UN Dispatch

In trying to appease my interest in international relations, I try to follow news out of the United Nations as much as possible.  But instead of reading vague wire stories and boring reports, I keep up with the UN by following UN Dispatch, a blog funded by the UN Foundation.  UND writers offer their thoughts on UN-related news/actions and, in doing so, provide me with a place to get both UN news and UN commentary.  The blog features a powerful search engine, archives dating back to 2005, regular features, and a long list of tags to use to sort the archive's stories.  Some recent highlights:  the antics of Evo Morales, Ban's visit to Washington, and more arguing over the ICC.

Arts & Letters Daily

Arts & Letters Daily is a news and commentary aggregator owned by The Chronicle of Higher Education.  ALD's editors trawl the Internet for links related to the ALD theme, which is pretty broad.  The masthead describes the site's breadth: "philosophy, aesthetics, literature, language, ideas, criticism, culture, history, music, art, trends, breakthroughs, disputes, gossip."  It's pretty wide, and it's right up my alley (and very similar that of 3QuarksDaily).  I love this stuff, and I spend an inappropriate amount of time reading a lot of it. 

Which is why I'm up this late cramming out Assemblage posts.

FP Passport

In endeavoring to further expand upon the number of different topics that can totally consume my thinking for days on end, I subscribed to FP Passport about six months ago.  The blog is published by the editors of Foreign Policy Magazine, a bi-monthly publication that proclaims itself to be "the premier, award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas."  FPM's stated mission is "to explain how the world works—in particular, how the process of globalization is reshaping nations, institutions, cultures, and, more fundamentally, our daily lives."

The FP Passport, then, is a part of the FP website, which itself is more than just an online archive of print articles.  While the full website features unprinted long-form articles and academic papers, the FP Passport blog acts as a clearinghouse for all things foreign policy, an eclectic mix the editors describe as "our arguments hashed out at the coffee machine, insights on the news, story tips buried on our desks, things we hear from our friends abroad, and interesting links that circulated through our inboxes."  Some recent highlights:  breaking news, insider information, gossip, and, one of my favorite segments, What We're Reading, which, of course, leads me to spending even more time reading about foreign policy.  Also of note: my contribution to FP.  Note the attribution in the nut graph (back story here).  And yes, I actually do monitor the Getty image wire, because I am a huge nerd.