;-):"
Awh, shucks. It chokes me up to hear him say that. Hehehe!