Magic carpet malfunction leaves many stranded

(February 2^nd.2010) At Funland in Clifton, Karachi, 24 people were left stranded between 40 and 80 feet in the air when a ride called ‘Magic Carpet’ malfunctioned. Magic carpet was one of the most popular rides at Funland for many families since the Funland amusement park and the public park besides it seems the very few family entertainment places existing in Karachi. 

It is now shut for about four months. According to unofficial reports there was an accident resulting in several minor injuries after which the management has decided to shut down temporarily.

The ride features a wooden motor drome at an angle of 72 degrees and was 80 feet in diameter. It has been a major attraction and is enjoyed by children and adults equally. With the office stinking of pan and gutkha, it was only possible to speak to a representative of the manager outside their office. The management at Funland refuses to accept any case of accident. Park officials say that the passenger restraint system was working properly. However, one of the security staff members stated that “ride was only a year old and has been closed down due to some technical issues”. He also added that their maintenance/technical staff has failed to detect the fault and the chances of getting it fixed are very few. They have also consulted technicians from all over the country who, according to the security in charge, have given up on this one.

On observation, the remains of the ride lays rusting in the rain and the chilly weather of Karachi;  without any covers, which would only risk its suitability once the existing technical problems are solved. With magic carpet down and un-operational indefinitely, there only remains less than 8 so called exhilarating rides to entertain the 70% lower and middle class families of Karachi who visit the funland.

       The question remains that is it the operator error or a rider misconduct or maybe there was something wrong with the ride’s design to begin with. Funland might be an affordable activity for the most of our working class families but the question remains if these rides and their designs are reliable and if not then if such high risks are really worth it. At the same time, one is also tempted to think whether it is bad ownership which has ordered cheap parts and spare parts - from China where the black market for the spare mechanical parts is the largest.

One may find enough staff ensuring rider safety and conform in foreign amusement parks. At the same time, rides are tested for their safety throughout at the expenses of devoting an entire season out of business. On the other hand, Karachi Funland, though being in business 365 days of the year (Except strikes and violent days) and having a much bigger customer base is failing to maintain the standards.

Staring is rude..Is it?!

What can i say? I have absolutely no idea what so ever. No, honestly, I don't have a clue.

I think in my case people are just THERE. They ARE, and when I find one in my close proximity, I have to check them out just to make sure they mean me no harm. You have no idea how many people carry a little hatchet in their suitcases nowadays.:)

And I'm not watching only people. I also watch their shoelaces, fingernails, noses, eyecolor, the way they light a cigarette, the way they hold their lips, when they drink from a glass bottle, the way they touch their face, when they're nervous or flattered, their movements, facial expressions... the list goes on.

I find people charming.    

PRESS RELEASE (Journalism Assignment)

PRESS RELEASE

PROVINCIAL DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN 

LAUNCHED, 10 August 2010.

The Launching Ceremony of Provincial Disaster Risk Management Plan for Sindh was held on August 12th in a local hotel.

“With the implementation of this plan it is hoped that a disaster prevention frame work will be put in place across the province which will help in protecting the lives of people as well as vital infrastructure against impending disasters, it will also put in place effective mechanisms of preparedness and mitigation against multiple hazards, the plan also envisages how to manage an emergency response in an effective and timely manner he added,” said Senior Member Board of Revenue Mr. Ghulam Ali Pasha. He further stated that it has been Sindh Revenue Department endeavor to develop the Provincial Disaster Management Authority into a responsive and smart organization with strong linkages and partnerships in order to make the lives of our people and our province safe.

Senior Member National Disaster Management Authority,Mr. Shaukat Nawaz Tahir in his speech thanked UNDP, NDMA and others for their effects in making of this Disaster Risk Management Plan of Sindh and hoped that all provincial stake holders would follow the strategic direction given in the plan to make SindhProvince safer from Disaster Risks. Mr. Ghulam Mustafa Abro made a presentation of the plan and stated that an action plan has also been made and further this project is first of its kind in Pakistan. Minister Revenue Jam Mahtab Hussad Dahar has congratulated the officers of Board of Revenue and of Provincial Disaster Management Authority for their achievement and efforts that has given Sindh Province the distinction of being the ris to launch such project and hoped that all stake holders will extend their support to strengthen the disaster Management capability of Government of Sindh.

 The launching was well attended amongst other by officials of Board of Revenue DCO’s ofThatta and Umerkot, and by secretaries of various department. HANOUT NO. 705/09 (IHB) .

Conservation of Sin.

All the worlds a stage.

Shakespeare did not invent the metaphor; 'All the worlds a stage': it was already in common use by the 16th century and he would have expected his audiences to recognise it.

In limerick

The poem was compressed into limerick form by the historian Robert Conquest:

Seven ages: first puking and mewling,

Then very pissed off with your schooling,

Then romances and then fights,

Then judging chaps' rights,

Then sitting in slippers, then droolin

The whole world is a stage", says Shakespeare in a poem and by associating ideas: the stage as a chessboard or a piano keyboard cannot have but an ambivalent role: the theater stage and the musical stage.

