The Golden 80s

Flying Squads, Task Force: Supreme Court OKs Steps To Curb Delhi Pollution: NDTV Air pollution is local and trans boundary. There is a limit to which it can be controlled locally, unless you have great scientific expertise.   If you don't have an urge for your surroundings to be clean and clear, such enforcement using police may not earn much.  Air pollution control and management is a daily affair and never a seasonal affair.

On October 27, 2021, the supreme court of India ordered that an independent expert committee will investigate the revelations made in the Pegasus spying controversy.  The committee of experts decided by the top court will complete the probe in eight weeks.  The following are the news sources for this story. The page will be updated later.  LiveLaw India Bar and Bench

According to the New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage, an appositive is "a word or a phrase that identifies the noun or pronoun that immediately precedes it.".  Appositive phrases in English language explains or identifies the nouns or pronouns in a sentence. If these phrases are not essential to the meaning of the sentence, they are separated with commas.  Example: Amazon is launching Astro, its first household robot, powered by its Alexa smart home technology.  But if you look at your favourite newspapers or websites, nobody cares about these rules. Appositive phrases are aplenty, set off with an opening punctuation like comma, and not closed with the same punctuation.  "Persistent Systems founder and chairman Anand Deshpande, a newly minted Indian billionaire says being in the ultra-rich has changed nothing other than the number of people now saying that they know him," said a news story on  MoneyControl.com . The editorial desk did no...

 Our newspapers still contain mistakes that could have been avoided with some rechecking.  Here's one from The New Indian Express , Bengaluru edition dated August 12. Even after five days, the same headline was seen on the web page.  This is another one from a Malayalam newspaper Kerala Kaumudi where the chronological order on a report on the Thiruvananthapuram Airport's history appeared incorrect:

 Every day around 7.30 a.m. people start guarding the vaccine gate to salvation. In the beginning, there is discipline.  In an hour the crowd swells and restless conversations will start. Bikes and cars roam around looking for parking space. Someone blows a whistle. People are busy talking to someone on their mobile phones.  Sometimes, there are arguments and shouting until the 'Marshals' arrive to restrain the crowd and enforce the discipline.  Finally the gates will be opened, they walk briskly, and the residents heave a sigh of relief.  By 10.30 a.m. the noise and the crowd disappear and the gates remain closed as if nothing has changed. 

A glacier broke off at Joshimath in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Sunday, resulting in floods and killing around 150 people.  Around four power projects were damaged, bringing the focus back the concerns raised by scientists and environmentalists on the fragile Himalayan glaciers.   More details are waited as rescue efforts are on. 

It will take months or even years for this road dug up during the pandemic to return to normalcy.  The hapless residents will have to put up with such constant degradation of road facilities.  

In the 70s and 80s, school principals used to instruct students to read English newspapers such as The Hindu for improving English skills. But the last three decades had seen an erosion in the perfection of sub-editing across English newspapers in India. One can see lots of grammar and spelling errors, poor sentence structures, misleading headlines, and heavily editorialized news.  In keeping with the highest traditions of professional journalism, The Hindu had issued a correction to an error that I pointed out on Twitter on Dec 1, 2020.   On its front page, a news story had an error about the end date of the current Assembly term in Karnataka. Instead of 2023, the news story mentioned the year as 2013. A silly mistake.  On Dec 2, The Hindu on page 4 published a correction.  But the same story on the newspaper's online edition  (accessed on Dec 2, 10: 50 am IST) had a different text. The edit made created a grammatically weak sentence at the end of the res...

In a paper, No evidence for increased transmissibility from recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2 , published in the Nature Communications journal, the authors state that none of mutations identified lead to the increase in the spread of Covid-19.  This definitely is good news.  The paper also lists three ways in which the SARS-CoV2 virus mutates in infected humans: Mistakes in copying errors during the replication (multiplication) of the virus. Interactions with other viruses in the affected human cells. Changes in the host RNA modification systems. The paper says that out of the identified total of 12,706 mutations, about 398 strongly supported recurrent mutations were observed. It also added that the genomic diversity of the virus remains low, but vigil should be maintained continuously.

If you think air pollution can be controlled by maintaining the status quo, then you are probably mistaken. Pollution is linked to our day-to-day activities. It is the stark reality. In Bengaluru, the primary reason behind air pollution is that there are lots of vehicles on the road, especially during peak hours. The more vehicles that you add to the existing number, then the air pollution will keep on increasing.  Air pollutants do not vanish overnight. They stay in the air and they will react with other chemicals to form toxic compounds that create eye irritation and respiratory issues. If night temperatures are less, the chemicals trapped in dense air will disappear next day only.  To reduce air pollution in Bengaluru, do the following: Reduce the number of vehicles This is the saddest and the most controversial solution that nobody will agree to. There are over 83 lakh registered vehicles in Bengaluru, says a report in the Deccan Herald newspaper. The city has to reduce i...

FSD stands for Full Self Driving . The term is famously associated with US-based electric vehicle company, Tesla. So, you have FSD software and FSD cars.  The Verge reported that Tesla released their FSD Beta software to a select number of users. The report says that the Beta release "...will enable drivers to access Autopilot’s partially automated driver assist system on city streets. The early access program is used as a testing platform to help iron out software bugs." Meanwhile Elon Musk had tweeted that he "Will be extremely slow & cautious, as it should."

 I am not a big fan of India's prime time debates, especially those by the so-called national media. I still scour the print media for news and editorial views and social media for comments (both valid and stupid).  To me, most of the prime time debates are just one-sided cacophony and in a democracy like India these unprofessional conduct should have been regulated and punished long back. It may be the case that as a trained journalist, I can research more on the fare dished out and check facts and fake news by all forms of news media.  Such a luxury may not be available to all viewers and they then become the primary victims of targeted propaganda through social media.  Against this background, I was not at all surprised at the belligerence in which the anchor at NDTV was shouted at by an 'expert'. The discussion was about the booming stock market amidst a tanked economy and a pandemic.  Stock markets are not the best indicators of an economy . So it is ridic...

