Overheard in the corridor. One professor to another, "Your handwriting is indecipherable."
Reply: "Why not? It's not as though our words make any difference."

And near the copy machine:

"I don't think the populace as a group has a very high intelligence. As individuals, yes, but as a group, very low indeed."

Perhaps because we lack the practices -- group and individual practices -- that allow a group to learn from experience, to deliberate, to choose to act? In that light, blogs, as a collection of social practices, give us reason to hope and to begin to lose hope. [0 & P]