Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Educational, Cultural & Social Matters
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Last week, Ruchira featured an article by Matthew Crawford about the redemptive value of manual labor. My comment begins, “Crawford is full of it.” Read the comment if you care to know why I think so. Now, thanks to Ron Silliman’s blog, I see another “philosophically” styled column by Alain de Botton in the Boston…
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Feeling too lazy to write at length on anything (an increasingly frequent occurrence of late). So here are a few links to stories that I heard, saw or read in passing over the last week. No Smiley Faces On DMV Mugshots: Few places in Virginia are as draining to the soul and as numbing to the…
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A very interesting article in the New York Times about the joys of manual labor. (link via Leiter Reports) The author of the piece has a Ph.D in philosophy. He runs a motorcycle repair shop in Virginia. The television show“Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of…
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That would be in Japan and the European micro-nation of San Marino, according to a recent WHO report. The two top the list for the highest life expectancies in the world – Japan for females and San Marino for males. A girl born in Japan today will likely live to celebrate her 86th birthday, the longest life expectancy anywhere in the world.…
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The unsettling events of the past decade – eight years of Bush-Cheney's reign of terror, 9/ 11, an economy in the doldrums, two wars dragging on for years and now a black president in the White House, have some Americans feeling particularly paranoid. Hate groups are quietly increasing their ranks and recruitment efforts, anti-immigration fervor is high, guns and ammo sales have spiked…
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Nearly three years ago I addressed the issue of looted, neglected or destroyed treasures of the world – whether the value of rare, ancient art and artifacts should be measured in regional and nationalistic terms or do they represent the foot prints of history pertinent to all humankind and therefore qualify as global treasures? I wrote: Those of us born in antique lands with long and…
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Okay, I shall begin with politics, post on something I've often mused about, and which is brought for me into renewed focus by topical politics – the search for Souter's replacement, and Sonia Sotomayor's chances at getting to the US Supreme Court. If you've followed the story this past week, I shouldn't be surprised if…
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A few weeks ago, I saw the intriguing works of twin painters Amrit and Rabindra, better known as the Singh Twins via Asian Window. They have applied the techniques of Indian miniatures to contemporary Indo-British life, making for an intriguing and what they like to term a 'Past Modern' approach to painting. They use the…
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Who is the most influential person of 2009? Instead of relying on assorted "experts" Time magazine decided to open this year's annual polling on this topic to the "general public." And just as democracy is messy, so are on-line public polls. Totally unexpectedly, the top position has gone to someone named "moot." (There is more to moot than meets the…
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I have been sitting on a couple of blog posts that I wanted to expand upon since they appeared on 3 Quarks Daily on the same day in the beginning of March. Both pertain to food, both are written by Indian born authors who muse on Asian food habits and their relation to religion, culture and the versatility of the human…
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The Indian elections are just around the corner. Politicians are out bloviating in full force. Journalists are following them around and asking questions. Some of them are not taking "no" or evasive tactics for an answer. Instead, the proactive reporters have begun taking things in their own hands (or feet in this case, perhaps) and are throwing shoes at the offending politicians.…
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A few years ago on a plane, my husband and I got into polite chit-chat with a fellow passenger. The talk turned to children. The lady asked what our kids were up to with their lives. Our daughter was at the time a graduate student in philosophy. Instead of providing that simple bit of information, my husband said rather grandly, "My daughter is a…
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After all the world-wide interest in Susan Boyle, there are still some things about the phenomenon which are rather puzzling to me. On seeing the Youtube video for the first time, I was struck by how exaggerated the judges' and audience's eye-rolling and snickering seemed to be. Why should they react thus at the sight…
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I didn't know grown men play make-believe pirate games. Apparently, it is a popular pastime for some who are beguiled by the tales of high jinks on high seas popularized in books, theme parks and movies. Those daredevil outlaws of the past occupy a romanticized place in the hearts of some modern day men with sedate lives. In their spare time, they like to put on eye patches, dress up in…
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I have never been impressed by overly sensual/ carnal language applied to food. I know, I know, sex too is a natural appetite and lust and gluttony can describe urges both above and below the belt. But for some reason, calling a piece of chocolate cake "sinfully delicious" doesn't make me want to eat it more. So it was not a surprise that I found the following article…
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