The Penn Blogosphere Expands

Albert Sun, a Penn sophomore who blogs at Albertgate provided an updated listing of the known Penn-related blogs, building on Kevin Burke's original list from last year.

I was very happy to see the updated list that included some blogs that I hadn't seen before. Most of the blogs I already read regularly and are on my blogroll.

I decided I would group the blogs in categories and clusters that seem to be connected online through mutual links or blog mentions. (If you have suggestions on categories or if I missed any blogs, please let me know)

Penn Political Blogs:

• Akkam's Razor - Staff/Master's student. one of the most active blogs on the list, he posts nearly every day.
• Progressive Dispatches - a blog by former student government member Brett Thalmann about politics mostly.
• The Appletonian - Justin Sykes, Wharton senior. He's from Appleton, Wisconsin, which I guess explains the title.
• the iv-tini chronicles - Penn senior named Dan, originally from Wisconsin, who will be off to med school next year.
• Penn Democrats - Official blog of the Penn Democrats
  

Penn Alums:

• Martin Gordon's Blog - Penn alum, Class of 2007
  
• Dueling Tampons - blog by Penn alum Matt Rosler, about other Penn alums and students in the arts
  
• Valley Virgin - Blog by Penn grad Danny Maloney, M&T '05 now working at Google in strategy.
  
• Essential Luxuries - Jean Hsu's blog about post-Penn life in New York City
• ryanpedia - Ryan Hayward's blog, class of 2007
  

Tech/Entrepreneurial:

• 3000 Miles of Virtual Insanity - Ravi Mishra's blog about being between Silicon Valley and Penn.
• The Un-Wharton - Stuart Stein, a Wharton senior studying marketing and management blogs here
• Nat Turner - Wharton student/entrepreneur's blog. Has a company in philly called Invite Media. intriguing.
• Jason Toff - Penn senior and entrepreneur who founded Penndrinks.com
• Jack Abraham - Insights of a young tech entrepreneur who recently graduated early to work on his start-up.
  

Penn Professors:

• Jeff Weintraub - a political science professor's blog on politics and current events
• Earning My Turns - Computer Science Professor and skiing fan Fernando Pereira's blog. He was my professor for CIS120 last semester and showed a picture from one of his skiing trips every day.
• Werblog - Legal studies professor and 'internet expert' Kevin Werbach
• Language Log - very popular language blog, hosted out of a computer in the linguistics department by Mark Liberman. (he taught LING001 last semester I think) Professors from a whole bunch of different schools contribute
• Dept of Anesthesiology - a blog from Penn Med's Department of Anesthesiology & Critical Care
• Nathan Ensmenger - blog from the undergraduate chair of the Science, Technology & Society major.
• Critical Mass - a blog by English professor Erin O'Connor about academia

Penn Administrative blogs:

• Outlines - Penn LGBT Center's blog
• Faithful Philly Forum - Penn's Christian Association's blog
  
• Vitale Digital Media Lab - A blog with information about this digital media lab in Van Pelt. It's actually a pretty cool place and they have video cameras and AV equipment they lend for free.
• Penn Press Log - blog about books published by the Penn Press
• MBA Admissions Blog - about the Wharton MBA admissions process
• Knowledge@Wharton - Wharton's attempt to "share its intellectual capital". A truly great resource
  

Cluster 1:

• Affabillyty - a blog with a lot of good music, by Billy ___, a sociology major.
• I Am Malek - Malek H. Lewis's blog. Topics for the future include San Francisco, High School Musical, and Gay Videogaming. Purple text on a gray background.
• A Beautiful Mess - Engineering student John Tran's personal blog.
• meta.jane - a rather literary blog by a Penn senior named Jane
  
• the iv-tini chronicles - Penn senior named Dan, originally from Wisconsin, who will be off to med school next year.
• Progressive Dispatches - a blog by student government member Brett Thalmann about politics mostly.

