Paleoblogging

Two weeks ago I praised Harper's Scott Horton, who in addition to tiptop legal/political commentary regularly serves up poignant and relevant chunks of older texts, and lamented that more bloggers don't mine the past as well or as often as they do the just-this-minute.

I don’t have to impress upon you the need to embrace the new... You have to continue to challenge yourself as a reader - a serious reader. And as one who learns - a serious student. That you have not calcified. That you do not know what you think you know, least of all who or what or where or especially WHEN is important... Get a library card and wander somewhere dusty. Find something real. And then blog about it — bring it into this world. Scan that creaky wisdom, make it sing. We need many things now, but wisdom most of all.

There are actually a whole microclass of bloggers and online commentators who do what Horton does. And I think I've come up with a good name for what they do: paleoblogging.

Like paleontologists, paleobiologists, and paleoarcheologists, Paleobloggers dig up blogworthy material from the past to see what makes it tick. But instead of our prehistorical past, paleoblogging focuses on our analog past, blending in somewhere in the mid-1960s. See after the jump for my abbreviated field guide to paleoblogging.