Boing Boing discovers paan

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The normally reliable cypherpunk cool-hunters at Boing Boing discover a strange new delicacy called ‘paan.’ They’ve linked to bloggers who, in typical geek fashion (I mean that as the highest compliment), have catalogued its production with step-by-step photos and reference objects for scale. Spitting contests with laser ranging can’t be far behind.

In related news, I’ve spotted an obscure Western dessert called ‘canoli.’ A mass spectrographic analysis will follow.

Here’s what I say: leave the paan, take the canoli.

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Checking in with my favorite authors

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Zadie Smith, she of the Bangla-Jamaica mashup White Teeth, got married last September; they met at Cambridge. I ran into her at a small London birthday party at an age when she was considered precocious, well before I’d read her. She was all biting wit, creeper hair and privacy. Authors never look like their jacket photos, nor friendsters like theirs.

She’s due out with a third novel, On Beauty, in September. Autograph Man was studiedly trivial, seemingly an entire chapter devoted to Alex-Li’s body fluids. You’ve gagged on the wealth and hype jalebi, now toss me some more of that fine, fine namkeen.

Rushdie dogged my steps all through this India trip via the gossip columns. He returned to his eternal muse, Bombay; worked the press in that quintessential writer’s city, Calcutta; and held court at a fashion designer’s nightclub in that most elegant of settings… a Noida mall. Avoid-a the New Okhla Industrial, y’all.

Kitabkhana drolled on about Rushdie’s Delhi reading:

“That story, man, that story, it has the touch of genius, pure, jaano, calibre aachey. Each line has the stamp of a Master.” (Displaced Bong intellectual wannabe who spent most of the reading with eyes closed in ecstacy that would have been more convincing if he hadn’t snored once or twice in between.) … Sleepy photographer… wanted to go home but had been told by his editor to stay till the bitter end. “In case,” the editor apparently said, “Rushdie gets shot or something.”

… my last glimpse of the Rushdies was of them using upturned plastic chairs to hold at bay hordes of… squeaky-voiced journalists asking original questions (“Mr Rushdie! Are you writing a new novel?” “Padma, what’s your favourite food?”)

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First 60 Minutes, and Now Nightline?

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This Friday, ABC’s Nightline, one of the better known newsmagazines, will be doing a show highlighting, surprise, surprise, Bollywood. The episode, senior produced by Madhulika Sikka is dubbed as “an introduction to Bollywood for the novice,” and will feature Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, and of course, Bollywood crossover Hottie-to-be, and oh yeah, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Aishwarya Rai.

I wonder if SM can patent that phrase, or if soon Ash will be like Michael Jackson, and be announced T as TMBWITW, Aishwarya Rai. Maybe we should patent both.

Life under the shadow of raisins

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Prunes get no respect I tell you. The Pacific News Service reports on the woes of Sikh prune farmers in central California. Yeah, I had no idea either.

Prune growers in California’s Central Valley, which stretches from Fresno north to the Yuba City-Marysville area, are facing their worst harvest on record, following an extremely hot spring, which left little time for pollination.

Jaswant Bains, one of the area’s largest growers, said this year’s harvest has been “just about the worst crop ever.” Hot and dry weather during pollination resulted in a lack of fruit setting, he explained to India-West. Additionally, he said, high winds during the summer contributed to a heavy fruit drop during the picking season.

The Yuba City-Marysville area produces 99 percent of the nation’s prune orchards and about 70 percent of the world’s supply of prunes. Sikhs – many farming the land of ancestors who migrated here in the late 19th century – account for roughly 30 percent of prune farmers in the United States. Overall, the “dried plum” industry, as it is now known, could lose more than $100 million this year, as farmers said they harvested from 25 percent to 45 percent of a normal year’s crop.

I wish I had known all these years that so many Indian farmers harvested prunes. I would have totally drank more prune juice in solidarity. Prune juice has many benefits. Anyways, is there any relief in sight for these farmers? Continue reading →

I will not allow you to make us hypocrites.

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I think I speak for all Mutineers and rational humans when I ask for your civility here. We are ALL outraged, but we’re trying to act constructively. Hate speech is NOT constructive, nor is it welcome on this site. That doesn’t mean that we’re censoring you, telling you to take it like a bitch or turn the other cheek.

We do appreciate irreverent, funny commentary…

But RACISM and BIGOTRY are neither of those things. If you have something to say, please feel FREE to say it. If, however, it’s homophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-Black, anti-Amreekan, …please start your own blog and spew venom there.

You don’t fight hate with hate; you fight it with righteous indignation, moral superiority and passionate activism.

We will delete hate speech.

This project was created for many noble reasons; the content of certain comments does not honour those beginnings at all, indeed, it makes us sound like hypocrites who don’t deserve the victories we are struggling for.

If we want respect, not only must we demand it, we must conduct ourselves with it as well.

Be the change you wish to see.

Thank you. Continue reading →

And now for some good desi news out of Philadelphia

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The Philadelphia Daily News is reporting that Lee Daniels, director of the highly acclaimed film “The Woodsman,” (starring Kevin Bacon) has cast an SM Favorite, Aishwarya Rai to star in his next film, a musical Ladies Night. Daniel’s describes the film

“like ‘Waiting to Exhale’ meets ‘Chicago’ meets animation.”

In addition to Rai, Daniels indicated that he has cast, Mo’Nique, Macy Gray, Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys,Mariah Carey, and Patti LaBelle and hopes to cast Beyonce as well.

Save the Children.

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Right now, there are only a few things that outrage me more than hate-spewing sucka MCs. However, the thought of criminal acts being perpetrated against children just obliterates my livid reaction to mocking shock jocks.

Just what kind of monsters walk this planet? What manner of despicable @$$^0)# could inflict more pain on innocents who have already lost everything they’ve ever known in an epic tidal wave and quake?

