swansont

delayed-choice and max_planck have been banned as more sockpuppets of mpc755. Let up hope he has run out of socks.

Viczareliz banned as another sockpuppet of Victor Elias Espinoza G.

illuusio is banned for multiple attempts to reintroduce a closed topic both as new threads and as attempts to hijack threads started by others.

The running gag in our D&D adventure group: "Your first-level party enters the cave and is ambushed by a group of minotaurs" "We kill them and go on"

Qualified dragons, sure.

EquisDeXD banned because he asked/dared us to.

Just saw this on twitter

A-wal suspended 3 days for being abusive.

angela860 has been suspended 3 weeks for hit-and-run preaching. The term is long because the user posts infrequently, so a normal suspension might not be noticed.

deepnessdawn has been banned as a sockpuppet of Blusupernova

Started reading Chris Mooney's The Republican Brain and have polished off several of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. Recently finished Daniel Okrent's Last Call, about the US prohibition movement, which was fascinating. (Nice to be reading books again, now that I have an electronic device that lets me change the text size.)

eyesOpened has been suspended 3 days for trolling and confusing bravery with stupidity

rigney has earned a three-day suspension for violation(s) of the prohibition against slurs and prejudice

From the vantage point of Fox news and their viewers, saying global warming and evolution are real is probably considered crazy.

I also must point out that stating a whacky deeply-held belief is not a gaffe. It's having a whacky deeply-held belief. For example, Todd Akin's views on rape is not a gaffe. It's misogynistic lunacy.

Remember: It's an horrific gaffe when the guy in the other party makes it. It's merely a mistake when someone in your party makes it. That makes the demonization so much easier. The left wing has a whole host of whackaloons. Radical environmentalists, for example, or anti-globalists. They are generally far out on the fringe, though — they have not taken control of the party. Not a whole lot of Washington politicians running on an "everyone should be a vegan" platform, or even an anti-science new-age-crystals platform.

! Moderator Note I've pinned this and made the title more generic, so that all can post information on gatherings such as this, and all of the information can be kept in one spot. Announcements only, please. Any followup discussion should happen in a separate thread. In the Washington DC area, there's a monthly meeting of scientists and science communicators types, arranged through twitter. The day and location vary. You can check #DCScitweetup for the announcement.

Elshamah is suspended for repeated soapboxing/proselytizing. This may become permanent, pending further discussion among the staff.

Amanbir banned for carpet-bombing us with trollish posts.

The Architekt has been suspended a week. One hopes he spends it learning how to interact with people.

For some over-the-top outbursts, The Architekt has earned a two-day cooling-off period.

Staff consensus is that the week of July 9 be deemed to be abuse-from-Aethelwulf free. Suspended.

There is more suspended a week for trolling and rudeness.

Green Xenon has been banned for repeated violations of rule 1c (prejudice against groups)

Rich_A12 is banned for repeatedly violating the rules by neither supporting nor addressing objections to his speculations (soapboxing) and for sending an inappropriately-worded, abusive PM.