This guy could change the gender balance of the Indian American community? Yikes!

An interesting story about ads for The Fertility Clinic, a Los Angeles-based center that claims they have the "world's largest and most successful PGD sex selection program," running in Indian American media.

When I arrived in San Francisco as a country-bumpkin from the Midwest, I often found myself standing by the hole in the ground at the corner of Jackson and Kearny in Chinatown. I had seen the amazing documentary The Fall of the I-Hotel back in college and I was amazed that the space was still being protected. It was the last year of the dotcom boom and all the history of displacement seemed incredibly relevant.

It’s been almost two years since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. While the major focus has been on the failure of the government to provide support to the majority African American community in the 9th Ward, the resilience of the Vietnamese American population in New Orleans East – a suburban community 15 miles northeast of downtown New Orleans – has been getting a great deal of attention. Both academic research and mainstream media seem to point to the idea of a hard-working community whose been through much worse than Katrina's destruction.

Samina Faheem Sundas is doing the damn thing.

I've never been one of those New Yorker magazine junkies, like many people I know. I guess I'm more of a secret New Yorker junkie because I have enough things piled up in my life to feel guilty about not getting to. But the annual "Summer Fiction Issue" is kindof a must for me. I picked it up a few weeks ago on the way back from a trip to Mexico and have been carrying the increasingly more tattered thing around with me ever since.

I was poking around make-up megastore Sephora the other day while waiting for a meeting and came across this display for Shalini Vadhera’s Global Goddess line. Come to think of it, I was actually looking for some concealer that would match my skin tone and there it was – a whole line of beauty products made by a South Asian woman, catering to different skin tones.

I've been meaning to post this disturbing story for some time.

So, I’m not sure if anyone watched the reality show – or docu-soap – I’m From Rolling Stone on MTV, most people didn’t.

MC Hammer shows his love for Asian America and Hyphen magazine at the opening gala for the 2007 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Hammer played talent agent Roy Thunders in Justin Lin's Finishing the Game which opened the festival. Photo by Bernice Yee

I’ll have to say, there’s nothing like a giant theater full of Asian Americans and a party with free Lychee Martinis to make you feel good about your community.

I'm not sure there is anything that new in the "Trying to Crack the Hot 100" story in the style section of Sunday's NY Times, but it was interesting that it was in the style section.

Long-running Asian American weekly AsianWeek is facing criticism for publishing a column by writer Kenneth Eng entitled “Why I Hate Blacks.”

It's been about six months since Mr. Hyphen was crowned Asian American royalty. We were wondering what exactly he's been up to ...

Last week, an Iranian UCLA student named Mostafa Tabatabainejad was tasered several times by campus police when he did not show his student ID in the library.

So, Thursday night is the premiere of the new season of Survivor, this time set in the Cook Islands. But as you all probably now by now, the twist this season is that the 20 contestants will be split into teams based on their race.

Here is an amazing article from the L.A. Times about a retired F.B.I. agent who was willing to put his reputation on the line to debunk the confessions in the Lodi case.

British Sri Lankan rising superstar M.I.A. has been denied a visa to visit or work in the United States.

Do you guys ever notice that when you're specifically caught up thinking about something, you start to notice it everywhere?

So the verdict came out this week on the Lodi terrorist case: A jury convicted 23-year-old Pakistani American Hamid Hyatt guilty of giving material support to terrorists.

When I first read that Harvard sophomore Kaavya Vishwanathan got $500,000 from publishing company Little Brown & Company for a two-book deal, I was fascinated.

I know the festival is already in full-swing, but I just wanted to point out some awesome South Asian picks for you to attend in the next few days. And the best thing about the South Asian films is that if you miss them this weekend or this week, you can make a field trip out of it next weekend and head down to San Jose and maybe stop for some yummy South Indian food on the way.

If you are Asian American and not yet registered in the national registry, there are a series of drives being held to help save the life of Filipina American filmmaker Christine Pechera.

When I was a little Indian kid growing up in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, I would often face confusion about my ethnicity and race from my fellow classmates. I remember riding the school bus home from school and being crushed into a green rubbery seat with my friend Michelle and her little sister. We were bouncing along the street and Michelle was pointing out the window at people in passing cars and informing her little sister on the ways of the world.

Michelle: See, that lady in that car is Mexican and she is bad because she takes all our jobs.
Little Sister: Oh, okay. (Looking over at me with a confused look.) What about her?
Michelle: Oh, she’s okay. She doesn’t count.
Little Sister: (Still looking confused.) Oh?