Author: admin
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Ausaf Husain and His Sincere Frankness
Syed Ausaf Hussain Marhoom: On 18th January, 2012, Ausaf Bhai left for his heavenly abode. A wrangler in the true sense and a man of high principles. With the way he carried himself, no one could gauge his true age. I remember sharing an anecdote with us that he once visited a Hakeem. Hakeem sb…
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Depressive Thoughts and Poetry- How Poetry Mellows and Enriches Social Interactions
What is the relationship between depressive thoughts and poetic expression? How poetry enables us to face hardships in our lives. What a mournful separation of the family members after the partition is depicted through poetry. Note the following message of eid Mubarak and its poetic response by members of the family across the divide. Also,…
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Inter-Disciplinary and Multi-Disciplinary PhD Research
As I look back I am trying to connect the dots that I have been trying to follow the footsteps of Prof Dr JC Browne at UT Austin, TX, in multidisciplinary research. He was, my PhD Supervisor during 1990-95 whose pic is here: JC Browne’s students were from electrical and computer engineering department, computer science…
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Irfan Husain, Mazdak, Begum & Akhtar Husain Raipuri and Zafar Umar
I have been reading Mazdak/ Irfan Husain’s articles in Dawn for last 20+ years. Although I often disagreed with his opinions but yet used to read them regularly. Son of acclaimed writers Akhtar Husain Raipuri and Begum Hameeda Akhtar Husain Raipuri. Begum Hameeda Akhtar, an acclaimed writer herself was daughter of Zufar Umar author of…
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Library Search for Articles at UT Austin in 1989: How searching of articles has changed
Think about researchers who reviewed hundreds of papers that they had to access manually! UT Austin, Texas in 1987 had around 6 millions items distributed in several departmental libraries. Some of these were several storyed library buildings. There was also a huge 6 floor central library. For example, In Engineering building library each engineering discipline…
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Of Excellence in Ironing and Remembering the Learnings from Mukhtar A Siddiqui, My Khaloo
Of Excellence in Ironing and Remembering Mukhtar Siddiqui Mukhtar Khaloo once came to Islamabad and was traveling to Mardan. This was the mid-1970s. He spent a few days at our place. There are two memorable incidents from his stay. One was my learning about excellence in ironing. The way he ironed his shirt and pants…
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Which is the “competent authority” for investigating a crime such as abduction in Pakistan
“Which is the “competent authority” for investigating a crime such as abduction in Pakistan? “Competent Authorities” for Investigation & Enforcement suffer from conflicts of jurisdiction, duplication, redundancies, multiple chains of commands, and mismatch of authority with responsibility. There is lack of transparency, and accountability. There is a perennial tension between Enforcement vs Investigation induced by…
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70 years of Failure of Dominant Narratives
اگر آپ ملک کی ترقی چاہتے ہیں تو اس 70 سالہ ناکام بیانیہ کی اندھا دھند تقلید چھوڑ دیں، جس کے چند بڑے نکات یہ ہیں:1. پاکستان کی زبوں حالی کی بنیاد مالی کرپشن ہے- جی نہیں، پاکستان کی زبوں حالی کی بنیاد مالی نہیں آئینی کرپشن ہے جو کہ اداروں کو تباہ و برباد…
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Competent Authorities of Pakistan and the Source of their Incompetence
What is “Competent Authority” and how their incompetence breeds mafias:“Competent Authority” is the code word used by bureaucracy itself to hide the name of decision maker. This is often the secretary of Ministry but may denote a committee also or some other decision maker, but the footprint of the secretary must be there in that…
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Complex web of Investigative Agencies investigating the other Investigative Agencies
بادشاہ کا گھوڑا اور انوسٹیگیشن کی نگرانی کے نگران:بادشاہ سلامت نے شاہی اصطبل کے لیے مہنگا ترین گھوڑا خریدا۔ کچھ دن بعد بادشاہ نے وزیر کے ہمراہ اپنے پسندیدہ گھوڑے کو دیکھنے کے لیے اصطبل کا دورہ کیا اور وزیر کو کہا کہ گھوڑا کمزور ہو رہا ہے ۔ وزیر نے معاملے کی تحقیقات کی…
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Oil Price Hike Mafias in Pakistan
Incompetence of the competent authority: Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, OGRA The relationship between OGRA and Ministry of Energy, Petroleum Division. There is a conflict of responsibilities and authorities which allows these mafias to fester.
