Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Educational, Cultural & Social Matters
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Both sides have claimed Einstein for themselves – the religionists and the atheists. A letter he wrote in 1954 sheds more light on his personal views on the matter. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between…
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A few days ago I posted about Ilya Somin’s post proposing a "holiday" called "Victims of Communism Day." The post self-referentially called itself, in addition to Ilya’s post, idiotic. While this is surely true, Ilya’s remarks did rub me the wrong way, and it may be worth expressly and seriously making the point that I…
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Well, not that Spam which is more than seven decades old, but this one. Heard the story on C-Span this morning and here is the report in the New Scientist. Thirty years ago next week, Gary Thuerk, a marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet,…
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[or, Why It’s True That Numbers Lie] Ilya Somin has a post up at the Volokh Conspiracy explaining why we need a holiday to honor all the murder-victims of communism. In case that’s a little too subtle– and for readers of the VC, were it making any point other than "liberals bad!!!" it well might…
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"Did you know when Dr. DeBakey was a little boy, his mother taught him how to sew? How lucky for all of us. She could not have imagined then that the little hands of her little boy would become some of the finest surgical instruments the world has ever known." – House Speake Nancy Pelosi…
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Pope Benedict XVI recently wrapped up his high profile visit to the US, his first after becoming pope. Benedict attended many functions that drew wide media attention. He visited the White House on his 81st birthday, held mass at several cathedrals as well as in the Yankee Stadium, met with victims of sexual abuse by…
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Cross-posted from Fluff ‘n’ Stuff ———————————————————– Jonny stood by the gate, tapping the latch to gain attention, his red-shot watery eyes blinking in the late morning sun. Mother stepped out on the veranda."Ah, finally, you have come. Why did it take so long? The palm leaves have been in danger of falling on the heads…
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Via Abhi at Sepia Mutiny, I came across this article in the New York Times. It is funny and refreshing to read an essay in which the choice of books (rather than other trendy habits), figures as the deal maker (or breaker) in a budding romance. Although I didn’t choose my own mate based solely…
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Think about spending a month, a week or even a day without electricity (yes, batteries are included in the ban). You will surely appreciate that it is no exaggeration to suggest that electricity has afforded us the most dramatic enhancement of physical ease and comfort since the ancient man first discovered fire and then invented…
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A few weeks ago, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin was spirited away from Delhi, India to a destination unknown. Controversial and banned in the country of her birth, she was denounced and subject of a fatwa in Bangladesh in 1993, leading to her fleeing to Europe and later India. In the wee hours of Wednesday, exiled…
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David Bernstein thinks that the liberals are indoctrinating their students. And presumably, this is ruining the country, because otherwise how will his law school (George Mason, the least academically diverse in the country) keep finding new conservative law professors? Professor Bernstein does have, I must admit, killer evidence. He "certainly knew some students at Brandeis"…
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Manoj Joshi on Tibet and China from India’s perspective as shaped by history and the current state of geo-politics in the region. A sharp commentary in Slate by Melinda Henneberger and Dahlia Lithwick on why Hillary Clinton cannot give a speech about gender as Obama did on race. Roger Cohen in the NYT on the…
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Democracy is all the rage these days (what’s not to like?). We are into the sixth year of a war trying to impose democratic values on Iraqis; Pakistan is struggling to fashion itself as a democratic nation after years of military dictatorships and feudal kleptocracies; and in our own backyard, the workings of the democratic…
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Now that the Democratic Party is beginning to resemble the Donner Party, Akhil Reed Amar, professor of Constitutional Law at Yale, describes how the party can come together by electing both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for president. How can they pull it off? By taking turns! When Hillary Clinton recently floated the idea of…
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While we are caught up in every inconsequential detail of the interesting presidential primaries currently under way in the US, much upheaval has recently taken place on the other side of the world. China is getting ready for the 2008 Summer Olympics – an occasion during which it hopes to showcase the country’s impressive growth…
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