Don't Mess with Barkha Dutt

And what if you do? You might ask "What are you gonna do? Charge me with libel?" as Ms. Catherine Tramell did ask in Basic Instinct, when told not to smoke in the interrogation room, albeit with a puff of white smoke. What follows this is history, as they say. If you don't know this part of the story, I advise you rent the CD/DVD from the friendly neighborhood video store and get ready for some unexpected insights (pun intended). Whatever, leave Sharon Stone now and come back to our heroine here. Yes, I am talking about Ms. Dutt.

If you are not aware of the ongoing extreme anti-Barkha storm raging in Indian blogosphere, just give a search in Google blog search (or better click here).

What did she do to earn the wrath of the bloggers? Bloggers, as we know are rather harmless souls. Well, one poor soul named Chyetanya Kunte, gave his opinion about Barkha Dutt's coverage of 26/11 in his blog. Barkha and NDTV threatened him with legal action and made him withdraw his post (Google cache, scroll to very bottom) and publish an unconditional apology.

Desipundit is an aggregator of interesting indian blogs (it's great!) and they have two marathon posts linking all the major blogs commenting on this issue. Here and here.

Ms. Dutt was mainly enraged because, Kunte mentioned the allegation that she crossed the line while covering Kargil war and gave away Indian artillery positions (Kunte quoted it from in her wiki-article, which has now changed a little bit by now).

Funny thing is, our Navy chief Admiral Suresh Mehta shares the same opinion about her. Wonder why she has not threatened him with legal action so far!

It's funny when our media claims the right to criticize each and everybody and becomes so defensive while someone else do it to them. They cry about less government control, denies the necessity of censor and when blamed for irresponsible behavior during 26/11, they tell govt. hasn't made any rules. Like small children caught stealing sweet... "Nobody told me not to steal".

Also, this is not the first Barkha vs. Blogger clash. Last year (or in 2007) she did an episode of "We the People" on "Blogging in India". To quote GB,

In a 45 minute program that I felt squeezed in every journalistic no-no possible (sensationalism, poor research, blatant bias and lack of objectivity), the presenter, motivated no doubt by her antagonism towards blogs which she said had spread malicious rumors about her, presented “English language” blogs as exclusively frivolous “web graffiti” that are created to spread gossip, discuss people’s personal lives and to make confessions of a prurient kind.

Naturally, bloggers didn't take it well. And there were posts criticizing the show and how she conducted the show. Maybe it started at that time... Man she keeps grudges for long!

I wish she does an episode of her show based on this very topic and see what the people think about her. I know it's just a wish, still I would love to see her face. Will it show 'genuine' concern like always and "Oh my God.. I'm so sorry, aren't you angry/worried/grieved!!!" comments.

More than that I am apalled at the apathy and lack of understanding from NDTV, in a topic like this. A channel where they have a show called "Newsnet 2.0", and the website which is one of the most popular news sites among Indians, they should understand internet in general and blogs in particular is here to stay. It is a platform where people can talk freely, where nobody is spared, where people of any kind of background/interests can have a conversation (not chat shows with talking heads). And that's what make it so great. And mainstream media must learn how to live with that. The sooner the better for them.

Update : This post found a place in Blogbharti. Blogbharti is another aggregator of indian blogs like Desipundit. :D

Overhead Transmission Finding Unexpected Receptions

I explained my rationale behind the name of my blog here and little did I know that it will provide me material for one more post. After you create blog you'll constantly check the visit count, if any comment is posted, if your blog is coming in Google search. In Google blogsearch it does appear, but normal search... no chance. Give "Overhead Transmission" and you get hundreds of sites about transmission lines, high-voltage power transmission and etc etc. Or so I thought. Looks like things have changed. Yesterday I was checking the visitor details (Yes, I can see your ISP, approx location, time of visits and things like that... no credit card details yet, but I am working on it). I saw some visits from Google search pages and guess what? This blog is now at #9 in the google results for Overhead Transmission!!! And what takes the cake is, it is now #1 when you select pages from India. I don't know till when it will last, but I am grinning like anything till that time. :D

I am sure some visitors in this blog came looking for a very different kind of overhead transmission and were disappointed at the quality of transmission found here. Aplogies guys. This is just my blog. Though I read some stuff about transmission lines and all but that was long long long ago. And if you happen to read the same post about naming of this blog, you will know I don't remember a single word about those lines. To use a bad pun, I can say "It was nothing but overhead transmission". But thanks anyway for visiting.

Now this was about people who was searching for some technical term (maybe students), but imagine the disappointment of the guy who came to this post of mine when he was looking for this. All I can do is pray for speedy recovery of your condition. And thanks for visiting!

And now I will go into more bizarre categories. Looks like this blog features at the very top when somebody searches for, hold your breath, Tranny Blogspot!!! What the eff!! Did you say that? Well I did, when I saw this amazing result. For those who doesn't know 'tranny' is a slang used for a transgender person. Naturally the presence of my blog in that search result, raises interesting questions about this blog's author, which is me. And I am pretty sure those who are searching for tranny blogspot in net are not doing it for their final year thesis on "Representaion of transgender community in blogosphere". If you are not getting what I'm saying, just search 'tranny' in any engine and you'll know. But before you jump the gun and start wild speculations about my profession also,
one sober fact. Tranny also means transformer, transistor radio and automobile transmission among other things. Says who? Dear wiki, who else. Check out yourself. Which does explain the situation to my relief.

Well... What can I say. Web search is not a perfect technology. It is evolving, just like the World Wide Web is evolving. And it is not possible to provide search results which provide exactly what you what all the time. We are so used to Google's brilliance we take things for granted. Just try using some other search engine for one day and you will see the difference. And till it becomes perfect (if at all it does someday) we'll keep getting these wacky results to write blogs on them... So in the end it is Google whom we should all thank. :)