While guest-blogging, I came across this devastating criticism of two blogosphere heavyweights:

Am I the only person who occasionally wanders over to Crooked Timber or the Volokh Conspiracy and feels like he just cracked open Derrida's latest book?

Honestly, when I understand what these folks are talking about (which happens a majority of the time at both places, although more at Conspiracy than Timber), I really enjoy both sites, but occasionally, well, it feels like I'm not in the blogosphere anymore.

Ouch. Of course, what will frost members of both group blogs is not the accusation that their posts are too abstruse -- it's being accused of postmodernism.

From David Brooks' essay on the tendency to self-segregate in the latest Atlantic Monthly:

What we are looking at here is human nature. People want to be around others who are roughly like themselves. That's called community. It probably would be psychologically difficult for most Brown professors to share an office with someone who was pro-life, a member of the National Rifle Association, or an evangelical Christian. It's likely that hiring committees would subtly -- even unconsciously -- screen out any such people they encountered. Republicans and evangelical Christians have sensed that they are not welcome at places like Brown, so they don't even consider working there. In fact, any registered Republican who contemplates a career in academia these days is both a hero and a fool. (emphasis added)

I'm guessing that David will be telecommuting a lot at his new job.