The Meridian's (not quite) Mid-week Miscellany #2

The new semester has begun and so I must prepare to meet it. Thus, posting will probably be light(er than usual) until that gets done and I actually begin setting these classes into motion. In the meantime, I thought I'd offer you some links to various outposts in the blogosphere that I've recently stumbled across and that you might like to visit:

Lovers of the art of centuries-old illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts will love BibliOdyssey. This site won the Cliopatria award for best new history blog. The template is plain because the show is the images.

3 Quarks Daily is the place to go if you're curious about a great many things and have LOTS of reading time on your hands. This "filter blog" links to long articles on such topics as whether laughter predates humor, biological insights yielded by the study of deer antlers, contemporary architecture, whether there is a "beauty instinct" in the same way that, as Steven Pinker argues, there is a "language instinct" . . . you get the idea. Go there.

This one isn't a new find, but he's worthy of your attention anyway. If there is a smarter, more thoughtful, "big picture" political blogger than Mark Schmitt, I have yet to find him/her.

Ross Douthat runs The American Scene, a right-leaning blog about politics and culture. Douthat calls himself a theocon, but let's just say he doesn't fit that stereotype. To rewrite a bit a line from A River Runs Through It, Douthat is a theocon who can read.

Some new (to me) bloggers you should know about:

Camille at 327 Market blogs about art and living in the Bay Area and other stuff. Careful prose, engaging photos.

A colleague of mine, "Dejavaboom," has just opened Musement Park for your reading pleasure. It's new; he hasn't installed many rides yet. He and I are colleagues, but his blog is worthy of your visits anyway.

And finally, 3 bloggers who work the typical blogosphere terrain but who work it smartly, thus making it yield something more nutritious than do others:
Epiphatic Exhaustion
Nobody Asked . . .
and
Infinite Regression.

Enjoy. I'll be back in a few days.