"Think Outside the Nidifice": Endangered Words & How to Save Them

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Wednesday November 03, 2010 · 1:08 PM PDT

2010/11/03 · 13:08

Ever been inconsolably distraught that no single word in English describes the condition of "being without eyebrows"? Say, when you were preparing to make an argument about whether your dog has them (i.e.<span id="search" style="visibility: visible;">, eyebrows) </span>or not, for a major televised debate? How happy would you have been to learn that there actually exists such a word, or rather, existed such a word: "epalpebrate"? Or maybe at some point in your life, you wanted to characterize something as being "small and cup-like in its shape," without having to resort to such a cumbersome superabundance of words. Perhaps you once needed to describe cow's ears to someone who'd never seen them. "They are shaped like little cups" just sounds forced, right, and awkward? Well, fret no more-if you find should find yourself in that situation (again), you can describe the ears as being "pocilliform." (What a snazzy, compact little word, eh?)

usreeb

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Monday February 22, 2010 · 4:38 PM PST

2010/02/22 · 16:38

There is something sexy about the term: "international student." It's an integral part of my identity, writ into my scholarly badge as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley...For the past six years in California, I have rarely introduced myself simply as a graduate student; I'm importantly an "international student-from India." And yet, I understand this term but little. It now feels as if it alienates me as much from the land here, as it makes me homeless in the land I left behind.

usreeb

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Saturday December 12, 2009 · 7:19 PM PST

2009/12/12 · 19:19

About an hour ago, I woke up groggy in the pre-dawn hours in a satellite town of New Delhi, India. Almost with automatic first-thing-in-the-morning reflexes, I searched for "Berkeley" in Google News, and was horrified to see a story entitled "Protesters attack Berkeley chancellor’s home." According to the official UC Berkeley news release,

a group of about 40 to 70 protesters stormed Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau's home on the north side of the UC Berkeley campus, smashing planters, windows and lights while shouting, "No justice, no peace." They also threw incendiary objects at the house, which could have caused a major fire.

usreeb

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Tuesday December 01, 2009 · 11:02 AM PST

2009/12/01 · 11:02

Along with thousands of UC (University of California) students, staff, and faculty members, I participated in the recent massive system-wide three-day strikes organized to protest the proposed 32% hikes in tuition fees. Apart from a move to cancel classes, the strikes included a particularly inspiring production of Waiting for Lefty, protest marches, Open University, trash-ins, and other events. The Wheeler standoff, of course, ended up being the most talked about media event, eventually leading to the arrest of 41 individuals. At the time of this writing, there are thousands of news stories circulating about the events from that week. The next week brought with it a rally against police brutality, a candlelight vigil against police brutality, and a sit-in at the University of California Office of the President (UCOP).

usreeb

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Tuesday September 22, 2009 · 12:07 PM PDT

2009/09/22 · 12:07

President Obama made some surprising comments recently about the blogosphere during an interview with the editors of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade:

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

I am somewhat astonished by his comments, or at least his way of framing the news aggregating and disseminating juggernaut that is the blogosphere. Obama, a self-confessed "newspaper junkie," aligns "[j]ournalistic integrity,...fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting" with newspaper-based news, whereas (as you can see from the quote above) the blogosphere becomes a space of opinions chaotically swirling around, with little accountability or sense of responsibility for "facts." The former, affirms the President somberly, is "absolutely critical to the health of our democracy."

usreeb

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Friday August 14, 2009 · 7:42 AM PDT

2009/08/14 · 07:42

This evening, Sunehri Market, the local bazaar, was awash in green, white, and deep saffron, the colors of the Indian flag. There were tricolor kites, delicate (miniature) paper flags, exercise wristbands, streamers, paper caps, garlands, towelettes, artificial flower bouquets, and cloth flags. This is in anticipation of tomorrow, which is Independence Day, the 62nd anniversary of Indian freedom from British colonization. It marks the end of an ugly and oppressive era in Indian history, and the birth of a sovereign nation. As a native of New Delhi, I have always felt pride that my hometown, the capitol, witnesses the biggest celebration of I-Day (televised nationally); the PM (Prime Minister) hoists the national flag at the famed Red Fort, a symbolic gesture that makes me as teary-eyed now as it did when I was a little kid. I haven't been in India for 15th August in 8 years, but I will be celebrating it here tomorrow. And the celebrations got started a little early...

Poll

65 votes Show Results

Are you of Indian origin?

65 votes Vote Now!

Are you of Indian origin?

Yeah! :)

38 votes

No!

