My friend P.J. Doland informs me that I managed to make the short list of suggested blogs for a class on “Information in Cyberspace” at the University of Texas. I have no idea if anyone in the class actually selected this as their blog to follow, though if you did, you got to see the breaking of the Lott/Rosh story and its percolation into mainstream publications and TV, which ought to give you ample material for ruminations on the blurring of the boundaries between “real media” and amateur websites and all that yadda yadda yadda.

If that’s not enough, though you’d damn well better be able to milk an A out of the reflections on the participatory nature of blogging, and the erosion of the author/reader distinction occasioned by this post. All the while, you thought you were the observer — the dispassionate analyst studying a text… and now you find yourself a character in it. As Heisenberg taught us, all acts of observation are themselves part of the system they observe, and influence its behavior. When you gaze into the blog, the blog gazes also into you.

So, if you’re out there, send me the paper. I’ll then post a blog entry following your following of me for the past four to five weeks, and answer such questions as: Who is the intended audience of this paper? How well has the author gauged the intent and motivations of the blogger? What do you think motivates the professor who assigned it? Do you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with the author? Why?

Added incentive: if I have time, I’ll proofread it for you.