If you use Google Desktop or a browser which snapshots pages, could you please paste the last few days of our News tab into an email for me?
I’ve thoroughly b0rked some of the summaries on our News tab while carelessly editing the database by hand. Right now I’ve got only the last couple of pages saved.
The perpetrator will be thoroughly self-abused. Thanks in advance!
Update: Now fully restored using Google Desktop cache (thanks, Ashvin and others).
A bit of an oldie (forgive me, work’s been a beeyatch). Economist Robert Samuelson writing for MSNBC, hits an issue recently discussed on Sepia Mutiny – the much feared Science & Engineering gap with India & China.
Samuelson’s retort is multi-pronged. First, the gap with India/China isn’t as crazy as the numbers might suggest it to be –
Judged realistically, China and India aren’t yet out-producing the United States in engineers. Widely publicized figures have them graduating 600,000 and 350,000 engineers a year respectively, from six to 10 times the U.S. level. But researchers at Duke University found the Chinese and Indian figures misleading. They include graduates with two- or three-year degrees–similar to “associate degrees” from U.S. community colleges. And the American figures excluded computer science graduates. Adjusted for these differences, the U.S. degrees jump to 222,335. Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India.…Only about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce consists of scientists and engineers.
Secondly, even if the gap is real, econ 101 would dictate that the “shortage” should reveal itself in engineering salaries (on average). And yet….
The Solomon Amendment is a Federal law which directs that certain Federal funds be withheld from recipient colleges and universities that do not grant military recruiters access to their campuses on a level equal to that provided to any other employer.
The Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), an association of law schools and professors that oppose discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, alleged that the Solomon Amendment infringed on its First Amendment freedoms of speech and association due to the militaryÂ’s discriminatory recruitment practices (i.e., “donÂ’t ask, donÂ’t tell”). (See Abhi’s previous post on the case here.)
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against FAIR yesterday, issuing an opinion [.pdf] that upholds the constitutionality of the statute and that in effect gives FAIR three-snaps in a Z-formation (i.e., the “Zorro snap“). (While some legal commentators predicted a unanimous outcome, I honestly did not think a case this contested in the public sphere would yield an 8-0 result.)
Joan Biskupic of USA TODAY described the Court’s reasoning:
“Accommodating the military’s message does not affect the law schools’ speech, because the schools are not speaking when they host interviews and recruiting receptions.” [T]he basic communications required of colleges were bulletin board notices and e-mails [which] hardly could be compared to the kind of “compelled” government speech that has been invalidated through the years, such as a West Virginia law that required schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and to salute the American flag, or a New Hampshire law that ordered the state motto — “Live Free or Die” — to be on license plates. [Link]
As this astute (and hopefully single) desi notes on her blog, Mia Culpa:
The decision boosts the Bush administration as it struggles to maintain recruiting levels to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a defeat for Harvard, Yale, Columbia and other universities that accused the government of intruding on academic freedom. [Link]
The good ol’ U.S. of A.: alleviating poverty, one five-star doggie hotel room at a time…
An argument broke out between US security personnel and the management of the [five-star] Le Meridien Hotel in New Delhi on Wednesday over the accommodation of 60 sniffer dogs that are part of President George W Bush’s security entourage. The US Embassy booked 70 rooms in the hotel in the Indian capital, where Bush will travel on Thursday. However, the hotel management was surprised to find that the rooms had been reserved for dogs.
These weren’t just any old pooches, they were decorated officers of the U.S. Secret Service:The hotel management was surprised to find that the rooms had been reserved for dogs
US security personnel accompanying the sniffer dogs were offended when the management told them that dogs were not allowed on the hotel premises, saying that they were “security officers”. The External Affairs Ministry had to intervene and arrange for the rooms to be allotted to the American “officer” dogs. Each “security officer” dog has been provided an air-conditioned room with an American attendant. [Link]
… the newly revamped Le Meridien in New Delhi has some “special guests”… The hotel is playing host to an “important delegation” from the United States — the K9 dog squad. But the word “dog” is never mentioned in front of these elite canines: they are referred to as “officers”… Kennels have been flown in specially for them… The “officers”, who have been decorated for their service, have their own private area in Le Meridien. [Link]
Upon hearing of the K9 unit’s digs, half the population of Bihar attempted to enlist 
Continue reading
As usual, I’ve been keeping an eye out for desis in politics here in the U.S. Just over a month ago I read that Kamil Hasan had been appointed as a Member-at-Large of the Democratic Party by DNC chairman Howard Dean. There wasn’t too much about him at the time but today the San Jose Mercury News features him:
Kamil Hasan of Saratoga has a new job: collecting serious cash from the Indo-American community for the Democratic National Committee.That job may not be as powerful as senator or congressman. But for the Bay Area’s roughly 155,000 Indo-American community members, Hasan’s appointment represents another step the well-educated, affluent immigrant group is taking to gain political clout. His goal is to raise at least $5 million through a newly formed Indian fundraising council in time for the next presidential election.
