While on the subject of pop culture as a force for Good, I thought it would be interesting to point mutineers at a current chart topping song in Pakistan. “Yeh Hum Naheen” (“This is Not Us”) has been making waves and the title is apparently becoming a catch phrase of sorts.
Thanks to the magic of YouTube, we present it here with English subtitles –
Personally, the tune doesn’t move me too much but the message kicks ass….
So here’s another piece of ammo for your “everything came from India” uncle –
Newton’s Infinite Series: We heard it in Malayalam first
NEW DELHI: A group of Malayali scholars had predated a ground-breaking Newton ‘discovery’ by over 250 years, according a research paper published on Monday.
The team of researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter reveal that the ‘Kerala School’ identified the ‘infinite series’- one of the basic components of calculus – in about 1350.
And thus, by discovering one of the building blocks of calculus first, Mallu’s used the knowledge to, uh, well, uh, I’m not quite sure…. The researchers were quick to note that this discovery shouldn’t be used to reduce Newton’s stature but instead, add some brown names to the pantheon of genius –
[Dr George Gheverghese Joseph, one of the researcher and Honorary Reader, School of Education at The University of Manchester said,] “The brilliance of Newton’s work at the end of the seventeenth century stands undiminished – especially when it came to the algorithms of calculus.
“But other names from the Kerala School, notably Madhava, Valloppillil, and Nilakantha, should stand shoulder to shoulder with him as they discovered the other great component of calculus- infinite series.
However, Dr. Joseph does note that perhaps, just perhaps, Newton wasn’t inspired by the proverbial apple at all –
…there is strong circumstantial evidence that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century.
That knowledge, they argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself.
Let the attribution games begin! (Hat tip – Venkat & Sindhya)
A gentle reminder that the Eastside leg of the Mutineer Road Tour is this Saturday, Aug 18 in NYC. Come one, come all – lurkers, commentors, straight, gay, white, brown, yellow, purple, macaca, married, single, polygamous, polyamorous, uptown, downtown, lovers, haters, and all in between.
Festivities start a tad on the early side (5pm) so you have time to visit the meetup and duck out for dinner if you don’t want your RealLife friends to know about your Real friends. 
| Saturday, August 18 | New York City |
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5pm – ??? 110 Rivington St Special Bonus – this meetup will be co-sponsored by our good friends at Ultrabrown. |
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And for those who can’t make it to NYC, hopefully we’ll see you in SF next weekend…
I generally cover the “economics beat” here on SM and one of my favorite nuggets is the complex interplay between econ and culture. There’s a certain non-PC’ness there that I love to indulge although it admittedly leaves many feeling a tad uneasy. Why non-PC? Well, if culture and economics are intertwined…. and since econ outcomes are (generally) measurable…. and it (generally) ain’t too hard to say that richer is better than poorer…. you end up treading dang close to quantifying how one culture might (generally) be better than another.
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A purveyor of oppressively unrealistic bourgeois imagery or the fountain of liberation? The numbers are starting to come in… |
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p>There are a couple of important “pressure escape valves”to keep in mind though. First, cultures are as non-uniform as they are notoriously difficult to define (“model minority” discussions – for ex here – usually wade deep into this territory). Second, and in our case perhaps more importantly, the economic + technology machine’s dynamism necessarily turns around and affects the host culture. This impact is both for better and for worse with a range of attitudes on where it all nets out (shouldn’t be hard to figure out where I land )
While we’re quick to note the emergence of social networking or blog culture on the Internet, the real, important change happens at a comparatively more pedestrian level, and often with far less cutting edge tech. This latter effect is profoundly visible in India (and, of course, China) and is now yielding some fascinating new research looking at the effects of a liberalized television market on rural Indian women…
It’s been way too long since we’ve done meetups in two of the most desi-licious cities in the US. So, mutineer A N N A and I have joined forces to coordinate our travel scheds and bring you the Sepia Mutiny Summer Road Tour – a back to back meetups in NYC & SF.
The following dates & places are still tentative but we wanted to pass y’all the heads up ASAP –
| Saturday, August 18 | New York City |
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5pm – ??? 110 Rivington St Special Bonus – this meetup will be co-sponsored by our good friends at Ultrabrown. [The last NYC meetup? – back in Nov ’06!] |
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| Sunday, August 26 | San Francisco |
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3pm — ??? Café Greco 423 Columbus Ave [Last one in SF? Sept ’06] |
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p>You’d better believe that we’ll do our part to Help Vinay & Sameer at the meetups. Special prizes to anyone else who manages to attend both meetups. And, as usual, we’ll do our best to document the depravity in our flickr group.
This has been forwarded to me ~15 times and you are all right, it’s some seriously funny shiznit. “Yo Momma” is an MTV series that looks for the best trash talkers around the country. I watched last season end to end (ah, the miracle of Tivo) and it was ridiculously good. This time around, the show’s been infiltrated by a desi dude who’s donned the character “Pak Attack” and if he can keep the gimmick going, he’s actually got what it takes to go all the way & win the show.
