November 30, 2005
Liveblogging ANTM's mercifully brief trip to Bollywood (Updated!)
Breaking News which is Meaningless:
A brown-ish designer, Ashley Isham, is one of the four people America’s Next (Nowhere Near) Top Model contestants go on a go-see with during this episode’s “challenge” in London. Contrary to every model friend I’ve ever had, THESE hapless girls are being told to wear something in the “style” of each designer, i.e. wear preppiness to Ben Sherman versus the typical jeans and no makeup MY friends rocked whenever they did anything.
The twist? The girls have to assemble their punk, preppy, mod and BOLLYWOOD outfits at some flea market. Winner gets a photo-shoot. A Bollywood photoshoot. (UPDATE: There ‘tis, above/left.) Oh my. What any of this has to do with being a supermodel is beyond this bear of little brain. Lovely Malayalee Julie of ANTM3, we hardly knew ye, and ye would’ve rocked the shit out of this trifling test.
With the words, “so, look BOLLYWOOD” still ringing in my ears as four confused girls run off to buy something, anything sequined— but will they look appropriate for a frolic through the Swiss countryside?— I hereby notify you that this train wreck is on UPN RIGHT NOW on the east coast. You mutineers on my home coast still have 2.75 hours to get ready for this spicy jelly (Thanks, ANTM fan Rani!).
Liveblogging, after the jump…
Observation One: Turns out that the photographer who shoots the Bollywood-esque “prize” is one of the main ANTM judges. Nigel is half-desi because his Mummy is Sri Lankan. Who knew? Also, who knew that Sri Lanka has so much to do with Bollywood? (Sounds like he conflated the two to ME)
Observation Two: For fuck’s sake, Bollywood is not the same as “Egyptian”…and I’m not even talking about decent Egyptian, this is all kitsch, my friends. Jayla is wearing a heavily-banged black Cleopatra wig, kohled-out eyes that were copied from some hieroglyphics and she’s posing like (you guessed it) an Egyptian (whatever she thinks that means).
Observation Three: Who puts a bindi on the bridge of their nose? WTF?
Observation Four: They are eating at a desi restaurant…trying to figure out which.
Observation Five: Nigel’s Mummy surprises the crew by showing up at aforementioned nameless restaurant. She randomly gets up to teach four finalists how to…tie a sari…because this is always what we do in a South Asian restaurant. Riiiiight. Faster than you or I can pleat, she’s gone.
Observation Six: At the final judging/emotional eviscerating, the four are asked to provide a modern take on something classic. I haven’t finished harrumphing before the four of them are trying to put a “modern” spin on…a sari. Three out of the four look like idiots, with one girl drowning in a red shmatha. The only ANTMer who looks decent turns a chiffon which is the perfect color for her in to a strapless confection. Wah wah.
Observation Seven: Judgette J. Alexander needs to
- a) take that bindi off
- b) NOT impersonate bharatnatyam dance movements
Observation Eight: They sent the “Egyptian” home. Not surprising.
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Apparently there is an encore presentation of this fiasco on Tuesday night. Watch the retardery for yourselves, you won’t regret it. ;)
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P.S. Thanks for the pictures tip, Nita!
anna at 08:11 PM in Fashion, Humor, TV · 37 comments · Direct link
Majoritarian Blasphemy
I came over to Sepia Mutiny to write about this and discovered that something similar already is being thoroughly canvassed in comments here. Ah, well.
Recently I’ve marked the onset of each winter by complaining about the people who complain about the de-Christianization of Christmas. My last post on the matter focused particularly on the bizarre spectacle of some Christian extremists who are offended when Wal-Mart fails to greet them with Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, and who assume they are being discriminated against because Christmas, unlike Kwanzaa and Hannukah, didn’t have a section separated from Holiday on the giant retailer’s website. I found their desire to have their religion associated with trees and Barbies very bizarre, concluding “Personally, I’d be annoyed if paintball places declared themselves to be celebrating Holi.”
Then I stopped and thought about whether I’d feel differently in India, where I’d be in the majority rather than in a small minority. Maybe there I’d feel that something was being taken from me, that my place in the majority was being disrespected, if the day before Diwali, someone merely wished me “Happy Holidays” in an attempt to be inclusive of Eid (which this year came the day after Diwali). Can anyone who’s been in India more recently than I recall instances of Hindu holidays being traditionally tied to secular items, and Hindus’ being offended when the secular items were dissociated from the religious holiday?
Speaking of commercial acknowledgments of faith, I’m not offended, but I am a little puzzled that my planner notes Christian, Jewish, Muslim and even Buddhist holidays, but nothing of Hinduism. I think the maker, Quo Vadis, is based in Canada, but surely there aren’t so many more Buddhists or Muslims in the Great White North than there are Hindus?
UPDATE: Here’s one way to get a multicultural holiday — put bindis on Mary and Joseph.
pg at 07:03 PM in Holidays · 18 comments · Direct link
Do Not Touch! [Updated]
While shop window designers are offending our readers by sexualizing Indian religious icons, Indian authorities are busy putting the “hi” back into “hijra” - their new hospitality guide makes it very clear to all those dirty over-sexed foreign visitors that they must behave themselves in a supremely chaste fashion when in-country.
A 20 page booklet has been prepared to instruct visitors to Ajmer, Rajasthan, in the “proper” way to respect Indian sensibilities. Here are some of the rules:
- Men should never touch women in public, even to help a woman out of a car, unless the lady is very elderly or infirm
- In Indian culture… men socialise with men, and women with women
- Married couples in Asia do not hug, hold hands or kiss in public. Even embracing at airports and train stations is considered out of the question
- Generally it is improper for women to speak with strangers on the street and especially to strike up a casual conversation [Link]
Hotels and restaurants have been instructed to give this booklet out to new arrivals, as if to discourage tourists from staying a moment longer than originally planned. Hotel owners have been asked to post these rules prominently, in large font, on their walls even though it’s self-touching not other-touching that leads to poor vision. A shorter version is being prepared for the back of hotel receipts, perhaps to remind post-coital couples that cuddle time is now officially over. Luckily, these rules do not yet have the force of law, and are “merely” suggestions.
“It is improper for women to speak with strangers on the street,” the rules inform tourists While versions of these rules are being prepared in English, German, Hebrew and French, there is no indication if they will also be distributed in Hindi or other Indian languages.
Speaking personally, these rules don’t describe the behavior of my extended family within India, let alone how my married relatives behave. Maybe it’s just because I’m a Punjabi, but the idea of not being hugged at an airport or being told that I shouldn’t socialize with female members of my family in public seems quite absurd. This is far more sweeping that regulation of behavior between couples, it’s the Talibanization of all relations between the sexes, within the same family or not. I look forward to active civil-disobedience being staged starting soon 
Road trip to Rajasthan, anyone?
UPDATE:
Here’s additional information on the origins of these guidelines:
A priest at Puskhar said that such behaviour was a form of “cultural pollution” and had led to local people petitioning Rajasthan state’s chief minister to put a ban on all Israelis entering the town.
