I'm thinking of paring my RSS feeds down again, as I'm feeling a little overextended at the moment, and could stand to spend less time reading stuff on the Internet. This brings up the obvious question of which blogs to keep, and which blogs to jettison, and that, in turn, lends itself to a reader poll type post.
The concept of "Desert Island Books/Albums" is well known in pop culture-- what are the books/ records/ whatever that you would want for entertainment purposes if you were stranded on a desert island. Of course, the idea of "Desert Island Blogs" makes much less sense-- "What sites on a global communications network would you want to access from a desert island?" is kind of a silly question-- but that's the basic idea. So,
Imagine that some evil global conspiracy has kidnapped you, and are holding you in a remote island fortress. To maintain your sanity, they agree to allow you to follow the RSS feeds of a half dozen blogs. Obviously, this blog is one. What are the other five?
These could be science blogs, gadget blogs, political blogs, cute-cat-picture blogs-- whatever you like. What five sites do you find absolutely indispensable?
Leave your answers in the comments, but DO NOT INCLUDE LINKS. If you try to put five links in a comment, it will be held for moderation by the spam filters. Just leave the blog name and/or author name-- we can use Google to find the actual sites.
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Glenn Greenwald
Firedoglake
Pharyngula
DailyKos
Digby (Hullabaloo)
You know, it seems to me that this poll is going to do the opposite of what you want. Your readers will be telling you about MORE blogs to read.
The origin is Desert Island Discs, on BBC Radio 4. The idea that this is pop culture is rather quaint.
Now I guess I have to answer (I would do it on my own blog, as a blog meme but I'm here because I'm prevaricating whilst writing up Mike Dunford's Earth day Meme).
Just for added fun, I'll deliberately ignore any Sber (or ex-Sber), or NNer. There are too many good blogs on both platforms. That should save my arse!
So, my 5:
1. Masks of Eris, by Masksoferis: should be much better known. A Finnish maths student writes about "humor, bright and shiny things, and maybe mathematics". A very dry Finnish sense of humour, and a rather strange imagination.
2. My First Dictionary by Ross Horsley: A librarian with a twisted sense of humour. He changes the text on a set of rather odd "my first dictionary" pictures. Text like (for noise): "Our band makes noise. We make loud sounds. When we are very noise, we can hardly hear our parents fighting".
3. Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre: I think everybody's heard of this one: Ben puts the boot into pseudo-science, and the press which reports it. Very good book too, even if it doesn't have any anthropomorphic discussions.
4. Pigeon Blog, by Brian Pigeon: "The online diary of a London pigeon". Sounds odd, but it works. The voice makes it.
5. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: mainly by Andrew Gelman: this is a work thing. Andrew is well known in Bayesian communities, and this is a good blog for reading about his latest thinking. He also now sometimes blogs at 538.com.
Of course, the one blog everybody should read is Deep Thoughts and Silliness. It's even had squirrels!
A few of these are probably already on Chad's list.
1. Slacktivist - fascinating commentary on the intersection of popular culture and evangelical Christianity.
2. Reality Based Community - smart people blogging about public policy topics.
3. Confessions of a Community College Dean - I'm an admin at a career college. Dean Dad is one of my heroes.
4. Charlie Stross's Diary - I'm torn between wanting him to post more often or get published more.
5. More Words, Deeper Hole - For my SF fandom and planetary science news. Also cat stories.
Sadly, Websnark is on a prolonged hiatus.
Ahh... I remember reading about desert island books in a Ralph Milne Farley story from about the 1920's so I would say the idea is a little older than the BBC. And he was a pulp writer so that would be pop back then ...
Anyway, for me I use combinations like Science Blogs last 24 hours and such so I don't know about individuals. So removing things like science blogs.
-Podium Cafe (Pro Cycling fan)
-A Quantum Diaries Survivor.
-Second on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science the Andrew Gelman Stats Blog from above.
-Godels Lost Letter and P=NP by RJ Lipton
-Kos or something generic I guess since you are saying only these 5 things on the internet. So I want something with a lot of stuff.
Aggregators like MeFi and BoingBoing have a lot of good stuff, and would be my best bet for entertaining material, but I suspect that's not what you want.
I won't list any science blogs, because they're so subject-specific, and this crowd will cover them quite well anyway.
1. Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Matt Yglesias
3. Comics Curmudgeon (joshreads .com)
4. Wil Wheaton
5. John Scalzi (Whatever)
1. Sadly, No! - They're suffering from an embarassment of riches just now, what with the Republicans harboring so many wackos, but still a great source of dark laughs, and snark.
2. Achewood - Sick humor and social deconstruction, as veiwed thru the life and loves of a bunch of cats (how can you not love a cat named "Roast Beef"?
