3 Quarks Daily
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/
By A.M. Dellamonica
The weblog has become such an entrenched feature of the Internet that it is sometimes hard to remember that it is still a relatively new phenomenon. Like many cyber trends, the practice of keeping online journals appeared to explode all at once, from nowhere. In fact, though, its first practitioners (including SF author Jerry Pournelle and screenwriter Dave Winer) were pioneering the format well over a decade ago. But ten years on the Web can seem a lifetime, and blogs have evolved fast. Today, there are articulate, entertaining writers covering every facet of human existence, from the exalted to the mundane.  For readers with a passion for science, design and literature, one blog not to be missed is Three Quarks Daily. Authored by a dedicated staff of artists and scientists from around the world, this site is a feast for the mind, offering links and articles on such diverse subjects as biofuels, religion, pitfalls to avoid when writing fiction set in Africa, the nature of entropy, the meaning of nerdgassing and much more.
Three Quarks Daily casts its net wide ... but never indiscriminately. Like many collaborative blogs, it employs an elegant system of filters to help to make sense of it all (be warned—visitors must go to the archive page to find its list of categories). Websurfers who are only interested in books, or food and drink, or technology—to name a few of the Web page's umbrella topics—can easily seek out those pieces. Offbeat, engrossing and a fertile source of ideas for researchers, newshounds and storytellers of all stripes, this is a blog that shows what these sites can do by routinely inspiring and challenging its audience. |
