Blogging for a New (Academic) Year

Today’s post looks back to the last year or two of blogging and forward to the next year. In the past, my blog posts have often been linked closely to my classes, for example reporting on or continuing a discussion initiated in class. In the 2010-11 academic year I am on research leave, so will have no classes to stimulate postings nor a group of students who eagerly look forward (at least I can imagine they do) to what I write.

My main focus in September will be on a proposal to SSHRC for funding to do a book about narratives about private sector management, using the same approach as the book I’m completing about narratives about public sector management. Grant proposals have tight deadlines and demand intense focus, so I may go offline for a while.

After completing the grant application, I will go back to finishing the book on narratives about public sector management. So the process of writing may serve as the basis of some postings.

I may weigh in on some public policy issues as they arise. This past summer the census long-form controversy kept demanding my attention. That story is not ended, and I expect to continue writing about it. The long-form census controversy led to my post about the Globe and Mail’s Neil Reynolds, which quite a few people told my they noticed – and agreed with. The Globe and Mail has not immediately accepted my recommendation of putting the 70 year old columnist out to pasture, but maybe they will. I notice that in a recent column Reynolds used the phrase peer-reviewed research, so maybe he read my post, and has decided to be more careful in how he refers to the articles he quotes.

Finally, I should mention a big technical problem I had to deal with during the summer. My website got spammed and some malware was insinuating onto it, and I was receiving somewhere on the order of 40 comments every day that were simply links to websites in Russia or the Ukraine selling Viagra or Cialis at bargain basement prices. With the help of web consultant Wes Bos (www.wesbos.com) the malware has been eliminated and the spamming has stopped. He had to take the site down and repost it and, along the way, some content was lost. So some posts have shortened titles and others just a word or two. Right now I don’t have the time to repost it all, but in the future I may do some reposting.

For those who, like Jews and academics – I’m both — think of September as a time of new beginnings, I’d like to wish all a happy and healthy new year.