First off, sorry for no posting the last couple of weeks.\u00a0 Travel and work-related things have kept me well occupied.\u00a0 New posts are in the works.<\/p>\n
Second, for those who follow this blog’s occasional posts on the chymistry historiography, have a look at The Economist’s write-up<\/a> of Lawrence Principe’s presentation at the AAAS meeting.\u00a0 Also, a cbsnews.com Tech Talk post<\/a> about the Economist write-up links to EWP<\/a> for more information on current professional thought on the issue.\u00a0 The spotlight, it blinds me!\u00a0 (I got 60-70 hits off of it, which for EWP constitutes a flood.)<\/p>\n On this note, I’ve started to worry a little bit about the fact that there are certain topics where you can just put up a reasonably well-informed post about something, and suddenly you become an authority.\u00a0 This issue comes up with my old Schaffer Oeuvre series<\/a> — which may one day return — wherein by virtue of simply talking about his work at all, people know me as the guy whose comments pop up when you search for information about his writings.\u00a0 I’ve received enough nice comments from people about that series that I guess I’ve gotten things right enough <\/em>that I’m not too worried about it, but I do wish people who are actually well-versed in 18th and 19th-century studies would displace by some means my hobby-like interest in the subject.<\/p>\n Finally, speaking of nice things being said, we had Paul Lucier in to speak with us a couple of days ago.\u00a0 I don’t receive a lot of feedback on how this blog is actually read and talked about, and by whom, so it was gratifying to hear from him that my post<\/a> on his terrific Isis <\/em>article<\/a> on men of science vs. professionals in 19th-century America succeeded in generating some extra interest in that work.<\/p>\n My concern is that there are people out there not speaking up who have good ideas about deleterious side-effects to blogging activity.\u00a0 Long story short, I think it’s time the profession as a whole started thinking quite seriously about how blogs ought to be used to talk about scholarship in a serious, responsible, and public, but short-form way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First off, sorry for no posting the last couple of weeks.\u00a0 Travel and work-related things have kept me well occupied.\u00a0 New posts are in the works. Second, for those who follow this blog’s occasional posts on the chymistry historiography, have a look at The Economist’s write-up of Lawrence Principe’s presentation at the AAAS meeting.\u00a0 Also,<\/p>\n