MetaFilter posts tagged with india

jittery UK government reveals itself before potential claims of former v

infini — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:42:33 -0800

Mau Mau to Midnapore: Confronting the brutality of empire There are certainly some Britons, including academics, journalists and human rights lawyers, who are aware of the realities of colonialism. However, in the society as a whole and in the media in the UK there are still far too many who seem strangely reluctant, even after so many decades after the end of the British empire, to come to terms with the true nature of colonialism or learn from the perspective of former subjects who had rebelled against it.

A Compassionate "Human Computer", RIP

bluefly — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:49:14 -0800

Shakuntala Devi, the Indian "human computer," passed away on Sunday. The NY Times first did a profile on her when she visited the US in 1976, during which she computed the cube root of a 9 digit integer in her head, but could not remember that she had been to the US once before -- over 20 years prior. Bob Bemer (inventor of the Escape key previously) remembers meeting her in 1953 on the TV show You Asked For It (which had previously featured a race between an abacus and a calculator). Psychologist Arthur Jensen (who did controversial research on race and IQ) wrote a paper on Shakuntala's exceptional ability in 1990. Shakuntala made her living as an astrologer and authored numerous books mostly on mathematical puzzles and tricks, but also The World of Homosexuals (1977), one of the earliest ethnographic studies of gay people in India. Specifically about gays in her hometown of Bangalore, Shakuntala called for "not only the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India, but also its 'full and complete acceptance' by the heterosexual population so that the Indian homosexual may lead a dignified and secure life."

Material Poverty & Privilege in India

Gyan — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:02:23 -0800

What would a poverty map of India look like?

Sounds with an "eternal essence"

Miko — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:13:26 -0800

Sometimes called the "Alan Lomaxes of India," the founders of Amarrass Records are on a mission to record and revitalize interest in traditional music from India, Turkey, and beyond. Over 100 videos on their YouTube channel chronicle their field recordings and festivals featuring artists like Lakha Khan, the Barmer Boys, Bombino, and many others. Twitter, Facebook.

How a Single Spy Turned Pakistan Against the United States

beisny — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:07:23 -0800

More than two years later, the Raymond Davis episode has been largely forgotten in the United States. It was immediately overshadowed by the dramatic raid months later that killed Osama bin Laden — consigned to a footnote in the doleful narrative of America’s relationship with Pakistan. But dozens of interviews conducted over several months, with government officials and intelligence officers in Pakistan and in the United States, tell a different story: that the real unraveling of the relationship was set off by the flurry of bullets Davis unleashed on the afternoon of Jan. 27, 2011, and exacerbated by a series of misguided decisions in the days and weeks that followed. In Pakistan, it is the Davis affair, more than the Bin Laden raid, that is still discussed in the country’s crowded bazaars and corridors of power. - The Spy Who Lost Pakistan (SL NYTIMES Magazine)

The Story of the Turban

salishsea — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:16:46 -0800

The Story of the Turban (slyt) is a 38 minute documentary on the history of the Sikh community in 20th century Britain as embodied by the struggle to be allowed to wear the turban in all walks of life.

Not So Evergreen

vidur — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:26:21 -0800

"India's supreme court has ruled against Swiss drug giant Novartis in a landmark case that activists say will protect access to cheap generic drugs in developing nations." "Glivec sells in developed nations for more than $3,000 for a month's worth of treatment, but a generic version is sold in India for less than $200." "The Indian Patent Office in 2006 denied a patent to Novartis, a decision upheld by the Indian Intellectual Property Appellate Board. The board cited a provision of Indian law that aims to prevent “evergreening,” in which companies make an incremental change to a drug’s chemical makeup, without any real medical benefit, to extend its patent life and prevent the introduction of low-cost generic copies." Novartis says it will stop investing in R&D in India.

We're Going To Have To Find Out How To Deal With Lots Of Idle Hands

The Whelk — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:53:03 -0800

The Forces Of The Next 30 Years - SF author and Mefi's Own Charles Stross talks to students at Olin College about sci-fi, fiction, speculation, the limits of computation, thermodynamics, Moore's Law, the history of travel, employment, automation, free trade, demographics, the developing world, privacy, and climate change in trying to answer the question What Does The World Of 2043 Look Like? (Youtube 56:43)

"Use the method of the grandmother"

jeffburdges — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:14:13 -0800

Sugata Mitra's 2013 TED Prize talk argues that learning should be viewed as self-organizing and that our educational system is a relic of the victorians. His first TED talk has slightly more detail, while his blog has considerably more.

You can't get there from here

overleaf — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:31:22 -0800

It's nearly impossible to make consumer navigation technology work well in India. Western-style routing based on directions ("Turn left onto Woodrow Street") is impossible when streets often don't have names, not to mention the problems of using the local language. The solution? Landmark based navigation.

