While the Doc's Away

I'll be at a conference until Monday, trapped in a giant hotel in Philly with 7,000 political scientists. Jealous? So blogging will be sporadic. But no reason yours should be. Explore the links to the right. Experiment with posting pictures, if you've not done so already (but consider copyright laws, of course). See if you can teach yourself how to embed a streaming video link -- the Help pages on Blogger are pretty good. Read your colleagues' entries and post your comments, and your comments to others' comments. Or just think about our readings and class discussions, survey news coverage from various purveyors of information, and post your succinct but penetrating analyses. As you are no doubt discovering, writing good, polished short essays is not necessarily quick or easy -- as Mark Twain reportedly once commented: "I'm sorry to have written you such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a short one." Or, as a former teacher once told me, in what is perhaps the best advice about writing I've ever received: "Think a lot, write a little." And remember, play nice. The Doctor sees all.