Monthly Archives: February 2011

Yoi, It’s Super Bowl Sunday

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I don’t know the last thing about football (at least NFL, I bleed Trojan’s Cardinal and Gold). So it’s no surprise that I just realized the Super Bowl is today. Who am I going to root for? I don’t really know. But after watching the following video, I’m kind of leaning towards the Black Gold and Silver…

Cute, no? Who is this Black Mahal that is the mastermind behind this bhangra-fied sports anthem?

Part P-Funk, part Punjabi-Funk, BlackMahal is a San Francisco-based live music experience complete with drums, DJs, horns, hip-hop MCs, and the godfather of Punjabi-American music – Ustad Lal Singh Bhatti. BlackMahal is steeped in Old California, a Punjabi-American experience that started in the 1890s when the first Punjabi-Americans settled in the Great West and forged a new identity combining elements of Mexican and African-American influence. [blackmahal]

And the turbaned man in the video is none other than Ustad Lal Singh Batti.

Over the past 43 years, Bhatti has performed for nearly every U.S. President since Gerald Ford as well has being honored at the opening of the Smithsonian Sikh Gallery in 2005. After picking up the dhol drum instrument as a teenager, he quickly won the hearts of India by the way he played and was invited by the Government of India to serve as cultural music liaison to the country via worldwide music tours to 25 countries.[blackmahal]

Who am I kidding. I’m rooting for the socialist community owned Green Bay Packers all the way. Go team! Happy Super Bowl Sunday! Continue reading →

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$1.7 Million = One Wrongful Death

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Usman Chaudhry.jpgSepia Mutiny has been following the case of Mohammad Usman Chaudhry, the autistic 21 year old man who was shot and killed by LAPD when he was found in Hollywood sitting in shrubbery. A horrendous case, it seems that unwarranted police violence and murders on civilians have only increased, at least in California, since then. But in the case of Usman, at least there was some justice (h/t DrrrtyPoonjabi).

Earlier this week, a federal jury found that an ex-LAPD officer was responsible for the wrongful death of an autistic man shot and killed in Hollywood in 2008. On Wednesday, the jury awarded the victim’s family $1.7 million.

Since the killing, Cruz has insisted that Chaudhry tried to attack him with a knife and that he fired his gun in self-defense. On Monday, however, after four days of testimony, the jury rejected Cruz’s account when it returned a unanimous verdict finding that the ex-officer had used excessive force and acted in “a reckless, oppressive or malicious manner” when he shot Chaudhry.[latimes]

Clearly $1.7 million is not equivalent to the cost of one life, but it does signal to the LAPD that they simply cannot afford to make mistakes. What I found most fascinating about the case was the evidence pointing out the knife was planted by the LAPD and that the police officer knew the name of his victim.

During the trial, lawyers for the Chaudhry family presented evidence aimed at putting doubt in the minds of the jurors over Cruz’s account. Testing on the knife that Cruz said Chaudhry had used, for example, found one person’s DNA profile on the handle and blade but showed that the DNA was not Chaudhry’s. Also, after Cruz said he had never met Chaudhry before the shooting, a man testified that he had been present on multiple occasions when Cruz confronted Chaudhry and called him by name.

After the verdict, the jury was asked to decide how much money, if any, to award Chaudhry’s parents. Attorneys representing Cruz and the city of Los Angeles had tried to limit the size of the award by arguing that Chaudhry had had a frayed relationship with his parents that lessened their suffering.[latimes]

Condolences to the Chaudhry family. You can read Usman’s brother’s Tumblr page following the case right here. Though nothing can bring their son back,there is some vindication in knowing that some form of justice was delivered, particularly in this time of heightened police violence. But in the end, $1.7 million is still not enough. Continue reading →

Math nerd meets lottery ticket

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Wired has a totally charming story of one man’s quest to understand and beat the confounding scratch-off lottery ticket:

Mohan Srivastava, a geological statistician living in Toronto, was working in his office in June 2003, waiting for some files to download onto his computer, when he discovered a couple of old lottery tickets buried under some paper on his desk. The tickets were cheap scratchers–a gag gift from his squash partner–and Srivastava found himself wondering if any of them were winners. He fished a coin out of a drawer and began scratching off the latex coating. “The first was a loser, and I felt pretty smug,” Srivastava says. “I thought, ‘This is exactly why I never play these dumb games.'”

The second ticket was a tic-tac-toe game. Its design was straightforward: On the right were eight tic-tac-toe boards, dense with different numbers. On the left was a box headlined “Your Numbers,” covered with a scratchable latex coating. The goal was to scrape off the latex and compare the numbers under it to the digits on the boards. If three of “Your Numbers” appeared on a board in a straight line, you’d won. Srivastava matched up each of his numbers with the digits on the boards, and much to his surprise, the ticket had a tic-tac-toe. Srivastava had won $3. “This is the smallest amount you can win, but I can’t tell you how excited it made me,” he says. “I felt like the king of the world.”

Delighted, he decided to take a lunchtime walk to the gas station to cash in his ticket. “On my way, I start looking at the tic-tac-toe game, and I begin to wonder how they make these things,” Srivastava says. “The tickets are clearly mass-produced, which means there must be some computer program that lays down the numbers. Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random digits. But that’s not possible, since the lottery corporation needs to control the number of winning tickets. The game can’t be truly random. Instead, it has to generate the illusion of randomness while actually being carefully determined…”

Srivastava had been hooked by a different sort of lure–that spooky voice, whispering to him about a flaw in the game. At first, he tried to brush it aside. “Like everyone else, I assumed that the lottery was unbreakable,” he says. “There’s no way there could be a flaw, and there’s no way I just happened to discover the flaw on my walk home.”And yet, his inner voice refused to pipe down. “I remember telling myself that the Ontario Lottery is a multibillion-dollar-a- year business,” he says. “They must know what they’re doing, right?” [Link]

This story reiterated in my mind how important it is to have a good understanding of science and mathematics in modern society. Consider how many activities in your day are governed by a mathematical code or logical pattern of some kind. Every minute you spend on Facebook you are helping Facebook perfect and equation to predict what you might buy for example. Nerds are poised to inherit the future.

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