Juan Cole today has a post that confirms some things I was wondering while watching coverage of the UK terrorist incidents on televisions at Reagan airport in DC. In that post, Juan links to terrorism consultant Larry Johnson, who has some great lines:
“For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive. If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed. Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second. Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incendiary. If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED. Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapenal.”
“You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade. The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.”
“Judging from the overreaction to this non-incident I think we can safely conclude that Osama Bin Laden will remain holed up in Pakistan and let the fear mongers at CNN, MSNBC, and FOX do the dirty business of scaring the shit out of people.”
This guy reminds me of somebody I sat next to on a flight recently.
I don’t watch television, so I didn’t know about this “Morning Joe” show, but it’s nice to see Mika Brezinski behaving like an actual journalist and refusing to cover Paris Hilton’s release from jail …
If this is the beginning of a trend toward covering what’s really going on in the world, I might start watching news shows again. Although apparently CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux didn’t get the memo.
Call me shallow, but I think you can tell the difference just by looking. Which one of these women would write a line like “He was the first of many children who Jenna [Bush] befriended in her new role as public ambassador, a role she seemed to fit into with ease and sincerity?”
Actually, I prefer Sarah’s coverage of the Paris Hilton story.
A regular Doug’s World feature whenever I travel to India on business is a compilation of TOI quotes. I enjoy the style, the jargon, even the punctuation.
My first thought when flipping through today’s Times of india was “what’s a cut-off?” On the front page, there’s an ad that says “Don’t let cut-offs decide your future. Join GNIIT. Change the way the world sees you.” It seems to be some type of college entrance test, like the SAT. On page 2 there are articles entitled “CUt anxiety from cut-off lists on our new website,” “Science cut-offs kept low to deal with dropouts,” and “1st Cut-Off: Science Stoops to Conquer.” An ad on page 3 features a smiling young woman and says “Cut off worries, your anxiety is understandable. I decided on AIT over a prestigious college of Delhi University. AIT helped me carve a niche on the global platform.”
Here are a few other typical articles from the first few pages of the June 26, 2007 issue of the Times of India …
2 dead, 12 hurt as taxi hits truck head-on
Two persons were killed and 12 persons were injured in a head-on collision between a Radio Taxi and a Tata 407 at Bhatti Mines in south Delhi on Monday. The driver of Tata 407 was also injued in the mishap, while, the driver of Radio Taxi managed to escape. Tata 407 was packed to capacity with more than 20 person on board … A case of death due to rash and negligent driving has been registered against the driver of both the vehicles.
Poisonous bite claims wife, man kills self
It was a tragic end for a newlywed couple when the grieving husband jumped to death after his wife was declared dead on being bitten by a poisonous animal … Seema (24) was brought to the hospital about 3:30 pm after she was reportedly bitten by some poisonous creature. According to director of Kalyani Hospital Dr S K Khanna, she was brought dead to the hospital. “The man jumped from a private building adjoining the hospital.” … family members who rushed to the spot immediately after Pradeep committed suicide said that Seema was bitten by the poisonous animal in their bathroom while she was taking a bath. But they could not name the animal … An official added that they would talk to family members to find more details.
Monsoon on course, says Met
Late night showers and a squall caught the city off-guard on Monday. All that Met officials were willing to say about the approaching monsoon though was that it was well on its course. “Monsoon seems well on its course to Delhi and shouldn’t be too delayed this year. It might arrive around July 2.
Women staffers thrash senior
The manager of a corporate office of a tube manufacturing company was, on Monday evening, thrashed by two women employees and others for allegedly sexually harrassing the women. The manager’s clothes were torn off. They also smashed his Santro car’s window panes, office furniture, a phone and other items … The manager, V K Gupta, eho was finally taken away by police, was arrested after one of the women filed a report against him for outraging her modesty.
Parents of teen ’surgeon’ held
The doctor parents of the 15-year-old boy who performed a C-section in Manaparai in Tiruchirapalli district were arrested on Monday and could face charges of attempted homicide. The boy, whom the doting parents had led to the operating table to prove what a prodigy he was, has however not been traced by the police. … A special team has been formed to find Dhileepan, who is suspected to be in Chennai. … After the controversy erupted, the couple claimed that their son only watched the surgery being done on 20-year-old Neela who gave birth to a baby girl through the C-section delivery. Neela’s husband is said to have claimed that he was not informed about the surgery being done by a boy.
Cong uneasy over Patil ‘revelations’
Congress on Monday tried to bat aside fresh charges about the UPA’s presidential nominee Prathibha Patil, but worries about the fallout of the driblets of embarrassing disclosures are beginning to gnaw at the leadership. Party spokesperson Devendra Dwivedi told the media that the charges were unsubstantiated, ducking a specific query if Patil, in her avatar as the chairperson of a cooperative bank, had favoured her kin with loans.
