Hasta La Gadget!

Like its Nexus phones, Google picks one hardware company to design its Nexus tablets. The Nexus 7 was built by Asus and the Nexus 10 was made by Samsung. This time around, the honors went to HTC to craft the Nexus 9. Neither a 7-inch or a 10-inch tablet, the Nexus 9′s 8.9-inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and Android 5.0 Lollipop are out to take out the obvious […]

Nexus 9 Review

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When it comes to smartphones with styluses, we’re sure many think of Samsung’s Galaxy Note series and the S Pen that usually accompanies the device. This is because the accompanying stylus is more than just a stylus and has been optimized and designed to work in sync with the smartphone itself.

While LG has a stylus phone of its own in the form of the LG G3 Stylus, it isn’t as prominent but if a recent trademark filing is any indication, the company could be looking at making a renewed effort. The trademark filed is for a device called the LG G Pen. Unfortunately apart from the name, it is unclear as to what exactly this device could be.

The trademark filing covers a variety of product types, ranging from smartwatches, tablets, smartphones, and so on. We expect that this was done just to cover their bases, but hopefully we will be able to find out more about the device in the future. It is possible that it could be the name of a stylus accessory, or it could be LG’s renewed effort at making a phone with stylus support, like what Samsung did with their Galaxy Note series.

For all we know this could be a feature that might debut with the LG G4 which presumably is set for a launch in 2015. In any case we’ll be keeping our eyes and ears peeled for more information, but in the meantime what do you guys think the LG G Pen could be?

LG Files Trademark For “G Pen”, Hints At Stylus Plans

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NEW YORK (AP) — A jail guard accused of skipping her rounds and falsifying the logbook to cover it up was charged Monday in connection with the death of a mentally ill inmate in his stifling 101-degree Rikers Island cell.

Carol Lackner faces multiple counts of falsifying business records, filing a false instrument and official misconduct charges for falsely indicating she checked on homeless ex-Marine Jerome Murdough and other inmates every half hour Feb. 14 even though video didn’t show her doing so, according to prosecutors.

Lackner pleaded not guilty and was released; she didn’t immediately respond to a voice mail message seeking comment, and her lawyer didn’t return an email or phone call. She faces up to four years if convicted on all counts. Her next court date is Feb. 17.

A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney said Lackner was offered a deal in court to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and resign, but she rejected it.

The Associated Press first reported the shocking death of the 56-year-old Murdough in the overheated cell, after a city official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Murdough “basically baked to death” when he was left unchecked for at least four hours overnight as malfunctioning equipment caused his cell to overheat.

Murdough’s Feb. 15 death – along with the horrifying death of another mentally ill inmate in a similar mental observation unit five months earlier – prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to convene a task force on how the mentally ill fare in jail. Last week, de Blasio announced that task force’s findings, saying he’ll spend $130 million over the next four years to improve how the mentally ill interact with the justice system, before, during and after jail stints.

Lackner, 34, was suspended for 30 days after an investigation found she left her post 20 minutes before Murdough was discovered unresponsive in a pool of his own blood and vomit in the hot cell. She’s the only Department of Correction official so far to be criminally charged in the case.

Documents obtained by the AP showed she was disciplined by jail officials four years earlier for abandoning her post, leaving Rikers entirely without permission while working in the women’s facility of the massive jail complex near LaGuardia International Airport. The AP also reported then that Lackner, an eight-year corrections veteran, couldn’t be seen making the required tours on surveillance footage despite the logbook entries.

Her attorney, Damond Carter, told the AP in May that Lackner denied accusations that she left her post without permission. He said she had been brought in that night as a relief guard after effectively working three straight shifts and, while she felt the excessive heat, wasn’t informed of any complaints regarding it. He also said it was unfair to lay all the blame for Murdough’s death at Lackner’s feet.

Murdough, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was on psychotropic drugs, which experts say can make a person more sensitive to heat. The medical examiner ruled his death an accident.

His mother, Alma Murdough, had intended to sue over her son’s death, but city officials agreed to a $2.25 million settlement before her lawsuit was filed.

“She should never have had that job,” Alma Murdough said Monday after being informed of the charges, adding she hoped Lackner was convicted and sentenced to prison.

