Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Educational, Cultural & Social Matters
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Recently we went through a lengthy debate on the subject of interference by scientists in religious matters. As matters stand, I doubt that scientists will have much success in influencing people’s religious inclinations. Politicians and religious ideologues on the other hand, have done real harm in the area of scientific query and research. It is not a…
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Ruchira suggested that I post my thoughts on the Seattle International Airport (Sea-Tac) Christmas tree display "kerfuffle." These were Ruchira’s, very cogent, thoughts: As a minority and a non-believer, I don’t like religious boorishness. But is there a difference between accepting different cultural symbols gracefully and being thin skinned about other people’s beliefs and celebration?…
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I have been sitting on this very interesting (and long) article by Christopher Hayes about his experience in a beginner economics class. His teacher was Allen Sanderson of the University of Chicago, an ardent subscriber to the Milton Friedman school of "Free Market – Free Trade" economic theory. "Is a little economics a dangerous thing?"…
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(Portraits of Gypsies by Dina Gottliebova displayed at the Memorial Museum in Auschwitz-Birkenau) Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, like all artists, wants to have a say in determining where her art work should hang. But she has been told that it is not up to her to make that decision because the art in question is the…
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"He ain’t heavy, Father … he’s m’ brother." ( Motto, Boys Town – Omaha, Nebraska) In a recent post on biologist Marc D. Hauser’s hypothesis about the innate nature of human morality, I said the following to explain our moral and ethical instincts, noting that our morality is not a quality that is as pure,…
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One big plus of having interesting co-bloggers is that you learn something new from your discussions with them. Even when you disagree. Joe’s post about the current controversy under way at the University of Minnesota Law School over the hiring of Robert Delahunty, resulted in an impassioned discussion in the comments section. In my very…
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Or rather, does it equal Saddam? You see, Senator Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein. Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ but has a distinctly Muslim (Arab actually) sounding middle name, perhaps in honor of his Muslim paternal grandfather. Now that Obama is a rising star in the Democratic Party and…
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Facts are measured in terms of truth/non-truth. Interpretations and opinions are measured in terms of quality. Unless, of course, you’re Lou Dobbs. “What you won’t see on our broadcast is ‘fair and balanced journalism.’ You will not see ‘objective journalism.’ The truth is not ‘fair and balanced.’ ” “Everything I believe, I believe unequivocally.” Interesting,…
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Who knew that my law school could be such a controversial and exciting place? Robert Delahunty is in the national news (by which I mean Brian Leiter, not USNWR) these days. Wait, who? It’s just not a sexy name like "Yoo" or "Gonzales!" Delahunty co-authored a Jan 9, 2002 memorandum with John Yoo for the…
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The last elections may only manage to put a skidding brake and not a complete halt on the run-away train wreck that is the Bush administration. Despite the thumpin’ at the polls, the Bushies are bent but not broken. Even in the lame duck years of this presidency, Bush and his cronies will seek to…
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George W. Bush plans to raise mega bucks for his presidential library. The target amount is a whopping 500 million dollars. This kind of money will surely not go towards buying multiple copies of My Pet Goat. More likely, it is meant for re-writing history. For the right price, you can buy the right historian…
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It’s that time of the year again! When parking lots are packed tighter than sardine cans, people camp out in tents by the closed doors of the big box stores well before the dawn’s early light to proudly hail that all-American tradition more glorious than the flag – Black Friday.Once, as a newbie to this…
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Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate in economics and champion of the "free market" died on Nov 16, 2006 in San Francisco at the age of 94. (He inspired the original "Friedmania" – long before Thomas Friedman, the cheerleader for globalization came along.) I have little knowledge or understanding of Friedman’s scholarly works but I have…
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Now that everyone is a warrior in Bush’s war on terrorism, why should the campus police be left out of the action? On Wednesday Tuesday night (Nov 14th) in the UCLA library, twenty three year old student Mostafa Tabatabainejad refused to comply with a request to show his ID during a random check. The campus…
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The two stories here are a few days old and I had not planned on writing about them. But the recent distasteful experience of watching the movie "Borat," got me thinking about racism, prejudices and what place they occupy in our national discourse. It also made me think of macacas and from there, of monkeys.…
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