Paper Moon

The Hero Initiative is seeking donations to cover the cost of Robert L. Washington III's funeral. Please please please help if you can. Washington was a groundbreaking writer who neither got the acclaim nor the financial compensation that he deserved from the comics industry. Without funds to cover the cost of a small, modest funeral his remains will literally be thrown into a ditch on Hart Island, without any ceremony, and without giving his family an opportunity to say goodbye.

Other links of interest:

Chris Claremont, Ann Nocenti, and Louise Simonson re-unite to discuss the original plans for Madelyne Pryor's character in the X-Men comics. Wow. Wooooooooooow.

Justin Sevakis explains the mysterious process by which film properties are licensed and distributed internationally: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Molly McIsaac lists the ten best manga (available in English) for children. Comments argue about whether Dragonball should be on the list because of its sexual humor and whether the list fails for excluding Astro Boy. In response to the former, meh, I'd say there's no hard or fast ruling on that one - it really depends on the age, maturity, and experiences of the kid reading it. As for the latter, well, if I had to pick one kiddie Tezuka manga to put on the list, I would choose Princess Knight over Astro Boy. And I still think it's a shame that Honey Honey will likely never be available in English because it is still one of the greatest kids' manga of all time.

In much less light-hearted fare, Foz Meadows explains some basics of Rape Culture 101 in her two blog posts about rape culture and gaming: One | Two. The comments on the first post are unsurprisingly full of fail, hence the follow-up post. But I agree completely with the way that Meadows lays out the differences in terms of what rape culture looks like in a digital community versus how it manifests in meatspace. Both posts are definitely worth a read, even if you don't exactly need a 101-level explanation of the basic concepts involved.

I am not participating in the "internet blackout" to protest SOPA today because, Jesus tapdancing skateboarding Christ on a cracker, of all the ineffective protests ever conceived in the history of armchair internet activism, this has got to be the least effective of all. (ETA: I mean ineffective in the sense that the I'm not going to post to Tumblr or Facebook today because I'M PROTESTING! "blackout" is ineffective. The major websites like Wikipedia turning black and redirecting visitors to information that helps them contact their legislators? WAY more effective! But most of Tumblr and most of my Facebook contacts seem to have interpreted "blackout" to mean let's not use the internet today, which, uh, NO. Not an effective protest!)

I do, however, count myself among those who realize that SOPA is a horrifically dangerous and poorly-written law, and it SHOULD be killed with fire. Why?

This article by Chris Heald explains exactly why SOPA is a bad law, breaking down the actual text of the proposed law point-by-point and explaining how that would impact internet usage in the real world. Meanwhile, PIPA, the evil twin of SOPA created by the Senate, is so poorly-written that six of the Senators who originally sponsored the bill have asked majority leader Harry Reid to CANCEL the upcoming January 24th vote, due to concerns that the bill as it currently stands is, well, a poorly-written and dangerous mess.

What can you do if you ACTUALLY want to take action to stop SOPA/PIPA?

Contact your Representative and Senator. By phone, as that's the best and most direct way to persuade them.

The Reddit article linked above gives a pretty good idea of what you need to do and how to go about doing it, but just to repeat some key points:

1. Read up on SOPA/PIPA before you make your phone call. Have a couple of talking points ready.
2. Be calm and be polite. You are going to be more persuasive if you sound like an informed citizen than an angry internet nerd.
3. You are probably going to be talking to an aide instead of your actual Representative/Senator. That's okay. It's the aide's job to take phone calls like this and relay voters' opinions to their bosses. Your call won't be ignored. Trust me.
4. Don't be surprised if the person that you talk to has never heard of SOPA/PIPA or has no idea what the heck any of this is about. That's exactly why these phone calls are so important!

I called my Rep last night, talked to an aide, and it went pretty well. From my time in AmeriCorps I can definitely say that direct phone-call-to-lawmakers action is always the best way to seriously get shit done.

Please please please take a moment to make a phone call. It shouldn't take more than three to five minutes of your day. Your internet will thank you later.

Signal-boosting:

helpthesouth
Fannish auctions to raise money for areas in the southern United States affected by the devastating tornadoes on April 27th.

help_japan lightning round
Parts of northern Japan still look like a warzone. Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in emergency shelters. Shortages of food, water, gas, and medical supplies are an ongoing problem. Here's a second chance both to offer and to bid on auctions to help Japan.

In case anybody reading this is still poo-pooing the idea of fandom auctions to raise money for real-world causes, let me just remind you that the first round of auctions at help_japan raised over $45,000 that was donated directly to groups working on relief efforts in Japan.

As of today, the official death toll from the Tohoku Offshore Earthquake has climbed past 11,000 deaths, with 17,000 people still missing. Over 300,000 people are living in shelters without adequate food, water, or medical supplies. It's freezing cold in the Tohoku region right now and vast numbers of people are without heat or electricity. Many roads are still impassable which means that grocery stores are running out of food and gas stations are running out of kerosene (which fuels heaters in many Japanese houses).