The minister rejected the calls, but sanctioned the 20-page booklet of “do’s and don’ts”, which has been published in English, French and German, in order to “educate foreign tourists about local culture and sensibilities” [Link]
This is just like Middle-Eastern politics! You can either blame the Israelis or blame the Israeli blamers, but either way there’s a lot less fun in the world than there was before.
Related posts: Delhi sex clip portends sexual revolution? Everyone’s having sex except you the youths! they are having the SEX! No sex please, we’re Indian
ennis at 05:38 PM in News · 49 comments · Direct link
November 29, 2005
Piss Krishna
Penises of Paradise: You could be forgiven for thinking a post with this subtitle refers to the prowess of the male Mutineers. Alas, our significant others demand truth in advertising. Actually, our old friend Beads of Paradise has thrown a new wrinkle into its exotica-dealing ways: it’s encircled Ganesh with a garland of penises. A dangle-sutra. A dick-lace.
I’m bemused by the dildos strewn around the feet of the idols, and the well-hung Buddhas dangling off Christmas trees. Is this Inuit-Hindu totemic mashup? Is it a newfangled fertility ritual? Are they invoking the subcontinental symbol of disgrace, the garland of shoes? Andrés Serrano would be proud.
Color me unimpressed by the gonads on display. Here’s what a real New York set looks like, from this year’s Halloween parade (NSFW after the jump).
manish at 11:46 PM in Humor, Issues, Religion · 76 comments · Direct link
Panic room
Reader Dhaavak reports that he narrowly escaped a violent in-car mugging at the hands of a criminal pretending to be a construction worker.
It’s the prototypical Good Samaritan horror story. Glad you’re safe!
I was approaching the stop light when a man with a construction worker’s safety gear stepped out of the side and waved at me to stop… The construction worker walked up to my side and said that he needs a jump for his truck… “Sure guy. Come in”, I said, asking the guy to get in.
… he caught hold of my neck with both hands and started choking me. “You are about to die”, he said as he squeezed.
It was a powerful grip and I started struggling. I had my left leg half way out and I kept trying to push the door open. He was quite strong and pulled me towards him with the neck. I used my left hand to try to pry open his hands and tried to honk the horn with my right knee. “Don’t kick open the door”, he warned, “Hand me your wallet, or I will kill you”. I got a couple of fingers open and then all of a sudden, he let go.
I leaped out of the door and turned around to face him. I noticed my lights were flashing and the horn was honking. I had inadvertently pressed the panic button… [Link]
Lesson learned:
Do not ever get into someone else’s car or allow some stranger into your own… If someone approaches you for help, lower the window just a little, offer to call on the cell-phone, but don’t let anyone enter your car. [Link]
There’s a silver lining. By nearly getting himself killed, Dhaavak pulls himself off Abhi’s list:
(13) dhaavak- This is the most boring blog EVER. [Link]
manish at 11:16 PM in News · 17 comments · Direct link
Canadian peace activists abducted
Yesterday the Canadian government declared that two of its citizens, both humanitarian workers, had been abducted in Iraq. It decided to keep their identities secret for the time being. CBC News reported:
The Canadians were among four people - all humanitarian workers - who disappeared.Media reports say the other two hostages are a British man believed to be in his 70s, and an American. A British Foreign Office spokeswoman has identified the missing Briton as Norman Kember.
Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Graham says the government will do everything it can to help free the hostages. He did not provide any details.
Foreign Affairs spokesperson Rodney Moore told CBC.ca on Monday that the department is “closely monitoring the situation.” It is “not giving any names,” of the individuals involved, he said, since “we have to respect the families” of the people taken hostage.
Today the identities of the two men were released (thanks for the tip Dhaavak). They are Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney:
James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, both members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, were among four aid workers abducted Sunday at gunpoint, the organization confirmed in a statement late Tuesday.Mr. Loney, 41, a community worker from Toronto, had spent many years working with the city’s homeless before joining the organization in 2000. He had been leading the group before he was abducted.
Mr. Sooden, 32, a Canadian electrical engineer, was described by his family as being “peaceful and fun-loving and he is known to be passionate about the plight of the underprivileged around the globe.”
Being part of a Christian missionaries organization isn’t going to win them any points with these insurgents, but the fact that they are peace activists and probably support (I’m guessing) a withdrawal of troops would work in their favor you would think. What good does it do the insurgents to take these guys hostage?
According to the al-Jazeera report, a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and has accused the four of being spies working undercover as Christian peace activists.
Ahhh yes. Spies, spies everywhere. In response to two of their own being kidnapped, the Christian Peacemaker Teams organization released a statement:
We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. governments due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has worked for the rights of Iraqi prisoners who have been illegally detained and abused by the U.S. government.
At the very least I hope that message from the CPT falls on the ears of these clueless insurgents and gets these hostages released.
abhi at 08:05 PM in News, Non-profits, Religion · 41 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
Don’t F#ck with my website!
Back in May of 2003 Indian American Biswanath Halder went on a shooting spree on the campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. CBS news reported at the time:
The 62-year-old man accused of a shooting spree at a prestigious Cleveland university had military training with the Indian army and a grudge against an employee, authorities said Saturday.Biswanath Halder, armed with two handguns, allegedly killed one person, wounded two others and held police at bay for seven hours Friday in a shiny, swirling building filled with twisting corridors that complicated his capture.
Halder wore a bulletproof vest and a wig glued on “a kind of World War II Army helmet” as he walked the halls of Case Western Reserve University’s Peter B. Lewis Building and fired hundreds of rounds, police Chief Edward Lohn said.
“There’s a trail of blood throughout,” Lohn said. “It was a cat-and-mouse game.”
Now, nearly three years later, Halder’s trial has begun (thanks for the tip Joyce J.):
“This case is about two things, arrogance and selfishness,” assistant county prosecutor Rick Bell told the jury in the Cuyahoga County common pleas court yesterday.Halder, accused of killing student Norman Wallace and injuring two other persons during the siege on may 9, 2003, has repeatedly said information he considered vital to his own life’s work was destroyed.
The defence position is that Halder was trying to protect “mankind” from a cyber criminal. [Link]
But why? Why did this old man do such a thing? What made him snap? Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar:
Biswanath Halder’s Web site was his life. Working at least eight hours a day year-round in the Case Western Reserve University computer lab, he painstakingly compiled the digital equivalent of a bulging file cabinet and hope chest, stuffed with business plans and pleas for social justice.Then, three years ago, a prankster hacked into his computer and erased it all. “Everything I had was destroyed,” he said. Halder’s outrage turned into a blizzard of complaints, from the courts to the FBI and Capitol Hill. He blamed the university and a computer lab assistant named Shawn Miller - “the evil man,” as Halder called him.
Halder sued Miller, but a judge dismissed the case. Two weeks ago, an appeals court refused to review it. On Friday [May of 2003], police say, the 62-year-old Calcutta, India, native stalked through Miller’s workplace at the CWRU business school, firing a pistol and a machine gun in a seven-hour standoff that ended with one dead and three people, including Halder, wounded.
That hits too close to home. Now let me be clear. I DO NOT advocate murderous rampages. However, if I was an old man and slightly mad, and someone destroyed say…my blog, someone gonna’ get hurt…real bad.
