Davis, CA, 7th grade – I was on the school basketball team, and usually played a two guard or small forward. In the 4th quarter of a game that wasn’t close, the coach told me to go in and run point. The other four players on the court, all white, weren’t having it. The coach didn’t intervene.
Enter Jeremy Lin.
Maybe that story doesn’t play out the same way now?
You might have come across this article from the New York Times Travel magazine titled India in Paris. As colorful as it was, some of us felt it could use a little more. So we’ve reproduced it below, with each of us snarking in a different color. And don’t worry, we’ll get better at this with more practice.
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Legend: Phillygrrl Nilanjana Sugi Vivek
There are times when Paris is (unwillingly) touched by other cultures. (“Stop touching me!” “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”) (Touché! Sorry, couldn’t resist.) The touch may be temporary — like a spritz of (jasmine? can it be jasmine?) perfume. (There’s always the possibility of sandalwood. Or… even better for the hippie love fest, Patchouli!!!!!) Or it can open up a well-established world hiding in plain sight. (Like a woman in a burka?! Sign me up!)
This, by the way, has nothing to do with how Paris has clobbered other cultures. Continue reading
On July 16, Swamy, the leader of the Janata Party in India, contributed a shining example of vitriolic filth to DNA India:
Fanatic Muslims consider Hindu-dominated India “an unfinished chapter of Islamic conquests”. All other countries conquered by Islam 100% converted to Islam within two decades of the Islamic invasion. Undivided India in 1947 was 75% Hindu even after 800 years of brutal Islamic rule. That is jarring for the fanatics…
The first lesson to be learnt from the recent history of Islamic terrorism against India and for tackling terrorism in India is that the Hindu is the target and that Muslims of India are being programmed by a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus…
We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindu. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus. If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj (greater Hindu society) which is Hindustan (DNA India).
So to recap, despite the overwhelming diversity that defines Hinduism, and despite the glaring social inequities that find their roots in the religion, Hindus in India need to privilege their religious identity above everything else because the Muslims around them are being infected by the suicide bomb bug. Did I miss anything?
I know I do! Which is why I was thrilled to find out about a new computer game that lets you relive that amazing period of history as the glorious nations that helped to shape the world into the great success that it is today.
Pride of Nations is a turn-based historical strategy game set in the colonial era of the 19th century, where the player takes control of a country and guides it through industrialization, military conquest, and colonization. This upcoming release from AGEOD follows such successful historical strategy games as Birth of America, American Civil War, Napoleon’s Campaigns, and Wars in America [linkocricy].
What? What’s that I hear you say, friend? You feel slightly more ill now than you’d otherwise feel on a Monday morning because there’s about a 0.0001% chance that Pride of Nations in any way addresses the awful things these countries did to colonies and their people? Well rest assured!
Fight against a strong AI through a number of new game mechanisms
Yes! Strong AI will represent your ancestors and their struggle for freedom!
So writing about reality TV isn’t really my thing, but there’s a show on Sunday nights on NBC that regularly gets my mouth watering. It’s America’s Next Great Restaurant, and it takes 21 people, each with an idea for a fast casual restaurant, and finishes with a winner who gets his/her restaurant opened in three US locations: Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New York. The judges are also the investors in the new restaurant, and provide their input (sometimes ultimatums) as to what they want from each contestant, eliminating one contestant per episode.
They’re down to the top five in tonight’s episode, and one of the remaining contestants is Sudhir Kandula (@sudsnyc), whose brainchild is Spice Coast, featuring – are you ready? – fast casual southern Indian coastal food! Sudhir’s restaurant began the show with the name Tiffin Box (it had me there) but the investors asked him to change it because no one knows what a tiffin box is.
I spoke with Sudhir earlier in the week about the show, the diversity of Indian food, and his idea for a healthy restaurant:
If you’re viewing this from a device that isn’t flash-friendly, here’s the link.
Who’s down for a little live-tweeting of the rest of the World Cup? If you’d like to participate, you can use ANY of the following hashtags: #cwc, #iccwc2011, #cricket, #worldcup, #cwc2011; AND the following: #sm
Your tweets will show up here:
PS: Let me know if you want additional hashtags.
I don’t have time for an extensive post just now, but I thought y’all might want to coordinate viewings around your various locations.
There have been 46 matches played so far in this year’s ICC Cricket World Cup, and only four teams remain:
Sri Lanka, who got to the semifinals by chasing England’s respectable total of 221 without losing a wicket;
New Zealand, who did less to the South African bats than the South African bats did to themselves;
Pakistan, who embarrassed the West Indies by first bowling them out for a paltry 112, then chasing the total in less than half the time it took for the West Indies to accumulate it;
India, who avenged their 2003 World Cup Final drubbing by Australia.
