Don't you think that the whole "tenure track", "up or out" thing has a lot to do with it as well? The academic job search is quite brutal.
(Even further off-topic: my old university has decided that each group can have at most one professor, and that this job will be re-awarded every five years. It's too early to see the effects, but...)
I think that you might be on to something. There are some disciplines that are much less competitive for jobs/tenure (like accounting). From the outside at least, it sure seems like there is a lot less internal politicking going on.
I don't think so - it's attributed to various academics, most famously Henry Kissinger; why would they talk about student politics? (That said, I didn't manage to find an authoritative source for the quote.)
It's a challenge for any site that focuses on the Scobles of the world as their early users. What happens when it they want to change the vibe to make it more broadly appealing?
It's certainly not fatal. Twitter navigated through it a couple of years ago, when a lot of the old-timers (including Scoble) talked about how it had lost its appeal and FriendFeed was the wave of the future. It'll be interesting to see what Quora does.
EDIT: although I do think Robert's right: Quora isn't a very good platform for blogging.
