Are the humanities “relevant”? Should they have to “justify their worth“? I am disturbed by last week’s NYT article in which these questions are posed, not because it’s reporting an unfortunate, if not entirely newsworthy, phenomenon—the decline of interest in the formal study of humanities given their seemingly inherent impracticality and the excessive costs of…

I want to comment on Alex Rodriguez, who, you've surely heard by now, was part of the steroids-in-baseball conspiracy, which seeks to dishonor a game in which grown men are paid millions of dollars to wear ridiculous outfits and stand around while one guy throws a little white ball to another guy and a third…

I can't promise actually cool science stuff pulled from the news because all I've been doing for the past week is watching the History Channel.  This series on the seven deadly sins is pretty cool.  Actually, the HBO "John Adams" mini-series is pretty cool, too.  Anyway— A Snickers bar from 50 feet away is NOT…

Through all the press adulation and contented purring surrounding Barack Obama's team building for his upcoming administration, why have I been feeling a bit uneasy? Frank Rich of the New York Times nails it.

After a primary season in which comedians complained about the difficulty of mining Obama’s candidacy for material, writers at The Colbert Report, at least, must be excited about the obvious contribution to their running joke presented by McCain’s choice of VP. Watch out polar bears, she’s a-comin’!

Regular readers have already seen my Virtual Exhibitions. New readers can now access them in one place, rather than root around in the archives.  The paintings and the posts are listed chronologically as they appeared on the blog.  You can link to the original posts through the titles to read more about the paintings. Click…

Despite my ignorance of most of Norman Mailer’s writing and my muted distaste for his caricature of a public (and evidently private) persona, I was saddened to learn today (via Ruchira) of his passing. It signifies more than a loss of an individual writer of great merit, but of a type of literary author, albeit…

Apropos of our discussion of the continuing relevance of the Regeneration Through Violence last week, Susan Faludi is blogging at TPM this week about her new book The Terror Dream.  Its thesis?  The irrational militarism of the American response to 9/11 is symptomatic of a long-standing cultural narrative in which Anglo frontier people responded to…

For anyone interested in sci-fi and/or our bizarre futuristic present, may I humbly direct you to a review of William Gibson’s "Spook Country" that appeared in the NY Observer by yours truly yesterday.  It’s not a wholly favorable review, but at least I didn’t refer to the female protagonist Hollis Henry as a "young newsman."

Ruchira Paul : Founder of Accidental Blogger. An erstwhile chemistry teacher and mother of two adult children, Ruchira lives in the Houston area. This blog was launched as a solo effort in October, 2005. You can email Ruchira at [ruchirapaul at gmail dot com] The following authors were added over time. Anna Levine : Anna is…

After the serious and involved backing and forthing on my recent post on superstitions, religious and otherwise, how’s this for some morbid humor?  [ link via Pharyngula ] Serbian vampire hunters have acted to prevent the very remote possibility that former dictator Slobodan Milosevic might stage a come-back – by driving a three-foot stake through his…

Now that Anna has introduced her Uncle Ed and his very interesting food site to us through her excellent post, I thought of drawing attention to the other new blogs added to our list recently. Since I opened the door to food on A.B. with my chicken recipe after Thanksgiving, I will look forward to…

Lend anything enough weight and credibility and it becomes important, right?  And in this case, we’re talking about a lot: National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on…

This is great news for the promotion of social equality with respect to higher education in the U.S.  The New York Times has the story: Harvard University, breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university officials arguing that such programs put low-income and…

Prosperity Theology. Disturbing, no? TIME Magazine has a story (CNN summary for non-subscribers such as myself) on this aberrant Christian philosophy. Known (or vilified) under a variety of names — Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, Prosperity Theology — its emphasis is on God’s promised generosity in this life. In…