Take That, Ivy League! Penn State Prof Kills IvyGate, Narrowly Avoids Home Schoolers

U.S. News and high school boys are not the only ones who like to rank stuff. The Weblog Awards this week announced its 2006 winners, including Penn State Prof. Michael Bérubé, whose self-titled blog beat out competitors IvyGate and SpunkyHomeSchool with 38.62 percent of the vote.

Is this a defeat for the Ivy League at the mighty hands of public universities (on the rise, according to the New York Times )? A blow to poor defenseless students at the hands of one of America's 101 Most Dangerous Academics (thank you, David Horowitz)? Take heart, at least, from this: according to the New York Observer, Bérubé "seems to be one of those strange academics who actually enjoys the undergraduates."

Undergraduates and–according to a quick perusal of his blog– 2001: A Space Odyssey ("not a political film"), Justin Timberlake ("reasonably talented" but "not particularly attractive"), and something called the "We Are All a Giant Fireball Now" party (uh…looks like some kind of …political thing).