Men in Saris: Mumbai's new lavani dancers

infini — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 06:50:31 -0800

Men in Saris: Mumbai's new lavani dancers Lavani is a folk dance, traditionally performed by women for men. The popularity of Bin Baykancha Tamasha (or Performance Without Women) and other female-impersonation groups in Mumbai suggests that the city may slowly be getting comfortable with flamboyant expressions of male sexuality.

Maha Kumbh Yatra

infini — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 05:40:28 -0800

Bangalore based blogger ecophilo shares his experiences of attending this year's vast gathering of pilgrims at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad this year. Previous thread on the Kumbh Mela, what it is and why the Maha Kumbh only takes place every 144 years. Here's a snippet: It all began with Twitter. There were a few on my timeline who were tweeting about the Maha Kumbh Mela, 2013 and a thought took root in my mind. Can I make it to the Kumbh Mela this year? After all, it was tempting to be part of the worlds oldest and largest human gathering - and it seemed within reach too. And The Kumbh Mela was not a place that had ever figured in my list of 'things to experience'.

Ayurveda in the Modern age

dhruva — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:03:58 -0800

Ayurveda: Hoax or Science? "'Western science identifies these systems as folklore. They don’t see it as an organised system of knowledge—this is an alien epistemology to them because their medical traditions only go as far back as the medieval times and renaissance.' There is also the very real problem of complexity in natural-product research. It is harder to develop a drug from Ayurveda than it is to build a synthetic molecule, because of the large number of compounds in each Ayurvedic herb. All these factors are responsible for the state of Ayurvedic medicine today."

"We're back! We're hungry!"

bardic — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:00:20 -0800

Hungry? Meet Rocky and Mayur -- two likeable blokes who happen to host an Indian food/road show called "Highway On My Plate." Since 2005 they've been traveling around the country sampling the culinary delights of the subcontinent, and lately they've been visiting school and college cafeterias. Youtubery ahead! Some personal favorites: Street food in Mumbai. How the adorable kids at Assam Valley School dine. Fresh seafood at the beaches in Goa. A visit to a Muslim festival in Lucknow. Munching in Mangalore. A trip to Kolkata. French food in Pondicherry.

Fourth Wave?

eviemath — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:35:15 -0800

'I'm sick of being ashamed." Three days ago, an anti-harassment activist said those words to me in a flat above Cairo's Tahrir square, as she pulled on her makeshift uniform ready to protect women on the protest lines from being raped in the street. Only days before, I'd heard exactly the same words from pro-choice organisers in Dublin, where I travelled to report on the feminist fight to legalise abortion in Ireland. I had thought that I was covering two separate stories – so why were two women from different countries and backgrounds repeating the same mantra against fear, and against shame?

The mood of hope that so recently swept Europe, America, the Middle East and cyberspace is collapsing into confusion and social tension, and social tension is being channelled, in part, into suspicion of minorities, immigrants, people of colour, and women and girls. Sexism often functions as a pressure-release valve in times of social unrest – and when it does, it takes different forms, depending on local values. Right now, in Egypt, it's groping, heckling and mob attacks; in Ireland, it's rape apologism and a backlash against abortion and sexual equality; on the internet, it's vicious slut-shaming and "revenge porn". But this time, women are refusing to take it any more.

On a path to liberation....

zarq — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:01:16 -0800

Over a thousand monks and laymen are revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the incarnations of past teachers who convey enlightenment to their followers from one lifetime to the next. Some of the most respected are known by the honorific "rinpoche." For eight centuries, rinpoches were traditionally identified by other monks and then locked inside monasteries ringed by mountains, far from worldly distractions. Their reincarnation lineages were easily tracked across successive lives. Then the Chinese Red Army invaded Tibet in 1950 and drove the religion's adherents into exile. Now, the younger rinpoches of the Tibetan diaspora are being exposed to all of the twenty-first century’s dazzling temptations. So, even as Tibetan Buddhism is gaining more followers around the world, an increasing number of rinpoches are abandoning their monastic vows. Reincarnation in Exile. Mentioned in the article: Osel Hita Torres, also known as Tenzin Ösel Rinpoche. He was profiled by the BBC with a 30-minute radio documentary this past September. Related article.