Bangladeshi Deputy Council commemorates Mother language day in Karachi

KARACHI:  Bangladeshi Deputy Council hosted an experience sharing seminar at Avari Towers (Karachi) on Sunday 21st February to commemorate International Mothers Tongue Day. Many eminent scholars,writers and prominent political figures like Mr. Jawed Jabbar were present at the event. Speakers brought in the limelight the emotional significance of the language of the region -Sindhi and its contribution to literary world. 

Mother Language Day was proclaimed by UNESCO's General Conference in November 1999. The International Day has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingual ism.

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

The best reason for a big event

....

is being big. Nah, HUGE. Ordinary big isn't good enough any more.

Big events, grand openings, national events that just can't be missed. These work (if they're big enough).

Big events, if they're truly big, change the rhythm and demand a different sort of attention and preparation. We can push through the dip, expend emotional labor and do things we never thought we'd be able to do if there's a charette and a deadline and an audience.

Human beings respond to emergencies and to hoopla. We like doing what others are doing, and we'll suspend social disbelief if we're being carried along by the pack (or the mob).

The challenge comes when we institutionalize the event and make it normal.

If you're going to have an event, better make it big. Or even bigger than that. It needs to be awe-inspiring, frightening, on deadline and worth losing sleep over.

You Can If You Think You Can!

this is one of the very inspiring poems shared by my teacher every now & then. every time he recites it; it rejuvenates in me the energy and passion to strive for better and best.


You Can If You Think You Can!

If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win, but you think you can't,
It is almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost,
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will.
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But soon or late the man who wins,
Is the man who thinks he can.

~ C. W. Longenecker ~

As great as your dominant aspiration

You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.

James Allen

we dont need no thought control !

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Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (Waters)  We don't need no education We dont need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. All in all you're just another brick in the wall. We don't need no education We dont need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. All in all you're just another brick in the wall. "Wrong, Do it again!" "If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?" "You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

Valentines!!!

Today is the last day of my week-long queue of back to back classes and also Valentine’s Day, as it happens. Today everybody gets showered with flowers and chocolates, love’s little messengers.

Sometimes these gifts are given with real live love and that's the gold medal, the Nobel prize, the Best Picture Oscar.   But sometimes, Valentine’s Day can put all kinds of pressure on us.  If we’re not in love, we feel left out, if we are in love, we feel obligated to do all the things commerce prescribes: send cards, make dinner reservations, buy flowers and chocolates.  We may genuinely want to celebrate our love with gifts, but commercial pressure and emotional blackmail can make us feel a tiny bit manipulated and resentful.

To counteract this, when we give those roses, chocolates, whatever, we shouldn't forget the love bit.  The adoring look, the hand-holding across the table, the tender gestures.  Don’t have a lover?  Give a friend some love; give yourself some love.  Give the love first, add the trappings and trimmings later. 

Red roses, walks on the beach, candlelit restaurants and cards are not romantic.

                                                        !! Love is romantic!!

Art and imitation

In the essay "Art and imitation", Gadamer defines the ideology that art is imitation of life, nature or human experience. This ideology is quite lucid in objective art that was created prior to modern non-objective art. However, Gadamer's greatest question in this essay is how we can apply aesthetic ideology to both modern non-objective and classical objective or figurative art.

We return to the idea that nature is the most beautiful, the beauty that cannot be entirely defined, the most universal. Therefore depiction of objects and figures of nature are easily recognized as works of art, easily recognized as representation of something, a thing that exists. Gadamer does state that this representation is a reflection of the permanent infinity of humanity and/or nature, as the individual thing or person has temporality and from its genes springs forth yet another incarnation. The representation is the imitation of the perpetual being or nature. It is in reflection of this nature that we appreciate the representative. However the imitation is not required to be identical to the object or thing or the ideal to be recognized and appreciated as the representative. In this form the representative allows the liberation of interpretation.

Recognition is the acknowledgement that we now judge the being/work/creation independently from the initial encounter. It is not solely recording the familiar. Gadamer gives the example of the use of effigy in festival, our joy in recognition of these and describes the a social inclination towards the imitation or mimesis. With this in mind, Gadamer refers to the fact that the concept of modern non-objective art seems to be to not explicitly represent nature and the familiar. He explains that modern art is seemingly done for love of experimentation, almost purely. Gadamer also refers to modern atonal music, experimentation in theater and literature in example. Yet however abstract or atonal, there is some recognition that we find in these creations as well.

After imitation, Gadamer refers to the concept of expression. He regards its rise into dominance in the eighteenth century due to the inability to apply the ideology of imitation to the media of music. With the nature of sound or rather sound of nature there are some apparent limitations and so expression grew to reign in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gadamer describes how expression could be most fulfilling for the artist or composer as they give such a unreserved and absolute contribution to a work/creation that the potential for interpretation is assured.

