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.

3quarksdaily

3quarksdaily is a blog, similar to Boing Boing and Fark, in which an editor (or a group of editors) trawls the Internet for interesting links, articles, etc. 3QD is different, though, in that its content is rather high-minded and interdisciplinary. As its masthead proclaims, the blog features articles related to science, arts, literature, politics, gossip, and philosophy. In my experience, the articles that the editors feature are usually complex and detailed--this is certainly not a place for mainstream media consumers. Some recent highlights (which were hard to select because I love most of what 3QD publishes): We Cannot Live By Skepticism Alone, Philosophy's Great Experiment, Is Time An Illusion?, and Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie. Goooood stuff.

3QD is my favorite blog, but I do have one complaint. Often, the titles the editors choose for their posts are not clear and/or descriptive, so I am forced to read much of the entry just to see what the related article is about. I already have enough trouble with RSS addiction; Now that 3QD's ambiguous headlines have joined my flow of articles, I've had to cut out some other--less amazing--subscriptions.

Daily Routines

Daily Routines is a blog that publishes descriptions of the daily routines of "writers, artists, and other interesting people."  The blog is user-driven--readers who stumble across a book excerpt or newspaper/magazine/online article detailing the routine of an interesting person submit the link to the blog's editors, who publish the routine--usually as an excerpt--and a link to the full article.  Updates are sporadic, but usually interesting.  Past routines include that of the novelist Haruki Murakami, the mathematician Paul Erdos, the poet Emily Dickinson, the writer Thomas Friedman, and President Barack Obama.  DR is absolutely one of my favorite blogs on the Internet.