Monthly Archives: December 2006

Last nights on Earth

Posted on by

Just a reminder to everyone that STS-116’s first launch window opens up in ~three days and two hours. The mission will take Astronaut Sunita Williams up to the International Space Station where she will live and work for at least 6 months. You can watch the launch live on the internet at NASA TV (or on CNN). The best blogs to follow along at (besides us) are the official NASA blog and The Flame Trench. You can read about the whole crew here.

For those of you who are feeling a bit inspired by Williams’ impending flight, particularly if you are under ~30-years-old, you should also note that NASA is smack in the middle of an aggressive plan to return the United States to the Moon (in competition with both China and India) and just today announced plans for a permanently-manned international base by 2024 near the lunar south pole (close to Aiken Basin). If you are an undeclared undergrad then take note that engineering and science (besides just the life sciences) are about to become sexy once again.

NASA may be going to the same old moon with a ship that looks a lot like a 1960s Apollo capsule, but the space agency said Monday that it’s going to do something dramatically different this time: Stay there.

Unveiling the agency’s bold plan for a return to the moon, NASA said it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon’s poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts land there.

It is a sweeping departure from the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and represents a new phase of space exploration after space shuttles are retired in 2010.

NASA chose a “lunar outpost” over the short expeditions of the ’60s. Apollo flights were all around the middle area of the moon, but NASA decided to go to the moon’s poles because they are best for longer-term settlements. And this time NASA is welcoming other nations on its journey. [Link]

Continue reading →

Smoke on the vater

Posted on by

Bangalore is about to have one of it’s largest live concerts ever, courtesy of aging 1970s rockers Deep Purple.

Who are/were Deep Purple? For our readers who like to listen to music originally recorded in their lifetime, Deep Purple were part of the the holy Trinity that founded Heavy Metal, along with Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath.

Their biggest hit was probably “Smoke on the Water” which reached #4 on the Billboard charts in 1972, and which is “#426 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. If you’ve got a friend learning to play electric guitar, you’ve probably heard him or her attempt to play it, along with Stairway to Heaven.

It is commonly the first song learned by many beginner guitarists, it’s also noted for it’s extreme difficulty. However, it’s main recognisable riff is not difficult and consequently is constantly played by learners.
In fact, it’s so popular, that one famous guitar store in Denmark Street, London, used to sport a sign on the wall reading ‘If auditioning a guitar, please refrain from playing Smoke on the Water, as this is causing our staff mental torture’… [Link]

Events like this contribute to this peculiar retro-quality that parts of Indian culture have. I suppose it’s good that Indians still appreciate the retro given that they’re still receiving visits from bands whose biggest hits were over 30 years ago. Heck, Deep Purple first broke up in 1976.

Bangalore is the only Asian stop on the reconstituted band’s tour. The group will fly in from South America to play one night in India before flying on to Europe, so in some ways it’s a big deal.

But (and I’m wrinking my nose here) … don’t you think that India should be receiving more up to date acts now? I know that tickets are expensive for the average Indian, but Bangalore should have more than enough young employees of multinationals that they’re willing to pay something close to international prices for a ticket. Why is it that, despite India Rising and all that, that India attracts only 3rd string western bands on international tour? I’m sure I’m missing something.

Continue reading →

Good writers finish last

Posted on by

There are times when we on Sepia Mutiny are happy when a desi loses. For example, when a desi author makes the short list for “one of the world’s least-coveted literary prizes – the Bad Sex in Fiction Award” [Link] (thanks Pooja!).

This year, Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal joined luminaries like former Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell and Thomas Pynchon (and five others) for consideration by the London based Literary Review for the 14th annual dishonor. I’m sure they all heaved a sigh of relief when the award went to first time novelist Iain Hollingshead instead. If you’ve never heard of the prize,

… 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”. [Link]

Embarassingly, this is not the first time a desi writer has been nominated. In 2003, Aniruddha Bahal won the award for his novel Bunker 13. The very next year, Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi was nominated for The Last Song of Dusk, Nadeem Aslam was nominated for Maps for Lost Lovers [thanks Red Snapper], and two non-desi writers were nominated for desi themed stories — Gregory David Roberts nominated for Shantaram and Will Self for Dr. Mukti.

That means that a full 50% of the nominees in 2004 were either desi or writing on desi themes! The Guardian has quotations from all of the 2004 nominees [Not Safe For Work] so you can see exactly how bad the writing was. We’re talking really really bad, people.

