A most timely find for this time of year - vacation options for single parents. I have experienced some of the same challenges that this column talks about. Feeling slightly odd to be the solitary single parent family in a "sea of two parent families" or at least bigger families with relatives standing in for the absent parent. If J and I travel somewhere it feels as if we merely teleported ourselves while still sitting on the living room couch. The scenery is new and different but nothing else is - something remains missing from the vacation. Unless we have friends traveling with us, the time off does not have the rejuvenating effect I look for.
I used to wonder if that was just me seeking what I don't have at the cost of not appreciating the many blessings that I do have. I would chide myself for not being able to live in the present and enjoy what the moment has to offer and get frustrated at not being able to quite do so. It is very comforting to see that I am not alone in feeling odd and left out in crowds and that there is niche for people like me who want to travel with their children and make it a trip to fully enjoy and remember. Despite everything, in the end it is true that : Adults who travel alone with kids face some pressures that two-parent families don’t.
crossings as in traversals, contradictions, counterpoints of the heart though often not..
Tweeting In Twaiku
I have had a Twitter profile for quite sometime how but had not been using it. As with a lot of people, I had not grasped the point of micro-blogging. Then I read this interview with Michael Lapp. There were quite a few new things I learned. Some of the more interesting questions (and answers) :
In which the concept and potential of @names is explained in 140 words or less
MS: Will @names on Twitter eventually become as highly sought after as .com domain names?
R: It's ironic that @names are simply reversed email addresses that drop the domain name. The concept of @names is much bigger than Twitter.
Uninterrupted tweeting can be a good thing if you know how to use it.
MS: Has Twitter ever been a nuisance? When (if ever) do you turn it off?
R: If Twitter is annoying you then you don't understand Twitter.
The only way to find out what Twitter is all about is to kick the tires yourself.
MS: How do you make your friends and family understand why you use Twitter?
R: I've given up trying to explain Twitter to people. The point is for you to sign-up and figure it out for yourself.
Whatever, else Twitter may or may not do for your social and professional life, chances are it will be enable you to master the art of confining your thoughts to less than 140 words. The only logical next step then would be to for everyone to start tweeting in Twaiku.
In which the concept and potential of @names is explained in 140 words or less
MS: Will @names on Twitter eventually become as highly sought after as .com domain names?
R: It's ironic that @names are simply reversed email addresses that drop the domain name. The concept of @names is much bigger than Twitter.
Uninterrupted tweeting can be a good thing if you know how to use it.
MS: Has Twitter ever been a nuisance? When (if ever) do you turn it off?
R: If Twitter is annoying you then you don't understand Twitter.
The only way to find out what Twitter is all about is to kick the tires yourself.
MS: How do you make your friends and family understand why you use Twitter?
R: I've given up trying to explain Twitter to people. The point is for you to sign-up and figure it out for yourself.
Whatever, else Twitter may or may not do for your social and professional life, chances are it will be enable you to master the art of confining your thoughts to less than 140 words. The only logical next step then would be to for everyone to start tweeting in Twaiku.
Who Does She Think She Is ?
Who Does She Think She Is ? by Pamela Tanner Boll is an eloquent and often heartbreaking testimony by five women artists on finding their true selves as creators of art while meeting (or failing to meet) societal expectations of women as mothers and wives. While a male artist is allowed (and indeed expected) to have his entire existence defined by his art, the standard is very different for a female. Unless she decides to eschew having a home and a family, she is required to be a wife and mother first and create her art in any spare cycles her other responsibilities leave her with. To do otherwise is usually met by censure from both her partner and the world outside.
Janis Wunderlich is a mother of five who does everything a typical suburban soccer mom does and then she has a second life as a sculptor feverishly creating works that she must haste to get out the door lest the they come in harms way in a five kid household. Her life and art beg the question how she does it as much as who does she think she is.
Wunderlich is not alone is struggling to find balance between her desire to be a woman as defined by marriage and motherhood and to be an artist at the same time. Of the five women artists profiled in this movie three of them have been forced to choose their art over their marriage because their husbands were simply unable to reconcile with the intense need these women felt to keep creating art.
We meet the experts who talk about how phenomenally underrepresented women artists are in the professional arena when you consider the statistics on name recognition and solo exhibitions. One of them, Leonard Shlain hits the nail on its head when he says hindering female artists from reaching their full potential is akin to having half of the body paralysed after a stroke. The whole society suffers when half it is immobilized.
Pamela Tanner Boll does an outstanding job of putting in perspective what would be considered by many as a fringe issue - namely the struggles of women artists in the context of much larger and far more critical social issues. She makes a compelling case for why we would not be able to move ahead as a society if we restrained the creative energies of half of it.
Janis Wunderlich is a mother of five who does everything a typical suburban soccer mom does and then she has a second life as a sculptor feverishly creating works that she must haste to get out the door lest the they come in harms way in a five kid household. Her life and art beg the question how she does it as much as who does she think she is.
Wunderlich is not alone is struggling to find balance between her desire to be a woman as defined by marriage and motherhood and to be an artist at the same time. Of the five women artists profiled in this movie three of them have been forced to choose their art over their marriage because their husbands were simply unable to reconcile with the intense need these women felt to keep creating art.
We meet the experts who talk about how phenomenally underrepresented women artists are in the professional arena when you consider the statistics on name recognition and solo exhibitions. One of them, Leonard Shlain hits the nail on its head when he says hindering female artists from reaching their full potential is akin to having half of the body paralysed after a stroke. The whole society suffers when half it is immobilized.
Pamela Tanner Boll does an outstanding job of putting in perspective what would be considered by many as a fringe issue - namely the struggles of women artists in the context of much larger and far more critical social issues. She makes a compelling case for why we would not be able to move ahead as a society if we restrained the creative energies of half of it.
Mellowed
A few days ago, a vendor took a bunch of us out to dinner. The group consisted of three single women and myself and two married men. After a few drinks, everyone was feeling mellow and and two of the ladies got talking about ex-boyfriends. Most of the stories were downright hilarious - it is what hindsight and the passage of time often turns heartbreak into. As they shared, the ridiculous nature of their once romantic relationship became painfully obvious. They laughed and we along with them. The third woman, the youngest in the group, was not quite as forthcoming but an occasional reference to a former boyfriend did come through.
The men shared no such stories but they prodded the women to sharing more once they had begun. I have seen this theme repeated in many social gatherings involving men and women who are good acquaintances but not really friends. The girls will talk about boys they had once been with. Little things at a dinner table will trigger memories - the one who made a mean creme brulee, the one who was a wine connoisseur, the one who was a cheapskate when it came to tipping - the list goes on.
You sense a mix of nostalgia and disappointment in how these stories are told. Each failed relationship becomes to a woman of a certain age, a mile marker on the long road that failed to take them to a home and family of their own. One drink too many and they will talk about it if only to make light of something that weighs on their mind. For a man, perhaps it is a little different. Each woman that came and went from his life life, is a notch on the stake of their manliness - an accomplishment even if not a whole scale conquest.
A dinner with co-workers is not the best place for them to engage in manly braggadocio. Not surprisingly, they hold their peace and enjoy hearing it about it from a woman's perspective. As they hear, it might cross their mind that somewhere an ex-girlfriend after one margarita too many, must be reminiscing their time together as well just as these women around his dinner table are doing. That must offer some satisfaction.
The men shared no such stories but they prodded the women to sharing more once they had begun. I have seen this theme repeated in many social gatherings involving men and women who are good acquaintances but not really friends. The girls will talk about boys they had once been with. Little things at a dinner table will trigger memories - the one who made a mean creme brulee, the one who was a wine connoisseur, the one who was a cheapskate when it came to tipping - the list goes on.
You sense a mix of nostalgia and disappointment in how these stories are told. Each failed relationship becomes to a woman of a certain age, a mile marker on the long road that failed to take them to a home and family of their own. One drink too many and they will talk about it if only to make light of something that weighs on their mind. For a man, perhaps it is a little different. Each woman that came and went from his life life, is a notch on the stake of their manliness - an accomplishment even if not a whole scale conquest.
