Lift-off of the Space Shuttle Discovery with Astronaut Sunita Williams aboard is scheduled for 8:47:35 p.m. EST. Watch it LIVE by clicking the picture below or turning on the news (CNN has it LIVE):
Good Luck and Godspeed.
UPDATE (8:57p.m. EST): They just jettisoned the External Tank. SUCCESS!! Time for orbital insertion.
Images from this week’s coup in Fiji are pretty much what you’d expect from a generally bloodless military takeover: soldiers patrolling empty streets, makeshift roadblocks, dismissed politicians vacating offices, tentative encounters with civilians, and so forth. (Photo: AP via Yahoo!)
What’s missing from the imagery of the coup is desi faces, which is interesting considering that at least one-third of the population of Fiji is of Indian origin: principally the descendents of sugar plantation workers, plus Gujarati trading families that came to Fiji after its independence in 1970. A couple of decades ago, Indo-Fijians made up close to half the population; sources differ as to how fast the proportion has diminished since then, but it’s still a sizeable population.
Many previous troubles in Fiji have highlighted the competition for power and resources between the Indo-Fijian and indigenous Fijian communities. The first elected Indo-Fijian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, was deposed in a coup in 2000 that led to a nasty hostage situation. The coup’s leader, George Speight, was eventually imprisoned, but Chaudhry did not return to office.
Now Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the head of Fiji’s military, has overthrown the elected government of prime minister Laisania Qarase, and has done so in part out of self-professed concern for the well-being of Indo-Fijians. The Qarase government had attempted to pass property laws that would have increased control of the nation’s land by ethnic Fijians. (I’ll leave it to someone more versed in the issue to explain exactly what this was all about, and how much it was a motivating factor, rather than an excuse, for the coup.)
In May’s elections, Qarase’s indigenous-dominated government was narrowly returned to power by securing the votes of the vast majority of Fijian voters while Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour Party won the almost total support of Indo-Fijian voters.
Bainimarama said on Tuesday when he announced his grab for power that one of his main aims was to “mend the ever-widening racial divide that currently besets our multicultural nation”.
He has slammed government plans to offer amnesties to plotters of the 2000 coup and other legislation he says discriminates against the Indian minority.
Caretaker Prime Minister Jona Senilagakali, today said — a day after being sworn in by Bainimarama — that race relations was top of his agenda.
“There is too much hatred, that’s what really worries me in Fiji. There’s too much emphasis on the indigenous Fijian`s interests,” he told local radio.
“We have achieved our state of development mostly through the efforts of the Indian community and I respect that very much.” [Link]
It is time for further explorations of today’s “You asked for it…” theme, via flash fiction on a Friday: 
Jai: As someone recently mentioned on the News tab, this blog is screaming for a Bad Sex in Fiction-themed 55Friday, like a man and woman simultaneously exploding in a 2000-gigaton thermonuclear detonation of desire and mutually-assured destruction, the mushroom cloud of their passion suffusing the bedroom like acid rain in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter.
Pooja: A N N A did respond to my suggestion with a “Hell, yes!”
We’re waiting… ;).[linky]
Wait no longer, my pets (though allegedly, if you do it’s that much better)– the porntastic version of 55Friday is here. Jai and Pooja? Membership has its privileges, because this DJ doesn’t always take requests. 😉
For those of you who are utterly confused as to what we three book-lovin’ pervs are going on about, Ennis wrote a post entitled “Good Writers Finish Last” about a dubious competition–the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award— which inspired the comments you see quoted above.
Now in its 14th year, the award is given to the passage considered to be the most redundant in an otherwise excellent novel…
The judges said the award’s mandate is “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it”. [linkypoo]
Hopefully you still have enough stamina to mount an attempt at some 55age, though I know some of you must be exhausted from all of that passion expended over on the “size matters” thread. You may write total fiction, obscure some, ahem, non-fiction or use Mutineers or anyone else you please in your nanofiction. Come now, it can’t take you all that long to recover. 😉 After all a 55-word story is nothing but a quickie. You’ll be done (and so very satisfied) before you know it. Continue reading
READERS are blowing up the tip line asking us to cover the story below. Here’s a sampler:
You asked for it. And here it is, via the BBC:
A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men. …
Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.
The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.
The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.
This news is the top item in William Saletan’s science round-up this morning in Slate, which offers a translation of the key finding for any macacas that aren’t down with the metric system:
Thirty percent of Indian men are 1 inch short, and another 30 percent are 2 inches short.