This sickens me:

SRI LANKA:…A 60-year-old man tried to sell children, ages 12 and 13, in Balapitiya, near the hard-hit southern city of Galle, said police officer W.D.T. Wijesena. Police were tipped off of the sale and arrested the man on Tuesday, he said.
…The fate of the children was not immediately clear. The children are among scores who lost their parents in the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed about 31,000 people in this island country.
The United Nations and international aid agencies have expressed concerned that child traffickers could take advantage of the situation and try to sell orphans into forced labor or the sex trade.

I pray that Sri Lanka’s stringent rules regarding adoption are enforced during this tragic moment of vulnerability.

I’ve heard some infertile couples decry the “maze of red tape” they have encountered in their bid to create a family; I’m sure those legitimate, deserving, would-be parents welcome such red tape now, as it attempts to serve as an imperfect wall between fragile young survivors and the horrid exploitation some sub-human deviants wish to inflict on them.

Follow the Benjamins

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I’m putting out a call to desi college students in the Philly area: come up with a list of companies that advertise on Power 99’s Star and Buc Wild show.

Why? Well, let’s take a little tour through social science, an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.

First stop: Anthropology

Anthropology directs our attention to the use of discourse in the construction of meaning. Huh? In simpler language, Anthropology teaches us to listen closely, not just to what somebody is saying but to how they say it.

Everybody? Get out your Turbanhead.coms, we’re going to do a close reading:

Community-affairs director Loraine Ballard Morrill, is quoted as saying “Essentially [we’re] apologizing for things on our Web site that were racially inflammatory and insensitive, saying, ‘We took it off our Web site and it won’t happen again.’ ” She said the more serious matter was posting the clip on the Web site. “That probably made it a much more – just a worse situation. Then people could click on it and hear it. That was not cool… . He made a big ol’ mistake in judgment.” [snip] Secondly, the Inquirer story tries to diminish the scope of the problem by taking Morrill’s word that “Most of the e-mails came from people who do not listen to Power 99, whose audience is mainly African American. What does the demographics or geographic location of the offended have to do with this offending clip?

Let’s try to answer Turbanhead here. Why is Power99 apologizing for putting the clip on the web rather than for having recorded it in the first place? Why do they keep mentionining that the people complaining are not their listeners?

I think their language reveals their notion of “fairness.” In their world, a company’s job is to make its audience laugh. In their minds, there would have been nothing wrong if the skit had simply aired as planned, heard mainly by their on air listeners. The mistake was putting the clip on the web, and exposing it to a broader audience who might be offended by it. That is, they’re not sorry they did it, they’re sorry we’re offended. They’re trying to be gracious.

You see something similar when they protest that we aren’t their regular listeners. They don’t think it’s fair that we, who are not their core audience, are getting upset. They’ve done their job, namely entertaining their audience. We shouldn’t be butting in. The fact that they butted into our realm by calling India, using lewd language and threats is not really of importance to them. They can call India, but we can’t call Philly, home of M.Knight himself. Continue reading →

Religious Illiteracy

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Boston University professor Stephen Prothero writes a pretty acerbic commentary today in the Los Angeles Times:

The sociologist Peter Berger once remarked that if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden the least, then the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. Not anymore. With a Jesus lover in the Oval Office and a faith-based party in control of both houses of Congress, the United States is undeniably a nation of believers ruled by the same.

Things are different in Europe, and not just in Sweden. The Dutch are four times less likely than Americans to believe in miracles, hell and biblical inerrancy. The euro does not trust in God. But here is the paradox: Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion.

In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can’t be bothered to read what he has to say.

I can’t argue with any of the main points in his commentary. I’m not sure what his agenda is though. Is he being critical of religious ignorance because of its deleterious effects on society, or because he wants people to become more religious?

A few days after 9/11, a turbaned Indian American man was shot and killed in Arizona by a bigot who believed the man’s dress marked him as a Muslim. But what killed Balbir Singh Sodhi (who was not a Muslim but a Sikh) was not so much bigotry as ignorance. The moral of his story is not just that we need more tolerance. It is that Americans — of both the religious and the secular variety — need to understand religion. Resolving in 2005 to read for yourself either the Bible or the Koran (or both) might not be a bad place to start.

I’ll take that advice.

Power99 teaches Weaseling 101

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Power99’s response to their racist broadcast controversy is a textbook example of corporate weaseling. First, they told the press that the real problem was that they got caught — that they posted the audio clip to their Web site. Then they ducked responsibility by saying the complaints are coming from non-African Americans (duh) and non-Philadelphians.

As pressure mounted, they buried a Web apology on the bottom of the second screen, well below the fold, and refused to apologize on air. And they simply changed the date of an already-planned radiothon and tried to pass it off as a DJ ‘suspension’:

On Wednesday morning, the station broadcast a radiothon for tsunami victims in place of Star and Bucwild. The radiothon was previously scheduled and was only advanced to the show’s slot, Morill said.

Here’s the text of the apology:

The Star & Buc Wild Show prides itself on walking on the edge. On December 15th, we crossed it. We know the pain racial slurs cause and apologize that this comedy segment went too far.

At the same time, it’s also become clear that the abuse of call center workers is more widespread. Check out the Is Your Job Going Offshore? forums (via Times of India):

“… we’re up and running with our call campaign against the BP Motor Club. There are three of us calling on a daily basis to express our displeasure with oursourcing [sic] to the Indian phone center workers. There’s room for you!… Usually, I limit the calls to 60 seconds anyway, so I can call back and really hammer them. I’ve been doing this about 20 minutes a day. It’s great fun!”

Because that’s the rational thing to do when you’re jobless: spend your unemployment benefits on phone calls to India.

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