Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Tin Tin Babu

The exploits of the cartoon character, Belgian boy-reporter Tintin, have delighted people the world over for 75 years now.

And Tintin comic books and DVDs in English have been imported and sold in India for many years.

But now for the first time, DVDs and Video CDs (VCDs) of "Adventures of Tintin" have been launched in Hindi too.

The comic character's enduring charm is not the only reason why Tintin has learnt Hindi.

Saibal Chatterjee, a media critic, says the move is driven by pure commercial sense.

"When you do something in English, you're only reaching out to a certain number of people, a certain percentage of the audience," he says.

"That is why most English programmes today are dubbed, even Hollywood films are dubbed into Indian languages.

"When you translate Tintin into local languages, you're only expanding the base of consumers," he says.

<read on>

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Jinnah

"You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the (fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens) of the State."

-- M. A. Jinnah

Silicon Valley Stories

Silicon Valley USA tells the stories of the area in a year when the place went through its own agony, the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Thousands lost their jobs. "But", says Peter Day, "It's amazing how the dot com bust has not shattered the confidence of so many of the people who've been severely dented by it. They're now looking for the next technology revolution..and their own chance to rebuild their fortunes."

And, almost everywhere, an extraordinary confidence...even from the man who's been living rough for five years. He's not just out of work : he's an "advocate for the homeless" who stands for Palo Alto council in the local elections.

<stories>

Corporate Ethics

But mass production is going to become a mug's game in the 21st century, as the rise of India and China reduces much production in the west to zero profitability.

It is time for a new sort of capitalism; Western companies will have to find ways of reinventing themselves as they have never had to before.

They will have to take their customers more seriously than they have ever dreamed possible.

And their customers are going to become much more demanding, and want much more information.

<read on>

~ Peter Day

Stories of Smokers by Smokers



<exhale>

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Who's in charge of this mess anyways?



A great collection of articles and audio files over at the beeb. The range from something as odd as the relationship between a dominatrix and her charge to a critique on the power and influence the united nations has on the world.

<please be checking>

The Girl in the Cafe


Set a tingle in your brain a little. Go watch The Girl in the Cafe.

Can Consoles Plug the Digital Divide?

Why don't Microsoft, Sony and the other console manufacturers make it easy to turn their games systems into useful general purpose computers and announce that they are happy to have the hardware modified and new software installed, provided the resulting systems are used outside the developed world?

A few million extra computers could make a real difference in schools and colleges in Africa or elsewhere, and I would like to think that Max's old Xbox was helping someone else's child get online and change their life.

Perhaps Microsoft can celebrate its 30th year in business by opening up its hardware to the developing world and encouraging all of us who go out and buy its new games system to bring our old ones in for legal modification.

<read the beeb>

~ Bill Thompson, BBC

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Manhole covers in Japan


Apparently, manhole covers in japan are something of an art form. Enjoi!

<japan>
<the world>
<exploding types>

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

How can we miss you if you won't go away? ~ wanderlust

Palin's Travels



I enter a tiny, hexagonal room at the base of one of the remaining stone towers of the Kabuli Gate. Most of the space is taken up by the impressive bulk of Abdul Wahid, proprietor of the Khyber Dentist Clinic.

Stone walls keep the clinic pleasantly cool, but it's impossible to keep out the roar of Peshawar's mighty traffic. An unbroken succession of private buses, turning out of the junction with Hospital Street, hoot furiously at each other while their conductors shout for business, yelling their destinations, selling tickets on the move and, when full, slapping the sides of their vehicles with cacophonous panache.

I've spent a lifetime in dental treatment of one kind or another, so I'm quite interested to see how Mr Wahid works. I squeeze into his chair, taking care not to dislodge the ominously placed green plastic bucket beside it. As I settle back I find myself staring at a wall decorated with a pair of dentures and a copy of the Koran. <more>


Micheal Palin's (who was in Monty Python dochaknow) is simply brilliant in this travel show. I can not imagine chosing anyone better to travel around the world. It has a this odd mixture of great locations and physical humour but more than anything else its the little moments that really dig in deep inside you. Like when he's crossing the Sahara its not the desert and the camels you remember but an odd conversation he has with one of the bedouins where niether can understand what the other is saying. The bediuon seemingly is teaching Micheal to say something bad in his language (which is often the case in learning any new language) and it ends up being this real bonding experience between the two.