A dinner with co-workers is not the best place for them to engage in manly braggadocio. Not surprisingly, they hold their peace and enjoy hearing it about it from a woman's perspective. As they hear, it might cross their mind that somewhere an ex-girlfriend after one margarita too many, must be reminiscing their time together as well just as these women around his dinner table are doing. That must offer some satisfaction.
Email Response
Good to know what your email response time tells about you - even if you don't agree with the findings, it would make little difference if the vast majority of people did. For better or worse, you would be viewed and judged through this collective lens.
When it comes to email and work, I find my response time being inversely proportional to their distance from me in the food chain. The higher up they are, the quicker is my reaction with a couple of exceptions. A major snafu or a bellicose customer would usually take precedence. If there is a query with a binary or simple answer, I will respond right away no matter who it is from so I don't hold up whatever the other person is trying to get done.
It is generally believed (and even observed) that women are on the average better at multi-tasking than men are. So it should come as no surprise that they are able to respond to emails faster and also continue with their other tasks. It may not as the pundits are saying :
But such a swift response may have a downside - it may mean the sender is stressed or has low self-esteem, according to research.
Women, in particular, felt more pressure to respond quickly to a new email than men..
When it comes to personal mail, I will either respond with a day or two or chances are it will get drowned somewhere in my Inbox unresponded to for many months. I will think about writing that email every once in a while but not quite get to it. I figure everyone has a certain cadence to responding to their mail personal or official. They have their best and worst response times and for reasons that are idiosyncratic to their lives and personalities. In the end, there may be far more worthy subjects for research even if your area of interest is email.
When it comes to email and work, I find my response time being inversely proportional to their distance from me in the food chain. The higher up they are, the quicker is my reaction with a couple of exceptions. A major snafu or a bellicose customer would usually take precedence. If there is a query with a binary or simple answer, I will respond right away no matter who it is from so I don't hold up whatever the other person is trying to get done.
It is generally believed (and even observed) that women are on the average better at multi-tasking than men are. So it should come as no surprise that they are able to respond to emails faster and also continue with their other tasks. It may not as the pundits are saying :
But such a swift response may have a downside - it may mean the sender is stressed or has low self-esteem, according to research.
Women, in particular, felt more pressure to respond quickly to a new email than men..
When it comes to personal mail, I will either respond with a day or two or chances are it will get drowned somewhere in my Inbox unresponded to for many months. I will think about writing that email every once in a while but not quite get to it. I figure everyone has a certain cadence to responding to their mail personal or official. They have their best and worst response times and for reasons that are idiosyncratic to their lives and personalities. In the end, there may be far more worthy subjects for research even if your area of interest is email.
Marriage In Recession
Used to be that women in third world countries had to tolerate abusive and even violent husbands because they lacked the wherewithal to leave them. They had been married so their parents would need to feed one mouth less. It just would not work economically for her to go back home with or out without kids even without the huge amount of social pressure such a move would bring in its wake.
When I read this article about divorce being the latest luxury in America, I had to wonder if recession if deep and long enough would turn the clock back on the emancipated women of the West by a couple of hundred years. But as with every cloud, thanks to the creativity of divorce attorneys even this situation has a silver lining. If you are too broke to split up and go solo, you could at least sign a "cohabitation agreement" which is defined thusly:
A cohabitation agreement includes an understanding of each partner’s responsibilities for financial issues, a projected date of separation, the value of assets and debts, how much of each asset and debt each partner gets, a plan for living in the same house, custody arrangements, child care expenses and can even include issues about dating.
Except for the custody arrangements and dating expenses bit, that reads like the state of many a less than perfect marriage. You have to assume that the separation of heart and soul has already taken place in such a marriage so there is no date to project.
Half Magic
I've often had good luck following Nancy Pearl's book recommendations for kids - which is to say I enjoy reading them but J (the intended reader) liking them is a whole different matter. She will pronounce an opinion on the book after having read all of five lines of Chapter 1 on Page 1. More often than not the book is cast away unread.
If I can coax her to read just a little more to see if she may end up liking it, and she reaches the end of Chapter 1, chances are she'll stick with it to the point that I will need to peel her away from it. So, off I go looking for recommendations on contemporary children's literature and have more than 90% of my discoveries summarily rejected. My most recent casualty has been Half Magic by Edward Eager described thusly :
Jane and her sister are having a very boring summer. Yet, everything changes after Jane finds a coin on the street, which grants wishes. The only problem is that only half of the wish comes true. She realizes that her wish will only be granted if she asks for twice as much as she wanted. Jane is then bewildered in the calculations for her desires…
To me that was a fascinating plot and definitely worth reading. I got it from the library and handed it to J, eager to see her enjoy the story. Her first complaint was about the names of the chapters - "too boring". The chapters, I admit are somewhat uninspiringly named :
How It Began
What Happened To Their Mother
What Happened To Mark
What Happened To Katherine
What Happened To Martha
What Happened To Jane
How It Ended
How It Began Again
Once she got past that to Chapter 1, she did not like the opening line of the book :
It began one day in summer about thirty years ago, and it happened to four children.
With that the book was cast away in favor of some others that she liked more. Like a bowl of boiled brussels sprouts, I push Half Magic her way every once in a while knowing that she will get hooked if she persists with it to end of the first chapter. She responds by pushing it aside telling me she'll read it "later". I had no idea kids were such fussy and impatient readers - I thought my challenges ended at the dinner table.
If I can coax her to read just a little more to see if she may end up liking it, and she reaches the end of Chapter 1, chances are she'll stick with it to the point that I will need to peel her away from it. So, off I go looking for recommendations on contemporary children's literature and have more than 90% of my discoveries summarily rejected. My most recent casualty has been Half Magic by Edward Eager described thusly :
Jane and her sister are having a very boring summer. Yet, everything changes after Jane finds a coin on the street, which grants wishes. The only problem is that only half of the wish comes true. She realizes that her wish will only be granted if she asks for twice as much as she wanted. Jane is then bewildered in the calculations for her desires…
To me that was a fascinating plot and definitely worth reading. I got it from the library and handed it to J, eager to see her enjoy the story. Her first complaint was about the names of the chapters - "too boring". The chapters, I admit are somewhat uninspiringly named :
How It Began
What Happened To Their Mother
What Happened To Mark
What Happened To Katherine
What Happened To Martha
What Happened To Jane
How It Ended
How It Began Again
Once she got past that to Chapter 1, she did not like the opening line of the book :
It began one day in summer about thirty years ago, and it happened to four children.
With that the book was cast away in favor of some others that she liked more. Like a bowl of boiled brussels sprouts, I push Half Magic her way every once in a while knowing that she will get hooked if she persists with it to end of the first chapter. She responds by pushing it aside telling me she'll read it "later". I had no idea kids were such fussy and impatient readers - I thought my challenges ended at the dinner table.
The Desi Male POV
There are many phrases containing the word desi that can lead you from Google search to my blog and some of those them can also lead you to one called Desi Manifesto (not terribly PC or censored but definitely worth checking out). So, I found this blog while checking my site stats some time ago and wrote to SI to see if he and his compadre/s might be interested in doing an interview. They were gracious to accept the invite and here goes :
Me: Why a desi male manifesto and not something more gender neutral along the lines of what can brown + curry do for you ?
Me: Why a desi male manifesto and not something more gender neutral along the lines of what can brown + curry do for you ?
desimanifesto: We want to talk about the shared experiences of Desi Men. There are plenty of "well rounded" blogs out there and frankly, they are a little boring. None of them really speak to our experiences and they never allow their commentators to really say what's on their minds. We needed a forum for our stories especially when you don't have a lot of Indian friends locally.
Me: When you say our experiences are you talking the gen 1+ or the FOB experience ? It seems to me that in the desi world, vintage is like the modern day caste system. Do you see the gen 1 desi man being fundamentally different from the FOB desi man ? Is your forum open to the FOB dude ?
desimanifesto: Gen 1 basically, Indian men born or mostly raised here in the US or Canada.It is open to anyone, but tailored to those like us. Those of us who were born here are fundamentally different from the IBI (India born Indians). We have been heavily influenced by the US culture and certainly we miss many aspects of Indian culture, both good and bad.
