I got a lot of great suggestions from readers when I asked which blogs I should be reading. I’m conflicted: on one hand, blogs bring a lot of great new ideas to my attention, and they have created an amazing and heretofore unparalleled Republic of Letters. My blog reading was probably pretty thin by the standards of the internet; I don’t read a lot of blogs because there are thousands of worthy blogs out there but only so much time in the day and many also-worthy-but-unread books and journals on my shelves. I’m overdue for an update, and I’ll probably update again next month by culling my feeds old and new. The next month or so will be an experiment in updating my information intake.
For now, here’s who I’m following via RSS or Twitter (I just added the suggestions from my earlier post):
1. EconLog. Duh.
2. XKCD. In my humble opinion, it’s the funniest comic strip in existence. And I grew up on “Bloom County,” “Calvin and Hobbes,” and “Dilbert.”
3. The Big Questions (Steven Landsburg). Landsburg is one of my favorite thinkers.
4. Marginal Revolution. The blog of record in economics. And cuisine. And Mexican amate painting.
5. Overcoming Bias. Robin Hanson drops the science, both natural and social, in a never-ending quest to become more rational.
5a. Less Wrong. I include this with Overcoming Bias because Less Wrong offers a very detailed look at rationalism and (wait for it) how we can overcome bias.
6. Bleeding Heart Libertarians. This is an interesting project. Some classical liberals think it’s great; others question the attempt to build a case for liberty on the grounds of modern high liberalism.
7. Classical liberals like David Friedman, for example. David Friedman is a model of clarity and creativity.
8. A Fine Theorem. Summaries of papers. I subscribed but haven’t really started reading yet.
9. Jason Womack. My favorite thinker on workplace performance. We’re collaborating on a few projects together. Over the next year or two or ten I’m going to blog my way through my favorite books on workplace performance for Kosmos Online. I’m starting with Jason’s book, and I’ll definitely announce when the first post is available.
9a. Jon Acuff. Author of Stuff Christians Like and another motivator.
9b. Restart GTD. For my perpetual attempt to maintain workflow.
10. Travel Blogs: View from the Wing, Heels First Travel, and Frugal Travel Guy. One of the things I love about my job is that I get to travel (forthcoming posts about recent trips to exotic locales like Stockholm, Sweden and Atlanta, Georgia). I’ve been dabbling with rewards program optimization, and these blogs have helped.
11. “Church” Blogs. Ardent Church (where we attend), Ardent Worship (posts from our worship pastor), The Veritas Forum, and the BioLogos Foundation. I just resubscribed to Bare Knuckle Bible, which is the blog of Columbus, Ohio-area pastor John Myer. I grew up in Columbus, but I didn’t meet John until I was in grad school in Saint Louis. He was on hiatus for a while, but now he’s back.
12. Mike Ray, Living Paleo. Mike is a friend from college who is blogging “an inconsistent record of our attempt to live long enough to make it to the singularity.”
On the subject of church and fitness, I now have a StickK-like pact with my pastor where we have agreed to meet certain daily fitness goals (exercise and diet), or we have to give money to questionable causes. In short, I’m back on this horse after lashing myself to the mast with incentives.
13. Kids Prefer Cheese (which I usually get from Mike Munger’s Twitter Feed). Mike Munger and Kevin Grier with an intellectually disciplined-but-irreverent take on…everything.
READER COMMENTS
Grieve Chelwa
Jun 3 2013 at 2:45pm
Art,
You should also add Open Borders to your list. The site is dedicated to making the case, morally and empirically, for open borders.
Aidan
Jun 3 2013 at 4:11pm
Do you read anyone with a different worldview than you?
Andrew
Jun 3 2013 at 5:27pm
Art,
You should add Bob Murphy’s Free Advice blog to your RSS feed. He is excellent on all economics issues, plus he is one of the most persuasive Christian thinkers you will find.
PrometheeFeu
Jun 4 2013 at 1:45pm
How can you not have the Volokh Conspiracy there?
Politics Debunked
Jun 4 2013 at 2:31pm
re: “XKCD.. it’s the funniest comic strip in existence”
On that lighter side, I just recently discovered this comic which e.g. had one about central bankers and a super-villain convention:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2936#comic
and somewhat relevant to the issue of central planning vs. distributed invention in the market (trumped by another factor..) regarding whether “great people” or “the masses” are the most important drive of history:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2947#comic
Obviously in addition to independent blogs like the ones you mention (where you might consider scattered ones from related intellectual worlds like libertarian legal theory from the Volokh law professor’s blog, or perhaps business/entrepreneur ones) there are of course various libertarian news sources and think tanks like from Reason, Independent.org, etc, most think tanks and news sources have them.
Bill Meade
Jun 16 2013 at 6:47pm
Art,
I read this link because it is pointing into my blog http://restartgtd.com and noticed that Restart GTD was 4 entries below bleeding hear libertarians.
FYI, I grew up in an Austrian econ household (my dad knew Von Mises, Sennholz, Rogge, etc. and when I read THE PASSION OF AYN RAND my Dad knew 13 of the people thanked in the acknowledgments) so I’m kind a bleeding heart libertarian. 🙂
Get GTD organized, change the world whether it wants it or not!
bill meade
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