Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »A brand/context mismatch!
December 28th, 2007
So, approved I’m all for traditional brick and mortar or even Web 1.0 companies embracing the new internet ways and all, angina I espouse this daily on the Health 2.0 scene, sildenafil but the above is just not what I want to see in my inbox, no, not at all. It might as well say the IRS is going to hunt you down, omg, lol, smiley face with wink.
Know your brand and know your place!
Dave Eggers’ response to "keeping it real" – not his phrase
November 18th, 2007
I was taken by Dave Eggers’ long and impassioned response to a Harvard student’s interview question on “how do you keep it real?”
And here’s my response to his response.
Dave Eggers’ piece resonated with me. Yes to saying yes. But if this were a live conversation, more about I’d want to put the following to him: what about the implicit contract an artist or entrepreneur (while still early and small) makes with his or her viewer, physician reader, sale listener, user? I think Dave doesn’t acknowledge that there is an intimacy to the relationship between an emerging artist and audience member/fan, a bond more imagined than real, full of unrequited passion and adolescent fantasy perhaps, but no less visceral to the early fan or the early adopter of a new technology for that matter.
When the artist or entrepreneur gets big, this notion of monogamy or mutual loyalty, albeit illusory, is shattered. So the young person, explorer/discoverer, president of a fan club of 3 feels an inexplicable sense of betrayal and moves on to support the next underdog. Remember “you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you. Now 5 years later, you’ve got the world at your feet. Success has been so easy for you. But don’t forget it’s me who put you where you are now and I can put you back down too. Don’t you want me baby?” Creepy, yes, but kind of a hard-to-ignore part of the psyche of fan-hood.
And this goes beyond the arts. Mike Arrington, tech guru, writer, investor wrote a sad post about the state of silicon valley now vs. a number of years ago, Silicon Valley could use a downturn right now.
Small is beautiful, big can be devastatingly gorgeous and infinitely renewing, but the journey between the two is by definition a relationship between creator and experiencer and therefore inherently fraught with negotiation.
Trying out YouTube’s Custom Player
November 14th, 2007
My maternal ancestry, beginning in the mid-late 1800s
November 3rd, 2007
This my great-great-grandfather, abortion Simon Podwal. The Catholics of Mangalore, a coastal town north of Goa, voluntarily converted to Christianity in the 1600s under the influence of the Portuguese. Many of these early settlers had fled the horrific, forced conversions going on in Goa, that were a part of the Inquisition.
Below is Simon’s son, Andrew D’sa, my great-grandfather and his first wife and daughter.
Now we have Appolinaris D’sa, my grandfather, whom I lived with as a child and loved very much. This picture was taken in 1938 in Mangalore. He is a young lawyer 2 years before he is to meet and marry my grandmother, Eunice Pinto.
Switching sides, below is a picture of Rose Pinto, my great-grandmother. She was born in 1896 and died at the young age of 24, in 1920, of Typhoid, a terrible disease at the time that claimed the lives of young mothers and children every year. She left behind 3 children, the oldest of which was my grandmother, who was 7 years old when her mother died.
And here is my grandmother, Eunice D’sa, the year she married my grandfather, in 1940. The picture is a cropped image from a group photo of the Ladies Club of Mangalore taken in honor of a visit by the British Governor’s wife. This is 7 years before India’s independence.
And finally my parents, Marina D’sa and Paul Subaiya in 1972. Marina was Eunice’s 4th child.
Karl Rove’s Republicanism or why the Democrats are more closely aligned with internet culture
October 25th, 2007
I wrote this post earlier in the year, health system before Karl Rove left the White House, and forgot about it. I decided to bring it back since I’ve been thinking a lot about how the web is changing our lives.
The thing about comparing Republicans and Democrats is that it’s not an apples to apples comparison. I’d argue that they are two different constructs that as a function of necessity and history have been described as two political parties, but really it would be like comparing a noun and a car, or a fruit and philosophy – things that might share some common elements but really should not be the basis for meaningful comparisons. Listening to Karl Rove talk about his party’s “mission” and Tom Delay talk about global warming, I get the sense that each party is running a separate race, not against each other with a common definition of success, but separate battles altogether.
Enter bias. Democrats seem to pursue change based on humanitarian ideals, whereas Republicans seem to pursue control in the name of more abstract ideals. It is interesting that Karl Rove’s Republican rhetoric involves use of the word “natural” so often. A “natural majority” for example. Because he knows that to further his party’s agenda requires skillful and heavyhanded masterminding, precisely because the agenda is…unnatural. It is unnatural to protect extreme wealth in the face of huge economic disparities, to believe so strongly in individualism that we ignore compassion. It is unnatural to deny our responsibility in damaging the earth.
