a sign of things getting out of hand..

Princeton was a great experience, a small luncheon with an unusually distinguished group of academics and former diplomats in attendance.  Since it was a closed event I won't write about the talk or the discussion (other than that I quite enjoyed it).  But I can say that the single moment which most floored me was when Michael Cook, the distinguished historian of Islam and author of the magisterial Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (condensed and affordable version here), introduced me not only as the author of Voices of the New Arab Public and associate professor at Williams College, but also as the blogger Abu Aardvark.  And Bernard Lewis nodded along.   This blogging thing really might be getting out of hand....

Comments

[Leila]

Yep, I knew it ya Ustaz. Remember I've been telling you about the whole Nancy Ajram goof and your meme about the pretty Al Jazeera anchor (and you've been listening!). This blog is the big time. If you're smart, you have a backup of your archive somewhere besides Typepad, and you have a grad student printing out hard copies of your oeuvre. Seriously.

As for my own humble efforts - my journalism teacher at Mills College, who is a working journalist with an impressive resume, told me to include my blog on my own resume. She said that things like the Reuters "Mideast Voices" feed are creditable items for the curriculum vitae. Last year she wasn't quite sure what a blog IS.

There may be a backlash of course, and we'll have to return to blogging underground, in secret.

[aardvark]

Man, that has never even occurred to me. A hard copy printout of the whole blog? Or even storing it on my own server... definitely a good idea. But actually doing it? Daunting...

[Yohan]

But actually doing it? Daunting...

That's what unpaid aardvark interns are for!

[d]

Blogger has some sort of feature that allows its users to print out bound "gift copies" of their blogs and -- I'm not kidding here -- sell them to your friends and readers. In most cases, I can't imagine anything less interesting. Here, though, that's not a problem. Not to be soo unctuous, but I actually assigned a couple recent Aardvark posts in my US-Middle East course, so there's obviously something to say in favor of including certain blogs on CVs and resumes.