Category Archives: Science and Technology

Two Lessons From Indra Nooyi’s Success

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By now, most readers probably know that Indra Nooyi is being promoted to the CEO of PepsiCo, a company with $38 billion in revenues. She’s been mentioned several times before on Sepia Mutiny, mainly in response to comments she made at a graduation ceremony at Columbia Business School last year. (There are several other posts on her as well.) And Manish had a solid post on her recent promotion this past Monday on Ultrabrown.

I draw two conclusions from her success. First, you can be a working mother and climb the corporate ladder while raising kids (Indra has two, who are I believe in their early/mid teens). Second, you can get ahead in the American corporate environment without sacrificing who you are culturally.

On the first point, there have been many recent stories about the difficulties facing powerful women. Maureen Dowd, for instance, recently published a book called Are Men Necessary?, where (among other things) she talked about the difficulty some women face in dating and/or marrying men who are less powerful or successful than they are. But a growing number of “power moms” are also flat-out powerful. And they do it without sacrificing their connection to their kids, as I think Indra Nooyi’s Nintendo policy proves:

She views PepsiCo as an extended family and everybody at the company is there to help in every way possible. Sometime ago, when Indra was traveling, her daughter would call the office to ask for permission to play Nintendo. The receptionist would know the routine and ask: “Have you finished your homework? Have you had your snack? OK, you can play Nintendo for half an hour”. She then left a voice message for Indra saying “I gave Tara permission to play Nintendo”. (link)

Have you had your snack? Ok, go play. Momma has to go acquire a multinational or two and pacify the Indian media regarding the recent pesticide allegations.

Secondly, you don’t have to sell yourself out and tell everyone your name is “Bob” if it’s really Balwinder. Nooyi’s story about getting her first job in the U.S. after completing her Master’s at Yale is illustrative: Continue reading →

Love in the Time of Terrorism

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This newest terror alert and the ensuing security lockdown has come at the most inopportune of times for me. Tomorrow morning at 8a.m. I have to catch a flight to Charlotte, North Carolina to attend my friend Seema’s wedding. First, let’s take a quick look at what I cannot bring with me:

Advice if you’re flying:

1. Liquids are banned from carry-on luggage and cannot be taken through security checkpoints. That includes drinks, toothpaste, perfume, shampoo, hair gel, suntan lotion and similar items. Drinks purchased in the airport cannot be carried onto flights.

2. Baby formula and medications will be allow but must be presented for inspection at security checkpoints.

3. All shoes must be removed and placed on an X-ray belt for screening.

4. Passengers are also asked to arrive at least two hours early to allow for additional screening.

5. Passengers traveling to the United Kingdom should contact their airline for information about any extra security measures or precautions that might be required. Laptop computers, mobile phones and iPods were among items banned on British flights. [Link]

I’m a 30-year-old single male. There are fewer opportunities for me to meet eligible women (according to my parents). A desi friend’s wedding is supposed to be a money venue. But just look at my predicament. I cannot shampoo my hair (hotel shampoo doesn’t count) or apply even a modest amount of styling gel to my hair in order to achieve that proper look between sophistication and slackerdom. Even worse, without my contact lens solution I will have to keep my contacts in my eyes the entire weekend, which will in turn cause me to spastically blink (to prevent the increasing dryness) every time I go to talk to a girl. Even if I make it this far, who will want to talk to a guy that hasn’t been able to brush his teeth because his toothpaste has been confiscated? I didn’t even mention the lack of shaving cream (stubble makes me look like a terrorist) or the lack of aftershave lotion that will make my face itch and burn all night even if I use the hotel provided shaving cream and blade. Also, wearing a suit makes me sweat, a fact that will be obvious since I won’t have any cologne to mask the scent.

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Liquid explosives

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I’ve decided to split the speculation concerning the science that may have been involved in the plot into a separate post since it is getting long.

Some experts think that the bomb might have involved TATP, the same compound used by the 7/7 bombers.

While there are several liquid explosives that could be used to bring down an aircraft, chemists believe it is more likely that terrorists planned to mix liquid materials that are not themselves explosive but can be combined into a bomb. The liquid explosives that are sufficiently destructive in their own right to blow up a plane are generally too unstable or too easily detected to be readily smuggled aboard.

A more subtle approach would be to combine two or more liquids that are stable by themselves, but which form a powerful explosive when mixed together. A prime candidate for this would be triacetone triperoxide (TATP), the explosive used by the July 7 bombers. Its two raw ingredients are both liquids, which could potentially be carried on board in sufficient quantities in containers such as bottles of shampoo or contact lens solution.

These could then be mixed in a toilet to make TATP, which is a crystalline white powder. The problem here is that the solid has to be dried before it becomes a reliable explosive. It can also be difficult to detonate, as attested by the failure of the attempted suicide attacks on London on July 21 last year.