4 loan recovery agents arrested after debtor beat to death
Despite the Supreme Court ordering banks not to use strong-arm tactics to recover money from defaulters, a leading bank in the city did just that last week and sent its “recovery agents” to an Andhra Pradesh government employee’s house to reclaim its dues. Within hours of the visit last week, the 42-year-old loanee breathed his last at a hospital in Ameerpet. (Amount of the loan was Rs 15,000, or a little under $400.)
Row over govt nod to US ship
The planned visit of the gigantic American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to Chennai port next week has once again drive a wedge between the defence ministry and the Left parties. As it is the Left does not like india’s burgeoning defence relationship with countries like the US and Israel. … [CPI national secretary D Raja said] “Keeping in view the whole development in the West Asian region and particularly American’s stance against Iran, we are concerned about the government’s decision.”
Hillary collects $2m, applause from NRIs
Unfazed by the scrutiny of her ties to Indian-Americans, presidential election frontrunner Hillary Clinton collect $2 million and several rounds of applause from NRIs at a fund-raising gala on Sunday. The event also showcased the growing political activism of Indian-Americans, now regarded as the wealthiest ethnic minority in America. … The biggest cheer of the evening came when, speaking of her own presidential bid, she remarked, “I understand it’s likely that India will have a woman president, perhaps in the next month or so.” … She also spoke of the many Indian-Americans who worked on her campaign and praised the community for their emphasis on family values and education that had led them to become the most successful minority in the US.
For more great stories and colorful writing, check out the Times of India web site.
I’ve always wanted to see one of the infamous bootleg software markets in India that I’ve heard so much about, but every time I’m there I either run out of time or don’t know where to go. Today, thanks to a brief reunion with two friends I’ve not seen for a while, I got my chance. Pali and Tarun remembered that I wanted to see something like this from a conversation in Bangalore last year and made it happen. Thanks, guys!
Delhi’s biggest and boldest pirated software marketplace is Nehru Place. It’s in a busy part of town, out in plain view and not hidden in any way. You can find everything for sale from motherboards and memory and other hardware items, to software (name it, you can buy it), to services ranging from hardware repair to refilling printer cartridges. Most of the technology products are on the 1st floor, in stalls along a walkway above the courtyard.
The software vendors have photocopied lists of products in alphabetical order, and you can purchase a collection of items from the list, or a single product if it’s especially large or popular. Vista or Office were advertised many places, but I get those for free at work so I wasn’t tempted. Xbox games seem to be hot items as well.
There are two packaging options, depending on whether you need a counterfeit package in addition to the bootleg software. (For resale, for instance. :-))
If you just want the software, you get a disk in a CD sleeve, with the product name written on the disk in a permanent marker. The other option is packaging that is a clone of the original retail package, with full-color copies of the original artwork glued to the box. These are very realistically done, right down to the certificate of authenticity that appears on Microsoft products.
Quality control isn’t what it could be on the simple unpackaged disks, but for these prices what do you expect? For example, I bought a disk full of Lotus products, or so I thought, but when I looked at the disk in my laptop I found it included a “Loan Spread Calculator” as the first program, and the last program listed in the readme file, Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition Release 9.8, wasn’t included. So apparently somebody was copying products to disks alphabetically and made a mistake on where the Lotus entries started and ended.
The price is usually about 100 rupees (a little over $2), although it seems to vary based on popularity of the specific software included. I paid 300 rupees for Adobe CS3, 200 rupees for a bunch of handy graphics utilities, and 50 rupees for the Lotus collection shown above. I could have purchased CS3 from a different vendor for 100 rupees, but he needed 20 minutes to burn the DVD. A classic case of just-in-time inventory creating savings that are passed on to the consumer, but I paid triple the price (about $8) to avoid waiting.
I was told that most of the software comes from Singapore. There are occasional raids by the police, but things get back to normal pretty quickly afterward. Sounds to me like the war on software piracy is about as effective as the war on terrorism and the war on drugs. Cocaine has never been cheaper or more plentiful in the US, suicide bombings have never been so common in the Middle East, and in India a disk containing ready-to-install copies of all the products to the right costs less than the price of lunch at the nearby Subway, Sbarro, or Starbucks.
As we wandered past the various shops I found myself remembering that book “Off the Rails in Phnom Penh: Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls, and Ganja.” Its author, Amit Gilboa, paid for a child prostitute to collect material for his book. This earned a predictable reaction from most quarters (Amazon banned the book for a while), but the author insisted it was “investigative journalism” since he didn’t actually have sex with her.
I have a similar rationalization regarding the three disks I bought. Sure, I helped support the software piracy economy with my transaction, but these disks are just souvenirs as long as I don’t follow these simple and enthusiastic instructions …
Like most people, I have a few things I complain about over and over. And one of the things on my list lately has been the way they drag out the meal service in business class on long flights. I complained about this to Megan recently (again) on our trip to Africa.
