Accidental Blogger

A general interest blog

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Category: People, Places & Friends

  • Can Gross National Happiness = Gross National Irony ? (Sujatha)

    So much for the concept of Gross National Happiness, a concept developed and promoted as an index of well-being by the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2005. While efforts to quantify it were widely publicized and discussed, nobody seemed to take the Bhutan government to task for its treatment of the ethnically Nepali Lhotshampas and…

  • Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer (Norman Costa)

    “British author, literary critic and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died, aged 62, according to Vanity Fair magazine.”

  • Did You Ever Notice? (Norman Costa)

    “With his jowls, bushy eyebrows, deeply circled eyes and advancing years, he seemed every inch the homespun philosopher as he addressed mostly mundane subjects with varying degrees of befuddlement, vexation and sometimes even pleasure.” –Richard Severo and Peter Keepnews

  • The Book and the Charlatan (Sujatha)

    It's always good when a book gets embroiled in a controversy, it makes for more attention and publicity for both the book and the 'libellee'. The book in question is Siddhartha Deb's 'The Beautiful and the Damned : A Portrait of the New India', the title needing a subtitle to differentiate it from F.Scott Fitzgerald's…

  • My Live Blog for Hurricane Irene (Norman Costa)

    Up to now, the water went no farther than my counter top and the sink. The forecast is for rain starting at 6:00 PM, and going non-stop for about 14 hours. After that, my apartment in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA will get rain for 9 of the next 15 hours, bringing us up to 11:00…

  • “Four More Years” (Norman Costa)

    "Four More Years" (Norman Costa) This political cartoon by Clay Jones is one of the best I've seen. And "No," it is not an old cartoon. "Meet Clay Jones "Clay Jones was often sent to the principal's office as a child for making fun of his classmates. He discovered at a young age that he…

  • Cultural heritage: language, literature and politics

    A very nice interview with poet, author and artist Sukrita Paul Kumar in Muse India. I am publishing the full interview by GSP Rao below.   Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar, scholar, critic and poet of great sensitivity, has done significant work in diversified areas like women’s studies, literary translations, and cultural diversity and literary traditions of…

  • “Save A Mother”: Annual Appeal

    (Bringing the post to the front as we make a final push before the May event. Many thanks to those who have contributed. Your help will go a long way towards achieving our goals.) A message from Dr. Shiban Ganju, founder of Save A Mother: Save A Mother is a non-profit organization working to reduce…

  • Another Baby on A.B. :-)

    If you stick around long enough, interesting things happen on the blog. This is the second time we are announcing the news of a baby being born to one of the A.B. bloggers. A little girl was welcomed by our own Dean's family recently, exactly a week ago to be precise. Olivia Valero Rowan was born on March 27, 2011…

  • Seizing the Truth (Sujatha)

    The sanctification of a human being is a slow process, taking months or even years to accomplish. It begins with careful wordings and rewordings of the early life stories, followed by more scholarly but carefully culled compedia as the years and paper trails grow in number and intricacy. The end point is inevitably the post-mortem,…

  • Resurrecting a subterranean poem and the last word from a friend …

    Our good friend and 3 QD contributor Elatia Harris' comment appears in an article in the WSJ as the last word on a story about a lovely poem by Sue Hubbard (another 3 QD contributor) that appeared, disappeared and has now reappered in a London public place. See the story (and Elatia's comment) here.