Me: As a desi woman, I have found very little to tell a desi male gen1 or gen0 apart except for the accent perhaps. Could you name a few things that would clearly separate the two sets ? Assume an affluent, cosmopolitan upbringing for the FOB dude.
desimanifesto: Value systems. One thing is what they think is important or acceptable. It is not always a tremendous difference, especially if someone is very cosmopolitan but not all of them are. However, I'd say what they expect from their women usually is different. Similarly their understanding of race and relations in the US and worldwide is different as they are the vast majority in India. It is a stretch to assume they're all cosmopolitan though certainly, that would lessen the differences.
Me: A desi being raised in a typical desi household in say a Parlin or Edison NJ ends up with a ghettoized brand of desiness - if I may use that phrase. They see far too much of desis than they would (or should) need to living in the States. Do you think that has something to do with gen 1 angst about being brown in a white country ?
desimanifesto: Having never lived there, I can't totally relate. I have never lived around a huge Indo population but I bet it contributes to them being annoying and clique-based Indos.
Me: You mentioned earlier that there is a difference in expectations from women based on vintage. What would a gen 1 desi male expect from a woman in a relationship ?
desimanifesto: First off, I don't think most desi men are as progressive as they could be. I believe that most of the Indian men here have seen plenty of Indian women in the US succeed at the highest levels of various industries. So there is an expectation that women will be educated, capable , independent to an extent, etc. I can't say that the IBIs I've met always share that view of women. I'd like to say that those born here don't expect women to cook, clean, etc but that may be speaking for myself more than for most Indian men. Again, I was never part of the larger Indo community. My friends and I never really liked them all that much either.
Me: Is it fair to say that the not so average desi man would be comfortable with a woman who is Indra Nooyi at work as long as she can serve a four course dinner desi thali style for dinner each night ?
desimanifesto: Well, if she could do it and enjoyed doing it, sure. But do you mean, would an average desi man feel OK if his wife did these things out of duty rather than enjoyment? I think the average man, regardless of race, would feel OK with that.
Me: I guess my question had more to do with how desi moms raise their boys. That's where the domestic expectations come from. The world outside can teach a desi man that women can do just about everything he can do and better but the disconnect in relationships sets in because the playbook for domesticity is way out of date. With the desi gen 1 man being everything the doctor ordered for the desi gen 1 woman, why would she even consider looking outside her cultural comfort zone as she most often does ?
desimanifesto: Well I'd say desi moms generally spoil their sons rotten as do fathers with their daughters so both sides have unrealistic expectations of norms much of the time. However, the bottom line is that women control the dating scene and it is easy for them to write off desi men because brown women assume they know what all brown men are about. Growing up in the US, they never see brown men in larger media as sexual objects so it makes it pretty simple to say "they're not attractive to me, white men can be hot, etc." Brown men who I know never write off Indian women regardless of what we go through.
Me: So does a desi male have to work extra hard to remain competitive in the American dating scene ? By your reasoning a FOB desi female would not have trouble finding a gen 1 desi male attractive being that they've grown up thinking of Arjun Rampal, Dino Morea and Milind Soman as hot.desimanifesto: I believe yes, a brown man absolutely does have to work harder to even be in the mix in the US dating scene. 100%.
Me: Yet gen 1 desi dudes will quickly reject a FOB desi female. What gives ?
Me: A desi being raised in a typical desi household in say a Parlin or Edison NJ ends up with a ghettoized brand of desiness - if I may use that phrase. They see far too much of desis than they would (or should) need to living in the States. Do you think that has something to do with gen 1 angst about being brown in a white country ?
desimanifesto: Having never lived there, I can't totally relate. I have never lived around a huge Indo population but I bet it contributes to them being annoying and clique-based Indos.
Me: You mentioned earlier that there is a difference in expectations from women based on vintage. What would a gen 1 desi male expect from a woman in a relationship ?
desimanifesto: First off, I don't think most desi men are as progressive as they could be. I believe that most of the Indian men here have seen plenty of Indian women in the US succeed at the highest levels of various industries. So there is an expectation that women will be educated, capable , independent to an extent, etc. I can't say that the IBIs I've met always share that view of women. I'd like to say that those born here don't expect women to cook, clean, etc but that may be speaking for myself more than for most Indian men. Again, I was never part of the larger Indo community. My friends and I never really liked them all that much either.
Me: Is it fair to say that the not so average desi man would be comfortable with a woman who is Indra Nooyi at work as long as she can serve a four course dinner desi thali style for dinner each night ?
desimanifesto: Well, if she could do it and enjoyed doing it, sure. But do you mean, would an average desi man feel OK if his wife did these things out of duty rather than enjoyment? I think the average man, regardless of race, would feel OK with that.
Me: I guess my question had more to do with how desi moms raise their boys. That's where the domestic expectations come from. The world outside can teach a desi man that women can do just about everything he can do and better but the disconnect in relationships sets in because the playbook for domesticity is way out of date. With the desi gen 1 man being everything the doctor ordered for the desi gen 1 woman, why would she even consider looking outside her cultural comfort zone as she most often does ?
desimanifesto: Well I'd say desi moms generally spoil their sons rotten as do fathers with their daughters so both sides have unrealistic expectations of norms much of the time. However, the bottom line is that women control the dating scene and it is easy for them to write off desi men because brown women assume they know what all brown men are about. Growing up in the US, they never see brown men in larger media as sexual objects so it makes it pretty simple to say "they're not attractive to me, white men can be hot, etc." Brown men who I know never write off Indian women regardless of what we go through.
Me: So does a desi male have to work extra hard to remain competitive in the American dating scene ? By your reasoning a FOB desi female would not have trouble finding a gen 1 desi male attractive being that they've grown up thinking of Arjun Rampal, Dino Morea and Milind Soman as hot.desimanifesto: I believe yes, a brown man absolutely does have to work harder to even be in the mix in the US dating scene. 100%.
Me: Yet gen 1 desi dudes will quickly reject a FOB desi female. What gives ?
desimanifesto: I can't agree with that. It might be because IBIs are brought up to think that those born in the US are ABCDs therefore unacceptable, unintelligent, lacking culture, etc. Gen 1 desi dudes will NOT always reject a FOB desi female. However, the same standards of beauty apply perhaps unfair as standards in India and the US are not the same.
Me: You mean a FOB desi woman will need to compete against the best in the West when it comes to her looks ?
Me: You mean a FOB desi woman will need to compete against the best in the West when it comes to her looks ?
desimanifesto: The best Indian women in the west, yes most likely she will need to do so.
Me: To paraphrase then the FOB female will need to look like the ABCD but still be the FOB she really is ? Isn't that sort of an impossible thing to ask for?
Me: To paraphrase then the FOB female will need to look like the ABCD but still be the FOB she really is ? Isn't that sort of an impossible thing to ask for?
desimanifesto: Let's assume we're talking about attractive women so looks wouldn't be the issue. IBI women that I've met are rarely, if ever, attracted to desi men born in the US so I've never seen the case of an US born Indo rejecting an attractive IBI who liked him - ever. Physical attraction will be an issue at all times both for men and women. Getting past that would yield the actual answers regarding personality, culture, etc. So we will have to assume that the women in all these scenarios are attractive in which case, I've never seen a US born guy reject a woman for being an IBI and I've never seen an attractive IBI go for a US born man who was Indian.
Me: Now consider a scenario where a FOB and ABCD both look like Mallika Sherawat with all other factors being equal. The FOB has a strong ghati accent, the ABCD talks like she grew up in Bronx. Who would the desi gen 1 male select ?
Me: Now consider a scenario where a FOB and ABCD both look like Mallika Sherawat with all other factors being equal. The FOB has a strong ghati accent, the ABCD talks like she grew up in Bronx. Who would the desi gen 1 male select ?
desimanifesto: The person whose experience more closely resembles his own. In this case that would be the US born woman. It is just as if an IBI could choose from two equally qualified Indian men one from the US one from Mumbai she will choose the guy from Mumbai as he understands her world more closely than the other man. Not to say that exceptions don't happen but on the whole, this is how it is pretty much every, if not all, US born brown men I know. If given the choice between two equally attractive women one of any race/background and the other an Indian woman born in the US he will choose the Indian woman. I certainly would and I've always dated inter racially and I'm open to marrying whomever.
