Impedance Mismatch over HTTP

In yet another sad and disgusting turn of events, Asha Katiya, all of 16 years was raped and later burnt to death for having the guts to report the crime.

As usual, the news media in India has largely ignored the brutal killing of the 16 year old. It probably was an eye-sore for the national channels who are enamored with fashion shows, high-end Indian art and wine tasting tips.

As she lay dying of her injuries in hospital on Wednesday, Asha allegedly told police that the upper caste man was her murderer, and that he had previously threatened to kill her unless she changed her statement so the charges against him would be dropped. Her mother, Shashibai, told The Indian Express the family was preparing to flee but Asha was killed before they could leave. An aunt has also come forward to the suspect as as the man she saw fleeing after the incident. But the alleged rapists parents say he was with them when the incident occurred.

Source: The Independent 

What infuriates me is that there are people back home; in India; in my backyard, who in the year 2006 have the gall to nonchalantly ask a rape victim to withdraw her case and later proceed to douse her with kerosene and burn her to death. Don't we have any shame? I used to think we were a workable but flawed democracy; I don't think so anymore. We are officially *sick scum.*

Asha has set the bar very high for the rest of the Indian herd with her bravery.  As they say, only the best die young: Manjunath, Satyendra Dubey, Asha… the list goes on.

One year ago, on this fateful day, Manjunath Shanmugam was shot and killed by an Indian Oil Coporation dealer in Lakhimpur Khiri, Uttar Pradesh. The reason: he stood up for what was right and was honest. Thanks to the alumni and his friends, who have barely managed to keep the memory alive in the media frenzy of today where attention spans are shrinking at an amazing pace. 

The Manjunath Foundation has launched a couple of initiatives to coincide with the anniversary of Manju's death: (1) Right to information helpline; and (2) Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award. The helpline is a great idea as it helps spread the power of RTI as a tool to hold those in power accountable. Arvind Kejriwal is lending his support in the creation and support of this helpline. 

"We just did not want to light candles and put flowers but do something constructive," said Jaishankar, Manjunath Shanmugam Trust.

"Manjunath stood for honesty and against corruption and RTI helps fight corruption in the system so what better way," said Arvind Kejriwal, Parivartan.

Updates on the case against the accused can be found at the site dedicated in Manju's memory.

Yesterday, I heard a commentary piece on taste; a brief summary on the psychology behind our perception of taste and choice. Apparently, what we perceive as beautiful and in good taste is generally a representation of missing virtues in our own life or qualities the society around us is lacking; something that will bring us close to what we crave and drive away the fear. Minimalistic and clean lines could represent inner turmoil; highly ornate and grand spaces could represent someone who is poor inside and is terrified of poverty and decay.

Listen to the audio @ npr.org 

I have never had cable and it has been five months since I have watched TV at home. I feel better, more structured, and in-control in TV's absence. One of the prime reasons for not watching TV is the inability to relate to the content or the characters. Being a first generation East Indian in the USA comes with a premium: conformity issues at being subject to verbal, visual and subliminal messages crafted after careful market research and segmentation.

Driven by corporate structure, ratings, and revenue, the difference between entertainment, reality and information has almost vanished. I have always felt more taxed as I watched TV; perhaps the biggest outcome of corporate driven media is the mindset that it permeates amongst its viewers. This mindset creates undocumented social norms, prejudices, and values. The mindset builds over time and our neural networks get tuned to it as the images drive us into a softer/addictive state of mind leading us into a vicious cycle of thought. If not being able to see any decent desi portrayals was one reason, the effort in my mind to counterbalance the blatant political correctness and formulaic portrayal of characters based on the actor's ethnicity or background worsen it further. The most disgusting of them all is the apathy the media subculture creates in terms of regurgitated commentary where one talking head parrots stuff stolen from another talking head and presents them with polished vocabulary; not to mention the promotion of a certain flavor of English language that is defensive, stiff and confusing when used in real life situations.

Conan O'Brien is probably one of the most gifted on-screen anchors on TV. Conan once commented on Charlie Rose's show about the necessity of on-screen energy and animation on TV today, this energy according to him, is created via camera movements, on-screen antics, body language and graphics. These assault the mind in a way that it heightens your senses very artificially.

With Radio, youtube, Google, and RSS, a lot of the noise could be removed as it promotes cleaner and leaner content with due respect to the intelligence and time of the audience involved. I am not suggesting that all user-generated content out there is cerebral and classy but the bottom line is that there is no hidden agenda behind the content. It probably makes it more honest. Even if some faction were to use youtube or RSS to feed nonsense, people can smell it. You can fool people only for so long. With TV, it's unabashedly biased, there is nothing you can do about it. Case in point: name any of the alphabet soup channels. Even PBS has been hijacked; essentially, where there is structure and leverage, there is room for fishy business. Probably, there shouldn't be any structure to organizations that disseminate news, commentary or content that influences kids. On the contrary, ephemeral pools of news sources should coalesce into news organizations. 

My beliefs were further strengthened when I heard about Jennifer Richeson on the radio. Jennifer, a 2006 MacArthur fellow is a social psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. She has a very striking observation that corroborates with the "taxing" feeling I get when I watch TV. The slight difference is that there is subtle prejudice already in front of my eyes and therefore the mind has to combat twice the amount of prejudice, mine as well as what I see on TV.

A key finding of her work is that such interactions require heightened self-control to combat expressions of prejudice, calling on increased cognitive effort and resulting in decreased effectiveness on other cognitive tasks.  Her work provides a novel way of examining and calculating the “costs” associated with intergroup interactions.