Monthly Archives: October 2005

Hottest Brown Blogger EVER?

Posted on by

cineblitzaug05.jpgSadly, no mutineer can claim that distinction now that this Bonny lass is blogging.

Like Gogol before her, Bipasha has found a new way to concomitantly combat boredom and promote her new flick. I know, I know. It’s not a “real blog”. It’s a PR stunt. Still, her first post received 186 comments. Watch out darling Ennis, your record may not stand… 😉

Being a star is HARD:

In the past, IÂ’ve had some very ugly experiences in Jaipur — people wanting to touch, wanting to be physically nearÂ…
IÂ’m very scared of the mob-like mentality of the people.

Good thing she didn’t have that problem while making this phill-um. Another problem she didn’t have? A sore kundi from sitting in the makeup chair for hours. Continue reading →

Rub a Dub Dub

Posted on by

One of my goals in life is to figure out a way to get paid to watch Bollywood movies and yell at the TV screen.  According to an article in Salon by Sumana Harihareswara, someone (actually four someones) has beaten me to it:

“Uncle Morty’s Dub Shack,” which just finished its first season on the ImaginAsian cable network, is the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” of bad Asian films, and like its predecessor with the then-unknown Comedy Central, it could help put the obscure iaTV on the map. The conceit of the show is that four loser friends — Trevor, Aladdin, Jimbo and John — earn a little extra cash dubbing martial arts, action and Bollywood films into English at the Dub Shack, run by an old crank named Morty. Uncle Morty doesn’t have the translated scripts, so the friends turn the movie scenes into sketch comedy. For those of us who didn’t warm to MST3K, “Uncle Morty’s” is easier to love, because it’s only half an hour long (the films are significantly, and mercifully, edited down), and the writers create believable alternate narratives for the flicks instead of merely smirking at them.

Unfortunately, iaTV is not offered by my satellite provider, so I had to make do with the clips on Uncle Morty’s website.  (Of the Bollywood clips, I enjoyed “Goatman” and “Chicken Members” the most.)  The episode guide lists Dushman Duniya Ka, Dand Nayak, and Soch among the cinematic treasures given the Dub Shack treatment.  (The channel has also been airing the intriguingly-titled Duplicate Sholay.)

Continue reading →

Party Politics

Posted on by

iftaar.jpg

“43” hosted an Iftaar dinner at the White House yesterday, the fifth time that Bush has held one in the State Dining Room. Ambassadors Ronen Sen and Bernard Goonetilleke attended, as did other diplomats and prominent Americans who practice Islam. After the Imam’s prayer, the President announced a “first” which seemed especially appropriate; a Koran is now part of the White House Library.

The President used the occasion to express his gratitude towards Muslim nations who have assisted in the WoT. As for the rest:

“I believe the time has come for all responsible Islamic leaders to denounce an ideology that exploits Islam for political ends and defiles your noble faith,” he said at the White House, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). [link]

Continue reading →

Bird Flu, Indian Reverse Engineers and Mangosteens, Oh My!

Posted on by

I sometimes hang out at Brad DeLong’s blog, where apparently Razib thought I was a dude. Yesterday DeLong wrote a Cipla's Chief, Yusu Hamiedpost about Tamiflu, the Roche patented drug which is the one of the only plausible defenses against the dreaded Avian influenza or Asian Bird Flu. DeLong was mostly concerned with the domestic policy and economic ramifications of nationalizing a patent in times of emergency and stockpiling a drug ahead of time, but as with Sepia Mutiny, the comments can be most educational–and that’s how I found out that clever Cipla is at its Robin Hood reverse engineering tricks again. Bird flu is, of course, a global issue:

Cipla, an Indian producer of generic drugs, is preparing to become an alternative producer of oseltamivir phosphate, an antiviral drug better known by the brand name Tamiflu.Cipla plans to offer Tamiflu in the Indian market and in 49 less-developed countries where the company already sells AIDS treatments, Hamied says. The legality of the introduction in India, where pharmaceutical patents started to be recognized this year, is uncertain.

Hamied says he will withdraw Tamiflu from the Indian market if Roche’s patent is recognized.  (Link.)

A Roche spokesman, Terry Hurley, said that the company ”fully intends to remain the sole manufacturer of Tamiflu.” . .Making the drug involves 10 complex steps, he said, and the company believes that it’ll take another company ”two to three years, starting from scratch,” to produce it. Hamied dismissed that claim, saying that he initially thought it would be too hard but that his scientists had finished reverse-engineering the drug in his laboratories two weeks ago. He said he could have small commercial quantities available as early as January 2006. Asked if he thought Hamied was making an idle boast, Hurley declined to comment. Hamied said he would sell generic Tamiflu ”at a humanitarian price” in developing nations and not aim at the US or European market. ”God forbid the avian flu should strike India,” he said. ”There is no line of defense.” (Link.)

