Is ‘blogger’ male or female?

This poser should interest/provoke Raji, Kalyani, Indrani, and a host of my other blogger friends. If words have a gender, what would blogger be, male or female? Brenda who blogs in verses might compose one on blogging’s glass ceiling. The consensus at the San Francisco BlogHer conference was that women bloggers are not taken seriously. BlogHer, founded by a former journalist Lisa Stone, and a couple of other women professionals, runs a website to publicize women’s blogs.

Many speakers at the conference said their male colleagues and major media groups tended to ignore women; their political blogs were linked less often by their male counterparts. “Women get dismissed in ways that men don’t,” according to Megan McArdle of The Atlantic Monthly, who blogs on economic issues. Of the top 100 web celebrities listed by a technology website there were only 11 women. The Forbes.com list last year named just three women on its list of 25 bloggers.

This is the kind of stuff that provokes blog posts. I read someone making a point that those raising this gender bogey should count themselves lucky that NYT covered their conference at all. That the newspaper did it in its Style & Fashion section was not lost on many others.

Making a song and dance of this man versus woman blogger thing may get us nowhere.  But it’s fun reading about it; and I wouldn’t skip it, even if it appears in S & F section of NYT. As for blog posts the NYT article triggered, my pick is cranky who writes, ‘I’m kinda glad I missed out on the BlogHer conference, if only after reading this NYT article’. She goes on to say she reads Lynne, Vallette and Hetta not because they’re women, but because they write stuff she wants to read.

Period.

Cross-posted in SiliconIndia

The NRI swadeshi fervor, a growth industry

It is said a desi abroad grows fond of India and things Indian; native Bellary or Bhatinda tends to look more romantic from Boston or Birmingham. And our Bollywood thrives on the genre of movies that hype patriotic fervor of desis abroad – Dilwale Dulahania Lejayenge,  Khabi Khushi Khabhi Gum, Pardes, Aa Ab Laut Chalen and several others.

Indian TV news channels have made inroads in NRI living rooms. They pay hefty subscription to watch ‘Page-3’ frivility; and celebrity-related non-events jazzed up as ‘breaking news’. Headlines Today the other day made ‘breaking news’ of Aamir Khan taking to smoking again.

The channel gave viewers in the Bay Area an insight into why and how Aamir Khan took to smoking again, quoting extensively from the actor’s blog post. Those of us who were concerned about Aamir Khan’s smoking habit were reassured that our celebrity smoker doesn’t light up in the presence of children, and in company where someone objects. I don’t suppose Doordarshan carried this item. But then I don’t get to see DD channels in San Ramon, California. 

Swadeshi-minded NRI’s keen on keeping up with developments back home could count on better fare from DD channels, though their coverage may be boringly developmental. And I wonder how many NRIs are aware of the Lok Sabha channel that telecast Question Hour and notable parliamentary debates. But then how many flag-waving Americans watch C-SPAN, to get first-hand account of US Senate proceedings?

My blogger friend Maddy says the degree of swadeshi fervor of NRIs is  proportionate to the length of their stay away from India. He calls them India Deprived Desis (IDDs); the type that would drive 50 miles for a plate of masala dosa at Bhimas in Milpitas or Sunnyvale’s Saravana Bhavan. Indian eating joints have mushroomed in and around San Jose.  IDD zindabad.   

Tapping the NRI swadeshi fervor is a growth industry and Bollywood promotes its own version, notably, among ABCDs – America born confused desi. Their take on India’s socio-cultural tradition is shaped by Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar. A growing number of ABCDs are Bollywood movie fans. Many of them, with aspiration to be part of it, are reported to have signed up for courses at Anupum Kher’s and other acting schools in Mumbai.

Bike Rentals, a fashion in Paris

In my schooldays in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, bicycles were the prime mode of transport for the middle-class. The affluent among my class-mates came to school in own bikes. My parents didn’t get me one till I joined college in New Delhi. By which time (this, in late 50s) bicycling went out of fashion.

With aggressive marketing of Luna, scooty, and other two-wheelers bicycles became a poor man’s vehicle. We, who considered ourselves better-off on the social scale, preferred the rush, long wait and uncertainty of public transport to a bicycle for travelling to work. Coming to office on a bike wasn’t an executive thing. Clerks biked to work.

