I am sitting in a friend’s apartment, a couple Negronis to the wind, in rejuvenation mode after my colloquium this afternoon at Brandeis (convincing the locals that the universe is accelerating, but that we don’t know why — not a hard sell, really). So I’m in no condition to comment on the mild kerfluffle that has broken out, ironically immediately after the announcement of 411blog, in response to Matthew Yglesias’ lament that there aren’t enough expert bloggers. But I was glad to see my honor (and, incidentally, the honor of some other people) defended by PZ Myers and other bloggy luminaries.
However, given my druthers, I’d prefer to have Fafblog exhort people to send me money. Flattery is nice, but it doesn’t pay the mortgage.
(Honestly, there’s a pretty basic fact here — by percentage, most people in the world are not experts. They’re not especially good writers, either. This is one of the first things you realize, I thought everyone knew, when you rambled around the internet — there’s a very good reason why magazines have editors, rather than just being first-come-first-published. The worthwhile stuff is there, but you do have to look for it a little.)