What does this have to do with mangosteens? I’m glad you asked!

Continue reading →

What the data might reveal

Posted on by

The Christian Science Monitor carries a provocatively titled article today: “How India’s nuclear secrecy hampers earthquake detection.”  The article investigates India’s refusal to share real-time seismic data on the grounds that it could reveal information about underground nuclear testing:

In the wake of the recent earthquake that devastated Kashmir, some Indian officials are reevaluating the government’s refusal to share real-time online seismology data with the international community.

India has balked at putting seismic data online because it could provide evidence of underground nuclear testing. The country’s refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty also excludes it from exchanging data with the International Monitoring System, a global network of seismological sensors operated by treaty signatories.

Seismologists can more rapidly and accurately pinpoint the location and power of an earthquake when real-time data can be triangulated against a wide network of sensors. A delay of even seconds in reporting data induces errors in the exact location and could set back relief efforts in their crucial early stages, prompting some scientists here to argue against data hoarding.

Such are the consequences of brinkmanship.  We can’t let the other guy know what the yield of our newest, baddest weapon is no matter what.

As for the value of sharing seismic data in the event of a future earthquake, some decision-makers in Delhi have yet to get the message. “Share data? What for?” asked an official from the Ministry of Science, sounding nonplussed when questioned about India’s policy to not make real-time data available via broadband.

“Open-data sharing in seismology over the past century … has been of enormous importance in reporting of earthquakes and studies of global and regional earthquakes,” says Shane Ingate, director of operations at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) in Washington, the world’s repository for data from most seismic networks around the globe. “It is regrettable that India … imposes restriction on the open and rapid access of these important data.”

Emerging technologies are making it possible to detect blasts and blast yields even without rigorous seismic data, so it doesn’t make much sense for India to maintain this policy, especially when releasing that data could help save lives.

Continue reading →

Just press the button…

Posted on by

Before this Mutiny started I took a solo trip to North Dakota to find a suitable location in which to establish our world blogging headquarters.  The choice of North Dakota was obvious.  There were many existing underground bunkers where we could make a home for ourselves, far away from the prying eyes of  “others.”  I found one facility in particular that immediately caught my attention and won my heart.  I knew I had found our home.  It was a fixer-upper though.  In addition to being a mess, which took days of back-breaking labor to clean up, it featured some old electronic equipment left behind by the previous residents.  Among the bookshelves I found a video cassette which I played out of naked curiosity.  In hindsight this was a bad idea.  The video said that something horrible would happen unless I pressed a red button (which was embedded into a table in the conference room) every three hours.  This helped explain why the previous owner was in such a rush to leave and offered a great deal on the place.  This button reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode I had once seen titled, “Button, button”:

The 1980s revival of the Twilight Zone series featured an episode entitled “Button, button”, based on a short story by Richard Matheson. In the story, a gaunt, black-clad gentleman arrives uninvited at the cramped apartment of a financially destitute couple and presents them with a tempting though somewhat ominous offer. He gives them a simple wooden box with a clear plastic lid overtop a large red button – the type of nondescript contraption teens might build in a high school Woodshop class – and explains their options: 1) Don’t push the button. Nothing happens; the man will come back tomorrow to claim the box. 2) Push the button and get $200,000 – tax free – and someone will die. “Who?” the wife asks. “Someone you don’t know,” the man replies. He then leaves them to think about it. The husband decides it’s unconscionable, but the wife wants to go for it. After all, what is the death of someone they don’t know? People die all the time, don’t they? Maybe a bad person will be the one to die. “And maybe it’ll be someone’s newborn baby,” the husband counters. [Link]

By the time the rest of my fellow mutineers moved in to our bunker I had become obsessed with the red button.  Anna makes fun of me.  She wants to see what will happen if I don’t push the button.  Ennis helps me out from time to time.  If I fall asleep he pushes the button for me.  Anna is probably right, and nothing will happen.  Still, I am both a man of science and a man of faith.  Why am I telling you all of this?  Because today SM tipster Shashi Kara sent us another button to press and it has got me thinking.

Continue reading →

Cutie Patootie

Posted on by

darshi.jpg

Would that every morning commenced with such gur at my front door. This bundle of adorable is named Darshi Shah and yesterday, she was on WaPo’s front page for a story about how schools are working fitness back into their students’ lives.

Many schools in the area, and across the country, are combating the trend toward child obesity by extending physical education beyond gym classes.
Walking, running and jump-rope clubs are popping up, even for the youngest children, before and after school. Students are wearing pedometers and learning to calculate their heart rates. And fitness gear designed to help kids improve upper body strength and agility are complementing slides and swings on school playgrounds.

