NBC’s “The
Office” reminds us to never reveal our sexual
predilections at the workplace.
Insure your elephant
Spotted on last Saturday’s episode of Showbiz
India: New York Life urges
you to insure your elephant, lest your bastard spawn choose to abuse the living crap out
of it.
Here’s a Quicktime video of the advertisement (500 KB, 30 secs.).
Faded Genes
We are going to have to ask for the experts to comment on this one. The BBC reports (thanks for the tip Mytri):
Indians infected with the AIDS virus are more likely to contract the disease than people in the west, a new study has found.
Scientists say that Indians have lower immunity to the virus because they have genes that hasten the disease.
India says more than five million of its citizens are infected with the HIV virus, second only to South Africa.
Activists say the number of Indians affected by HIV/Aids is much higher than the government says.
Scientists at India’s premier medical school, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), studied 200 people with HIV infection and 2000 healthy people over two years for the study.
I always try to look at genetic anomalies in terms of evolutionary pressures. In cases where none are obvious I just shrug my shoulders and wait for an explanation.
“Protective genes are low among Indians while the harmful genes are more common,” Dr NK Mehra, head of the study told the BBC.
Ummmm. That explanation doesn’t quite make it clear (to me at least). In a somewhat related story the Hindustan Times reported last week that Indians and Pakistanis in England have the lowest number of sexual partners (ouch).
Desis on U.K. ‘Apprentice’
England’s magnificent Punjabi
Boy alerts us to their home-brewed edition
of “The Apprentice,” which features a pair of desi contestants. If
you’re among the ladies who was turned off by our American Raj, check
out the U.K. alternative:
Name: Raj
Age: 30
Qualifications: LLB Law (Hons).
Career: Internet entrepreneur, founder and managing director of an estate agency.
Hobbies: “I have no hobbies or interests – my total focus in on business.”
He says: “I’m an entrepreneur, not an angel.”
To quote Punjabi Boy, he’s a “complete dork.” Since American Raj is totally awesome, we win that round. But then our Raj’s awesomeness
is easily trumped by the “feisty and sexy” Saira
Khan:
Name: Saira
Age: 34
Qualifications: BA in Humanities, MA in Environmental Planning.
Career: Sales manager for an online recruitment company.
Facts: She runs marathons, loves diving, and speaks four Asian languages.
She says: “I hope that as an Asian woman I will give other Asian women the inspiration to go out there and do well in business.”
Indeed, it never fails: the British version of any television show is always better.
Gotham Chopra explores spirituality on TV
Former Vice President Al Gore on Monday unveiled his long-awaited television
venture, “Current,” which is described as “the first national
network created by, for and with an 18-34 year-old audience.” Deepak Chopra’s
son is prominently featured:
Among Current’s young on-air talent is Gotham Chopra (host of “Current Soul,” an exploration of spirituality from a young perspective), a former Channel One News anchor who has reported from around the world and interviewed leaders including Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama, wrote three published works including the comic book Bulletproof Monk (serving as executive producer of the film adaptation), and was called one of the “most powerful and influential” South Asians worth watching by Newsweek. [PRNewswire/Yahoo!]
Twenty-somethings discussing and exploring spirituality? What, did a high-pitched screeching sound already have a prior commitment?
PRNewswire/Yahoo!: Al Gore and Joel Hyatt unveil Current…
Indian music in ‘The Far Pavilions’
There’s some buzz surrounding plans to bring together western and Indian
music for the U.K.-theatre production of MM Kaye’s classic romantic novel “The
Far Pavilions”:
The original book, published in 1978, told the story of forbidden love between an Indian princess and a British army officer during the time of the Raj. To replicate the contrast between the two cultures that forms the essence of the book, the new musical, directed by Gale Edwards, has two composers – Philip Henderson, who is British, and Kuljit Bhamra, who is Indian. [BBC News]
Gurinder Chadha has got to be pissed. Her monopoly on brown-woman-white-man productions appears to have crumbled. Every KFC in her immediate vicinity is advised to prepare for an onslaught of takeout orders.
What’s the matter with Bangladesh?
