The Golden 80s

Yet another typo on LinkedIn's pages. I do notice such mistakes daily on newspapers, emails and websites. But when it is on Linkedin, I can't stop writing a blog post.  On such an topical conversation, this was pure laziness. So, there goes my first post of 2020. Let it be a nice year!

A report on the Deccan Herald daily said that in Kengeri area of Bengaluru, power supply was disrupted after a 40-year-old tree fell on a couple of electric poles. In the last paragraph of the story, it says, "The electricity poles were expected to be replaced and power restored by late Saturday afternoon.". I was reading this report on Sunday morning. That is, nearly two days after the incident happened. So, was there was no one in the newspaper who could confirm whether the power supply was restored on Saturday evening? Would it have been better if the reporter had verified this and asked the desk to update the story? How difficult was this verification? What does this silly lapse say about Indian journalism? Irresponsible or shoddy? Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/city/bengaluru-infrastructure/a-dark-night-for-parts-of-kengeri-after-tree-fall-783655.html

Bengaluru was known as 'Garden City' because of its greenery, tree-lined avenues and parks. Officially there are 1247 parks and many 'undeveloped' parks. There is a park right opposite to my house. There are trees with bushy crowns, small trees, benches, and play area for children. In the mornings, I can see people of all ages walking, running, jogging. In the corners, lovers cuddle, pinch, squeeze, kiss and hug their emotions. In the evening the park gets noisy as children go wild, as expected like an unknown script. But the nights are dangerous. As the yellow streetlights are switched on, lumpen youth get in. in the dark corners, they scream, smoke and drink and smash the liquor bottles. Youth gone wild. The bottles, cans, and plastic covers are thrown around the trees and benches. A few are thrown out directed at someone's cars or bikes outside. Some are really creative: they throw the bottles under parked cars. Planting or destroying evidence. The re...

Typos are everywhere. You know it better than me. But typos in job portals? How can a well-known company justify it? This one is from the lord of job networking, Linkedin: This one is from a list in another job portal: It is laziness that is 'written' over typos and not lack of knowledge. It does affect your brand. It is not a 'small thing' as developers and QA say. It is serious.

One of the reasons why garbage disposal remains chaotic, inefficient and unscuccessful in India is the fact that the people think they have a right to generate waste. Once we create waste, we then decide to dump it on public spaces and wait for the municipal authorities to dispose it. The following waste appeared one fine day right opposite to my house. Why did someone dump it here? It took three weeks, multiple calls to BBMP, and then political help to remove the waste, as the corrupt garbage collector refused to remove it. If the responsible citizen had done some due diligence, should this tree waste could have been avoided? Citizens get the garbage disposal they deserve. They should understand that they have absolutely no right to create waste, dump that waste onto the roads, and lament that the municipal authorities did not remove it. 

In their enthusiasm to report the fire at the Bengaluru Aero Show 2019, the city's own Deccan Herald published a badly subbed copy with redundant expressions. In a report titled Over 300 cars burnt as massive fire engulfs Aero India , the newspaper copy trieds its best to sell the story, but with some stale expressions. The reporter does like the word, billow, which appears multiple times in the story. Then comes a slew of expressions, just to hype the disaster. In the Times of India also, there were redundancies galore in reports about the fire. The report says "an unextinguished cigarette butt or a short circuit" as probable reasons for the fire. Cambridge Dictionary defines Butt as the "part of a finished cigarette that has not been smoked!"

For such a simple sentence, this grammatical error is unpardonable.

The India media's expertise is primarily on politics, cricket, entertainment, and business. Their forte is not on science, unlike other well-known publications like The Guardian or the New York Times. When I read the headline, Mandya's lake man to build 15th pond with award money , I was not all surprised. I was sure that normal readers may not find the words, Lake and Pond, that intriguing. A discerning reader or someone who have studied Ecology will notice that there is something wrong here. A lake and a pond are not the same thing strictly from an ecological science point of view. Of course, they are static water bodies of varying sizes. But there are obvious ecological differences. One is there are man-made lakes and there are lakes borne out of natural phenomenon such as volcanic eruptions, retreat of ice sheets and earthquakes. Technically, there are differences in the structure, energy flows, ecological stratification, flora and fauna, and so on. There is an intere...

AP big story reports that the literary magazine, The Strand Magazine , has published an unpublished story from 1956. The story is titled, A Room on the Garden Side. AP reports that the story is "...Steeped in talk of Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas..." and is set in the writer's favourite city. Here's the link to the AP news story.

I like small blog posts. I think big posts, ranting on and on, are just fake. Synthetic and contrived. Created to impress. Soulless.Plastic. There is a song called Fake Plastic Trees from Radiohead. Poetry is rich, right? The experience the few words evokes is matchless. The neuronal networks it spawns are tremendous. I like to write brief blog posts.Small ones. If I have left anything unsaid or missed anything. you may fill it. 

Peter Bergen , CNN's national security analyst, asks some questions about the air strikes launched by US and its allies. In India, The Hindu asks what did the strikes achieve and what will be the response. Other Indian media seem to have been not aware of this development. There is a book club meeting today that will discuss books on World War I. I am sure someone will say this may be the beginning of another war. For the beleaguered Indians, what exactly is in store?

