What has happened to Google news?

Was a big fan of google news. Yes, it is now in past tense.

Seriously, the first time I had clicked on the News link when it was there, I was hooked.

You got world news on top. You almost clicked the news button on top and what you were looking for was usually the number 1 link.. right there as though they read your mind!

You could also scroll down just half a page and fast flip links to things that interest you!

Now, it is all messed up. You get local weather which we don't need google to tell us. Based on searching (through google) looks like the changes are permanent and there is no plan to give an option to revert back to the old settings! Apparently that is to help the user!!

Local news which we usually don't care about.

Taking off any flexibility of even seeing what you want in a format you want, all in the name of personalization.

Why did Google do this?

Did they ever ask folks in the top of the news page "Are you happy with Google news? do you want any changes? Do you want us to be more like Bing news or Yahoo news? If we copied those pages would you still read Google news?"

etc. etc. and my bet is the answer would have been "do not mess with this product" from most folks who read it.

Why Google? Why?

Why would a company that was doing a lot of things right now doing a lot of things wrong?

The mess with Buzz, now the mess with News?

Do you hire too many people from Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook recently?



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Life sentence - for a long life

A guy receives a life sentence for 1,152 years in a US court.

(no, I checked. It is not a typo. the sentence is for 1,152 years)

He killed a sports person. He was found guilty. Now he has this sentence.

Couple of questions in all seriousness.

a. How does one calculate the 1,152 number?

b. Why cannot they truncate it to "life sentence" ie.,as long as he is alive.

c. What if he lives past 1,153 years. He will be set free?

d. What does it say about the people who gave out the sentence and their sanity in the first place?

e. If you are a judge and you read this sentence out aloud "he is hereby sentenced to a life sentence of one thousand one hundred and fifty two years in prison", do you go !!!!????

f. If you are a taxpayer and your next 23 generations (assuming increasing life expectancy, a couple of world wars, global catastrophes in between over the next millennia) have been committed by this judge to feeding this dude, will you go ???!!!


g. what about the family of the dead sportsman. will they be happier that this guy is locked up for a long long long time?

h. Is there any sanity left in our news these days?

i. are we supposed to look for the crazy side of news articles to get a healthy disregard for news in general?

Look at news like this..

god knows what I have been giving to Jr. and the little one in the name of Tylenol and Motrin.. It does get fever down fast.. but.. recalled as of the news 42 minutes ago!

or the new found revelation that powerpoint is bad for presentations. duh?

or this news where an employer fired an employee after she goes through surgery to reduce her health risk.. another duh as of 10 hours ago

and much much more..

just read the news headlines on google, yahoo, etc. and you start thinking that Sun News wasn't that bad after all...


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Exploding at the gates

Was driving to work this morning listening to the news. The Winter Olympic reporting was going on.. and in every alternate sentence..

Shaun just exploded from the gates

Lyndsay just exploded at the start..

What is going on with every Olympic gold medal winner either exploding at the gates, being explosive at the start or just having an explosion?

Way too many Iraq Green Zone reporters now at the Olympics and they cannot get over their old style?!



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The News, brought to you by..

News today seems to be sponsored, by someone who gets to benefit by the news...

It is just something that gets more polarized by the day.

Any fact seems to have two view points, depending on who the target audience is and one starts to scratch ones head to find out what the truth is. That says something about the quality of news.

Some fundamental themes today are:

1. Focus on the exception, not the rule

for example

a. "54 year old Indian man has not brushed his teeth since he was born!" could make the headline here.. they would even go to break that sentence to suggest that Indian men do not brush their teeth..

b. "Billions of people across India have been brushing their teeth since 3000 B.C. till today, starting with neem twigs to the latest Ultrasonic brushes!".

Let's see...

a. makes better headlines.