Me: Except for a small glitch as you had pointed our earlier - desi gen 1 females are not very likely to choose a desi over a white guy.
desimanifesto: It seems that way. Especially the very attractive ones I hope I'm wrong or that I've been exposed to the exceptions rather than the rule but that is how it seems.
Me: Could it be possible that the desi gen 1 males that are pursuing these smoking hot desi females are not that good looking themselves ?
Me: Could it be possible that the desi gen 1 males that are pursuing these smoking hot desi females are not that good looking themselves ?
desimanifesto: Quite possible. But for a desi woman to write off ALL desi men ? Again, our issue is not that desi women date inter racially it's that they say "Indian men can't be hot" or "I don't date brown men" etc. We understand that we generally not perceived as sexual objects in larger American culture and we accept that. This is a white country. But for our own women to write us off just like that hurts. Brown men would never do that to brown women at least none that I've seen.
Me: I hear you. The west has not given the desi man his due. Harold and Kumar is about as far as the guy has gone so far. But would it also help for the desi gen 1 male to recalibrate his expectations and settle for someone less than smoking ?
Me: I hear you. The west has not given the desi man his due. Harold and Kumar is about as far as the guy has gone so far. But would it also help for the desi gen 1 male to recalibrate his expectations and settle for someone less than smoking ?
desimanifesto: Well, here's the other thing. It's not like all desi men only want the hottest. Most people go for their "Looks equals". You see average looking brown men and women together all the time but the other thing is even attractive Indian men are not necessarily sexual objects in the Western eye sure, we certainly get more attention but to know that some of our female "looks equals" in the brown world won't even give us a chance chance is disconcerting.
Me: What are you guys over at the manifesto doing to right this ?
Me: What are you guys over at the manifesto doing to right this ?
desimanifesto: Getting the word out figuring out how to change OUR views on things. I actively encourage brown men to date inter racially especially other minorities.
Me: That's a great starting point.
Me: That's a great starting point.
desimanifesto: Of course, the average desi man has messed up racial notions.Sad but true.Again, there are reasons my crew and I never mixed well with the larger desi crews.
Me: The bhangra and garba crowds you mean ?
desimanifesto: Yes exactly. And we do want to raise the point that among desis in general about how things are. It's good to hear desi women who don't automatically say "You're wrong, etc." or "Indian men are lame," etc. I'm never closed-minded to most logical criticisms of desi men. Anyone who reads the blog will see that we are pretty fair about the faults of desi men and how WE certainly don't like brown dudes like that either.
desimanifesto: At least giving each other a chance. The whole "I don't date brown men" thing is absurd like with ANY group of people. Only a small percentage will be uber-qualified. But you never hear a hot Indian girl say "I'm done with white guys" . I'd faint if I heard that!Me: Would your happy place be where brown men and women can meet each other without letting stereotypes get in the way of it ?
Me: I guess it's time for the last question. Tell my desi female readers why they should take a good hard look at the gen 1 desi dude instead of clicking on the next profile of a SWM.
desimanifesto: I mean, I'm not trying to beg. It's frustrating, but when a girl has that attitude, you don't want to be with her anyway. However, if a woman wants a man who's attractive that is totally fine. Realize that attractive desi men DO exist. Do you have to look a little harder? Yes. By percentage, we're not bad but consider how few of us there are. When you see the raw numbers you know you will have to search. The point is, a well educated brown man with a progressive view would likely be better than any other candidate and it's hard to find the woman who is flawless herself. Women certainly have more choices in life specially the attractive ones but self-hating only limits your chances when you cut out those most likely to understand you without ever having to utter a word.
Acronyms: Curry Bear does an outstanding job of defining FOBs, ABCDs and everything else in between. This is like the Desis for Dummies and a Reference for the Rest of Us.
Gone Shopping
You don't need to have lived in or known about Singapore to enjoy Wee Li Lin's Gone Shopping. No matter which part of the world you live in, chances are the Gods of the shopping mall have extracted from you life more than they have given in return. And if that is true, this is a movie you must watch. The cast of characters in Gone Shopping are creatures of the mall - it has come to be their natural habitat though not always of their own volition.
There is Clara Wong, the wealthy lady of leisure who has given up her prescription medicines in favor of retail therapy. A shoe when she does not know where is going, a bag when she is feeling sad and so on - she is familiar with her ailments and what it will take to numb the pain when it strikes. Then there is the Renu, the eight year old kid who has been abandoned by her parents in a mall and learns to survive there not unlike a rat would giving new meaning to the phrase mall-rat. We see Aaron and his cosplaying girlfriend reach relationship denouement without having stepped out of the mall.
The lives of all these characters and a host of others who inhabit the mall nearly 24/7 confluence as they escape their real lives into a more fantastical one that the malls help them conjure. It is as Hui Hui the cosplaying teenager puts it "Everyone in Singapore needs a bit of cosplay in their lives". Li Lin turns that into a more universal need that malls, retail mania and consumer culture serves around the world. There is a lot to like about this movie but I particularly loved the music which accentuates the ambiance the story needed to be told so well.
To order the movie online visit :
http://www.moviexclusive.com/estore/index.php?productID=338
There is Clara Wong, the wealthy lady of leisure who has given up her prescription medicines in favor of retail therapy. A shoe when she does not know where is going, a bag when she is feeling sad and so on - she is familiar with her ailments and what it will take to numb the pain when it strikes. Then there is the Renu, the eight year old kid who has been abandoned by her parents in a mall and learns to survive there not unlike a rat would giving new meaning to the phrase mall-rat. We see Aaron and his cosplaying girlfriend reach relationship denouement without having stepped out of the mall.
The lives of all these characters and a host of others who inhabit the mall nearly 24/7 confluence as they escape their real lives into a more fantastical one that the malls help them conjure. It is as Hui Hui the cosplaying teenager puts it "Everyone in Singapore needs a bit of cosplay in their lives". Li Lin turns that into a more universal need that malls, retail mania and consumer culture serves around the world. There is a lot to like about this movie but I particularly loved the music which accentuates the ambiance the story needed to be told so well.
To order the movie online visit :
http://www.moviexclusive.com/estore/index.php?productID=338
Memes
For those of us who need to feed their blogging habit, almost anything including the 5th sentence on Page 123 of an random book, can be turned into a meme waiting to be blogged and tagged about. That being the case, you wonder if memes do nothing more than trigger loggorhoea and then spread the contagion by way of tagging.
But every once in a while in this cesspool of random ramblings, one may find something of value and originality - a thought worthy of a pause and ponder and god forbid an impulse for yet another blog or tag. So we keep feeding each one and other ideas that have been regurgitated many times over hoping someday that the typing monkey hordes will co-author a Shakespeare.
But every once in a while in this cesspool of random ramblings, one may find something of value and originality - a thought worthy of a pause and ponder and god forbid an impulse for yet another blog or tag. So we keep feeding each one and other ideas that have been regurgitated many times over hoping someday that the typing monkey hordes will co-author a Shakespeare.
Usability and Hitopadesa
User experience is one of those greatly overused and little understood technology cliches. When I hear usuabilty experts fold forth, I am often reminded of a story from Hitopadesa - The Tale of a Brahmin and Three Rouges in which brahmin is parted from his goat in three easy steps with the moral being you cannot please everyone and to trust oneself. The brahmin in the story could be the entity who concieves the product, the goat which is mistaken to be a dog is the product itself and the three rouges stand for the many kinds of users the creator of the product tries to please in vain.
Just as the brahmin and his goat part ways, so do the intent and concept from the product. Some users will be pleased and others won't - there is always a fourth and a sixth rouge who does not agree with the rest of them. Instead it would be nice to see an user interfaces adapt to the preferences of the user unintrusively, become this comfortable old shoe that you always find yourself slipping into.
