Monthly Archives: March 2006

TGN1412

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TGN1412 is the current designation given to a trial drug that is being tested in the UK as a treatment for leukemia. The first human trial resulted in some horrific results earlier today. First the background though:

Another human trial gone horribly wrong

Two men were in critical condition Wednesday in a London hospital and four others were seriously ill after taking a new drug in a trial supervised by a Waltham, Mass.-based company.

British regulators ordered the immediate suspension of tests of the drug, developed to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and leukemia.

“Two patients remain critical and four patients are serious but showing some signs of improvement,” Ganesh Suntharalingam, clinical director of intensive care at Northwick Park Hospital, said in a statement. “The drug, which is untested and therefore unused by doctors, has caused an inflammatory response which affects some organs of the body…” [Link]

Here is how things took a turn into science fiction territory and became plain scary for the volunteers:

The girlfriend of a man fighting for life after taking part in a pharmaceuticals trial has said the drugs he was given have left him looking “like the Elephant Man”.

“His chest is puffed out. He is already a big kind of guy but his face is out here, like Elephant Man, it’s completely puffed.

She added: “They haven’t got a cure. This is not leukaemia. This is a drug they have never tested on humans before so they don’t know what they are dealing with. It’s completely messed up their vital organs…” [Link]

A couple of the hospitalized volunteers appear to have been of South Asian origin. Continue reading →

A Mutiny through Sound

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For those of you into ethnic drum and bass, british-asian hip hop, or good live music in general, and if you are in New York this Friday night (3/17), I highly recommend attending the upcoming New York Sub Swara show featuring some of the top south asian musicians/producers around, including State of Bengal (best known for that Flight IC 408 track from Talvin Singh’s Anokha record), Navdeep of Mutiny fame, DK aka Bollygirl (Avaaz/Kollektiv), and DJs Bobby Friction and Nihal (BBC Radio 1), among others of course. Click on the image for more information, but rumor has it that pre-release copies of State of Bengal’s upcoming album, along with some of the most innovative in diasporic desi sounds will be available at the show.

The show starts at 10 p.m., is $15 in advance, or $20 at the door, and is @ Downtime, 251 W 30th Street (Between 7th and 8th). 21 and over.

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Incredibly off-k!lter

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Last night I saw an odd Indian tourism billboard in Times Square. It read, ‘Get to know yoga from its mother,’ and the visual style reminded me of old-skool ‘An Ideal Boy‘ posters.

The blurb in an advertising publication says the ads aim for kitsch, but IMO they fall into the chasm between kitsch and cheese. The colors say ‘An Ideal Boy,’ the visual style is fun. But the elements don’t work together. The slogan is lame, its font evokes Dances With Wolves, and the tagline in ultra-serious Bodoni strip it of wit. Indian tourism needs to hire whoever’s penning the witty Citi ‘Live richly’ campaign. I hear Rushdie’s available.

Even the campaign description is off:

Prathap Suthan, national creative director, Grey Worldwide, explains why this campaign stands out: “The difference lies in the expression which, according to me, is very Indian. Where one normally uses photography for billboards, which is a Western expression, the style used to communicate in this ad is the kitsch look… Opting for the kitsch look is based on everyday observations from all over India. These images have been drawn from village folk art and common imagery seen across India, images that bring to mind the colours, uniqueness and diversity of India.” [Link]

Kitsch, like cool, shrivels in sunlight. Trying to explain it kills it. Reading about it in dorky ad pubs kills it. Nonchalant, off-radar irony is the point. Calling it ‘the kitsch look’ voids any street cred. It’s painful even to read. I’ve lost all my Williamsburg karma by writing this paragraph.

Chantal, book me for a fauxhawk. The three hundred dollar kind. Tell them I want highlights, I’m feeling verklempt.

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Get Your “Kundis” to the D.C. Meetup, 3/25

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“Anyway monay, can I call you right back? I was in the middle of reports…”

“Ma? Please, really quick, ’cause I’m writing something?”

“Vat?”

“Does kundi mean “ass” or “anus“?

Sigh. A deep breath is inhaled.

