I blog because the medium is like no other. You can write quickly, but you cannot be as telegraphic or fragmentary as you can in notes to yourself. That forces ideas out. You can be trenchant or unsure; you may not yet know how the current fragment will fit in your final manuscript. But you can still write, and you can receive interesting comments from people you don't know or wouldn't meet.

Blogging, said one of my students, may be one of the last available venues for free speech. I like reading blogs. I find it inspiring to discover how very many people are reading and writing to the void. I like catching their words and images as they fall.

Professor Zero, writing on July 10. I should also say that I was a member of “that audience” in front of whom the Prof. outed herself as a blogger. Hadn’t realised we were such a select company.