Some things to read and ponder for the weekend, all dealing with matters pertaining to expertise, accessibility, and public accountability.

Wired's article on the Long Bets Foundation, an organization set up "to raise the quality of our collective foresight by incorporating money and accountability into the process of debate." Plenty of people are willing to play prophet and make predictions about our future. But as Richard Posner and others have complained of late, few are ever held accountable for how they use the limelight. Long Bets is looking to change that by creating a space where grandiose claims can be challenged the good old-fashioned way--via wager--and then publicly tracked over time. Winner takes all, and we all learn over the time which predictions, and what styles of predicting, don't come true.

Jay Tolson's Wilson Quarterly article, "Wittgenstein's Curse". Don't let the metaphysical-sounding title throw you. This is a great piece on academic obscurantism. It's especially good on how the structure of academic professionalization contributes mightily to the proliferation of awful writing.

If you like the Tolson, check out the rest of the online essays from The Wilson Quarterly's special issue on "The Making of the Public Mind." Louis Menand's "Unidisciplined" is particularly fine on the disappearance of academic disciplines that is happening under the (false) rubric of interdisciplinarity.