“This is for your website? Kundi is chunthi. Koothi means anus.”

“Let me be painfully careful– kundi and chunthi are like…the butt cheeks?”

“Yes, they are what I would like to kick right now, absolutely.”

“So, like, you could use kundi in the following context: “get your kundi on the dancefloor?'”

Another sigh is sighed.

“YES.”

“I knew it!” Continue reading →

Malaysia’s first astronaut?

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An engineer named Vanajah Siva Subramaniam is one of the four finalists (and only woman) vying to become Malaysia’s first astronaut:

The Right Stuff

An ethnic Indian woman was on Tuesday named among four candidates short listed to become Malaysia’s first astronaut and travel to the International Space Station next year.

S Vanajah Siva Subramaniam, 35, will travel along with three Malay men to the Russian Space Agency in Moscow soon to undergo medical and technical tests that will establish which of them will take part in the scientific expedition on board the International Space Station in 2007.

The three men are Malaysia Airlines pilot Mohammed Faiz Kamaluddin, 34; army dentist Faiz Khaleed, 26; and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a 34-year-old hospital medical officer.

The four were chosen from more than 11,000 candidates who had submitted their applications in a process that started in 2003.

Vanajah is an engineer by profession. She was the only woman to be short-listed. All the three men are from the dominant Malay community, while Vanajah belongs to the ethnic Indian community, which comprises 8 per cent of Malaysia’s 26-million-strong population. [Link]

Her selection of course is dependent upon whether or not Malaysians think she is too sexy for the job of astronaut (I thought astronauts were REQUIRED to be sexy) . The astronaut who makes the final cut is scheduled to spend an expedition aboard the ISS sometime in 2007 (although I will bet money that the mission will be delayed at least a year).

Vanajah has previously said she hopes to inspire other Malaysian women to participate in science-related projects, saying her achievement proved that women could compete alongside men in rigorous trials.

The finalists have endured a battery of physical and psychological examinations, and officials said the remaining four were chosen on the basis of physical fitness, personality and preparedness, including family support. [Link]

I also found an article that describes some of those psychological tests that the Malaysian astronaut candidates were put through:

After extended periods of physical and mental stress, including sleep deprivation, being roused from a nice warm bed at 3am for a run followed by a swim, it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to continue pretending to be Mr Nice Guy.

Candidates were made to spend hours in pitch-dark jungle conditions to gauge whether they could endure long periods of isolation and sensory deprivation.

“It can be frightening if one is not used to the jungle but the candidates were never in any real danger ? what they did not know was that there were commandos assigned to watch over them at all times,” reveals Dr Teoh.

Continue reading →

‘Playboy’ Nehru

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The latest New Yorker reports that Jawaharlal Nehru did an interview for Playboy’s October 1963 issue. Oh yes, we read it only for the articles. Will anyone cop to having a copy, or you gonna make me drag my culo down to the N.Y. Public Library? ‘Cause you know I will.

… Playboy’s fiction was far less important than its interviews, inaugurated in 1962. Among the subjects were Miles Davis, Peter Sellers, Bertrand Russell, Malcolm X, Billy Wilder, Richard Burton, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jimmy Hoffa, Albert Schweitzer, Nabokov, Jean Genet, Ingmar Bergman, Dick Gregory, Henry Miller, Cassius Clay, and George Wallace, and that’s just for the first three years. The questioning was long (seven to ten hours) and confrontational. Presumably for that reason–and maybe, too, because this was a skin magazine and what the hell–the subjects often said what they did not say elsewhere. [Link]

The cover model uses Nehru as a fig leaf of civility (NSFW):

Shortly after this interview ran, the Nehru ‘jacket’ became popular in America. I think you see where I’m going with this. Embarrassed, the Indian government quickly backpedaled:

… after the rest of the magazine had gone to press, we received word from the Indian Embassy in Washington that our interview with PM Nehru was not, in fact, the result of an exclusive, personal conversation with the head of the Indian state, but simply a gathering together of public pronouncements made by the Prime Minister in various speeches, statements, etc., over the past several years. The Nehru material was submitted to us by a well-regarded journalist-publisher who has previously conducted numerous similar interviews with famous personages all over the world: it was sold as an actual interview, recorded on tape, and the covering letters that so described the material also included photographs of the Prime Minister and journalist together… [Link]

Rajiv Gandhi also did an interview for Penthouse’s Jan. 9, 1987 issue (thanks, Karthik). And Kal Penn did a famously raunchy, somewhat tongue-in-cheek Playboy interview (NSFW):

What’s the most number of women you’ve slept with in a day?