Users and usability tests are equally blindsided by not knowing what they don't know at the time of their initial interactions with the product. To that end, what appears a decent experience at first may in time feel inadequate. Another point that is not emphasised enough in usability discussions is that user experience is not limited to usuability is is the whole series of experiences a user or customer has while interacting with a company or its product.
Ticker Shock
It was somewhat surreal watching the stock price of my current client plummeting like there was no bottom all day yesterday. By late afternoon, the otherwise upbeat marketing types that sit in cubicles around mine, were mulling credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgages, derivatives, foreclosures - the whole enchilada of economic woes that defines these times. Clearly, everyone felt anxious and no one was quite able to focus on their job.
These things are contagious. I found myself carrying it over to another building where I had a meeting. My co-worker there had until then been buried under deadlines and had not paid attention to the stock price. When I mentioned it, his disbelief gave way to pessimism and fear. It was not a very productive meeting with everyone talking about what all this means to our lives, homes and jobs. We were feeding into each others' fears and worries until the sum of all our negativity leads us into a situation where we have real reason to panic. I wonder if this is how it feels before the credit default swap tsunami strikes.
These things are contagious. I found myself carrying it over to another building where I had a meeting. My co-worker there had until then been buried under deadlines and had not paid attention to the stock price. When I mentioned it, his disbelief gave way to pessimism and fear. It was not a very productive meeting with everyone talking about what all this means to our lives, homes and jobs. We were feeding into each others' fears and worries until the sum of all our negativity leads us into a situation where we have real reason to panic. I wonder if this is how it feels before the credit default swap tsunami strikes.
Male Mother
In terms of news this is really old, spun through endless cycles and wrung completely dry. But nice essay on the increasing permeable gender roles and parental identities specially in the aftermath of Thomas Beatie (The World's First Pregnant Man) childbirth. Ellen Goodman says:
..what made Beatie tabloid fodder is that in a he/she world of opposite pronouns and sexes, he represents the trans in gender, the mind-spinning possibility that gender is not either/or but both/and
NY Times columnist Guy Trebay notes in his column He's Pregnant, You're Speechless :
Partly a carnival sideshow and partly a glimpse at shifting sexual tectonics, his image and story powered past traditional definitions of gender and exposed a realm that seemed more than passing strange to some observers — and altogether natural to those who inhabit it.
..what made Beatie tabloid fodder is that in a he/she world of opposite pronouns and sexes, he represents the trans in gender, the mind-spinning possibility that gender is not either/or but both/and
NY Times columnist Guy Trebay notes in his column He's Pregnant, You're Speechless :
Partly a carnival sideshow and partly a glimpse at shifting sexual tectonics, his image and story powered past traditional definitions of gender and exposed a realm that seemed more than passing strange to some observers — and altogether natural to those who inhabit it.
Many and One
This David Brooks Op-Ed column in NYT Harmony and the Dream is steeped in cultural biases glossed by the thinnest sheen of scientific evidence to support his point of view. While there may something about cultural influences on how people think and behave, Brooks fails to discuss the more important questions of the day - what happens when collectivist cultures turn individualistic ? What forces come into play and how does it transform who participate or are impacted by such a change ?
Conversely, what happens when individualist urn collectivist ? Also, in large, complex and heterogeneous cultures like China or India how the different parts of it - on a varying sliding scale that ranges from highly individual to highly collective work in concert. Those would far more interesting themes to write Op-Eds about. Clearly, that takes more than stringing together a bunch of off the cuff borrowed observations and call it an article as Brooks is prone to doing.
Conversely, what happens when individualist urn collectivist ? Also, in large, complex and heterogeneous cultures like China or India how the different parts of it - on a varying sliding scale that ranges from highly individual to highly collective work in concert. Those would far more interesting themes to write Op-Eds about. Clearly, that takes more than stringing together a bunch of off the cuff borrowed observations and call it an article as Brooks is prone to doing.
Girl Power
Reading this article on college girls wolf-whistling at construction workers had me thinking about my college days. Back in the day, girls represented less than ten percent of the class in my engineering school so we had very little strength in numbers. With that kind of skewed ratio, we inevitably received a lot of undesired male attention.
It took us some growing used to the crude commentary on our anatomies and the constant bust level staring of the self-styled Lotharios who lorded over the campus. A lot of these guys had come from the remote backwaters of India and were around women in an urban setting for the first time. To them, seeing girls in form fitting tee-shirts and jeans was like being in a strip club for the very first time and they behaved accordingly.
Yet every once in a while, us girls had our comeuppance. We would be on our way back from college to the ladies hostel and there would be this one guy walking down the street. The agent provocateur in our group, I will call her A, had this rather suggestive way of calling out single digit numbers when the victim was within earshot that had the singular effect of turning him red in the face specially when her sidekick, K would do this oh-so-subtle once over and provide her assessment in the form of another single digit number sometimes even a second smaller one.
Everyone knew what was going on, but there was nothing substantially offensive. The rest of us who lacked the nerve to do what A and K did, thought their method was super-slick. It got the job done without resorting to the depths of vulgarity that the guys descended to. As is often the case, these random victims of A and K were almost never the ones who had offended any of us. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and they represented their sex.
It took us some growing used to the crude commentary on our anatomies and the constant bust level staring of the self-styled Lotharios who lorded over the campus. A lot of these guys had come from the remote backwaters of India and were around women in an urban setting for the first time. To them, seeing girls in form fitting tee-shirts and jeans was like being in a strip club for the very first time and they behaved accordingly.
Yet every once in a while, us girls had our comeuppance. We would be on our way back from college to the ladies hostel and there would be this one guy walking down the street. The agent provocateur in our group, I will call her A, had this rather suggestive way of calling out single digit numbers when the victim was within earshot that had the singular effect of turning him red in the face specially when her sidekick, K would do this oh-so-subtle once over and provide her assessment in the form of another single digit number sometimes even a second smaller one.
Everyone knew what was going on, but there was nothing substantially offensive. The rest of us who lacked the nerve to do what A and K did, thought their method was super-slick. It got the job done without resorting to the depths of vulgarity that the guys descended to. As is often the case, these random victims of A and K were almost never the ones who had offended any of us. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and they represented their sex.
Adultery And Options
I know a couple of women who are aware that their husbands are cheating on them and yet choose to stay on in the marriage, children and all. My first instinct used to be to question the wisdom of their choice - specially for what it meant for the kids. A girl who grows up seeing her mother demurely accept being abused and humiliated may not grow up to seek or demand any different from the man in her own life. The boy would likely not learn to respect women if he did not see his father respect his mother - specially if his mother did not reject being disrespected. The mother forms a very important female leitmotif in the lives of her kids whatever their sex. It becomes important then for her to become an example of what she would not regret them emulating.
As for the woman herself, once she lowers the bar that low for how far out of line her spouse can step without jeopardizing their marriage, chances are, her husband will stop at nothing - he now has carte blanche to do exactly as he pleases without fear of consequences or retribution. How could any of those scenarios be a good outcome from a marriage, how could such a marriage be worth preserving. Seemingly contrary to commonsense, these otherwise smart women do what seems utterly wrong both for themselves and their children.
What is more, this behavior does not seem to be restricted to the ordinary and middle-class. Rich and famous women have likewise accepted their errant husbands when it would appear they had no reason to tolerate bad behavior. Maybe there comes a point in a married woman's life, when she is betrayed by her husband, any or all options she has available are wholly unfavorable to for her far more than they are for the straying husband.
If she has achieved a certain standing in society by virtue of her marriage or is atleast greatly helped by it, she stands to loose that position all that it entails if she walks away without any guarantees she can do even better alone or with someone else. Past a certain age, she no longer feels confident that men will still find her appealing enough to consider marriage or she would be able to find someone (potentially even older than herself) who would appeal to her. If she walks away, the other woman walks right in to her life, run the home she helped build and share the children she gave birth to.
