Books Update - Nov 2022

 Writing a post after a long time. 

The following books were too boring and were queued for exchange:

1. The Wall by John Lanchester

2. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

3. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and Climate

It is now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster, says The Guardian report on the latest reports from the IPCC. 

What exactly are these reports? The IPCC website says, "The IPCC prepares comprehensive Assessment Reports (AR) about knowledge on climate change, its causes, potential impacts and response options. It adds that "The IPCC also produces Special Reports, which are an assessment on a specific issue and Methodology Reports, which provide practical guidelines."

The latest reports called AR 6 reports are on the following:

• AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2022
• AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change
• AR6 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

The IPCC Working Group II (WGII) assesses the impacts of climate change, from a world-wide to a regional view.

This is what I understood after reading a slew of news reports:

• Substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions beyond what governments committed.
• Emissions gap of 14 to 23 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent in commitments by countries.
• Countries like India must focus more on renewable energy than coal.
• Drastic changes in urban planning and biodiversity conservation
• Changes in lifestyles including a reduction in demand of non-essential items

BBC lists five ways to solve the climate crisis. 

But all these measures may help if peace prevails in the world, an alternative to GDP,  which recognizes unbridled material production, is devised, and substantial changes to lifestyle is implemented. 

Otherwise, such reports will just result in newspaper articles, editorials, op-eds, seminars and webinars, fellowships, and grantts. 

In the end, things will remain the same. 

Sea Erosion or Coastal Erosion?

In an interesting news story on the plight of the people affected by coastal erosion, I noticed how the word 'sea erosion' has been used throughout the story. 

In this Mongabay India story about the east coast of India, 'sea erosion' appears 16 times in the story! The story is basically an anthropocentric one about the plight of the villagers and fisher folks affected by coastal erosion. 

Back to early 1990s. In the university library, there were thick hardcover textbooks of Geology that I used to refer to during my MSc studies. Of all the textbooks, Alan Strahler's Physical Geography was the best for me. His textbooks were beautifully illustrated and excellently written. One will fall in love with the subject of Geology just because of his textbooks. 

Thirty years later I bought a copy of Strahler's textbook. It is top class as always with vivid descriptions of additional topics and meticulous organization. 

The book does not mention 'sea erosion' at all. The index entries are all on coastal erosion, because the hard-hitting sea water erodes material from the fragile coast. The reverse of erosion, accretion, is pretty slow and at a lesser rate. 

Too much jargon in news stories puts off readers. But the use of 'sea erosion' paints the sea as a villain, whereas human beings have not bothered to protect the coasts for decades.

Week Ending Jan 30, 2022

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 vaccines, rocker Neil Young asks the streaming service to remove his songs. Supporting him, in an open letter., Joni Mitchell also asked Spotify to remove her songs from the streaming site. 

Republic Day: India celebrated the 73rd Republic Day with the beating ceremony not featuring Mahatma Gandhi's favourite song, Abide With Me. The withdrawal sparked public outrage. 

Week Ending Jan 23, 2022

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 Minister, Jacinda Arden, postpones her marriage as Covid-19 cases mount in the country. This is a rare show by a PM at this age of pandemic. 

Indian Cricket in Trouble After Losses in South Africa

Indian cricket started 2022 with a test series loss to relatively weak South Africa after some poor batting and clueless bowling in both the tests as well as the ODIs. The series was marred by Kohli's resignation as Test captain. The side lost the ODI series also under the captaincy of K L Rahul casting doubts over coach Dravid's efficacy and needless controversies over the skipper. The last match is on today. 

Past Comes Back in le Carre Classic

Finished John le Carre's Legacy of Spies novel. The past catches up with Pete as the wards of past bloopers approach the legal system for justice. The Spy Who Came Out From The Cold comes back strongly in this novel. 

Air Pollution is Both Local and Global

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.

Pegasus Spying: Supreme Court Orders Probe by Expert Panel

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

Why Writers Need to Know About Appositive Phrases

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 not see it fit to add a comma after 'billionaire'.

If the error is corrected, the sentence will be read as:

"Persistent Systems founder and chairman Anand Deshpande, a newly minted Indian billionaire, says..."

This problem of wrong punctuation is not restricted to this website. But you can find it everywhere with an alarming variations in incorrect usage.

Media Watch - Aug 17

 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:

Waiting for Vaccine!

 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. 

Glacier break in Uttarakhand kills hundreds and damages power plants

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. 

City Images

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.

 

How The Hindu Newspaper Corrected an Error!

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 respective paragraph. This poor sentence remains unedited on Dec 2. 

Three Types of Mutations in SARS-COV2 Virus Infections

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.

