Category Archives: Science and Technology

Better living through Technology

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…actually, scratch the “better”…I’m just happy about the living part. We exist in amazing times, and for that I am constantly grateful and humbled. Why am I blathering all new-agey? I’m just pondering the healing powers of the Internet, that’s all.

Nepalese_miracle

Few thought this little boy would survive after he was bitten by a snake in Nepal.
His parents consulted a Shaman who bound the boy’s leg so tightly with a tourniquet it went gangrenous.
When doctors eventually saw him they were at a loss to know how to save him. The bandage had been on for 25 days and his leg was hanging off.
Everyone was resigned to him dying.

Everyone except Lord and Lady Swinfen. The peer and his wife run a phenomenal charity that “virtually” saved the child’s life. Continue reading →

When you care enough to send the very _____

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Per my Friday night custom, I visit a nearby drug store on Wilshire Blvd. to pick up a bottle of soda pop and some correspondence stationary. I hop over to the greeting card aisle whenever I need to restock my arsenal of overpriced pieces of color-printed cardstock. On one such occassion, I ran into the following birthday card from Ohio-based American Greetings:

 

I felt compelled to purchase and share the card with the Mutiny because it sprung forth many conflicting questions that I could not answer: Is this good-natured, equal-opportunity ribbing? Does such mainstream inclusion signify true acceptance and integration? Is the joke really just derived from a sinister dig at turbaned Sikhs? Did I really just shell out $2.30 for a card that I’ll probably never address? Why do my Friday nights resemble that of a kind, old granny?

Any answers are greatly appreciated.

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Microsoft doubles down in India

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Microsoft is doubling down on its India bet by announcing a research center in Bangalore, due next month, just weeks after opening a large programming campus in Hyderabad.

The company decided to add an Indian campus to take advantage of promising computer science students coming out of universities there, said Rick Rashid, a vice president in charge of Microsoft Research. The company hopes to hire a couple dozen researchers over the next year, he said.

Intel is also shifting some high-profile CPU design work (the Xeon ’06) to Bangalore.

Delhi subway’s alpha engineer reverses IST

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A transportation expert penned an op-ed in the NY Post yesterday bemoaning that New Delhi is more efficient at building subways than New York:

New York is talking – again – about starting work on the 8-mile Second Ave. line. It’s budgeted at $17 billion and scheduled to take up to 16 years to complete…

New Delhi started from scratch in 1998 and now has 13 miles of rail line up and running. The system is due to grow to 40 miles by next June, as workers complete their jobs three years ahead of schedule. The cost of all this: $2.3 billion…

In contrast to Delhi’s count-every-minute attitude, New York officials have talked about a Second Ave. subway since the 1920s… If New Delhi can do it, why can’t New York?

Why not, indeed. Cast off the bureaucratic habits of our former overlords, oh Yankees! Delhi’s subway was built five times faster at one-third the cost (buying power-adjusted), for a 15x improvement in bang for the rupee. Who’s the Mr. Laajawab behind this feat?

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A more desi-friendly Zara

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This post is in honor of the busiest shopping day of the year. A fashion entrepreneur might do very well with a more desi-friendly Zara:

Zara is paradise for sexy men’s clothing. It’s my all-time favorite store…

  • It’s one of the vanishingly scarce stores in America which do fall colors and deep jewel tones, like Indian formalwear, instead of those sickly pastels which look terrible on desis
  • Its fabrics are beautifully textured, like sherwanis, so subtle details appear upon closer inspection
  • It does dramatic tapered cuts rather than the shapeless American box cut; it’s the only non-designer store where I can get any semblance of a V-shape and waist…

The Economist compliments its speed:

Zara is the world’s fastest-growing retailer… Zara can make a new line from start to finish in three weeks, against an industry average of nine months. It produces 10,000 new designs each year; none stays in the stores for over a month…

Someone please clone this store, quick. The number of dark-haired people in the U.S. (black, Latino, Asian, desi) is enormous and growing. Zara with a more desi-friendly line and deeper supply chain could be an absolute gold mine…

Also focusing on the underserved dark-haired, olive-skinned market is fellow Berkeley grad Lubna Khalid’s startup, Real Cosmetics.

Continue reading…

Making Water: Paging Morarji Desai

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Water is becoming increasingly scarce, all over the world. In India, perhaps fewer than a third of all Indians have access to “decent sanitation and high quality drinking water.” (See V’s earlier post on the subject) Nor is this just an Indian problem. Some of Australia’s biggest cities, for example, may run dry in just a few years, perhaps as early as 2006.

What is to be done? Well, there is the ancient vedic practice of Shivambu or Amaroli, but despite Morarji Desai’s best efforts, drinking one’s own urine has not(ahem) gone down well amongst the general population.

But don’t despair. In Singapore, they have harnessed the braininess of Brown scientists in the US to produce NEWater!

NEWater is the product of Singapore’s new water-treatment system, and it is wastewater that has been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed. That’s right: The crystal-clear NEWater that gushes through the country’s faucets isn’t gurgling from a mountain spring. Most recently, it was flushed from a toilet. [Salon.com]

This process is the brainchild of Ashok Gadgil:

In December 1992, an outbreak of a new and dangerous strain of cholera began in southeastern India. Within months it had spread into neighboring countries, killing up to 10,000 people. The tragedy inspired Ashok Gadgil, an Indian-born scientist working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, to look for a new way to purify drinking water. Using science no more complex than the ultraviolet light emitted by an unshielded fluorescent lamp, he built a simple, effective, and inexpensive water disinfection system. Dozens of these systems are now installed around the world. “At the bare bones, using the simplest engineering, we could disinfect water for half a cent per ton. That’s shockingly cheap. You could disinfect water for one person, a full year’s drinking supply, for a couple of cents.”