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Hoarding and Price Manipulation Mafias
Incompetence of the “competent authorities” responsible for lack of price control under several ministries. Beware of media brigade that wants to protect and cover-up the shenanigans of the “incompetent authorities” by shifting the blame to the poor people. They are trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility of ensuring that the incompetence of these so…
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Constitutional Corruption vs Financial Corruption
Corruption is breaking of law to gain some financial benefits. Law is under the constitution, so constitution is at a higher pedestal than law. Constitutional violations have a greater negative impact than the financial corruption because constitutional violations destroy the institutions and their relationships, thereby leaving scars that may take decades to heal. The impact…
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Why there are Crime Mafias in Pakistan- Multiple Investigation Agencies with Overlapping Functions
کرپشن اور کرائم انوسٹیگیشن: بڑھتا گیا درد جوں جوں دوا کیHow many investigation agencies are there in Pakistan? Which other investigation agencies exist that are not mentioned in the attached lists? I think there are investigating units also in FBR, EOBI, SBCA, SBP etc? I read somewhere many years ago that there are 40+ agencies!How…
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How Mafias Come into Existence in Pakistan: There is no single authority to be held accountable
Mafias are created when different government agencies start playing ping-pong with their responsibility. They are all the time fighting turf wars often with the connivance of the vested interests, who then cling together to form cartels that start playing one government department against the other, one ministry against the other. جہاں جہاں مافیا ہے…
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Aviation Fiasco: Incompetence of CAA, PIA and Aviation Ministry
CAA has recently certified that all the licenses issued by CAA are genuine and are not fake. Please note the count of fake licenses was 262 in the report flashed by the aviation minister in the assembly which was followed by the Prime Minister speaking about that the fake licenses while trying to implicate previous…
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Learning and Life is My Autobiography
Writing poetry, blogs, essay, or reflections is greatly cathartic. Things that greatly troubled me, once I got them out of my system through my writing, they stopped bothering me. Once expressed, they stop festering. This is how I forgot many of my longings. My long blog posts are my learning and my efforts in my…
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When Ayub Khan Accused Fatima Jinnah Of Being An Indian And American Agent
Source: Time Magazine datelined Christmas Day 1964. It sheds interesting light on how far back this game of the security establishment conjuring up images of US-India collusion go. Ayub Khan actually accused Fatima Jinnah of being pro-Indian and pro-American. Oldest trick in the security establishment’s book. -YLH “They call her the Mother of the Nation,” sniffed Pakistan’s…
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Weakness of Pakistani Judicial System and PCO Chief Justices
Since the Justice Faez Isa case in the SJC and subsequent Supreme Court’s full bench hearing on Justice Isa’s petition, the Pakistani media brigade has gone full throttle against maligning all the judges of the superior courts. All ills have been heaped on the judges with insinuation about their integrity. This facebook post highlights who…
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Dictator Godfathers of Pakistani Politicians-Quality of Selectors-Quality of Selectees
Quality of selectors in Pakistan has reflected in the quality of the selectees. Vicious propaganda against politicians of Pakistan should make us reflect that why on ZAB, NS, AZ, AH and Chaudhrys are credited for their alleged treason and corruption. Their godfathers should also be given due credit if we accept that they have such…
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Political Engineering of Chief Justices of Pakistan: PCO judges
This slide in one glance tells you why there is a vicious campaign against the Supreme Court Judges. There is a new breed of SC judges that are not PCO-ed by dictators. This also tells the story of how Supreme Court controlled and manipulated. Only the judges who toe the lines of the dictators are…
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Corruption and Doctrine of Necessity
چور مچائے شور: کرپشن قانون توڑ کر اپنے نفع کے لئے فیصلے کرنے کو کہتے ہیں، جس کے لئے اپنی جان بچانے کے لئے مک مکا و مٹی پاؤ کرنا بھی شامل ہے- ہمارے ساتھ پچھلے 70 سال سے اس ڈرامے کو نظریہ ضرورت کے نام پر ڈکٹیٹرز اپنے قانون توڑنے کے بعد بچاؤ کے…
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Murphy’s Law and Project Leadership during Change Implementations
Whenever we use technology, we should always do a pilot. Do you recall IBA’s entry test fiasco of medical colleges of Punjab in late 1990s which was widely covered in the media of that time? I saw the fiasco unfolding in front of my eyes from close at IBA where the untested scanner was put…
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Why Dictators Have to Threaten the Ethnicity of their Opponents?
[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions] Unfortunately in their false bravado and continually pumped up by their closed coterie of sycophant advisors , dictators threaten their opponents, and this becomes too much when they threaten the race. This may be a common…
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Using Rubrics to Manage Anxiety Created by LMS Based Online Assignments
Open ended assignments such as case studies, project reports, real life problems that are open book and are take-home types often lead to a mismatch of expectations of the students with that of the faculty members. This mismatch can make students work on Final Assignments for even 10-15 hours, not knowing whether they have met…
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How much time does it take to write an Exam in the LMS Based Online Exam Taken in Asynchronous Mode
How much time does it take to write a 3-hour exam in an LMS Based Online Taken in Asynchronous Mode? My expectation from faculty members is that their question needs to be a 3-hour exam, the “estimated” writing time for the answers should be 3 hours. The exam paper is typically loaded on LMS as…
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Long Term Costs of Presidential System in Pakistan that Need to be Computed
Our penchant and love for presidential systems, our mythical expectation of a strong leader, a saviour on horseback to come galloping and relieving us from our faltering steps has resulted in the following during our over 35 years quest: Three arbitrary selections that establishment now consider corrupt, three separatist movements, three rigged elections, three selections arbitrarily…