Once upon a time, before blogs ruled the earth, somebody invented the Liebster Award. It was probably a German, because “liebster” is German for “beloved” or “favorite”.

The idea is that you nominate a blog for the award if you think it deserves more readers. In this latest round of nominations, the cutoff for getting the award is having fewer than 200 followers. This humble blog currently has 181 followers, so it qualifies with respect to the numbers. Whether WOCS deserves to have more readers is a more difficult question (it’s possible it should have fewer).

Anyway, a fellow blogger nominated WOCS for the Liebster today, after being nominated himself. So, to accept the award, I’m supposed to answer 10 questions sent to me by the other blogger, and also nominate other supposedly underappreciated blogs.

However, although I’m pleased to have been nominated – as anyone would be – I’ve decided not to “accept” the award by fulfilling the requirements above. Instead, I’m merely going to mention some blogs I follow and which you might enjoy too (one of which has many more than 200 followers).

Fortunately, the nomination doesn’t come with a threat, unlike a standard chain letter. If I’d been told that failure to continue this process would result in some catastrophe or other (locusts? none of my favorite cereal at A&P?), I definitely would have complied. You can’t be too careful about these things (well, actually, you can).

Now for those blogs I recommend:

First, there is SelfAwarePatterns. The author of this very interesting blog writes about science and philosophy, among other things, and gets a lot of intelligent comments. Also, I agree with him more often than not (he’s obviously a very bright guy).

Another philosophical blog I recommend is ausomeawestin. The author argues vigorously for moral realism, the idea that judgments like “Susan is a good person” or “Sam did the right thing” are true or false just as much as statements like “Copper conducts electricity”. In other words, we can have knowledge about ethics. I tend to disagree, but I’m not sure why, and I’ve greatly enjoyed discussing the issue with ausomeawestin’s proprietor.

Lastly, on a very different note, there is Beguiling Hollywood, operated by Vickie Lester (presumably a pseudonym, since “Vicki Lester” is the character played by Janet Gaynor and Judy Garland in their respective versions of A Star Is Born). Ms. Lester mostly writes about old Hollywood and also has a wonderful supply of related photographs, which she shares on a daily basis, like this one of Frederic March and Janet Gaynor from that famous old movie:

Ok, my part of the chain is now broken, but do consider taking a look at these deserving blogs. They’re fun and educational too!