Best infrastructure for site combining static and dynamic content

Independent design vs blog software vs CMS

[metaman]

I am planning a website that will have a small (several dozen pages to begin, will grow only slowly) of academic material, with an additional section that is essentially a blog of entries discussing development of the material that ultimately makes it to the static section of the site, inviting reader comments in the process.

Having created several small sites and found myself spending an enormous amount of time playing around with non-content aspects such as typesetting and link architecture, and lacking the time to learn high-level web-design, I am thinking of relying on software so as to focus on content (which I will be writing).
I've looked at blog software and am wondering about which specific software package is especially appropriate; I am also curious about CMS which I know nothing about.

I would appreciate some guidance in this field. Also, assuming I am using some software, do I base the whole site on the software or only the dynamic part of the site? What sort of architecture should it be (site.com plus blog.site.com or site.com/blog, or site.com/static plus site.com/blog, or other?)