Boston University professor Nazli
Kibria pens an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles
Times, in which she warns that Bangladesh’s unchecked ruling party is rife
with terrorist tendencies. She needs only point to the January assassination
of her father, Shah A.M.S. Kibria, a renowned member of the opposition party,
and a former undersecretary-general of the United Nations:
He had traveled from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to address a public meeting in the northeastern part of the country on Jan. 27. Hundreds of people had gathered to hear him speak. As he left the auditorium, without any police protection, a series of grenades exploded. My father was badly hurt, but despite the frantic requests of my mother and many of his colleagues in the hours after the attack, the government did not provide him with helicopter transport to medical facilities in Dhaka. His ambulance ran out of gas as it raced toward a hospital, and he bled to death. Four other opposition party members also died in the attack. [Los Angeles Times]
She laments the lack of concern from the U.S.:
Even as the U.S. has expanded its war on terrorism across more and more of the world, Bangladesh has escaped attention. In many ways this is not surprising. Bangladesh has never, since its bloody and triumphant birth in 1971, been seen by the U.S. to be a country of much strategic importance. In the calculations of those who make foreign policy, Bangladesh is greatly overshadowed in significance by its feuding nuclear-power neighbors, Pakistan and India. But in the long term, the price of inaction could be high. Is it prudent to ignore a political crisis in a country of 141 million people, home to the fourth-largest concentration of Muslims in the world? Are we better off dealing immediately with a problem that can most likely be solved through firm international diplomacy or waiting for a later time when we may be contending with a rogue state that lends aid and comfort to Islamist extremists? [Los Angeles Times]
A professor should know the answer to that. History clearly demonstrates that we don’t intervene until after a rogue state becomes an uncontrollable mess. Like with Alabama (circa 1963).
Los Angeles Times: Bangladesh’s lurking terror
Minimum love for ‘Maximum’ author
Suketu
Mehta’s “Maximum
City,” an account of Bombay’s
two-decade transformation, was beaten out yesterday for the Pulitzer Prize in
non-fiction by Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars,” an in-depth exposé of
the CIA. Mehta’s
book was a nominated finalist along with “The Devil’s Highway,” by
Luis Alberto Urrea. Winners of the annual prize receive $10,000, and get to emboss
a gold seal on the cover of their book. Pulitzers are administered by Columbia
University, which gave the award’s highest honor to the Los Angeles
Times for its series exposing medical problems and racial injustice at King/Drew
Medical Center. A full
list of winners is available on the award’s official web
site. Past recipients of the prestigious award include Jhumpa
Lahiri, David Mamet (I
couldn’t resist), and a
bunch of other folks. The first South Asian
to capture the award was Gobind
Behari Lal in 1937, for his coverage of science
at Harvard University (via Sreenath Sreenivasan).
Yep, we were science geeks even back in the 30s.
Helping India Become “a major world power”
MD writes in with this article in the Weekly Standard about recent developments in US-India policy –
WITH THE NEWS from Iraq relegated to the back pages recently, last Friday’s State Department briefing–especially since it was not devoted to Condoleezza Rice’s latest fashion statements–attracted little attention. The subject: the evolving strategic partnership between the United States and India. The news? It is the “goal” of the Bush administration “to help India become a major world power in the 21st century.” …A U.S.-India strategic partnership, if fully developed, would be the single most important step toward an alliance capable of meeting the 21st century’s principal challenges: radical Islam and rising China. Unlike our almost erstwhile allies in western Europe, India shares an equal strategic concern with both these challenges. Perhaps even more important, India shares a commitment to democracy that transcends ethnic nationalism–Hindu nationalism, in this case, will not suffice to govern a state that includes 120 million Muslims–and an understanding of the necessity for armed strength. India’s position in South Asia puts it in an essential geostrategic location from both a continental and maritime perspective. In sum, the United States could hardly dream up a more ideal strategic partner.
The article dismisses the sale of F-16s to Pakistan as a symbolic gesture relative to the far larger balance of power issues (truth be told, I hold the minority opinion on the Sepia Mutiny editorial staff – I actually tend to agree with folks like Blank/Weapon Nerd about their lack of real import). Continue reading
Do the trains still stop at the Unawatuna station?
Turbanhead offers a poignant post that takes a unique view of the Tsunami’s aftermath via Anthropologie, of all things. I’m amazed at how a decision some art director made can end up being so meaningful later on…
You might want to check it out. Continue reading