Sri Lanka and New Zealand play tomorrow in Colombo. India and Pakistan play on Wednesday in Mohali. The winners play on Saturday in Mumbai. All three matches start at 5 am Eastern, 2 am Pacific.
So the question is, where to watch?
In December, I was in Delhi’s brand new Terminal 3, waiting with my mother for a flight to Chennai. The terminal itself is pretty consistent with most such new constructions in India – one enters and is immediately transported to Anywhere, Cosmopolitania – shiny floors, ginormous ads for stylish bathroom fixtures, and food courts featuring the generic and exotic (Subway and dosas, respectively).
Eventually we made our way to the gate, where we listened to the departure announcements.
Friends, it was hilarious.
First, an automated voice would make an announcement in English butchering the pronunciation of the destination city (presumably for the phoreign ear). A few seconds later, the announcement in Hindi would pronounce the city name perfectly.
Here’s Chennai:
Guwahati via Bagdodra:
Khajuraho via Varanasi:
Srinagar via Jammu:
This week we learned that the International Cricket Council (ICC) is nepotistic (GASP!)
The World Cup final is to be played on April 2 in Mumbai, whose Wankhede Stadium has a capacity of 33,000 seats. Of these, only 4,000 have been allocated for sale to the public. The remaining tickets, a whopping 27,000, are reserved for the ICC and the Mumbai Cricket Club’s associate members (ESPNCricInfo).
Not only that, but when fans tried to buy tickets online, the whole system crashed from the number of people trying to make purchases.
The most prominent errors took place on Monday afternoon when the servers of Kyazoonga.com, the ICC’s official ticketing partners, were overwhelmed with the load as the site went ‘live’ with sales for the final and semi-finals at 1pm India time. The website received close to ten million hits in a matter of minutes – half a million at any given moment – many of those people refreshing the site. It would have needed, a Kyazoonga staffer said, a server farm the “size of a football field” to keep up with that kind of demand. The site crashed by 1.05pm and the few people who had got into the system and begun purchasing their tickets found their plans hanging somewhere in cyberspace.
The website went online again around 9.30pm IST with a statement that no tickets for the finals & semi-finals had been sold on Monday due to the system issues and that updates about the ticket sales would follow. So, all the tickets allocated for online sales will still be available once the Kyazoonga network teams in India, Europe and the United States get their servers up and running again. Kyazoonga were not willing to reveal an approximate time when that was expected to happen.
Epic Fail. Oh well, it’s better on TV anyway, right? Even if you’ve traveled from South Africa to see it live? Um, yeah.
The only remotely exciting match of the tournament so far was the most recent one, between Bangladesh and Ireland. It shouldn’t have been close, but the side that scored 283 against India in Dhaka last week was nowhere to be found. Instead, Bangladesh were bowled out for a paltry 205, and just managed to make sure Ireland didn’t catch them. Scorecard
This weekend should be more promising: On Saturday, Pakistan and Sri Lanka play in Colombo, and England takes on India in Bangalore.
And in case you’re still not sure what this game is all about, have a whack here. Stick out the first half-minute. You’ll be glad you did.
Some of you might remember Sepia Mutiny’s coverage of the only Cricket World Cup to occur during this blog’s existence (2007 in the West Indies). Here we are four years later (can you believe it!?) and this time the World Cup is being played in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.
Before we go any further, let’s have a cool video explaining the rules of this exotic and fascinating game:
What? You don’t speak German? Oh. Well unfortunately, I can’t find a nice, concise video presentation in English of how cricket is played. Any suggestions?
If you’re the texty sort, here are the laws of cricket, with a few slightly helpful pictures. If you’d like to translate those to video, I actually suggest watching Lagaan. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry. You can skip all the parts about drought, taxes, Radha, Krishna, betrayal, rhyming “kiss” with “bliss,” and skip straight to the actual match. Why? Because if I’m not mistaken, the match in Lagaan has a demonstration of every single way you can get out or score a run in cricket.
If you’re in the US, your viewing options are fairly limited, not least because the matches start at either 11 pm or 4 am eastern time. If you’re a DirecTV subscriber, you can buy the World Cup bundle for $149. You can also pay for an online streaming subscription through willow.tv for $129. Willow offers replays and highlights of previously played matches. The tournament is also available through Dish network, though I’m not sure for how much. The World Cup final will be played in Mumbai on April 2.