A tribute to Kobe, the dog in FireDogLake.
posted by scalefree on Nov 26, 2009 - 22 comments

I like big bundts and I cannot lie! In honor of November 15th, National Bundt Day, the Food Librarian is bringing us 30 days of Bundt cakes. (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Nov 11, 2009 - 29 comments

Getting tired of fail, fail, and yet more fail? SUCCEED Blog chronicles that which is made of win. Leave your schadenfreude at the door. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack on Nov 6, 2009 - 55 comments

Death's Blog
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 11, 2009 - 44 comments

On August 16, 2008, a small plane carrying a young married couple and their flight instructor crashed in the Arizona desert. Doug Kinneard, the instructor, was killed in the crash; Stephanie and Christian Nielson survived, both severely burned. Prior to the crash, Stephanie's weblog, the NieNie Dialogues, "had attracted a small but ardent following, thanks to its upbeat dispatches about marriage, home décor, entertaining and the art of raising four children ages 6 and younger." After the crash, with burns on over 80% of her body, she spent two months in a medically induced coma. One month later, she was released from the hospital (link to Stephanie's sister's blog); one month after that, she began blogging again. Stephanie's posts since then have chronicled her gradual recovery, her re-integration into her family, her love and gratitude for her husband, and, finally, on the one-year anniversary of the plane crash, herself. [more inside]
posted by granted on Aug 16, 2009 - 61 comments

Cancer is hilarious. [more inside]
posted by digaman on Aug 13, 2009 - 39 comments

NYC Grid is a photo blog dedicated to exploring and discovering The City of New York block by block and corner by corner. Updated every weekday, each post covers a new block with a focus on the mundane and ephemeral. An optimistic snapshot of New York as it is now. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Aug 1, 2009 - 8 comments

“With t.o.night, you too can remember the good old days, when Mom, Dad, Junior, Little Suzy, and Skip would all sit around the radio and listen to blogs on the Internet.” The solution to the decline of newspapers? Launch a new one, charge nothing for it, fill it with wire copy and stories from a city blog, publish it weekday afternoons, and hire kids to wear “poor-boy caps” and shout “Extra! Extra!” while handing it out. [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Jul 30, 2009 - 8 comments

i dream of a world without you: death notices for the nonexistent. [more inside]
posted by Iridic on Jul 13, 2009 - 12 comments

A homeless man in DC has a wordpress blog which he posts images to using a remote camera. I saw this man in the DC metro yesterday, hauling a shopping cart around that not only contained his clothes, but was also festooned with cardboard signs advertising different web addresses. Wandoojin.wordpress.com was the only one I could make out, and though the fellow is clearly disturbed (though the site is not disturbing), to me it's a fascinating look at how accessible technology is to everyone, especially the folks who have too many words, images of Gremlins sitting on the US, and conspiracy theories involving Teddy Kennedy and the Clintons to keep to himself. Also, he's apparently made good use of the Apple store near my office. (I wonder if he knows the Arlington rap?)
posted by oneironaut on Jun 18, 2009 - 45 comments

Appetite for China - a food blog whose motto is "1.3 billion people must be eating something right". Today: Dried Fugu and Durian Pudding
posted by Joe Beese on May 16, 2009 - 29 comments

The Most Expensive Journal blogs about $4,200 computer keyboards, $2.7 million guitars, and $11 million watches.
posted by Joe Beese on May 2, 2009 - 44 comments

It is apparent to me that Faith does have a brain, despite what the doctors have said. Even though it is generally believed that anencephalic babies are blind, deaf, and cannot feel touch or think... I don't believe that. Not at all. So little is known about the human brain and the only one who really knows what's going on is God. I truly believe that Faith can think and can feel my touch and hear my voice. I can't prove it but I feel like I just know. [images may be disturbing]
posted by Joe Beese on Apr 21, 2009 - 253 comments

The Huffington Post just announced that it is launching a new initiative to produce a wide range of investigative journalism — The Huffington Post Investigative Fund. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Mar 30, 2009 - 27 comments

The OMB has a blog (feed) -- Peter Orszag started one at CBO (still going under Douglas Elmendorf née Bob Sunshine) and carried blogging over to the White House. The Atlanta Fed has one too (not to be confused with Macro Man). David Altig unofficially began it as an economist at the Cleveland Fed and then, when he became research director in Atlanta, made it official (altho still hosted on TypePad). Are there any other (federal/state/local/non-US) worthwhile government blogs (wikis sure) out there from our shiny new iPod gov't? cf. DoD live (check out the other service blogs, e.g.)/air force live & USAgov on twitter
posted by kliuless on Feb 28, 2009 - 5 comments

