Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Educational, Cultural & Social Matters
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A very interesting article on Pakistan’s stunning new national art gallery. (via 3QD) I would certainly love to visit if I could. [ Pakistani architect Naeem ]Pasha led me on a tour of the spectacular new National Art Gallery in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. It’s the first national gallery in the country and Pasha’s crowning achievement. …
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Right wing fanatics have complained loud and long about the so called left leaning bias in US academia. Although most surveys show that a majority of the faculty in the humanities and natural sciences departments tend to be Democrats, the same surveys also find more Republicans in US business and medical schools. (What’s the split…
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An essay in the New York Times Books section counts some famous books which may not have seen the light of day, had the judgement of publishers like Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and others been the last word on their literary value. In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language…
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More than a year ago I had lamented the lack of exposure to the humanities and the social sciences during my school and college years as a science student. I firmly believe that a well rounded education better prepares a person for whatever esoteric specialty awaits them later in life than a one dimensional focus.…
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Thanks to DocuTicker, an excellent informational blog I routinely read, I was tipped to this recent American Association of University Professors (AAUP) report. The AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure released the report in June this year to address the following issues: Critics charge that the professoriate is abusing the classroom in four…
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It is the sixth anniversary of the dreadful events of 9/11/2001. Tributes will be paid to those who lost their lives on that day. Families will grieve, politicians will posture and the nation will remember. What is the appropriate manner of commemorating the fateful day that set the course for how we think of security…
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I am not much of an automobile aficionado. For me a car is a convenient instrument for getting from point A to point B, not a social statement. As long as I can see over the steering wheel, my feet reach the pedals, the vehicle fits in my garage, accommodates my grocery, is painted a…
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Prof. Brian Leiter (Law & Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin) has remarked upon a brief article recently published by Prof. Jonathan Wolff (Philosophy, University College London) about the preponderance of boring writing in academia. (They implicitly seem to mean humanities and social science writing, since it is difficult even to apply the criterion to…
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A must read article in Vanity Fair for those with an interest in literary figures, in disabilities, or in the relationship between individual rights and the community, which is both a touchstone of Miller’s work and part of what has made disabilities issues my own life work. The playwright Arthur Miller’s son, Daniel, was born…
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Last year just around this time, I lamented the fall of Pluto from its planetary pedestal. In that context, I mused over the oddity of a future generation of children growing up with eight planets in their solar system, unlike their parents who counted nine in their sky. I wrote the following comments regarding the…
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A few weeks ago, I linked to Usha Alexander’s account of the birth of a religion on a remote island where the adherents base their faith on the faulty correlation between earthly actions and heavenly rewards. Here is yet another example of an irrelevant and shoddy (IMO) cause and effect reading, this time in the field…
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What do you do if you want your child to stand out among a billion plus of his fellow countrymen in a nation where only 129 different surnames account for 87% of all family names in use? Surely, you give him a modern name that is at once easily recognizable and different from everyone else’s.…
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Myths and legends, like scientific discoveries often require careful planning. Few precious myths are born of Eureka moments . Most are orchestrated for maximum mass appeal by injecting elements of awe, mystery and the fantastic (think religious narratives). But rarely are we privy to the inner machinations that lead to the birth of a popular legend.…
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Jack Kerouac’s famous iconoclastic book, On The Road was already some thirteen or fourteen years old and the events described in it another decade older, when I first laid my eyes on it . The Beat generation, whose sensibilities were shaped by jazz, poetry and mind altering drugs was nearing middle age and the Hippie movement…
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We celebrate diversity in our surroundings – at least that is the popular zeitgeist. Not to do so is to be close minded and xenophobic, it is believed. We mature as human beings when we are exposed to a potpourri of life styles and points of view. A diverse array of faces, languages, religions and…
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