Two, when I had the threesomes. But, ask me again three months after Harold & Kumar comes out. [Link – NSFW]

Continue reading →

Malaysia: Fobs too sexy for jobs

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It’s pretty common for bigots to complain that outsiders are intent upon luring, seducing and despoiling their women. The defense of the motherland is intimately linked to the defense of mothers, and women in general, who have to be protected from the depredations of the evil other. It’s also common for nativists to complain that there are too many immigrants, and that those who arrive under legal cover often stay to do something else. However, it’s rare to complain that illegal immigrants pose a national danger because they’re just too good looking.

Warning: Bangladeshis will not be allowed into Malaysia if they look too much like this man!

Until now.

Malaysia is being swamped by thousands of illegal Bangladeshi workers who are gaining entrance on the pretext of being students, according to reports… Home affairs minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said the men end up doing menial jobs in response to a labour shortage. [Link]

Malaysia has a manpower shortage, and Bangladeshi men are arriving in Malaysia to fill the gap, to give Malaysia what it needs. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in this – it’s completely natural. Why should the minister object, then?

Home Affairs Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said Bangladesh workers were still spotted on construction sites and in restaurants despite a ban on their employment two years ago over concerns they were causing “social problems”. “They have blue eyes and look like Hindi film actors and they create social problems here,” Radzi was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times of the reason for the ban…. Hindi films are popular amongst Malaysian women, as are handsome male Bollywood film stars. [Link]

Ahhh … that explains it. Bangladeshis are too sexy for their jobs (too sexy for their jobs, so sexy, they’re fobs). Can you just imagine the Malaysian ambassador asking the Bangladeshi PM to make sure that only ugly “students” go to Malaysia? [Give us your tired your poor, your ugly masses yearning to be free, the unattractive refuse of your too too sexy shore … ] And what does it mean that no such restriction is imposed upon Indians?

I’m sure that today, all over Dhaka, Bangladeshi college students are walking around, catching reflections of their butts in shop windows, and comparing each other to movie stars. “Dude! You so look like SRK! I’m not kidding man, you really do! You’ve got the same blue eyes as he has!”

[Thanks also to technophobicgeek who blogged this story on the News tab]

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BBCD on Marriage

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Stories about marriage in which South Asian women are treated like property, used as a means to obtain money, married off at the tender age of twelve, or attacked by their in-laws, understandably generate certain feelings, including shock, anger, disbelief, and sadness. Another expected reaction might be to think that these incidents occur on the fringes of a society: in an “old school” world that should be increasingly marginalized and whose degrading and stereotypical practices need to be exposed as such.

Categorizing these stories in this way not only stigmatizes certain vestiges of the “old school,” but also places or elevates the critic into a different world, a “modern,” “civilized,” or “Western,” one in which specific qualities — such as individual choice and gender equity — are at a premium. But, while disassociating one’s self from the old school has its psychological benefits, it would be a mistake to think that the women born and raised in the West are free of humiliation in the marriage or courtship process.

Recently, I have been reading a blog called British Born Confused Desi (BBCD). The author describes herself as:

a Londoner who has her foundations firmly rooted in her Pakistani heritage. I face a constant state of confusion as I battle between trying to be a good Pakistani girl and a modern British woman.

She writes candidly of her experiences as a prospective bride. Her posts give the impression that she is an unwilling participant in a draft, where the male suitor and his family thinks they have the final say as to whether they want to select this “free agent” girl.