Department of Correction officials suspended Lackner upon her arrest. She had previously been placed on modified duty. She surrendered to the Department of Investigation on Monday.

DOI investigators, who referred the case to prosecutors, found that Lackner falsely verified she’d conducted the count of the inmates in Murdough’s unit and said she’d conducted five tours of the housing area between 11:30 p.m. Feb. 14 and 2:30 a.m. Feb. 15, according to an indictment.

Murdough was discovered unresponsive at about 2:50 a.m. by another jail guard.

Murdough had been arrested on a misdemeanor trespassing charge for sleeping in an enclosed stairwell in a Harlem public housing building and sent to Rikers after being unable to make $2,500 bail. His family didn’t learn about his death until they were contacted nearly a month later by the AP.

Also Monday, jury selection began for another Rikers Island jail guard. Terrence Pendergrass is accused of ignoring the pleas of a dying inmate in 2012 after he swallowed a toxic soap ball. He is charged with one count of depriving the rights of 25-year-old Jason Echevarria.

The news that a recent survey has established that 27 percent of Indians still practice caste untouchability is not, in many ways, news at all. Most Indians have grown up in an India where we have seen such behavior, though the kind of people who read English-language op-eds probably think of it as something that happens in rural, backward villages rather than urban India.

But this survey also packs a few other surprises. It shows almost every third Hindu (30 percent) admitted to the practice. That is, they refused to allow Dalits, the former “untouchables,” into their kitchen or to use their utensils. But bizarrely enough, data from the survey showed that untouchability was also practiced by Sikhs (23 percent), Muslims (18 percent) and Christians (5 percent). These are faiths that pride themselves on their enshrining of equality and the brotherhood of faith. Dr. Amit Thorat, the survey’s lead researcher, at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, was quoted by the Indian Express as saying, “These findings indicate that conversion has not led to a change in mindsets. Caste identity is sticky baggage, difficult to dislodge in social settings.”

These findings — confirming the persistence of the iniquitous practice of caste discrimination across India’s religious communities — came on the heels of the outrage that greeted a prominent journalist, Rajdeep Sardesai, on social media when he tweeted his joy that two members of his caste of Goud Saraswat Brahmins (GSBs) had been elevated to the Cabinet in the latest government reshuffle.

Part of the reason for the controversy, undoubtedly, was surprise that a sentiment one might associate with, and therefore more easily accept from, someone more traditional and perhaps rural emerged from an English-educated urban professional and certified liberal. People of Saredesai’s ilk tend to disavow caste loyalties as unworthy relics of a more unequal pre-independence past. As intellectual heirs of a freedom movement that explicitly rejected caste and outlawed caste discrimination, we aren’t supposed to admit to caste feeling even if, in some cases, it lurks somewhere beneath the surface.

Any elitism Sardesai acquired at the elite educational institutions he attended (Campion and Cathedral Schools in Bombay, followed by Oxford University) would normally be assumed to be an elitism of merit, of respect for education and cosmopolitan values. Caste pride sits oddly with such a background.

Or does it? I am conscious of my own bias in the opposite direction. The son of a Keralite newspaper executive who dropped his caste name (Nair) at college in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s exhortations to do so, moved to London and brought his children up in Westernized Bombay, I am a product of a nationalist generation that was consciously raised to be oblivious of caste.

“We aren’t supposed to admit to caste feeling even if, in some cases, it lurks somewhere beneath the surface.”

I still remember my own discovery of caste. I was a ten-year-old representing the 6th Standard in an inter-class theatrical event at which the 8th Standard’s sketch featured “Chintu” (Rishi) Kapoor, younger son of the matinee idol and producer Raj Kapoor, later to become a successful screen heartthrob in his own right. I had acted, elocuted a humorous poem and MCed my class’s efforts to generous applause, and the younger Kapoor was either intrigued or disconcerted, for he sought me out the next morning at school.

“Tharoor,” he asked me at the head of the steps near the toilet, “what caste are you?”

I blinked my nervousness at the Great Man. “I – – I don’t know,” I stammered. My father, who never mentioned anyone’s religion, let alone caste, had not bothered to enlighten me on such matters.

“You don’t know?” the actor’s son demanded in astonishment. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Everybody knows their own caste.”

I shamefacedly confessed I didn’t.

