Sikhs Parade for World Peace

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw a photograph (in voice of Asia) of Sikhs parading for world peace in Houston recently! A peace march with swords?! What's next? 

Photo Source: Sikh Center, Houston

To an outsider, this probably would look like a group of Taliban folks pledging to execute a Fatwa!  It takes an Indian to understand the cultural significance of swords in Sikhism.

On a slightly different note, I wonder if I could justify attending these parades on skipping work, by calling in Sikh :-)

Change is the Only Constant!

Here is a 1946 advertizement of Western Electric.

I am sure people are going to giggle when they come across advertizements for iPod and iPhone, and the name "Goolge", 20 years from now!

EEO

Been through mandatory EEO training and testing in the office today for about two hours - painful, but every government employee is required to go through this once in two years. I must admit that I do enjoy some of the new things and euphemisms these folks keep coming up with.

Calling someone handicapped used to be OK. It is not politically correct now, as the word originated from hand in cap. Even though hand in cap is not derogatory Per Se, as it sounds like cap in hand (which is begging), we are being told to avoid this word. Now we need to call it disabled.

The other interesting thing I learned is, it is not OK for an employer to ask the question Have you ever been arrested?, on employment applications. This is because minorities get arrested more than Caucasians. Therefore, based on answer to this question, an employer can potentially commit racial discrimination. To look for employees with no criminal background, an employer is allowed to ask Have you ever been convicted? Neat! Conviction is a solid record, whereas arrests can be made on illegal racial profiling.

An @tempt For @raction

One of the differences I noticed between the second generation Indians and their Chinese counterparts is their nomenclature. It appears that most of the Chinese parents in the US give their children American first names like Jason, Jim, and Andy. This is not the case with Indians - we stick with Indian names (which I think is good).

The following article on unconventional naming reminded me of my dad's colleague Late Dr. S.V. Joga Rao - he liked Shakespeare's literature so much that he named his son Venkata Shakespeare!

A Chinese couple seeking a distinctive name for their child settled on the e-mail ‘at’ symbol — annoying government officials grappling with an influx of unorthodox names. The unidentified couple were cited Thursday by a government official as an example of citizens bringing bizarre names into the Chinese language.

Written Chinese does not use an alphabet but is comprised of characters, sometimes making it difficult to develop words for new or foreign objects and ideas. As of last year, only 129 names accounted for 87 percent of all surnames in China, Li Yuming, vice director of the State Language Commission, said at a news conference.

The letters ‘a’ and ’t’ can be pronounced in a way that sounds like the phrase “love him” in Chinese. The father “said ‘the whole world uses it to write e-mails and, translated into Chinese, it means ‘love him,”’ Li said. Li did not say if police, who are the arbiters of names because they issue identity cards, rejected baby ‘at'.

One Nation, Under Gun

In my previous life as a consultant, I had an opportunity to travel quite a bit in rural Texas - from gas gathering stations in East Texas to Oil fields in West Texas. During these trips, I used to get fascinated by the people with fascination for guns! Gun racks in the pickup trucks is a pretty common sight in small towns. Why would some one need to carry a gun all the time? After a while, I started accepting guns as just (dangerous) toys.

While working on Zant Seep, we (I and my colleague Chris) once parked our truck in the middle of a cotton field in oil fields of West Texas, and walked about a quarter mile to a ranch house of the owner of the property, to ask him some questions. After we introduced ourselves, the owner said that he thought that we were some miscreants, and for a few minutes he was watching us through his gun scope! He was a pretty nice guy and he showed (off) his gun collection. His gun vault looked as if it belonged to barracks!

The following article in recent News Week reminded me of the above incident.

The Second Amendment tells us that 'a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

Two hundred years later, in 1999, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated that there are about 215 million guns in America--at least one firearm in half the households in the country. The anti-gun Brady Campaign, however, puts that number at 192 million guns, owned by 39 percent of the population. Either way, that's a lot of firepower.

Photographer Kyle Cassidy wanted to find out who these people were, what they looked like and how they lived. So he traveled 15,000 miles over the course of two years taking pictures of people with their weapons and asking them one question: 'Why do you own a gun?' His new book, 'Armed America,' is the culmination of that project. Keep clicking for Cassidy's portraits of Americans at home with their six-shooters and 12 gauges.