Ive added several links to the list on the right,
so now if you want you can sit on this site and spend all day reading what I
read. Mostly these are politics and society blogs, though they each have
distinguishing characteristics.
Two of the new entries, Alas, A Blog and Long Story, Short Pier, are two
of the best written blogs Ive seen. Id have thought it was impossible to
write well for a blog because (a) all blog entries are first-drafts and (b) all
first-drafts are poorly written. I dont know which premise is falsified by
these blogs (perhaps one by each, perhaps), but at least one must be.
(And Alas,
A Blog has in the sidebar the Woody Allen quote that I half-intentionally
misquoted the other day, but without any citation for where I got it from. That
wasnt very good of me. Dobby has been very very bad. So let me also recommend Alas, A Blogs quote bar.)
Kieran
Healy and Brad
DeLong each run academic blogs, Kieran focussing on sociology and Brad on
economics. The presence of other academics as such in the blogworld makes me
feel less of an outlier for running this one. I do wish that more philosophers
would start blogging. Kierans a philosopher-in-law I suppose, but its not really
the same.
Calpundit
and Eschaton are more purely
political blogs, in each case with some sci-fi mixed in from times to times.
They each update several times a day, often with both fresh news and insightful
commentary (rare enough things in isolation, let alone combindation) so I spend
more time that I ought on their sites. Eschaton
is run by the mysterious Atrios, whose identity is known only to the select
few. My theory is that hes FDRs ghost – that would explain how he has so much
time and energy to devote to the blog, and it might shed new light on the Buffy
interest.
Virulent Memes is a fun Australian website that
mixes Australian music and cricket into its commentary. And this week its
cycling through new designs daily, which makes for a pleasant change from this
boring backdrop.
Of course, when the philosophy papers blog becomes
fully operational, when its incentive effects are effective, there will be so
much new philosophy posted on the web I wont have time to read anything other than
philosophical papers. That might not be for the best.
UPDATE: Oops, I already had Brad DeLong on the links
bar. So let me add one more, though youve probably all heard of this by now. Josh Marshall is the most famous
member of Brown University in the blogworld, and hes rapidly becoming one of
the premier political commentators in this country. One day soon hell turn in
his dissertation (hes a PhD student in history) and then by default this might
become the most famous Brown blog. One of the good things about being a
nominalist (or a promiscuous Platonist) is that you get to make up categories
that link you with people its good being linked with.