Dave,

unless you can demonstrate that you are the same person in real life how can anyone trust you?

What is "the same person in real life"? All you can expect from a forum is that all posts signed "Grishka" are by the same person; this does not solve your problem though. (If Mudcat offered password-protected GUEST accounts, without cookies etc., I would use one.) If I were claiming the authority of, say, two Cambridge Ph.D.s, you could rightly ask me to produce references. But the sort of authority I want can only be gained by sensible messages.

Musket,

Grishka, you waded in to a thread spawned by a thread that had become a silly game. Some of us carried the game in this thread. The more people were outraged, the funnier it was.

Commonly called trolling. Skillful trolls can do a good job of exposing unreasonable outrage. Those who do all the name-calling themselves have failed, all the more so if they cannot credibly plead satire.

Pricking the bubble of pomposity is a well judged activity.

It would be. Instead, you created glorious martyrs, and, worse, committed treason of your claimed rationality and scientific education. If you had fun, your condescendingly appointed "co-Messiah" definitely does not seem to share it. Too bad for him.

Generally, messages to Mudcat should not tacitly require knowledge of other threads. In particular, critical comments should always state the exact message they refer to. For example, accusing others of hate crimes takes some elementary rhetorics, either satirical or serious, to be credible to neutral readers.

Steve, I take your word for it, for the time being. (In fact, I have seen Islamists shouting "We are gentle people, peaceful and pious, strictly against all violence, suffering silently, never harming a fly. But if those bastards insult the Prophet, of course they must all die!" Also, I remember you feeling "sniped at" in an argument about - drum roll - Beethoven!)