Seabury is experiencing some serious difficulties (“Aren’t you on sabbatical?” Yes, so I suppose you can infer that when I say “serious,” I am not using the term casually) which erode my concentration and distract me from the work I’m supposed to be doing. I’ll probably be free to say more about this in a while, but for now I’ll just point to several interesting online links. Light a candle for Seabury, though, if you will.
Elia Powers on changes in the textbook marketplace
Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, a review article on constitutive irrationality; I’m especially interested by this, since I’m near a point in my work on Matthew’s Gospel where I need to be able to defend the proposition that Matthew may be inconsistent without my conveying disrespect or scholarly laziness. I resist, though, the premise that ascribing any degree of inconsistency to an author amounts to derogation. I would be more inclined to respect an interesting, slightly inconsistent author, than an author whose systemic consistency amounts almost to paranoia.
Andy Guess on Open Source libraryware — this’ll be big. When I was on library committees, I always wondered about the role of gargantuan proprietary software firms. Thanks to those decision-makers who’ve been able to see the value of developing an alternative.
Draft Lessig ’08!
Barbara Fister on Facebook, social software, privacy, and anarchism.