If you can spare any money, please please please donate to the International Red Cross. They are the most deeply embedded in the afflicted regions right now and they're your best bet for making sure that your money goes directly to supporting somebody who needs it.

My friend Yoshiko also recommends donating to the Ashinaga Fund for Children, which provides financial aid, therapy, and psychological support to children who were orphaned by the disaster. They provide a desperately needed service in a country where the concept of "therapy" is still taboo for a lot of people, so please spare them some money if you can.

It's still not too late to make a bid at help_japan, either. Auctions won't close until March 31st. The auction website is much easier to browse through its delicious account - especially if you need to instantly sort through the over 1800 different fandoms offered - so please give it a look.

For those of you who use Tumblr, you can now donate to the Red Cross of Japan directly from your dashboard, and Tumblr has pledged to match user donations for up to $15,000.

TEPCO is updating their English-language website with hourly technical briefings on the status of their reactors, including the two in Fukushima that may or may not have experienced meltdowns.

More terrifying Science Facts: The initial 8.9-magnitude quake has opened up a new gigantic fault in the seabed and tilted the Earth's axis by 10 cm.

HuffingtonPost is reporting that parts of Japan have literally sunk - because the quake was caused by the Pacific plate slipping ten meters below the North American plate - which in turn may have lowered the elevation of huge chunks of Pacific terrain, including Japan. Says the geologist quoted therein: ""You see cities still underwater; the reason is subsidence. The land actually dropped, so when the tsunami came in, it's just staying."

Speaking of HuffPo, they have also set up an excellent page keeping track of which charity/aid organizations are already on the ground in Japan and what kind of work they are doing. If you have money to donate, please donate to these groups in order to make sure that your money will directly help somebody in need.

A 6.8 just hit south of Sendai again and a 6.1 hit Nagano two hours ago. It just isn't stopping.

I haven't been able to contact anybody that I know in Japan yet.

Completely terrifying Science Facts, courtesy of the NHK news feed: A cubic meter of water weighs one ton. (Sciencey people: is this really true? I had no idea.) Now imagine how many cubic meters of water were in the first 20-foot-high wave that hit Japan yesterday. And that wave reached speeds of up to 500 kilometers per hour when it was traveling over the open ocean.

This is not just the worst earthquake in recorded Japanese history, but the fifth-most powerful earthquake ever recorded anywhere in the world, period.

Four passenger trains and a cruise ship with over 100 people on it have been missing since yesterday.

Links again, because these cannot be signal-boosted enough: CharityNavigator and Google People Finder.

Six ways that you can help tsunami relief efforts in Japan and the Pacific: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/11/five-ways-you-can-help-earthquake-and-tsunami-victims-in-japan/

Also, Google People Finder, for those of you with friends and family in Japan: http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/

In addition to the previous round of signal-boosting:

Girls Drawing Girls (NSFW) is hosting a Haiti Earthquake Relief Charity Art Sale (also somewhat NSFW). There is some effin' amazing stuff being offered for sale, so please check it out.

Most of you have probably seen these links before, but signal boosting never hurts. Here we go.

Skywardprodigal's list of recommended organizations to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake. I'd personally recommend NOAH; I heard good things about them when I was in Minneapolis, and the money that you give to them goes directly to help the people who need it most. I donated to NOAH and I hope that some of y'all who can spare some money will do so too.

Post a Story for Haiti. Samit Basu is participating and he already posted an awesome story in his blog. If you read it, please make a donation to one of the charities listed on the Crossed Genres page. I'd recommend Doctors Without Borders; again, that's where my money went.

Heroes 4 Haiti. Comic book art auction.

help_haiti. Auction of fannish things.

Wonder Woman is

1) awesome, and

2) the only female comic book character to have had her monthly comic book series more-or-less uninterrupted since 1941.

That's a pretty big freakin' deal.

Not that most of us would know that, of course, since Wonder Woman has been re-numbered at least twice (possibly more than twice?) over the years. But anywhoo, the upcoming issue #45 of Wonder Woman is actually going to be the six hundredth issue of her series (!!!!). And, in recognition of this utterly-amazing-when-you-stop-and-think-about-it anniversary, some fans have asked Dan Didio to please re-number WW #45 as WW #600, in order to give Diana the recognition that she deserves. DC has repeatedly stated that they consider Wonder Woman an iconic character on the same level as Superman or Batman. And, well, Superman got his monthly Action Comics title re-numbered specifically to recognize his milestone anniversaries, so doesn't Wonder Woman deserve the same?

Thus Didio said, "Send me six hundred postcards, and I'll make it so."

And boy, did he get postcards. Here's the official weekly tally so far. But there aren't six hundred yet. We still need moar!

So if you have a postcard, a stamp, and thirty seconds of free time, please consider helping out. Send a postcard with "Wonder Woman issue #45 should be renumbered #600" or some similar message to:

WONDER WOMAN #600
c/o Dan DiDio
1700 Broadway
New York, NY, 10019

More information: Amazon Princess blog | Westfield Comics blog

(No, I don't have a Wonder Woman icon, so here's some Devi for y'all instead.)