Karl Rove observes two important trends: that people want individual responsibility/market forces and that they crave spirituality. I actually agree, but I think he is dead wrong about how we will get there. I believe people will seek a new level of wholeness and fulfillment in their lives but not by flocking to evangelical churches, but rather by tuning into their environments, joining communities for social change, paying more attention to their health, examining their role in social inequity and demanding greater transparency from their institutions. And yes people want market forces; Karl Rove cites Ebay. But he draws a totally weird conclusion about free markets. What people are really doing on Ebay is building a new economy of trust, by proving that the individual empowered by information and access to resources will be a creative, productive force of “good” in the world. Communities will form that will self-regulate. Groups will learn. Ethics will not have to be sleazily forced by political machinery; a point totally lost on Karl Rove. A sense of collective morality can grow if you believe in people. And this is really what the internet ethic is about; what we are seeing evolve in the socially networked world some of us are lucky enough to live in.
Rove’s brand of Republicanism isn’t about this at all. According to him, unless the party is hypervigilant and controlling of the message it will lose its grip. It’s the essence of old school, top-down, unidirectional media; web 0.0. And probably, his fear is justified, because his version of the party line is inherently unnatural and precarious to begin with. It requires a politics of fear and insecurity. Not unlike what would be spouted by dictators who live with the constant threat of a coup because deep down inside they know they’ve wrested power, not earned it; that the principles for which they stand would not be the logical outcome of truly democratic debate. Instead the message needs to be constantly repositioned and framed so that it’s never seen for the Emperor’s new clothes that it is.
India’s community identities
October 25th, 2007
Aunt Rhoda is awesome. Once a week she takes 5 girls from underprivileged backgrounds through their math homework – today I listened in on a lesson about the quadratic equation. These girls were taken in by nuns because they either don’t have families who can provide for them or they don’t have families at all. They gathered around my Mac to see pictures of themselves, pills full of giggles. Over the years, four of Aunt Rhoda’s students from this lot have gone on to college, something she is justifiably proud of.
It is the way one wears her sari, anemia
the fabric her sari is made of, store
the way one greets a friend, the way one cooks chicken, or whether one eats chicken at all. “We are this way” is a common expression pronounced with the Indian equivalent of a Talmudic shrug. “We” refers to the mirco-identity of a small group, categorized and defined by a complex intersection of race, religion, geography, occupation, social standing, family ties. It’s like looking under a microscope at what would be a monolith to the naked eye. At my Aunt’s home the other day, four guests were saying goodbye. I just nodded and smiled at the Manglorian Hindu couple, but kissed the Manglorian Christian woman on both cheeks and shook the hand of the Manglorian Christian man – everyone participated in the goodbye rituals intuitively and seamlessly and to have done anything differently would have crossed a subtle line in social conduct.
Algebra class in the apartment
October 23rd, 2007
Aunt Rhoda is awesome. Once a week she takes 5 girls from underprivileged backgrounds through their math homework – today I listened in on a lesson about the quadratic equation. These girls were taken in by nuns because they either don’t have families who can provide for them or they don’t have families at all. They gathered around my Mac to see pictures of themselves, pills full of giggles. Over the years, four of Aunt Rhoda’s students from this lot have gone on to college, something she is justifiably proud of.
Guests
October 23rd, 2007
We had a slew of guests today: a woman doctor who is instituting AIDS awareness programs in middle schools in Mumbai despite the wild protests of the Hindu fundamentalist party (they aren’t allowed to call it sex education), rheumatologist her husband, an international bridge champion to whom I lent the New Yorker issue with the article about Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess phenom whom I learned he admired and their daughter a homeopath who works out of her home. Conversation went from how out of control autorickshaw drivers were in Bangalore, refusing to take customers if the distance is too short and extorting people for high fares (the situation was pronounced “beyond redemption” because even if you took it to the highest level, the police commissioner turns out to be our own cousin and he just laughs and says, why not just pay the extra 20 rupees), to the stock market and how much higher it could go without collapsing, to the latest Hindi movie about an Indian coach who leads a girls hockey team to success. The actor, Shahrukh Khan is now getting requests to teach leadership in management programs across India. It’s just the “glamour quotient” said the woman doctor. We served foie gras I’d bought at the airport in Brussels, on crackers topped with cucumber in the shape of bows.
