Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

Abhi lives in Los Angeles and works to put things into space.

Jersey Guy’s lose advertisers

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DNSI links to an article that says that the Jersey Guys’ advertisers are starting to pull out:

The Star-Ledger (NJ) is reporting that Cingular Wireless and Hyundai Motor America have pulled advertising from WKXW-FM. The station has been embroiled in controversy almost immediately after hosts of the station’s “The Jersey Guys” program, Craig Carton and Ray Rossi, offered racist and offensive commentary aimed at Asians and Indians.

Blogger Lester Gesteland is also keeping up with the minute by minute. Continue reading →

The further on the edge, The hotter the intensity

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Quick, who caught my song reference in the title? Niraj forwards us this article from the BBC about Pakistan’s recruitment of female fighter pilots. So hot.

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The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) academy has been all-male for more than 55 years – but now it is going through major change.

Women are now allowed to enrol on its aerospace engineering and fighter pilot programmes and are doing rather well.

To the great surprise of many men, some of the female recruits will soon start flying jet-engine planes.

Male cadets are having to come to terms with the fact that masculinity itself is no longer a condition for reaching this prestigious institute.

But can women withstand the forces that maneuvering a fighter plane puts on one’s body, and perform as well as men? Of course. We KNOW they can from years of experience but it is insightful to point to the data.

Extended periods of hard labour and limited caloric intake are common military conditions. Maximum normal acceleration forces during combat have increased from peak averages of 5 g to 9 g. Besides physical strength, air combat manoeuvring requires significant g-tolerance. G tolerances of 102 women and 139 men were subjected to a Standard Medical Evaluation and the G Profiles were compared. Unpaired t-tests revealed that there was no significant difference between the women and men in either relaxed or straining G tolerance. Covariance analysis controlling for differences in tolerance due to age, height, weight, and activity status revealed that the women have marginally lower tolerance; the analysis also identified height as a factor having a strong negative influence on G tolerance, and weight as having a positive influence. When the women were matched only by height to the men in the comparison group, the women’s mean G tolerances were significantly lower than the men’s. On Standard Training G Profiles, 88% of 24 women and 80% of 213 men completed the runs, but this difference was not significant. G tolerances of 47 women were measured on the Medeval Profiles both during and between menses, but no significant differences related to menstruation were found

Basically this means that the best fighter pilots are short and stocky with a lot of muscle, because this body type tends not to pass out as easily when the blood get sucked from the brain. You want to minimize the distance between the heart and the brain. Without the benefit of a G-suit I’ve even become light headed even at 2.5-3 Gs. Continue reading →

Politics across the pond

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I thought that it would be a good idea to take a quick look at politics in the land of crumpets and soccer hooligans. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you are probably aware that England held parliamentary elections last week. How did South Asians fare? IACFPA reports:

Seven of the eight sitting members of Parliament (MPs) –– all of them from the Labour Party –– were re-elected in the British general election on May 6, while one, a Liberal Democrat, lost his seat. But that loss was compensated by the victory of a debutant Asian MP on a Conservative Party ticket.

Two of the winners, veteran Asian-origin Labour Party MPs on May 6 celebrated their victories and said they would continue to represent IndiaÂ’s interests in the House of Commons.

Is that being reported correctly? They will continue to represent India’s interests? That seems like a rather lame statement.

Speaking to Indo-Asian News Service, Khabra and Vaz exuded confidence and pledged support to India. “I would very much hope that the government will treat India on par with China,” Khabra said. “Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer) has already shown his interest in China. I hope there will be further interest by the Government in India, which is emerging as a major global economic and trading power.”

It seems to me that South Asians elected to England’s parliament should be concerned FIRST with issues facing South Asians in England. I understand that they were speaking to an India media outlet, but sound-bites like that get recycled out of context. Evidence of divided interests are exactly what the conservatives there use to stoke xenophobia. Sunny Hundal, founder of Asians in the Media, fills us in on some of the issues facing South Asians in England:

At 5am last Friday I staggered out of BBC White City, satisfied once most of the election results had been announced, yet saddened by the political campaign.

