We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Three

We’re up to number nine of my journey through Time.com’s 25 best blogs. If you’ve come this far, you may as well go a little further.

One of the most prolific blogs out there (65 posts in the last 24 hours!) has to be the media, gossip and pop culture blog, Gawker. Personally, I prefer the media and pop culture posts to the gossip, but there appears to be more than enough of all of them. Interesting features that I spotted were the ‘Gawker Stalker Sightings’ and the Open Caption threads (basically the same idea as the Cartoon Caption Contest on Radosh.net, but with a celebrity photograph instead). But what’s this… one of the main category headings on the home page is ‘Tom Cruise’. Surely there’s not enough Cruise posts to warrant a category of entertainment unto himself? Let’s refresh the site… but no, there it is again! Weird…

My partner-in-crime has suggested that I try the Daily Kos next, so any long-term damage I suffer as a result is on her head. The messages are fairly simple: Obama is a hero, McCain is a conservative and bordering on senile, and while I admit that the arguments are more detailed than your average leftist blog, it all pretty much amounts to the same thing. Of more interest is their dKosopedia project, a political encyclopedia which has useful articles on topics such as ‘How To Run For Office’ and the set-up of the US Government. If you were ever befuddled by what was going on in The West Wing, this may be the resource for you.

The Consumerist is a worthy match for Gawker in terms of prolificacy, in this case centering on the various ways us poor consumers are swindled. Posts from the day that I visited include: a man being refused an early termination on his lease for the apartment in which his fiancée was murdered, a Lonely Planet writer admitting to basing his book on information from his girlfriend, Sears refusing to refund the money for a television that they never delivered, and a Wal-Mart employee trying to coerce a customer by holding his credit card. Some will be pleased to learn that there are special sections on ‘Banks’ and ‘Airlines’. And once you feel that you an informed consumer, you can click on one of the flashy ads.