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The ‘big bang’ launch

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Among Bollythemed entertainment, Bombay Dreams on Broadway and Bride and Prejudice in the UK have both trended sharply downward after strong openings. Two other desi (but not Bollywood) projects, Vanity Fair and Harold and Kumar, also did weak box office.

It’s tempting to conclude from the business torpor that America is not yet ready for desi culture, that the existing revenues reflect mainly interest from niche, culture-sampling subcultures. But take a look at it from the perspective of the ‘big bang’ launch: the $1B marketing campaign for the presidency, the $250M spent on the Windows 95 launch and so on. Creating a market via customer education is far more expensive and time-consuming than just selling into existing positioning slots (Spiderman 2). The former is a long-term campaign, while the latter is straightforward, tactical awareness-raising: hit the magic 7+ impressions per customer, and you’ll get higher sales.

I’m pretty sure fusion desi culture in the U.S. is not a fad. It’s a strong subculture with intense palettes, a supporting South Asian American population and rising awareness. So each desi cultural product, no matter how it performs, is also an in-kind contribution to the ‘big bang’ launch for Desis in America. This launch is being done in pieces, as befits a small, innovative product growing organically. The endgame is probably similar to the awareness and saturation of desi subcultures of the UK or Canada, albeit more dilute.

So while Meera or Mira or Gurinder or Kal may be nibbling discontentedly on their numbers, they can take some consolation in their contributions to a larger campaign, no matter how unintentional.

One More Dream for Chatwal

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SM’s favorite Page Sixer, hotelier and actor Vikram Chatwal, is celebrating the opening of his newest destination with a “star-studded” bash tomorrow night.

Despite Chatwal’s busy social life, and a tussle with celebrity photographer Dave LaChappelle, “Dream NY” will open its doors as scheduled. No word yet on the status of invitations to the opening party for east coast Mutineers.

The hotel boasts “a hip, futuristic fantasy of mirrored vaulted ceilings, columns crowned by blown glass, a glass elevator and a whimsically striped lounge.” The rooms are equipped with iPods and plasma TV’s, which should make watching hotel porn a truly memorable experience. If you’re interested, rates for this weekend range from $309 to $789 a night.

For those of us on the other side of the country, we may soon have our own Dream to reckon with. Chatwal’s Hollywood flack, Eileen Koch, released a press release yesterday announcing her client’s interest in opening up “Dream LA” on the city’s Sunset Strip.

* * * A Special Message for Vikram Chatwal * * *

Mr. Chatwal, when such a hotel opens, I (and possibly fellow Angelino, Abhi) would love to join the west coast division of your party-hoppin’ crew. I haven’t hooked up with a supermodel since…well, since forever, so this could be just the opportunity I’ve needed. I eagerly await your response.

* * * End Special Message for Vikram Chatwal * * *

Included in the press release was news that Chatwal has landed a role in the independent film, “Hope and a Little Sugar,” which is scheduled to commence shooting in a couple of weeks. He was last seen in the short film, “One Dollar Curry.”

Business Wire: Hotelier Vikram Chatwal Scouts Location for New Hotel on the West Coast
 Sepia Mutiny: On the Trail of Vikram Chatwal…

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Indian companies hiring engineers in China

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This is fascinating: Indian outsourcing companies, caught short-staffed by surging sales, are subcontracting some of the work to China.

“We need a deep reservoir of talent as well as an alternative low-cost center like India as we continue to grow,” said Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys, who has talked of his company’s scaling up to become the Wal-Mart of outsourcing. “And only China can match up.”… China has some 200,000 information technology workers–compared with India’s 850,000–in 6,000 local companies… More than 50,000 Chinese software programmers are being added to this pool annually.

… even with wages rising in India, China’s information technology workers are more expensive “because a combination of English-language and technical skills is at a premium,” Nilekani of Infosys said.

So a country which couldn’t defeat its neighbor on the battlefield is employing it instead. And it’s all thanks to unwanted colonization by an empire which left behind its language. It’s not only the law of unintended consequences, it’s also slick jujitsu.

World’s biggest steel company will be desi-owned

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London-based billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and his son Aditya are planning a $17.8B acquisition of an Ohio company which will make Mittal Steel the world’s biggest:

Last week, in a complicated $17.8 billion deal, Indian entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal said he would merge his existing steel assets — the privately-held LNM Holdings and the publicly-traded Ispat International — with the U.S.-based International Steel Group (ISG). The deal, which must still gain regulatory approval, would create the world’s biggest steel company, Mittal Steel, to be based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and help Mittal pursue his modest goal of making Mittal as synonymous with steel as Ford is with the motor car. The new company could produce up to 10% of the world’s steel…

Mittal made his $6.8B fortune in steel mills all over the world, including Calcutta, Romania, Mexico and Kazakhstan. Ironically, Mittal no longer owns any steel mills in India itself.

He has been able to generate profits by using his scale to buy lower-cost raw materials and by importing modern management techniques into previously inefficient state-run mills.

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