churchofchai

a view into the sordid life i lead

Friday, December 28, 2007

journalistic biases

i just went to news.google.com. the top story is about benazir bhutto's assassination. of the 5527 articles the first non-US coverage starts at article 60 - sify.net.

i waited 5 minutes and refreshed news.google.com to see how the spread might change. out of 1010 articles related to bhutto reuters india is now at 6, Sify at 11, NDTV at 12, Aljazeera at 13.

So in 5 minutes the world has started looking at the [more] local news outlets for more detail than the international.

this morning's time/cnn article had a picture of bush for the bhutto story (which i had screen-captured that, but alas did not). seemed somewhat indicative of the state of u.s. journalism. but then again, the ny times has a truly excellent piece (and some very good photos) of the event "bhutto is buried as pakistan reels".


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Thursday, December 27, 2007

america calling desmond tutu

Mark Kleiman over at The Reality-Based Community: Truth and Reconciliation writes:
If a Democrat gets elected next year, he or she is going to have a
terrible hand to play. The economy is likely to be in a slowdown, with
the bad-housing-debt problem still looming. The foreign policy
situation certainly isn't going to get any better. And worst of all,
the new President will be inheriting an office discredited, and a set
of executive agencies ruined, by GWB and his fellow vandals. (read more)
I've thought about this for a while - it seems entirely ludicrous that any sane individual would wish to take on the US presidency at this time, for the reasons the article outlines. I only hope Kleiman's punchline pans out. I wonder if the US would even be capable of handling anything like the TRC when people are so polarized about the morons in power. It would be like India having a TRC to deal with the excesses of politicians - not bloody likely.


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bhutto

i've been getting my news on what's going on on the ground and the response to benazir bhutto's assassination from the bloggers. http://lahore.metblogs.com and http://karachi.metblogs.com has some very dedicated bloggers providing some on-the-ground info.


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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

streets of fury

every day in chennai i get into a fight or witness a fight. almost every auto trip is an argument. since autos in chennai do not go by the meter (the excuses: the meter is broken, the meter does not work, the meter does not record correctly, the prices fluctuate too much, the government is the problem) there's no easy way to determine exactly what it should cost to go to a certain place. (note to self: figure out if there's a way to get a consistent auto rate to any place in the city).
then there are the street fights. every day i witness at least one instance where people are close to coming to blows. the arguments are about silly things for the most part - there is virtually never an instance where a fight is warranted. i've found myself being dragged into fights virtually every day, even when i know that it's pointless. i fight because the testosterone in the air is too thick and i have to say my piece for fear of being downtrodden.
in every case the fights are between men. every street is choked to the hilt with men. the traffic is too much for a town this size, and the male-female ratio is unnatural.
there was a "this american life" episode a few years back about an afghani kid living in california who decided to go to afghanistan with his father when the karzai government took control. he said that every meeting he went to with his father was extremely aggressive and violent. until one day a woman walked into one of the meetings and everything calmed down.
i think it's the same situation here - there are too many men being aggressive. we need more women.
jonii said that when she went to thailand it felt amazingly pleasant and civil and people actually cared about the beauty around them. thailand has a much more balanced male-female ratio than india.
changing the status quo will require that women be held in a much higher regard than men for some time, in the same way that affirmative action was put into place. it's going to require that women be paid more than men for a period of time and given more latitude. perhaps that will never happen in a male-dominated society like india's.


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fists of fury

every day in chennai i get into a fight or witness a fight. every auto trip is an argument. actually maybe not every trip, but most trips are. since autos in chennai do not go by the meter (the meter is broken, the meter does not work, the meter does not record correctly, the prices fluctuate too much, and so many more excuses) there's no easy way to determine exactly what it should cost to go to a certain place.
then there are the street fights. every day i witness at least one instance where people are close to coming to blows. the arguments are about silly things for the most part - there is virtually never an instance where a fight is warranted. i've found myself being dragged into fights virtually every day, even when i know that it's pointless. i fight because the testosterone in the air is too thick and i have to say my piece for fear of being downtrodden.
in every case the fights are between men. every street is choked to the hilt with men. the traffic is too much for a town this size, and the male-female ratio is unnatural.
there was a "this american life" episode a few years back about an afghani kid living in california who decided to go to afghanistan with his father when the karzai government took control. he said that every meeting he went to with his father was extremely aggressive and violent. until one day a woman walked into one of the meetings and everything calmed down.
i think it's the same situation here - there are too many men being aggressive. we need more women.
jonii said that when she went to thailand it felt amazingly pleasant and civil and people actually cared about the beauty around them. thailand has a much more balanced male-female ratio than india.
changing the status quo will require that women be held in a much higher regard than men for some time, in the same way that affirmative action was put into place. it's going to require that women be paid more than men for a period of time and given more latitude. perhaps that will never happen in a male-dominated society like india's.


