Fish compared himself to a comic figure named Morris Zapp, who always gets to put in the last word on any given academic subject. Check it out in his much-discussed Opinionator column. This guy also dishes on the fashionableness of blogs, characteristically seizing the occasion to explore theology, life's inevitable transience, and the state of letters in general. Can't leave well enough alone, apparently.

Ah, the Sokal Affair. A physicist named Alan Sokal stirred up a hornet's nest when he submitted a fake article ("Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity") to the journal Social Text, all in to the name of mocking post-modernism. It got really ugly, so naturally, Stanley Fish weighed in.

Stanley Fish thinks that spoiling a story actually makes it better. Agree or disagree? Either way: check it out.

This public intellectual wrote a defense of Sarah Palin. That's right. He always keeps people on their toes, and in this piece, he does do not disappoint. His thoughts? So-called experts and reviewers are more cloying than Sarah Palin herself.