Around the blogosphere

A few new blogs I'm adding to the links list at right:

The Heathen Republican is a relatively new "secular conservative" blog aiming to put conservatism on a rational, non-religious basis. If you're one of those who thinks conservatives are always stupid or crazy, you should check him out. I seldom agree with him, but he is seriously grappling with ideas, and seems to be willing to debate commenters.

Joé McKen's Preliator pro Causa is a startlingly prolific blog which seems to put up about three to six posts per day -- substantive ones, too -- expressing the views of "a liberal skeptic, rationalist and atheist stuck in a rut in the heart of Québec". There's politics, religion, social issues, animal pictures, and SF illustration, and probably other things too -- I haven't been reading it very long. If you like my link round-ups, he has a sort of mini-version each day.

(Another blog I've long had on the list, Republic of Gilead, also has link round-ups, focusing on gay and church-state issues, and split into "news" and "commentary" sections -- and of course Mendip is basically one continuous link round-up.)

TYWKIWDBI is a true everything-but-the-kitchen-sink blog (the name stands for "Things you wouldn't know if we didn't blog intermittently), and there's probably a kitchen-sink post in the archives somewhere. Topics on the front page at the moment include birds' nests, World War I, movies, fishing, oddly-named butterflies, a chart of paid-leave laws in different countries, and a Vermeer painting.


Finally, just for fun, there's Good Show Sir, a British blog dedicated to a single topic: bad SF and fantasy book covers. Most of them are pretty bad, but the fun part is the descriptions and comments. The cover shown above, for example, is summarized thus: ".....we get a phenomenal rendering of the back of some random knight and a severely constipated dragon trying desperately to crap himself in terror at the War of the Worlds spaceship blowing the hell out of its castle with a laser that comes from nowhere."

Blogging note: This is my two-thousandth post.