I’m a bit perplexed about the connection between South Asia and bad sex. Is it the Kama Sutra thing that attracts preposterous sex writing? Do exotification and bad sex come not so chastely hand in hand? Is it India’s own fascination with purple prose?

That said, I’d rather that desis were associated with writing about bad sex rather than having actual bad sex. Bad sex writing is funnier, and I’m all about the laughs.

Continue reading →

The Flop of Taj

Posted on by

kal_penn1.jpg
Kal Penn’s latest film, Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Raj, has opened poorly, at #10 on the U.S. box office. More than that, as of now it’s running an astonishing 0% approval at Rotten Tomatoes — the worst of the worst! (Even that Maha-Flop, Gigli, came in higher, at 6%). The original Van Wilder didn’t do that much box office, but became a hit when it went to DVD. But reviewers here aren’t saying things to the effect of “This was really sexist and adolescent, but kind of funny” the way they often do with gross-out comedies. Here, it seems most are basically saying “I wish I could forget the 90 minutes I wasted watching this piece of crap.” That spells no cult status and no DVD after-life: The Rise of Taj will probably just disappear without a trace.

Has anyone seen it? Is it as “bad as Badalandabad”? Is it as bad as “a day without sunshine”? Does it “not even compare three cup sizes to the half-assed original from 2002”? (Not quite sure what that means, but you get the idea.) The juiciest, ragingest five lines of snark I could find were the following:

Flavorlessly directed by Mort Nathan (2003’s “Boat Trip”) and seemingly penned on a napkin by David Drew Gallagher, “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj” has direct-to-DVD written all over it. There is unequivocally no reason why such an asinine, energy-deprived waste of time has reached theaters. I have had knee-shaking, ass-skewering hemorrhoids that were funnier than this so-called comedy, which doesn’t inspire a single laugh, smirk or smile in all of its running time. (link)

Go MovieBoy. (Oh, and sorry to hear about the hemorrhoids! Ouch!)

Personally, I’m not going to go see The Rise of Taj, even though I do admire what Kal Penn has been able to do in Hollywood. Neither the reviews nor the trailers suggest anything redeeming to be found here. And no, one doesn’t go to movies just to “support” aspiring Indian American actors. Really, the best support anyone can give Kal Penn at this point is an email along the lines of “make less crap, ‘kay?” Continue reading →

Rasslin’, the way the it was meant to be

Posted on by

I could barely restrain my glee yesterday when I switched on the TV during the day, and found myself witnessing the 15th Asian Games in Doha. Why, you may wonder? Because I found myself watching (wait for it)…international, competitive, kabaddi.
Kabaddi.jpg

One of the more eclectic sports, and for people such as myself who know nothing about the game other than its featuring scantily-clad, oiled-up men chanting, kabbadi is played by two seven-player teams, which take turns raiding each other’s side of the court. One scores points either touching an opposing player and returning to your own side, or by an opposing team managing to prevent a raider from returning to his side.

I mean, I sort of know what it’s all about, but my experience with kabaddi was limited to having heard about it, seen the occasional match while channel-surfing at 4:00 a.m., and once or twice, driving past Clifton Beach in Karachi on a Sunday evening and seeing what I was informed was a match in progress. I certainly had no idea that kabaddi had hit an international level, and even less aware was I that Japan and Iran are also into the sport. I also had no idea that (a) this existed, and (b) that there were some hotties involved in the game: Am I just clueless about this, or did I somehow miss the (re?)surgence of kabaddi? Best of all though, I can’t help but feel somewhat vindicated by this image. On behalf of all brown men everywhere who enjoy getting oiled up and tussling with other oiled-up men in skimpy clothing, I say carry on my brothers! We shall overcome!

Continue reading →

“An oratorio about our virtual surroundings”

Posted on by

And, with great frequency, we find it necessary to become the news, to participate in it, to deliver it. Perhaps this impulse is our only defense; reality television, the blogosphere and YouTube are but a few examples. These are the new narrative forms of our life. Digital reportage, punditry, and testimony are now integral to the way we define ourselves.

That’s from the introduction to their new work Still Life with Commentator, by Vijay Iyer, Mike Ladd, and Ibrahim Quraishi. The show premiered earlier this year in Chapel Hill and Salzburg and has its first major run this week, December 6-10, at BAM in New York City. The album on Savoy Records will appear in March.

Still Life involves many of the artists who appeared in Iyer and Ladd’s tremendous 2003-04 project In What Language? with the addition of avant-garde vocalist Pamela Z. I’ve heard the music and it’s terrific; Vijay has also posted this preview on YouTube.