That Voodoo That Scientists Do. "When findings are debated online, as with a yet to be released paper (PDF) that calls out the field of social neuroscience, who wins?"
posted by homunculus on Feb 27, 2009 - 53 comments

Oh those vaunted "first 100 days," they are finally upon us. Roosevelt's legendary time period has long been applied to new administrations, but never so emphatically or with such hope as to the Obama administration. And now you can follow them! For commentary, there's The First 100 Days, for mainstream media there's Obama's First 100 Days, for a comparison between old and new there 100 Days: Starting the Job, From FDR to Obama, for new media there's Obama's First 100 Days, and finally, for a government perspective there's First 100 Days. I smell an idea for an ironic t-shirt...
posted by Cochise on Jan 22, 2009 - 13 comments

In yet another strange marriage of media new and old, The Printed Blog launches next week. The paper will be distributed in Chicago (home of the once-great, now-bankrupt Chigago Tribune) and San Francisco, and it’s free. “Why hasn’t anyone tried to take the best content and bring it offline,” asks founder Josh Karp. What about people who don’t live in Chicago or SF? They can get the PDF … online.
posted by janet lynn on Jan 22, 2009 - 30 comments

Your favorite music blog sucks.

Rock/Psych/Prog/Indie/Folk
ChrisGoesRock
Prog Not Frog
Like Dynamite to your Brain
YoungMossTongue
Glamorous Indie Rock'n'Roll
FANTASY
SONZEIRANANET
A L A I N F I N K I E L K R A U T R O C K
Orexis Of Death
[more inside]
posted by swift on Jan 19, 2009 - 55 comments

How to blog, or counter-blog, for the US Air force, in handy flow chart form.
posted by Artw on Jan 6, 2009 - 40 comments

2008 Cliopatria Awards announced. These awards are given for the best History Blogs. Winners this year include: The Edge of the American West (best group blog), Wynken de Worde (best new blog), and Northwest History ( best individual blog) by mefi's own LarryC. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Jan 5, 2009 - 7 comments

Toons at War [more inside]
posted by anastasiav on Dec 9, 2008 - 5 comments

The Neglected Books Page
posted by anastasiav on Dec 5, 2008 - 13 comments

The WSJ Photo Journal - The Boston Globe's Big Picture has company. [previously]
posted by kliuless on Nov 13, 2008 - 9 comments

Jocelyn Testes-Harder is a no-nonsense woman
posted by iffley on Nov 13, 2008 - 94 comments

Shifting the Debate. Track the movement across the blogosphere of the top 100 political videos on YouTube with this amazing Flash applet.
posted by scalefree on Oct 27, 2008 - 8 comments

Waggish would be one of the choicest blogs around if he updated more, but I suppose I can settle for what there is. If you've never read it, you'll know how good it is when I tell you about a few of the coolest posts: an inquest on "left-brained" literature, a short review of John Williams' Stoner, an appreciation of the great Shohei Imamura and three part coverage of the ultimate film, Béla Tarr's Sátántangó.
posted by colinmarshall on Oct 19, 2008 - 23 comments

Brutal or Amazing? - this is just one of many fine posts on the Photo Africa Blog, an excellent source of in-the-wild animal and nature photos and reports from bush field guides. Also see: Madikwe Lions.
posted by madamjujujive on Oct 4, 2008 - 20 comments

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about. First reported by an anonymous tip to a blog, the Los Angeles Times has confirmed that David Foster Wallace has hung himself.
posted by gerryblog on Sep 13, 2008 - 483 comments

Fear and Loathing in Denver, Colorado - August 24-28, 2008.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 29, 2008 - 56 comments

Are nuns keeping up with the times and are they having fun? From blogs to running, to the arts and union disputes, nuns are busy. Even a beauty contest is being planned. But, the old ways persist. [more inside]
posted by Xurando on Aug 25, 2008 - 42 comments

What to Expect When You're Aborting: I'm 23. I'm knocked up. And I don't want to keep it. You can fuck yourself, Judd Apatow.
posted by Rumple on Aug 22, 2008 - 189 comments

Torre's Stories. As part of their ever-expanding blog empire, Major League Baseball has invited Joe Torre to take up the noble habit of blogging. He joins the likes of Kevin Slowey, Bengie Molina, and Mark DeRosa as guys who apparently have time to blog between games. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on Aug 21, 2008 - 19 comments

Tired of getting busted for illegally peeing* in New York City? Try Diaroogle.com, a toilet search engine that "helps you find quality public toilets from your mobile phone." [more inside]
posted by dhammond on Aug 6, 2008 - 40 comments