Freedom From Famine - The Norman Borlaug Story

Blasdelb — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:58:24 -0800

A documentary film about Norman Borlaug, the Iowa farm boy who saved over a billion people from starvation. (1:06:47) Americans have little knowledge of one of their greatest sons. Why do schoolchildren in China, India, Mexico, and Pakistan know the name and work of Nobel Peace Prize winner [His speech] Norman Borlaug while so few of his countrymen have never heard of him? How did a dirt-poor farm boy from rural Iowa grow up to save a billion people worldwide from starvation and malnutrition and become the father of the Green Revolution? What were the inherited traits and environmental factors that shaped his astonishing journey and led to successes that surprised even him? What can we learn from his life and views that might help the human race survive the next critical century? Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity The downright adorable Norman Borlaug Rap (His Obit post previously after his death in 2009 at age 95)

Indian cow breeds face extinction

dhruva — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 11:50:58 -0800

The Desi Cow – Almost Extinct "The idea of the cow, of course, is also emotively charged because of its mythical place in Hindu iconography, religion and culture: it is quite literally worshipped as goddess Kamdhenu: the cow of plenty... Again, this veneration is founded in hard pragmatics. Traditionally, India has been home to some of the most varied stock of cows in the world: the red-skinned Sahiwal that milks through droughts, the mighty Amrit Mahal with swords for horns or the tiny Vechur that stands no taller than a dog."

East India Company?

Guernsey Halleck — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 01:56:02 -0800

A recent genetic study suggests that around 2200 BC explorers from India arrived and settled on the continent of Australia. "Unlike their European successors, these earlier settlers were assimilated by the locals. And they brought with them both technological improvements and one of Australia’s most iconic animals." [SLEconomist]

Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354

infini — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 03:27:42 -0800

"To the world of today the men of medieval Christendom already seem remote and unfamiliar. Their names and deeds are recorded in our history-books, their monuments still adorn our cities, but our kinship with them is a thing unreal, which costs an effort of imagination. How much more must this apply to the great Islamic civilization, that stood over against medieval Europe, menacing its existence and yet linked to it by a hundred ties that even war and fear could not sever. Its monuments too abide, for those who may have the fortunate to visit them, but its men and manners are to most of us utterly unknown, or dimly conceived in the romantic image of the Arabian Nights. Even for the specialist it is difficult to reconstruct their lives and see them as they were. Histories and biographies there are in quantity, but the historians for all their picturesque details, seldom show the ability to select the essential and to give their figures that touch of the intimate which makes them live again for the reader. It is in this faculty that Ibn Battuta excels." Thus begins the book, "Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354" published by Routledge and Kegan Paul. Step into the world of "the first tourist" who made his mark as the world's greatest traveler before the age of steam. Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, was a Moroccan Muslim scholar and traveler. He is known for his traveling and going on excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of almost thirty years. This covered nearly the whole of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors. After his travel he returned to Morocco and gave his account of the experience to Ibn Juzay. Via A map of his decades of wandering. Inspiring an animated series, computer game, books and documentaries* galore including an IMAX , he lived through 3 epidemics of plague, in his search for adventure. Trained judge (qadi), scholar, and observer, he's been called a true Renaissance man, surpassing his contemporary, that other, more famous traveler Marco Polo. Battuta crossed over 40 modern countries and covered over 70,000 miles. He became one of the greatest travelers the world has ever seen. He left behind a travelogue of his life's journeys filled with details on the places, people and politics of medieval Eurasia and North Africa. His adventures reveal, as Dunn writes, "the formation of dense networks** of communication and exchange." These networks "linked in one way or another nearly everyone in the hemisphere with nearly everyone else. "From Ibn Battuta," Dunn continues, "we discover webs of interconnection that stretched from Spain to China, and from Kazakhstan to Tanzania." Even in the 14th century, an event in one part of Eurasia or Africa might affect places thousands of miles away. Via *BBC documentary in three parts of which this link is to the first part. Noted here is that it doesn't cover Battuta's travels in Sub Saharan Africa, considered the best available written record of life in Africa before the Europeans arrived. **For more on the inexhaustible wealth of information from and about Ibn Battuta

Nicholson Reads Kipling

Charlemagne In Sweatpants — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:47:15 -0800

Jack Nicholson reads Kipling's Just So Stories with music by Bobby McFerrin Part 2

Indian Movie Posters

reenum — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:25:26 -0800

India's hand drawn movie posters are artistic, hilarious, and full of pastel colors.

Kalyug

infini — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 05:30:46 -0800

"The brutal* gang rape of a student in Delhi on December 15 has ignited anger across the country. Youth and students from various cities raised their voices demanding a safer society for women and an end to violence in every form*. From the capital* city of Delhi to Hyderabad and Guwahati, protesters turned up in large numbers to register their protest." (text via The Hindu's slideshow) Women protesters were also sexually harassed during these protests. *may contain triggers

Ravi Shankar has died.

Rustic Etruscan — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:07:55 -0800

Ravi Shankar, sitar virtuoso, has died at 92.

Honey, I Shrunk the Tariff

vidur — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:55:00 -0800

"Honey laundering is a complex exercise that involves several players in the honey chain from apiary to wholesaler to retailer. In the case against ALW, evidence was presented to show the use of fake country-of-origin documents for shipments, replacement of labels on Chinese containers with fraudulent ones, switching of honey containers in a third country, and even the blending of Chinese honey with glucose syrup or honey from another country."