My co-author Anna (who has been missing from the blog for a while), recently said in an email, "Your tireless effort on the blog never ceases to amaze me." I assured her that the tireless effort is actually exhausting. Which is why I am woefully out of blogging ideas this morning. Unlike my usual practice of providing multiple links to stories only on a weekend, I begin this week by directing you to what others have said on various matters of interest because I myself am bereft of any worthwhile thoughts or commentary.
Encyclopedia of Life: This is the story I had in mind for Monday’s post but Shunya beat me to it. Rather than my duplicating the effort here, please read about it at Shunya’s Notes.
Christopher Hitchens and God: Over at the NYT Book Review, Michael Kingsley has written a hilarious and accurate piece on Christopher Hitchens the contrarian (can we any more utter Hitchens’ name without this necessary qualifier?) and his new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I vehemently disagree with Hitchens’ current politics of war and peace but I like his writings. Still, I will probaby give this book a miss although I am sure I will find much to agree with in it. However, as things stand in the world, the "atheists vs the faithful" debate that is currently raging, is for the most part a futile one in my opinion. I don’t see any hope that the sharpest minds on the skeptical side of the aisle are going to make even a dimpled dent on the dullest ones on the other side. My own mind is already made up. So why bother?
Terrorism and Justice: Manoj Joshi has a thoughtful article originally published in the Hindustan Times, on the system and sense of justice in democratic nations and the strain that has been put on them by the war on global terrorism. Frustrating though this unconventional and asymmetric war is, can open and free societies afford to jettison their core values just for revenge or the satisfaction of meting out swift punishment to those who may richly deserve it and in the process, occasionally to those who don’t?
A Campus Comedy: After a couple of months of insipid reading, for the month of May my book club picked Richard Russo’s Straight Man, a not so straight take on academia and university life. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Straight Man (with its many references to Occam and his razor) is a hilarious account of academic life (in a small town university in Pennsylvania) – the intrigue, the angst and the quiet desperation among those who have devoted their lives to "higher thinking." Please read the reviews on Amazon and find out if it is your cup of tea. Like Jane Smiley’s Moo (which too I enjoyed very much), this book may appeal particularly to long time denizens of colleges and universities and those who spend their lives with them. (The picture of the goose on the left is not a mistake!)
Accidental Blogger 
