Erratic personality

Scott Aaronson on that moment we're all dreading:

A phone conversation last night, with someone I’ll call Prof. X from University Y, was typical. Prof. X started by explaining that, while the whole “blog” phenomenon had passed by him personally, some questions had come up during a hiring committee meeting with the more junior faculty — and, to get straight to the point, was it true that I wrote one of these “blogs” myself?

Yes, I said.

And was it true that this “blog” was known, in large part, for a debate about “battling vaginas”?

Biting vaginas, I corrected him.

And was it also true that I made frequent pronouncements about C*-algebras, modern art, and even string theory and loop quantum gravity, despite knowing next to nothing about any of these things?

Yes, I said.

And was it also true that, in the past few days, I’d spent much of my time defending the General Theory of Relativity against someone who calls himself “assman”?

Yes, I said.

Prof. X said he hoped I’d understand that, as far as he was concerned, I could write whatever I damn well pleased, but that, in an age of increasing sensitivities, and particularly in the wake of the well-known Luboš Motl debacle at Harvard, concerns had naturally arisen over whether a department could afford to gamble on someone with an “erratic personality.”