Our colleague, Sharon Howard, is at the heart of yet another new venture. She and Jonathan Edelstein at Head Heeb have just announced the launch of a new on-line symposium based on the Old Bailey Session Paper database. If you've not visited there, it's the largest on-line primary document source on the net, with the records of 100,000 criminal trials from 1674 to 1834.

Robert Novak, of all people, identifies a cause in which every respectable libertarian, conservative, liberal, and radical in the United States should be able to agree: Remove the name of J. Edgar Hoover from the F. B. I. Building in Washington, D. C. Thanks to Gene Healy at Liberty & Power for the tip.

Linus Kafka's"The Only Way to Win is Cheat," Historiblogography, 30 November, is a thoughtful follow-up to Oscar Chamberlain's"More on Colonel Westhusing" here at Cliopatria; and Oscar's"Wiki-Libel" provoked thoughtful discussions both at Kevin Drum's"Wikipedia" at Political Animal and Tim Burke's"A Different Take on Wikipedia" here at Cliopatria.

Scott Eric Kaufman,"My Morning: A Play in One Uncomfortable Act," Acephalous, 30 November. No description does it justice. I'm satisfied that it's done, from Penn to UC, Irvine, at least, but it does take some special cheek and balls to do it in the prof's office.

Hugo Schwyzer,"The Joys of Faculty Self-Evaluation," Inside Higher Ed, 30 November, tackles a peculiar form of self-torture.

Oscar Chamberlain - 12/2/2005

One of the pleasures in life is coming into unexpected agreement with people. This is one of those times.

Sharon Howard - 12/2/2005

The OBP symposium was entirely Jonathan's brainwave. He wrote about it to me and I've got involved with helping to publicise it and so on but that's all I can honestly take credit for.

Alan Allport - 12/2/2005

The University of Pennsylvania dropped all disciplinary charges against the student photographer this morning. Much discussion over at The Daily Pennsylvanian website: to my mind, the most apposite comment was made by 'Dave'. "It's not a good sign if significant press coverage defines the outcome of the disciplinary process. In fact, it's intellectually dishonest. The problem with Penn's code of conduct (and this is shared with most other schools) is that there are no real standards other than fuzzy general concepts. A rule of law that is so vague that one cannot accurately determine its meaning is not a law at all. It's an invitation to subjective interpretation and prosecution. Penn should not permit such a state of affairs to continue."

Ralph E. Luker - 12/2/2005

Duh! Thanks for the proof reading, Kevin. I'll make it in the text, so the whole world won't know what an idiot I am.

Kevin C. Murphy - 12/2/2005

Poor Herbert Hoover. His dismal Depression days already overshadow all his WWI humanitarian efforts and his tenure at Commerce, and now he's saddled with J. Edgar's dirty laundry to boot...