The World is Flatter

Earlier today police fired tear gas on people protesting the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. Those poor bastards are pissing against the wind. 

Because the other day, when Bollywood, Google, and a Tajik crossed paths, they blew away the notion that anyone can or could control the globalization beast.

Back in the early 1980's, Bollywood made yet another movie that was as amazing as it was awful. Spoiler warning - how bad, you ask? Mithun (the star) got "guitar-phobia" when the bad guys hooked up 5000 volts to Mithun's electric guitar to kill him - but fried the star's unfortunate mother instead. One of the several un-note-worthy song-and-dance sequences in the movie is "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja" ("Jimmy, come hither"). Long after the movie ran out of steam in India, it percolated in Central Asia's movie houses and soon had a cult following (boy - do they need help...). We tend to focus on India's outsourcing industry as a symbol of globalization - but Bollywood is India's most potent globalization beast.

Enter Tajik Jimmy - the "un-global". We are told he is Baimurat Allaberiyev, an ethnic Uzbek from Tajikistan.  A one-time sheep hearder, cotton picker, construction worker, stock room guy, and now recording artist. TJ can render all of Jimmy Aaja using a stockroom table, his knuckles, and his vocal cords. All the disco music, the male singer and even the falsetto female singer (that Bollywood is infamous for). And one-man Bollywood band with panache.

Enter that most ubiquitous of globalized technology - the mobile phone. TJ's buddies recorded him on their phones and played them back and forth. According to BBC, one such recording made it to Moscow.

Enter YouTube - that startup sensation before Twitter and before Facebook. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion a few years back. 7 billion videos are viewed on YouTube each month (more than one for every man, woman, and child on earth). 20+ hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute (that's a ratio of 72,000:1). But is YouTube global? Three-quarters of that content comes from outside the US.

Sometime in early June, someone's brother in Moscow uploaded 2 minutes and 53 seconds of TJ's video while others the world over uploaded the rest of the approximately 19 hours, 57 minutes, and 7 seconds of video that same minute. TJ's video went viral.

Friedman and Nilekani said that the world was flat. That was in 2005. Vivian - it's a whole lot flatter now. What will it look like when you are old enough to wonder? 

Skoki Valley

Vivian - I found a couple of pictures on Flickr (thanks, bosco). They show Ptarmigan Lake and Baker Lake in the Skoki Valley in Banff National Park, Canada.

Ptarmingan - the lake in the first picture - becomes visible very suddenly after a short clamber up Boulder Pass. My first thought was - hey - here's a zero edge lake. When you reach the zero edge, you see Baker down below you. Gunaraj and I camped at the far end of Baker. Horses take visitors and provisions to the Skoki Lodge. So we can put you on a horse and hike out there.

I Propose

We were driving back from Ikea in the rain. Vivian was chatty as usual. I can't even recall what it was that she wanted. But she said "I propose that...". After a double-take, I attempted verification. "What did you say?". She said again "Mommy, daddy - I propose that..." followed by whatever it was that she was proposing.

I don't know when I first proposed anything. But it surely wasn't when I was two-and-a-half.

Peanuts?

Months ago I taught Vivian a few handy anatomical terms but Jo didn't approve (specifically of "anus"). So I dropped it. Through disuse, the terms have mutated in Vivian's brain. Penis is now "peanuts".

That brings us to this morning. We were in Room 6 waiting for Dr. Z, Jo's trusty OB/GYN. He entered and started telling Vivian how beautiful she was. She interrupted "Doctor - my mommy has a baby in her belly and it's getting bigger and bigger and I'm going to be a big sister".

This announcement inevitably led to cold alien-green jelly being squirted on said belly and sound waves being directed at said baby. Vivian stood up on my lap and peered somewhat anti-climactically at the squirming ultrasound image of our new tadpole. She was silent for a second or two. Then she said "Daddy - does the baby have peanuts or a huha?".