Today, the good old bike could be an answer to traffic congestion and carbon emission in Bangalore,if only office-goers and company executives take to the bike in a big way, making bicycling a fashionable mode of transit, as they have done in Paris. One would like to see Anil Kumble and Shivrajkumar going to work on a bike;see Rahul Dravid with a bicycle in lifestyle media ads. Major IT companies – Infosys, IBM, Yahoo and others – could promote use of bicycles.

They could cut-back on car allowance and offer, instead, bicycle bonus to employees. And those who give up their cars for bicycles could be considered for telecommuting. Maybe IIM-B students could take up a project to explore the prospects of putting in place (are you and your project group reading this, Reema Mahajan?) bicycle rentals service in Bangalore on the pattern of Velib’ of Paris.

The New York Times, in a recent article – A New Fashion Catches On in Paris: Cheap Bicycles Rentals – gives us an idea of how the system works. Maybe we can’t replicate it in all aspects, for Bangalore isn’t quite Paris; but the concept could be emulated.

The highlights of the Paris bicycle rentals:
1)The bikes are cheap to rent, as they are subsidized by advertising; some 20,600 bicycles are for hire, from 1,450 rental stations.
2)Annual subscription (29 euros) lets user take a bike whenever needed for 30 minutes at a time without extra-charge. It is reckoned 96 percent of all rides are less than 30-minute duration (and hired bikes can be returned at any convenient location).
3)Bicycles theft rate – 15 percent in the first year of operation. About 1,500 bikes a day come in for repairs.
4)Bikes can be rented on hourly basis, for a day, and also on weekly basis.
5)The 10-year contract for running bicycle rentals has been taken up, not by a transport contractor but a major PR and advertising company – JCDecaux.

Cross-filed in Giving It A Shot

The idea of Obama

As someone visiting the US, it appears to me that the question that haunts the political-minded here is not who the next President would be; but what if, Barack Obama gets elected. Pundit Dick Morris, who was for long a Clinton consultant, but now their strident critic, has written a full-fledged book to illustrate the point. An Amazon list-topper, the book – Fleeced - has, presumably, been written in the fond hope that it would influence enough people to wish away Obama, come November. But then Mr Morris, more than anyone else, appears convinced that America is in for the Obama presidency, even though the Morris vote (Dick and his co-author wife) would go to McCain.

I happened to catch on C-Span Book-TV a re-run of Dick Morris’ recent address at the Cornell Club, NY. A PR-plug to his book, it was an engaging hour-long speech-cum-Q & A, by an articulate Obama-basher, who took in in his swipe Hillary and McCain as well, for balancing his bash-job.

Doing justice to Dick’s pet peeves and political prejudices; and his alarmist analysis, in the event of an Obama presidency, would take a book, not a mere blog post. What I found noteworthy and must-be-posted are his comments on how the other two presidential potentials have virtually allowed Obama a walk-over in this race.

The author’s considered opinion is John McCain is ‘sleep-walking’ through the campaign. He said he wrote Fleeced for McCain to read it. As for Hillary Clinton, it was not a good idea for her to highlight ‘experience’ to a constituency of Democrats who are sold on ‘change’ as the prime campaign point. Talking about ‘experience’ in Democrats’ primaries, said Dick Morris, was akin to talking ‘abstainance’ in the French primaries.

The other factor that did in Hillary was her lack of appreciation of the power of the Internet. In contrast Obama has built up a formidable online following. Mr Morris reckoned Barack Obama had a million online donors who keep funding his campaign, whether or not he won a given primary. Hillary’s fund-flow dried out along the way.

Referring the Clintons’ ignorance, and lack of faith in the Internet Dick Morris observed neither Bill nor Hillary even knew how to type. They believed in drafting speeches in long-hand. And the former Clinton political strategist referred to an incident when Mr Morris had to draft a State-of-the-Union address for Clinton.

President Clinton tossed at Dick Morris an yellow writing pad, asking him to get on with the speech, while the latter was used to keying in such stuff in his laptop. Clinton didn’t want this. For, according to Mr Morris, the President didn’t want anyone in the White House to know his State-of-the-Union wasn’t authored by him.

As Mr Morris put it, they produced an IBM electric type-writer on which he pounded out the speech, working late at night in the White House. Clinton walked in now and then to take away the type-written stuff, page by page, for copying on his yellow-pad, in his left-handed scrawl. So that he could brag the next morning to his aides about how he worked on the speech through the night.