"'Blogs,' which is to say thoughts ... made available on the internet. "

Gordon Smith has fun reading some sentences, which is to say thoughts, written by the dean of the University of Chicago Law School. The dean, Saul Levmore, writes:

Our plan is to experiment with a faculty blog, perhaps by asking a different faculty member to post some thoughts for a one- or two-week period before turning over the lead to a colleague. This point-person would ensure that there is frequent new material on our Law School blog, but ideally other faculty members would regularly post as well, so that we might have a kind of public Roundtable.

Gordon asks:

If a University of Chicago Law School blog is a good idea, why doesn't it happen spontaneously? The costs of entry into blogging are very low, so experimentation is easy, and the faculty already includes a number of experienced bloggers.

It strikes me as weird to send out a letter to alumni saying the faculty is going to start a blog experiment. Since anyone, any minute, can start up a blog, it's not like planning a new law school building. Do the blog, and if it works our well, call attention to it. But saying hey, we're going to have a blog, is not just lame, it's risky.

And why capitalize "Roundtable"? That, in itself, bespeaks an unbloggish pomposity.

UPDATE: A commenter points out that the University of Chicago Law School has a journal called Roundtable and a long tradition of using the name Roundtable for various scholarly efforts.