Sometimes, the cold math of it all just does not add up to make sense to walk away for the sake of injured dignity and hurt pride. Maybe these women stay on because it is the logical best option to remain the thorn on their cheating husband's side and bar another woman from feasting on the fruits of her labor. Ironically, it is two women working against each other over a man who is the cause of all their troubles in the first place.
As for the woman herself, once she lowers the bar that low for how far out of line her spouse can step without jeopardizing their marriage, chances are, her husband will stop at nothing - he now has carte blanche to do exactly as he pleases without fear of consequences or retribution. How could any of those scenarios be a good outcome from a marriage, how could such a marriage be worth preserving. Seemingly contrary to commonsense, these otherwise smart women do what seems utterly wrong both for themselves and their children.
What is more, this behavior does not seem to be restricted to the ordinary and middle-class. Rich and famous women have likewise accepted their errant husbands when it would appear they had no reason to tolerate bad behavior. Maybe there comes a point in a married woman's life, when she is betrayed by her husband, any or all options she has available are wholly unfavorable to for her far more than they are for the straying husband.
If she has achieved a certain standing in society by virtue of her marriage or is atleast greatly helped by it, she stands to loose that position all that it entails if she walks away without any guarantees she can do even better alone or with someone else. Past a certain age, she no longer feels confident that men will still find her appealing enough to consider marriage or she would be able to find someone (potentially even older than herself) who would appeal to her. If she walks away, the other woman walks right in to her life, run the home she helped build and share the children she gave birth to.
Sometimes, the cold math of it all just does not add up to make sense to walk away for the sake of injured dignity and hurt pride. Maybe these women stay on because it is the logical best option to remain the thorn on their cheating husband's side and bar another woman from feasting on the fruits of her labor. Ironically, it is two women working against each other over a man who is the cause of all their troubles in the first place.
Dilbert at Work
Over the years, I have learned to be wary of anyone who has Dilbert accessories in their workspace be it a coffee mug, a calendar or a strip stuck at a prominent location in their cube or office. It makes we wonder about what it is they are trying to say (and to whom) without really saying it and why it is so important. My concerns are slightly alleviated by static material such a mugs, posters or scotch-taped strips from circa 1993.
It signals (to me) in the best case, that they've said their piece and have worked it out of their system since. Day to day, they go about their life at work just like the non-Dilbert people - they are not getting all steamed up in a pressure-cooker whose safety valve happens to be Dilbert. In the worst case, they have one very important thing to say and they want to make sure they are heard. Dilbert is the voice of their dissent.
However, when the material is dynamic and frequently refreshed, it gives me more food for thought and I might add, concern. It would a whole lot more fun and cathartic to take their show on the road as this blogger does with great aplomb. What's more the blogger could get a book deal out it - I would hate for Bob to end up in a syndicated comic strip and become Dilbert's competition.
In an article titled Dilbert is Bosses' Stooge, the writer quotes author Norman Solomon who gets it right :
It signals (to me) in the best case, that they've said their piece and have worked it out of their system since. Day to day, they go about their life at work just like the non-Dilbert people - they are not getting all steamed up in a pressure-cooker whose safety valve happens to be Dilbert. In the worst case, they have one very important thing to say and they want to make sure they are heard. Dilbert is the voice of their dissent.
However, when the material is dynamic and frequently refreshed, it gives me more food for thought and I might add, concern. It would a whole lot more fun and cathartic to take their show on the road as this blogger does with great aplomb. What's more the blogger could get a book deal out it - I would hate for Bob to end up in a syndicated comic strip and become Dilbert's competition.
In an article titled Dilbert is Bosses' Stooge, the writer quotes author Norman Solomon who gets it right :
Thus, the Dilbert character is an agent of a "corporate America (that) is not selling us the rope to hang it with, (but) the illusions to exculpate it with," Solomon contends. "Labor unions haven't adopted Dilbert characters as insignia. But corporations in droves have rushed to link themselves with Dilbert, Why?
"Dilbert mirrors the mass media's crocodile tears for working people -- and echoes the ambient noises from Wall Street."
Germs and Religion
Reading this article in the Economist - Praying for Health, reminded me of my abortive attempt to read Jared Diamond's book Gun, Germs, and Steel. A friend had recommended the book and his short summary of the book's central themes sounded interesting. Diamond's book is not made for easy or even enjoyable reading.
If you can push yourself hard enough, you might get through it and get something out of it for your troubles. But if you are attention span challenged like I am, you'll be lucky to make it to page fifty. The Economist article cites the following conclusion of two researches Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill :
The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in “traditional” (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.
This seems similar to Diamond's argument that ancient societies succeeded or failed based on the luck of the geographical draw. Likewise, people would be more or less disease-ridden based on the religious make-up of their environment. The case for tying germs and religion does actually come in the conclusion of the article :
Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring.
If you can push yourself hard enough, you might get through it and get something out of it for your troubles. But if you are attention span challenged like I am, you'll be lucky to make it to page fifty. The Economist article cites the following conclusion of two researches Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill :
The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in “traditional” (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.
This seems similar to Diamond's argument that ancient societies succeeded or failed based on the luck of the geographical draw. Likewise, people would be more or less disease-ridden based on the religious make-up of their environment. The case for tying germs and religion does actually come in the conclusion of the article :
Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring.
Inspired by Scam
Found this little gem via Mefi - a blog that reads like very well-written short story, but this is not exactly fiction unless you count email exchanges with a Craigslist spammer real. You have to read the blog in its entirety to savor this adventure but the tag line tells it in brief :
My 45-day quest to convince a craigslist scammer to write me a poem-- and how she lost her mind and tried to become my friend
My 45-day quest to convince a craigslist scammer to write me a poem-- and how she lost her mind and tried to become my friend
I found it interesting to see the person emerge from inside the scammer, the lies, distortions give way to poetry even if plagiarised. There is a corn field of opportunity out there for anyone with literary aspirations these days all from the comfort of their couch. Todays writers don't need to fight wars and live to tell about it, or relocate to the South Pacific to create a volume of stories set there. They don't even need to hang out at the bar and listen to streams of consciousness pour out of dead beat drunks. Replying to emails from scammers and other strangers hanging around in cyberspace is rich with opportunity as this blog proves. All you need is an the imagination to create something worth reading with all this material.
Mandarin And Boondocks
I think it was in the book Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost where I read about how, the center of gravity of the world of technology has shifted to China. Or it could be that I had read that somewhere and Troost's book reminded me of that line. Whatever the source, I figured it would be hard to argue that contention and as a suitable next step, it would only be prudent for J to learn Mandarin – the sooner she got started the better.
However, in my neck of the woods, no one acts like the axis of their world has titled far east. The edge of the world and the boundaries of our county coincide quite nicely even today. In a sense, I am living in a time wrap so a friendly reminder about the true state of the world is always welcome. Then a few days ago, I read this update on my Linked In homepage.
I am interested to co-develop these Chinese IDN domains into directories with an Indian entrepreneur that would like to market Indian services in China in Chinese.
It is a moment of truth when you read something that resembles what you are familiar with and realize a) Though you have been in the information technology business for quite a while and do what you can to remain "informed", you did not understand what that sentence meant but more importantly b) You have no idea exactly how much you don't know what you don't know. This becomes critical when the difference between knowing and not could determine your prospects in the job market of the future.
However, in my neck of the woods, no one acts like the axis of their world has titled far east. The edge of the world and the boundaries of our county coincide quite nicely even today. In a sense, I am living in a time wrap so a friendly reminder about the true state of the world is always welcome. Then a few days ago, I read this update on my Linked In homepage.
I am interested to co-develop these Chinese IDN domains into directories with an Indian entrepreneur that would like to market Indian services in China in Chinese.
It is a moment of truth when you read something that resembles what you are familiar with and realize a) Though you have been in the information technology business for quite a while and do what you can to remain "informed", you did not understand what that sentence meant but more importantly b) You have no idea exactly how much you don't know what you don't know. This becomes critical when the difference between knowing and not could determine your prospects in the job market of the future.
Players and Liars
Eric Haseltine describes what makes a good liar or a good spy in this article on the science of lie detection :
Who makes a good spy or a good liar?
