Brandon Watson at Siris has a fascinating philosopher's take on the Killian Memos discussions as an instance of"Cooperative Distributed Argumentation." The whole experience of it was something like watching a half dozen concurrent doubles tennis matches all playing out on courts overlapping each other.

Look. Scott McLemee works wonders for us at the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's a great gig. Still, the man ought to do a book. He writes; he resides; he could be your writer-in-residence.

I forgot to link to Terry Eagleton's review for the New Statesman of Frank Furedi's new book, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Excellent reading. Thanks to Patrick Belton at Oxblog for the reminder.

Finally, if things have been slow at Cliopatria, it's for two reasons: First, it's the Jewish New Year. Happy New Year to all! As for moi, I've been celebrating Ivan's passover. Atlanta was nowhere near the eye of the storm, but no matter. We were without electricity for a two hour stretch and, then, a twelve hour stretch. Down the street, water and wind crumbled a concrete block retaining wall. There are trees down all over the area. Our damage is nothing compared to what happened in the Florida panhandle and along the Alabama coast, of course; but it was awesome, nonetheless.