India

In an attempt to go beyond discussions about the "digital divide", I organized a panel at this year's South by Southwest festival to discussing the exploding market segment of 'minority' technologists and early adopters.

I apologize in advance for my hemming and hawing. I have a lot of work to do with my public speaking skills. But stay until the presentation done by Stephen Wilmarth and his students from The Center for 21st Century Skills. A victim of our anti-immigration policies, this straight A student gives a heartbreaking account of how after being deported with her mother to Brazil, she tried to keep up with her technology program and classmates using Skype and other social media.

This podcast first appears at the South by Southwest website.

A year ago today I wrote about the suicide of Sunil Kumar Verma. Sunil was born in Bhopal, India, in 1972. On Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, the negligence of Union Carbide (now part of Dow Chemicals) killed Sunil's parents and five siblings, and left him with ongoing psychological problems. Those psychological problems dogged him for twenty two years, and a year ago today, Sunil hung himself. Meanwhile, those who were responsible for the death of his family have gotten off largely scott free. This one is for Sunil.

What negligence am I talking about? Well, some of our younger readers may not know about Bhopal, one of the most disgusting moments in American corporate colonialism. It was an event that killed some 20,000 people and left over 100,000 affected. And corporate America, responsible for this disaster, has done almost nothing to clean up the mess and take responsibility. Here is a description of what happened from the International Capaign for Justice in Bhopal:

On the night of Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal.[1] Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits.[2]Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women.[3] In 2001, Michigan-based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.

A good piece on aging in America. The only thing I would add is that it is also imperative for older generations to respect their youth along the way, no matter how different and more American they may seem. True respect can only be born out of reciprocity.

Aging in a Foreign Land

New America Media, Commentary, Ngoc B. Lam, as told to Andrew Lam, Posted: Jan 10, 2007

Editor's Note: Growing old in America can mean growing more isolated, and that’s particularly tough on those whose home cultures stress strong family and clan ties. Ngoc B. Lam came to America in 1975 as a refugee and worked as an accountant for more than 20 years. Andrew Lam is a NAM editor and author of “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” (Heyday Books, 2005).

FREMONT, Calif.--There's a Vietnamese saying: America is paradise for the young, but hell for the old, and how true it seems now that I'm in my mid-70s. America has all these products that cater to children: toys, movies, video games, theme parks. For the old there's only isolation and loneliness.

Vietnamese are defined by family, by community, and when you lose that, you lose a big part of who you are. In Vietnam I never thought of living anywhere else but in my homeland. You live and die where your ancestors lived and died. You have your relatives, your clan; you have your family, your temple.

Once we were bound to the land in which our ancestors are buried, and we were not afraid of death and dying. But in America our old way of life is gone. We were forced to flee after the war ended in 1975, and we have lived in exile since then. Today, my friends and relatives are scattered across the world.

Germans find radiation linked to ex-spy contact | Top News | Reuters.com or Trace spread of nuclear death.

Jupiter, Mercury and Mars Conjunction Visible with Naked Eye - Science News - Playfuls.com - Science & Technology or triple celestial clusterfuck.

Second Russian hospital hit by fatal fire - CNN.com or Siberia is burning.

globeandmail.com : globeinvestor.com : World's richest 2% own 40% of all household wealth or a yawning global gap that invites screams of horror.

Saddam's nephew escapes Iraqi prison - Yahoo! News or it will be a Sunninsurgent christmas.

Today I'm admiring three women in the cultural eye who do better, with more to learn and balance, than I've ever attempted. I'm considering what their individual identity-crafting might teach me as I shape whatever complicated identities I might claim tomorrow.

I could argue my own identity as native American blue-eyed whitebread. I was born here, as were generations of ancestors.

I can speak no language except Americanized English, though God knows I've tried. My enthusiastic but inept efforts both in school and out to learn French were Dave Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day-like as comedy. I was raised a polite and unassuming Sunday-Methodist because everyone else was too, with no party or doctrine in particular to set me culturally apart. Females are technically a majority, so I can't deny I grew up in cultural comfort.

It wasn't until I found myself a homeschooling mom that I felt real culture shock. Keeping my family completely out of school meant abandoning my cultural and professional homeland (public schooling) and moving to a foreign and somewhat frightening culture without a reliable guide.