Education

A Brief Guide to Blogodemia

by

Rushkoff Blog

Douglas Rushkoff, NYU

Impossibly hip NYU prof (he doubles as the keyboardist in the latest incarnation of Psychic TV!) and Frontline media personality Rushkoff sounds off on George W. Bush, cybercultural trends, culture jamming, the Renaissance, and scores of other unlikely topics.

Sivacracy.net

Siva Vaidhyanathan et al., NYU

NYU culture and communication studies prof and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs. Thanks to a team of contributors, there are often several posts within a day, most notably from Ann Bartow of the University of South Carolina Law School.

Instapundit

Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee Law School

According to blog monitoring service

technorati.com, Instapundit is the second most popular blog on the Net, ranked by the number of sites that link to it. As of this writing, there are a staggering 14,748 hyperlinks out there to Instapundit. How does he do it? Well, one strategy to get as many hits as he does is to be prolific-Instapundit often has dozens of posts in a single day, so that readers keep clicking back for more.

Daniel Drezner, University of Chicago

University of Chicago’s Drezner bills his blog as “politics, economics, globalization, academia, pop culture . . . all from an untenured perspective.” Politics blogosphere-wise, he’s one of the heaviest hitters.

Lawrence Lessig

Stanford law prof and Wired columnist Lessig is an expert in the area of Internet law; he runs one of the most incisive and well-designed law and politics blogs around. His 1999 book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace has recently found new life online as a wiki; Internet users worldwide can collaborate with and update the text of the book.

Crooked Timber

Big group blog with 12 academics on staff.

The Volokh Conspiracy

Big oft-cited politics group blog.

K-Punk

Top in cultural studies, media studies, philosophy.

Wayne Marshall, University of Madison-Wisconsin

Ethnomusicology blog

Worlds of Possibility

Jon Dale, University of Adelaide

Cultural studies, music

Josh Blog

Josh Kortbein, University of Minnesota

Philosophy blog

Preposterous Universe

Sean Carroll, University of Chicago
Chicago physicist Carroll runs this top science blog. Recent posts deal with dark energy and the acceleration of the universe.

Noam Chomsky, MIT

Wily MIT linguist and fierce foreign-policy critic Chomsky has a blog. Well, not exactly. According to the bio, “the content of this blog is drawn largely from his Znet Sustainer Forum where he answers queries.” But still, close enough. Recent posts deal with El Salvador, Iraq, Vietnam, Israel, Serbia, and Palestine. Regardless of whether or not you agree with him (there are multiple anti-Chomsky blogs), his writing is as sharp as ever. The comment boxes can get pretty rowdy—they include everything from personal recollections to fiery political analysis to Pablo Neruda’s poetry.

Highlights