''3 Quarks Daily'' is an online

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podc ...

and

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

that curates commentary, essays, and multimedia from selected periodicals, newspapers, journals, and blogs. The focus is on literature, the arts, politics, current affairs, science, philosophy, gossip–and, as stated on their web site–"anything else we deem inherently fascinating." Each day of the week from Tuesday through Sunday features about a dozen items culled from the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

. Each Monday is devoted to an

online magazine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer magaz ...

which has essays and other previously unpublished content by editors and guest columnists.An Audio Interview with Abbas Raza of ''3 Quarks Daily''
By Adam Kampe, National Endowment for the Arts Magazine The stated aim of ''3QD'' is to offer “a one-stop intellectual surfing experience by culling good stuff from all over and putting it in one place.” ''3 Quarks Daily'' also awards annual prizes, called “quarks,” for exceptional writing in the blogosphere, as well as organizing quarterly online symposia on international issues. The blog commands a significant readership and readers follow it in a variety of ways: through an

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

subscription and an

RSS feed RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

, as well as through

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

updates via

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

History

Author, engineer, and philosopher S. Abbas Raza founded ''3 Quarks Daily'' in 2004 to serve as a conduit for content across disciplines for the web-based

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...

everyman The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them. Origin The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...

. Unlike similar blogs of the time, such as

Arts & Letters Daily Arts & Letters Daily is a web portal which links to news stories, features, and reviews from across the humanities. The site is owned by ''The Chronicle of Higher Education''. Content According to founder and former editor Denis Dutton, ''Arts & ...

and

Andrew Sullivan Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...

's ''

The Daily Dish Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...

'', 3QD would explore topics beyond the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

and feature science content as well as commentary on current events. In fact, Abbas Raza says that Arts & Letters Daily, "was one of the main inspirations for my starting ''3 Quarks Daily''." The first post was on Saturday, July 31, 2004, and featured the 1904

Constantine Cavafy Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis ( el, Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης ; April 29 (April 17, OS), 1863 – April 29, 1933), known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy (), was a Gre ...

poem ''

Waiting for the Barbarians ''Waiting for the Barbarians'' is a novel by the South African writer J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin for its series '' Great Books of the 20th Century'' and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geo ...

''.3QD posting for Saturday, July 31, 2004
/ref> The new aggregator site grew rapidly, reaching a thousand posts within seven months; by 2014 that number had reached thirty-five thousand.Manuel, Thomas (2016).
Why the Web Needs the Little Miracle of 3QuarksDaily
'

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American Crime film, crime drama Television show, television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The ...

, October 07, 2016 Since then, ''3 Quarks Daily'' has culled content from hundreds of sources, from blogs such as

Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon (P ...

Science Daily ''Science Daily'' is an American website launched in 1995 that aggregates press releases and publishes lightly edited press releases (a practice called churnalism) about science, similar to Phys.org and EurekAlert!. The site was founded by mar ...

, and

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

, from major publications such as ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'', and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', to smaller outlets such as ''

Guernica Magazine ''Guernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics'' is an online magazine that publishes art, photography, fiction, and poetry from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces, and opinion pieces on internat ...

'', ''

The Awl ''The Awl'' was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid." History Founded in April 2009 by David Cho and former ''Gawker'' editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk ...

'', and ''

The American Scholar "The American Scholar" was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College at the First Parish in Cambridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his gr ...

''. The name ''3 Quarks Daily'' comes from the elementary nuclear particles of physics which in turn were named after the word ''quark'' which

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

had used in

Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction whi ...

. The confluence of references to both science and literature in a single word suited the intent of the blog perfectly and the founders also thought that the name would be short and memorable. They named their top three annual prizes the ''Top Quark'' (1st), the ''Strange Quark'' (2nd), and the ''Charm Quark'' (3rd).

The DAG-3QD Peace And Justice Symposia

Since 2012 ''3 Quarks Daily'' has teamed up with the Amsterdam-based Dialogue Advisory Group (DAG) to present online dialogues on topics of international peace and justice. Occasionally, as in the 2013 symposium on drones, a book is published. As of October 2015 there have been six such symposia as shown below.