<official site>

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Nationless Manifesto

Nationless.org : Manifesto

Nationless is a state of mind caused by the inability of certain people to belong to any one particular culture, race or community. Once cracked opened in such a way it is often impossible to cram the consciousness back into ones cranium and the subject is doomed to roam the world endlessly thereafter.

Sometimes there are certain people that manage, on purpose or by accident, manage to escape belonging to any one particular culture, community or clan. They may be eternal exiles or childhood expatriates. They may have been raised in international schools or made a habit of literary escapism. What ever the cause these people manage to transcend communities and thereby they have a special role and responsibility in this world. They act as bridges connecting people of difference. They translate culture, which is far more difficult a job than just translating language. Often they act as diplomats and critics. Sometimes both at once. They are early adopters and find it easy to get adopted. They tend to move a lot but bring '‘home’' with them wherever they live. This is a story of some such people. Their lives, worlds and experiences.

Natinless.org is a place to explore these ideas and bring to attention other explorations. But more important than that. It is a place of stories.

August 2003


'me in kuwait'

I am an Indian...or so my passport says. I was born in a large Indian
city. My mother who was married less than a year then wanted to raise me
there for sentimental reasons, but my father landed a job in Kuwait,
which as far as my mother was concerned, was many planets away.

I do not remember much of my first few years in Kuwait- only flashes
of color, and faces of random people that pulled my cheeks. But one
thing I do remember was that we were taught to fear Arab children. As
kids, all of us were unruly, always had hair that was combed once in
the morning and left to take many forms of untidy over the day, almost
always had a piece of candy we bought from the bakala (the grocery
store), and sticky faces from the dry heat that Kuwaiti evenings
offered. The Arab children looked just as unruly and brown as us with
the only difference being their footballs instead of our cricket bats.
But our parents viewed their unruliness as different from ours. As my
dad once put it, "They are MORE unruly!"

When parents are forced to pry their children from their natural
habitats into large foreign lands with strange people, they feel
forced to severely preserve their own culture in their children. As a
result, I was put in The Kuwait Indian School, had only Indian friends
(well, one Pakistani friend in my building - but she stole my Barbie's
shimmer evening gown and gave her a bikini instead. Her brother kept
flipping his eyelids inside out just to see me run terrified.), went
only to Indian cultural events, ate only Indian food, and was taught
to sing only Indian devotional songs. But what my parents did not
realize was that there existed a whole different culture, language,
and way of life on their daughter's way back home. Everyday she was
exposed to two recitals from the Quran from 6 different mosques
-played on loudspeakers, she was exposed to broken conversation with
the Arabic Bakala owner who had all the candy, and she was exposed to
women in tight black scarves or full head dresses. Most of all, she
was exposed to a plethora of questions that began with 'why?' .

We were growing and so was media. By the time we moved to Abudhabi,
the next Arabic city my father was transferred to, everyone had cable
television. Star TV revolutionized pre-teen life by replacing our few
evening cartoons with American shows featuring extremely pretty women
and temptingly delicious men. So now I was an Indian adapting to a new
Arabic country while desperately trying to emulate an American way of
life . My parents still insisted on regular cultural training- like I
was forced to wear a bindi ( a dot on the forehead) and my elaborate
gold earrings wherever I went. This seriously undermined my desire to
be a bindi-free American woman, and I consoled myself by watching the
Little Mermaid over and over again.

Cultural divides were so deep that when we passed a Pakistani or an
Arabic school bus on our way back home, a kid in their bus would spit
on our window, and a kid in ours would spit at their window. I don't
think any of us understood why. But my curiosity was slowly
overwhelming my desire to keep my head straight and ignore the white
gob of spit oozing outside my window. I remember examining the ooze
once. Maybe we didn't like them because they ate something gross.

My parents decided that it was time for their eldest daughter to be
shipped back to her homeland to finish her education. So I was flown
to India. The more time I spent there, the more I missed my weird Arab
neighbors. Atleast there I knew who to avoid. Here, everybody looked
the same, and my dad was wrong. I saw new levels of unruliness that he
obviously missed while growing up. I did not feel like an Indian. I
had been exposed to a very different culture despite my parents' many
efforts to protect me from it, and this was proving to be such a
lonely experience. Nobody understood my jokes, no one had watched
Beverly Hills 90210, everyone was jealous of my creamy kraft-cheese
and bread lunch, and they all thought I was rich and spoilt just
because I came from 'foreign'.
Eventually I learnt to leave my Kraft cheese at home, stop talking
about Luke Perry, and dress up to look poorer. I made a lot of friends
but was more confused than ever.