The problems of assembling and then detonating an improvised bomb of this sort in an airline toilet could explain why the terrorists targeted so many aircraft. It is likely that many of the devices would have failed, so attacking 10 flights would have greatly increased the chances of blowing up one or two. [Link]

There have also been at least two prior terrorist attacks planes using liquid explosives, KAL 858 and PAL 434. [Details follow after the fold] Continue reading →

Mantra: “Exploit, Degrade, Profit”

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Los Angeles Times reporter Claire Hoffman has a must-read article this weekend in that paper’s West magazine on Joe Francis, who may be the most repulsive individual in America. He is the founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” soft-porn franchise, advertisements for which have been polluting cable television for nearly ten years. Those who, like me, believe that this sort of barely-legal exploitation is a lot more dangerous than is hard-core porn will find here a cornucopia of material to bolster their view. The way that Francis and his crew prey on drunken 18-year-olds and induce them to debase themselves on camera (there’s even a $1,000 bonus for recruiters who get a girl to bare herself right after midnight on her 18th birthday) is vile beyond belief. What goes on in the crew bus is even worse. Francis clearly hates women: whenever he has to deal with a woman on a professional basis he becomes vulgar and threatening, as the reporter learned when he pinned her to a car and nearly twisted her arm off, and later when he called her a c**t and threatened to kill her. This is the kind of article that a paper runs only after its lawyers have pored over every comma. Even Defamer, the LA Gawker franchise, calls the piece “jaw-dropping.”

So what’s the desi angle? Well, the farther I read the more I got riled up that Francis’s company is called Mantra Entertainment. Now I’m a writer and I believe in playing with words, and I don’t think any word is ever absolutely off-limits. But come on, this is disgusting. Mantra?

A mantra is a religious syllable or poem, typically from the Sanskrit language. … They are primarily used as spiritual conduits, words or vibrations that instill one-pointed concentration in the devotee. … They are intended to deliver the mind from illusion and material inclinations.

I’m sorry, calling your porn and degradation company Mantra just ain’t right. After searching a little for other business misuses of common Indian spiritual terms, I found that mantra is by far the most-abused. Sure, there’s a Karma Digital Corporation, at least one Karma Entertainment, a Nirvana Corporation that builds real estate in Costa Rica, a Nirvana memorial park in Malaysia, a Juggernaut Entertainment (oh no, not again) in Chicago, the Ashram Galactica Grand Hotel at the annual Burning Man festival, and of course the sinister Dharma Corporation of the TV series Lost. But mantra is on a whole ‘nother level:

What is it about this word that has spawned so much commercial use? Am I over-reacting when it makes me feel queasy? And what other egregious (or amusing) uses of desi cultural terminology have you run across in the business world? Continue reading →

"Fascination, fear and greed"

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Time Magazine’s Asia edition has a cover article this week that details the life and travels of Marco Polo in the context of today’s emerging economies in China and India:

If history has taught us anything, it’s that Eastern and Western perceptions of one another are thoroughly unstable, an uneasy blend of fascination, fear and greed that lends itself to exaggeration. That all started with Polo (1254-1324), who left a detailed, and still controversial, account of his journeys and the years he spent in the service of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan. Polo’s Description of the World is the world’s first best-selling travelogue. He set off to the Orient from his native Venice with his father and uncle in 1271. For them it was a return journey; they had already been to what is now Beijing, where the Great Khan had given them a letter to the Pope, and asked them to return with learned men who could teach his people about Christianity. The route, as described by Marco Polo, took them through the Caucasus, Persia, Afghanistan, over the Pamirs and along the Silk Road to Cathay, as he called China. Hardship and danger were balanced by wonder, especially once he arrived at Kublai’s court, where he claimed to have become a court favorite who was sent off on diplomatic missions. He dictated his book, years later, long after his return to Italy, while in jail in Genoa in 1298. Some of the descriptions–from the miracle oil that cures skin trouble in the Caucasus to the giant griffin birds who pick up elephants and drop them into the Arabian Sea–earned him a reputation even in his day as a fairytale spinner rather than a credible witness. [Link]

Also in the issue is an article on western Big Pharma’s attempts to patent knowledge that Indians have been actively using for millenia:

It started with turmeric. An essential ingredient of most Indian curries, the spice was paid tribute by Marco Polo; he compared it favorably to saffron, and noted its importance in traditional medicines. Indeed, Indian doctors have long reached for the knobby yellow root to treat a variety of ailments from skin disease to stomachache and infection. So when two U.S.-based researchers were awarded a patent in 1995 on turmeric’s special wound-healing properties, a collective howl of outrage arose from the subcontinent. “Housewives have been using turmeric for centuries,” says V.K. Gupta, director of India’s National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources in New Delhi. “It’s outrageous that someone would try and patent it.” The patent was eventually revoked, after a decade-long battle in which the Indian government and private sector spent millions of dollars in legal and research fees to prove that turmeric’s qualities were well documented in ancient medical textbooks. Gupta scrolls through a list of some 5,000 applications currently pending approval by U.S. and European patent offices, jabbing a finger at the most egregious examples of what he considers to be outright theft. He estimates that at least half of those scientific “discoveries” are established remedies in India’s ancient plant-based medical system, called Ayurveda. To Gupta, each application is a jewel plundered from India’s vast trove of medicinal knowledge. “If this isn’t piracy, I don’t know what is,” he says. [Link]
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Can WE help stop the tiger slaughter?

