Why my other places interest me

It's occurred to me that I haven't talked about why I chose each of the "Other places of interest," those links to the right. I only have five so far, and I really should expand the section, but it might be of some interest as to why I chose the ones I have put there.

Economist's View is the blog of Mark Thoma, an economist at the University of Oregon. His blog is perhaps the best I've seen at providing links to topics of interest in economics, and his own opinions are always interesting. It's the place to go if you want to survey articles or themes that reach well beyond the business press.

From ship to shore is a blog by Jacky. Some personal background here: In late 2006, my wife and I took a cruise to Alaska. We generally take fairly active vacations, with hiking and driving madly from place to place, but, for various reasons, we decided to go a little more sedentary this time.

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed the cruise experience on board the Statendam, a Holland America ship. We didn't take too many excursions, so we enjoyed a lot of shipboard activities, the games and trivia contests. The cruise directors worked quite hard to ensure that we had the best time possible. One of them was Jacky, and I stumbled across her blog last year. She doesn't update it very often, but I find it quite entertaining. Of more importance is that it was this blog which "inspired" the creation of my blog. For whatever reason, Jacky's blog was the one that convinced me I should start one of my own.

James Howard Kunstler is an author and essayist, and is one of the most pessimistic (and entertaining) authors on the Internet. He writes a weekly blog, the name of which I shan't repeat here, that is largely about the end of our oil-based system and the effect that will have on America's lifestyle. Even if you don't agree with everything he writes (I think the U.S. economy is a little harder to turn than he does, so I don't see total catastrophe looming, say, tomorrow), his thoughts on the extent to which our current social structure depends on the easy availability of cheap petroleum-based products will force you to take a different view of your surroundings.

Joe Posnanski is a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star, who also wrote one of the best baseball books I have ever read, The Soul of Baseball. (It's a remarkable account of Joe's time with the great Buck O'Neil, and is an antidote to all the negative news coming out of baseball these days. I guarantee that, if you feel your love for the game wavering, you will get it back when you, through Joe, spend time with Mr. O'Neil.) How he finds the time to write hundreds more words a week I don't understand, but his blog is a lot of fun. Not everything is baseball-oriented, but you probably won't get the most out of it if you don't love the game.

Political Animal, created originally as Calpundit by Kevin Drum, is now the official blog of Washington Monthly magazine. It's a liberal-leaning look at the political news of the day, but provides enough links to "real" news sources to allow a reader to use it as a starting point, even if one holds contrary opinions. It's written in a personal style that I envy, while still expressing opinion based on facts.