About
Yet another Self-Important Blog.
Rohit Singh
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Use as directed or at your own risk.
Links
These are a few of my favourite links.
Sun, 26 Aug 2007
Amazing Graphic at NYT
If you wondered why the New York Times is thought as one of the world's
best newspapers, here's a demonstration.
A few weeks ago, there was a minor storm in the blogosphere over a restatement of NASA's figures about mean annual temparatures in the U.S. At the time, I'd actually tried to make sense of the various blog posts to figure out who's right and who's not. But the mess of data and (mis)information was just too much. Andrew Revkin wrote an article on that episode. It included this graphic:
What a clear, informative way of conveying the various pieces of data! It simultaneously conveys that: (1) there are two different sets of Top-10 rankings, (2) only some of the years have changed ranks between the two sets, and (3) the rank-change is because of underlying numbers that actually changed very little between the two sets.
Of course, this is not to say the NYT can't be bone-headed and biased at times (e.g., Somini Sengupta's reporting is usually annoying).
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Wed, 22 Aug 2007
Go Read This
Powerful stuff. Amazingly well-written. I love this kind of writing--
simple and direct.
Iraq now is a huge, hairy mess. Peace there in the forseeable future seems unlikely, with or without U.S. military presence. However, if the Americans leave, the mess may well spill out of Iraq. Given how fragile the Mid-East is and how "flat" the world now is, nobody may be immune.
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Tue, 14 Aug 2007
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The Hobbit
I've been reading The Hobbit and one thing that strikes me repeatedly is how
much more informal this book is than the LoTR books. The latter have a
self-conscious tone of narrating epochal events. The former just reads
like a
rollicking adventure story (at least it seems to be, till now!).
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit before the LoTR books. I'm guessing its success made him a bit more self-conscious and stilted his story-telling a bit.
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Mon, 13 Aug 2007
Schadenfreude
Ooh, this
makes me so happy. Parents who push their kids to be the next prodigy
are quite annoying.
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Tue, 07 Aug 2007
Dumb. Freaking. Idiots.
The Indian Express article's title is quite appropriate. The commies
don't want the India-U.S. nuclear deal because it is part of a "US quest to make India its
reliable ally in Asia."
Whose ally they'd rather India be-- Brunei's? Pursuing one's national interest means finding allies (in contrast, enemies usually crop up all by themselves). Wonder what the left would rather want India to do.
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Go Read This
Seriously. It is an absolute gem. Articulate, insightful and written
with humility.
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Incorrigible?
You read something like this and you wonder if there really are people
who just don't deserve any second chances. I buy into a significant
part of the
current thinking that prisons should rehabilitate and not just punish,
and that we should help a person redeem himself when possible. After all, maybe
they were abused as a child, or
racially discriminated, or just got unlucky when choosing their
parents. But when you read what some men are capable of, you wonder.
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Sat, 04 Aug 2007
On Being Old
Whaddya know...another David Brooks op-ed I like. Now, if the guy could
only avoid writing about politics. Quoting an old book ("Autobiography
of an Elderly Woman"), Brooks talks about how the old feel
excluded from the hustle-and-bustle of life that goes on around them.
They are respected, but not involved. He quotes:
"I do not know when the change came, nor do they, if indeed they realize it at all," she writes. "There was a time when I was of their generation; now I am not. I cannot put my finger on the time when old age finally claimed me." ...
"You count the number of your years by the way your daughter watches your steps; and you see your infirmities in your son's anxious eyes."
The op-ed's a great read, even though it doesn't really have a point, except maybe to wonder when youth supplanted age as the thing to "venerate" and if old people these days feel less isolated.
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Fri, 03 Aug 2007
Mr. Bourne
The In-house Economist and I watched Bourne
Ultimatum's midnight (i.e.,
first) showing. Awesome movie. And watching it in the middle of the
night with other fans of the Bourne series made it even more fun. Matt
Damon's been really good in the Bourne movies; he does the whole "take a beating,
but soldier on" thing very well. And as a bonus, there's Julia Stiles.
