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the following are the links that i look at most days, or are particularly useful.

political and news diaries

abelard's news
an eclectic mix of interesting news items. mostly focuses on science based items and politics. new items are infrequent, but rarely boring. I write there.

instapundit
this guy seems to do nothing but post! he has tendency to post things with just a link and no real explanation, but when there is explanation it tends to be interesting. interests seem to revolve around law and civil liberties. well meaning, but can be a tad shallow. I read more for what he links, than for what he says.

bill roggio
long detailed analyses on military matters.

japan probe
silly little items relating to japan.

lesser sources

belmont club blog
long items on aspects of american foreign and domestic politics. very interesting in depth comment. particularly good on military matters.

publius pundit
a blog dedicated to following freedom movements around the world. excellent.

james hammerton
another of the top-class specialists spawning in the online diary world. his specialism is civil liberties and law, particularly w.r.t. to the u.k. one of the people behind magnacartaplus [the abelard above is another]. james also runs the magnacartaplus blog, which nowadays is the more active.

best of the web political blog
a daily group editorial in many sections. into queer bashing, religiousness is good, the death penalty, removing abortion and clinton's knickers, but otherwise fairly sensible! basically a fairly representative christianist republican party shill: makes a nice break from the usual wanking in the fossil media, but hardly much more serious/honest.. it is, however, usually a darn sight funnier.

samizdata
british group diary focusing on an anarchist agenda. regular posts of insane support for public smokers and other unsavoury types, but otherwise interesting. also has good technology items.

uk conservative party news
links to speeches, press releases and the like from the uk conservative party.

tapscott's copydesk
good coverage related to us congress corruption and the porkbusters campaign.

imao
very funny republican satirist. now a group diary: the volume has increased, the quality has decreased. i only read the items written by frank j, the original writer. [link is anonymised because imao seems to be blocking non-us readers!]

little green footballs
prolific and interesting blog from the right. mostly related to dealing with the fundies.

schneier on security
bruce schneier is author of various definitive books on subjects like cryptography and computer security. his blog is full of interesting items related to those subjects. he also seems to like squids.

michael totten
excellent fact-based and in-depth reports from the middle-east.

michelle malkin
right-wing nut whose good at finding interesting photos and videos relating to current jihadi news stories. the writing is something cronic.

melanie phillips
british right-wing columist. long-winded and often somewhat shallow, but has some interesting ideas.

victor davis hanson
hanson is one of my favourite political writers. here you get links to his articles all over the places.

powerline
a prolific and effective republican shill. fun as long as you avoid them on abortion, gay marriage, death penalty, etc..

poker article by daniel nagreanu
interesting walkthroughs of poker plays and hands by a top professional.

dilbert blog
a pretty funny/clever blog written by the dilbert cartoonist.

dissident frogman
bilingual frog writing on french politics. very funny.

yourish
an excellent source for israeli politics.

belgravia dispatch
like belmont club, but more focused on european politics. interesting and in depth. has 'issues' over israel and 'neocons'. he appears to be a democrat who thinks, which makes him confused at times!

the volokh conspiracy
political diary by an american lawyer with an interest in civil rights type things. be warned: his site is a mess to navigate, link and otherwise use.

braden
an ex-marine. has interesting letters and photos, as well as some amusing comment on american politics and war.

limbic's blog
he's a bit obsessed with the twin evils of immigrants and multiculturalism, but otherwise puts out interesting and pretty links.

iraq the model blog
probably the most interesting/sane of the iraqi political diaries. the english is sometimes difficult and rants are a plenty, but otherwise a useful source of background information.

the messopotamian
another iraqi blog. shia sympathies, but seems honest and has interesting analysis.

scrappleface
good, short, sartirical news items. same warnings about christianist right lunacy as for powerline and best of the web.

french language sources

google's french news links

Le peuple des connecteurs
Interesting political blog.

japanese language sources

google's political news links

japanese language newspaper links

editorial page links for the main newspapers

engadget
a technology geek blog translated into japanese.

the following five japanese language blogs i found in research for a couple of items. they all write on japanese politics. i haven't read enough of them to make comment. they may well disappear again once i have!

摩訶不思議なるマツリゴト

独書録

新聞記事・ニュース批評＠ブログ

原子力ブログ

エコロジー・エネルギー・ブログ

comics

cox and forkum
mostly very good political cartoons. averages two or three a week.

day by day
a good political comic strip. can be very obscure. daily.

sinfest
probably my favourite comic. very rarely not funny, if not hilarious. usually daily.

oxy & millie
one of my favourite strips. it is incredibly sweet, usually funny and often surreal. new strips are too uncommon.

xkcd
silly stickmen with geeky jokes.

userfriendly
set in some sort of computer company. generally very funny in a geek sort of way. daily.

phd
adventures of some doctoral students. usually funny, but new strips are rare.

garfield
can get samey, but there are regular very funny strips.

dilbert
despite the tiresome plot idea "managers are evil and stupid and ruin everything", it is rarely not funny.

unfit
a gym's fitness instructor's jade view of the world. i don't think i've seen an unfunny one yet.

news outlets

science tech daily
daily science and technology shorts with links.

national review online
american political magazine. has hanson amongst other interesting writers.

the american thinker newspaper
daily shorts with links on political topics. generally sane.

tech central station
some interesting items of politics and technology.

the register
badly written items on interesting technology subjects, with a tendency to far left political interludes.

google news
automatic aggregated headlines from around the world.

science daily
daily science shorts with links.

japanese newspaper links
links to english editions of japanese newspapers.

useful/other

jim breen's japanese dictionary
this is the biggest and most widely used japanese dictionary available online. set the dictionary dropdown to "the_lot" for best results.

alc japanese dictionary
sometimes has slang items where jim breen's does not.

english-french dictionary
excellent two way dictionary with a wide range of examples and compound words. all words are clickable. also has italian, spanish and portuguese.

bug me not
an essential tool for those that refuse to answer newspapers' and other sites' intrusive questions. right click on the bookmarklet link and add it to your bookmarks. next time you get one of those ridiculous registration pages, click the bookmark and paste the data it gives you. voila, you can see the information and annoy the intrusive. :-)

livejournal 'friends'
the other livejournal users that i regularly read all on one page.

japanese tv guide
where i find out what's on, or going to be on, japanese tv. i obviously check for the kagoshima prefecture tv, but you can get timetables for anywhere in japan from that page.

kyushu cinema guides
where i find out what films are on at my local cinemas. information can be a little bitty, but it's the best i've found so far.

nhk radio
nhk is the japanese equivalent of the bbc. unlike the bbc, they only make a very very little available online. you can listen to that very little here.

discontinued blogs

chrenkoff
creator and writer of the "good news from iraq" and "good news from afghanistan" series. these posts tend to be extremely long, but full of useful leads. the rest of his writing tends to be of more manageable length and just as useful. stopped blogging to appease a new employer.

the diplomad
well written and funny pieces on america foreign policy supposedly by rare non-lefties within the us state department. went offline shortly after bush's reelection.