Cluster 2:

• ohbadiah - Nick McAvoy's blog, he used to write on The Spin
• Leighcia - . former Penn student who has apparently decided financial consultant was not the right way to go
• starlighterx - blog by a Penn student who stresses over midterms and likes to comment on New York Times columnists
• The Spin - the DP's blog about student life and etc. it's a group blog with different writers each semester

Other:

• Vocab 101 - Hayling Price's blog about music, his time abroad and more
  
• Oikono - a blog by Wharton student Geoffrey (Kok Heng) about economics, poverty, international issues
• colour my world! - a blog by a Penn student who will be doing banking in Hong Kong this summer
• Mr. Swyx - a blog by Huntsman student Shawn Wang
• {metadatta} - a blog by Physics student Sujit Datta about 'academia, science, or just life in Philadelphia'
• The Buzz - a blog by the sports editors of the DP, about Penn sports teams
• DP Photo Department - a blog by the DP photo department about all things photography related
• Scents - Daniel Drucker, a graduate psych student's blog
• all that glitters - a tumblr blog by Jessica Gold Haralson, who started Quake, a SAC funded erotica magazine.
• I Had a Surprise Birthday Party - Kevin Burke's blog

Not sure if Penn-related:

• Blog blah blahg - just a 'gay boy wading in the murky dating pool of Philadelphia.'

Please let me know of any corrections or additions.

~BT

Around the Blogosphere - New Hampshire Edition

• Matt Stoller gives his prediction for the Democratic New Hampshire Primary:

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Obama will win the New Hampshire primary by a substantial margin tomorrow, followed by Clinton and then Edwards. I know that sounds crazy, considering that Obama is so anti-establishment that he has raised only $100 million, garnered the support of a good number of ex-Clinton administration officials, and is treated exceptionally well by the press. But he could just pull it off.

• Jerome Armstrong blogs about the state of the race.

• Markos thinks the Obama wave is more like a "tsunami":

This thing is becoming a tsunami, and that's before Obama even wins New Hampshire and South Carolina. I don't see how Clinton recovers.

~BT

1 Month Old!

I was really surprised to notice that I have been blogging at Progressive Dispatches for 1 month now, mainly because it feels like I just posted And we're back! So, why post about a such a minor milestone?

Well, I had previously blogged for 3 months at Canadian Liberal @ Penn in the summer of 2005. True, I am only 1/3 of the way to my previous record in terms of longevity, in terms of number of posts, this is my 21st post so far, which is getting close to my previous record of 27. Unfortunately, I am not anywhere close to the amount of traffic I used to get, which is disappointing because the traffic provided me with active comments and conversation with others that made blogging more fun and meaningful. But last week's discovery of a burgeoning blogosphere at Penn has been pretty cool.

This time around, I found blogging to be both easier and harder. It has been easy because of the large range of topics that I want to blog about but tough because of the high speed and breadth of the constant flow of new information. The sheer size of the American political system allows for a sizable political chattering class of pundits, strategists, lobbyists, and has seen the emergence (pdf) of a vibrant progressive blogosphere that is fascinating to watch flex its muscle within the Democratic party. The progressive resurgence nationwide and the real notion that I could be part of this avant-garde progressive movement has been exciting. Most of all, it it the desire to bring this progressive infrastructure and success back to Canada that is most interesting me about US domestic politics right now.

In comparison, I was able to blog about Canadian politics at a much slower pace and there were less blogs and not much of an online opinion infrastructure. Granted, I was blogging within a nascent Canadian blogosphere dominated by well organized conservatives. Progressive Bloggers had just been founded and was quickly followed by Liblogs, both of which I joined and saw a steady traffic of around 50 unique visitors per day.

We find the the same thing at the early stages of the development of the US blogosphere. It started with conservatives having a powerful top-down infrastructure which has since stagnated. Meanwhile there has been an incredible growth of the progressive blogosphere with some asking whether it has reached its apex. This example shows how the Canadian right is able to effectively emulate their American counterparts and implement similar policies, strategies and ideas on a slight time delay.

In Canada, Conservatives have long mastered the art of borrowing from the US conservative movement and I don't see why Liberals shouldn't do the same thing on the Progressive side. Across the pond, British bloggers are similarly learning from recent progressive successes in America. From an initial glance, the Canadian landscape seems to have grown in size but I don't see Canadian blogs having the same sort of impact on politics yet.

(cross-posted at Canadian Liberal @ Penn)

~BT