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Five minutes ago I finished watching the film Two Brothers on cable. This movie which came out in 2004 is about two tiger cubs that become separated when they are young and then reunited in adulthood. It is only a fictional account but it totally makes you root for the tigers.

Set not so long ago in a distant land, the film follows the adventures of twin tiger cubs–one shy and gentle, the other bold and fierce–who are born among the temple ruins of an exotic jungle. However, on a fateful day, the brothers are separated by fate. The bold brother is sold off to a circus, where homesickness and living in a cage rob him of his spirit. Meanwhile, the shy cub becomes the beloved companion of the governor’s lonely young son, until an accident forces the family to give him away to a man who resolves to break his gentle nature and turn him into a fighter for sport. When they are fully grown the brothers find themselves reunited–but as forced enemies, pitted against each other. [Link]

At the end of the movie, just before the credits roll, the filmmakers relate the message that a century ago there were 100,000 of these beautiful cats in the wild and that today there are fewer than 5000 remaining. I turned off the television, turned on my computer, and within two minutes I randomly found this new article in Time Asia that describes how a bad situation is getting worse:

One of the difficulties with killing tigers is that they scream. Snaring them is simple enough, says Nitin Desai, a conservationist at the Wildlife Protection Society of India–you set a few iron traps near a game-park watering hole, then wait for a tiger to take a wrong step. But when the trap’s jagged metal teeth sink into its paw, the tiger howls–an alarm that can rouse a sleepy park ranger. So, a smart poacher will plunge a spear down the trapped animal’s throat and tear out its vocal chords; then, at his leisure, he can poison or electrocute the cat–or, if the buyer doesn’t mind a bullet hole in the pelt, simply shoot it. [Link]

I felt that coming across this article just minutes after seeing the movie was a sign, and so I thought that blogging it was the next logical step 🙂

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Designer Desi Baby Food

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It’s hot outside. So hot, these days, you want to curl up next to a fan with a cup full of ice water and allow your brain to regress to an almost womb-like state of slushee-induced, heat-transcending peace. The local papers here in Philly have had nothing very exciting to say about the curent heat wave, but the BBC has an amusing article on the rest of the British media’s penchant for “climate porn” (the BBC, of course, only participates in the phenomenon by discussing how everyone else participates in it). Still, “climate porn”: you might want to rethink how much time you spend at work checking the weather. 02baby.2.190.jpg

Speaking of returning to the womb, or something close to it, did you hear about the new, designer desi-themed baby food?

HappyBaby, which sells colorful cubes of frozen vegetable and fruit purées through FreshDirect and Gourmet Garage, flavors puréed peas with fresh mint, and potatoes and red lentils with coriander and cinnamon in their savory dahl, an Indian staple.

“This is how my parents fed me,” said Shazi Visram, co-founder of HappyBaby, which began on Mother’s Day and is expanding its line this month. “Why shouldn’t babies, of all people, get to eat delicious things?”(link)

No more vanilla, canned Gerber for today’s stylish babies. At HappyBabyFood, you get organic Baby Dhal. It comes in frozen, baby-sized cubes, and is sold at health food places in the New York City area. (Because it’s frozen, they can avoid having to put in preservatives.)

Not everyone is thrilled with the masalafication trend:

But some parents remain skeptical. “Moms ask me, ‘Can babies really have that?’ ” said Anni Daulter, co-founder of Bohemian Baby, which delivers meals like Vegetable Korma, made with coconut milk, for 12-month-olds, and purées of fruits like pomegranates and figs for infants. “And I say, of course! What do you think they feed babies in India?” (link)

Wait, you mean they feed babies in India something other than American baby food?

For more frozen organic baby food porn, click on this image, from New York Magazine. And a bit more on HappyBaby Food co-founder Shazi Visram, who has an MBA from Columbia and has worked in real estate in Brooklyn, can be found here. Continue reading →

Indian Soft Drinks Not So Soft

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There’s quite a controversy brewing (thanks, Scott Carney) over the pesticide content in Indian soft drinks. The vast majority of these are owned by the multinational Coke and Pepsi companies, and are of course manufactured and bottled locally in India using all local ingredients. cse bar graphs.jpg

The controversy actually began three years ago, with a report from the Centre for Science and the Environment that alleged high concentrations of pesticides in soda samples. The government at the time attacked the findings aggressively, and questioned the credibility of the scientists who conducted it. But as a result of the study, strict standards for pesticide content were put in place for the water that is used in soft drinks, though standards for the sugar and other ingredients that go into the soda still haven’t been finalized.

