I certainly appreciate the kind introduction by Chris, and the invitation from him and David to join L&P as a regular member. As I said when I guest-blogged earlier this summer, I consider myself to be in august company.

It’s interesting that this blog is hosted by “History News Network,” yet as far as I can tell, at least 10 of the L&P bloggers are non-historians. Including me: I’m a philosophy professor. (While we’re doing numbers, six of the other bloggers are people I’ve met personally (ten counting the contributing editors list), four are people I’ve corresponded with or spoken to on the phone, but never F2F, and the rest I’ve never met, but in most cases have read their work somewhere other than L&P.) As Chris implies, I’m from NYC, but now I live in Massachusetts, teaching at Bridgewater State. I do political philosophy, moral philosophy, phil of law, and then there’s the popular culture writings. So, I’ll mostly be blogging on those areas, but might occasionally have something to say about other fields, if I know anything about them.

Couple confusing things – 1, my first name is pronounced as “Ian.” 2, tenure and promotion are separate here, so while I’ve just been granted tenure, I won’t be promoted to associate til the spring (assuming I get promoted, of course).

During most of vacation, I had no internet access (the horror!), and I see to my great dismay that I missed some fascinating threads on libertarianism and foreign policy/war both here and at Volokh. Curses! It would be overly obsessive to go back over the archives of the last 6 weeks and chime in late, so I won’t. But next time! While I was disconnected, though, I finally had a chance to read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and it’s as good as I had heard.

Anyway, happy to be here. Next, I attempt to do some work.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Wait. I thought your name was pronounced EE-on. Of course, that could be as wrong as the people who think mine is pronounced EER-fon.

Aeon J. Skoble - 8/12/2004

No, some Hungarian friends of mine say it that way, but the correct pronunciation is as the English Ian. But yes, I freely admit that you surely have it worse than I in the name-mangling department. :-)