I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. Being a good actor, being a good poker player. Being a good con man. Con men are people who are sociopathic, who do not feel remorse, and who are very attuned, strangely, to other people and can read them very well. If I know what you really want to hear and what is in your heart of hearts, your fondest desire, because I’m good at reading you and I’m street-smart about assessing you, then I can feed you what you want to hear. A good con man does that. A good magician does that. You also have to have a good memory.
That description fits a lot of players I have encountered in my life. Most of them are more than averagely smart and engaging conversationalists. When pressed for specific information about themselves or asked questions about their past, they will offer a slew of data but even the most diligent dredging of it will not yield any useful answers. However, the sheer volume of material will give you the warm and fuzzy about the man - a lot like a Big Mac or a Big Gulp will offer comfort but no nourishment when you are very hungry.
Who makes a good spy or a good liar?
I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. Being a good actor, being a good poker player. Being a good con man. Con men are people who are sociopathic, who do not feel remorse, and who are very attuned, strangely, to other people and can read them very well. If I know what you really want to hear and what is in your heart of hearts, your fondest desire, because I’m good at reading you and I’m street-smart about assessing you, then I can feed you what you want to hear. A good con man does that. A good magician does that. You also have to have a good memory.
That description fits a lot of players I have encountered in my life. Most of them are more than averagely smart and engaging conversationalists. When pressed for specific information about themselves or asked questions about their past, they will offer a slew of data but even the most diligent dredging of it will not yield any useful answers. However, the sheer volume of material will give you the warm and fuzzy about the man - a lot like a Big Mac or a Big Gulp will offer comfort but no nourishment when you are very hungry.
Digital and Income Divide
Interesting NYT article on why America is becoming less Republican. Author David Frum writes :
As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us.
He talks about how inequality and home is directly proportional to equality between nations - they both rise or fall together.
As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us.
He talks about how inequality and home is directly proportional to equality between nations - they both rise or fall together.
The family revolution coincided with another: a great shift from a national to a planetary division of labor. Inequality within nations is rising in large part because inequality is declining among nations. A generation ago, even a poor American was still better off than most people in China. Today the lifestyles of middle-class Chinese increasingly approximate those of middle-class Americans, while the lifestyles of upper and lower America increasingly diverge. Less-skilled Americans now face hundreds of millions of new wage competitors, while highly skilled Americans can sell their services in a worldwide market.
A much older article corroborates this point of view as far as what is happening in India - those on the right side of the digital divide now have lifestyles comparable to their peers in America but those on the wrong side are seeing their fortunes slider further south. The warnings about the widening income gap and its catastrophic consequences continue to this day.Due Considerations
John Updike is one of my very favorite writers and I am specially indebted to Hugging The Shore for introducing me to some of the best books I've read. With Updike's guidance on traversing a crowded (and to me, mostly unfamiliar) literary landscape, I no longer felt limited by the narrow confines of my small town existence. Each time, I read a book or an author recommended by Updike, the more I came to depend on his judgment.
So, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I picked up Due Considerations. To say the least, I was hoping to be introduced again to a fresh crop of literary talent from around the world, writers and works Updike had not been able to give consideration to before. But more than that I was hoping to hear his own thoughts about anything he thought worthy of consideration.
While his reviews are as detailed, informative and insightful as they have always been, often he comes across as a little too kind to be critical or perhaps he has deliberately chosen to comment on works that he finds easy to lavish praise upon. Whatever, the case, I found myself skimming through the entire section titled "Considering Books" and agreeing with NYT reviewer Christopher Hitchens when he says: Fair-mindedness here threatens to decline into something completely passive, neutral and inert.
I must be one of those readers who loved every line of what Updike had to say about the literary output of others but have really been waiting for him to share more of himself with his readers.
In his essay "On Literary Biographies" Updike writes about the readers of such works :
We read, those of us who do, literary biographies for a variety of reasons, of which the first and perhaps the most note-worthy is the desire to prolong and extend our intimacy with the author - to partake again, from another angle, of the joys we have experienced within the author's oeuvre, in the presence of a voice and mind we have come to love.
That describes precisely why I would have loved to hear more about Updike in his own words about himself. I missed that in Due Considerations - he just has not considered himself nearly enough. I would love a book devoted entirely to Personal Considerations which forms only a small section of this one.
So, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I picked up Due Considerations. To say the least, I was hoping to be introduced again to a fresh crop of literary talent from around the world, writers and works Updike had not been able to give consideration to before. But more than that I was hoping to hear his own thoughts about anything he thought worthy of consideration.
While his reviews are as detailed, informative and insightful as they have always been, often he comes across as a little too kind to be critical or perhaps he has deliberately chosen to comment on works that he finds easy to lavish praise upon. Whatever, the case, I found myself skimming through the entire section titled "Considering Books" and agreeing with NYT reviewer Christopher Hitchens when he says: Fair-mindedness here threatens to decline into something completely passive, neutral and inert.
I must be one of those readers who loved every line of what Updike had to say about the literary output of others but have really been waiting for him to share more of himself with his readers.
In his essay "On Literary Biographies" Updike writes about the readers of such works :
We read, those of us who do, literary biographies for a variety of reasons, of which the first and perhaps the most note-worthy is the desire to prolong and extend our intimacy with the author - to partake again, from another angle, of the joys we have experienced within the author's oeuvre, in the presence of a voice and mind we have come to love.
That describes precisely why I would have loved to hear more about Updike in his own words about himself. I missed that in Due Considerations - he just has not considered himself nearly enough. I would love a book devoted entirely to Personal Considerations which forms only a small section of this one.
Testing Glitches
This Business Week article on the leaking of GMAT questions (a part of a series I have been following for some time) is reflective of the kind of bathwaterism that bedevils any large enterprise public or private. Instead of trying to go after the root cause of the problem, the solution is the punish the effect and everyone who was tainted by it. This is akin to covering chicken-pox with concealer instead of preventing it by inoculation.
The users of the service as several of the commentators point out did not necessarily know that it was illegal and to that extent going after them retro-actively does not really help plug the hole through which the questions are leaking. Would it not make sense to use much more sophisticated technology to select the questions for the test and also deliver a customized and adaptive version to each test taker based on the sum total of all their academic and non-academic credentials. Needless to say, the use of a wide pool of geographically and culturally varied resources to prepare the questions is equally if not more critical.
As long as the rules of engagement are transparent and the system has been independently vetted and verified for accuracy everyone should be comfortable and more importantly advance knowledge or preparation would not confer any significant advantage. In the end, a test for the best institutions of learning should be all about putting learned concepts to the most intelligent and innovative use without having "prepared" in advance. The focus of such testing needs to shift from measuring skill to measuring innate talent.
While any amount of help understanding concepts and theoretical underpinnings of the subjects being tested is perfectly legitimate, the test itself should be designed in such a way that it just cannot be a learned or taught skill. Just doing that will put all coaching, hot-housing and tutoring facilities out of business. The standardized test even with questions randomly culled from a massive database is a set up for failure, a disaster waiting to happen.
This is exactly how India has failed to maintain the strength and consistency of its IIT and IIM brands, and would be where the American system would fail as well once the ratio of the available slots to the number of aspirants to them falls low enough.
Returning to the Business Week story itself, as much as the actions and decisions of GMAC reek of bureaucratic short-sightedness, it may prove to be a strong deterrent against seeking any form of "help" in preparing for the GMAT - at least until someone comes up with a more creative way to game the system. I can't imagine this will be the last time something like Scoretop will make headlines. As long as testing status quo prevails, elite education will produce no more than "excellent sheep" as William Deresiewicz writes.
Wisdom of Mothers
I have found an answer (at best) or an animated discussion (at least) for almost anything related to J's education I've ever had to look for online . The problem at hand is a timed math test that her brand new second grade teacher is giving the kids. It appears that her brain shuts down under the twin pressures of time and competition. J is not a tough kid by any stretch of imagination and this timed test business is really pushing it.
My well-meaning neighbor recommended that I intervene so the teacher does something to ease her troubles but I figured, this might be an opportunity for her to toughen up a little. After all, the real world has plenty of aggressive, pushy people with really big voices and she'll need to survive and make herself heard above the din.
