Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

THE TWENTY-FIVE MOST VALUABLE BLOGS IN AMERICA - 2011

That's according to the blog, 24/7 Wall Street (which lists itself as #25).  (HT: HotAir)  The list is based on the supposed financial value of the various blogs.  I dunno...   A good number of the blogs I know nothing about.  That may be because many are entertainment-centered/gossipy blogs.   When I have more time, I'll take a closer look.   I'm a sucker for lists... 

GOLD FROM JUSTIN TAYLOR'S "BETWEEN TWO WORLDS" BLOG

No doubt there are many fine Christian blogs "out there" in cyberspace, and I wish I had unlimited time to benefit from many more than I do.  But for my money, the one blog that requires frequent visiting is Justin Taylor's Between Two Worlds.  Here's a sampling from recent posts:

- Free Audiobook: Tim Keller's Ministries of Mercy 

- Keith Getty on Writing Today's Modern Hymns  (I found this stunningly good)

- Thielman's New Testament Theology  (Seminary audio lectures with outline.  Amazing resource!) 

- Professor Peter Kreeft's audio lectures:

• 10 Uncommon Insights Into Evil from The Lord of the Rings
• Christianity in The Lord of the Rings
• The Language of Beauty

- D.A. Carson's "The God Who Is There" Video and Audio (MP3s for the 14 - part series here).

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES AND BLOGS - PART ONE

A friend new to the internet sent me an e-mail asking for websites and blogs I would recommend.  I sent an e-mail in response, annotating each suggestion offered.  Below is what I wrote, (my first installment):

My personal reading habits include a daily look at the Drudge Report - http://www.drudgereport.com/ - which contains a hodgepodge of news links.  It has proven influential down through the years and is read by millions.  Matt Drudge broke the story of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.  Many people check the blog several times a day.

National Review Online - http://www.nationalreview.com/ - publishes a daily website with a variety of articles, but they also publish a blog, The Corner - http://corner.nationalreview.com/ -  to which writers contribute throughout the day.  They often link to important articles appearing elsewhere on the internet.  It's

DOUG ROSS' FABULOUS 50 BLOG AWARDS

I found these awards interesting.  (HT: Atlas Shrugs)  Some I expected and refer to often (such as Pamela Geller, HotAir, The Corner, Michelle Malkin, and Drudge).  Some I would look at from time to time (such as Big Government, Gateway Pundit, Doctor Zero, MEMRI Blog and Michael Yon).  But here are new ones:

• The 'YouTube This!' Award for Best Video Blogging goes to: Pajamas TV.

• The 'It's Awfully Hot Here In This Sauna' Award for Debunking the Religion of Warming goes to Watts Up With That.

• The 'Nine-Hour Nostradamus' Award for consistently being ahead of the story goes to: The Astute Bloggers.

• The 'Salvador Dali' Award for Most Creative Blogging goes to SondraK.

And still more. . . 

PAMELA GELLER OFFERS HER VIEWS ON THE BLOGOSPHERE

I have come to find Geller's Atlas Shrugs an important daily read.  Among other things, she understands the threat of Islamic supremacism, and works tirelessly for conservative principles.  She is also the major chronicler of the Rifqa Bary case.  She posts excerpts of her interview with "Stop the ACLU."  Following are a few excerpts:

My political party is capitalism. I think the Constitution is as close to a religious document as you can get. America is the most noble experiment in human history: noble, moral, benevolent and successful. My goal at the outset was preserving the America I grew up in – fighting for the free, protecting and defending the individual’s rights against majority tyranny and minority plotting. And that is still my goal. . .

Turning to the overall picture of the right blogosphere…. what has changed for the worse is the abandonment of the issue of Islamic supremacism by the big blogs — the most dangerous threat facing the West, more dangerous than Nazism, more insidious than communism and they won’t touch it. Of course Jihad Watch covers it comprehensively, but that’s what Spencer does. Islamic jihad is not a tangential issue. It is the defining conflict of our time.

Her response to a question about new blogs I found helpful:

The most interesting blogs are the international blogs like New Zeal and anti-jihad blogs like the Finnish Tundra Tabloids that are doing incredible work exposing the scoundrels on the Hill.  New blogs like Brave New Commie,Vigilant Squirrel Brigade, and summer patriot, winter soldier offer a refreshing new perspective. But guys like Vanderleun, who have been around awhile, are still fresh, original and delish. And Oleg at The People's Cube, outstanding.    [MORE . . .]

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS BLOG

If you haven't yet discovered Tim's "Random Observations" blog, it wouldn't surprise me if you wanted to add it to your bookmarks. When I pop by every so often, I am invariably treated to several original thought pieces of an extremely high caliber.  Tonight, for example, I greatly appreciated his post, "Detecting Religion in Atheists." I also valued his post, "The Origin of the Flat Earth," which taught me that "no one before the 1830s believed medieval people thought the earth was flat."  That was a charge invented, or should I say, "concocted" by atheists.  I appreciate his level-headed, dispassionate observation displayed in his post, "What's at Stake in the Intelligent Design Debate?"  There's a lot more to be found at his blog.  Happy reading! 

"Most-Linked" Political Blogs

Wonkoblog lists the top 10 most linked blogs - Liberal, Conservative and Neutral.   "Most linked" refers to “inlinks” or the number of times a blog is pointed-to by other blogs via their blogrolls.

See Who's Editing Wikipedia

Wired came out with a major article yesterday.

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Lots of others are chiming in with ramifications and revelations, such as Michelle Malkin and  Guardian newspaper.    Michelle Malkin says,

Yes, you can now identify and track Wiki vandals at, say, the NYTimes or Al Jazeera. Very useful tool.

Hot Air helps explains how it works.

"Boundless Line" - A Great Blog Specially Designed for the 20 Something Singles Crowd

Here are some sample posts from the Boundless Line Blog:

Cover Up, Please
Hitchens is Faithfully Anti-God
Loing That Vinyl Sound 
Praise for America's Past 
Manimals are Here
Posts from the Sex Category

Update  7/23/07:   Jennifer Marshall's new book, Now and Not Yet: Making Sense of Singleness in the Twenty-First Century garners  universal high praise from Christian leaders, including Joni Eareckson Tada  and Chuck Colson among many others.  (Click the Colson link for related articles on singles and sexuality.)
 

Top 100 Christian Blogs According to Joe Carter at "Evangelical Outpost"

Update Note: See also the post, "100 Christian Books that Changed the Century"

**
- Joe Carter says:       (HT: Hugh Hewitt)

This is not a list of the "best Christian blogs" (whatever that might mean) but rather the top 100 blogs that I have found to be the most convicting, enlightening, frustrating, illuminating, maddening, stimulating, right-on and/or wrongheaded by Christians expressing a Christian worldview.

The selection process is, by necessity, intensely personal and unapologetically subjective. There are a number of Christian blogs that are written by brilliant thinkers and stylists yet, for one reason or another, have not captured my imagination in the way that the following blogs have done. The list is also reflective of my rather narrow field of interests and associations. By and large, the bloggers that are included are from the conservative wing of evangelicalism and Catholicism. There is also a peculiar range of focus. Philosophical blogs are overrepresented, for example, while "This is where I’m at right now"-style introspectionists are all but excluded.

.  .  .  For now, I've listed the top 20 that have had the most influence on me over the past year and listed the others in alphabetical order.

1. Between Two Worlds
2. JollyBlogger
3. The Scriptorium
4. Challies.com
5. WORLD mag blogsa