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July 13, 2013

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After their 9th Studio Album- Backspacer- being acclaimed by many as their best work yet Pearl Jam after almost a 4 year long break have given us a sneak peek into their upcoming album Lightning Bolt. This preview comes in the form of the song Mind Your Manners, released over the internet 2 days back. Let us dig right into the striking features of this Lightning Bolt then:

The song starts off with a guitar progression that is quite punchy, yet the tone is rounded off well, making it a rather easy way in. And then the vocals hit you, if you are not a regular to PJ’s music (like me) then it’ll take you a moment to realize that it still is Eddie Vedder. He doesn’t look or sound like the guy in Alive or Jeremy, but is amazing nevertheless. The style of vocals complements the lyrics and in turn the title of the track. The lyrics are cloaked in religious references and so is the cover art for this track- we saw some resemblance to the cover art of Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy here.

About halfway through the song the masterstroke comes in, the guitar solo. Sadly this is short lived, however, by now one can realize that not only is the final sound impeccable, but PJ has played around with the soundscape a bit more. It is safe to assume that the band must’ve had a lot of fun during the production.

In so many ways the song is similar to the PJ sound (case in point- Spin the Black Circle) but in many ways different and a leap forward. If this song is the centrepiece of the album, Lightning Bolt will be one album to look out for.

So Sailors, Mind your Manners!

In what might be another notch on the its list of mishaps, Delhi University allegedly fumbled with results of the final year students of Journalism Honours. Apparently, the University forgot to add 200 marks to the final score.

According to the current syllabus being followed, the VI semester of the three year Journalism course has two papers -Seminar on current affairs’ and Human rights, Gender and Environment both conducted for the first time in 2013, along with the usual dissertation. The addition of these papers led the total marks to be earned in the VI semester to 400, in comparison to the 200 prior to that. The aggregate marks at the end of the degree now became 2400 but the results which were released on 12th July show the students to be marked only out of 2200, which created a situation of panic among some of the hopeful graduates.

At first, the students assumed that the dissertation marks had gone missing. While many distressed students were confused whether to consider themselves as graduates or not, Journalism students of Kamala Nehru College remained calm about the situation. “The best part is we already know are dissertation marks, so we can include them in ourselves” remarks a student, wanting to be unnamed. Students of other colleges did not share the same fate as their dissertation marks were not disclosed to them.

Later on, as Kamala Nehru students who already knew their dissertation score analysed the 2200 with the marks of their previous semesters, what came into notice was the fact that DU had included the marks of the dissertation but left out the scores of the other two papers.

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While, it is yet to be confirmed from any University official if an error has actually occurred, a faculty member of the course attested to the oversight on the University’s part stating that the University did forget to add the 200 marks and that a new result sheet would soon be uploaded.

The sudden bouts of high blood pressure amidst the students, led to several students using social media to share their worries and their anguish over the result.

Errors in examination results is surely nothing new for the students of Delhi University. Earlier this year, students had reported of over inflation of marks with students scoring 102 in a paper of 100.