One good point about PTI

More and More will be said about Imran Khan in the coming days. 

People will criticize and question his strategies and the team he builds. 

And that's crucial indeed. 

But for me, what matters, so far,  is the process, IK and PTI has been through over 16 years. 

It's a party comprising of educated and well-informed people, many of them being experts their respective fields. 

And the only thing that matters today, is that, some Pakistanis like me have again come to think of politics bigger than a business of bloody politicians. 

We should not attribute any guarantees to this new team. 

But one thing we should do is to learn about the people ... off course not the new entries ... but the founding members and those who have been in this struggle for years. 

There's more than just IK in there. 

and I will recommend people to read this famous article by IK. 

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=337714363732

Zikr e jahri in different forms

I came across different videos of Zikr all over the world. Here, I share with you some of these videos as found. 

Chechen Zikr

Chechen Qadri Zikr

Naqshbandi Zikr

Summarizing Obama's Death Affects... !!!

That’s the headline of today:

(Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan on Sunday, President Barack Obama announced, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide hunt for the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

Well, here's my version of the story before I somehow manage to return to work and recover from the side-effects this big development: 

1.   People all over the world are relieved; it's a relief after all, "Khas kam Jahan Pak...."

2.   Americans are happy; they did it after 10 years... !!!

3.   President Obama must be super-happy... he did it and that may win him another term .. !!!

4.   A tweep from Abbotabad, Sohaib Athar,  celebrates being the only tweep to tweet live about the noise of helicopter involved in the attack on Osama

5.   Pakistan's are left in a state of confusion on the consequences of this event whether this would imply:

a.   more terrorist attacks in retaliation

b.   more US military involvement in Pakistan affairs and a prolonged war here

c.   some relief in any form for them??.. .:-P

6.   Pakistani government does not yet have any statement on the matter. We

7.   The fact Osama was killed with 1KM premises of Pakistan Military Academy raises serious questions about the role of Pakistan Army and Intelligence into the issue.

8.   On a funny note someone remarked, “@faisaljamkhan: This is worrying. Even Osama Bin Laden is not safe in Pakistan.” And “@myasinmasood Osama dies every 4th year... just like world cup. 2003, 2007, 2011... !!!”

9.   Strangely, he had been reported to be buried in sea…!!!

Image Source: Revolt of the Plebs

A Fist Look at QAU Ranking in Mechanical Engineering

Pakistani print and electronic media, is proudly reporting that Quaid-e-Azam University has been ranked 69th in world in "Engineering and Technology" category. Complete story can be found on APP's website. 

They deserve appraise for such an outstanding achievement but wait a minute, does it make complete sense. How could a university make such a huge progress to appear in top 100 world universities all of a sudden. On a positive note, we must find out how they did it and implement the same model for other universities as well. 

As I came to read that QAU ranked for the Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautical and Manufacturing category, the first thing I did was to ask two sane and sound looking engineers sitting around me to confirm if they knew whether QAU conducted Mechanical Engineering or any other Engineering course at all. Blank faces... :-(. You see them so often around,  blank faces. 

I checked on QAU's website and bad luck again, may be reflecting my poor googling skills. Nothing there in Engineering category. On a side note, you may agree that the beta version of new website looks definitely a lot cool and professional than the old one. 

Intrigued, I thought may be I can spare some time to see the actual source of the ranking. 2011 QS World University Rankings by Subject - Engineering & Technology Rankings. The first and only thing I got after a pressing Cntrl-F and looking for Pak was what I looked for. QS rankings seem to confirm what we claim. 

However, in the first place, the ranking never says exact rank sixty-nine, it's just 51-100 category. However, if you keep counting the rows from 50 onwards on that page, you reach rank 69 for sure.

Let's look at the top of the page to see how universities are ranked. Their are three criteria listed. Academic, Employer Ranking and Research Citations. MIT is at top and it scores 100, 84.9 and 61.3 in individual categories for an overall score of 83.9.

The university ranked one above QAU, Politecnico di Milano, Italy scores 30.9, 52.2 

and 22.4 respectively. 

But QAU's score are bit strange. 2.4 in academics, 5.2 in Employer and 92.8 in Research. You can do the rest of maths. It ain't that hard. However, the overall score is not mentioned at the QS website. 

A 92.8 score is incredibly high. It means we are probably ahead of all the universities in the world in mechanical engineering research.  Rice University scores 89.1 and Harvard 84.1 for citations. 

HEC says QAU is at top in its ranking with 544 indexed journal publications. I could not find how many papers MIT or Cambridge have published in same period of time and what is the amount of their citations. 

These rankings indicate the university ranks pretty bad in academics. 2.4 out of 100 is not a charming score after all. The only contributing factor to the ranking is the number of publications. A natural question pops up if research and academics have any relationship at all.2.4 in academics and 92.8 in research, does that sound logical and possible.

If I were aware of detailed ranking criteria, may be I had a different picture of the story. 

              

Sar Mein Jootay

The story was narrated by a close friend about a politician from the raja family of Khan Pur (near Taxila), Pakhtunkhwa. A political leader from their side was bragging about the number of primary schools in Pakhtunkhwa. Someone asked him, why he does not support the case for institutions of higher education in his area. The response was classical and accurately portrays the mindset of our politicians.  

In his words, 

"Jeray Primary pass ho janday nay, oh ta sanun salam nae kar k janday, jeray 10 par laysan... O te lazmi saday ser ech jootian marsan"

"Those who pass primary, they don't even say salam to us. If they pass 10th grade also, they will, for sure,  throw shoes at us."

And indeed that is what happened with these people. HEC, did not surrendered to the illegal demands of our corrupt politicians and exposed their fake degrees. 

The reciprocal response seems pretty natural. Similar has been happening to whosoever in our country  attempts to expose such cases of corruption and foul play.