Jeff Weintraub

Norm profiles an interesting guy. Here are some of the bits that jumped out and grabbed me by the throat:

"Why do you blog? > I sometimes like to think that, at its best, the blogosphere is the closest equivalent we have to the old eighteenth century Republic of Letters. (Whether this is an optimistic or a pessimistic observation is another matter.) It's a way of carrying on extended conversations and debates in an age when few of us write the kinds of letters, pamphlets or polemical essays they used to write so fluently in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries."

"Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > When people mention some fashionable terms or ideas in the course of making an argument, such as 'orientalism' or 'rational choice' or 'essentialism', I confess that I sometimes have to make an effort not to simply shut off further consideration and just dismiss the rest of what they're saying. I try to remind myself that not all arguments which include these catch-phrases are necessarily absurd or fraudulent, and some may even be worth taking seriously."

Fancy mentioning Christopher Hitchens and Juan Cole as favourite blogs!