Even as I made that decision, I was troubled by it. What if J needed more help coping with this than I thought she did ? Was I making the right choice by throwing her into the melee and having her learn to swim on her own ? Were there other kids in her shoes ? In short, what was the wisdom of the crowds on this issue - namely, how do you help your child come to grips with the demands of a timed test and what did it mean when they were having trouble . I did not have to look very far to find out. As always, a vibrant support group was only two clicks away and I counted my blessings.
My well-meaning neighbor recommended that I intervene so the teacher does something to ease her troubles but I figured, this might be an opportunity for her to toughen up a little. After all, the real world has plenty of aggressive, pushy people with really big voices and she'll need to survive and make herself heard above the din.
Even as I made that decision, I was troubled by it. What if J needed more help coping with this than I thought she did ? Was I making the right choice by throwing her into the melee and having her learn to swim on her own ? Were there other kids in her shoes ? In short, what was the wisdom of the crowds on this issue - namely, how do you help your child come to grips with the demands of a timed test and what did it mean when they were having trouble . I did not have to look very far to find out. As always, a vibrant support group was only two clicks away and I counted my blessings.
Parents
I have absolutely no appetite for horror flicks and only watched this movie because it was billed as black comedy. Parents is not a movie anyone like me should watch late on Saturday night - it is very black alright but there is nothing remotely comedic about it. The story pivots around the idea that the most horrible things are possible and happen behind the facade of comfortably conventional.
What struck as different about this movie is how the bizarre story unfolds - there is nothing Stephen King or Night Shyamalan about it and yet I was not able to sleep all night. The two other movies I recall having this effect on me were American Psycho and Hannibal but then I do my very best to stay away from the horror genre.
I am not sure what one should expect in true dark comedy but this was clearly not what I had counted on. I would have been able to deal with something like The Virgin Suicides. If visceral reaction is a measure of success for a horror film this one scores very high at least with audiences like me who have a very low threshold to begin with. How it fares with horror movie fans with a stomach for the stomach-churning could be a whole different thing.
What struck as different about this movie is how the bizarre story unfolds - there is nothing Stephen King or Night Shyamalan about it and yet I was not able to sleep all night. The two other movies I recall having this effect on me were American Psycho and Hannibal but then I do my very best to stay away from the horror genre.
I am not sure what one should expect in true dark comedy but this was clearly not what I had counted on. I would have been able to deal with something like The Virgin Suicides. If visceral reaction is a measure of success for a horror film this one scores very high at least with audiences like me who have a very low threshold to begin with. How it fares with horror movie fans with a stomach for the stomach-churning could be a whole different thing.
Google and Brain
Nicholas Carr in his Atlantic Monthly article asks if Google is making us stupid. My instinctive response to that question was yes and I had not yet read Carr's take on the matter. He concludes his case with :
as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
When you combine the fact that we use Google to help us navigate our way through our huge off line memory and indeed don't use our brains as a repository of information and facts as we did in our pre-Google days, net-neutrality becomes that much more important.
Without it, all the talk of a flat, interconnected and convergent world where the geeks from Estonia, Mali, Silicon Valley and Shanghai have a level playing field will not amount to much. The guy with access to the express lane and superior content will be information rich and the rest will turn into the digital have-nots who can no longer count on Google to supplement the function of their brains as they have grown used to doing.
as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
When you combine the fact that we use Google to help us navigate our way through our huge off line memory and indeed don't use our brains as a repository of information and facts as we did in our pre-Google days, net-neutrality becomes that much more important.
Without it, all the talk of a flat, interconnected and convergent world where the geeks from Estonia, Mali, Silicon Valley and Shanghai have a level playing field will not amount to much. The guy with access to the express lane and superior content will be information rich and the rest will turn into the digital have-nots who can no longer count on Google to supplement the function of their brains as they have grown used to doing.
Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda
There is something inherently poignant about leaving a movie half-watched (I was watching it on television when some unexpected guests showed up) ten years ago to see it again now. When the movie in question happens to be Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda and you've had in those ten years, some life changing experiences that question the very nature of love, poignance does not even begin to describe the experience. In the interests of full disclosure, I am an unabashed Shyam Benegal fan and love the poetry of Dharmvir Bharti. With the two coming together in Satvan Ghoda, it would take little else for me to be bowled over.
Without giving the plot away, the story is explores the nature of love and morality through real life stories told by Manek Mulla, the protagonist to a group of his friends. There are tenuous links that join the lives of all the characters who feature in the stories, some obvious others not quite. Each sub-plot can stand on its own strength but bringing them together results is something that is far greater than the sum of the parts.
Each story centers around the complicated trade-offs people make in love and life, as they try to strike that delicate balance between the mundane business of living day to day and living for something greater than themselves. Often they stumble and fall, taking their moral high-ground down with them as they do. When they get back up, they will rearrange the facts to fit the outcome and invent a version of history that shows them in more favorable light than they deserve to be shown in. Rashomon comes to mind in how the story depicts subjectivity of perception on each individual's recollection of the events.
This is a movie that will leave you with many unanswered questions and trigger introspection on who and how you have loved, why you have left or stayed with them. For anyone who is interested in meaningful cinema from India, this movie should be a must watch.
Without giving the plot away, the story is explores the nature of love and morality through real life stories told by Manek Mulla, the protagonist to a group of his friends. There are tenuous links that join the lives of all the characters who feature in the stories, some obvious others not quite. Each sub-plot can stand on its own strength but bringing them together results is something that is far greater than the sum of the parts.
Each story centers around the complicated trade-offs people make in love and life, as they try to strike that delicate balance between the mundane business of living day to day and living for something greater than themselves. Often they stumble and fall, taking their moral high-ground down with them as they do. When they get back up, they will rearrange the facts to fit the outcome and invent a version of history that shows them in more favorable light than they deserve to be shown in. Rashomon comes to mind in how the story depicts subjectivity of perception on each individual's recollection of the events.
This is a movie that will leave you with many unanswered questions and trigger introspection on who and how you have loved, why you have left or stayed with them. For anyone who is interested in meaningful cinema from India, this movie should be a must watch.
Spread The Word
A few days ago, Survivor Corps sent me this mail :
If you haven't heard, Russia has been dropping cluster bombs on innocent civilians in the Georgian republic which has killed and wounded many innocent people. Survivor Corps is one of the lead organizations in the movement to ban cluster bombs and to assist survivors of this terrible weapon. I've put together this social media news release which explains everything.
http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
I would be grateful if you could blog about this very important subject, it would help many people.
I am very glad to help get the word out and hope my voice and that of the many other little people in cyberspace gets heard over the din of corporate 24/7 news networks. An NYT op-ed column gives me hope though. Frank Rich says :
But now that media are being transformed at a speed comparable to the ever-doubling power of microchips, cable’s ascendancy could also be as short-lived as, say, the reign of AOL. Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum, which monitors the intersection of politics and technology, points out that when networks judge their success by who got the biggest share of the television audience, “they are still counting horses while the world has moved on to counting locomotives.” The Web, in its infinite iterations,is eroding all 20th-century media.
If you haven't heard, Russia has been dropping cluster bombs on innocent civilians in the Georgian republic which has killed and wounded many innocent people. Survivor Corps is one of the lead organizations in the movement to ban cluster bombs and to assist survivors of this terrible weapon. I've put together this social media news release which explains everything.
http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
I would be grateful if you could blog about this very important subject, it would help many people.
I am very glad to help get the word out and hope my voice and that of the many other little people in cyberspace gets heard over the din of corporate 24/7 news networks. An NYT op-ed column gives me hope though. Frank Rich says :
But now that media are being transformed at a speed comparable to the ever-doubling power of microchips, cable’s ascendancy could also be as short-lived as, say, the reign of AOL. Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum, which monitors the intersection of politics and technology, points out that when networks judge their success by who got the biggest share of the television audience, “they are still counting horses while the world has moved on to counting locomotives.” The Web, in its infinite iterations,is eroding all 20th-century media.
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