Cue up another round of outrage, snark, statistics, exotification and sundry manifestations of sexual anxiety. As you can see, two of the tipsters left comments questioning the reporting of this story. Media hype? Colonial plot? Lou Dobbs?
Speaking of sexual anxiety: For those of you who read this site because you are considering becoming involved with a diasporic macaca, I would caution that you not jump to any conclusions about his member until you’ve had a chance to inspect it for yourself. Emigration leads to changes in diet and other health factors, which results in changes in body type. Just because your macaca’s grandpapa might have had a teeny weeny doesn’t mean your wholesome, corn fed, suburban cul-de-sac raised American desi shares the predicament. Whew!
Discuss. [Previous Sepia jimmyhat analysis here.] Continue reading
“Actually, Dilip couldn’t make it, he ate too much paaya last night, and his stomach’s upset.” Those were the words preceding my introduction to Shobha Dé this past weekend, at a book-launch for a new author from Karachi, someone named Nadya A.R. (like E. E. Cummings, only the other way around), who has written what promises to be yet another opus to my home-town. This one, since Kamila Shamsie seems to have used up all the other referential titles, is entitled Kolachi Dreams. I haven’t read the book just yet, nor have I been able to find myself arsed enough to look up reviews, but I’m working on the premise that more desi writers is a good thing, so I’m hoping it’ll be a good read. I’m a little annoyed by the elements that went into the publication, but we’ll get to that in a second. Continue reading
A few weeks ago, six imams were removed from an USAIR flight originating from Minneapolis where they had just been attending a conference of Imams held at the Mall of America on building bridges. Their suspicious behavior? Praying out loud while they waited and asking for seatbelt extensions. (Here’s an argument that their behavior was truly suspicious and here’s an argument saying it wasn’t). Coulter: Profiling Muslims is … like profiling the Klan
Before they knew it, airport police swarmed onto the plane, and the six imams were herded out, handcuffed and interrogated for hours… After the FBI cleared them, US Airways still refused to allow them to fly. The imams bought tickets on Northwest Airlines and flew back to Phoenix… [Link]
The event has produced widely differing reactions. Ann Coulter piped up to argue that it is good to profile Muslims and Arabs (she makes little distinction), saying:
After the attacks of 9/11, profiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan. [Link]
Washington DC area talk show host Jerry Klein went the other direction, staging an event to demonstrate how deep bigotry towards Muslims was. First he suggested that “all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band,” a suggestion that was supported by manycallers. One went further, saying:
… that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans…” [Link]
At the end of the hour long show, where many people had called in to argue that visual identification of Muslims would make other Americans safer, the host turned the tables on his callers:
Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. … “I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience … “For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.Continue reading
“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous…” [Link]
Since the big changes occurred in Nepal this past summer (see SM posts here, here, and here), the longstanding conflict there between Maoist insurgents and the government has ceased, as a “Comprehensive Peace Agreement” (CPA) has been signed. The Maoists have agreed to lay down arms and stay in camps where they will be monitored by international observers. The system they’ve come up to ensure both parties abide by the agreement seems a little far-fetched, but perhaps workable:
Under a novel agreement with the government and the United Nations, they are to deposit their weapons in padlocked containers at each of the cantonments like this one. They will hold the keys, but their gun closets will be closely watched. Floodlights will shine each night. Surveillance cameras and burglar alarms will be installed.
For the sake of at least symbolic reciprocity, the Nepalese Army has promised to keep an equal number of its soldiers in their barracks.
An initial team of 35 United Nations monitors is expected to trickle in by the end of the year to oversee the Maoist and the army barracks alike, followed by an assessment team to determine the final size of the United Nations mission. (link)
This seems like an awfully fragile system. Though Nepal’s 10 year old conflict is a little different from civil conflicts in other parts of the world — as I understand it, it’s not rooted in ethnic differences, so it may be easier to heal — it seems hard to imagine this method working for very long. Will the symbolic deposition of the King and the advent of a permanent democratic government be enough of a change to bring the country back together after 10 years of civil war?
In the short run, ironically, the Maoists have lots of new recruits hanging around at the new camps. But it’s unclear whether the new kids are there because they support the ideology, or because they hope the newly legitimized Maoists might have work for them:
Up the road in the village, among the old men sitting and soaking in the last of the dayÂ’s sun, the question of new recruits inspired churlish laughter. Of course these are new recruits, they said, and you can easily tell them from the old-timers. The new ones know nothing, one old man said. The new ones cannot tell the difference between where to defecate and where to bathe, another said. That inspired howls of laughter.