This has been an election defined by one issue other than Iraq – the continual attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers by the Conservatives. It is also a stark reminder that despite all the talk of Asians making it in business and media, we are remarkably powerless when it comes to politics.

Continue reading →

The changing face of wealth

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The Washington Post features a story on the shifting strategy of large brokerage houses to recruit minority investors, particularly from amongst the South Asian an Hispanic communities (where they see the most opportunity):

A handful of well-dressed professionals gathered in a gallery at Christie’s auction house here the other day to listen to a South Asian art expert discuss works soon to go on sale, including several by Maqbool Fida Husain, considered India’s Picasso.

No one in the crowd planned to buy any art. In fact, few even cared about it. They just wanted to sound smart at a cocktail reception later in the evening.

The Christie’s event provides a snapshot of Merrill’s aggressive effort, replicated to varying degrees among Wall Street firms, to harness demographic shifts in American wealth.

The Merrill effort, headed by three-time cancer survivor and former star financial adviser Subha V. Barry, has so far focused on wealthy South-Asian Americans and Latinos in a handful of big cities, including the District…

According to the article the sudden shift in strategy is tied to the fact that as baby boomers retire they will only be withdrawing from their investments. Thus, Merrill is targeting South Asians because, “25 percent of South-Asian Americans earn more than $100,000, far more than the average.”

Continue reading →

DiCaprio and the 300 dwarfs

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I know you are wondering, so let me be clear from the start. This is not an attempt by Disney to win a seat at India’s table. An upcoming movie by director Ron Howard will involve Leonardo DiCaprio and 300 South Asian little people. Yahoo Movies India reports [tip from Kishan Thomas]:

Leonardo DiCaprio, the Titanic hero is to play the lead role of the Hollywood remake of a Malayalam film Albhudhadweep. Prithiviraj played the role in the original version.

The story is about four navy officers Hari (Prithiviraj), Joseph (Jagathy), Jagadish and Indrans being marooned on a remote island after their helicopter crashes in the sea. They reach this island where all men are dwarfs but the women are normal and beautiful. According to the folklore, some local deity has cursed the men who became dwarfs!

About 300 dwarfs have acted in this film. The fantasy fairy tale directed by Vinayan was a slow starter but gained momentum later.

This is some straight-up bulls*it. Don’t you guys see the hidden message here? This is just a plan by “Whitey” (a.k.a. the Man) to rub in the fact that South Asian men are somewhat shorter. They think they can just come to our “island” and take our beautiful women from us. I am totally going to protest this. In the meantime I am trying to decide who makes a better leading man.

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Continue reading →

A series of unfortunate events

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My favorite radio show, This American Life, had a riveting and humorous, true story this past weekend. It involved a twenty-something Afghani American who only wanted to impress his girlfriend by spray-painting some “frogmen” on the sidewalk outside of her apartment. By the end of it all he was in jail and on several terrorist watch-lists. The story even personally involves Donald Rumsfeld. It sounds dire but it all turns out well in the end. The many twists and turns in the story make it worth every second of its 40 minute recording time. Continue reading →

Abramoff’s Pakistan connection

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The New York Times reports that Jack Abramoff, the same lobbyist whose shady dealings with Congressman Tom Delay have been all over the news recently, has been brokering shady deals for many years:

Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of a federal corruption investigation, led a Congressional delegation to Pakistan in 1997 but failed to tell the group’s sponsor or the lawmakers that he was a registered lobbyist for the Pakistani government, according to the sponsor and the two House members on the trip.

Lobbyists for foreign governments are required to register with the Justice Department. Disclosure statements filed by Mr. Abramoff and his former firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, show that the firm was retained by Pakistan in May 1995 to lobby to overturn sanctions barring delivery of American weapons to Pakistan if its government continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The initial six-month lobbying contract paid the firm a retainer of $165,000, plus expenses. A spokesman for Preston Gates had no comment.

Continue reading →

Even Gogol’s got a blog

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Sometimes being a movie star sucks because you’ve got a lot of down time between seeing all your wardrobe options (no sarcasm intended). What would YOU do with said downtime? Well Kalpen Modi (a.k.a. Kal Penn) does the same thing that I would do were I an actor with down-time (besides using my popularity to hit on girls of course): he blogs as if he were born to. [thanks to Kunal Bhaumik for the tip]

In the glamorous world of filmmaking, I am sitting on the floor in a corner of a bedroom at 1:20 in the morning, waiting to try on wardrobe options. Think about that next time you see an actor on the street, romanticize what we do because you watch too much “Extra” and read too much “US Weekly”.

