10 hours ago
Sound effect
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE
Thanks to a scientific phenomenon, distance reduces the noise of the news
Distance is said to lend enchantment to the view, blurring the sight of warts and other eyesores. Distance also lends detachment from the news.
On a visit to London I stay tuned to what's happening back home in India by following the news. There is a familiarity about the news, born out of repetition that makes the word 'news' into an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
Perhaps the people in charge of compiling dictionaries should, by deed poll if necessary, officially change the name of news to olds, because much, if not most of it, is the same old, same old.
Opposition is going at govt hammer and tongs. And to return the compliment, govt is going at Opposition tongs and hammer.
Operation Sindoor was/was not an unqualified success. The White House did/did not play the honest – or dishonest – broker in effecting a ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Govt, after having opposed a caste-based census all this while, is now in favour of it because it wants to consolidate the so-called Hindu vote/it wants to fragment the Dalit/OBC vote. Ding-dong, dong-ding.
But there's not just a familiarity in the news, there's also a reduction in its noise level, making it sound less frenetic and frenzied the farther off it is. The scientific reason for this is called the Doppler Effect, after the Austrian physicist, Christian Doppler.
The scientist described this phenomenon in 1842, whereby the frequency of sound waves changes as the source of the sound approaches or recedes from the hearer.
The whistle of a train approaching a station sounds increasingly sharper and more shrill, the sound waves getting scrunched together like a squeezed accordion, and gets muted as the train passes and the wavelength becomes longer and flatter, like the wrinkles being ironed out of a shirt.
Distance and flattening wavelengths take much sound out of the fury of the news, and some of the fury out of its sound
For this relief much thanks, Herr Doppler.
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