What’s most important, community members said, is that the appointment isn’t just about Hasan: It’s about the voice of the entire Indo-American community, about 2 million strong.
“It’s basically a seat at the table,” Hasan said in an interview at Hitek Venture Partners in Mountain View, a company he founded in 1995 that funds about 30 high-tech start-ups. “It’s a clear acknowledgment that the Indo-American community has made major contributions. We want to make a major impact on where this country should go, and to be involved as a player.”
A couple of things. First, is this really about the entire Indo-American community as Hasan believes? I don’t think so. This is about money and the members of the community that have it.
Kamil and Talat Hasan have long been leaders in the Indo-American community, where Hasan is known as a nice guy who plays golf at the Saratoga Country Club and a father who is strict about once-a-week family dinners with his daughters, Minal, 24, and Saima, 20. Hasan was born into a privileged family in Aligarh, India, in 1944. His father was a wealthy landowner. He came to the United States in 1968 to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology….“This is important because this says to the community, ‘We value you,’ ” he said. “And it’s a smart thing for the politicians to do, because this expands their base. And as we all know, this is a community with a lot of money.”
Those are two separate things. Valuing one’s money is a lot different than valuing the “community.” Or perhaps they are no longer separate things in contemporary American politics. Of course, Hasan also recognizes that he may have a problem herding cats:
The challenge for Hasan is to be the voice for a community whose members hail from one of the most diverse countries in the world. It’s not clear how many Indo-Americans are Republicans or Democrats, though Hasan is trying to figure that out. He estimates the breakdown is about 70 percent Democrats, 30 percent Republicans. Even within their own party, many Indo-Americans support different candidates for governor. Others disagree on whether to invest in local or national politics.
The NYT, the Economist and several U.S. congressmen have been on a sanctimonious, anti-India tear after the India-U.S. deal for nuclear power generation.
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The NYT op/ed committee for Dubya’s South Asia trip |
It’s just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him… when Mr. Bush agreed to carve out an exception to global nonproliferation rules for India, it should have been obvious that Pakistani opinion would demand the same privileged treatment… [Link]
Fast-forward to Thursday’s nuclear deal with India, in which President Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its nuclear weapons programs and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… This would be a bad idea at any time… Mr. Bush might as well have tied a pretty red bow around his India nuclear deal and mailed it as a gift to Tehran. [Link]
President Bush wants to carve out an exception for India. That’s the worst possible message to send to other countries — Iran comes to mind — that America and its nuclear allies in Europe are trying to keep off the nuclear weapons bandwagon. Already, Pakistani officials are requesting the same deal for their country, although it is a request that is unlikely to be granted. Congress would have to approve this nuclear deal, and it should kill it. [Link]
What has emerged on Capitol Hill is an alliance of conservative Republicans, who are concerned that the deal will encourage Iranian intransigence, and liberal Democrats, who charge that the Bush administration has effectively scrapped the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… “People are worried about the precedent of establishing a full-fledged cooperation with India while we’re wagging our finger at North Korea and Iran”…
“This deal not only lets India amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants, it looks like we made no effort to try to curtail them,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is Santa Claus negotiating. The goal seems to have been to give away as much as possible.” [Link]
You have all most likely heard of the Kennewick Man:
In 1996, there was a boat race on the Columbia River, near Kennewick, in Washington State, in the extreme northwestern United States. Two fans pulled ashore to get a good viewpoint of the race, and, in the shallow water at the edge of the bank, they found a human skull. They took the skull to the county coroner, who passed it to archaeologist James Chatters. Chatters and others went to the Columbia and retrieved a nearly complete human skeleton, with a long, narrow face suggestive of a person of European descent. But the skeleton was confusing to Chatters; he noticed that the teeth had no cavities and for a 40-50 year old man (the most recent studies suggest he was in his thirties), the teeth were extremely ground down. Cavities are the result of a corn-based (or sugar-enhanced) diet; grinding damage usually results from grit in the diet. Most modern people don’t have grit in their food, but do consume sugar in some form and so do have cavities. And Chatters spotted a projectile point embedded in his right pelvis, a Cascade point, normally dated between 5,000 and 9,000 years before the present. It was clear that the point had been there while the individual was alive; the lesion in the bone had partially healed. Chatters sent off a bit of the bone to be radiocarbon dated. Imagine his astonishment when he received the radiocarbon date as over 9,000 years ago. [Link]
The cover of Time Magazine this week is dedicated to new discoveries about the Kennewick Man reported inside. For many years his remains were the subject of a heated court battle. Native Americans claimed that they had the right to reclaim and bury his remains (thereby preventing scientific study) because he was one of their own. The Time Magazine article (subscription currently required) explains how forensics reveals that the Kennewick Man was not racially what we would consider Native American, but rather Polynesian or Ainu. He therefore predates existing Native American tribes. Indolink.com takes it a step further and includes speculation that he may have been from South Asia. It gets tricky because some people use “South Asia” when they really mean “Southeast Asia”:
Now it appears that analysis of Kennewick Man, places him “closer to southern Asians and nearly equidistant to modern Native Americans and Polynesians.”