The Quark Prizes

In 2009, in the interest of encouraging and rewarding good writing in the blogosphere, 3QD announced that it would be awarding annual cash prizes, in Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the three best blog posts in each of these four fields. The selection process is as follows: After several weeks during which nominees are submitted by 3QD readers and editors, the four principal editors of 3QD (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and

Azra Raza Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Director of Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) Center at Columbia University. She has previously held positions at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Cincinnati, Rush Un ...

) narrow the list down to six articles in each category. A prominent intellectual such as

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...

, or Lewis Lapham is chosen in each of the four areas to select the final winners. The prizes are whimsically named the

Top Quark The top quark, sometimes also referred to as the truth quark, (symbol: t) is the most massive of all observed elementary particles. It derives its mass from its coupling to the Higgs Boson. This coupling y_ is very close to unity; in the Standard ...

(first prize of $500), the

Strange Quark The strange quark or s quark (from its symbol, s) is the third lightest of all quarks, a type of elementary particle. Strange quarks are found in subatomic particles called hadrons. Examples of hadrons containing strange quarks include kaons ( ...

(second prize of $200), and the

Charm Quark The charm quark, charmed quark or c quark (from its symbol, c) is the third-most massive of all quarks, a type of elementary particle. Charm quarks are found in hadrons, which are subatomic particles made of quarks. Examples of hadrons containin ...

(third prize of $100). Originally the prize amounts were twice as big. Not every prize is awarded every year, and no prizes at all were awarded in 2013. Due to logistical and financial reasons, the Quark Prizes were discontinued after 2015. A complete list of prizes awarded between 2009 and 2015 is shown below.

Reception

The 3 Quarks Daily blog has been praised by prominent authors and scientists including

,''3 Quarks Daily announces awards for science blogging''
ScienceBlogs: May 27, 2009

Christopher Lydon Christopher Lydon (born 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American media personality and author. He was the original host of '' The Connection'', produced by WBUR and syndicated to other NPR stations, and created ''Open Source'', a weekly rad ...

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...

Ken Roth Kenneth Roth (born September 23, 1955) is an American attorney, human rights activist, writer. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022. Early life Kenneth Roth was born on September 23, 1955 in Elmhurst, Illin ...

Laura Claridge Laura Claridge (born 1952 in Clearwater, Florida) is an American author known primarily for her biographies of major 20th century figures, forcing re-examination of popular icons including Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, Emily Post and Nor ...

John Allen Paulos John Allen Paulos (born July 4, 1945) is an American professor of mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and ...

, and Thomas Manuel.

Guest columnists

The Monday magazine is not completely the creation of the 3QD editors; guest columnists are frequently invited. Prominent guest contributors have included: *

Marko Ahtisaari Marko Ahtisaari (born 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish technology entrepreneur and musician. Ahtisaari has been CEO and co-founder of two technology companies: Dopplr (acquired by Nokia in 2009) and Sync Project (acquired by Bose in 2018). ...

Arjun Appadurai Arjun Appadurai (born 1949) is an Indian-American anthropologist recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. In his anthropological work, he discusses the importance of the modernity of nation states and globalization. He is the fo ...

* Stephen T. Asma * Hartosh Singh Bal *

Pranab Bardhan Pranab Bardhan (born 11 September 1939 in Calcutta) is an Indian economist who has taught and worked in the United States since 1979. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Biography Bardhan received ...

* Akeel Bilgrami *

Mark Blyth Mark McGann Blyth (born 29 September 1967) is a Scottish-American political scientist. He is currently the William R. Rhodes Professor of International Economics and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. At Brown, ...

Maarten Boudry Maarten Boudry (born 15 August 1984) is a Dutch-speaking Belgian philosopher and skeptic. He has been a researcher and teaching member of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University since 2006. To date, he has published o ...

Paul Braterman Paul Sydney Braterman (born August 1938) is Emeritus Professor of chemistry at the University of North Texas and honorary senior Research Fellow in Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. Braterman is also a science writer and education cam ...

Alexander Cooley Alexander A. Cooley is an American political scientist. He is Claire Tow Professor at Barnard College. He served as the 15th director of the Harriman Institute of Columbia University and is currently the Vice Provost for Research, Libraries and A ...