I've liked the soundtracks of the previous Bourne movies. The latest one has great scores too. In particular, the song at the end credits is really cool (it's been in all 3 movies now). It's "Extreme Ways" by Moby. Take a listen:
The lyrics match the movie quite well too.
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Wed, 01 Aug 2007
Cartoony Goodness
Much as I disliked the
previous graphic-novelist/illustrator/cartoonist showcased by NYT, I absolutely
love their current artist. Rutu Modan draws like a dream and has the
funniest stories. The latest one is about loving-but-meddlesome parents doing what they think is best
for their daughter: buy her a bigger car. They then proceed to guilt her into doing
something they'd like her to do. The setting's that of a Jewish family, but it could
really be any culture (in particular, Indian).
The line about "So he still hasn't gotten his Ph.D.?" rang too true. I was reminded of my sundry aunts and uncles.
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Thu, 19 Jul 2007
WTF!
If I were an American, here's when I'd say, "That's it! I'm moving to Canada." Or even better, to Germany. Charging $2500 per speeding ticket is underhanded, outrageous, immoral and altogether evil.
And this is where you wonder at the marvel that is Wikipedia. Turns out, Germany's autobahns aren't completely speed-limit-free but the roads in my home state (U.P., India) are. For once, I'm proud how incompetent Indian bureaucracy is. If I didn't know better, I would've though they just don't bother with laws that are not needed.
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Fri, 08 Jun 2007
Idiots
Some people are actually thinking of banning Orkut, because some hooligans
didn't like the existence of Orkut communities that "hate" Shivaji.
I can't decide which one of the following is true:
- The Mumbai Police doesn't know a computer from a TV and a website from a pamphlet.
- Mumbai Police is too ineffective to actually police the hooligans and would rather settle the fight by shutting down the other side-- people who are peacefully expressing their opinion
- Babudom really thinks it knows best for everybody and has adjudged that banning Orkut is in the society's best interests
I sincerely hope it's (1) or (2), and not (3). In India's ruling class, I'll take incompetence over hubris any day.
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Thu, 12 Apr 2007
Annoying
There. I said it. Maira Kalman's paintings in the New York Times (they
appear on the first of each month) are very annoying. They are these
childishly painted watercolors (I presume) with text written on them. The text's styling is
annoying enough. But what makes the paintings insufferable is the text's content.
Very new age-y, existential-ish and trying too hard to be both whimsical and zen-ish. Load of crap, if you ask me.
I wouldn't be ranting about this if I could only understand what others see in these paintings. A lot of her fan-base (mostly female, it seems from the comments on NYT site) seems to particularly love the content of the text. Clearly, I seem to be an exception in that I find the text content and the paintings annoying. But the puzzling thing is--- I'm no opinionated art expert. Until now, paintings and I have had an amiable, nonjudgemental acquaintance. Maira Kalman's paintings just annoy the hell out of me, though.
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Tue, 03 Apr 2007
On Memes
The Proud Indian meme seems to be gaining strength rapidly. Both the NYT (I can't remember which article) and the Economist have pushed this one (see this article). It's a rather annoying meme because it all too often acts as a segue for the writer to talk about something that's going wrong in India. In the case of the Economist article, the writer uses the meme to get in a cute jab at the Indian cricket team.
And while I'm on a rant, could we please retire the "India as the Elephant" meme before it gets further entrenched? We might already be too late. Elephants are nice, cuddly creatures with glorious ears and an entirely regal fondness for afternoon siestas and, I believe, bananas. However, symbolize a dynamic economy they do not.
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Sun, 01 Apr 2007
Living with cancer
Jonathan Alter, a regular Newsweek columnist, writes a gem of an
article about his struggle with cancer-- a particularly nasty lymphoma.
The article is great not because of its prose or arguments or things
like that. It's great because of its honesty and detail in its portrayal
of how people deal with news that they (or a loved one) has cancer, and the
subsequent flurry of activity.