Two years ago I moved to the United States. I met Pakistanis, Arabs, and
Americans. And no one spat at each other. This was great! A lot of
freedom and a wide palette of friends made me slowly discover that I
belonged to an entirely different culture. I understood myself a
little better now. I wasn't very Indian, I wasn't very Arabic, and was
too much of both to be very American. I like boys, but do not
understand casual dating. I pray my prayers, but I do them in a
church. I grew up a vegetarian Hindu but find myself saying
"Medium-well" at a steak house. I date a Pakistani.

I might be confused, but am learning to accept that too. And I gave up
the bindi somewhere along the way, but still wear the earrings.

~ Aruna

Copper


Check out the oh-so-excellent Copper by the oh-so-talented Kazu Kibuishi.
<more Copper comics>
<bolt city>

George Ka Pakistan

I try my best to not make this site very Pakistani or South Asian but I really had to post this. This is one of my favorite shows and it came across as a pleasent suprise when I read this yesterday. I sincerly suggest trying to get a copy of the show on a bittorrent near you.

The premise was simple: could a Gora (white man) become a Pakistani? Over 13 weeks, Fulton, a 27-year-old former public schoolboy, travelled the country to find out. He sampled Pakistan's many delights - moseying through the tribal areas, dancing at slick Karachi parties, speaking bad Urdu and arguing with his electricity company. It turns out that warm hospitality and hot curry were not the only attractions for Fulton: he has fallen in love with a Pakistani woman, also a TV producer, and they plan to get married next November.

<read full article>
<GKP website>

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Number27 Concept Maps


Some amazing information architecture by Jonathan J. Harris (aka number27) of the tenbyten fame. I love how the complexity of the design draws me in (makes me wonder though, what would Tufte say?). These were made for Princeton universities International Networks Archive.

<yummylink>
<interactive maps also very yummy>

Bigga Boda



In 1994 a Stanford engineering student named Ross Evans experimented with new designs for load-carrying bicycles. The existing designs either had three wheels, put the weight up front, or towed it behind in trailers. In short, they carried weight but no longer rode like bikes. Through a grant from the Stanford Center for Latin American Studies, and the H. Michael Stevens Public Service Fellowship from Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service, Evans traveled to Nicaragua and started a bike fabrication shop teaching Nicaraguan war veterans to repair and build cargo bikes. While working at the shop in Nicaragua Evans invented a two-wheeled bicycle conversion that could carry hundreds of pounds in its rear racks and still ride like a bike. Better yet, this invention could be produced at low cost and attach to any existing mountain bike, extending its wheelbase and turning it into a load-carrying bicycle.

In 1998, a Stanford friend named Kipchoge Spencer convinced Evans that in order to fund world-class research and development for his invention, he needed to start a company. Together, Evans and Spencer founded Xtracycle LLC. Since then the invention has shed pounds and taken on a sleek curvy look, while its strength and utility have increased.Nearly a thousand people from around the world have purchased Xtracycles, and reviews are positive! (For more information about Xtracycle LLC, visit www.xtracycle.com .)

One early Xtracycle 'product tester' was Adam French, a close friend of the founders and a fellow outdoors expert with experience starting a non-profit in Africa. He helped realize the dream of bringing freight cycling technology to those who could least afford it by starting a new nonprofit while Evans and Spencer continue to lead Xtracycle LLC. The Foundation allows Xtracycle's superb technology and design innovations to achieve their potential in places American bicycle companies typically ignore.


<project page>
<XAccess homepage>

Seeing things differently

Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers.

The researchers, led by Hannah-Faye Chua and Richard Nisbett, tracked the eye movements of the students -- 25 European Americans and 27 native Chinese -- to determine where they were looking in a picture and how long they focused on a particular area.

"They literally are seeing the world differently," said Nisbett, who believes the differences are cultural.

"Asians live in a more socially complicated world than we do," he said in a telephone interview. "They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop, they can't afford it."

The findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, Nisbett said, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others.

<read on...>

Worldprocessor



A project started in 1988 the project now hold more than 300 globes. That's 300 different views. It's goal is to visually describe our planet in as my ways was possible. The ongoing project has a number of very interesting visualizartions that show the fragility, greed, diversity, geology of our lonley planet. Images are printed on globes to create an installation pieces that represent a direct and powerful statement as any.

