research is the opium of academicians.

you know your research isn't going anywhere when...

there is a very fine line between genuinely beneficial research and mental masturbation. i don't know how many researchers actually bother listening to that squeaky inner voice which says, "how's this helping anybody?" or variations thereof.
definitely not the guy who's doing/did research on the iyers of matunga. i kid you not. there is such research happening. worse even. and before the natural scientists start getting all smug, there's pointless research happening on that side as well.
my question before embarking on any research, then, is this: "is it as pointless as the study on the iyers of matunga?"

curbing the urge.

economics, the queen of the social sciences demands that her researchers provide policy implications of their studies. sweet but i think it still isn't as effective a deterrent as it ought to be. people still come up with ridiculous research and gosh awful policy implications, thanks basically to shitty institutions that encourage these by means of awarding degrees.
the other ineffective method of doing this, of course, is awarding scholarships for research in specific fields. problem here is that it narrows the scope for research and people essentially keep churning the same research over and over with little or no variation.
it is interesting, however, to note the technique that sociology employs to curb shit research. sociology, through its very discourse, encourages research of the marginalised/the sub-altern. so, even if there are people who specialise in culture, they often have done their studies on tribes/marginalised sections of societies. this covert technique of channelising research actually achieves the opposite of what it sets out to do- it only produces more trash.
ladies and gentlemen, here's a revelation: india has not come up with a single comprehensive sociological theory on anything (not counting caste theories). this is because research subjects have been narrowed through overt and covert mechanisms.

self-discipline is the key

there's only one way to do this. researchers must practise self-restraint instead of spraying their intellectual cum all over the body of existing studies, which is a lot of dried cum, at any rate.
it helps that the researcher looks into what appeals most to him/her, to begin with. institutions need to encourage studies right across the spectrum. and the guides need to care enough to read up on the latest happenings on the subject and thus, guide the researchers down that path of the divine light- practical, applicable and liberating knowledge.

the wiki.

maybe i'm just spending more time actually browsing these days, but it seems to me that there are more wikis around than i previously imagined.

the first time i heard of a wiki was when my friend, A had/visited (not sure) a wiki outlining all the annotations on alan moore's v for vendetta.

some time lapsed before i stumbled on the wiki detailing all the er.. "happenings" connected to nine inch nails' year zero (for the uninitiated, check out the link which is my post before last). Today, again, i was reading the wiki dedicated to warren ellis' "doktor sleepless". Of course, there are all those artist wikis on last.fm...

the wiki concept is one solid step ahead to making sense of the information overload. i don't know whether academicians use wikis or not to organise their references, but considering the massive bodies of work that they reference and cross-reference, it would be a fairly prudent thing to do.

from what i could gather of warren ellis' interview on comicbookresources.com, the wiki can also be a sort of an extended back matter- it goes beyond the standard 2-3 pages that comes with the printed edition and helps create an entire context, particularly for readers not quite familiar with ellis...

"It's there to gather up all the information inside the book...There's more information written than could possibly be fitted inside the narrative of the comic itself -- at least, not without completely distorting the shape of the narrative and doubling the book's run. It's also there for people to play with. There's a complete backdrop and mythology to 'Doktor Sleepless,' and the wiki will allow people to make connections between it all, and perhaps see what some of the characters are really up to... I was inspired by the 'Lost' wiki project, where the first connection was made between a screenshot of the 'boatbillies' and the Dutch scientists involved in Dharma. If you work hard enough, then you can provide enough material that interested readers can find a whole new level of engagement with the work."

year zero

experiential marketing.

kicking up a 'crorepati' storm.

quiz shows. there's something about them that disrupts an otherwise stable psyche at an individual level and at a macro level- it causes people to think irrationally, changing the world as we know it. kaun banega crorepati whipped up a fury at its inception and the one thing that has stayed common through these three seasons, other than the fact that its airing on Star Plus, is the fact that it continues to kick up a storm at the least or a tornado, at best.

the third season of kbc has had pretty much the same effect on the media and marketing circles as satan puckering up to an innocent virgin child. 24 hour news channels and media journals have managed to further confuse an already perplexed audience by weilding the ratings weapon- some fucking dipshit thought it would be a brilliant idea to compare kbc 3 with the previous season.

fuck the fact that universe sizes have changed since season 2, the entire fucking realm of television has undergone a paradigm shift. plus, let's not forget the weekday-weekend split- no point comparing a weekday show with a weekend show.

kbc 2 aired on weekends and was the perfect launching ground for baa, bahoo and baby on the 10 o'clock weekend slot. the 8.30 show that aired from monday to thursday saw a new lease on life when it was extended to friday. post kbc 2, however, the 9 to 10 weekday slot on star plus just rolled over and died like a st. bernard that had suffered too long and too painfully. as far as programming heads go, kbc 3 is the beautiful rebound for an audience that had moved on to Zee, kasamh se.

star plus is doing pretty fine, really, if you go past the TAM ratings and check out the aMap ratings. for the uninitiated, TAM's ratings come out an entire week later, aMap gives out ratings overnight. take the aMap ratings, write the dates against each day and plot 'em on a line graph. Star Plus is doing pretty neatly, really. for those who really want to look at an in depth analysis, check out this piece.

if the oms-hansa study is anything to go by, shah rukh khan is doing his job just fine in helping star plus (and in turn, marketers) reach out to a younger audience. it's going to be a while before kbc 3 does a titanic if you really consider the facts...