These comments were sent to my colleagues in the Arts Faculty or to the university-wide email list called "Forums and debates".
"Crowd wisdom", February 2008: a comment on James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds.
"Evidence-based management", November 2007: a comment on Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I Sutton's book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management.
"Crossing the tracks for love", September 2007: a comment on Ruby K. Payne's book Crossing the Tracks for Love.
"Academic life as a text", August 2007: a comment on Donald E. Hall's book The Academic Self.
"How to become an expert", March 2007: a comment on K. Anders Ericsson et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.
"The value of optimism", January 2007: a comment on Suzanne Segerstrom's book Breaking Murphy's Law.
"Predicting happiness", October 2006: a comment on Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness.
"Understanding the life of students", September 2006: a comment on Rebekah Nathan's book My Freshman Year.
"Strengthening your mind", January 2006: a comment on Elkhonon Goldberg's book The Wisdom Paradox.
"Blink", January 2006: a comment on Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink.
"Malleable intelligence", November 2005: a comment on Carol S. Dweck's chapter "Beliefs that make smart people dumb".
"Cheating culture", August 2005: a comment on David Callahan's book The Cheating Culture.
"Learning about intuition", June 2004: a comment on David G. Myer's book Intuition.
"Changing your brain", May 2004: a comment on Robert Restak's book The New Brain.
"Random selection of leaders", October 2003: a comment on an article by S. Alexander Haslam et al.
"Weird ideas", February 2003: a comment on Robert I. Sutton's book Weird Ideas that Work.
"The enterprise university", June 2001: a comment on Simon Marginson and Mark Considine's book The Enterprise University.
"Learning lessons from academic disputes", March 2001: a comment on prominent Australian academic disputes.
"University of Wollongong: a distinctive university?", December 1996: a comment on ways the university might become distinctive rather than great.