Category Archives: Blogs

From Michael Bérubé comes this urgent plea:

FrontPage.com, the website run by the Person Who Shall Not Be Designated By His First Initial and a Drastic Truncation of His Surname, is conducting an online poll to determine the very worst professor in America.  You may recall that I was outraged, outraged that He Who Shall Not Be Designated had not ranked his “101 or 100 or 102 Most Dangerous Professors” in the order of the danger they pose to the Republic; but now, friends, you and I have a unique opportunity to redress a grave wrong.  Please vote for me as America’s Worst Professor, if you have the time and inclination.  Right now I’m leading Eve Sedgwick by the slimmest of margins, and as you know, I have no Diebold apparatus to fall back upon.  But don’t worry about ballot-stuffing!  This is FrontPage.com, people—a website whose unofficial (and yet universally acknowledged) motto is “Sloppiness R Us.” There are no limits, no limits at all, on the number of votes you can cast from one IP address.  So stop by FrontPage today, and vote for me as America’s Worst Professor.  I thank you, and all that is good and holy thanks you.

Incidentally, if you missed this Bérubé post on indoctrination of college students in contemporary higher education, well, you have a treat in store.

Ann Bartow has set up a blog for Feminist Law Professors which sports an impressive list of participants. One more for the blogroll & newsreader

Update: A link in case you are looking for the Feminist Law Proffessors Blog News Feed.

David Friedman’s Ideas blog will strike some as law, economics and libertarianism run wild, but I think he’s doing what academics are supposed to do: thinking, and making us think too.

Note also this piece of self-description,

I am an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field.

Angry Bear, that most excellent economist, sums up a bloggish debate that apparently broke out while I wasn’t looking. Seems that there’s otherwise sensible people out there who argue that there’s little if any point in bloggish wonkery at this moment in US history because no one in power cares about facts anyway.

A better argument for the “no facts please, we’re American” point of view might have commented on the need to break through the right-wing financial and ideological dominance of mass media (and I don’t just mean Fox, I mean a New York Times that thinks it is 1944 and FDR is President).

But even the strongest form of that argument is wrong. Angry Bear goes to the trouble of working up wordy justifications for, well, justifications, and does the usual nice job. But I’m afraid my view on this is quite simple, some may even say simplistic:

The truth may not always set you free, but there is no real freedom without truth.

Academics, wonky bloggers, muckrakers, we all play our small parts in the Experiment that is democracy.

So, how’s the experiment going this year?

From CultureCat | Rhetoric and Feminism:

3. What are some of the best female-written blogs in
your opinion? The best liberal blogger? The best conservative blogger?
The best in keeping everyone guessing?

Best female-written blogs:
One Good Thing: http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/
Girl Genius: http://girlgenius.typepad.com/girlgeniuscom/
Badgerings: http://badbadbadger.blogspot.com/

Best liberal bloggers:
Pharyngula: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog
Bitch Ph.D.: http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/
Body and Soul: http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/
Norbizness: http://norbizness.com/
Feministe: http://feministe.us/blog/

blackfeminism.org: http://blackfeminism.org/
Hullaballoo (Digby): http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
John & Belle: http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/

Also creative endeavors like:
The Rude Pundit: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Wealth Bondage: http://thehappytutor.com/ (“fetish action figures”)

Best conservative bloggers:
Ann Althouse: http://althouse.blogspot.com
Ilyka Damen (now defunct): http://ilyka.mu.nu
(and though they’re more libertarian/fiscal conservative)
Crescat Sententia: http://www.crescatsententia.org/
Marginal Revolution: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

The Robert of Robert’s Stochastic thoughts and I are just about exactly the same age. And like him, I find the use of the phrase “begs the question” to mean anything far from “avoiding grappling with the issue” to clang horribly. (Robert would have it be something like making a lousy argument, thus leaving the question un-answered, which works for me too).

Just mentioning.