Oxblog asks "Why Don't Hot Chicks Blog?"

(Actually, Crooked Timber poses the question and Oxblog offers some hypotheses, but Oxblog's title was catchier.)

My immediate thoughts were a) there are plenty of them on LJ, but of course b) LJ doesn't count. Why LJ doesn't count when bloggers discuss blogs, and why there are plenty of women here strike me as interesting questions.
There are a lot of people who don't really consider LJ a blog. Certainly LJ has the reputation for being an insular place where people talk mainly to and about their friends on subjects that are only of interest to themselves.
Personally, I don't actually mind the reputation, because by and large--aside from the food and lodging listings--that's why I blog.
LJ's focus on people you actually know may be more attractive to people who care more about social interaction. My gut feeling is that this tends--for cultural reasons, perhaps--to attract more women.

To be fair, Crooked Timber was originally talking about academic blogs. Oxblog theorizes that women may not be so eager to join the cut and thrust of online argument. It might be, though, that we social people have other things to talk about.

Fireplaces are wonderful.

I've spent a couple of nights this last week sitting by, and poking at, the fireplace at the house. It's been lovely. There's the adolescent pleasure of poking at fire, which many of my friends understand, even if they don't share it. But while that would be fun for a short while, the real joy comes from hanging around with friends.

You sit, read, chat, hang with people who are theoretically working but actually playing Snood, and generally get warm fuzzies inside and out.

Stoner had left a copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver behind, which reminded me that the rest of his Baroque Cycle was out. At the local public library I found The Confusion but not The System of the World. I've been chewing my way through that, in front of the fire.

People stop by, attracted by the warmth, talk for a while. Some stay, some go and come back with work or toys. A social dynamic that's probably as old as the domestication of fire.

While reading a friend gave me a flashing LED pacifier (thanks, Alex!). I'd wanted one of them since one ended up hanging from the doorknob of my room at the Dulwich Hill hostel in Sydney last spring. Each morning it would appear on a different doorknob along the hall, and I didn't feel right about keeping it when it got to my door, so I passed it on. And now I have one.