<project homepage>
<all the 300 globes>

Doctrine of World Peace

Growing up nationless meant that I would walk around the world searching for something that was not allowed or condoned as appropriate by others. I wanted to be a citizen of the world, holding a passport that simply stated ‘stan’ (eg. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hindustan) which in some parts of the world means ‘a place’. In other parts, it refers to the name Stanley. I wanted to be from somewhere, but although for travel purposes I held an Indian passport, I never quite felt I was just from there. Third eye blind profoundly stated that ‘I’d walk with my people if I could find them’. I’ve walked (actually flown) about 30,000 miles in my life to find my people, only finding that my person is figurative for anyone who I can talk to. I’ve always believed that everyone has a story to tell, has laughed at a funny sounding fart, dreamt of being somewhere else or held the people dearest to them closer than their comfort level allowed. We are all the same, only our approach to the world has been skewed by the elementary school we went too. As a kid, too young to comprehend who I was and who my neighbors were, I drew tanks invading a city in Pakistan, with Mig-29’s roaring above armed with Indian insignia and Russian made missiles. I feel terrible now for the hate I felt, without even knowing what hate can do. I once bored a Pakistani cabbie in New York on the similarities between our countries, made the man and myself almost teary eyed. The extreme affection was short-lived as I still had to pay my full fare plus tip. But it made me realize who I was. A worried man whose hatred towards a certain people had developed into a hatred, towards hate itself. And simply because what I didn’t understand frustrated me. Why, was there that disconnect and why are neighbors often the ones that dislike each other? We are all impatient in finding a connection between ourselves and others. I have a great Japanese friend from high school in Hong Kong, and even though our language barrier prevented extended conversations on Nietzsche, we never grew tired of sitting on top of our residential blocks, staring at the sun set over starfish bay, west of Ma On Shan mountain. Our perception and understanding of natural phenomena allowed us to go days without speaking, and although we did speak, the camaraderie was stemmed from an appreciation of the absolute. We are all the same. We feel emotion in the same manner, but express it differently. We understand unconditional love, but find it hard to say those three words every girlfriend of mine has wished I said more often. We know of social well being, natured into us via our affinity to packs of wolves (who I was raised by in Borneo). We can very easily find a pack of humans who can point at differences between various cultures, but have never attempted at finding the similarities. To end my doctrine on world peace and cultural understanding, I say this to you’ “Make a funny sounding fart in front of a foreigner”, and –insert laugh here-.


by Rathi

Friday, September 02, 2005

coolio

coolio means ass in Italian.

I wonder what else we are inadvertently saying...

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Ratty Photos



by Rathi

Talk to Strangers

My Globalized lifestyle:

A nationless kid in the making

I don’t remember much about the first time I traveled alone, but I do remember it was a big deal. I had been to Hong Kong before with my parents to visit my grandparents, but I was even younger when that happened, so my memory of it, even more fabricated. I was an unescorted child, almost 3 years old, dressed sharply in my mismatched suit jacket and pant. The jacket was a plaid patterned red, white, beige and orange carnival. The pant was navy blue, and passed on to me after my elder brother was done with it. The clothes were ‘foreign’ made, so I looked doubly impressive. I remember it well, for I forgot it on the plane on the return leg of my world exploration. The world at the moment, ended for me in Hong Kong. For that was my grasp of how large the world truly was. So decked out in my sporting casual attire, some generic bag made in India in one hand, and a Chinese Lufthansa airhostess with a kind smile on the other, I waved goodbye to my worried mother, and my father, who at my age always seemed too busy to wave goodbyes. I was scared, would be an understatement. I had never flown alone before, short of my dad flinging me around a room as I impersonated the man from Krypton. When I was four, and braver, I broke my arm trying to jump of a table with my towel cape and tightie whities.