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Friday, December 21, 2007

Curried pirates


Pirates of the Curried Beans - The Little Theatre presents a
Christmas pantomine called 'Pirates of the Curried Beans.'
I'm bummed that I missed this. I just saw the poster for it today. Might have been cool to go to.


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Curried pirates


Pirates of the Curried Beans - The Little Theatre presents a
Christmas pantomine called 'Pirates of the Curried Beans.'
I'm bummed that I missed this. I just saw the poster for it today. Might have been cool to go to.


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Movie madness

There's a rule in Tamilnadu (and maybe in other parts of India) that movies with non-tamil words in their title are taxed, whereas tamil-only titles are not. I'm sure there's a nationalistic logic to this, and perhaps it's a way to make people cherish their "mother-tongue".
Film promotion is often in the news papers, regardless of language, so tamil films with tamil titles are promoted in English papers, transliterated. They can't translate the names .. because of the tax. So you have situations where movies are have promotional text with titles like "Muzhi" which really only make sense to those who understand Tamil.

There was a time when I was a bit of a Tamil-nationalist. I'm now realizing that language, like religion, is simply a way to keep people apart.


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Friday, December 14, 2007

Culture shocks

Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: PodWorks

My brother just showed up with his iPhone and all his music on it. In the eternal wisdom of DRM, Apple has made it virtually impossible to get the music that he has purchased off his iPhone to a machine that we can play the tracks at his wedding. Annoying as all hell!

I figured there MUST be some bright hacker who has figured out how to pull stuff off the iPhone, but after a 4 hour search I gave up yesterday. Then this morning I decided to give it one last shot, and I find PodWorks. These guys are freaking brilliant. And the product costs $8. Eight freaking bucks. I mean eight measly clams. It's insane how good this program is, and $8 is just a ridiculously good price. I would probably have paid $20 (not that I'm suggesting they increase their price).

I you have an iPhone or iPod you MUST get yourself this program. It's awesome. AWESOME!!!


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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

india - land of the uncaring

India’s urban planners, designers and technologists have never felt
the need to conceive a human-friendly system of managing garbage and sewage.
Instead, they rely on an unending source of disposable, cheap, Dalit labour.
Tehelka:: Free. Fair. Fearless

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Sunday, December 02, 2007

airline food suckage


My mealpak on Jet Lite from Delhi to Chennai felt like i was being punished with just bread and water. But I was punished with style I guess since it was 2 kinds of bread and 2 kinds of water.


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Saturday, December 01, 2007

Chai'ed up and ready to go


Pretty much nothing like a good cup of chai first thing in the morning, even when our first thing started at 4am and the chai showed up at 8am. ach! Go to the flickr page for more pics.


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what, no hell?!

you know something's amiss when the only headache you get is due to carrying kefir on board at the cedar rapids security check. in fact the rest of the trip has been ridiculously easy. the food was decent (i guess american finally got the sense to contract indian veg food out to an indian company, in this case jyoti or swad or something - yes, i should have taken a picture but just was not prepared). it's nothing like the indian veg fare from the uk to india, mind you, but it was not anything to sneeeze at. markedly missing was the lack of pickle.

in any case, decent food, easy immigration, no hassle at customs, a totally uneventful taxi ride to the master paying guest house and we're now in bed with free wifi access. interestingly there's a 4-lane highway all the way to carol bagh. 4 years ago we basically drove on a 1.5-lane road through something resembling a forest between delhi and carol bagh. probably the most impressive part is the almost complete lack of touts as we exited indira gandhi international airport. either i'm just not good enough to be hassled by the taxi drivers, hotel pushers, and all the other assorted hangers-on, or something got cleaned up. but maybe we just got lucky!

i should state for the record that you know you're in india when there's pollution so thick it's like fog, and about 10 minutes into "fresh" air you have a sore throat and wish you'd been smoking more to keep the pollutants at bay. then there's the random drumming and tinny radio music that's blaring pretty much non-stop. i have no idea what it is, but there's a comfort quotient there that makes me recognize home.

anyway, we're in delhi, safe and pretty much feeling like the last 2 years in iowa have flitted by. except for the brand spankin new highway, and the monumental levels of construction we could have been here last week.

from here on there will be more pictures, i promise.


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