Accidental Blogger

A general interest blog

Recent posts

about

Category: Random Thoughts & Idle Chatter

  • Five Years of A.B. (Sujatha)

    Happy Birthday, Accidental Blogger!  Ruchira has asked me to do the honors in this fifth anniversary post and had suggested a heading along the lines of 'Five Years and Fatigued'. Of course we are all fatigued for various reasons- disillusionment with a too-centrist state of affairs, work, sleepless nights with babies, family and other commitments,…

  • Coffee in matrix form (prasad)

    Coffee at Starbucks. It's advertised in three sizes. What wasn't obvious to me is that the sizes actually contain different concentrations of coffee. A tall (12 oz.) coffee has a shot of coffee, as does a grande (16 oz.), but the venti (20 oz.) coffee has two coffee-shots. So, depending on which size you get,…

  • “I write like … David Foster Wallace”

    I came across a website last night that purports to "analyze" one's writing style and compares it to that of famous authors. Naturally, I was curious. After analyzing seven random blog posts, my writing style came out to be like that of Cory Doctorow (4 times), Kurt Vonnegut (2) and David Foster Wallace (1). "What, no…

  • Football, Fussball, Futbol aka Soccer

    The past one month has been an embarrassment of riches for sports fans  who love soccer and tennis. Being one  of them, I have been majorly distracted lately, mostly by the fast, furious and elegant action on the soccer fields of South Africa. In fact, my favorite tennis tournament at Wimbledon went by without my…

  • A Little Saturday Morning Linkery (Sujatha)

    Bad Bro vis a vis Big Bro : the perils of the Intertube Age. (Note: the first link is to a humorous situation that I found myself in. I had thoughts about contacting my cell phone carrier to ask about number blocks and such, a genuflection of sorts at the altar of Big Bro, but…

  • Cactus Flower

    This post is a cut & paste transfer from Facebook where I have been recording the unusual but surprisingly beautiful progress of a cactus plant. Readers who are on my FB list of "friends" may have already seen it. Click on the images for an enlarged view. I have had several cactus plants for years – indoors and…

  • Too much of a good thing (Sujatha)

    There is such a thing as too much chocolate. We just got back from a two day trip to Hershey, PA,  the 'Sweetest Place on Earth'. I've always had an affinity for chocolate, lovingly lingering on those tiny bars of Cadbury's milk chocolate that were a rare treat in childhood. We had to study how…

  • A Text Without Content (Dean)

    Having read (just) a few of her reviews over the years, I don't believe Michiko Kakutani knows much about books or literature. But I am quite confident that she knows even less about network technologies and even less than that about literary theory. Look at this rambling mess. On second thought, skip directly to the…

  • Sadness as a Muse (Sujatha)

    Does happiness chase away the creative ability? This intriguing New York Times article suggests that depression and its attendant emotions might play an evolutionary role that has led to its being preserved in the human species across time, perhaps for the creative advantages that it confers. Imagine, no Lascaux cave art, if it weren't for…

  • Pop Philosophy (Dean)

    I dislike film and most of what passes for popular culture. I think this may be why Ruchira tipped me off to this review of a film about the viability of popular philosophy. On reading it, I immediately reflected that our own M recently mentioned Camus in a comment to a post about Heidegger. I'd…

  • A picture that only a mother could love…

    That's a bit of a purposely sef-deprecatory sounding title. I too like the picture. But it is true that of all my paintings this was my mother's favorite. When I posted an Obamaicon of myself here, I had thought that was as close as I was likely to come to publishing a true likeness on the blog. I still do not plan to…