Court records, interviews and Halder’s writings show that the bachelor led a life of awkward isolation while creating an Internet persona of a budding millionaire and social activist, even a savior of the world. There were plenty of contradictions.
I need to go out for a stiff drink. Right now. No, like right now.
abhi at 07:18 PM in News, Profiles, Tech · 6 comments · Direct link
Fight AIDS in your Computer’s Spare Time!
In honor of the upcoming 
(Thursday),
The World Community Grid team has announced the FightAIDS @ Home project. By downloading their screensaver you donate your computer’s idle processing power to the project. The increased processing power will hopefully allow researchers to more aggressively and quickly screen possible HIV-fighting drugs. [Link]
AIDS is an increasing problem in India:
India has had a sharp increase in the estimated number of HIV infections, from a few thousand in the early 1990s to around 5.1 million children and adults living with HIV/AIDS in 2003. [Link]
This software is similar to the SETI @ home project that was popular a few years ago, no more intrusive but with (IMHO) a much higher probability of success. A full explanation of the program follows for the geeks amongst us:
HIV Protease Docking UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, estimated that in 2004 there were more than 40 million people around the world living with HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The virus has affected the lives of men, women and children all over the world. Currently, there is no cure in sight, only treatment with a variety of drugs.
Prof. Arthur J. Olson’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is studying computational ways to design new anti-HIV drugs based on molecular structure. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that the function of a molecule — a substance made up of many atoms — is related to its three-dimensional shape. Olson’s target is HIV protease (“pro-tee-ace”), a key molecular machine of the virus that when blocked stops the virus from maturing. These blockers, known as “protease inhibitors”, are thus a way of avoiding the onset of AIDS and prolonging life. The Olson Laboratory is using computational methods to identify new candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block HIV protease. This general approach is called “Structure-Based Drug Design”, and according to the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, it has already had a dramatic effect on the lives of people living with AIDS.
Even more challenging, HIV is a “sloppy copier,” so it is constantly evolving new variants, some of which are resistant to current drugs. It is therefore vital that scientists continue their search for new and better drugs to combat this moving target.
Scientists are able to determine by experiment the shapes of a protein and of a drug separately, but not always for the two together. If scientists knew how a drug molecule fit inside the active site of its target protein, chemists could see how they could design even better drugs that would be more potent than existing drugs.
To address these challenges, World Community Grid’s FightAIDS@Home project runs a software program called AutoDock developed in Prof. Olson’s laboratory. AutoDock is a suite of tools that predicts how small molecules, such as drug candidates, might bind or “dock” to a receptor of known 3D structure. The very first version of AutoDock was written in the Olson Laboratory in 1990 by Dr. David S. Goodsell, while newer versions, developed by Dr. Garrett M. Morris, have been released which add new scientific understanding and strategies to AutoDock, making it computationally more robust, faster, and easier for other scientists to use. AutoDock is used on the World Community Grid to dock large numbers of different small molecules to HIV protease, so the best molecules can be found computationally, selected and tested in the laboratory for efficacy against the virus, HIV. By joining forces together, The Scripps Research Institute, World Community Grid and its growing volunteer force can find better treatments much faster than ever before. [Link]
ennis at 02:21 PM in Science and Technology · 7 comments · Direct link
Caption Contest
This is a photo from a NYT article on the sexing up of chess. Their caption was: “The model Carmen Kass in a five-minute blitz match against Viswanathan Anand last year.” I’m sure our readers can do better than that, especially given his … interesting expression.
ennis at 01:07 PM in Photos · 49 comments · Direct link
A meditation on form
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| Sikh khanda | Star Wars Rebel Alliance |
Old Mazda logo | Flag of Iran |
Graphic convergence, or looking to Sikh religious tradition for inspiration?
Related posts: Khan Noonien Singh, Camping while brown
manish at 12:01 PM in Photos, Religion · 35 comments · Direct link
Papal pull
The new pope of the Catholic empire has put the rebel alliance of Assisi and its dialogue with Hindus and Buddhists in check:
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Peace, love and tolerance: you disgust me |
In a decree published Nov. 19, the pope placed the Franciscans in Assisi under the… control of a new local bishop… The edict overturned autonomy granted in 1969 by Pope Paul VI that in effect made the Franciscans ambassadors to peace movements and to outside cultural and religious groups… So far, [Pope Benedict’s] reign has been an exercise in the tightening of practice to match church doctrine as he sees it… [Link]
Rise, Lord Ratzinger. What bugs the new pope about those hippie-dippy Franciscan friars: respectful, tolerant interfaith exchange. Why, those reasonable bastards.
In the view of critics, few places within the church challenged Catholic certainties more flamboyantly than Assisi. In particular, interfaith meetings held in the hilltop town appeared to them to be a kind of food court of dangerous relativist thinking.
… Benedict was settling scores with the Franciscans over a “carnival-like” interfaith meeting they hosted in 1986. Voodoo priests, American Indian dancers and African animists took part… The Franciscans went beyond agreed-upon rules by allowing pagan worship practices to take place on church property, and Benedict “never forgave the Franciscan community for the excesses…” [Link]
Voodoo, Native Americans and animists are fine, but what really gets the good pope’s robes in a twist are Hindus and Buddhists:
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St. Francis basilica at Assisi |
“… during [the previous pope’s] voyage to India, he had given speeches of unprecedented openness toward that country’s religions, and at Bombay had even let a priestess of the god Shiva anoint his forehead with a sacred Hindu symbol…”Some of the city’s churches were allotted for the prayers of Buddhists, Hindus, and African animists, as if these buildings were neutral containers, void of any indelible Christian value. The Buddhists set up a shrine of Buddha on the altar of the local Church of Saint Peter. The absence from Assisi of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [the new pope]… was not improperly interpreted as… self-distancing… [Link]
Hinduism, he said, offers ‘false hope’; it guarantees ‘purification’ based on a ‘morally cruel’ concept of reincarnation resembling ‘a continuous circle of hell’…… [Link]
What horror. Part of the church’s issue with Hinduism and Buddhism is a well-developed theology which makes conversion more difficult:
The pope maintains that there are religions that are by nature “particularly close to Christianity,” like the animist religions of Africa, from which conversion to the Gospel can come more easily. But he formulates an opposite judgment concerning the “great religions of the Far East”: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism. These “are of a systematic character,” and are thus far less penetrable. This explains why, in these regions, “the missionary activity of the Church has born, we must acknowledge, very modest fruit…” [Link]
The peaceable Baha’is got shafted as usual:
The next Assisi interfaith meeting, in 2002, was low-key compared with the one in 1986, and several commentators saw Ratzinger’s hand behind the changes. Fewer groups were represented, and some religions, including American Indian and Bahai, were replaced by Asian sects with larger followings. [Link]
The 2002 interfaith gathering in Assisi yielded this bit of sweetness. As Rodney King once slurred, c-c-can’t we all just get along?