That’s because the skull “appears to have strongest morphological affinities with populations in southern Asia, and not with American Indians or Europeans in the reference samples” according to one study.
The interpretations by anthropologists Joseph F. Powell and Jerome C. Rose are based on a scientific technique called craniofacial morphometric analysis. It involves detailed study of the shape of the skull and face, using a sophisticated method called multivariate analysis. In some cases, more than 60 different dimensions of a skull are measured and compared with comparable dimensions considered typical of specific racial groups. [Link]
Bush wasn’t the only imperial American to visit India last week. Mega-movie star, sometime rapper, and potential aspirant to the presidency Will Smith was also there as well. While he was in India to promote a new English language movie channel, he graciously complimented the competition, endearing himself to Indians with his love for Bollywood: 
“The first Hindi film that I saw was Sarkar,” he explained, “and I was blown away by the Big B (megastar Amitabh Bachchan). I want to be known as Big W from today.” [Link]
“Just recently I got to know the number of films Bollywood makes a year – a whopping 800. And each with its share of song, music, dance and drama… I am simply enticed to be part of it” [Link]
Although his representatives denied that Smith had any concrete plans for a crossover movie, he did spend a whole day meeting with various filmi types, so something may be in the works.
For me, the highlight of Smith’s visit was his appearence on Indian Idol. There he imitated Tom Cruise by jumping up on the sofa (scaring the presenter Mini Mathur half to death) where he mugged and sang:
Telling the contestants how to deal with butterflies in their stomachs, Will said, “It’s hard going on stage, and I used to have a weird feeling in my gut too. Sometimes, I still do. And when I really want to make sure I’m ready for stage, I go to a really crowded place, like a mall or something, I just climb up onto something (jumps onto the sofa) and do this!” He screams his guts out, wildly, his lunatic expressions all over the place. [Link]
[To see a flip book animation of his performance, click here] While on the show, he not only performed “Getting Jiggy With It” but he also ventured a duet of “Aati Kya Khandala” with one of the contestants. Unfortunately, one of the male contestants was considerably more self-conscious than Smith was:
Will got off the couch to raucous applause, encouraging the lad right next to him, Sandeep, to do the same. “Go ahead, man, go for it! Your turn now!”
And this is where the Idol hopeful blew it. If Will Smith tells you to leap onto a sofa and yell your head off on television, you do it. Sandeep hesitantly got to his feet, perched atop the couch as if made to stand to attention, and then, instead of just shouting, he fumbled around for a microphone. Even as Will kept egging him on, Sandeep managed a lame ‘Woo’ sound, then stood there grinning haplessly. [Link]
Why am I not surprised? Continue reading
M. Night Shyamalan had a two-minute-long AmEx ad on the Oscars telecast tonight (watch or download — thanks, Arzan and Sonia). The ad was lots of fun, a riff on Shyamalan’s odd worlds. Manoj Night was all slicked out in necklace, fitted suit and fancy haircut. Ennis Del Mar would approve.
I heard there was a short Ismail Merchant clip in the obituary montage. Sajit adds that Aishwarya Rai’s L’Oreal ad was shown at the end.
Out of the nominees, here are my personal should-have-beens (see also the complete list of winners):
Picture: Munich (winner: Crash)
Director: Steven Spielberg for Munich (winner: Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain)
Actor: Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line (winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote). It’s a travesty that Reese Witherspoon won her Best Actress award for Walk the Line, while Phoenix, the movie’s heart, was jilted for his dark, intense performance.
Yes, Hoffman disappeared entirely inside that role like a good interper, in a way you rarely see any more. But the faults of the rest of the movie bleed over. Capote was so slow and aggressively anti-stim, so sensory isolationist, it literally almost put me to sleep in the theater, slower than watching paint dry. As Anthony Lane wrote about a different film, it had ‘the touch of mummification which wins awards’ and an elegiac tone that was stultifying.
Crash blindly jabbed your emotional buttons. It was a race drama by the guy who wrote Million Dollar Baby, and about as subtle, i.e. not at all. It felt as pointlessly corrosive as downing a bottle of Tabasco sauce, making it upsetting to sit through, every key character spewing racist invective. It felt like reading Usenet: messy, undirected, didn’t go anywhere. You’ve got my time, now make a point.
The movie was way too pat, like feature columnists in small papers in the ‘burbs. Everyone just happened to bump into everyone else in the L.A. urban sprawl. I’ve seen that narrative structure before, but it wasn’t used well here — it was utterly contrived. The carjackers were like scholars. The Latino dude who lived in a ghetto barely had any accent. If you’re going to deal with race, be accurate. This movie veered into Lifetime schmaltz often, as mawkish as much of Bollywood. Continue reading
