Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Educational, Cultural & Social Matters
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In the past week, there has been a little drama unfolding across the pond, in Britain, involving an Indian movie star and a British reality show. Perhaps it is not such a small drama after all – it was covered by most major media outlets in the US (see here, here and here, among others).…
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This week’s most popular article in the New York Times reports that there are more single (unmarried, divorced, widowed) women in America today than married ones. This is the first time that this demographic statistical shift has occurred in the US. For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living…
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A pizza company in Texas is in trouble with some patriotic US citizens. Its crime? "Pizza Patron," a Dallas based pizza chain (five stores in Houston), made the decision to accept Mexican pesos as payment for pizzas. Many of Pizza Patron’s restaurants are in areas with significant Mexican / Mexican American clientele who often have…
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Brian Leiter has posted a link to a list of nano-philosophical questions – some of them quite funny. Yesterday I came across a news report from India that poses a paradoxical question fit to be included in the list. But it is not funny – just very sad and somewhat ironic. The river Ganges (Ganga,…
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Yesterday, the New York Times’ most e-mailed piece was an article about free will (or the lack of it). Jason Stanley of Leiter Reports calls such enthusiastic response of the general public to popular philosophy topics, "Philosophy in the Public Sphere." (Conversely, it can also be described as physicists and neuro-scientists crashing a philosophers’ forum.)…
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Although today is just another day, culturally we are trained to think of the new year as a stepping stone to something new and hopeful. The science / philosophy magazine Edge is asking its readers what they feel optimistic about at the start of 2007. Thoughts of some 160 scientists, philosophers and thinkers are listed.…
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`Mine is a long and a sad tale!’ said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.`It IS a long tail, certainly,’ said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; `but why do you call it sad?’ Lewis Carroll ( ‘Alice in Wonderland’)——————————————————————————Here starts a saga of…
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The festive season of gift giving and receiving is just past. A few days ago, I came across this interesting article about the economics and psychology of gift exchange. The study shows that even though we don’t always receive what we particularly want and often exchange, return or recirculate our presents, most of us appreciate even…
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Following up on our recent discussion here on science and religion and a couple of links to reviews of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion provided by Shunya, I point readers to a lively post by Razib on Gene Expression. Razib argues that Dawkins has every right to debate theology (I believe we all do)…
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George Will first called bloggers inconsequential narcissists on ABC’s Sunday news show. Now he has written this article in the Washington Post. It is strange that he should be talking of narcissism – he who is a Washington Post / Newsweek syndicated columnist and a permanent pundit on ABC TV with an opinion on everything…
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I won’t have time for thoughtful posts for the next few days. Please make do with web articles for a while. (Unless Sujatha decides to write about the virgin Komodo dragon!) The following mildly amusing essay about learning or not learning a foreign language is from The Economist (subscription link). This one describes the Brits…
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I just received the following e-mail and link from my co-blogger Dean. "This is remarkable. A student has taped his eleventh grade con law class teacher proselytizing…and the kid is getting death threats!" The link to this disturbing story here. Update: Although I myself (and presumably Dean) saw this story only today, the Science Blogs…
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My suspicions about Laura Bush’s lack of deep wisdom have at last been proven true. Even though she has shown uncommonly poor judgement in her choice of spouse, I was willing to give Laura the Librarian the benefit of the doubt only because she claims to be a serious book worm. I ascribed her marital…
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Iceland, Mongolia, Siberia, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Iran, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Morocco, Algiers, Botswana, Bolivia, Paraguay, Antarctica. These are some places that I would love to visit one day but probably never will. During childhood and youth, certain places and people capture one’s imagination for no reason other than a fleeting glimpse into their…
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During our discussion about altruism and evolution, reader Biswajit provided a useful link to the very interesting discussion Beyond Belief 2006, pertaining to the role of science and religion in our lives and if there is or needs to be, any relation between the two. Rather than leave the link buried in the comments section…
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