HOW OTHERS SEE US. Joanne Jacobs gets off one candidate for quote of the week: "Gee, if knowledge is a function of power, then President Bush knows a lot more than the intellectuals." It's a survey of a number of exegeses of Mark Goldblatt's visit to the Modern Language Association convention (OK, mocking the lit-crits is just this side of taking baby's candy) where he discovers the implicit finger-quote and other devices. There's some serious commentary here and some commentary on the lighter side here (the bit about Mutually Assured Deconstruction is quite nice), and here.

Some time ago I wrote an essay for the Faculty Bulletin at this university in which I suggested that people who denied coherent beliefs of any kind ought prepare to enjoy incoherence. Apparently some still do. But you'd think that people who claim some familiarity with the works of Marx would not be so willing voluntarily to participate in the reserve army of the unemployed.