Orson Scott Card on gay marriage, which he says "marks the end of democracy in America". Not everyone is too happy about that.
posted by Artw on Jul 29, 2008 - 284 comments

The Fallacy of Examples, and the problems of extrapolating from media. [Via RConversation]
posted by homunculus on Jul 7, 2008 - 5 comments

Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Jun 5, 2008 - 4 comments

The Big Picture The Boston Globe launches a new blog focusing on a large single image from the day's news. It's kind of surprising how rare it is to see a really big photo on newspaper sites these days and this blog makes the simple concept work. [via mefi projects]
posted by mathowie on Jun 2, 2008 - 45 comments

British Literature Blogs is the brainchild of six British literary bloggers. Each working hard at bringing readers to forgotten or overlooked books, our BritLitBloggers decided that combining their latest blog entries together in one place would highlight the breadth and depth of British literary blogging.
posted by Fizz on Jun 2, 2008 - 2 comments

When your research subjects notice you watching.... The fine folks over at Little Green Footballs discovered "a pile of results and code" from an observation of their on-line discourse on a server at Carnegie Mellon. That led to a heated thread of sometimes paranoid speculation that eventually calmed down (somewhat) when the researcher's academic advisors posted a good-natured mea-culpa (wea-culpa?) and explanation.
posted by mmahaffie on May 18, 2008 - 92 comments

A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out. Woeser (previously mentioned here) is a Tibetan writer and poet living under house arrest in Beijing, from where she blogs about the recent unrest in Tibet (there are English translations of her posts at China Digital Times). Last year she was awarded the Norwegian Authors Union Freedom of Expression Prize, but she was not allowed to travel to Oslo to collect the prize.
posted by homunculus on May 6, 2008 - 15 comments

• "Please don't beat me. I'm having my period." ~ Mama Wangari
• "It is being both black and gay [which is problematic]." ~ Zanele Muholi (Nehanda Nyakasikana) [NSFW]
• "Sisters at heart, these women are: from Kibera to Loresho." ~ WM
• "My vagina wants an Uzi" ~ Larissa Klazinga (Amanda Atwood)
• "You are from Kenya? So are you Kikuyu or Luo?" ~ Wangui

Those big, wonderful book blogs like Paper Cuts, Guardian Books, and Poetry Foundation haven't totally satisfied your book blog bloodlust? [more inside]
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches on Apr 16, 2008 - 14 comments

The Confederacy of Dunces. The Village Voice's comprehensive election-season guide to right-wing political bloggers, by Roy Edroso of alicublog.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Apr 15, 2008 - 54 comments

Checkout: Where all lanes are open. NYT article article on Walmart's new blog written by their buyers with uncensored commentary on Walmart products. "After heeding the lessons of Wal-Mart’s earlier blogs and consulting with several well-known bloggers from sites like the Huffington Post, the buyers decided the site would succeed only if they wrote in their own voice, free from censorship and corporate review." [more inside]
posted by Xurando on Mar 3, 2008 - 55 comments

Create your own Pollock [Friday Flash Fun] and some decent art -related content , utilties and blogs as well on ArtReview.com
posted by psmealey on Feb 22, 2008 - 33 comments

Encephalon: Briefing the Next US President on 24 Neuroscience and Psychology Issues. Encephalon, the neuroscience blog carnival has returned after a brief hiatus and is being hosted at Sharp Brains. [Via Mind Hacks, which will host the next edition.]
posted by homunculus on Feb 19, 2008 - 9 comments

"Blogs", by Sarah Boxer in The New York Review of Books. An essay concerning books about blogs. Boxer, former New York Times reporter and critic, is author of the forthcoming Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web (NPR interview), an anthology of the best of blogs.
posted by stbalbach on Jan 25, 2008 - 26 comments

Chicago Center for Literature and Photography has some excellent book and film reviews, written by author and artist Jason Pettus. He mostly reviews contemporary fiction but has a few classics like The House of the Seven Gables, which is part of a two-year project to read 100 "classics" to see if they are really classic or not.
posted by stbalbach on Jan 18, 2008 - 15 comments

As Iraqis See It. "About a year ago, McClatchy Newspapers set up a blog exclusively for contributions from its Iraqi staff. 'Inside Iraq,' it's called, and several times a week the Iraqi staff members post on it about their experiences and impressions. 'It's an opportunity for Iraqis to talk directly to an American audience,' says Leila Fadel, the current bureau chief. As such, the blog fills a major gap in the coverage." Previously discussed here. [Via disinformation.]
posted by homunculus on Jan 15, 2008 - 10 comments