Comments Defended
Angela Thomas argues that the risk of flame wars in academic blogs is slight, and so my concerns that comments pollute weblog discourse are unfounded.
Update: Torill, reading this, concludes that I have recanted and now want comments. Elin (knowing I'm too curmudgeonly to yield so easily) observes that I've misled Torill: 'There is no way Mark would put comments on his blog.' Elin further observes that, if either Torill or I had comments, the discrepancy would be easier to clear up. But in fact the discrepancy wasn't difficult to fix: Torill wrote her post a little past midnight in Norway, Elin noticed the discrepancy at 8am this morning in Cambridge, and I'm writing this about three hours later at Eastgate Headquarters.