I shot a scene with my mom and sister (Tabu and Sahira, respectively), and was about to leave for the day. But we havenÂ’t found the right wardrobe for a few upcoming scenes, so Arjun (our energetic and talented costume designer) asked me to hang around for a while. I brought my laptop with me, and was emailing a little bit; then I realized this is probably what they meant when they said they wanted me to do a bit of blogging about how films are made.

Okay, but I do have one self-centered question? Why isn’t Sepia Mutiny on his blogroll? Surely a blog isn’t a blog without a proper roll? I know he reads us (well at least once).

April 1, 2005– Hello! Welcome to the Namesake weblog. If youÂ’re reading this, it probably means youÂ’re a fan of the novel, “The Namesake”, and are curious about the film adaptation weÂ’re shooting. This afternoon, I was asked by James (the Fox Searchlight Publicist in charge of “The Namesake”) if IÂ’d be up for keeping a sort of online journal through the shoot, so here goes…

I guess we should give my parents credit for birthing and raising me. Oh, and my guidance counselor, for inciting rebellion in me when she said that the biggest mistake I could ever make would be to “throw your life away by trying to do this whole acting nonsense, Kalpen!”

Wow. That’s what my “counselor” told me about blogging as well. I was a rebel too.

Continue reading →

Q: What is EVEN BETTER than a Star Trek convention?

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If I wasn’t a broke ass graduate student I’d be on a flight to Boston tomorrow morning. “Why,” you ask? The Guardian says it all [tip from Francis Assisi]:

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One of the strongest arguments against time travel is that we are not overrun with curious tourists from the future. A university student in Boston plans to change that, by inviting budding Doctor Whos to the world’s first time traveller convention this weekend.

The organiser, Amal Dorai – a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.

This is friggin awesome! Dorai’s hypothesis seems to me to parallel the Fermi Paradox which asks why we haven’t been overrun by intelligent beings from elsewhere in the galaxy yet.

“We are doing this as a very low-risk, low-cost way to investigate the possibility of time travel,” he said. “I think the probability they will come is very low, but if it does happen it will one of the biggest events in human history.

“Of course, no time travellers doesn’t rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention.”

Ahhh…hope. The last refuge of the nerd. Incidentally there was a Star Trek the Next Generation episode years ago where a time traveler from the past pretended he was a time traveler from the future. No word yet on how Dorai plans to handle this possibility. If we were to teach a time traveler from the past too much, he/she could pollute the timeline. It’s enough to make your head spin. Continue reading →

SAALT’s 2004 Exit Poll Analysis–biased??

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Saurav sends us a press release from SAALT about exit poll data from last November’s election as interpreted by them:

“Striking conclusions can be drawn from the data,” said Deepa Iyer, Executive Director of SAALT. “For 42 percent of the South Asians polled, this was the first election in which they had voted. Additionally, 88 percent of the South Asians who voted are foreign-born. This emphasizes the need for voter education and registration campaigns to include strategies such as naturalization drives and outreach tailored to South Asians who have arrived more recently.”

The data also revealed that South Asians chose “civil liberties” as the civil/immigrant rights issue most important in their lives. “The South Asian community has endured increased incidents of bias and immigration enforcement since September 11th,” added SAALT Board Member, Jayesh Rathod. “Our own work through dialogues with community leaders also echoes the importance of civil liberties as a prominent issue in the lives of South Asians, one that needs to be addressed in various contexts by policymakers, candidates, and advocates.”

Of particular interest in the .pdf document are the findings and recommendations. There is one line that I find revealing however, and should probably be used as a caveat:

Voters who participated in the exit poll were asked to choose the civil/immigrant rights issue that was most important to them [6]. Interestingly, most South Asian groups chose civil liberties as the issue of most importance, with the exception being the Indo-Caribbean community, which selected workersÂ’ rights.

Continue reading →