As he mentions in passing, it is ridiculous that some people think themselves fit to judge John Edwards' decision to continue running for president in the face of news that his wife's cancer has returned. Most busybodies who are passing judgment on the Edwards family probably have never had to deal with anything as traumatic as receiving that phone call-- the one that turns their (and their family's) life upside down. My experience with cancer in my family is that the very worst thing you can do with cancer is to sit and mope about it. The only real option is to keep doing stuff that you enjoy-- whether job or hobbies-- while retooling your lifestyle to deal with what's going on.
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Tue, 05 Sep 2006
Racial Profiling at Airports
Slashdot has an ongoing discussion on racial profiling. There are the
usual trolls; but there are also people with interesting stuff to say about
profiling, both positive and negative. Interestingly, it's the airlines
which seem to assign the multiple 'S' on one's boarding pass (a 'SSSS'
indicates high likelihood for being "randomly" selected).
My take? I repeat the golden words of a Slashdot poster: "Random my ass." I've been pulled aside much more often than other (non-brown) passengers when traveling alone. When traveling with the In-house Economist this happens less often; I guess they presume married people won't blow stuff up. Funny, no? When pulled aside, I try to remain calm while getting it across that I don't appreciate the profiling. Can never get the appropriate facial expression, though; I either look too pissed-off or too "I don't mind, you're only doing your job".
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Sun, 03 Sep 2006
On Salaries
What's with journalists and their propensity for "he makes more in a day
than you do in a year" stories! Sure, GE's CEO makes 300 times more than an
average teacher, but that's comparing apples to oranges. Does the average GE employee make that much? Are there teachers who make a lot more than the average teacher's salary (assuming professors count as teachers)? Do any of the latter make in the range of a million? (Yes, those in university administration or with popular, lucrative books.) Even if the highest paid professor doesn't make as much as GE's CEO, that's just how the market works; any teacher is free to go into industry and make more money.
I ranted about salary stories previously here.
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Mon, 10 Jul 2006
Cubicles 2.0
Your trusty old cube, redesigned.
I have a cubicle-makeover idea too: put in a door and a ceiling.
At Accelrys, I was given a cube whose one window was a glass wall looking into the 2nd-floor atrium. I later heard it was a cause for some griping among other, more senior colleagues. Until then *I* would gripe about people being able to see over my shoulder (from the lunch tables in the atrium). When I heard others were jealous, the cube immediately felt a lot nicer.
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Sun, 28 May 2006
Reservation Stuff
XYZ sent a mail on a Stanford mailing list saying might the Indian
middle class be selfish in arguing against reservations. He cites, in
particular, this article by Vinod Mehta. Here was my response:
"> Are the anti-reservations protest are a product of selfish middle
class? Few
> views.
A nice bag of ripe red herrings you bring, XYZ. People like Vinod Mehta can be willfully stupid, so they are best ignored as occasionally-useful idiots. But surely, you should know better before you cite him...
Vinod Mehta's argument is:
- Middle class doesn't like reservation. So,
- Middle class is hostile to empowerment of poor.
I'll try to keep my criticism of this argument short: even if we ignore the breathtaking sweep of generalization in Mr. Mehta's argument, are reservation and "empowerment of the poor" the same thing ? If the argument for reservation is about poverty (rural or urban), why not have affirmative action based on economic factors rather than caste? Even if some kind of caste-based affirmative action really were desirable, are quotas the way to go or is it better to have a points-based system (as was mentioned in an article pointed to on SIA earlier)? After all, the latter might better handle complaints about "creamy layer" etc.
Vinod Mehta, as usual, masks his propaganda as journalism; that doesn't mean his propaganda should be believed. One might argue vehemently against caste-based reservation while passionately believing in the need to improve the access of India's poor to quality education.
PS: And please don't cop out by saying "well, reservation by caste might not be the best solution, but it certainly is one." Any changes made to the system will impact the future of hundreds of millions of Indians-- if you can't come up with better ideas, let others speak. "
This article from Shekhar Gupta is good. He makes the point that educational system in India, especially the central universities and the IIT/IIM setup, is a vestige-- and a pernicious one at that-- of the license raj. We should privatize education more, allowing people to create new schools and, in particular, new high-quality colleges.
