"Press"ing Issues

Off late I have been following Indian newspapers a lot less than I used to before. I blame my new web browser for this! I switched to google chrome recently because firefox started crashing on me a lot. Earlier, there used to be so many times during the day when I opened a firefox window and sat staring at the startup page wondering where to go. Then I dropped down the navigation toolbar and picked one of the recent websites I visited. Google chrome does not have the drop down on the navigation toolbar. So what I want to do on the internet is no more a multiple choice question.

Timesofindia.com and ibnlive.com used to be part of my daily routine. It is the second best thing to do when I am at work, in front of the computer and have nothing else to do (the first is checking my email! NOT google chat!) I always used to think of Timesofindia as my daily dose of tabloid. Being the No. 1 daily in India, it would have been suicide for them to miss Kareena Kapoor's latest comments on Shahid Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan. Ibnlive was different. Their business model was focussed more towards sensationalization. I used to really enjoy many of these articles everyday.

Inspite of all the print/TV media bashing that many "Urban, English Speaking, Mayawati hating Indians" have been exercising, the fact remains that we are all still glued to that news channel/website. We end up picking the news channel which is closest to our own views and spend the rest of the evening either agreeing or disagreeing with what they have to say. In a democracy, newspapers are supposedly the voice OF the general public FOR the general public.

When I was growing up, during the times of Doordarshan, I used to really dislike Karan Thapar who never let the person sitting across the table speak. He was the quintessential "put words into your mouth" journalist. Undoubtedly, his research in those talk shows was phenomenal. And he asked really pressing questions. But he was no Tim Russert (Meet the Press).

Now, in retrospective, Karan Thapar seems to be a very pleasant man. Today we have all the Rajdeep Sardesais, Sagarika Ghoses and Arnab Debs who like to maximize their own screen times during talk shows. In most of their talk shows, the focus seems to be on covering the maximum NUMBER of issues and not on putting any one issue closer to a resolution.

The recent incident that comes to my mind is the coverage on the Abdul Kalam incident. Sagarika Ghose conducted a talk show where she had three people on a Face the Nation program. What followed was fairly predictable stuff. Sagarika Ghose was fairly clear about what she wanted to hear. She was in the complete VIP culture bashing mode. And to this objective, she made sure she put enough words into people's mouths, gave generous screen time to the "liberal, true indian citizen" guy (T S R Subramanian) and gave just enough screen time to the congress leader (Manish Tewari) so he could make a fool out of himself without getting a chance to finish what he was saying.

Its actually quite entertaining to watch all these people jumping up and down on their seats trying to make sure they get heard. Of course I might find it super annoying if I saw all this on a day to day basis. But the direction the media is taking the public is scary. Ibnlive has this section called Citizen Journalist. And this is what I recently saw on that! I think these newspaper people really need to get together and decide whether they want to project themselves to be liberals or conservatives. Whatever happened to the days of Sukanya Balakrishnan at 9.00 pm on Doordarshan when newschannels didn't have to make that decision!

Return of the Machine!

A long time ago, I went off on a long rant when the only CNC machine in our lab broke down for the first time since I started working in this lab. Its been four years since and by now I am totally accustomed to the idea of the CNC machine breaking down every now and then. Its kind of like a reflex reaction now. Restarting the computer AND the CNC machine solves the problem 95% of the time. If not there is some part that needs replacement. It usually takes about 2 weeks to figure out "which" part needs replacement. Then another 2 weeks to GET the replacement part and another week or so to replace the part. The machine kept breaking so often that we felt the need to get a new CNC machine two years ago.

So this time the newer CNC machine broke down. Obviously a 4 week backlog was going to ensue. So we decided to buy ANOTHER CNC machine. My boss came to know of this CNC machine in the market which cost $2000!!!! It was un"frikkin"believable! Our previous machines cost nothing less than $20000. This was 1/10th of the price. So what did they do? Did they go to the Junkyard, get a bunch of parts and put it together? We ordered this machine. 2 days later we got the answer to our previous question. Yes! They did to go to a junkyard to pick up parts and No, they didn't put it together!

The box they sent consisted of about 50 parts and the picture above! I was super excited! I got to play with all these parts and spend a full day building my own CNC machine! 3 hours later the beautiful piece of equipment on the right was sitting on one of the tables in our lab. I was extremely proud of myself. I had assembled an entire CNC machine on my own. Then it got me to thinking. How hard could it have really been? Obviously the company who made it thought it wasn't. Also it is fascinating how technology has progressed since the first CNC machines. The day may not be far when people who want to buy a car get a bunch of screws and motors along with a scary looking drawing like the one above.

The more pressing question is, Can we really resist technology? I obviously feel super excited whenever there is a new piece of machinery in the market which can do cool things. It is something like an occupational hazard I have to probably live with for the rest of my life. The only difference between me and these gadget freaks is that what "I" fancy costs a "little bit" more.

My dad resisted cell phones for the longest time. He refused to carry one! He thought it was invasion of privacy. It took a LOT of convincing and finally he caved. Now, a few years later, I am resisting the idea of the Smart phones. The G1s and the iphones are things that I want to keep away from because this time "I" think it would be invasion of privacy. Today when I don't answer my phone, I always have to answer so many questions like "Why didn't you pick up my phone? Were you intentionally ignoring me?" and such! Emails are easier, I can reply when I feel like. But if people find out I have a smart phone, I might be robbed off that luxury as well.

I know I am fighting a losing battle here. I am going to fall prey to this thing sooner or later! The real question is how much longer?

How much do Post Docs make?

How you would wish some mistakes were never rectified!!! :D