Blogs I've been enjoying but haven't linked to previously. In alphabetical order:
Apophenia is Danah Boyd's blog about subjects that interest her, particularly in her academic field: youth culture and social media. A June 2007 post, "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace," and her subsequent response to critiques of that essay, stirred up a huge online controversy. For something a little lighter, check out "LOLCat Bible = Infinite Entertainment."
Ben and Alice--he's a computer programmer, she's a PhD candidate in English at Columbia--call themselves "two nerds" with "five opinions." Fortunately, all of those opinions are interesting and well articulated. I especially enjoyed Ben's posts on the pros and cons of circumcision and on "ten better names for NBA teams" (Phoenix Ashes? Hollywood Agents?).
Just when I was beginning to think no one besides me gets annoyed about Elizabeth hooking up (again!) with that dork Anthony in "For Better or For Worse," I discovered The Comics Curmudgeon. Not comix, not manga: comics. In the daily paper. With your cornflakes. My local daily no longer carries a lot of the oldies, so I go to CC to get my "Apartment 3G" and "Mary Worth" fix and to read sage commentary like this (about--in case you had any doubt--"Rex Morgan, M.D."). After you link, scroll down:
That final panel isn’t artsy visual narrative, or a metaphor for Rex’s dual nature, or anything like that. It’s actually offering us a look into Rex Morgan’s head, wherein lies … another, slightly smaller, Rex Morgan head. And what’s inside that Rex Morgan head? You’ve got it: yet another Rex Morgan head. It’s like those damn nesting Russian dolls, only with Rex Morgan heads.
I can't figure out who writes Descriptively Adequate--I'll go out on a limb and guess that it's a linguist--but I love the title and am wild for this analysis of the "whomever" scene in last week's episode of "The Office." (Update: Benjamin Zimmer, at Language Log, clues me in that Descriptively Adequate is written by Ed Cormany.)
Sometimes I just can't wait for the next issue of the New Yorker to read Hendrik Hertzberg. So I'm very glad he also writes a blog about all the stuff that ticks him off: Bush, the neocons, the Supreme Court, etc.
The Party of the First Part is Adam Freedman's spirited attack on legalese like "witnesseth" and "rest, residue, and remainder." Freedman also gives credit where it's due, as when a U.S. district judge rendered a decision written in the verse style of "Green Eggs and Ham."
Now that the New York Times has made all its content searchable and free, there's no reason not to read Paul Krugman every day, instead of just the two days a week he appears in the paper. He's on book tour right now, promoting Conscience of a Liberal (which is also the name of his blog), but he's still finding time to post at least a couple times a day. Good stuff on politics, economics, hell, and handbaskets.
Swiss Miss is the nom de blog of Tina Roth Eisenberg, a Swiss designer now living and working in New York, and her blog is a "visual archive of things that 'make me look.'" Like these window stickers in the shape of Boeings, Cessnas, and other aircraft; and this amazing bookshelf system.
Tenser, Said the Tensor is the blog of a nameless grad student in linguistics who's also into comics, sci-fi, "and other geekery." His (her?) language posts are quite wonderful, like this meditation on "toward" vs. "towards" and this post, "A Tale of Two Geddies," about how and why bass player Gary Lee Weinrib became Geddy Lee and the actor Gary Watanabe became Gedde Watanabe.
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