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Sat, 27 May 2006
Portland..
...is green. Very green. Verdant's the word, I believe. I mean, this
place has meadows. The lush green type.
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Sat, 29 Apr 2006
I Love Python
It's the best scripting language I've played with. I can think about
the code in English and, very often, the Python version isn't that different.
This makes coding in it that much faster than anything else.
For example, during writing some code I realized I was getting protein IDs with their version numbers, e.g. NP_10023.1, while I just wanted to get the IDs. These are the kind of minor roadblocks that you always have when dealing with bioinformatics databases. Now, here the version number is preceded by a dot, ".". So, in English, the logic goes like this: "if the word has a '.' in it, then find the position of '.' in the string and take the part before the position". Here's the Python code:
if '.' in word:
word = word[ : word.index('.')]
That's it. Now, the point is not to show that this really short example couldn't be done in some other language in an equally short way, if not shorter. The point is: what I think is essentially what I have to write. I don't need to remember what the language's equivalent of strchr() would be. The most obvious thing ('.' in word) works. That makes coding much more natural.
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Sun, 09 Apr 2006
Lou Dobbs
Lou Dobbs is a jackass. It's amazing how easily the mind can tune out TV bloviators one doesn't like listening to. The annoying part is that there are others who still listen to people like Dobbs and O'Reilly and Nancy Grace, so you have to deal with such people. And, of course, since it was said on TV it must be true!
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Thu, 30 Mar 2006
Copyrighting Fashion
This
is just going too far. I can understand that a designer may feel cheated when
he slogs to create a new dress which sells at $2000 and then somebody makes a
knock-off and sells tons of those for $200 a pop. Nonetheless, fashion has too much cross-pollination going on for anybody to be able to draw a thick line between
"copied" and "inspired by". Heck, Yves St. Laurent sued Ralph Lauren for
copying, as the article mentions.
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Mon, 20 Mar 2006
Let's hear it for non-fancy cellphones
All I want is a phone that is small, doesn't have an antenna that breaks off on a whim, can be stuffed in my pant pocket without worrying about some key or other going off, good voice quality, and decent battery. I don't want games, I don't need a browser, I don't want a color screen, and I don't want downloadable ringtones. Also, I don't want a planner, or To-Do list maker, or some other oranizer crap. Convergence-shonvergence, bah! It's not as if I used my palmtop(s) when I had them.
Newsweek agrees.
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Thu, 16 Mar 2006
IIM Salaries...
There seems to be an undercurrent of resentment against the high salaries
being offered to IIM people, along the lines of "what have these
20-somethings done to deserve this". I can understand the envy, but not
the argument that nobody's worth that much. That argument really is silly.
The textbook explanation, and a correct one, would be that this is an issue about demand and supply and the salaries are
simply determined by the market.
But apart from these black-boxish explanations that my in-house economist might offer, it is also quite easy to demonstrate to the sceptics exactly why they too would be willing to *pay* such enormous salaries if they were the employer. The really high salaries are typically offered by finance companies and banks. A finance company makes its money by dealing in large amounts of Other People's Money and charging a small service fee. These money management roles scale up quite easily-- even a 2-3 person firm can manage a fund worth billions of dollars. Now suppose, company A and B are both managing Other People's Money, each with a corpus of $100 million. That is actually a rather *low* estimate and a bigger number would make my argument only stronger. Now, A and B have both one fund-manager each, but A's is smarter and can get them a 5% higher return than B. Both company A and B take 5% of returns as service charge (again, a low estimate) and so company A stands to make an *extra* $250K. Isn't it easy to see why the pay difference between the two fund managers could easily be 50-100K? Observe that most other industries can't afford to reward performance so lavishly. Extend this argument to its natural conclusion and it's easy to see why even a fresh recruit for a finance company can easily make a ton of money. It also explains why the admins and the IT guys and the janitor in these companies won't make obscene amounts of money-- they are not the ones dealing with Other People's Money.