Now the CSE has done another study, and published the findings in its magazine, Down to Earth. The actual numbers, and notes on methodology, are available on this PDF. (I haven’t found a more formal, “science journal” style article indicating the methodology of the study in detail anywhere.) The CSE says it is testing the soft drinks using methodology developed by the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

There are stories floating around of farmers using Coke and Pepsi drinks as low-budget pesticides, which would be a rather grim confirmation of this finding if substantiated. Of course, it’s unlikely that the amount of pesticide in these drinks is actually killing any bugs (the study finds pesticides in the drinks in the range of 11 parts per billion); it might well be the citric acid or the phosphoric acid (on the other hand, wouldn’t bugs be attracted to the sugar?). As a commentor on Scott Carney’s blog points out, it’s not clear whether this is a widespread practice, or a bit of an ‘urban legend’. Continue reading →

More Tragedy For The “Elephant” Men

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On March 16th of this year, Abhi wrote about a first-in-man trial in the UK which went horribly awry for six volunteers who experienced heart, kidney and liver failure after they were given an experimental drug made by German firm TeGenero, called TGN 1412:

It is an anti-inflammatory agent makers hoped would become a lucrative treatment for rheumatism, leukaemia and multiple sclerosis.[link]

When we first posted about this nightmarish story, Doctors said they were “in the dark” and that they did not know exactly how these human guinea pigs would be affected. Unfortunately, now it seems we have an answer—and it is tragic:

Victims of the disastrous “Elephant Man” drugs trial have been told they face contracting cancer and other fatal diseases as a result of being poisoned in the bungled tests. [link]
Nav Modi, 24, whose bloated face and swollen chest led to the nickname “Elephant Man”, said he did not know how long he would live.[link]
“It’s a really bizarre feeling when you discover you might be dead in a couple of years or even in a couple of months,” he said. “I feel like I’ve given away my life for £2,000.”[link]

It seems that not only were the volunteers (quite predictably) assured before participating in the trial that they would not suffer any life-threatening illnesses, they were told that after it was obvious that the test results were disastrous, too.

Four months later he still suffers from occasional lapses of memory, severe headaches, back pain and diarrhoea. (Modi) and the others had been led to believe that while their symptoms might persist for a while, their long-term future was not at risk.[link

Wrong. So very wrong.

One of the six victims was told last week he is already showing “definite early signs” of lymphatic cancer.
He and three others have also been warned that they are “highly likely” to develop incurable auto-immune diseases.[link]

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India’s Mis-take embarrasses the U.S.

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The Washington Post today detailed the tragic history of Plan B (a.k.a. the morning after pill). It is crystal clear that right wing idealogy has been winning out over science for far too long. From Wikipedia:

Emergency contraception (EC) (also known as Emergency Birth Control (EBC), the morning-after pill, or postcoital contraception) refers to measures, that if taken after sex, may prevent a pregnancy.

Forms of EC include:

* Emergency contraceptive pill –referred to simply as “emergency contraception,” “ECPs,” or “ECs”, or “morning-after pill” –are hormones that act both to prevent ovulation or fertilisation, or perhaps the subsequent implantation of a fertilised egg (zygote). ECPs are not to be confused with chemical abortion methods that act after implantation has occurred.
* Intrauterine devices (IUDs) – usually used as a primary contraception method, but sometimes used as emergency contraception.

As opposed to regular methods of contraception, ECs are considered for use in occasional cases only, for example in the event of contraceptive failure. Since they act before implantation, they are considered medically and legally to be forms of contraception. However, some who are anti-abortion define pregnancy as beginning with fertilisation, so they consider EC to be a form of abortion. These claims remain controversial; see Controversy section for more detail. [Link]

The key thing to understand here is that idealogically driven elements in this country, working with the Bush Administration, have tried to equate the use of the morning after pill with abortion. When the public is misled in this way many feel they too should work against allowing over-the-counter sales of such a pill. This analogy is simply untrue. The morning after pill is a form of contraception. It works to prevent conception in the first place in cases ranging from rape and insest to when a condom breaks. It was back in 2004 that an independent FDA review board made up of scientists and health professionals recommended that the pill be sold over-the-counter:

”By overruling a recommendation by an independent F.D.A. review board, the White House is putting its own political interests ahead of sound medical policies that have broad support,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign. ”This White House is more interested in appealing to its electoral base than it is in protecting women’s health.”… [Link]

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