3. MetArt - Sure, it's porn, but it's of a generally high quality. It's wank material that you wouldn't be embarassed to have discovered on your computer.
4. Bats left, throws right - You've heard about brilliant progressive writers, and how they are lighting up the internet, but you have a hard time finding them? Read this blog. Riley's current work is endlessly entertaining, but for a real treat, dig into the extensive online archive. Warning: David Brooks fans need not apply.
5. Talking Points Memo/The Washington Monthly - Yah, I know thats 2 blogs, but I couldn't choose. Either one will keep you up to speed on the goings-on in our illustrious capital.
I'm gonna second cisko's mention of Wil Wheaton's blog. I wasn't hugely impressed with his acting work, but the guy is a hell of a writer, and his site is always worth reading.
Did I mention my blog? Never mind, it kinda sucks....
1. Sadly, No! - They're suffering from an embarassment of riches just now, what with the Republicans harboring so many wackos, but still a great source of dark laughs, and snark.
2. Achewood - Sick humor and social deconstruction, as veiwed thru the life and loves of a bunch of cats (how can you not love a cat named "Roast Beef"?
3. MetArt - Sure, it's porn, but it's of a generally high quality. It's wank material that you wouldn't be embarassed to have discovered on your computer.
4. Bats left, throws right - You've heard about brilliant progressive writers, and how they are lighting up the internet, but you have a hard time finding them? Read this blog. Riley's current work is endlessly entertaining, but for a real treat, dig into the extensive online archive. Warning: David Brooks fans need not apply.
5. Talking Points Memo/The Washington Monthly - Yah, I know thats 2 blogs, but I couldn't choose. Either one will keep you up to speed on the goings-on in our illustrious capital.
I'm gonna second cisko's mention of Wil Wheaton's blog. I wasn't hugely impressed with his acting work, but the guy is a hell of a writer, and his site is always worth reading.
Did I mention my blog? Never mind, it kinda sucks....
1. Matt Yglesias
2. ThinkProgress
3. Cosma Shalizi [Three-Toed Sloth] (doesn't post often, but is usually fascinating when he does)
4. Crooked Timber
5. Edge of the American West
At least one other would make the list if commenting were possible, but not if just an RSS feed is available.
1.) Ezra Klein - I prefer him to Yglesias these days. And I'm kind of a health policy nut.
2.) Edge of the American West - As long as SEK cross-posts everything from Acephalous.
3.) Statistical Modeling... (Andrew Gelman)
4.) Eunomia (Daniel Larison)
5.) Either Crooked Timber or The American Scene
PZ, of course.
Since it's all about preserving sanity, Julie Zickefoose.
Must have Orac, at Respectful Insolence.
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
Greg Laden's Blog
Oh, and I forgot RealClimate. Hmm. Maybe I don't need ThinkProgress if I have Yglesias.
Let's see now...
Pharyngula
Making Light
Bad Astronomy
Talking Points Memo
Whatever (Scalzi's blog)
Assuming I'm not allowed aggregation or news sites that have RSS feeds (e.g. BoingBoing, Politico, ArsTechnica):
1) In The Pipline; Derek Lowe's pharmaceutical chemistry.
2) fivethirtyeight; Nate Silver's politics + statistics.
3) kottke.org; Jason Kottke's aggregation excerpts.
4) The Sports Guy; Bill Simmons from ESPN Page 2.
5) McSweeney's; Dave Eggers' Internet Tendency.
Hmm. Based on recent frequency, probably:
Making Light
Crooked Timber
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Whatever
Slacktivist.
It's hard for single-author blogs to compete -- perhaps for the purposes of this exercise we could persuade Cosma Shalizi and Scott Aaronson to combine, or have Bad Science join with Headsup.
Exclusivity does seem to go against the spirit of blog reading, though.
Without normalizing number of blogs to posting frequency, the number 5 loses much of its meaning. That could be anything from 3 to 150 posts per week.
That said, I recommend:
Mike Brown's Planets
Systemic
Armscontrolwonk
Green Gabbro
Other People's Emergencies (on indefinite hiatus)
These are generally low frequency, but there's nothing wrong with radio.
Are you able to click through and post comments? If so, my priorities would change - temporarily I would not be interested in US politics or in science. Instead, I'd be interested in rescue, and survival until rescue. I would use FriendFeed and use the community there to help me geo-locate myself, figure out how to overpower the captors, and how to get off the island (or get a rescue mission come and get me).
If not, some righwingnut survivalists blogs, medicinal ethnobotany blogs, hunting/fishing blogs and cooking blogs may be useful. I can go back to Ezra Klein once I am comfortably back in the USA.
badastronomy
gonintendo
respectful insolence
slacktivist (finally, enough time to read all of the Left Behind commentary ^_^)
wildaboutmath (gives me a biweekly dose of Monday Math Madness)