I don’t recall much of the airport, for at three, and heavily vertically challenged, you are nothing more than an expert on people’s knees. I enjoyed my Chinese escorts knees covered slightly by her skirt, but didn’t understand why. At thirteen, I did. Immigration, Check-in and all the other stops are a blur. Soon enough I was on the plane. I got a close look at it before we boarded, and it looked spectacular and large. The plane was probably the French Airbus A300 or similar, going by the kinds of planes Lufthansa used during the 1980’s. My escort explained how i ought to behave during the flight and then sat me on an aisle seat next to a Japanese man, who quickly befriended me by offering a piece of chocolate. Rule No. 1 for my parents was “don’t talk to strangers”. Rule No 1.1: “never eat anything a stranger offers you”. I guess because my friend offered me chocolate first and then spoke to me sort of made me comfortable in breaking parental authority. I had had rather an unmemorable time during take-off last year, and this year was no different. I spent the next 10 min. underneath my seat mingling with left over cracker snacks and other knick-knacks. My Japanese friend, who by now I knew as Mr. Miyagi, comforted me by speaking to me in a version of English I really didn’t understand. My English vernacular by itself was limited to mono-syllabic ‘yes’s’ and ‘uh-huh’s’, with a few multi-syllabic words, which were often just animal names such as hippopotamus or crocodile, so I wasn’t that surprised that I didn’t pick up on the Nippon-English accent. Yet, trying to figure out what he was saying allowed me to forget that we were taking off, and as soon as the plane leveled out, I was thirsty. I demanded the American icon of beverages, a Coca-Cola, and that too in a can. India at that time didn’t allow Coke in India, due to their secret recipe and ingredients. I had four of the little buggers, without ice, before I needed to go use the restroom. Indians aren’t big on the ice with cola thing. Probably because that way we can get more coke. Or maybe we don’t really trust outside water. In any case, I walked down the aisle to the restrooms, and upon entering it needed some expertise in figuring out cabin style bathroom. I approached a male steward for apparent reasons, and sought his aid in doing ‘su-su’, the polite way in which Indian kids refer to tinkling.

A quick nap, a crappy Bollywood movie set in Kashmir, and I was approaching Kai-Tak airport, the worlds toughest airport to land on. Trying to pear over Mr. Miyagi, eventually paid off, as he suggested switching seats with me. I got a glimpse of one of the most beautiful skylines, including the majestic Hopewell Center, the tallest building in Hong Kong at the time. After exiting the plane last, I went through another barrage of knee meeting check-points to finally be greeted by my grandparents, who welcomed me with a hug, and more importantly, Bumble Bee from the Transformers who quickly became my favorite toy for about two weeks.

The trip was fun. I realize now how I would grow to be a global kid, separated only by borders drawn on maps, but not culturally. I grew nationless traveling around the globe and trying to experience as much as I could. For me, being somewhere else was more important than being somewhere. I eventually learnt how to go do ‘su-su’ on airplanes by myself, but never really followed rule no.1; I always talk to strangers.

by Rathi

Rag Bag


fashion icons made from plastic bags picked up from slums in New Delhi. Apparently there are these people called ragpickers that collect plastic bags which are then converted into fashional accessories.

<raglink>

Rebranding the Homeless


Urban Nomad Shelter
First off, note that Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley didn't call their submission a homeless shelter. In name and form, the vivid inflatable contradicts a stereotype of cardboard-box vagrancy. The two partners of the Los Angeles�based Electroland conceived the Urban Nomad Shelter as both a "humanitarian act and as a social provocation." They created a cushion from the ground that also serves as a census taker for an itinerant population that is hard to count and even harder to countenance.

If Electroland's activist agenda captured the jurors' attention, it was their strategy that kept it. McNall, an architect, and Seeley, an artist/designer, have taken one of the most potent forces of the private-sector economy—brand identity—and redeployed it on the street. The Urban Nomad Shelter uses a self-conscious "design culture" aesthetic (think Target or Ikea) to re-brand the homeless and re-map urban real estate. The neon-colored cocoons work like soft pushpins on a city plan, making it impossible not to see the homeless and not to see them as human. As Kennedy put it, "The design makes a complex issue visible with the added virtue of operating on multiple platforms"


Baraka


Baraka is cinematic poetry. It is a compliation of video montages that show a story of all kinds of different cultures in our world today. The are no central characters, no narration, nothing other than just pure film unquiely crafted letting the silent wonder of humanity take center stage. Created by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson in 1992 Baraka is untouched by digital tomfoolery (there are some shots where you are just amazed enough at the earth to ask).

I first came across this video in my antropology class at SCAD. I remember sitting there as it started and I kept waiting for something to happen, a narrater to start talking, some plot element to talk place. The way it is edited you keep feeling that some great drama is taking place. By the end of it though, I didn't want it to stop. You want to get a huge plasma screen and hang it on your wall and just play it back to back like a painting. (crazy if-i-were-rich idea #745)

<link to spirit of baraka>
"When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is trying to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
~ J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

.