In a recent article, Inside Higher Education recounts a rather convoluted and ultimately, rather silly tale of blogging gone awry: three academic bloggers are conducting a personal disagreement in a very public way. This is just one excerpt, and you should really read the whole article in order to know exactly what the issues are:

Escalation, not restraint, has marked the ensuing days, in which Deignan, Hettle and Bitch Ph.D. have hurled accusations of various kinds at each other. Both Deignan and Bitch Ph.D. have hired lawyers. Hettle wouldn’t comment on whether he has done the same. Deignan said he is prepared to begin a lawsuit as soon as possible.

He accuses both Hettle and Bitch Ph.D of libeling him — Hettle because of the e-mail he sent to Deignan’s professors, and Bitch Ph.D. for saying that he may have used a technique known as “IP spoofing,” which is a form of hacking, to try to determine who she is. Deignan denies having done that.

Bitch Ph.D., said that she feels somewhat threatened by Deignan. “I don’t know if his attempts to track me down represent a real threat, either in terms of my identity or in terms of a physical threat,” she said via e-mail Wednesday. “I don’t know if what he’s doing counts as cyberstalking. It’s certainly upsetting.”

All I can (and all that I will say lest one of these three people involved decide that they should sue me for expressing my personal opinion) is -- people, let’s grow up, shall we?