Of course, this does not explain why *MBAs* make so much money. After all, there is no guarantee that the MBA you hired will be the right guy for your finance firm. But then again, if you are hiring for Barclays and you want to hire from India, which places would have the highest probability of giving you the most-likely-to-be-successful hires ? Yupp, IIMs. Sure, you could hire from the IITs or the other top colleges but many of their best finance-oriented students end up at the IIMs anyway. Your firm's growing and you really do need to hire some new people, so you might as well hire from the place least likely to give you bum candidates.
Indeed, I'd say that the IIM salaries aren't done climbing yet. They have a bit of a way to go before they match those offered to graduates of top US B-schools.
Actually, a similar argument applies to PhD admissions and explains why these days the top univs will almost never accept an undergrad who has not demonstrated some interest in research by taking an initiative to do an undergrad research project.
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Sat, 11 Mar 2006
You Can Tell A Cook By His/Her Tools
When dad went on his first overseas trip, in the early 90s, he brought
back an interesting oddment, a British potato peeler. It was
different from the typical Indian peelers of the day, with a translucent
red plastic handle and a thin but sharp blade. Indian peelers, in
contrast, had ugly wood handles and a serrated blade that somehow went bad pretty quickly.
For all of dad's gift-choosing prowess, however, mom never got used to it. So much for phoren stuff.
When I came to the US for grad school mom had bundled, with all the other sundry kitchen stuff, a brand new desi potato peeler. I used it for a while but never with really good results. Then one day, I noticed this funky potato peeler in the mall. It had a really beefy black soft-grip handle and its blade, unlike Indian peelers, didn't jut out from the handle; it actually was hinged between two anchors, the handle running through the entire length of the peeler. This hinging business let the blade swing a bit. Now, it's a very scary concept if you have a peeler with a blade that's not very stable- the first time I was sure the blade will jump off the potato and instead peel the skin off my finger. But no such thing happened, the swinging business lets the blade follow the potato's contours much better, making it a breeze to peel nice rings off the potato. Almost like the swinging business with new Gillette blades.
The peeler was made by Oxo. Later, I swapped my painfully useless can-opener for an Oxo can opener. Again, I was floored by how easy it was to use. Oxo makes really good stuff, there is an article in LA Times about them.
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Fri, 10 Mar 2006
Kumar Gaurawa's Website
KG is an old classmate from IITK. We also share Stanford as an alma-mater, but he started a little later than I did and we never took any classes together. Still, I saw him a lot when I was in the Bay Area. Absolutely amazing guy; was on the IIT cricket team, runs marathons and so on; is lots of fun. His numerous talents have always made me jealous.
I dropped by his website recently, seeing it again after a long while. Check out the photos he's taken and the sketches he's drawn- they're mindblowing! I had no idea somebody could make the Stanford Quad look so good, or an Indian village scene so beautiful.
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Tue, 07 Mar 2006
Just Stop It
They bombed my hometown. They hit the Sankat Mochan temple on its
busiest time of the week- Tuesday evening. They then set off a bomb in the
city's transportation center. A third blast was to be, if they had gotten
their way, in Benares' oldest and most-crowded market. Really, they had
thought it through quite well. It's a miracle
that the number of people dead isn't higher.
It's funny how hard something halfway around the world can hit you; one just needs to be able to visualize the death and destruction. I've been to each of the places that was bombed many times. It's not hard to imagine a guy, tired from a long day's work, stopping by the temple for his weekly prayers with a small box of laddoos. The laddoos around Sankat Mochan are fabulous. Maybe he's looking forward to taking some of the laddoos home to his kids who love them. The guy left his slippers at the temple entrance and is worried if they'll still be there when he's back. His wife will give him hell if they are stolen again. During all this the poor fellow has no idea that he's going to die, through no fault of his own. He's probably more worried about the monkeys in the temple compound attacking him for the laddoos. He needn't have worried about the monkeys. Even the monkeys won't go for laddoos stained red.
The hon'ble Prime Minister "condemned the attack and immediately called for calm." The main opposition party satisfied itself with a demand for the government's resignation. The Benares MP flew to Delhi to register his anger with the powers that be. Really, why do we even bother! Let's replace these guys by tape recorders. We know what they are going to say, and it's not as if they'll do anything.
