I’ve been very distracted for the past couple of weeks. Lots of reasons including some bumps with the little mute kid. But the main reason is that I’ve discovered online games. I’ve known about them for awhile, but knowing my compulsive personality, I’ve stayed clear. But then I thought. Just one taste. It can’t hurt. I can quit anytime. Ugh. I played 2,000 games of Solitaire in the past week. I feel cheap and dirty. It’s much better to channel my obsessive compulsive disorder into blogging which I can pretend is bettering myself professionally and personally and somehow making the world a better place, as well.
As part of my renewed interest in the blogosphere, I just spent a good long time reading the posts at Crooked Timber, which is really one of the top blogs out there. Harry has another excellent post on school reform. Ted tells us to call Sen. McCain to offer support to the anti-torture amendments.
All those yummy ideas and debate just goes to show that academia and blogs go together like peas and carrots. Read Henry Farrell’s rebuttal to Ivan Tribble. Tribble recently wrote in the Chronicle that academics should not waste their time with blogging and even jeopardized their employment by participating in such activities.
Henry says that Tribble misrepresents blogging. It isn’t about bad mouthing colleagues or gossiping about exboyfriends. Instead, it should be seen as a space for the exuberant debate of ideas, as a place which upends traditional hierarchy, and as a place that crosses across all formal lines that confine thought in the university.
In the comments section, Henry writes: Blogging is short-circuiting the traditional academic hierarchy in some important ways. Prominent academic bloggers that I read and enjoy come from a wide variety of institutions – and from no academic institution at all. That’s something new and important.
I’ll probably write more about this later, but I have two hours of precious babysitting time right now.
UPDATE: Jack Balkin on the University of Chicago’s Law School blog.
Apt. 11d 