The troops who have gathered here for now rely on the hospitality of the local people. The old man, Ananda Gyawali, introduced one 19-year-old, Krishna Acharya, as a distant relative. The young man is illiterate and came a couple of weeks ago from a village far away to throw his lot in with the Maoists. He claimed to have joined the rebels a year ago.
The boy came only because he thought the Maoists would give him a job, he said, adding, “Poverty is to blame for this.” (link)
Meanwhile, many Royalists loyal to King Gyanendra have begun buying property in places like India and Singapore. A major garment factory in Kathmandu has shut down for reasons that seem linked to the changes. And there have even been some protests against the Maoists in the Kathmandu Valley, who seem more powerful than ever at this point. Continue reading
The little black dress (actually a long black dress) worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s has just been auctioned off for a record $924,588 dollars at Christies in London, on Tuesday. This was roughly six times the highest estimate for the amount of money that the dress would bring in.
The dress was designed by Givenchy, who later donated it for a sale to help the famous “City of Joy” charity in Calcutta:
The dress, an iconic piece of cinematic history, was designed by Hubert de Givenchy, who became Hepburn’s life-long friend in 1953. He donated the dress to Dominic Lapierre, founder of the charity City of Joy Aid, which helps India’s poor…
Hepburn, who died in 1993, devoted much of her time in her later life to her role as Ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.City of Joy Aid is supporting the work of more than 1,000 social workers, doctors, nurses, therapists and educators in India, helping more than four million sufferers of tuberculosis, cholera and leprosy. [Link]
Givenchy made 3 such dresses for Hepburn – the other two are in museums. The charity was founded by novelist Dominique Lapierre who wrote a book of the same name which later became a movie starring the incomparable Om Puri and also Patrick Swayze.
Hepburn was one classy dame. Her commitment to helping others lives on long after she’s dead and gone.
We have reached yet another milestone as a community, one that was critical to our development. A desi of Indian origin has seized the coveted Miss Great Britain title!
With so few beauty pageant titles left unclaimed by the rising tide of brown in swimwear and heels, it was very important that we capture each of the remaining tiaras:
British-born Preeti Desai has become the first person of Indian origin to win the Miss Great Britain title replacing original winner Danielle Lloyd after she was stripped off the award for reportedly dating Judge Teddy Sheringham and agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine. [Link]
As with many winners, she has a heart-warming story behind her victory, one of filial piety:
Preeti gave all credit to her mum, who is recovering, from a serious illness. “When she was crowned Miss Great Britain she rang to tell me and said, ‘The crown is for you.’ I burst into tears. I felt as if I won that crown. I felt as if I am Miss Great Britain. She only wants to see me happy – both my girls do. They want to see me smiling thanks to them I was able to overcome that dreadful illness,” Hema said. [Link]
Like all good desi children, Preeti is multi-talented and ambitious. She worked for years in hair and beauty, before making a career switch to the family fireworks business and she may now be trying to get into property investment. In what I think are her own words:
She then started, and is currently working for the family business G2 Fireworks full time and was made Jr partner, which she built up after years of working for G2 Fireworks from being a child… Recently she decided to move to London and work as a model until she raised enough money to eventually get into the property business. [Link]
If you’re a fan, you can read her myspace page and personal website.
The amount of havoc wreaked in Karachi by the weather over the last few days has been insane.
With 51mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours (whatever that technically means, all I know is that my mother spent most of her day scurrying about in the rain with a trowel in order to re-plant her seedlings in parts of the garden that were elevated enough to rise above it all), things have been kind of nuts. While I haven’t really been out of the house much, since everyone in Karachi magically loses the ability to drive successfully if it’s pouring, my short stints have seen a fair amount of damage done to parts of the city.
While the actual numbers are listed in the linked articles, so far people have died from the cold, from being electrocuted as live power cables snapped and fell into the water through which they were wading, and a number of shops and businesses have shut down because the streets are (were) flooded and there’s no access to them. Karachi’s most notorious underpass, which was designed to keep traffic flowing smoothly was temporarily the city’s most expensive wading pool, and all the while, power outages continue to make their presence felt–I’ve spent most of today trying to make sure that all the power outlets in the house are turned off so that the electronics in the kitchen and assorted rooms don’t blow up from sudden current surges. While it’s somewhat understandable that a desert city may not necessarily be well-equipped for rainfall, one would think that annual monsoons would have indicated to the municipal authorities that SOME sort of drainage system is in order. Continue reading