Apparently the Miss Universe contestant from Denmark, Gitte Hanspal is half-Indian. Does this matter, besides the fact that it proves to the doubters that there are Indians in Denmark? No. I just needed the thinnest of reasons to put this picture up [tip from Pooja Makhijani]. The Miss Universe contest will be on May 31st in Thailand.

Occupation: I am currently working part-time as a student at IBM Software. My job is to assist the sales staff in different areas and on different projects, in order to relieve their workload.

She’s beautiful AND on her way to becoming and IT geek. Oh, and please let’s not forget about Miss India, Amrita Thapar.

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Are you expecting a child soon? Since it’s a well known fact that all Indian kids in the U.S. look alike through college, do your kids a favor and heed the following advice so that they have at least a minor shot at individuality. DO NOT name them Arjun or Maya. The Hindustan Times reports:

Arjun, the warrior-prince of the Mahabharata, and Maya were the most popular names given to baby boys and girls respectively by Indians in the United States.

The name Arjun was given to 247 boys last year, ranking it 741 in the list of 1,000 most popular baby names in the US, compiled by the Department of Social Security Administration.

I now await hate mail from Arjuns and Mayas worldwide. Please, don’t hate the messenger. Continue reading →

StrategyPage offers it’s analysis of what the first stages of a war between India and Pakistan might look like –

May 14, 2005: Can India ever fight a war against its nuclear armed neighbor and rival Pakistan without provoking a nuclear holocaust? The Indian Army (IA) thinks it has an answer to this question. Until now the India’s doctrine for war against Pakistan consisted of combat divisions advancing across the Rajasthan desert border into Pakistan, eventually cutting off Pakistan’s population centers in the north from the only port and economic lifeline of Karachi…

(click quickly! Stratpage’s permalinks are notoriously not so permanent)

Interesting reading if you’re of a macabre / war-nerd sort. Personally, I’m an optimist and believe that, short of an improbable Pakistani state implosion, a Hamiltonian peace will be the long term outcome between the 2 nations. Of course, the path from here to there is rarely a straight line. Continue reading →

Tyler Cowen @ Marginal Revolution, has the following quote about Indonesia which could just as easily apply to India –

Then Suharto looked at [James] Wolfensohn. “You know, what you regard as corruption in your part of the world, we regard as family values.”

That is from Sebastian Mallaby’s The World”s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

How true it is. Continue reading →

Overlawyered reports –

The Lost Coast Brewery in Humboldt, Calif. says it will take off the shelves its Indica India Pale Ale, whose label currently depicts the Indian elephant-god Ganesh “holding a beer in one of his four hands, and another in his trunk”. Although brewery co-owner Barbara Groom said her Hindu friends don’t mind the label, a California man named Brij Dhir sued the brewery, along with other defendants such as the Safeway supermarket chain, claiming that it is offensive and intimidates Hindus from practicing their religion. “Dhir seeks at least $25,000 and his lawsuit mentions that $1 billion would be appropriate to compensate Hindus around the world.” “It’s a hate crime”, Dhir told the Contra Costa Times.

Thanks to Ennis for the pict pointer! Continue reading →

Blinkey the death tank, the preferred steed of Lt. Neil Prakash, took friendly fire outside Fallujah in November:

A round exploded 50 meters in front of our front slope. “HOLY SHIT! BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP!!!!!. JUST GO GO GO!!!!!” The concussion knocked the air out of my lungs. I felt the soft punch of the air on my face. I didn’t know if more rounds were coming in but the effective kill radius of a 155mm artillery round is 50 meters. And if it was a V/T round (variable time), then it would detonate right above our heads and liquefy us…

The whole back left side of the tank exploded. Grey. Black. Smoke. Dust. Sand. It all happened so fast. I see Langford sitting up on the turret with his legs dangling in the hatch like normal. But against a wall of debris at his back. The image is fleeting. He either fell or got blown forward and down into his hole. Langford and I both fell into our hatches at the same time. My seat went into my back as I looked up at the sky through my hatch…

… where we had just been, my left track was laying out in all of its glory. Broken. With only the right side of track on, the tank could only turn left…like being in a rowboat with just your right oar.

Luckily, Prakash survived to deliver a can of whoop-ass to whomever was calling artillery.

Update: It was an anti-tank mine, not artillery.

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The earworm-inducing classic Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge just completed its 500th week of showings in India (thanks, Ennis):

Bombay audiences are some of the toughest in the world, and a bad movie can be pulled before the end of opening weekend. Most films bloom for a week or two and disappear. But “Dilwale” has become a Bombay institution, a perfect masala of location, entertainment, and low price. Young men and women, but mostly young men in their untucked white shirts, wait every morning outside the cinema. The box office sells balcony tickets – the choicest seats – for 15 rupees… On busy weekends, the 1,000-seat theater sells out with visiting families… The audience snuggles down in the dark, ready to make jokes, applaud the hero’s arrival, and urge the lovers to “Kiss! Kiss!”

I’m surprised they don’t throw rice. Desi film audiences apparently share a geeky obsessiveness with fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Star Wars. It’s not surprising, really. All three genres are high camp.

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Photos of ornate trucks in Pakistan (via CSF). Also, an Om-ified Padmini auto (via Neha). The desi aesthetic: sometimes Gaudí, sometimes just gaudy. Horn Please.

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If I tell a white man to go back where the came from, will he have to travel to Africa via India?

A team of geneticists … conclude that there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa – that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australasia … because the mitochondrial lineages of everyone outside Africa converge at the same time to the same common ancestors … people from the southern migration, probably in India, must have struck inland to reach the Levant, and later Europe, the geneticists say. [NYT]

So why can’t we all just get along? Continue reading →

A couple quick notes for SF-based Mutineers –

• MIA will be playing a sold out show @ The Independent theater in downtown SF this Friday night (May 13) followed by a show at the Fillmore on Sat (tix still available?). If you go, drop us a note @ the tipline with your review and/or cameraphone picts.
• Geek mutineers take note — Tiecon takes place this weekend down in Santa Clara. Registration is still open. The annual conference afterparty is @ Monte Carlo in Mountain View starting @ 830pm on Friday. There’s a guestlist and this stuff has been packed to the gills in years past. I guess if you couldn’t get tix to M.I.A., partying up (or standing in line) with a few hundred desi engineers / entrepreneurs is some sort of a consolation prize.
• Finally, a certain mutineer will be celebrating a b-day w/ some friends @ Roe / Prive in downtown SF, this Sat night starting around 10ish. Come by and say hello. MIA – if you’re reading this, you’re more than welcome to drop by after your Fillmore gig.

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