It’s as if they are deliberately trying to fill up the hours. They bring you a drink, some warmed nuts, then an appetizer, some bread, a salad, the main course, dessert, an after-dinner drink, coffee, and then, FINALLY, they’ll actually clear your tray so you can get some work done. Some of the airlines even add fussy little touches like custom-making your salad at your seat, grinding pepper, or other time-consuming forms of entertainment. I’ve had some flights were I had a lot of work to do, and the best alternative is to eat something before the flight and skip the free meal, if you really want to make the first couple of hours count. In business class, eating the free meal means signing up for at least an hour of screwing around.
But tonight I’m flying Continental from Delhi to Newark (a 15-hour non-stop), and I found in their little menu the Executive Meal Plan: “If you should prefer more time to work or relax, we suggest this meal option, complete with appetizer salad and hot main course, presented all at once, whenever you wish.”
Yes! That’s how I’ve been able to get some blogging done on the personal blog for a change. I’m at Newark now, waiting for my 7:00AM flight to DC, and will post a couple of things from the flight …
Here are the first pictures from my new Blackjack camera phone. It’s no D70, but it fits a lot better in my front pocket so I always have it with me.
First, a few from the Bay area earlier this week …
And here are a few from Sea-Tac this evening …
Man, I haven’t been to an airport that was this uncrowded in quite a while. It’s nice. I went to the counter and walked right up to a British Airways ticket agent with nobody in line. I only stopped moving once going through security, when they checked my ID. I had a whole train car to myself, and an empty one behind for good measure. I arrived at the business lounge in the south satellite, and the same young woman who had checked me in was working the counter. She just smiled and said “hi again!” and held her hand out to motion me into the lounge.
What service. I think she must have been further back on my train and somehow beat me upstairs. I did dawdle a bit to snap the pictures above. But not more than a minute or two.
One thing I don’t like about lounges in our country is they have people who serve you drinks, since Americans apparently can’t be trusted to pour from communal bottles like people do in the lounges in all those other countries. The drink itself is free, but we Americans are so conditioned to tipping that you’re left wondering whether you should tip when they bring a drink, especially when they are as aggressive about serving you as this kid is. Oh well, if I get another Glenlivet and leave him a buck they’re down to a quarter apiece. Such a deal.
Next stop London, then on to Delhi …
I took a walk this evening around the area where I’m staying here in San Francisco, down near the ferry terminal. Here are a few pictures.
OK, got the sightseeing out of the way, now I can get back to work. I love checking things off my list.
When I landed at Sea-Tac on Sunday afternoon, it was pretty cloudy but the clouds parted momentarily and I got one shot of our house …
Today I’m off to San Francisco, where I’ll be on the go non-stop Sunday through Wednesday. Sorry, Lynn and Elton, I’m starting to think we won’t be able to get together this time after all — my “free time” Sunday has just about filled up with work-related stuff downtown. Man, I’m going to the Bay Area and not even visiting my mother-in-law; now she knows how my relatives in Fremont feel. 
Hey, here’s a cool photo that I just noticed my brother Greg sent this morning, from his house in the country outside Spokane …
“This little guy was laying by the road and I thought that something must have happened to his mama but when I picked him up he started making a lot of noise and she came running over the hill - they both headed off into the taller grass.”
I have two more weeks of the crazed travel schedule, and then I’m looking forward to a nice summer at home. The travel has been fun at times, but 63 nights away from home already this year is enough for now.
OK, they’re about to start boarding my flight. This domestic flying is so convenient — you just check in and go board the plane, basically. Two of my next three destinations are domestic US locations, so if you count Orlando last week that’s 3 out of 4, after 15 international destinations in a row prior to that. I’m enjoying the fact I can buy a Newsweek or a New Yorker within 100 yards of the gate. More impressive still, that’s true no matter which gate I’m flying out of. It’s the little things, you know.
My Cingular 2125 finally bit the dust. It’s been getting flakier and flakier, and I’ve been abusing it more and more, because I want a new phone. I do more email on the phone now than I was doing a year ago, and triple-tap is too-tedious. And it’s been banged around so much that it looks like hell, too. It’s not the shiny new phone it was 15 months ago.
So I bought a Samsung Blackjack today. So far so good.
When a fan is paying tribute to this year’s NBA stars with an Etch-A-Sketch, it can’t really be 2007. Can it?
I used to watch every game of the NBA finals each year, back when Jamal Wilkes was smoothing in those jumpers for LA, Dr. J was the first Michael Jordan, and the Iceman and Kareem were still suiting up. And a few years later, like the great 1987 LA-Boston series, with Bird and Magic at their peaks. Or the 90s, and MJ, Scotty, and Horace …later, MJ, Scotty, and Dennis.
This year, I didn’t see a minute of it.
