Once upon a time I could be counted on to say something like “the comment thread is often the most important part of a blog post.” When you have an intelligent community of good-faith readers and commenters, the initial post need not be fully baked and comprehensive – it can instead be treated as a conversation-starter, a jumping-off point for
Read moreMy friend Evans Mehew (the man who, several years ago, introduced me to this brand newfangled thing called “blogging”) has launched a site called Guerillassance (as in guerilla + renaissance). Evans is a very smart guy and lately he’s been thinking a lot about our addiction to things, to stuff, and more generally, what the hell has happened to the
Read moreIn Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell posits what we might call the 10,000-Hour Theory – that is, to become exceptional at something, you have to dedicate 10,000 hours to it. Whether you’re an aspiring concert violinist, a hockey player, a business analyst, whatever, it takes the equivalent of three hours a day, every day, for more than nine years to separate yourself
Read moreA few weeks ago I asked a question: is the Huffington Post a force for good or a liberal sweatshop? In the wake of HuffPo‘s megamillion-dollar sale to AOL, it struck me as appropriate to question the ethics behind an allegedly progressive business operating in a fashion that was indistinguishable from the greedmongering corporate entities it professed to oppose. I
Read moreWe all have our favorite stops around the ‘sphere. One of the oldest and best progressive voices out there is Jeff Tiedrich’s Smirking Chimp, and while we don’t normally do this sort of thing, I’m asking everybody to pop over there today and, if you can, contribute to their fund drive. They’re talking a heavy beating financially, as are a
Read moreSome time back I mentioned that a group of us dirty hippie libruls have started a sports talk blog (because we love sports as much as we hate your freedom). Now, the same cast of ne’er-do-wells has launched an actual political site called, simply enough, Dirty Hippies (democracy, unwashed). Several of us here at S&R are members, and the site
Read moreOn several occasions we have pointed you toward the Poem for Tuesday feature at The Agonist. That weekly must-read is presented by Bruce Jacobs, who’s a fantastic poet in his own right. He’s our Poet of the Day at the Samuel Smith Poetry community on Facebook, and I thought I’d take a moment to point S&R lit lovers to his
Read moreThere are several ways of evaluating a blog’s place in the food chain. The one we’ve always paid the most attention to is Technorati, a search and ranking site that indexes well over 850,000 blogs. If you’re interested in learning more about how Technorati operates, you can review this overview at DollarShower.com. Anyway, as of this morning, Scholars & Rogues
Read moreOne of our original scrogue colleagues has passed away. Martin Bosworth, who helped us found Scholars & Rogues in April of 2007, was a central member of our community for our first year. He wrote frequently and energetically about progressive political issues of all sorts, and had a particular expertise in Internet policy issues. His death is a significant loss
Read moreEver since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in
Read moreI just thought inquiring minds might want to know.
Read moreI recently offered up an open letter to America’s progressive billionaires where I noted how much better conservatives have been historically at making best use of their intellectuals and at assuring that those laying the foundation for political action were taken care of. That is, the Daniel Bells of the world didn’t have to slave at two jobs to scrape
Read moreEarly today hackers launched an attack against the SoapBlox network, wreaking havoc with a significant number of progressive blogs (including Pam’s House Blend, My Left Wing and several state-focused sites). At one point it looked as though the whole network may have been trashed, although at this point it seems that some sites (like our friends at Square State) were
Read moreToday is the last day of voting! Please vote for us. Also, a climate-denying blog is presently leading for “best Science blog” when its content is hardly scientific. Please go here and vote for Pharyngula. It’s true. Scholars & Rogues has been nominated (again) for a 2008 Weblog Award in the Midsize Blog category. We’re not sure who nominated us
Read moreIt has been alleged that Scholars & Rogues is not, strictly speaking, a political blog. Sure, we write about overtly political issues and devote our share of time to things like media policy, energy and the environment, business and the economy, and international dynamics. Yes, we were credentialed to cover the DNC, but we don’t really do hard, insider, by
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lullaby pit 