10 Steps to Reduce Air Pollution in Bengaluru

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 its vehicle numbers. Reduce the number of diesel vehicles whether they are private cars, cabs, buses, or lorries. 

Phase out old vehicles

Discard vehicles that are old and polluting than the rest. Allow only healthier old vehicles to remain with stringent anti-pollution standards. Allow exceptions based on well-defined criteria. For example, the poor and farmers may need some exceptions. 

The traffic police authorities can also cancel the registrations of vehicles against which more than three grave traffic violations have been reported. If the violations are more than five, consider sending these vehicles to a local reuse and recycle economy to provides jobs to local people. 

Cap vehicle registration

Consider a quarterly or annual cap on vehicle registrations. Link vehicle registrations with air pollution levels. For example, if quarterly air quality data exceeds the defined levels, stop or slow down registrations. Consider an annual cap on SUVs. Make this process transparent. 

Revamp fuel policy

Review the fuel policy and ensure that you move towards greener, less polluting fuels. Stop adulteration of fuels on a war footing. Start a helpline to let citizens to report fuel adulteration. Set milestones on how you will achieve this. 

Improve public transport

Strengthening public transport is the universal solution for air pollution control. But public transport stacked with hundreds may not be ideal. Encourage suburban railway networks with good bus connectivity to inner areas. Don’t leave commuters stranded at railway stations. 

WFH

The Covid-19 lockdown has proved that working from home does work. It can be the new normal and not a reluctant exception. Encourage work from home or work from anywhere policies among trusted employees. Provide incentives to employees who use public transport more than private vehicles. 

Create cycling lanes

Another universally recommended solution to curb air pollution. But perform a pilot health study before you create cycle lanes. High temperatures, poor roads, heavy traffic, suspended particulate matter (SPM), and air pollution pose risks to cyclists. 

Regulate diesel generators

Even residential areas are not free from loud diesel generators contributing daily to the particulate matter pollution in the city. Daily power supply disruptions are the primary reasons why these generators are widely used. 

Develop a green construction policy

Bengaluru needs a sustainable construction policy whether it is for residential areas, high-rises, office space, or for the metro trains. There is tremendous air, water, and noise pollution from construction activities in the city. There is nobody to regulate the pollution caused by construction activities. The levels of noise and dust pollution caused by bore well digging is unimaginable in any other modern city.  

End solid waste burning

Burning of solid waste on the streets is very common. Residents realise only when the acrid smell reaches their nostrils. Residents can play a big role in stopping this practice by forming neighbourhood teams to report such violations to the authorities. 

What is FSD?

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."

Indian News Media and Fallacy of Expert Opinion and Arguments

 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 ridiculous to consider stock market variations as an evidence of the health of the economy. And investors are not the 'real' experts that the media should be inviting for debates on economy and issues of farmers. 

In every channel, one can see such 'experts'; some are called 'political observers'. What exactly is this 'political observer' and what is the criteria for dubbing someone as a political observer. In India, everybody has an opinion on anything under the sun. In that vein, a man on the street is also an observer. 

How many poor people have you seen, except in times of tragedies or natural disasters, in TV studios? How many poor farmer leaders have you seen in prime time debates? How many poor workers, who left the cities following the lockdown, did you see on these national television studios? How many reporters interviewed them, except for suitable sound bytes for ground reports? How many environmentalists did these channels feature in their discussions? 

Since we all know that the answer is No, then how can we expect these news media to serve as the Fourth Estate? There is no discretion in including 'experts' in prime time discussions on Indian news channels. To 'balance' the debate, channels include political spokespersons and 'independent' spokespersons who support a party. 

But the biggest problem is including rich or successful people as experts when they are actually 'political operatives'. In the past, we have seen investors, advertisement professionals, the so-called activists, corporate honchos, and actors in news studios who are actually willing partners in the larger political script and propaganda. 

When you don't practice discretion in including experts, when you try to 'balance' opinion by inviting political operatives. there is no debate, but cacophony. The viewer's right to facts gets thwarted here and it just becomes absolute waste of time and energy. 

So, go back to newspapers, talk to people that you know, learn to perform your own research, abandon prime time discussions, and say no to fake news and propaganda. Indian democracy and your world will be much much better. 

Oxford Vaccine Trial and the Indian Press

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 preliminary results of the Oxford vaccine trial and hoped that in 6-8 months the vaccine may offer the much needed succor to many. 

Big Win for Privacy as European Court of Justice Invalidates EU-US Data Shield

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 they will be now affected with the ECJ order.

BBC said that "Affected companies will now have to sign standard contractual clauses, as per EU laws.

As privacy activists celebrate the ECJ ruling, can India learn anything from this?

Twitter's Blue Tick Bitcoin Hack Raises Alarms

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 state agency make such a request?