The Golden 80s

New Scorpions Song : The first single that I heard from hard rockers Scorpions was Still loving You followed by the smashing Sails of Sharon . Meanwhile, the new single Rock Believer turned out to be disappointing. Setback to AI Hype : IBM's decision to sell off parts of its Watson Health business has come as a setback to AI nerds. In a tweet, Gary Marcus termed the decision as a "staggering collapse of its ambitious artificial intelligence effort". Another War : The Ukraine-Russian tangle dominated the week's headlines indicating the probable beginning of another cold war. Indian Cricket in Trouble : India lost the ODI cricket series against South Africa after a promising first test win in one of the final frontiers. The loss triggered the speculation that all is not well in the team. The series saw some poor batting, especially the middle order, and some pointless bowling. Neil Young Rocks Spotify : Alleging that Spotify is spreading fake information about vacc...

From this year, I have decided to post weekly updates about things that I have noticed more than others.  Joe Satriani's New Single Virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani is back with a new single and new album. I and my friend watched the song, Sahara's, premiere on YouTube. The new single was an OK one similar to the songs in the Strange Beautiful Music album with the typical Satch flourishes, but it fell short of some strange expectations. The new album is titled  The Elephants of Mars . Covid-19: Kerala Imposes Sunday Lockdown My home state of Kerala went to a complete lockdown on two Sundays starting today after the Covid-19 positive infections spiked dramatically in many districts. The state capital and Ernakulam fared the worst, as there were reports and group messages of entire families getting infected. Meanwhile, Karnataka lifted the weekend curfew from Jan 22, but decided to continue with the night curfew.  Jacinda Postpones Marriage  New Zealand Prime Ministe...

A lazy Sunday prompted a quick review of the The Hindu newspaper's new look. But on page 19 of today's Bengaluru edition, there is a broken headline. Australia's spinners get a...? says the headline about the visiting Aussies tour against India A. The Chennai edition accessed online had a different headline for the same story: Shreyas leads India-A reply. It has to be assumed that someone tried to add a different headline based on the story's intro and forgot to adjust the space or recheck the proof.  The Sunday edition seems to have some interesting content to look at. While the body text font, Publico, looks OK, the Guardian Sans font used for the briefs looks too small for the eye. The brief news looks a tad too smaller compared to the body font on other stories. May be it is an individual opinion.  I will post a review of the content later. So far the weekend content does not look that impressive. 

The Indian cricket team, which was defeated in the recent home Test series , appeared comfortable while playing the Twenty-twenty games. While the shorter version ended in a draw , with both teams winning a match each, the body language of the Indian cricketers looked much better. Frankly, I did not understand why the rookie pace bowlers were allowed to bowl the last few overs of the match. So, create three separate teams for the three formats of the game. Let there be an exclusive Test team, ODI team , and T20 team. Ideally, I would like to see three captains, and specialist batsmen and bowlers for each format. Such a strategy will ensure that there will be variety, a larger pool to select the team from, and more opportunities for youngsters. There is no point in continuing with the old strategy that puts too much emphasis on individual records and letting the greats play all forms of the game. Individual scores really matter when it results in victory or saves India from defeats....

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lamented the other day that Indian science lagged China and promised increased GDP outlay for science and R&D. When every child is brainwashed to become an enginner, doctor, or software engineer, and then settle "abroad" earning crores, who wants to be a scientist in poor and undeveloped India? Also, the establishment and the media still consider "satellite launches and Solar Eclipse" as the biggest science stories of the day! "There is not only an absence of big ideas backed by political conviction, but there is also an intellectual vacuity," says an editorial piece in D eccan Herald . It is not just in politics, in all spheres of Indian life there is a big hole. All we are bothered is how much skin has an actor displayed on our websites.Our media is hell bent to ensure we also have beauties who can expose just like Western beauties. Just like that! Cannot help from saying that this is an excellent intro: ...