In today’s Age, James McConvill (La Trobe) argues that all law academics should be blogging. The idea is that this will make their work more accessible quickly. Moreover, he argues that:

So government funding is being pumped into a system that is based on an interpretive community of academics competing for the article with the largest number of footnotes and most sophisticated use of prose.

Why not reallocate that funding towards law academics reaching out to the world through effective blogging? Blogs can be easily found through a simple Google search (unlike many Australian law reviews, which are still only available in hard copy via the library, and American law reviews, many of which are accessible only viaWestlaw or Lexis), making them a handy source of research for students,practitioners and other academics.

Of course, why stop with law academics, why not anyone in the social sciences including economics?

Let me put this succintly: I couldn’t agree with this less. There are real problems associated with blogging. First, it takes time. Second, not that many people read them. Third, academic journal articles are peer reviewed and that leads to a significant improvement in quality. A blog entry has no similar check. Finally, if its accessibility we want, then governments should make the libraries and authored work more accessible. For instance, versions of papers should be posted online so they can be indexed by Google Scholar.

It would be a mistake to blindly mandate or otherwise incentivise blogging; an activity without peer checking. Not even in teaching are academics really afforded that luxury.

Boing boing reports on a device that will tell a person if they are boring.

The “emotional social intelligence prosthetic device” is a camera that clips on eyeglasses and feeds images to a small computer that uses image recognition software to characterize emotions. If the listener doesn’t seem to be engaged, the device vibrates to alert the wearer.

I suspect I might have been shaken to death by marginal revenue this week. This surely is in the category “you don’t want to find out this way.”

My MBA class just had their Mid-Term test. One question (click here) was based on the blog entry, “Oh Honestly!” (posted 14th February, 2006). It was the only entry where someone asked: “will this be on the exam?” I answered “yes” about 10 days ago after I had written the test. I can’t guarantee I will always do that but thanks to the anonymous student in provoking me to think of a test question.