"‘Lost' Manuscript Valued at £1m," BBC News, 9 February, reports that manuscript minutes, in the hand of Dr. Robert Hooke, of England's Royal Society from 1661-1682 have recently been discovered in Hampshire and will be put up at auction. Thanks to Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber for the tip.

Michael Kazin's"A Difficult Marriage: American Protestants and American Politics," Dissent, Winter 2006, lays out his"passionate ambivalence" about William Jennings Bryan.

Amir Tahiri,"Bonfire of the Pieties," Wall Street Journal, 8 February, clears away some of my own misconceptions; and Timothy Burke,"Habitus for Humanity," Easily Distracted, 9 February, is the kind of commentary on the Danish cartoons/mob violence that we've needed. [ed: In the spirit of The Weblog's Friday Confessions, I confess that I hate it that some people seem to think in coherent paragraphs. It's nice that they let me read them.]

Joan W. Scott of Princeton and Rutgers replies indignantly to Scott Jaschik's"Fiasco at AAUP," Inside Higher Ed, 9 February.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

A quibble: Joan Scott isn't at Princeton University, she's at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. They're physically proximate to one another, but separate and independent institutions.