Why I Lost All Respect for The Business Insider and Henry Blodget

Wikipedia describes The Business Insider as a site that "..provides and analyzes business news and acts as an aggregator of top news stories from around the web, each with an "edgy" commentary." A couple of days ago, the CEO and EIC published two articles. One was to rebut an opinion of someone who thought the journalism practices of one of the members of the organization to be unhealthy and not worthy of emulating. It took the form of a slanderous, rude and uninformed piece which reminds one of a high school bully. The second one asked readers why people hate some Jews (here's the Gawker write-up on the second article Blodget penned). Yes, they're called the "Business Insider". As for journalism, it'd be an insult to the profession to include those two articles under the umbrella of journalism.


It all began with a New York Times profile of a "financial journalist" at the Business Insider by the name of Joe Weisenthal (screenshot below). 

The New York Times profile of Joe Weisenthal

Among other things, the profile noted Mr. Weisenthal's extreme work ethic which leads him to work to the point where there are days when he can do nothing but watch television. Sometimes his wife has to tweet him to get his attention. Before I move on I'd like to say that I feel sorry for Mrs. Weisenthal for having to tweet her own husband. The profile also called some of Mr. Weisenthal's work "air and sugar" journalism and alleged that his work was factually inaccurate on quite a few occasions. A journalism professor then wrote a post about him not wanting his students to emulate Joe Weisenthal despite him having being named the 'Financial Journalist of the Year' for 2011 by Talking Biz News. In my opinion, the factual inaccuracy is indeed troubling since we rely on the media for so much of your news and information. And while working hard is a good thing, there is an out-worldly, novel concept called work-life balance (*sarcasm*). 


Henry Blodget is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the Business Insider. He went on to write an uninformed, slanderous personal attack on the professor. The professor replied and Mr. Blodget then wrote another piece titled, "NO WORRIES PROFESSOR! Sometimes People In The Real World Like To Work Hard." Two things were particularly troubling to me. One was the BI's inability to accept criticism and recognize the other people's right to have opinions about them that don't agree with their own opinion of themselves. A news organization is about opinions! It publishes opinions, helps people have informed opinions and evolves and improves through reader opinions. This is compounded by the personal attack Mr. Blodget launched on the person holding the opinion, which is entirely unwarranted and despicable. Of course BI and Mr. Blodget are allowed to have an opinion and rebut, but attacking someone personally is definitely not the way to do that! Notwithstanding the intolerance of opposing opinion, Mr. Blodget also attributed the criticism of Joe Weisenthal published in the New York Times profile to the professor who simply quoted from the article. Talk about an organization with problems of factual inaccuracy!!


It is a sad reality that the success of a news organization in the internet era is measured by bottomlines and pageviews. However, distorting facts and launching despicable personal attacks is not the route to success any news organization should choose to take. Ethics, humility and honesty may seem unimportant to the organization and its management in the face of the reality of bottomlines and pageviews, but some of us still think having a conscience and moral character is important. I am one of those people. And I no longer have the tiniest shred of respect for, or ever again want to read, the Business Insider. 

Being as Accurate as DNA Would Mean Perpetual A+s. Awesome!

This post was instigated by the sheer sense of awe evoked by the sentence, “Over half of all known disease mutations come from replacement polymorphisms.” My attempt to share the awe ensues below.

Scientifically, the basis of all human beings is DNA, which exists as a double stranded helix, meaning two strings of molecules wrapped around each other. The human genome comprises in excess of 3,000,000,000 (3 billion) pairs of molecules and these molecules are constantly being replicated as cells die and new cells are needed to replace them. Not to mention that the molecules replicate at around 50 molecules per second per strand of DNA. Now imagine that happening in multiple places in one cell and then in multiple cells in one person at any given point in time. That’s an incredible amount of work just to survive day to day as a fully functioning homo sapien.

A lot of diseases, including cancer, arise from incorrect molecules being introduced into the DNA sequence during replication. Out of these “mistakes”, a fair amount don’t really make a difference because of certain redundancies in the way the cells interpret the DNA. Sometimes, only one molecule in the entire sequence is different- a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). What the sentence quoted at the very beginning is saying is that half of all genetic mutations, or “mistakes”, that are known to cause diseases happen because one molecule (in 3 billion molecules) was copied incorrectly. Essentially if a cell is 99.99999997% accurate in replicating its molecular basis, you can get cancer (if the mistake is in the right place).

Considering that most people don’t have major genetically induced diseases despite having way more than just one cell (60-90 trillion, to be more accurate), the human body is way awesome in terms of accuracy of replication. Imagine if you were wrong only once out of three billion attempts, you’d get through school, bachelors, masters and PhD without once having been wrong in an exam (or being wrong only once if the probabilities didn’t work out in your favor)! See- awesome! :)

Certain Kinds of People That Elude Me

Everyone who knows me beyond a certain threshold will testify that I am one of those people who are magnets for the weird, off-beat things that happen in life. Through these weird experiences I have come across a lot of people that I just don't understand. I try to see the world through their perspectives but it's always an #epicfail endeavor. Below is a rundown of some of these people. :)

The Stalker: Recently I was followed around by some random guy who I'd never seen before for a bit under an hour (so much for living in one of the safest cities in the world!). I just don't get it. What would you see in a person in one glance that would make you waste an hour of your life following them around while they go about their business? Especially when even a blind person would see that the "stalkee" obviously does not want to talk to the stalker!

The Carefree World Traveler: This past weekend while I was in a remote and rundown beach-side shack in paradise where I met this guy from Slovenia whose occupation is to travel. He picks up odd-jobs every now and then and travels the world. I'm pretty sure he doesn't get why I'm in university or why I would want to hold a job like the bulk of the adult human population. Traveling and seeing the world are wonderful things that are most definitely on my bucket list, but don't you need money to survive and do all that?! He does, however, make me wonder whether we as a society  have it wrong with how we live our lives. Is there supposed to be some larger point, some deeper meaning to life? If not, then I guess the meaning of life is the meaning you assign it and then both him and I are entitled to our interpretations of what life should be like.

The Two/Three/Four-Timer: These are the guys who are in relationships with multiple women and none of their partners are aware of the existence of the other. Firstly, that must be really hard to pull off. I would imagine it takes a lot of lying, an incredible capacity for compartmentalization and a missing conscience. Secondly, why bother? Thirdly, why can't all the people who like this secretly-polygamous thing just pick each other and leave the innocents alone?! Lastly, WHY?!

The I-can't/won't-do-it-because-it's-hard Clan: I was in the gym a few weeks back and a gym-virgin asked me to help her out with using the weight machines. Every time I'd show her proper form she'd say, "but doing it like this is SO hard!" Then she'd proceed with incorrect form or just do one rep because obviously that was easy. Most things in life worth having are hard. Sometimes really, really, really hard. That's all I have to say on the subject besides the fact that I just don't get "it's hard" as an excuse. 

The Two-faced "Friend": Oxymoron. As long as you're with them it's omg-you're-so-awesome. When you're gone it's omg-she/he-sucks! What's wrong with just telling someone you're not a fan?