After they left, my cousins Shona and Sam came by bringing biryani for lunch from a local restaurant. They said they’d deliberately picked a less spicy kind for me which was totally unnecessary since I relish the real Southern Indian version. We then combed the pages of a society magazine as my cousin picked out all the people she knew. “This guy is only 26 and married this woman in her 40s, but she doesn’t look her age,” we observed as we leafed through.
Today’s news
October 21st, 2007
Developers PLEASE stop creating beta versions of things that only run on Windows. Mac users by definition are early adopters and tastemakers – thinking about us after the fact is not just super irritating but it would seem to me that it’s bad business. Stop thinking about sheer market size and think about the type of customer you want, oncologist your ultimate adoption curve and the potential to create a lasting brand. Yahoo’s news videos used to be PC only, store I think now they’ve changed, but they lost me as a user. I just tried to download Times Reader. Bad, bad, only for Windows. And not to mention MS’s Healthvault, but that’s at least just plain predictable.
Oh and yes, I just bought a mac that can run windows. But it’s just so distasteful to have to make the switch and not all macs are configured for this anyway.
It’s 10:30 PM EST and I’m somewhere over the Atlantic on a plane, visit web
but it’s no ordinary plane. I’m on a brand new Jet Air flying machine. This company, symptoms
perhaps the Virgin Airways or Jet Blue of India is kicking it’s predecessor’s butt all the way into pre-outsourcing times and at the rate of growth in this economy, psychotherapist
it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask if that was when giant long necked lizardy things roamed the earth. Jet Air has enough polish and panache to rouse the most closeted of nationalist sentiments within someone of Indian origin – where or where shall I begin?
A bathroom on Air India. You’re better off waiting out the 24 hr. flight.
A bathroom on Jet Air. A bottle of basil and bergamot eau de toilette, hand lotion with essential oils, air freshening spray.
A meal on Air India. A passable Indian TV dinner at best.
A meal on Jet Air: Oh man, it was so good! The meal was served on a pink, orange and yellow striped tablemat with a red and orange brocade cloth napkin tied in a shiny orange ribbon. There was a warm paratha (Indian flat bread), a side of yogurt sauce and tomato salad, mango pickle, mushrooms, and corn in a light curry with ground cashew nuts. The rice was delicious and served with sautéed onions. The dessert was a classic Indian rice pudding in rose flavored sauce with two succulent strawberries. Hot towels were passed both before and after the meals. The crew is super young and gorgeous. They are dressed to impress. Hair, makeup, incessant smiles, the works – it’s enough to make one nostalgic for the days when flying was sexy and stewardesses were glamorous.
Then there’s the in-flight entertainment system. Touch screen, with a remote control hand piece and keyboard, a great selection of features, short films, television, news. There is a ton of legroom and an outlet for my laptop in my armrest. I grabbed copies of the NY Times and the Times of India from right behind me in a convenient magazine rack and settled into my journey back to the city I was born in.
October 19th
Bush said to Iran today, check “we will isolate you” referring to his zero tolerance policy for their efforts to build nuclear capabilities. It’s ironic since now, more than ever, it’s America who is isolated. With our weak dollar and lack of moral credibility, we are forcing a realignment of affinities even among our once friends. The joke about Bush bonding with Putin on his visit to W’s ranch is more than not funny, now that Putin is befriending Iran. China is cutting deals with Iraq, and so is Iran. Turkey is ready to take matters into its own hands with Baghdad, having given up on the US helping with the issue of the Kurds on their border. There is some serious huddling and whispering going on in them Eastern regions and Bush is not invited, and therefore we are not invited. There are new affinities forming, drawing into stark relief the real catalyst for the frightening but not so unreasonable threat of a WWIII, that Bush naively attributes to Iran getting nuclear.
Why do we put up with software for Windows only?
October 11th, 2007
Developers PLEASE stop creating beta versions of things that only run on Windows. Mac users by definition are early adopters and tastemakers – thinking about us after the fact is not just super irritating but it would seem to me that it’s bad business. Stop thinking about sheer market size and think about the type of customer you want, oncologist your ultimate adoption curve and the potential to create a lasting brand. Yahoo’s news videos used to be PC only, store I think now they’ve changed, but they lost me as a user. I just tried to download Times Reader. Bad, bad, only for Windows. And not to mention MS’s Healthvault, but that’s at least just plain predictable.
Oh and yes, I just bought a mac that can run windows. But it’s just so distasteful to have to make the switch and not all macs are configured for this anyway.
Billboard across from Magic Castle