I wish to extend my heartfelt greetings to all Hindus on this happy occasion [Diwali]…. I would like to conclude by sharing with you the strong impression which the image of lighted lamps made on me during the Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi last January. The representatives of different religions held lighted lamps in their hands and after their common commitment they placed the lamps on a common stand, symbolizing the convergence of hopes and efforts for peace. The pope blessed them, saying: “Go forward into the future holding high the lamp of peace. The world has need of light!” Happy Diwali. —Cardinal Francis Arinze [Link]
manish at 02:30 AM in Religion · 24 comments · Direct link
November 28, 2005
Ain’t no junk in her trunk
M.I.A. says in an Urb magazine interview that she took a lot of flak for licensing ‘Galang’ for a Honda Civic ad:
Ahh, fake hipster outrage keeps me warm at night. Our own Sajit (Gandhi, not Ghandi) defends the TV spot in the story. The title’s a little familiar, too:
Update: Another mag cover (thanks, Amardeep). Spin, spin, spin.
Related posts: Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching, Lolita Was a Man Eatah
manish at 07:45 PM in Music · 48 comments · Direct link
Coming down is the hardest thing
Vijaypat Singhania, the 67-year-old Richard Branson of India, set a new hot air balloon altitude record in Bombay on Saturday at 69,000 feet:
Indian Vijaypat Singhania has claimed a new world record for the highest flight in a hot air balloon, after a voyage lasting several hours. The 67-year-old textile tycoon soared past 21,000 metres (69,000 feet) but fell just short of his original target. He travelled in a pressurised cabin attached to a balloon as high as a 22-storey building… [Link]The temperature outside the balloon was expected to fall as low as minus 93 C and oxygen was negligible. Before taking off, Singhania stressed the importance of the pressurized cabin, saying that if he was exposed to such temperatures his “blood would boil.” [Link]
This is at a height no living being had been and is nearly two-and-half times the height of Mount Everest. [Link]
At least 17 aviators have attempted to beat the existing high altitude balloon record… “The aviation industry shudders at adventure flights. I chose India because it is my home and I feel [it] needs to be on the world aviation map… This flight is both dangerous and demanding…”
Most hot air balloons are powered by propane gas, but propane burners have never been tested at this altitude. [Link]
Singhania is a men’s suiting entrepreneur — I guarantee it:
Before taking off Mr Singhania, who chairs Indian textile giant Raymond Group, told the BBC that flying was in his blood. [Link]
Like SpaceShipOne’s record shot, he ran into difficulties:
The unexpectedly strong winds lifted off his balloon from its moorings prematurely, even before he was fully ready. Whereas the balloon should have taken off vertically, the gust dragged him westwards towards the sea at a dangerously low altitude. At this juncture a rescue helicopter set off in pursuit and chief co-coordinator Andy Elson radioed to Vijaypat that he should ditch the balloon into the sea. [Link]
Vijaypat’s dread of the sea is well known… [Link]”How farcical it would have been had I abandoned the mission just a few minutes after lift-off. I would have been the laughing stock of the world. With the burners not working efficiently, I turned to God and Saibaba and asked them to save my honour. You won’t believe me, but at that very moment my prayers were answered, the burners kicked up and the balloon started to lift off, as if by Divine ordination. However, my burners started packing up soon after lift-off and it didn’t take long for all 18 of them to stop functioning. For the major part of my journey the balloon was powered by solar heat.” [Link]
With his windows covered in ice, Dr Singhania never got to see the outside world from those heights. His camera system malfunctioned as did, reportedly, his communication system. [Link]
… the noted industrialist started learning ballooning in January this year at Mondovi, Italy. [Link]
But his advanced wireless systems saved the day:
”Every time it seemed that my mission would fail, God and Baba came to my rescue,” he said. ”I was in constant communication with them all the way.” [Link]
Singhania took the title from Texas, by way of a Swede living in the UK:
The previous record of 19,811 metres (64,997 feet) was set by Per Lindstrand in Plano, Texas, in June 1988. [Link]
It’s not the first record he’s set:
Singhania shot into the limelight when he completed the fastest solo flight in a microlight aircraft from London to Ahmedabad — a distance of 5430 miles (approximately 8,738 km) — in 22 days in August-September 1988… [Link]
Nor is it the last he desires:
… you spoke about your dream to go up to 132,000 ft, which would get you NASA certification as an astronaut, the minimum requirement being 130,000 ft. [Link]
The control room had a unique name:
… [the] Mission Impossible makeshift control room [was] set up in the air-conditioned lounge of the Poonawala Stud Farm at the Mahalaxmi Race Course yesterday… [Link]
Sounds about right. And no desi achievement is complete without the requisite chest-thumping:
“This goes to show to the world that we are not bullock cart drivers, but we can compete against the best of the world.”… [Link]
From one bullock cart driver to another: bollocks to bullocks. You done good.
See Abhi’s previous post. Here are video clips, a photo gallery and a Slashdot thread on the feat.
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You are all girly-men |
manish at 01:10 AM in News · 7 comments · Direct link
Shalom
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival ran this priceless ad in May this year (thanks, Areem):
This meshugenah has chutzpah. Remember, ‘shalom’ is just ‘salaam’ pronounced by a Bengali
manish at 12:29 AM in Humor, Religion · 8 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
November 27, 2005
Chrismahanukwanzakah sucks
I am a total Scrooge when it comes to the holidays. Halloween is the last great day of the year in my opinion. After that I just hold on until Martin Luther King Day. It's the usual rant of course. I hate that the holidays are all about consumerism. I could use a new digital camera because mine broke last week, but that is the extent to which I will participate in these holidays. Virgin Mobile is trying to sell some cell phones during the holiday crunch. In fact, they have decided that they will create a brand new holiday called Chrismahanukwanzakah that will maybe appeal to...well I don't know, agnostics maybe? There is no holiday for agnostics after all. Their ad campaign includes a cast of characters that can only be described as freaks. This includes a Hindu Santa Claus, and a pair of Hasidic Jews that sing about a dreidel made out of meat that they will eat and poop out. If you see the commercial on TV you will see that the Hindu Santa Claus plays to stereotype. The clip on the website is even lamer. Here are the lyrics:
Silent Chrismahanukwanzakah night
Holy Chrismahanukwanzakah night
Chrismahanukwanzakah is come
Chrismahanukwanzakah is bright
My new phone vibrate and tickle me
Holy guacamole it play .mp3
Can I have some chutney please
Can I have some chutney please
You know, cause a Hindu Santa Claus would be a chutney eater. Ba humbug.
Update: See last year's ad campaign.
abhi at 03:24 PM in Holidays · 35 comments · Direct link
November 26, 2005
‘Syriana’
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A long way from Lake Como |
The trailer is cut like an action thriller, but it’s actually a thought-provoking, 2œ hour-long film on the moral ambiguity of America’s oil dependency. The thrust of the story, based on a nonfiction book called See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, is that the U.S. uses the CIA to set up pliant dictators in oil-producing countries instead of those who might promote democracy. A Texan oil CEO utters this similarly realpolitik line (paraphrased): ‘The Chinese economy isn’t growing as fast as it could because they can’t get enough oil. And I’m damn proud of that.’
The movie opens with a shot of desi oil workers struggling to get onto a crammed Tata bus. Later in the movie, a shady oil company merger triggers layoffs. A Sikh foreman gets on a megaphone to Pakistani workers, telling them they’ve been fired, they must surrender their badges, and unless they find another job soon they have to report to immigration within two weeks and be deported.