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You smell so bad that people would rather sit next to me on an airplane… |
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p>In this clip over at MTV.com, he DESTROYS his yo momma competitor, Osa. Set aside ~10 min of your life to watch a Russell Peters worthy performance. Except, of course, there’s a much higher improv quotient here & Pak’s strictly amateur. (His myspace page indicates that in real life, he’s probably a GeorgiaTech engineer. 
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Now I’ll warn you, gentle mutineers, that there’s a certain brand of humor you’ve gotta be ready to accept on any show called “Yo Momma”… with that caveat in mind, a couple of Pak’s laugh lines –
“It is true, it is true, I work at 7-11, but just like my store, yo momma’s legs are open 24-7”
“The only difference between my camel and your momma, my camel spits”
Social commentary?
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The Greatest Living American? |
The greatest living American is Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and joins Jimmy Carter as the two living American-born laureates around whose necks this distinction as been placed.
How did Borlaug win his Nobel back in 1970?
Through the 1940s and 1950s, Borlaug developed high-yield wheat strains, then patiently taught the new science of Green Revolution agriculture to poor farmers of Mexico and nations to its south. When famine struck India and Pakistan in the mid-1960s, Borlaug and a team of Mexican assistants raced to the Subcontinent and, often working within sight of artillery flashes from the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, sowed the first high-yield cereal crop in that region; in a decade, India’s food production increased sevenfold, saving the Subcontinent from predicted Malthusian catastrophes.
As a temporary American expat to India, Borlaug’s impact on India’s development was possibly greater than Deming’s on Japan…
StrategyPage has always had great coverage of all things military in South Asia. With all the ink and pixels being spilled about all the things going wrong on Pakistan’s unruly border with Afghanistan, Stratpage has this report of one of the tactics that’s working relatively well –
The army can defeat the tribesmen in battle, but it’s guerilla warfare where the tribes have always had an edge. But that edge as disappeared as the tribes became more dependent on outside goods, moved by truck over a few roads. For thousands of years in the past, the tribes were self-sufficient in their mountain valleys. Now, the tribes suffer when the army sets up checkpoints on those roads, and forces the tribesmen to attack the better armed and disciplined soldiers…
Pakistani soliders are faced with suicide attackers who “love death more than you love your 5,000-rupee salary, nude pictures of Indian actresses and liquor.” [link]; But that’s part of the plan.
When Thomas Friedman turned the memorable phrase, The World is Flat, he was popularizing trends in globalization that many have observed for decades. First, that in modern capitalism, economic transactions now span a larger and larger portion of the world – Pakistani tribals might not be able to place Finland or Korea on a map but they are probably getting accustomed to the convenience of a cellphone. Second – and to the consternation of the Arundhati Roy’s, Naomi Kleins, et. al., the mutually beneficial, non-violent, uncompelled transaction inherent to economic exchange necessarily impacts the cultures on both sides. Certain shared cultural norms are necessary to support a transaction and it’s nearly impossible in the long run to get the benefits of a transaction without being at least partially infected by the new culture.
Thomas Barnett, in analyzing the 21st century faultlines, placed them not between Civilizations but rather between those successfully Integrating and those Not Integrating into the global rule set – namely economics & globalziation. The activities of the Pakistani military along this faultline thus paint a great picture of what multifaceted war can / should look like. Trade has clearly run through the region for centuries but only recently does it involve such day to day pedestrian and yet inherently global goods like AA batteries, gasoline, and the like…
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Pahtee In Thee Ghe-tto… |
One of the best things about summer in San Francisco is the annual Stern Grove summer concert series. The festival brings in some of the best in lesser known music with a particular emphasis on international / world beats.
This Sunday they’re doing it up Desi and will feature the Grammy-nominated Anoushka Shankar, Karsh Kale, The Non-Stop Bhangra Collective, Dholrhythms, and more.
Where: Stern Grove Park
When: Sunday, July 22; Concert starts @ 2:00 but seating is first come / first serve and once they’re at capacity, they stop admitting new folks. So be there by 1230 or so just to be safe.
And, of course, no gathering of Desi’s this large is complete without an obligatory shout out for folks to come out get their cheeks swabbed and help Sameer & Vinay find a bone marrow match. Sameer’s team is looking for volunteers to help out with the cause. I’ll be there with a few other mutineers so stop by and say hello!
Almost 20,000 have been registered but we don’t have a match yet… NYC mutineers can do their part this weekend at Pianos bar [158 Ludlow b/t Rivington & Stanton] on Sunday, July 22.
If you’ve already registered, go again & bring a friend. Either way, the last event was, to put it mildly, a hoot. This time around, Rashmi and Reena (Vinay & Sameer’s wives respectively) will both be in attendance and will certainly appreciate the show of support.
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p>And, as with last time around, Sepia Mutiny’s “send us a good swabbing pict and we’ll put you on the homepage” offer still stands. Do Good, have fun, and help your marriage / dating / social prospects by getting your mug in front of SM’s vast & cultured readership – not a bad deal
