I feel a bit peculiar watching these “bloggingheads” episodes — it’s like sitting in on two people’s private conversation, and by the nature of the medium, you can’t even join in. And then the recent Althouse spectacle made me cringe — it was just too Jerry Springer, and I half-expected a tall bald bouncer to show up and make sure the trailer-trash harridan didn’t actually claw anyone’s eyes out.
The recent science episode with John Horgan and George Johnson makes me feel a little better about it, though; it’s more of a chatty and casual intellectual conversation. It’s still a bit limiting that no one else can join in, but I can appreciate that a thousand people chattering on a page would be much worse.
When I heard them, though, I knew their remarks about string theory would set off an informed but indignant response somewhere. What do you know, I was right!