Casting sees desis’ brown skin as closer to the popular conception of a terrorist than light-skinned ArabsThe Urdu-speaking Pakistanis are portrayed as naïve young villagers who just want to make a better life for themselves. Two of the young men become radicalized after racist Arab security guards beat them. They end up in a madrassa limned in sympathy, in stark contrast to the unwelcoming society around them. A striking-looking Arab evangelist preys on their insecurities and inevitably turns them into C4 fodder.
If you think that’s a spoiler, you haven’t been paying attention to desi roles in the movies these days 
I’m noticing an odd trend at the movies. Like The War Within, they pick Pakistanis rather than Arabs to portray suicidal terrorists. It doesn’t at all fit with recent history as most Pakistan-based suicide attackers have focused on India. They don’t seem as attached to pan-Arabism as, well, Arabs, and 2nd gen idiots in London notwithstanding, they’ve got nowhere near the presence of Arabs in global terrorism. It seems more and more like casting sees desis’ brown skin as closer to the popular conception of a terrorist than light-skinned Arabs. On the other hand, perhaps this casting was driven by simple plot imperative.
Most of the desi oil workers have native accents, but the guy playing the father of one of the terrorists speaks in incredibly shaky Urdu. It made me wince every time he opened his mouth. There’s also an interesting Urdu voiceover which continues a few moments into a scene with Ms. Saving Silverman, Amanda Peet. It’s an odd mix of superbrown and ultrawhite.
The most fascinating parts of the movie aren’t the desi parts, but rather the dispiriting predicament of an oil country ruler and man of wealth. Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig from Deep Space Nine, Kingdom of Heaven and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid) is a vital, efficient Ph.D. from Oxford with a yen to pull an Atatürk and join modernity, yet he finds himself between the Scylla and Charybdis of dynastic politics and the American penchant for military intervention. Back in Washington, a delicately shaded good-guy lawyer turns pragmatist in the Beltway crucible, preferring ‘the appearance of doing something’ over actually excising a culture of kickbacks.
The politics here are none too subtle with a group called the Committee to Liberate Iran, clearly modeled on American neocon groups like the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the Project for a New American Century. In the movie, the Committee to Liberate Iran is a bunch of loonies with holy fire in their eyes who attend not to the reality of fractured Middle Eastern politics, only to ideology. How very familiar.
The movie pays homage to Wall Street with a K Street hunchback raving about the virtues of corruption in the Middle East: ‘Corruption is why we win.’ Gordon Gekko lives. There’s also a visual pun on a famous scene in Titanic. Christopher Plummer is fabulous as an amoral lawyer and CIA veteran. Matt Damon surfaces again in a geopolitical movie filmed like shaky handheld verité, déjà Bourne.
In Beirut, the CIA agent played by George Clooney shows up at Hezbollah headquarters and asking for permission to assassinate someone else on their turf. Things go all pear-shaped, and he ends up in a torture room, supine and naked on the floor with thirty-five pounds of method acting blubber gilding his torso like white on a beached whale. It’s his Bridget Jones moment.
Watch the trailer. Here’s the NYT review.
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The truth? You can’t handle the truth |
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Christmas present |
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I’m king of the world |
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Medic! |
South Asian contract laborers, legally bound to a single employer and subject to totalitarian social controls, make up the great mass of the population. Dubai lifestyles are attended by vast numbers of Filipina, Sri Lankan, and Indian maids, while the building boom is carried on the shoulders of an army of poorly paid Pakistanis and Indians working twelve-hour shifts, six and half days a week, in the blast-furnace desert heat… Human Rights Watch in 2003 accused the Emirates of building prosperity on “forced labor.”Indeed, as the British Independent recently emphasized in an exposé on Dubai, “The labour market closely resembles the old indentured labour system brought to Dubai by its former colonial master, the British.” “Like their impoverished forefathers,” the paper continued, “today’s Asian workers are forced to sign themselves into virtual slavery for years when they arrive in the United Arab EmiratesAsian workers are forced to sign themselves into virtual slavery when they arrive in Dubai. Their rights disappear at the airport where recruitment agents confiscate their passports and visas to control them.”
In addition to being super-exploited, Dubai’s helots are also expected to be generally invisible. The bleak work camps on the city’s outskirts, where laborers are crowded six, eight, even twelve to a room, are not part of the official tourist image of a city of luxury without slums or poverty. In a recent visit, even the United Arab Emirate’s Minister of Labor was reported to be profoundly shocked by the squalid, almost unbearable conditions in a remote work camp maintained by a large construction contractor. Yet when the laborers attempted to form a union to win back pay and improve living conditions, they were promptly arrested.
Paradise, however, has even darker corners than the indentured-labor camps. The Russian girls at the elegant hotel bar are but the glamorous facade of a sinister sex trade built on kidnapping, slavery, and sadistic violence. Dubai — any of the hipper guidebooks will advise — is the “Bangkok of the Middle East,” populated with thousands of Russian, Armenian, Indian, and Iranian prostitutes controlled by various transnational gangs and mafias. (The city, conveniently, is also a world center for money laundering, with an estimated 10% of real estate changing hands in cash-only transactions.)… [Link]
manish at 02:53 PM in Film, Politics · 45 comments · Direct link
Survivor:NYC
In 1998, Nidha Mubdi, a student at St. John’s University in New York, discovered during a routine checkup that she had leukemia. After much searching through SAMAR, a donor named Himesh Kapadia stepped forward:
The bone marrow donation saved her life, but Mubdi’s kidneys began failing because of chemotherapy, and she’s been on dialysis for the last five years. But earlier this month, Derek Ivery, a friend from Queens College, gave her one of his kidneys, a much more serious operation:
Mubdi’s family members were tested to see if they could donate a kidney, but no one came up as a match. [Link]
Ivery, of Queens, decided to step forward after Mubdi put out a call for a donor on the Internet. They had met when when they were student advisers at Queens College… Mubdi’s grateful father, Shelley Mubdi, a Bangladeshi immigrant who is president of Medina Masjid, a Manhattan mosque, called Ivery, a “courageous man…”
Ivery, 26, and Mubdi, 25, were resting comfortably at New York Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital last night after the nine-hour operation. [Link]
So far, the transplant appears to be a success:
“Her new kidney is working perfectly normally,” Hardy said yesterday, noting that Mubdi has begun to urinate - a sign the transplant was a success.
Doctors will be on the lookout for symptoms of organ rejection, but Mubdi should be out of the woods in six weeks and able to live a normal life, Hardy said. [Link]
Ivery’s first thoughts were for his buddy:
These days have been uncommonly mild for autumn, but Derek Ivery insists on wearing a sweater and jacket over his tall and very thin frame. He cannot get sick. [Link]“I feel a little bad because she’s in a little more pain than I am,” Ivery said. “Because of all the medication she’s been on, she couldn’t get all the anesthesia that I had.” [Link]
Thanksgiving indeed. Mubdi graduated from Queens College last year. Here are photos of her family celebrating her survival five years after her bone marrow transplant. Here’s how to register in the South Asian bone marrow registry.