“You mean you’re not a Brahmin or something?”

I couldn’t even avow I was a something. Chintu Kapoor never spoke to me again in school. But I went home that evening and extracted an explanation from my parents, whose eclectic liberality had left me in such ignorance. They told me, in simplified terms, about the Nairs; and so it is to Rishi Kapoor, celluloid hero of the future, that I owe my first lesson about my genealogical past.

So I grew up thinking of caste as an irrelevance, married outside my caste, and brought up two children to be utterly indifferent to caste, indeed largely unconscious of it. Even after I entered the hothouse world of Indian politics, I did not consciously seek to find out the caste of anyone I met or worked with. I hired a cook without asking his caste (the same with my remaining domestic staff) and have entertained all manner of people in my home without the thought of caste affinity even crossing my mind.

“I grew up thinking of caste as an irrelevance, married outside my caste and brought up two children to be utterly indifferent to caste.”

India is a land of multiple identities, and one of the key identities, inescapably, is caste. To some, it’s an instrument of political mobilization. As the “backward caste” Yadav ascendancy in north Indian politics has repeatedly demonstrated, when many Indians cast their vote, they vote their caste. English-speaking urban Indians may scorn such behavior, even while accepting it as part of India’s political reality. After all, none of us would object if a Dalit leader advertised her pride in being a Dalit or called for Dalit solidarity. It would be the Indian equivalent of America’s “Black is beautiful” slogan or black pride campaigns. But the outrage at Sardesai is, of course, because the journalist’s not a member of an oppressed community celebrating its achievements. He is someone at the top of the heap, not merely a Brahmin but a Goud Saraswat Brahmin at that — the member of a tiny elite. And he’s thrilled about members of this privileged tribe acquiring even more power and prominence.

But could it be that his attitude reflects not so much casteism as an admission of its diminished appeal as a badge of identity? Had Sardesai celebrated the elevation of two Campionites, or even two Oxonians, in the same spirit, no one would have objected (except maybe people who went to rival educational institutions). But isn’t it possible that his unreflective celebration of two GSBs suggests that his attitude to caste is so casual that he thinks of it as nothing more than the equivalent of any one of the other labels he can also claim?

“India is a land of multiple identities, and one of the key identities, inescapably, is caste.”

Had the journalist thought consciously that his tweet would be interpreted as casteist, he surely would not have issued it. Instead, perhaps, there’s an element of post-modernism about the entire fiasco. He said what he did not because his caste matters so much to him but precisely because it doesn’t. He doesn’t base his friendships, his hiring decisions or his political preferences on the basis of caste, and so he unselfconsciously applauded his fellow GSBs the way he might have applauded two members of the same cricket team, the same journalistic fraternity or the same social club as himself. GSB is just another type of identity he shares with others.

At least, that’s what I choose to believe. I haven’t asked him myself. But I don’t need to. Caste won’t disappear from the Indian landscape. Too many political and administrative benefits (and disadvantages) derive from your caste affiliation for that to happen. For many Indians, as the NCAER survey demonstrates yet again, it still matters greatly that they inter-marry with, dine with and admit into their homes only people of analogous castes. For someone like Sardesai, who married outside his caste, abhors caste prejudice and thrives in an eclectic social environment, caste doesn’t matter in quite the same way. To upbraid him for casteism is like calling India’s first prime minister, the secular atheist Jawaharlal Nehru, casteist for allowing people to refer to him as “Pandit” Nehru.

In other words, caste will always be there but, as this episode unconsciously reveals, for many of us it doesn’t pack the same punch it used to. If it becomes more and more one of many interchangeable, mutable forms of identity — one fraternity of many that an Indian can lay claim to — it can cease to matter so much. The majority of Indians aren’t there yet, which is why the offending Sardesai tweet was greeted with such shock. But if we can’t escape being conscious of caste, let’s be conscious of it like him as the equivalent of an old school tie, nothing more, nothing less. That will remove its sting.

And then maybe more people will let Dalits into their kitchens when the next survey rolls around a few years from now.

Let’s face it: Not every wedding kiss is romantic-comedy worthy.

Leave it to the folks at Awkward Family Photos and Buzzfeed to surface the strangest pictures ever snapped after “you may now kiss the bride.” Watch the video above and see for yourself.

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