Before you jump on the bandwagon of it's the System's Fault, it's not. The fault in this case, as in all terrorism cases, lies squarely with the perpetrators. It's not the police's fault that this happened. Nobody can lock down a city of 3 million indefinitely. It is the terrorists' fault. Let's not forget that. It's the terrorists who need to be found, tried and hung. Or just shot summarily. I'll take that too.
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Sun, 29 Jan 2006
Lawsuit against GTA: San Andreas
What the heck!! "Oh, won't somebody please think of the
children!!" crowd is just too aggravatingly stupid. Rockstar made a good
game. People loved it. They bought lots of it. Me included. Enter the
moral brigade. Result ? GTA is now the symbol of all that is bad about video
games.
GTA sells not because it is a violent game; it sells because it is a very good game- there are far more violent games than GTA. Just because I like playing it doesn't mean I go around looking to mow down pedestrians and shoot-off people with an arsenal big enough for Maldives. OK, I do wonder how it'd feel to do a Evil Knievel, but that's pretty much it.
Here's a snippet from the law-suit filed: "marketed the 'Grand Theft Auto' series in a fashion that encourages the creation of (software modifications), which has added to the counter-culture image of the games, enhancing their popularity and hence their profitability."
Arrgh!! Making things your customers enjoy fiddling with is a crime now?! What next- "Your honor, please stop people from watching Star Wars- too many people are making atrocious fan movies about it. Not to mention Ross wanting Rachel to enact the Princess Leia fantasy. And while you're at it, your honor, could you please gimme some of George Lucas' money?"
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Tue, 20 Dec 2005
Oh Puhleez...
So Sourav Ganguly is out of the cricket team again. And this time there
was quite a bit of hue-and-cry. But the most interesting take on this comes
not from India, but from Pakistan. A Pakistani columnist in the Dawn
detects caste equations in the ouster of Sourav Da. Come on, they can do
better than that! Sourav Da's caste was probably the farthest thing from
selectors and Dravid's and Greg Chappell's minds. This caste thing is
such a cheap shot!
It's actually sad that I often hear/read more about India's big caste problem from non-Indian blogs and websites than from other Indian friends. In my generation, caste just seems not to matter much. Indeed, any caste-related angst in our generation seems to be product of precisely that one policy that our forefathers thought would lessen caste distinctions- affirmative action and reservation in public sector. Granted that, in villages the problem still exists in a very significant way. But there it has more to do with class and haves-vs-have-nots issues than anything else.
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Sun, 18 Dec 2005
And Just When You Thought They Couldn't Possibly Get Stupider...
Lo
and behold. India badly needs a real conservative/libertarian type
party. Otherwise, the left/center-left establishment gets away with too
much crap. And no, BJP doesn't fit the bill. They are essentially social
conservatives, being right-wing on only one issue (religion/culture).
Elsewhere, they are rather Congress-like. Even on economic issues, the main
undercurrent in BJP seems to favour socialism rather than free-market
beliefs. As for Congress itself, a small but vocal part of it consists of
leftists who found full-blown communism too arduous. The overwhelming part
of Congress is, of course, filled with people who really don't care about
such stuff- they just want their share.
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Sat, 15 Oct 2005
IIT-JEE Pattern Change
Every IITian has very vivid memories of preparing for its entrance exam (JEE). For most of
us,
it was a time of working harder than we ever had. For some,
it was also a time of working harder than they ever will, again.
Coaching classes are not all bad- some of them tutor you in the basics of the subject and help you build insight, rather than teaching you which questions to focus on. But the majority of the coaching institutes are bullshit; and so are their products. I went to coaching classes too, so I should know. Often, these coaching-class products barely make it to IIT, don't/can't keep up at IIT, land an un-rewarding, non-challenging job and lead a nondescript life, wasting a spot at IIT that could've gone to a much more promising kid.