Then we proceed to the concept of sign, in which the suggestion that modern work can be read as a collection of signs. As perhaps we read or interpret language and literature, the signs being likeable to the characters of an alphabet. Gadamer states that the reading of language has profoundly influenced the manner in which we view a work of art, how we may view an image from left to right, down the image ending in the bottom right. He suggests that we must decipher an order of events in a figurative work so that we may decide the separate elements relation to one another and interpret the meaning of the interaction of those elements, e.g.: Malevich's "Lady in the city of London". Gadamer, returning to the idea that modern non-objective art has a quality which is unreadable, states that it is disallowing the concept of sign, in reference to the works of Picasso or Juan Gris. If we view each of the works of these artists, initially identifying the elements, we are driven back to the work as a composition; therefore we cannot decipher the elements and composition with the theory of sign or the idea of reading of language.

Gadamer finally refers to Aristotle divination of Plato, in which he declared that mimesis is reflection of the order of the universe, of numerical order in which we can apply to harmony, etc., that all things are mimesis or imitation according to numerical relation, perhaps that mimesis is the sum of the order of the apparent miracle of the universe while Aristotle himself suggests that mimesis is the attainment, "fulfillment", that we may look to the mimesis to encounter the universe. Gadamer considers further the doctrines of Pythagoras, which suggest that numerical order is determined by celestial force or visa versa. Since music was a means for cleansing of the soul, Pythagorean idea implies that the concept of imitation encompasses "the order of the cosmos, the order of music, and the order of the soul". Perhaps we can conclude that imitation depicts such order that we recognize as the representation of divine order above the representative of factual sum of the divine order in modern non-objective art.

Gadamer concludes with the concept that with the shift to modern industrial times we have reduced the significance of the "thing", object or perhaps even nature. With the fervent rise of consumption, all things have become disposable (including nature itself). There is the suggestion that production and more precisely marketing have deemed these things for lack of real significance. One can imagine that the desire to possess such a thing is not based on existent need due to marketing. Yet one might consider the other theories of Gadamer from the essay "The relevance of beauty; art as play, symbol and festival" in application to the evaluation of the mass-produced object. There is the possibility that the mass-produced thing may symbolize the absence of "thing", effigy, figure, beauty of nature.

Gadamer finally rests his dialogue with the proposition that Pythagoras' doctrine includes the celestial order, universal order which licenses us to portray the world as we know it, in it's mutable form, with suggestion that art restores order to an endangered culture. 

Life and the Philosophy.

If matter acting on matter for a sufficient period of time can create anything, then I should be able to go out to the Mountains of Colorado and find naturally-occurring computers, cameras, and cell phones. As we've seen, those inorganic devices are much less complex than a "simple" organic bacterium. Yet, most people would find my statement to be "silly" at best. Why? Whether organic or inorganic, the complexity and design is obvious.

To take this concept to a simple level, I examined the watch on my wrist (mine is digital). I contemplated the interdependent system of silicon chips, wires, and LED displays? Actually, by today's technological standards, that's a pretty simple device. However, is there any question that it was created by a group of designers, handed off to a team of mechanical engineers, and then placed into production by a team of automation specialists?

Then I took a minute to look at the wrist under my watch. I've grown comfortable with its apparent simplicity. I looked closer at the skin and hair follicles. I touched them. I thought about the nerves that just told my brain to synthesize that touch. Then I focused more closely and pondered the microscopic makeup of each of my cells. I imagined the complex cellular city at work, and contemplated the wonder of my brain that allowed me to imagine such a thing. I thought about the veins just under the surface of my skin. I thought about my heart pumping oxygenated blood through those veins to keep my wrist and hand alive. I thought about my lungs as they inflated, deflated, and processed that oxygen for my heart.

Then I flexed my hand. I pondered the miraculous communication effort that occurred in a milli-second. I created a thought -- my brain processed the subconscious instruction and translated it into a task for my body -- my nervous system delivered that task to my wrist - and my wrist performed the task perfectly. I never really thought about what just happened? How does an interconnected system like that evolve gradually and randomly over time?

It goes on and on... My digestive tract -- How did that evolve gradually over millions of years? Without processed energy, how would my earliest, evolving ancestors even exist? My part in a two-part reproductive system -- Come on, how did that evolve randomly over millions of years through natural selection and genetic mutation? How do you pass on new and improved genetic traits without the means to reproduce in the first place? I was finally thinking about these things!

So, out of all this, I developed a new thesis for my view of life... We need to drop our preconceived notions. Dump our presuppositions. Just meditate on this material with an impartial mind. Does this stuff have "metaphysical" implications? Sure. But why should that deter us from logically examining the evidence? Where did we get the notion that science and technology somehow have to exist in a naturalistic vacuum? That's not true science. True science is observing the evidence, creating a hypothesis, and testing that hypothesis through various means. Philosophical presuppositions have no place in true science. If science reveals things outside the bounds of known physics, then science should be applauded for its impartial contribution to philosophical and metaphysical thought.