Reading materials (link dump)
Now, unrelatedly, here is an account of my blogroll. It is not entirely composed of blogs proper -- just things that are like blogs in that they update frequently and I read their RSS feeds on my Google homepage.
Webcomics:
PhD Comics. I remembered seeing certain of these printed out and posted on refrigerators in the labs/buildings at Stanford where I've worked. It's a painfully hilarious account of grad student life, set at Stanford. Since I'm not a grad student, I can't say if it's accurate, but I can definitely say it's poignant.
xkcd is quite possibly the geekiest webcomic I've ever run across. *snerk*
Questionable Content is one of the few consistently funny social-drama/slice-of-life comics I've encountered.
Perry Bible Fellowship is so, so sick and wrong and hilarious. (I have no idea why it's called that; it's not a fundamentalist Christian site at all.)
For all four of those, I highly recommend making time to read the archives.
Nonscience blogs:
Improbable Research -- well, okay, this is a science blog, but it doesn't deal with one particular area of science, nor is it serious, so it goes in this category. These are the people behind the Ig Nobel awards and the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.
The Volokh Conspiracy is, I understand, a high-quality law blog. I don't read nearly every entry (there are a lot of them!); I pick and choose. A lot of it refers to significant cases I've never heard of, and because law is not my field, I choose not to take the time to snarf all the background information. But it's excellent writing, and it has a good reputation from people who know anything about law (not me). I just enjoy the non-arcane material.
Manolo's Shoe Blog: yeah, it's a fashion blog, but I don't read it for the fashion. I like the guy's affected syntax and infectious enthusiasm for shoes.
Stuff On My Cat...enh, it gets repetitive, but some of the pics are pretty damn funny.
Hanzi Smatter just takes apart people who get Chinese/Japanese character tattoos that say silly things, or are done wrong, or etc.
Neurocog blogs:
Cognitive Daily. Very interesting, good reliable frequent updates, and some really neat audience-participation things.
Retrospectacle. Written by a cochlea-studying grad student but covering a hell of a lot more than that.
Neurophilosophy. A bit higher-level than the others.
Developing Intelligence. They just did a cool series on prospective memory.
Also, I just subscribed to MindHacks, BrainBlog, The Corpus Callosum, and The Thinking Meat Project, so I can't give informed comment yet. But they all look particularly good; they're culled from an extensive list of neurocog blogs that Neurophilosophy just linked to.
Linguistics blogs:
Language Log seems to be THE preeminent lx blog. I can't say, cause I just started reading it. But I like their take on the 'Scriptivist war.
Babel's Dawn: good stuff on evolution and speech origins.
Semantic Compositions is another that I haven't been reading for very long. The guy just got back from an epic battle with the flu, so opinion is pending, but I like what I've seen.
Linguistic Life...huh, yet another that I've not been reading very long. Well, actually, this one's been on my homepage for quite some time, just hasn't updated very much.
Other science blogs:
Pharyngula is about evolution, development, and merciless ripping into creationists and IDiots. Whee!
Primordial Blog doesn't update at the fever pace that Pharyngula does, but every post is a gem.
Tetrapod Zoology goes really in-depth and over my head. The guy seriously knows what he's talking about.
Uncertain Principles is, I think, the only physics blog of the bunch. Good stuff.
Whoops, Cosmic Variance is also a physics blog. I don't read this one that often, but what I read is excellent.
Evolgen and EvolutionBlog update infrequently, but the posts are worth the wait.
The Official Scientific American RSS Feed usually has good stuff. It doesn't suffer from the dumbed-down malaise that afflicts the print edition.
And here are some random funny links:
The Etiology and Treatment of Childhood. In the same vein, The Onion comments on Youthful Tendency Disorder.
You know the joke where different scientists have to prove that all odds are prime? Linguists tackle it here. (Here are some more canonical versions.)
The Geologic and Paleontologic Cook Book looks like a whole lot of fun (and, @saizai: presenting lots of WTF possibilities).
Also, here is a (non-rigorous but interesting) article on 'reactance', framed as "why do men ignore nagging wives" but sounding awfully familiar from the "why do I automatically want to NOT do what my mom tells me to, just cause I'm a teenager" point of view.