Related posts: Finding her match, Child needs bone marrow transplant, Campaign Yields South Asian Bone Marrow Transplant Donor, They got married the next day, A dialogue between generations
manish at 01:19 PM in Health and Medicine · 7 comments · Direct link
Speak No Evil
Muslims in Fatehpura burned an effigy of Sania Mirza on Tuesday. Miss Mirza’s transgression? Her publicly stated views on S-E-X. (Thanks, Raj!)
Muslim leaders said that their religion and holy book ‘Quran’ do not permit her to make such statment.[linky]
The article linked above provided no clue to the naughty view that burned poor Sania. Some googling turned up this:
She was quoted as saying that whether before or after marriage, the most important matter was that sex was safe. [linku]
Whoa, nellie. I knew SM (great initials on her, by the way) had plenty of balls, I just thought they were for tennis. Of course, there’s more to the story; Miss Thing had to recant.
In a statement issued in Hyderabad, Mirza said pre-marital sex could not be justified.
She said she was upset that her image had been maligned by misquotes and that such a non-issue had become a controversy.
We already know about the creepy effigy destruction. Check out how the tennis star’s detractors voiced their displeasure:
Some activists burned Mirza’s effigy and shouted “Sania Mirza down down”.
I’m not touching that last one. ;)
I’ve said it before, I’ll type it again— India doesn’t have enough successful athletes. Do we have to harass one of the few who does exist? Sania is so fortunate, she offends more and more people, every day. Tipster Raj had this to say:
Desis are like crabs… they just cannot bear to see another desi succeed. This young lady is a talented tennis player..maybe not so savvy how to handle her fame but can you blame her..she is only 18 years old…The moral of the story is people need to mind their own business, stop hero worship, and be happy for someone who has achieved something in life.
Amen. Let the girl win and represent. Stop hatin’.
:+:
Inappropriate and Consummately Absurd Aside:
Raj, the reader who sent in this tip closed his email with the following, which I found hilarious, because I am actually thirteen:
If Sania wants to really focus on her tennis, it may be better to go live in Europe, USA or some where where she can feel free to fart without the press sniffing around her.
My tips come to me via GMail. Do you know where I’m going with this? Of course you do. Our readers are BRILLIANT.
I had to capture this for posterity:
Seriously Raj…thanks for unintentionally providing so much amusement with one little tip. ;)
anna at 03:12 AM in Humor, Issues, News, Sports · 27 comments · Direct link
November 25, 2005
55Friday: "This Woman's Work" edition
Happy holidays, sweet readers. Today is Black Friday and that’s actually a flawless description of the moment I’m typing in now. I’m feeling rather overwhelmed by the dark…mostly because I’m staying with my little sister and she’s sleeping, so I can’t turn on any lights. ;) I’m also supposed to be vewy, vewy quiet, so she can hunt wabbits in her dweams, but she’ll have to tolerate the clickety-clacketing, since I have pirated wifi and as long as I have the mighty iBook and a connection, the 55 will go on. :)
I spent my day in transit; six hours of flying through three airports (with a two-hour layover) and one misplaced, gate-checked, carry-on bag later, I was back in the state where I once played as a toddler. I arrived in mukluks, the memory of last night/the season’s first gorgeous snow fall in DC dominating my thoughts like a new crush. Still swoony for Frosty, I stopped cold once I left the artificial climate of the airport and saw…a giant cactus. In 70 degree balminess. What an amazing country this is, from one end to the other.
My ultra-vegetarian family never did celebrate Thanksgiving (“such a typically American approach…to be grateful ONCE a year”), so I didn’t mind traveling today, but I looked at my fellow passengers on each PACKED leg of the journey and wondered about them. Surely they were trying to get home to a TurDuckEn or something brined or deep-fried. Maybe it even tasted familiar.
What did you eat? Did you create your own holiday with the family you chose vs the one you were born to, or did you go home? Did anyone gobble an all “brown” feast, with nary a cranberry in sight? Where YOU responsible for all that cooking?
Thanksgiving is for family but it’s usually staged by women. My Uncle in Maryland was a rare gent who cooked with Auntie, side-by-side; she handled the Amreekan fare while he made a most excellent sambar, to go with the Mallu portion of the menu. I remember adoring him for that. Most of my friends, no matter their ethnicity, had just their mothers stressing out over creation.
Women are the keepers of traditions, the path to religion and the source of life itself, which is why the following statistic (Thanks, Kenyandesi) left me queasy:
One in six women worldwide suffers domestic violence — some battered during pregnancy — yet many remain silent about the assaults, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.No, I’m not surprised that women are such targets, or that the pain is so widespread…but to put such an accessible number on it—again, “one in six”— is like a bracing slap in the midst of all this fuzzy, post-prandial contentment.
:+:
Each week I throw out themes because you seem to enjoy them, but I try to emphasize that no one minds what you write your nanofiction about, so long as you just write. So go ahead, write anything, and then leave your contribution (or link) to our beloved weekly project in the comments below.
But.
If you are stuck, if your screen is blank and your fingers are stiff above the keyboard because you don’t know how to direct them, then know this: today is the U.N.’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Even if you don’t commence your brainstorming with that in mind, then maybe you are thinking about women or violence or the collective secrets a community keeps. Suddenly this Friday is Black for another, sadder reason. “One in six”? That’s too much pain.
For every woman who is going to be at the mall in a few hours, excited about “doorbuster” specials, another is crying herself to sleep. Hell, the former could have been the latter, before waking up to tackle the day’s legendary sales. “One in six”. Sigh. One in a million would be inexcusable…
anna at 04:20 AM in Haiku, Issues, Musings · 31 comments · 1 reader linked · Direct link
November 24, 2005
The Desi News Network
There’s an old saying that on Christmas day, the only biz going are Chinese restaurants packed with Jewish patrons. When the other 80-90% of the country is distracted by holidays, superbowls, and the like, some interesting, if otherwise overlooked, ethnic combos rise above the fold.
I’m a news / TV junkie and usually keep the feed on in the background when I’m working from home. The last 30 min may have been a milestone for desi’s on TV news.
Today’s CNN Situation Room was anchored by the dapper Ali Velshi standing in for Wolf Blitzer who was undoubtedly enjoying time at home with his family. Relative to CNN’s usual fare, Sit Room is a more “raw” up to the minute format featuring a heavier mix of live reports on the big stories.
So, instead of the same Iraq update loop that gets run on Headline News, for ex., the update goes straight to the on-the-scene reporter - in this case, Raman Aneesh - posing with mic in hand in front of a row of Hummers. And, for an update from the international desk, he turned to Zain Verjee.
20 minutes of namebrand news, an unbroken string of Desi reporting talent. Pretty cool.
A quick check on Fox News revealed anchor John Gibson interviewing Fox’s Baghdad reporter, Ms. Reena Ninan.
