So I have this new policy of posting email that threatens violence with full identifying information. I may have to retract that, since it looks like it’s getting abused. The idea was that I would have a public record of the threat, and that the smart people commenting here would be able to do a little sleuthing for me.

It is most definitely not intended to incite harassment. I do not want you to be dunning these people with email, threatening them back, signing them up for spam, or otherwise being a jerk. For one thing, we can’t be certain that an innocent’s account hasn’t been hijacked; for another, we’re supposed to be better than that. With the size of the readership here, any reaction by you is likely to be repeated a thousand-fold and turned into an over-reaction. I welcome any suggestions from you all but let me take care of any writing back.

I’m going to have to rethink my policy, which is unfortunate. Exposing roaches to the light is usually a good way to get them to scuttle away, but it’s not so good if people use it as an opportunity to swing sledgehammers in the kitchen to squash them.

Yeesh, not only am I busy at this meeting, but two factors are conspiring to keep me away from the web.

• The internet service in this hotel is abominable — I’ve tried both the wireless and wired access, and it’s like trying to read the 21st century internet over a 300 baud modem. I tried to edit a few trolls’ comments, and while I waited to load the page, I took a shower, walked a mile down the street, got breakfast and coffee, came back, found the maid service had cleaned up the suite (nice!), sat down to the computer, and just then it finished. I suspect the fact that the hotel is packed to the gills with computer scientists might have something to do with this.

• This is a conference way outside my discipline — I’m here to give some outsider’s context, talking about evo-devo to a bunch of evolutionary and genetic algorithms people. And everyone I talk to is telling me that they have very high expectations for my talk! Damn. These things are so much easier when I walk in and people have low expectations. Anyway, so I’m feeling mildly panicky — not too bad, though, because I think what I’ve got is at least a good talk — so I’m feeling like hiding away and just working it a little harder. Thanks, Conor Ryan and everyone else here, I’ve got butterflies now, and I never feel this nervous!

So you’re just going to have to talk amongst yourselves for a while, or browse some of the other fine sites in the Scienceblogs stable, as long as I’m choked up here in Atlanta…although I may just look elsewhere for an internet cafe later. Or if you want something to keep the flames burning bright, my atheist’s creed was cited in the comments — chew over that.

Please behave, don’t feed the trolls, etc.

Please STOP SENDING EMAIL TO THESE INDIVIDUALS. There are too many of you, the over-reaction is excessive, and you are not doing our reputation any favor. See this message for more.

Some of you may have noticed the little promise over in the left sidebar.

I’m posting without comment the worst of today’s crop of email threats. Formatting will be little wacky since it is just a raw dump of the mail with headers.

[Read more…]

By their actions you will know them. We have had a number of raving angry Catholics in various threads here…or have we? I’ve had a moment to clean up a few threads and post some of the stuff that was held in comment moderation, and discovered that Naz, k8, promo, baker, PZ is a fool, Burns, rumrunner, Dobbs, NYTs, KKKAthiest, Andy, CDV, BradJ, Brett, b7, PCD, NVFU, Your daddy, facebock, baker and several other loud-mouthed asses who have been braying here are all one and the same person.

This is called sock puppetry. It is trying to generate the illusion of a consensus on one side of an issue by pretending to be a multitude. It is cowardly, contemptible, and stupid — not just because a blog owner can look at the stats and detect it, but because it suddenly diminishes your point of view. It makes you look so weak that you have to lie to put up a pretense of popular support, and it makes your side, in this case the fundamentalist Catholics, look like a troop of posturing frauds.

Thanks!