Girl Geeks Share Their Stories

Editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders solicited stories from women “nerds” and “geeks” over the internet and received submissions from lady geeks who grew up interested in science, technology and other non-traditional fields for women. The resulting anthology, She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology and other Nerdy Stuff, includes contributions from women working in computer science, game design and scientific research, including Kory Wells, a writer and computer scientist whose mother encouraged her dreams of becoming an astronaut and a computer programmer, Roopa Ramamoorthi, a scientist with two doctorates who encounters the assumption that “real” scientists are men and that the women work for them as technicians, and Mara Poulsen, a game designer who discovers “the great conundrum of the video game heroine: Why, if she’s out clashing with the bad guys, would she be wearing an outfit that exposes most of her vital organs?”

More:
The She’s Such a Geek Blog“

The T(IIT)ans of Silicon Valley

Paul Sakuma / AP file

According to a Duke University study out today, immigrants are the driving force behind many of the country’s successful technology companies.

In 2005, immigrant entrepreneurs’ companies created 450,000 jobs and generated $52 billion in sales, says the report. 25 percent of technology and engineering companies launched over the past decade had “at least one senior executive…born outside the United States.”

During that time, roughly 7,300 startups were founded by immigrants. Of them, 26 percent have “Indian founders, CEOs, presidents, or head researchers.”

Most are IIT-grads.

Vivek Wadhwa, Duke affiliate and founder of two successful tech startups homself, says the study, “shows the tremendous contribution immigrants in general and Indians in particular are making to the US economy and global competitiveness. This is a win-win for America and for the immigrants that make it here.”

It’s a “Thums-Up” From Manmohanji

Photo from Amazon.Com

UVA scholar, author Harold Gould calls the book his “labor of love.”

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said it is the best thing he has read all year.

Critics have decided it is “vastly important…for desis, for all South Asians in America, to read and savor” (“It is their story; it is their history. It has never been told before—not so elaborately, so forcefully, or so compellingly.”).

And we think it will make the perfect holiday gift for the history buff on your list.

Now out in hardback, Sikhs, Swamis, Students and Spies: The India Lobby in the United States, 1900-1946 offers readers a look at the systemic racism early South Asian immigrants were forced to contend with. It considers the process of political awakening they went through in their struggle for civil rights here.

It is a relatively new-release, but has anyone read it yet? Let us know what you think.

( And PS: be sure to check back for an upcoming Nirali issue with Gould’s take on the Komagata Maru tragedy of 1914)

International Law

Supreme Court of India. Source.

You’ve heard of American law schools (like George Washington University) setting up shop in India.

Well word is, another will soon be following suit.

David Van Zandt, a dean at the Northwestern University School of Law, is in India this week, speaking to administrators at both private and public colleges there.

Says Van Zandt: “In the rapidly changing world scenario, lawyers need to have multiple skills, as they often spearhead global alliances and mergers and acquisitions. The emergence of common international model for transactions and dispute resolution, common language and new aggressiveness are some factors that have given us the impetus to increase our drive to enroll students for India.”

Um, okay. But what do you say? With business schools and medical colleges going global, this sort of extension is becoming something of a trend. Do you see it as a good thing?

(Source: Business Standard)

Women Weigh In On Diwali Barbie

Did Mattel get the Diwali Barbie right? Earlier this month, PRI’s The World interviewed Sepia Mutiny’s Anna John, fellow sagehen (chirp!) and blogger Nina Jacinto, novelist/poet Chitra Divakaruni and Professor Inderpal Grewal about one of Mattel’s newest additions to its Barbie line.

You can still listen to the report online at The World’s web site.

I agree with John’s assessment of the doll’s outfit—it looks like a lehnga outfit more than a sari. I also thought Divakaruni summarized the significance of the doll well as “a small step in the right direction” but “not a giant leap for mankind or dollkind or womankind.”

What do you think?

Film Review of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

So I finally got around to seeing Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle recently, on DVD. I know, that probably makes me the last person on earth, or at least in this hemisphere. While conducting a post-viewing Google on a rather pointless question (being Hindi-challenged, I wondered exactly what Kumar and the shopkeeper were saying in Hindi when he asked for directions—anyone?), I stumbled across a rather pointed review of the film by Shama Rangwala in the June 2006 issue of Scope, an online journal of film studies. Like many reviews of the movie, it refers to how this flick from the stoner/road trip genre manages to challenge racial stereotypes. But it doesn’t stop there, offering up an analysis of Harold and Kumar’s racial and class identities, and in the process providing one answer to the question—Why did Harold and Kumar go to White Castle?

Ten Years Since Dr. Salam’s Death: Isn’t It Time for Pakistan to Recognize Him?

I was heartened to read these two editorials in leading Pakistani newspapers this past week: The Daily Times’ “The tragedy of our treatment of Dr. Abdus Salam” and DAWN’s “Lest we foget.” The Daily Times piece opens with these words:

Dr Abdus Salam (1926-1996) died ten years ago. He was the first Pakistani to get a Nobel Prize in 1979. But he might be the last if we continue to allow our state to evolve in a way that frightens the rest of the world. Our collective psyche runs more to accepted ‘wisdom’ than to scientific inquiry; and even if we were to display an uncharacteristic outcropping of individual genius the world may be so frightened of it that it might not give us our deserts.

It doesn’t seem like Pakistan will act on the message of these editorials, but it’s encouraging to see them nonetheless.