27 votes

Tweeting The Revolution

usreeb

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Tuesday August 11, 2009 · 8:51 AM PDT

2009/08/11 · 08:51

This summer, protests have been breaking out in Iran over the "election" of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President. The dissenters comprise of supporters of the candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who are convinced that the election has been stolen from them. I have been following the protests avidly since mid-June, not only because it is happening in a country that neighbors my own, India (and has rich cultural and linguistic ties with it), but also because of how the protests were popularly relayed to the outside world: through the social networking site Twitter. The use of this new technology for organizing protests and relaying news has riveted MSM (mainstream) news sites and the blogosphere, and been much discussed in general public discourse. The Revolution, it was said, would be Twittered.

Poll

13 votes Show Results

Do you use Twitter?

13 votes Vote Now!

Do you use Twitter?

Yeah!

5 votes

Nein!

7 votes

Whaaaaa?

0 votes

(G) Obama!

1 vote

The criminalization of homosexuality in India

usreeb

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Wednesday July 01, 2009 · 10:02 AM PDT

2009/07/01 · 10:02

The media was recently electrified by the news that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (drafted in 1850, a hangover from the British colonial rule), which criminalizes homosexuality in India, was going to be repealed. This discriminatory law calls for imprisonment for life for engaging in homosexual acts. On the eve of a major constitutional challenge, it seems to be backtracking a bit. Section 377 "criminalizes same sex sexual behavior irrespective of the consent of the people involved," and is currently facing a constitutional challenge at the Delhi High Court.

usreeb

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Sunday June 07, 2009 · 11:33 AM PDT

2009/06/07 · 11:33

In an effort to buy chairs in bulk from a warehouse for my project in an orphanage in a city in North India, we ended up in a rather remarkable part of town that I have never had occasion to visit before. We didn't have the exact address when we started; my mother's friend's daughter's husband had "heard of a place" somewhere near Harola, a bustling jhuggi (slums) not far from where I live. We were going to drive around the general area and ask people, a kind of a "social" GPS that most people use to locate places in India.

Within minutes, we ended up in the middle of a kind of farmer's market. Fruit sellers were selling all kinds of seasonal wonders like lichees, mangoes, melons, Java plums, "jamrul's, and watermelons.

usreeb

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Wednesday June 03, 2009 · 9:07 AM PDT

2009/06/03 · 09:07

My days begin and end on blogs: charged, electrified, inter-active textscapes that are like no other...chaotic, always-in-motion, dynamic "journals" where it isn't the processed, polished product that's of value, but the product-in-formation, the process, the processing.

Hyperlinks, like branches curling out into endspace, send us hurtling across countless textdoms, as if on unending treasure hunts...

Poll

36 votes Show Results

How often do you visit blogs?

36 votes Vote Now!

How often do you visit blogs?

Several times a day.

16 votes

All the time, even in my sleep.

11 votes

Once a day.

4 votes

A few times a week.

1 vote

A few times a month.

2 votes

Almost never; in fact...wait, is this a blog?

2 votes

Race: No Qualification Necessary?

usreeb

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Friday May 15, 2009 · 9:39 PM PDT

2009/05/15 · 21:39

A couple of days ago, I chanced upon a very provocative piece entitled "I'm In Ur Base, Imitatin Ur Doodz!" posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates on his blog at The Atlantic Online, where he's a contributing editor. Here's what caught my attention:

Often when a white person wants to give his opinion on something racial, he'll preface it with something like "Now, I'm not black but..." or "Hey, I'm just white but..."[...]
Whenever someone says that to me, I just kinda shake my head and give them that annoyed "Will you just make your [expletive] point, white boy" look.
And then I started writing about gay marriage, and yesterday, about the ethics of outing, and I found myself in my head saying, "Now, I'm not gay but..." or "Hey, I'm just a straight guy but..."[...]It's the weirdest thing. You keep thinking to yourself, "Maybe I should shut the [expletive] up now." And yet, you don't...

usreeb

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Monday May 11, 2009 · 1:21 PM PDT

2009/05/11 · 13:21

Samajwadi Party (a regional Indian party) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's campaign promise to abolish the use of English, "angrezi hatao" (Remove English) in UP (Uttar Pradesh, a north Indian state) has been causing quite a bit of tumult. Mulayam specifically promised "to ban English in education and computers in new projects." My parents live in UP, in the satellite town of Noida (a suburb of New Delhi), and so this is something that's of some significance for me; and since I plan to spend my summer there, this is a news story I have begun tracking closely in recent days.

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"Think Outside the Nidifice": Endangered Words & How to Save Them

A Trip to the Taj Mahal

A Morality Tale: Violence in Student Protests

Student Protest at UC Berkeley

Obama Takes on The Blogosphere...?

Indian Independence Day

Tweeting The Revolution

The criminalization of homosexuality in India

The Knife Juggler of Harola

Confessions of a Blogaholic

Race: No Qualification Necessary?

An Indian State to Ban English?