The article didn’t contain any quotes from the precious little runner above, to my disappointment. Then again, her game face says it all doesn’t it? Continue reading →

A Hindu symbol, misused against Sikhs in Lodi

Posted on by

Some disappointing news from last week:

Vandals this week sprayed several swastikas and racial epithets on property that includes a Sikh temple at the northeast corner of Armstrong Road and West Lane.

Lodi, CA is a city that is 90 miles northeast of the bay. The vandalism went down at a site where plans for a larger Gurudwara were approved by the San Joaquin County Planning Commission. I don’t think the vandals’ choice of targets was coincidental.

Apparently there are close to a dozen groups of White Supremacists in the county. No one believes me out here on the right coast when I mention that I grew up near Klan members; they can’t get past the Golden Gate bridge/Hollywood sign in their heads. All the peaceful, flaky, uber-tolerant golden state stereotypes just make more sense, not that I can blame anyone for their disbelief. Unfortunately, stories like this validate a point I never cared to prove.

Nirmal Samra owns the 8.6-acre property and said he noticed the graffiti on his produce stand and a big-rig trailer Monday morning. The vandalism included remarks such as “killers” and “white power” along with other racial epithets directed at Muslims of Middle Eastern origin.

Nirmal Uncle is a grape farmer who

has never before experienced prejudice in his 30 years living in Lodi…

And I want to stress the following point: my experiences aren’t meant to be a blanket statement regarding racism or ignorance in the bay area or NorCal. Use Mutineer Manish’s statements for that. He went to the better school. 😉 Continue reading →

The tao of Manschot

Posted on by

I know of only a few people in the world doing pop art or Web design incorporating Bollywood kitsch, and we had at least two of them at the wonderful Brooklyn meetup on Sunday. (Arzan the hobbyist chef played heeeero. He slaved over the stove for four hours making dhansak, kebabs and delicious flan-like custard.) An ill-fated piece of Skylab could have taken out a significant part of the worldwide Bollykitsch talent pool. And then where would we be without snarky, arty, phillum-referencing tees?

There’s a dark side to all this. Like the children of atheists and their relationship to religion, Turbanhead’s babies will never know Bollywood irony-free. Like the preacher’s daughter, Pardon My Hindi’s future kids may rebel and turn into weepy Chunky Pandey fans. How ironic that would be. I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with K. There’s no escaping the ferric fate of the children of the kitsch.

I bring this up because one of my very favorite Bollykitsch artists, a Dutchman named Johan Manschot who did Diesel’s kitsch Indian theme a couple of seasons ago, has just sold out published a mainstream coffee table book on Bollywood. It’s called Behind the Scenes of Hindi Cinema:

… I’ve published a brand-new book… about Indian Cinema… [it] has been launched on the international press conference of the IIFA awards in Amsterdam… [I] was the one who [presented] the book to Mr. Amitabh Bachchan! And… presented the first signed copy to the alderman of Amsterdam…

The Web site, which uses a Bombay street scene theme, has song snippets and video clips from some of the classics. Here are some book samples. You can buy the glossy, $35 book here.

Whether or not you’re into the coffee table format, you must check out Manschot’s art.

Previous post here.

Related posts: Blood brother, Kitsch Idol, Blog bidness, Kitsch-mish, Happy Diwahanukwanzidmas

Continue reading →

Smacksourcing

Posted on by

Taut, tested arguments falling into place at long last are beautiful to behold. Like any good debater, Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys, has finally got his case down. First, talk smack about India’s place in the world:

Q. Are you worried about the outcry over outsourcing in America?

A. What’s happening is pretty fundamental. If you go back to the 1830’s, India and China were 50 percent of the world’s G.D.P., and then they missed the entire revolution of industry. So if you take a long view of this game, it’s just part of the process. [Link]

That ‘missed the revolution’ turn of phrase is a nice little euphemism for the Gothic horror of the British Raj.

Second, deftly position the inevitable outsourcing question as non-unique, overheated arm-flapping:

Q. What do you say to people who think that globalization will inevitably harm the United States work force?

A. Every time Wal-Mart replaces a person at a checkout counter with an automatic machine they’re eliminating thousands of jobs. This is one more facet of that, except it’s more emotional because instead of a checkout counter machine replacing Steve Smith, some kid in Bangalore is replacing Steve Smith. You can point to that kid and say, “He took my job.” [Link]

If you go back to the 1830’s, India and China were 50 percent of the world’s GDPFinally, remind Americans of their own core values:

Q. Does it feel odd to find yourself lecturing Americans on the joys of capitalism?

A. You guys told us for so many years to cut out this socialist rubbish and go to free markets. We came to free markets and now you’re telling us, “Stop, don’t come…” [Link]

This guy is better at jawboning than the politicians. Next step: mayor of New York?

Continue reading →