Now, at least when I did the quick check, MSNBC chose to deal with reporters on vacation by doing something different - they ran a documentary on the life and times of Michael Jackson
vinod at 06:30 PM in TV · 24 comments · Direct link
Baller
Sunkrish Bala will appear on Will & Grace tonight and Grey’s Anatomy on Sunday (thanks, Kiran):
Sunkrish Bala will be appearing on TV during Thanksgiving weekend. Look for him on “WILL and GRACE”— Thursday, Nov. 24th, 8:30PM on NBC and on “GREY`S ANATOMY”— Sunday, Nov. 27th, 10PM on ABC. These are guest starring roles and will likely feature him prominently. [Link]Height: 6’1” [Link]
He’s previously been on CSI:NY and My Name is Earl. He had a part in Desipina’s production of Barriers and played Rama in an adaptation of the Ramayana:
… I watched Cornerstone’s production of The Ramayana float effortlessly across the David Henry Hwang’s stage… a shortened and speeded-up version tailored to hold the attention of American audiences…There is a silly but funny scene in which Rama tells Lakshman of their need to forge an alliance with the monkey kingdom. “Uh, I don’t think they like to be called that,” Rama’s brother delicately points out. There follows an argument about the socially sensitive term to use (Vanaras), although, Rama complains, he can’t keep up with all these self-descriptions — “Why can’t they pick one name and stick with it?” And later, when he hears the Vanaras actually calling themselves “monkeys,” Lakshman points out that “It’s all right for them to call each other that…” [Link]
Romantic lead, maybe? Going from cabbie to Latin lover, exoticized though it might be, would be one step up in the reductionist sitcom pecking order.
manish at 04:27 PM in TV · 29 comments · Direct link
Whistleblower murdered
A 27-year-old IIM grad was shot to death outside Lucknow last weekend for trying to cleaning up corruption in the gas station industry. Manjunath Shanmugam’s heinous murder shows no good deed goes unpunished:
The IIM Lucknow graduate from Karnataka paid with his life on Saturday afternoon for his crusade against corrupt petrol pump owners… Manjunathan… had become a “nightmare” for Sitapur’s petrol outlets, always dropping in for surprise checks as part of his company’s campaign against adulteration, sources said.
A month ago, he had sealed the Manu Mittal petrol station in Gola on Sitapur Road and blacklisted several others… The police believe that several petrol outlet owners had plotted together to kill Manjunathan… Adulteration of oil — especially diesel - at petrol pumps is a longstanding problem across the country. Diesel is mixed with kerosene, which is subsidised for the poor. [Link]Nathan’s body was recovered from a vehicle in Sitapur district this morning. The vehicle, a Maruti car, reportedly belongs to… the son of Sulakshan Mittal whose petrol pump in Gola area of Lakhimpur district had been sealed by Nathan. [Link]
Having not heard from his son for three days… the father… sent an SMS: ”How are you?” … that evening, Manjunath was beaten up and then riddled with at least six bullets. His body was found in the backseat of his own car. At the wheel, were two employees of the petrol pump, on their way to dispose of the body…
“He was killed for doing his duty,” said a tearful Shanmughan after the cremation. ”He told me many times that he was working in an area with many mafia gangs and that anything could happen to him… He said it is a lawless world and for survival, one has to keep mum even if there are irregularities,” said Shanmughan. [Link]
Indians are bitter:
I am never going to ask another IIM/IIT guy to stay back in India. I always resented the fact that some of our best brains always grew wings and flew out of our country. Not any more….Youths who dare to live for country are killed, and who live for themselves, India call them home and honors them…
It would be interesting to track what happens to the culprits… most pumps in UP are political gifts given by politicians to their goons… [Link]
Gaurav Sabnis remembers Shanmugam:
People always crib about how IIM grads never do anything for the country or don’t join PSUs. Here was one IIM grad who joined a PSU. Did his work honestly and in the right way… And he was murdered in cold blood…
Manju was one of the well known faces on campus… He was the booming voice of “3.4”, our campus band… That cold morning, we got talking… part of his job was to inspect samples from petrol pumps, and report back to the company. The petrol pumps were ideally supposed to adhere to very high standards of purity. But he said the adulteration in the petrol pumps in UP, where he was posted, was usually so rampant, it’s a wonder even a single petrol pump was functioning… He said the reason why this adulteration happened so brazenly was that the dealers knew that no matter what happens, their licenses couldn’t be cancelled. If everyone does it, how many pumps will the company shut down? [Link]
The gas industry is in revolt:
The Oil Sector Officers’ Association threatened to go on an indefinite nation-wide strike from Thursday if the new oil marketing discipline guidelines are not withdrawn and those behind IOC executive B.S. Manjunathan’s murder arrested by then. OSOA president Ashok Singh said the government has been asked to “scrap immediately” the 2005 guidelines which place the entire responsibility of controlling adulteration on sales officers of oil companies…
Singh had earlier said officers of oil companies in Uttar Pradesh would observe a bandh tomorrow to protest the murder. This would be followed by a nation-wide strike the next day if the demands are not met… Singh said it was not possible for an oil company sales officer to carry out the responsibility the new guidelines had thrust on him as he had to supervise over 50 retail outlets stretching over a 300-sq-km area.
He said oil companies would have to be backed by state governments if adulteration had to be effectively checked. The weights and measures department of the state government and the police would have to back the efforts, he added. [Link]
Shanmugam’s was not the first life taken:
Manjunathan’s murder comes almost exactly two years after another young man, IIT Kanpur graduate Satyendra Dubey, was murdered after writing to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee about corruption… Dubey, a National Highway Authority of India engineer posted in Gaya, Bihar, was gunned down after threatening to expose collusion between NHAI officials and private contractors. A CBI probe concluded Dubey had been killed by highway robbers… [Link]
manish at 03:41 PM in News · 24 comments · Direct link
Happy Thanksgiving
Gobble-chi gobble-chi gum gum.
manish at 02:58 PM in Holidays · 14 comments · Direct link
November 23, 2005
Dibs on the cute brown boy
Female roommates divvy up cute boys on the WB’s One Tree Hill. Sophia Bush calls dibs on ‘Narrayan,’ ‘Jabbar’ and the lead singer of the Foo Fighters. Apparently can’t spell.
Desi please. No I don’t watch, just flipping through.
manish at 09:20 PM in TV · 2 comments · Direct link
Asian invasion, white flight (updated)
The WSJ says whites are fleeing Cupertino, a Bay Area city with good public schools and thus an influx of middle class East Asian Americans (MCEAAs).
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Monta Vista High School |
My parents tell me the same is happening in our neighboring town of Saratoga, which was first a white retirement community and then a magnet for Silicon Valley CEOs. Five years ago, all our immediate neighbors were white; today, two families are East Asian and one is desi. When I went to high school, there were only four or five desis in the entire school. Many kids assumed that if you wanted to date, you’d only date one of the three desi girls. I studied captive markets in econ class and lived them outside. Today, I hear the dating ‘study group’ pool has gone from baby-sized to Olympic.
… the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino’s top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years. Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation — particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants — as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998…It’s not competition that makes white parents uncomfortable, it’s competition with Asian-AmericansSome white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether… Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests. The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian…
Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School’s parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. “This may not sound good,” she confides, “but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class…”
Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students… But whites don’t seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it’s not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans…At Cupertino’s top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers… in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don’t take white kids as seriously as Asians.
