Arguments

Democracy: A Journal of Ideas has a new blog, Arguments, that you should bookmark.

Daulerio in GQ

I love Deadspin. But AJ Daulerio doesn't seem like the most likable fellow. I do love that he has co-opted Buzz Bissinger, however.

Simmons Takes a Few (Deserved) Shots

At Slate's blog Scocca two guys with whom I must admit I was unfamiliar until today, Tom Scocca and Josh Levin, obliterate The Sportsguy's Finals Preview column at ESPN.com.

538 to NYT

Huge news on the political blogging front. FiveThirtyEight -- simply the best data-driven politics site anywhere -- is being folded in to the New York Times, though it will retain its editorial autonomy.

Picturing Civil Rights

The New York Times' "Lens Blog" has a fabulous slide-show (and accompanying story) from the Civil Rights Movement.

Gipperwatch

RoJo, of Armitage Shanks and (long dormant) Amiable Dunce fame has a new blog, Gipperwatch. As the name implies, the newly doctorized RoJo's fabulously entertaining and insightful blog (he describes himself as "Professional Gipperwatcher") is committed to all things Ronald Reagan.

Charles Pierce's Blog

While I'm trying to catch up with life after my trip to eastern Pennsylvania (My rule of thumb is that it takes two days for every day I am away to get back to where I was when I left) you should check out Charles Pierce's sports blog at The Boston Globe.

Walk The Plank to Chait

Happy New Year. I hope 2010 is your best year yet.

Although I've read it less closely and linked it even less frequently in the last year or so, I was bummed out to see that The New Republic's Blog "The Plank" is closing its doors. The good thing is that Jonathan Chait, one of TNR's best and most astute writers, is starting his own blog, though it seems that it may just be a place for him to aggregate his magazine writing.

In the Service of Clio

For those of you in the historical profession, and especially early in your careers, I direct you to "In the Service of Clio," a blog that describes itself as providing "essays on career management in the historical profession." The professor who runs the blog recruits history PhD's working in various aspects of the profession -- various subdisciplines in the professoriate and in different types of schools and departments, archivists and librarians, public historians, foreign service officers, and the like.

FJM Spins the Dead

OMG Guys! OMG! OMG! OMG! The gang from the gone but never forgotten blog Fire Joe Morgan are guest blogging at Deadspin. No productivity for me today!

Jaime Says: "FAIL!"

Jaime, who is the suave and graceful host of The Cyber Hacienda, was recently asked to write for the blog of Arizona State University's North American Center for Transborder Studies (NACTS). His first post assesses a couple of the papers on panels he participated in at a conference in Albuquerque, both from scholars putting forth historical interpretations stuck in the 1960s, one from the right, one from the left.

At the Africa Blog: Self Indulgence Alert

In case you are not a regular visitor, you should know that I have been very busy at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog. One of the huge benefits of a fellowship such as this one is that it gives me the breathing room to do a whole range of writing, including blogging, short-form pieces and essays, as well as scholarly work. The Africa blog, in particular, has been a beneficiary of this time. (Although I've been as busy with dcat as at any time in recent memory too).

You also should check out the main FPA Blogs page that consolidates the work of all of the organization's bloggers. We are the largest network of foreign affairs blogs on the web (or so they tell us!) and our readership has been huge and growing. Even if you do not always check out the Africa Blog, bookmark the main page to get as good an overview of a range of global issues as is available anywhere.

Insanity Plates

Hate vanity plates and the people who own them? So does this guy, which is why he started this blog with a friend. Enjoy.

Uncertain Principles

I just realized that my friend and college classmate Chad's brilliant blog Uncertain Principles is not on my blogroll. It used to be on the blogroll of my old blog and then I changed blogs and he changed servers, and well, you know the age-old story. Chad is a physicist at Union College and is a really sharp guy with a range of interests. He's back on the blogroll and I promise you he is worth a daily read.

FJM, You Will Be Missed

It is a sad day. Fire Joe Morgan is closing its doors. A voice of witty, sometimes outraged, sanity in a world of witlessly smug insanity, FJM punctured some of the blather of written baseball commentary. FJM enhanced my own understanding of the game while sometimes making me laugh out loud. It will be missed.

Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce III, RIP

Ambrose Hofstader Bierce III, who brought us the occasionally amusing historical rumor-mongering at The Broad-Gauge Gossip has bid us adieu. Those wagons have been circling for several days now as Bierce's anonymity had become an issue. And when a blogger's anonymity becomes an issue, a blogger's anonymity tends not to remain a reality.

In his brief moment in the spotlight, Bierce drew a large following among historians who, let's face it, love to read about ourselves and better yet, about our betters. Bierce wrote well and amusingly about a pretty small sample of the profession, the elite swaths ensconced in the Ivies, the research I's, and an occasional elite liberal arts college or an aspirant to one of those categories.

I enjoyed Bierce's ruminations. I really did -- I blogrolled him largely because it provided me with an easy way to check up on him a couple of times a week. He tended not to drop a lot of revelations -- most of his information was not new, but it consolidated the inside skinny on his chosen prey in an easily digestible form. He provided one-stop-shopping for shop talk.

And his (choose a male pseudonym and I'm referring to you with a male pronoun) anonymity always seemed to me to be problematic for at least two reasons. For one, I fail to see its necessity. Yes, he was dishing on historians, but my understanding is that he has tenure. And if grad student and untenured professors overstate the jeopardy they put themselves in when they speak out (blogging, writing op-eds, what have you) tenured professors have almost no leg to stand on other than cowardice when they claim that they need the protections of anonymity. Unless of course they desperately want to ascend into the rarefied air of the very places their work criticizes. Bierce's pithy skewerings always gave a hint of aspiration: He had a notable tendency to shed light on those elite departments in supposed decline. And of course what better way for them to rise again than to hire someone insightful and engaging and in tune with the profession and able to write for both scholarly and educated brtoader audiences? In short, I wonder if he got the sense that he was biting a hand that he sort of hoped would feed him.

But the second problematic aspect of his anonymity comes down to the root of my problems with anonymity to begin with: If you are saying things that need protection, should you be saying them? And if you should be, what right have you to say them without the targets being able to face their accuser? Which brings us right back to the issue of cowardice. (For those of you relatively new to dcat, you might think that I am anonymous. But given that I link to books, op-eds and other publications on the side, that I have never hidden my identity, and that my name is Derek Catsam and I am a history professor at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, you would be mistaken.)

Perhaps we'll see an unmasked Mr. Bierce someday in a glorious but accountable return. But for now this seems like the best course of action.

The Broad-Gauge Gossip

Over at Cliopatria Ralph introduces many of us to The Broad-Gauge Gossip, whose psedonymous keeper Dr. Luker describes as "The Wonkette of the history blogosphere." Tidbits equal parts news and gossip abound at the B-GG. It's obviously a bit inside baseball, but for those of you in the biz the blog will be worth reading for its tasty tidbits about departments across the country, especially some of the big dogs. I've added it to the blogroll.

Light Blogging

Just got back from San Antonio today, and between now and Thursday I have to finish going over the copyeditor's questions and comments on the manuscript of my book. (To answer your question, yes, I have no shame). This, hopefully, explains another bout of light posting. As an fyi, not that you need me to point these things out given the relative level of readership, but Matthew Yglesias' blog has moved. I'll post as I can. (Cue smartassed Thunderstick comment.)

Matty's Rant-n-Rave

dcat would like to welcome Matty's Rant-n-Rave to the blogosphere. He's dropped to earth as fruit from my blogging tree. Make him feel welcome as he learns the ropes. Matt -- you are officially blogrolled.

A Publick Service Announcement: New Blog Edition

I just received the following announcement from H-Pol:

Common-place is pleased to announce "Publick Occurrences 2.0," a new blog of historical and political punditry by the inimitable Common-place columnist and former History News Network blogger Jeffrey L. Pasley. Jeff is a political historian ("broadly defined," he says) based at the University of Missouri and the author of The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Virginia, 2001) along with numerous book chapters, articles, reviews, and miscellaneous items that pop up all over the Internet. Jeff's new blog will be, we hope, one of several that will be part of Common-place and provide our readers with fresh content between our regular issues. We have no intention of giving up our standard, acclaimed format of carefully edited articles and columns to the new-fangled vagaries of the blogosphere. Common-place will remain a quarterly magazine of American history. But now, with Jeff's blog and others to come, it will also, we hope, be a place for on-going, active, and vibrant discussion about things historical and issues that matter to our readers and our contributors.

You can access Publick occurrences 2.0 here.