The new pattern changes (described here) make sense, mostly. Except for the all-objective JEE. It is definitely possible to make objective questions incisive and deep. But it's also very very hard. Moreover, subjective questions let students demonstrate partial competency, without having to get the entire thing right. IITs haven't allowed calculators in JEE, so what about calculation mistakes that hurt you big-time in objective questions? Does the JEE committee just want to make the job of evaluators easy?
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Wed, 31 Aug 2005
Pork Barrel Stuff
This is so aggravating. So much money being earmarked for "rural" development. Which is a code-word for "aah...sweet-money-for-everyone-except-the-guy-who-needs-it". This is such a waste. Somebody save Indians from their elected representatives.
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Mon, 22 Nov 2004
TOI bullshit...
And they needed two people to come up with this crap. Is TOI now hiring such stupidos that they need two of them to cook up even such crap ?
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Sat, 20 Nov 2004
Aiming for balance in media coverage
So a couple weeks ago Slashdot pointed to this Columbia Journalism Review
article which discussed how, in trying to provide balanced reporting on
controversial issues, the media actually makes things worse by accentuating
fringe opinions and toning down majority opinions. This is especially the
case when the overwhelming evidence/majority favors one side of the issue
but there is a vocal fringe that advocates the other side. In the
interest of providing a balanced perspective on the problem, articles (or
t.v. shows) give equal (or almost equal) weightage to both the sides, in
effect magnifying the real influence of the fringe. Why do they not make the effort
to be more fair and even-handed? Well, essentially because journalists either do
not want to be seen as pushing a particular viewpoint or simply do not have
the intellect/willingness to understand the entire issue, assess the relative support for
the varying takes, and then present it fairly.
The canonical example for this would be the theory of evolution. Most people with half a brain and half an hour can look at the evidence and see that there really is a lot of support for the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is one of the most successful theories in science. It is so strongly supported by the data and explains/predicts so many phenomena that it is one of the central tenets of biology. Yet, creationists always want to press the view that all life evolved in a giant poof--- as God's Giant Magic Trick.
The case for global-warming is also strong. The build-up of the ozone layer (and it's recent shrinking, due to less pollution), the steady decrease in the Arctic ice-shelf's size etc. and simple temparature measurements provide a strong justification. The opposing argument that this is all just a minor weather change is less specious that the creationist argument but, nonetheless, it is much much weaker than the global-warming theory.
Still, as the article I mentioned before points out, newspapers often cover these theories (esp global warming) in a way that doesn't emphasize that these theories are by far the most plausible, as judged by most experts. There are always all sorts of fringe elements and crackpots who have a different take on a theory. Instead of actually researching the issue and giving a fair take, most journalists take the cheap way of being fair--- simply balance the inches devoted to the two sides. Thus, all the crackpots get undue exposure and attention. And give ammunition to vested interests for saying that this is "just a theory, there are other theories too". And then those interests proceed to pick the theory that suits them best.
Of course, the most hot-button example of the media's inept coverage of controversial issues would be the coverage of Bush administration's case for war. Even when the reports of the arms inspectors had come in, the Bush administration flirted with the truth, trying to hint (but never actually *say*) that either the weapons could've been there or that Saddam Hussein was helping Osama Bin Laden. While covering this, NYT and Washington Post headlines used words like "exaggerate" and "flimsy" and "un-truths" to indicate their disbelief. But they never actually went ahead and said, in so many words, that "Bush Lied". Similary, none of them made any attempts to explicitly state that "Saddam Hussein was not involved with Osama Bin Laden". I can understand why the media didn't want to go out on a limb and explicitly say that 'the administration is not just passively fudging the truth, it's actively encouraging misconceptions': (1) they wanted to be evenhanded between pro-war and anti-war people, (2) if they had, people would've said they are taking sides and just being "liberal".
And that justification is a load of bullshit. After all, if 70% of Americans continued to believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, isn't it the job of media to disabuse the public of those notions ? Especially since that notion was directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans? It is a shame that the editors of the Great Newspapers of America are so afraid of calling a spade a spade.
[/rants-and-raves] | | | permalink