“Many of my Asian friends were convinced that if you were Asian, you had to confirm you were smart. If you were white, you had to prove it…” “White kids are thought of as the dumb kids…” Grades are so high that a ‘B’ average puts a student in the bottom third of a class. [Link]
I think the MCEAA influx is great. More debate, less football. Learning what it’s like to be at a good university. My parents agree, because MCEAAs value education. They’re an absolute boon for cities: smarter kids, better schools, higher tax base. What’s not to like? Too much Xbox and anime?
I love these quotes:
When Matthew, now a student at Notre Dame, finished middle school eight years ago, Ms. Doherty decided to send him to Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit school that she says has a culture that “values the whole child.” It’s also 55% white and 24% Asian. [Link]
What’s not to like? Too much Xbox and anime?Bellarmine was our archrival in everything because as an expensive, private prep school, it was so well-funded. They had four full-time speech and debate coaches, paid debate research assistants and so on. They sometimes flew to out-of-town tourneys, we piled into an old school bus. They were the Mercedes of high schools and charged as much. I took great pleasure in beating them, just like when Berkeley creams Stanford in the Big Game for the fourth time in a row. So to hear that some parents are paying for Bellarmine because the public schools are too good, oooh, delicious schadenfreude, I’m all verklempt!
The counterarguments in this story are pretty weak:
Monta Vista graduate Mark Seto says he wouldn’t send his kids to his alma mater [Monta Vista High]. “It was a sheltered little world that didn’t bear a whole lot of resemblance to what the rest of the country is like,” says Mr. Seto, a Chinese-American who recently graduated from Yale University. As a result, he says, “college wasn’t an academic adjustment. It was a cultural adjustment…” [Link]
This similar to the argument for diversity in college admissions, and I buy it, but only without severely compromising academics. And unless you grew up in a college town, it’s always a cultural adjustment.
Hung Wei, a Chinese-American living in Cupertino, has become an active campaigner in the community, encouraging Asian parents to be more aware of their children’s emotional development… life in Cupertino and at Monta Vista didn’t prepare [her daughter] for life at New York University. Diana moved there in 2004 and jumped to her death from a Manhattan building two months later. [Link]
I agree with this. East Asian and desi cultures need a reformation, less emphasis on predefined social roles and greater interest in people as individuals. But that’s pretty independent of the ethnic makeup of the city into which you choose to move. Besides, give it a couple more generations, and we’ll be just as slackerly.
‘Well-roundedness’ is how Hah-vad first tried to lock out Jews. The New Yorker reports that the original reason for the Ivy League’s ‘well-roundedness’ admissions criteria was to exclude first Jews and later East Asian Americans. Ideally, they wanted future elites: good-looking jocks who ended up on Wall Street and donated lots of money to their endowment:
It was difficult keeping Jews out because they were academically superior. The solution was to change the definition of meritThe enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically. By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate … because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also…”The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowell’s first idea—a quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student body—was roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowell—and his counterparts at Yale and Princeton—realized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit…
Bender, Karabel tells us, believed that if Harvard continued to suffer on the football field it would contribute to the school’s reputation as a place with “no college spirit, few good fellows, and no vigorous, healthy social life,” not to mention a “surfeit of ‘pansies,’ ‘decadent esthetes’ and ‘precious sophisticates.’ ” Bender concentrated on improving Harvard’s techniques for evaluating “intangibles” and, in particular, its “ability to detect homosexual tendencies and serious psychiatric problems…”
One application—and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile—was notated, “Short with big ears…”
Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience—an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite —and they have always been mindful of what must be done to maintain that experience. In the nineteen-eighties, when Harvard was accused of enforcing a secret quota on Asian admissions, its defense was that once you adjusted for the preferences given to the children of alumni and for the preferences given to athletes, Asians really weren’t being discriminated against. But you could sense Harvard’s exasperation that the issue was being raised at all. If Harvard had too many Asians, it wouldn’t be Harvard, just as Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard with too many Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears. [Link]
I envy people who grew up wealthy in their ethnic homeland, their certainty about their place in society. I mean that both of whites in America and desis in India. The new reality in Cupertino:
“Kids who are white feel themselves a distinct minority against a majority culture.” [Link]
Everyone is an immigrant now. Welcome.
Update: Interesting, mid-’90s essay in Slate about how Asian-Americans are the new Jews:
Remember the scene in Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint where the newly teen-aged Alex Portnoy goes to a frozen pond in his hometown of Newark to gaze upon gentile girls ice-skating?
So: dusk on the frozen lake of a city park, skating behind the puffy red earmuffs and the fluttering yellow ringlets of a strange shikse teaches me the meaning of the word longing…For Alex Portnoy, athleticism was something alien. It was part of a total package that included not only the golden shiksas but their brothers (“engaging, good-natured, confident, clean, swift, and powerful halfbacks”), their fathers (“men with white hair and deep voicesWhites were ‘engaging, good-natured, confident, clean, swift, and powerful halfbacks… men with white hair and deep voices’”), their mothers who never whined or hectored, their curtained, fireplaced houses, their small noses, their lack of constant nagging worry—in short, the normalcy and confidence that go along with belonging, with being on the inside…
Jews know all too well what the alternate form of merit that we didn’t have used to be: a certain ease, refinement, and grace. This may be what has led today’s generation of Jewish parents to athleticize our children. We want them to have what Alex Portnoy longed for: a deeper sort of American comfort and success than SAT scores and music lessons can provide… meritocracy ends on graduation day, and that afterward, Asians start to fall behind because they don’t have quite the right cultural style for getting ahead: too passive, not hail-fellow-well-met enough…
In my many hours standing next to hockey rinks last winter, I sometimes engaged in one of the Jews’ secret vices: Jew-counting. All over the ice were little Cohens, little Levys… What all the hockey-playing Jewish kids in America are not doing, during their hundreds of hours hustling to, on, and from the ice rink, is studying… At the front end of the American meritocratic machine, Asians are replacing Jews as the No. 1 group… as Asians become America’s new Jews, Jews are becoming … Episcopalians.
… academic commitment… is no longer a defining cultural characteristic of the group. What has replaced it is a cultural insider’s sort of academic preoccupation… mainly, college admission. Jews are now successful people who want to move the levers of the system (levers whose location we’re quite familiar with) so as to ensure that our children will be as successful as we are…
Asians are replacing Jews as the No. 1 groupJust at the moment when Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have presidents named Rudenstine, Levin, and Shapiro, those institutions are widely suspected of having informal ceilings on Asian admissions, of the kind that were imposed on Jews two generations ago…
Asian achievement is highest in areas like science and classical music, where there is no advantage from familiarity with the culture. This also once was true of Jews (why do you think my grandfather become a doctor?) but isn’t any more. Several years ago, Asian-American groups in California successfully lobbied to keep an essay section out of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. It’s impossible to imagine organized Jewry caring…
Asian-Americans today have two advantages over Jews. They have a lower average income, and so are more motivated. And most back-home Asian cultures rival or surpass Jewish culture in their reverence for study. Therefore Jews are going to have to get used to being No. 2…
The final irony is that golf and tennis are perceived by the Asian-Americans not as aspects of an ethos adapted from the British landowning classes (which is the way Jews used to perceive them), but as stuff that Jews know how to do… The wheel of assimilation turns inexorably: Scratching out an existence is phase one