Gerald Dworkin Gerald Dworkin (born 1937) is a professor of moral, political and legal philosophy. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. In 2016–17, he was Brady Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics a ...

Jennifer Cody Epstein Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of the novels ''The Painter from Shanghai'', '' The Gods of Heavenly Punishment'', '' Wunderland'' and '' The Madwomen of Paris.'' Life Epstein resides in New York City with her husband and daughters. She has a ...

Julia Galef Julia Galef (; born July 4, 1983) is co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality. She hosts ''Rationally Speaking'', the official podcast of New York City Skeptics, which she has done since its inception in 2010, sharing the show with co-h ...

Mohsin Hamid Mohsin Hamid ( ur, محسن حامد; born 23 July 1971) is a British Pakistani novelist, writer and brand consultant. His novels are ''Moth Smoke'' (2000), ''The Reluctant Fundamentalist'' (2007), ''How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia'' (201 ...

* Shadab Zeest Hashmi *

Pervez Hoodbhoy Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (Urdu: ;;born 11 July 1950) is a Pakistani nuclear physicist and activist who serves as a professor at the Forman Christian College and previously taught physics at the Quaid-e-Azam University. Hoodbhoy is also a promine ...

* Allen M. Hornblum *

Sue Hubbard Sue Hubbard is a poet, novelist and art critic based in the UK. Hubbard has published three collections of poetry with her fourth due from Salmon Press, Ireland in 2020, three novels, a collection of short stories and a book on art. She has wri ...

Ahmed Humayun Ahmed Humayun (18 May 1936 – 23 July 1999) was a Bangladeshi journalist. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 1987 by the Government of Bangladesh. Early life and education Humayun passed secondary school examination from Mohini Kishore High ...

Tasneem Zehra Husain Tasneem Zehra Husain is a Pakistani theoretical physicist. She is one of few Pakistani women to obtain a doctorate in physics, and the first Pakistani woman string theorist. An eminent scientist, she has been a guest speaker at a various schoo ...

Sam Kean Sam Kean is an American writer. He has written for ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''Mental Floss'', ''Slate'', ''Psychology Today'', and ''The New Scientist''. He has also published six books which discuss scientific discoveries in a narrative s ...

Amitava Kumar Amitava Kumar (born 17 March 1963) is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College. Early life Kumar was born in the city of Arrah in the Indian state of Bihar on 17 March 1963. He ...

Laila Lalami Laila Lalami ( ar, ليلى العلمي, born 1968) is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her ''Licence de lettres'' degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she e ...

Kenan Malik Kenan Malik (born 26 January 1960) is an Indian-born British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, trained in neurobiology and the history of science. As an academic author, his focus is on the philosophy of biology, and contemporary theories of mu ...

Suketu Mehta Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of ''Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found'', which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Pri ...

Martha Nussbaum Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosoph ...

John Allen Paulos
/ref> *

Robert Pinsky Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of ...

Steven Poole Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author and journalist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower?'' (2013). Biograph ...

Huw Price Huw Price (; born 17 May 1953) is an Australian philosopher, formerly the Bertrand Russell Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was previously Challis Professor of Philosophy and Di ...

* Asad Raza * Bruce Robbins * Andy Schmookler * Andrea Scrima *

Bapsi Sidhwa Bapsi Sidhwa ( ur, بیپسی سدھوا; born 11 August 1938) is a Pakistani novelist of Gujarati Parsi Zoroastrian descent who writes in English and is a resident in the United States. She is best known for her collaborative work with Indo- ...

* Justin E. H. Smith * Terese Svoboda *

Robert B. Talisse Robert B. Talisse (born 1970) is an American philosopher and political theorist. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is also a Professor of Polit ...

Bilal Tanweer Bilal Tanweer is a Pakistani people, Pakistani writer and translator from Lahore, Pakistan. His novel ''The Scatter Here Is Too Great'' was awarded the Shakti Bhatt Prize, Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize in 2014, and was shortlisted for the DSC Pri ...

Frans De Waal Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal (born October 29, 1948) is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, ...

References

External links

Official website

S. Abbas Raza interviews Richard Dawkins
{{DEFAULTSORT:3 Quarks Daily American news websites 2004 establishments in the United States News aggregators Internet properties established in 2004