My folks have a family coming over to see me tomorrow, I hate doing things the traditional way. It really is a meat market situation and for some reason the “boy side” always seem to think that its their meat to buy. [Link]

And when the family eventually came to “view” BBCD:

Today after a very long time I was made to feel like a piece of meat…. . We got on pretty well for a first meeting.. His mother on the other hand spent two hours staring at me making me feel so uncomfortable, I dont think she liked me at all, Im quiet sure that i was too “modern” for her. His father didnt smile at me even once, i think both the parents have been on a course as too how to intimidate a person…. Anyway as per usual in our silly community system of arrange marriages, lets just wait and see what “they” say. At least with last weekends bunch I wasn’t interested in him at all. [Link]

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Best of the Best 2

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It’s time once again for the annual Best of the Best competition. It will be held on April 15th in New York City:

Michigan represents at last year’s BOB

The 2nd Annual Best of the Best Indian Dance competition with participants coming from all across the nation will be held on April 15th, 2006! The show consists of three types of Indian Dance: Bhangra, Raas-Garba and Fusion/Bollywood, where competing teams are invited after placing first at a previous competition. The landscape of Indian dance competitions is filled with a variety of shows, each highlighting a different category of Indian dance. Best of the Best is unique in that it is the first large-scale non-profit competition to bridge the gap among these different dance styles and crown one winner among the top teams. The second annual Best of the Best competition will provide an entirely new and memorable experience for the audience and competitors alike. The show consists of three categories: Bhangra, Raas-Garba and Fusion/Bollywood, where competing teams are invited after placing first at a previous competition. A total of four prizes will be awarded among the nine competing teams: a cash prize to the winning team from each category as well as an overall Best Performance prize to the team that truly is the Best of the Best. In addition to the competing teams, the show will feature internationally recognized artists.

If you have never seen Indian dance before, then Best of the Best promises to provide a birds eye view of the wide-spread landscape of Indian dance. For more information and updates please visit www.bobnyc.com, or e-mail us at info@bobnyc.com.

Performance Schedule:
Saturday, Apr 15, 2006 at 7:30 PM… [Link]

The BOB website features some great pictures from the past show as well as more detailed event info. As usual the NYC kids get the fun events in their backyard.

See previous post: Portuguesa flips the ‘Bird’

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In the line of fire

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The International Herald Tribune has a fascinating look at the headaches/near-heart-attacks that the Secret Service endured in securing Bush’s visit to Pakistan. It also includes a particularly insightful comparison to Bill Clinton’s 2000 trip. This may go a ways in providing an answer to a post on The Acorn a few days ago that posited some notions that I found a bit far-fetched.

How did it happen that the president spent a night in Pakistan, the assumed haven of Osama bin Laden and one of the one most dangerous countries in the world?

The short answer is that Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, insisted. The long answer is a tale about the nightmare scenarios of the Secret Service and the calculated risks of presidential travel…

The fuzziness [of the travel plans to Pakistan] was to keep terrorists guessing about the timing of motorcades and the arrival of Air Force One, basic precautions passed down from a cloak-and-dagger trip that President Bill Clinton made to Pakistan in 2000 that had the Secret Service in an uproar. Six years later, accounts of the trip from former Clinton administration officials are far more harrowing than was known at the time.

“In the preparations for the 2000 visit, the service dug its heels in, repeatedly confronting the top NSC officials with horror scenarios,” Benjamin and Simon write. “There was danger to Air Force One from ground fire. No one trusted the Pakistani military to keep travel routes in the country secret or secure. The service said it could not perform its mission: It could not protect the president. In a meeting with Clinton, Larry Cockell, the head of the presidential detail, told him so.”

Clinton overruled the Secret Service, although he decided that his daughter, Chelsea, who was to accompany him to India on the same trip, should not make the stop in Pakistan. Clinton ended up slipping into Islamabad for less than six hours on a small military jet owned by the CIA while an Air Force One decoy flew in to draw a possible attack. It was a dramatic and, for Musharraf, embarrassing difference to the five previous days that Clinton had spent out in the relatively open in India. [Link]

Very cool. I would love a job planning out stuff like this. Especially after watching 24 last week. I like seeing gutsy calls where the President overrules his bodyguards at his own peril. Continue reading →