Webcomics:
PhD Comics. I remembered seeing certain of these printed out and posted on refrigerators in the labs/buildings at Stanford where I've worked. It's a painfully hilarious account of grad student life, set at Stanford. Since I'm not a grad student, I can't say if it's accurate, but I can definitely say it's poignant.
xkcd is quite possibly the geekiest webcomic I've ever run across. *snerk*
Questionable Content is one of the few consistently funny social-drama/slice-of-life comics I've encountered.
Perry Bible Fellowship is so, so sick and wrong and hilarious. (I have no idea why it's called that; it's not a fundamentalist Christian site at all.)
For all four of those, I highly recommend making time to read the archives.
Nonscience blogs:
Improbable Research -- well, okay, this is a science blog, but it doesn't deal with one particular area of science, nor is it serious, so it goes in this category. These are the people behind the Ig Nobel awards and the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.
The Volokh Conspiracy is, I understand, a high-quality law blog. I don't read nearly every entry (there are a lot of them!); I pick and choose. A lot of it refers to significant cases I've never heard of, and because law is not my field, I choose not to take the time to snarf all the background information. But it's excellent writing, and it has a good reputation from people who know anything about law (not me). I just enjoy the non-arcane material.
Manolo's Shoe Blog: yeah, it's a fashion blog, but I don't read it for the fashion. I like the guy's affected syntax and infectious enthusiasm for shoes.
Stuff On My Cat...enh, it gets repetitive, but some of the pics are pretty damn funny.
Hanzi Smatter just takes apart people who get Chinese/Japanese character tattoos that say silly things, or are done wrong, or etc.
Neurocog blogs:
Cognitive Daily. Very interesting, good reliable frequent updates, and some really neat audience-participation things.
Retrospectacle. Written by a cochlea-studying grad student but covering a hell of a lot more than that.
Neurophilosophy. A bit higher-level than the others.
Developing Intelligence. They just did a cool series on prospective memory.
Also, I just subscribed to MindHacks, BrainBlog, The Corpus Callosum, and The Thinking Meat Project, so I can't give informed comment yet. But they all look particularly good; they're culled from an extensive list of neurocog blogs that Neurophilosophy just linked to.
Linguistics blogs:
Language Log seems to be THE preeminent lx blog. I can't say, cause I just started reading it. But I like their take on the 'Scriptivist war.
Babel's Dawn: good stuff on evolution and speech origins.
Semantic Compositions is another that I haven't been reading for very long. The guy just got back from an epic battle with the flu, so opinion is pending, but I like what I've seen.
Linguistic Life...huh, yet another that I've not been reading very long. Well, actually, this one's been on my homepage for quite some time, just hasn't updated very much.
Other science blogs:
Pharyngula is about evolution, development, and merciless ripping into creationists and IDiots. Whee!
Primordial Blog doesn't update at the fever pace that Pharyngula does, but every post is a gem.
Tetrapod Zoology goes really in-depth and over my head. The guy seriously knows what he's talking about.
Uncertain Principles is, I think, the only physics blog of the bunch. Good stuff.
Whoops, Cosmic Variance is also a physics blog. I don't read this one that often, but what I read is excellent.
Evolgen and EvolutionBlog update infrequently, but the posts are worth the wait.
The Official Scientific American RSS Feed usually has good stuff. It doesn't suffer from the dumbed-down malaise that afflicts the print edition.
And here are some random funny links:
The Etiology and Treatment of Childhood. In the same vein, The Onion comments on Youthful Tendency Disorder.
You know the joke where different scientists have to prove that all odds are prime? Linguists tackle it here. (Here are some more canonical versions.)
The Geologic and Paleontologic Cook Book looks like a whole lot of fun (and, @saizai: presenting lots of WTF possibilities).
Also, here is a (non-rigorous but interesting) article on 'reactance', framed as "why do men ignore nagging wives" but sounding awfully familiar from the "why do I automatically want to NOT do what my mom tells me to, just cause I'm a teenager" point of view.