Our urban infrastructure is crumbling around us, and nobody wants to pay for it. I’m also wondering why folks like SixApart don’t have some sort of backup plan for their colocation. What if the Goddess of Plate Tectonics decides to have a major hissy fit? You know She will, one day.

Lots of folks on my livejournal friends list pointed out that those women were damned attractive (yes, I thought they looked good too), and lots of the early commenters on the Shakesville entry were as appreciative. Unfortunately, as comment threads often do, you get some later folks that had to chime in with their chorus of fatphobic things to say (like concern trollish cries of “unhealthy!”).

I give Shakesville some mad props for adding Kate Harding of Shapely Prose to their cadre of bloggers, and I’ve also started following Junkfood Science. Body Impolitic is another must-read.

I figure anybody who tapes bacon to his cat as a work avoidance tactic and lives to blog about it has fannish nature. Let the Nippon2007 voters decide about the latest manifestation of fanwriting.

My response to trolls in the past was honed in the Usenet days; it was best to fail to provide the responses they craved by refusing to engage them. However, things seem to have devolved to new lows. Amanda of Pandagon and Melissa of Shakespeare’s Sister came in for a whole dogpile of vitriol from so-called Christians and they ended up severing their connections with the John Edwards campaign. Bill also gave some more examples of women bloggers who are constantly dodging the dung flung at them; I find the attacks on Ginmar (here’s a recent example) especially disturbing because she’s a combat veteran, and I’d bet that most of her trolls are part of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders safe at home. Now, we’ve got a highly visible woman techblogger having to curtail her activities and call in law enforcement.

This cannot stand. I note that some male bloggers are speaking up about harassment they’ve experienced, but the really virulent attacks reeking of violent misogyny are saved for women who dare to be visible. Refusal to engage these harassers is not enough. They need to be identified and made to own these attacks; anonymity is not our friend. In addition, we need to be mindful of the words we send out; there’s a gradient that leads from snark to this kind of evil dreck.

Fortunately, it seems like some Santa Clarans aren’t afraid to challenge racism and classism in their own midst.

I hope Father Locatelli and the rest of the University community takes this incident as a wakeup call. It’s hard to see sometimes, but not all Santa Clarans come from upper- or middle-class backgrounds. It wasn’t that way almost thirty years ago when I first got there, and it isn’t that way now, but I am encouraged that they’re not trying to keep this under wraps.

I just sent this message to the Edwards folks:

Keep Amanda and Melissa working on your web presence. The people most enraged by them working on your campaign will never be your supporters, and if you cave in due to their pressure, then you send a message to all Democrats and progressives that the right wing are the only people in this country who have the ability to define the terms of political campaigns. We are the ones who have the right to tell our stories to the rest of the country and the planet; if we let the right wing get away with this, our stories would never get heard. What would our beloved Molly Ivins say about this?

Stay strong.

If you like, go make your voice heard over there.

Bill Donohue does not speak for this particular technopagan Buddhist Catholic, but then according to him, I’m already consigned to various forms of eternal torment. Pthpppt.

I wanted to add my own short appreciation of his work; Cosmos was one of the first hardback books I bought myself that wasn’t a textbook; The Dragons of Eden was another early addition to my library.

My first scientific love as a child was astronomy; I moved on to chemistry when I got fascinated by what the stars and planets were made of. Reading Sagan’s work helped me recapture that early love and fascination. I’m sure his writing was pivotal in having many people decide to pursue science.

May his memory remain unwithered. Ex astris, scientia.

SFGate.com’s sex blogger Violet Blue has remedied the situation with her column, “Knitting for Adults Only.”

There’s a proposal out for a manga adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Check a sample out.

I want this with an absolutely unholy passion. September 2007 cannot come quickly enough.