2. Take sides irrespective of the truth

a. Lashkar-E-Toiba is definitely a terrorist organization and granted there may have been some collusion with Pakistan in the early stages of the organizations creation where ISI had a hand in it, but the organization has been banned by the Pakistani govenrnment since 1998 for almost a decade! Also LET was started in the disputed territory in India, Kashmir which is being claimed by separatists, but is administered by India! So it is not fair to say that Pakistan is responsible for the Mumbai attacks...

b. Al-Qaeda is definitely a terrorist organization and granted there may have been some collusion with Afganistan in the early stages of the organizations creation where the Taliban had a hand in it, but the organization has been banned by the Afganistan government since 19xy.. So it is not fair to say that Afganistan is responsible for 9/11

again a. makes better headlines..

Except for the fact that a. was actually the headline in the NPR news today. Just couldn't believe what we were hearing! The logic was unbelievable.

To top things off, apparently the USA is going to give India all the support it can and also give Pakistan all the support it needs.

Did not quite get the part where Pakistan needs support right now. What am I missing here?



Ps. There are a lot of Peace loving Pakistanis out there and no doubt, they feel bad when all Pakistani's are portrayed as terror junkies. If LET and Pakistan are divorced, then the Pakistani government and the people should have no problem in helping India launch an offensive against LET, no?



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News

Ever wonder how there is something above and beyond the media frenzy?

In the United States (and more so in India), the media decides what should be the big news item of the day! The government controls the press or different political parties carve out percentages of the "free" press and invariably the news is what the controlling parties want the people to hear.

To top things off, the media today has the ability to blur the lines between reality and fantasy and you really cannot differentiate between "Times of India", "Rediff" and "The Onion"! Seriously the "real" news looks more ridiculous than the spoofs.

In the US it is always Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush, Hilary, Obama.

Once in a while though something happens that gives the media a reality check. Case in point is the cyclone in Burma and the Earthquake in China. They will push the standard news items to the background for a few days.

Then they will be pushed to the last page or a footnote when the next troop surge is announced or when Hilary or Obama do something attention grabbing!

Hope the news from Burma and China stays in the news for a few more days so those people get the attention they deserve from the rest of the world.


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Interesting view of things

Today in the letters to the newsdesk section of the news on public radio, a listener had pointed out an interesting fact.

The student who went on a rampage at Virginia Tech., was being showcased as a "Korean kid"! What is interesting is that he was born in Korea, but he lived his entire life here, went to school here, went to college here, was raised as an American and for all practical purposes was predominantly exposed to American culture.

The newscasters are trying to imply that his actions have something to do with his "Koreanity". Scary part is that, it is simply a question of time before someone in the media actually publicizes the word "Koreanity" and someone else misspells it as "Koranity" and before you know it you have the President triumphantly declaring that he has found the connection between the shootings and the Koran!

The USA today is scary. Over the years I have spoken to many teenagers and college students here, from the time I came here as a graduate student to the the present day. I just thank my stars that I managed to grow up in India in the eighties, an environment where students focused on their studies, were too young to chase the other sex when they were in high school (had no peer pressure to lose their viriginity before graduation !) or had to work and study at the same time.

Kids in this country have a tough time for the most part because they share the financial burden of their education (partially or completely), have peer pressure to do things that distract them from their studies and their future, do not have good examples and role models to keep them focussed and have a system that is more than happy to dole out overpriced student loans, condoms and depression pills to school kids as solutions to their problems as opposed to getting to the root cause.

The lucky ones do get to have role models, parents or relatives that support them during their education process and have the ability to focus and prioritize their goals. It is a fact that the most brilliant and creative people I have met over the last decade are of American origin. If a person has to succeed in spite of all these distractions and responsibilities, they have to be really good. Maybe that explains that creativity!

I have already written many a post on raising my kids here. I can only hope that if I support their education, keep them focussed , put them with kids whose parents share the same hopes and fears (yes, fear works at a lot of levels here) , then they will succeed!

Time and place do play a part in how people grow and develop, probably more than their birthplace or nationality. The media has a lot of growing up to do!


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