A blog post in Psychology Today says that the conservatives and the liberals reject evidence inconsistent with their ideologies. The report says because of asymmetrical ideological motivation "conservatives are more dispositionally distrustful of scientific evidence than are liberals. Also,  symmetrical ideological motivation  "...motivates people on the left and the right to reject evidence inconsistent with their ideologies..."

This page lists the new species of plants and animals discovered. The list is based on newspaper reports and will be updated till end of this month. Mesosticta davidattenboroughi - A type of damsel flies, shadowdamsels, named after Sir David Attenborough. Discovered from Burma. The hyperlink has a list of species named after David Attenborough. Hundreds of potentially new species of fungi discovered in the deep coral ecosystem from the University of Hawaii researchers. New species of Monkeyflower reported from Shetland, UK. Capinatator praetermissus, a new genus and species of arrow worms (Chaetognaths). New species of grass snake identified in England, says Guardian . Xibalbaonyx oviceps , a new species of giant sloth discovered from Mexico. Cycas pschannae and Cycas dharmrajii are two new Cycas species discovered from India, taking the total number of species in India to 14. New Species of Ocean Sunfish , the World’s Largest Bony Fish, discovered, says t...

Well known is the heavy metal Mercury's bioaccumulation in fishes and crabs. But a new study by University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, says that Mercury can affect the gene expression in algae found in aquatic ecosystems. The researchers studied the set of all RNA molecules that controls gene expression using molecular biology tools in a species of algae known as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The study says: "...mercury disrupted the metabolism of algae, with numerous genes being deregulated, regardless of whether the concentrations were comparable with those set by European environmental standards." For more information, click here to read the study details.

How will you identify whether a news link, an image or video that you have received from your friend on Facebook or Whatsapp is fake or not? The SMELL test will help you check whether hundreds of messages circulating as news on various media is fake or not.  The SMELL test involves the following: S is for Source: Does  the news story mention the source of the news. From where did the reporter get the news. Have they quoted anyone? M is for Motivation : What exactly is the motivation? Is it to inform the reader or is it to mislead people? Is it to create a controversy, tarnish someone's image or to affirm our bias? E is for Evidence . What evidence is provided for supporting the news? Is there any contrary opinion provided or is there is any scope for a different angle? L is for Logic . Does the news look nonsensical? Is it just statement of facts or is there any editorializing? Are certain facts hyped to assert the writer's viewpoint?? L is for Left out...

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. 

Yeah, what caused the fire in the polluted Bellandur lake in #Bengaluru? Let us look at what the media reported: "...Fires are often sparked by deadly effluents in the lake, but this time, it was a pile of burning garbage that caused the scare." said Deccan Herald.  The Hindu newspaper quoted unnamed firemen and said " the fire originated in the thick layer of hyacinth in the lake". "...But they are clueless on what set the hyacinth on fire," added the newspaper. The New Indian Express in a report titled, Bellandur lake spews fire , named the reasons as methane from industrial waste, solid waste and rise in ambient temperature!  At least the editorial teams must have checked how and from where a gas called methane is created.  The Financial Express went ahead and made it even worse by saying that the entire city choked because of smoke. Is it? I was feeling better yesterday after a few days of allergic rhinitis , which is common in Bengal...

I am not a big fan of opinion polls, because I think I have the common sense and the knowledge to decide by myself whom I should vote for. I also don't want any marketing firm to tell me what is the 'mood' of the nation. My vote is purely my vote and I don't care what others think of the prevailing state of affairs in my country.  Let us look at the latest PR exercise and spin done by a media house that I trust the least. The following are the reasons why I distrust this sham poll and will kick it out of my window: Interviews with a few thousand invisible Indians are not a scientific methodology. So, can you publish the methodology of the survery, including how it was analysed and conclusions arrived at.  Why was the survey done only between Dec 30 and Jan 9. What prompted the agency to select this period? Why was this agency hired for the poll? What were the terms and conditions between the agency and the media house? What was the age profile of the responde...

Business Standard  is a pink paper published from India. This tweet raised my eyebrows, as the word, 'Braveheart' has been the Indian media's cliche for a rape victim. I searched the major dictionries and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. There was no word called Braveheart in any of the dictionaries. At least officially! And there is no reference in the Online Etymology Dictionary . " Braveheart  may now be used allusively to encapsulate a view of Scottish nationalism maintained against English oppression," says  Encyclopedia.com There was Mel Gibson's Braveheart in 1995. I remember the hype on the glossy mags and television. I did not watch that movie. To impose a non-existing word on the media audience is a crime. 

In the India of early 90s, there were no CDs, DVDs, or mp3s. There were only audio tapes. And one among them was a recorded version of Malmsteen's Rising Force album. I, along with a few of metal friends, was overawed by the sheer creativity and neo-classical wizardry of Malmsteen's lead solos. There were a few who hang up their guitars, admitting that they cannot ever play like Malmsteen. Malmsteen along with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai was too much to handle in those days. In fact we did not want Malmsteen to join other bands. We wanted him to keep on releasing one classic album after the other. David Chastain faded into memory because of Malmsteen. I was overjoyed when I read Malmsteen is making his first visit to India, that too for a not much hyped festival in the north eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh . Disappointed that I could not go to watch the master, or think about going, I thought a post on Malmsteen is due. Let me share one of my favourite Malmsteen songs...