News about the promising results from the vaccine against Covid-19 developed by Oxford university created some buzz in the India media. The news was flashed from July 20 evening after the university itself broke it.  The study was published by the medical journal Lancet . The vaccine - called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 The BBC said the vaccine produced antibodies and T-cells that can fight Coronavirus in the 1077 patients tested. It also added that the vaccine is made from a genetically engineered Chimpanzee virus that can cause infection similar to Coronavirus and can trigger antibodies and T-cells to counter the virus. The Times of India added an Indian perspective and reported that the "Serum Institute would seek regulatory approval for clinical trials of the vaccine in India.  The Indian Express as usual had an explainer that compared and listed the vaccines that were under development worldwide.  Overall the Indian press looked bullish about the prelimi...

The European Court of Justice's order yesterday striking down the EU-US Data Protection Shield in the Schrems II case is a big win for European privacy activists. The court, according to Techcrunch , ruled that the US surveillance laws and data protection supposed to be provided in the EU-US Data Protection Shield"...interference with the fundamental rights of persons whose data are transferred to that third country”. The portal also states that because of this ruling "more companies (may) switch to regional data processing for European users". Austrian privacy activist and lawyer, Max Schrems, had approached the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) to suspend Facebook’s use of standard contractual clauses SCCs . The data regulator took him to court and later Irish judges referred the case to Europe’s Court of Justice, which delivered this order. CNN reported that around "5000 US companies rely on for transferring information across borders" and t...

I searched Facebook posts also when I heard that the Twitter accounts of several blue-ticked celebrities and the rich were hacked. BBC reported that the Twitter accounts of "Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among many prominent US figures targeted by hackers in an apparent Bitcoin scam". A message was also posted seeking Cryptocurrency donations to these accounts. In an explainer, The Indian Express reported that "the Bitcoin wallet promoted in the tweets received over $100,000 via at least 300 transactions." The Hacker News carried a speculation that "that hackers grabbed control of a Twitter employee's administrative access to take over a prominent account and tweet on their behalf". If this the method used, then it is a very disturbing news. And it also raises questions about at whose all behest can an employee 'take over' another account. Can authorized company personnel do it on the company's behalf or can a stat...

A day after Google announced its big five-year plan to invest Rs 75,000 crore in India, most of the newspapers splashed stories on the latest suit against the search giant. Google faces lawsuit over tracking in apps even when users opted out, was the headline in Indian Express . Its story talked about the latest data privacy violation suit slapped by the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, against data collection even after users had turned off “Web & App Activity” tracking and when in Incognito mode. Looks like the same Reuters copy was published in leading news sites such as News18, Livemint and Times of India also. Add caption Interestingly, a piece in The Print  tried to lay out why the tech giants are turning to India. From self-reliance to helping the battered banking sector and the ready mobile payments ecosystem, this piece provided hints on where the proposed investments may end up or prove beneficial. Let us keep our fingers crossed. But it does not ponder...

Google's plan to invest $10 billion in India has created lots of buzz in the tech, government, and industry sectors. The Times of India says that Google will work in areas as diverse as 'affordable access to information in local languages', 'building products', 'digitizing businesses', and applying 'tech and AI' areas like 'health, education and agriculture'. Livemint says the proposed fund will be raised through a 'mix of equity investments, partnerships, operations, infrastructure and ecosystem investments'. The announced projects include tie-ups with CBSE, Prasar Bharti and a 1 million grant to Kaivalya Foundation. The Indian Express added that the proposed investments will also be made through projects such as Internet Saathi and the AI-based flood forecasting system. A Techcrunch report details the education projects Google already have in India. Overall, the reporting was bullish about the proposed investment by the...

A missing vowel, O, creates a new virus in Times of India, Bengaluru, story titled Disinfection: Businessmen in Bengaluru make killing amid scare .

A report in Bengaluru's Deccan Herald today says that "...Air pollution in Bengaluru dropped by an average 28% during the Covid-19 lockdown".The report cites a study on PM 2.5 levels that decreased during the lockdown as an indicator of air quality improvement. It is not scientific to conclude that a decrease in one air quality indicator (AQI) results in overall air quality improvement or reduction in air pollution. This is because PM2.5 is just one AQI parameter used to measure the air quality level in India. Other pollutant levels need to be tracked to know whether their levels have decreased or not. This include Ozone, oxides of Nitrogen, Sulphur Dioxide, PM 10, and Ammonia.  A report by the Centre for Science and Environment says that Ozone levels saw a spike in many cities that were supposedly clean during the lockdown. The same report states that Bengaluru had an average PM2.5 level of 45% during the lockdown and NOx level have increased by 38%. This furth...

It’s is yet another World Environment Day and the world is in lockdown because of Covid-19. While all of us care about the environment, there are three issues that are worth pondering over today. Governance : Some say that the main beneficiary of Covid-19 pandemic has been the environment. During the period of complete lockdown in India, the air quality was better and the noise levels were less. Social media users posted pictures of how they could see faraway mountains from their terraces, as the thick brown haze disappeared from the skies. But still things are not that rosy. We are still unhappy that despite nearly 30 years after the famous Rio Summit, our rivers remain polluted, forests are being destroyed, wild animals are being killed, and life in cities and villages are becoming difficult. Why is this so? What we are missing is strong and scientific Environmental Governance. Just like the anti-corruption charade, environmental protection has now become annual one-day affair...