More on this next week, but I encourage NYC-area macacas to check this show out; it’s a big deal. And considering that the artists call the piece as “an oratorio about our virtual surroundings,” it may prove fodder for discussion here in the virtual surroundings we share. Continue reading →

India in Focus on World AIDS Day

Posted on by

THE VIRUS. The fever. The disease. The cocktail. The alphabet soup. The death. By any other red ribbon or name, today is December 1, World AIDS Day, and much of the day’s significant news on the topic comes, for better or worse, from India. (Photo: “An Indian sex worker wears AIDS symbols as she takes part in a rally in Siliguri,” AFP via Yahoo! News.)

aidsday06.jpgFor better, former US president Bill Clinton announced yesterday in Delhi a deal to dramatically reduce the price of effective treatment for children with HIV/AIDS. Among other things this is a fascinating example of a new approach to achieving health outcomes that combines public action with market tools. With funding from five countries, three European and two South American, the foundation has negotiated volume discounts on behalf of 40 destination countries. Thanks to the bulk purchase, the Indian generic manufacturers Cipla and Ranbaxy can sell single-pill tri-therapy drugs at 460 for a whole year’s supply. So the $35 million put up by France, Britain, Norway, Brazil and Chile ends up going a long, long way. $35 million! That’s NOTHING. Imagine if, say, the United States tossed in a little spare change from its daily Iraq expenditure. Grrrrr…..

Anyway, here’s a news story with details:

Only about 80,000 of the 660,000 children with AIDS who need treatment now get it, the United Nations AIDS agency estimates, and half the children who do not get the drugs die by the time they turn 2 years old. The United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef, has described children as the invisible face of the AIDS pandemic because they are so much less likely than adults to get life-saving medicines. …

Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories, Indian generic drug manufacturers, will be providing pills that combine three antiretroviral drugs into a single tablet, a formulation that is easier to transport, store and use than multiple pills and syrups. The combination tablets also need no refrigeration, an important advantage in poor countries lacking electricity, and can be dissolved in water for babies and infants too young to swallow pills.

Sandeep Juneja, the H.I.V. project head for Ranbaxy, said in a telephone interview that the company was able to provide the lower prices because of the larger volume of sales and because the Clinton Foundation, buying on Unitaid’s behalf, would consolidate many small purchases. He explained that the market for pediatric AIDS drugs was relatively small, fragmented and spread thinly across many countries.

“It would be a nightmare handling those small orders,” he said.”Imagine 40 to 60 countries buying a few hundred bottles individually, with no way to predict how many bottles would be needed.”

The new prices for 19 pediatric AIDS drugs are on average 45 percent less than the lowest rates offered to poor countries in Doctors Without Borders’ listing of AIDS drug prices, and were more than 60 percent lower than the prices the World Health Organization reported were actually paid by developing countries, the foundation said.

On the other hand — and here’s the “for worse” part — even the most abundant supply of inexpensive drugs can’t overcome poor distribution networks and, even worse, bonehead ignorance, especially when it comes from the people in charge of administering AIDS programs. Here’s a horror story this week from rural Gujarat: Continue reading →

They’re Having Fun at College. Are They Learning Anything?

Posted on by

nytimes college india.jpg

The Times has a piece on a familiar theme: lots of people are getting college educations in India that aren’t especially useful.

India was once divided chiefly by caste. Today, new criteria are creating a different divide: skills. Those with marketable skills are sought by a new economy of call centers and software houses; those without are ensnared in old, drudgelike jobs.

Unlike birthright, which determines caste, the skills in question are teachable: the ability to communicate crisply in clear English, to work with teams and deliver presentations, to use search engines like Google, to tear apart theories rather than memorize them. (link)

I know many readers will wince when the centrality of English is reinforced (especially by a western media outfit). And the idea that caste is now totally irrelevant seems far-fetched given the intensity of the current debate over reservations and the “creamy layer.” But Anand Giridharadas’s point isn’t so much the English language or the eradication of caste as methodology and ethos — and the fact that 17% of India’s college graduates are unemployed even as the top companies are desperate for talent. His examples of how to do it wrong are Hinduja College and Dahanukar College in Mumbai. In Giridharadas’s analysis, the problem at these colleges is the emphasis on things like obedience and punctuality, rote memorization, and the failure to inculcate the confidence amongst students to question authority.

It seems to me these are problems that could be fixed without overhauling the entire system. Leaving space for questions in a lecture is a start; guest-lecturers from industry might be another. If you agree with Girdharadas’s assessment of the problem, can you think of solutions that don’t involve waiting for the government to fix everything? Continue reading →