Media Rant #0983098

When the media talks irresponsible nonsense about some serious stuff like Foreign Policy, or half-as-serious stuff like b school rankings, they tend to get away with it.
When they serve up their regular tosh about cricket, they get easily found out.
Spot the difference.
Simple: The average man's intelligence with respect to cricket is pretty good.The same cannot be said about his/her knowledge about "worldly" topics. Of course the wiser among us are able to ridicule some of the things that come from the media. But that is a miniscule minority.
I guess the media would defend themselves by claiming that they are only doing their job of "encouraging debate". Well. They are correct on that front. They are encouraging debate. The issue is only in the way they are trying to. Which is disputable imo. The average cricketing fan knows the difference between a srikanth's opinion and a boycott's. But he/she may not be able to distinguish opinions with similar effectiveness in other topics. For instance, you and me are not experts to figure out whether outlook's or business today's methodology for ranking b schools is better. Of course, over a period of time we would be able to do it better than now. But, until a critical mass of people have that threshold level of intelligence, I am afraid that a large number of people would get misguided.

Funda #87309

Funda #87309:
When there is space available to ask questions and seek more information, then ask!

Something I ve observed in people is that people tend to use their existing knowledge base as a tool to get the missing information. I agree its a good method, but to be put to use when u dont have other methods to get the same information, like, asking questions. When you take into consideration that any person's knowledge base can be incomplete, you have a popular source for "errors in communication".

Peeping into the rivals' camp

Does Arsenal signing Diarra from Chelsea signify that 4 3 3 is gonna replace the 4 4 2 as the most commonly used system in the League?

A bit of cricket for a change

Here s my two pence on Sachin vs Lara:

When Lara debuted for WI, cricket was a major sport in the Caribbean. When he retired, looks like things are a far cry from those days.
When Sachin debuted for India, well, cricket was the only sport that had any semblance of mass following in India. It still is the same. Just that the size of the mass has grown considerably.

When cricket started declining in WI, there were other sports to take over. like basketball.
In India, the moment it seemed like it was on a decline, they d go and win a test in Australia ('03), reach the WC final, or more recently, win a test series in England. which would mean that the fickle masses would be back.

Whatever u make of the above factors, and the impact of ganguly, dravid and kumble on Indian cricket, Sachin is the man who took this mass madness up atleast a couple of levels higher. If not for sachin, none of the other cricketers would be earning as much from endorsements as they do now.

And Sachin played with a shit team during a large percentage of his peak years.
Lara played with a shit team during the latter part of his career.

As far as ponting is concerned. I hate him. Like i hate all aussies except gilchrist and gillespie.

And here s one way i can express it: Ponting is having his best years when Sachin looks past it and when Lara is about to retire.

General Questions I

1) Why are leftists in general regarded as "Intellectuals" when a lot of them can easily pass of for utter dumbwits?
2) Would the media be as powerful if everybody had a good IQ?
3) Media has the responsibility to reflect public opinion and the power to influence it. Surely that makes it too powerful?
4) Why is India obsessed with mediocrity? Cricket, Bollywood. It hurts me even more when i see the attitude prevailing here in Korea: either u are the best or u are no one. Of course it helps to have the luxury to demand high which korea has. but does that mean india doesnt have anything else to be proud of? to feel that its the best in the world? Why arent people, for instance, obsessed about the half a million genres of music u find here?
5) How many of u have even thought of donating money to wikipedia? in spite of being hooked onto it for everything. leave Google cuz its a money making monster without our donations.

EPL Questions I

Questions bothering me at the beginning of the new English Premier League Season:
1) Can anyone give me one logical reason why liverpool will finish above arsenal, leave alone win the title?
2) The biggest criticism of United's squad last year (that won the league, reached the FA cup final and the Big Cup semi), was a lack of depth in the attacking department. They bought tevez, hargo, nani, anderson. Any more logical reasons why they cant win this season also?

about this blog

the idea of blogging perfectly suits me. i seem to have a lot of things to tell ppl. not necessarily discuss. mind u. and its obviously unfair to find ppl who are willing to listen to all those thoughts. this blog atleast gives the space to talk. and i am happy to be in a deluded enough state to believe that ppl read what i ve been writing. :)

About Google AdSense

Here s a thought about google adsense:

would it evolve into something as useful as "related links elsewhere on the internet" ? considering that the ad links they post over there are customized according to the page content.

P.S: thats how i landed on the Jesus page. fyi.

About Jesus

Here s an interesting piece about Jesus Christ i found along the way:
http://y-jesus.com/jesuscomplex_1.php

Some ppl say he s only a moral teacher. not a God himself.
There s a line towards the end of the essay in which an expert ridicules that stance. i liked the observation.
the gist of that is that Jesus claimed he was god a fair few times apparently. So, if he was not actually god, then how can he be a great moral teacher when he was lying or, was he in some kinda delusion?

An evening for Seoul searching!

I wonder whether i am in a "foreign" and "prosperous" country. Atleast the subway ride didnt convince me that i am indeed in one of the few "developed" economies of the world. The stench at the subway [though a flavour different from the one that u would come across in chennai/mumbai]. The general crowd behaviour. The random beggar inside the compartment. Even the guy who sells those nifty things during a train journey. An almost rickety ride through the shantier parts of the country. [though the reasons for the last one are understandable]. Atleast you dont find the compartments jam packed. Nor would you be able to find that sack-in-the-corner where u ll try innocently, to rest ur ass.
Some nice things that you would find are pretty females wearing 4 inch long "shorts". And a heterosexual couple expressing their attraction towards each other more liberally.
It is also interesting to notice the density of shops in general. Even the Suwon subway station includes a massive shopping mall. The under-ground tunnels used to cross roads are massive shopping mazes as well. perhaps thats all cuz of capitalism, prosperity, higher circulation of money etc.
Perhaps the best[most embarassing for me as well] part of the day was when we banged into a korean who spoke much better hindi than i. he apparently had come all the way down to delhi university to pickup english and hindi language courses for 6 months. nice and exciting to meet a person who can speak hindi in korea. even more exciting when u bring in a dozen sweet looking females into the picture. they seemed all geed up to try their hand at hindi when they saw us.and seemed quite liberal about handshakes. and hugs. :) they were promoting some international youth film festival happening in the adjacent movie hall.
we got a free ticket to a romanian movie. which portrayed life and times during that communist/dictator/both ceaucescu's rule. movie was quite nice. [even excluding the juicy teenage sex that was part of the movie :)]not necessarily refreshing.
What was nice to see while we were returning home at 11pm was that it looked as lively as at 6pm. [Perhaps livelier. Especially when i noticed a bevy of women , standing in front of Hotel Ritz, twitching their feet the moment they saw us :D] [ I slept as late as 330am. :) ]
As u would ve noticed, i am struggling to end it in a half decent way. So. THE END. Huh!

PS: Even a Nike Showroom in downtown Seoul which looked like a proper man utd(read park ji sung) exclusive outlet doesnt have named jersey's for sale :( they apparently dont have the license to print the names or something like that.