Intellectual Property Law

5 Favorite Non-Law Blogs

By Tim Armstrong, Derek Bambauer, and William McGeveran.

I often find these chain-letter memes annoying, but this one is on such a valuable topic I am happy to participate: Mike Madison tags me to name five favorite non-legal blogs. It’s hard to pick just five, and some of my favorites are so obscure that I won’t subject you to them. But here goes:

The Fix: I am an extreme political junkie and I have a giant folder of links to related blogs. But Chris Cillizzas’s thoughtful analysis is the best general-interest national political blog. This time of year I visit several times daily. (Here locally there is a rich collection of independent, meaning non-MSM, political blogs, including MNPublius, Minnesota Campaign Report, and the usually wrong but often interesting Minnesota Democrats Exposed.)

My Heart’s in Accra: Ethan Zuckerman, the co-founder of Global Voices Online (another great blog) and a fellow at the Berkman Center, writes lovely prose about computers and the internet, the developing world and particularly Africa, life in the Berkshire Mountains, and the links between them all.

The Current Music Blog: One of the great things about the Twin Cities is the very high quality of public radio here. Minnesota Public Radio boasts three excellent stations here, including an especially good news station, a classical music outlet, and The Current, an eclectic mix of popular contemporary music, leaning mostly toward “alternative rock” but also extending to jazz, hip hop, folk, and some unclassifiable stuff. It’s all selected by the DJs rather than corporate executives at Clear Channel. And they have figured out, more than most radio stations, how to integrate their audio content with online content, as this blog demonstrates. (You can also click to listen at the top of the page even if you are not privileged enough to live in Minnesota…)

New York Observer Daily: As a displaced New Yorker I regularly used to read the Observer’s snarky coverage of the city’s political, media, fashion, and publishing worlds long before there were blogs. I still subscribe, but blog-sized tidbits often make an even better forum for this sort of news. Plus, not coincidentally, my brother Tom is an editor there.

Unit Structures: At the moment I am writing about social networking in general and Facebook in particular, so I rely on a number of blogs that focus on aspects of this complex subculture, including Allfacebook, Inside Facebook, Terra Nova, and Apophenia. But I am highlighting this blog by Fred Stutzman for its thoughtful analysis, readable and concise posts, and just-right combination of explaining context for newcomers without boring veterans. I strive for that in my blogging, and sometimes succeed, but Fred does better.

(Check out some other lists of 5 in this meme from Frank Pasquale, Mike Madison, and Ann Bartow.)

I am now supposed to tag five other legal bloggers to further broaden our horizons past the law. I’ll start with my co-bloggers here, Derek Bambauer and Tim Armstrong. Then how about Jim Chen, Christine Hurt, and Susan Scafidi?

By the way, this is the 400th post on Info/Law, quite a milestone for something that started as a lark. Thanks for reading, for your patience when real life makes posting too infrequent, and for your thoughtful comments. I hope you enjoy some of these selections to use even more of your time reading other interesting blogs.

Full post as published by Info/Law on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).