Two and a half men going down

The ninth season of two and a half men, on of the greatest on going comedy show has started but without Charlie Sheen who was replaced by Ashton Kutcher after months of drama. As expected, the show doesn't feel the same without notorious Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen played character Charlie Harper, a famous jingle writer who was living bachelor style in his beach house in Malibu. Three words, alcoholism, womanizing and gambling summed up his life. His brother Alan who is exact opposite of him, three times divorced and broke was living with Charlie for eight years and had a son named Jack. The story revolved around there lives. Evelyn (mother of Charlie and Alan), Rose (Charlie's female stalker) and Berta (house keeper) are also prominent characters of the show.

What made this show fun was mostly the interaction of Charlie with other characters. He wanted to kick out his brother out of the house. His impression on Jake and Alan's miserable life which was half of the times because of Charlie. His relationship with his mother and Evelyn's character is also hilarious.

Now CBS have replaced Charlie Harper's character with Walden Schmidt (Ashton Kutcher), a young billionaire, internet tycoon who buys the house after Charlie's demise. Now when you read this who imagine that Walden would exactly be like Charlie Harper but the writers of the show took the bold decision to make his character totally different. And it failed. Walden is recently divorced and isn't over his ex-wife who used to pamper him like her baby and left him because he doesn't act like an adult.

Ashton Kutcher's acting is fair enough but this show will only decrease his popularity because the character he is playing is absolute FAIL. The show revolved around jerk, womanizer and they replaced it with a soft cry baby.

They only reason people are watching the show again because the first episode had all the hype of Charlie Sheen being written off. Then first few episodes to watch the new character but now we can only see the rating of the show going down.

Rich in oil?

The ministry of water and power has claimed that there will be no load shedding from now on as the demand is 13000 MW and supply is more or less the same. The reason for terrible load shedding in the past week was the suspended supply of oil from Pakistan State Oil (PSO) to power generation companies which owe PSO Rs 150 billion. The power generation companies were, in turn, waiting for payment of Rs 120 billion from PEPCO.

Sources said that Rs 8.5 billion were paid to the PSO and independent power production companies by PEPCO. It took a week of unrest in all the cities of Pakistan, with violent protestors destroying public and private properties to vent their anger against the load shedding, for the Government of Pakistan to pay heed to the situation.

Now the protest against the load shedding will definitely stop as it has happened before and no one will care if the real problem is dealt with. The circular debt will keep rising because we are consuming more than we are producing. The Government will absolve their guilt after providing temporary solution to the problem in spite of finding more reliable and cheaper energy resources.

Pakistan needs 32,000 metric tons of furnace oil daily to produce sufficient energy. The figure shows the incompetence of the energy planners in Pakistan. Even oil rich gulf states do not consume this much oil for the production of electricity. The energy planning commission of Pakistan has turned deaf ear to the clamor of energy pundits of the world that the world is running out of oil and we need to shift to renewable energy resources to meet our demands. This is the reason that our circular debt rises by one billion with each passing day.

Pakistan has three major power sources- oil, natural gas and hydro. Each contributes around 32% while coal and renewable energy produces about 2% energy combined. Most countries have adopted cheap coal based power resources to produce 40-50% power while expensive oil for power production is reduced to less than 5% while Pakistan continues to use expensive oil for one-third power production.

What hurts the most is that Pakistan is suffering from blackouts, shortages, public unrest, lag in economic and industrial sector due to power outage while we are sitting on the top of one of the largest coal reserves in the world. Pakistan can produce 100,000 MW electricity for the next 100 years and only 25% of the coal reserves will be consumed if coal is included as major power source, where the current demand according to the Government is 13,000 MW and it can go up to 20,000 MW in extreme summer.

Coal is available in abundance in Sindh and Balochistan and provinces have the autonomy to set up power plants on their own but the problem lies in the incompetent administration and lack of interest from the government. It takes only 3 years to set up a plant up and running powered by coal. Government should give incentives to the investors and even if foreign assistance is acquired, the projects will be profitable and public will still get cheaper electricity.

Breast Cancer Awareness in Pakistan

The Pink Ribbon National Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign held a ceremony on Friday 30th September, 2011 to remember 40,000 women dying every year of breast cancer in Pakistan.

Pakistan has the highest rate of breast cancer for any Asian population accounting to 40,000 deaths every year. The available human resource in the health sector in Pakistan is quite low as it shows a ratio of 1,254 people per doctor and 2,671 per nurse. Despite these horrible statistics the Government of Pakistan has allocated only 0.57% GDP for the health sector whereas it is 4.7% for the rest of the South Asian countries.
Statistics show that out 90,000 breast cancer patients in Pakistan, 40,000 die every year. This means that the probability of dying is highest if you develop breast cancer in Pakistan. In India, 1 out of every 22 women have breast cancer while in Pakistan 1 out of every 9 women has breast cancer.

The cause of breast cancer In Western countries is obesity but to find out the cause in Asian countries, proper investigation should be carried out. Hereditary reasons are more likely to be a reason for it in Pakistan rather than lifestyle of women.

Men can also develop breast cancer although it is less likely in men. Women should start proper check up at the age of 40 to detect it at early stages. In Pakistan it is usually detected at level 3 or 4.
In the prevailing scenario it is important to focus on prevention rather than cure because if it is detected at an early stage the chances of survival are up to 90%.

Misconceptions:
1. Only older women can develop breast cancer.
2. Breast cancer only runs in the family.
3. Breast feeding increases the chance of breast cancer.

Has justice been served yet?

Religious mob protesting against the court's verdict in Rawalpindi 

The headlines of national and international news on 1st October 2, 2011 read that the Anti-terrorist court in Pakistan sentenced Malik Muhammad Mumtaz Qadri to death for the murder of former Governor Punjab Salman Taseer.

During the last hearing of the case, the accused, Mumtaz Qadri had given a written confessional statement before the ATC judge that he had killed the former Governor Punjab over blasphemy. The decision of the judge seems quiet obvious but it is not. In fact I am happy that the judge showed the courage of announcing this decision.

I have been reading articles about the verdict of the court and their response on the internet where I see everyone supporting the decision but that doesn’t give us the true picture. The internet users in a country like Pakistan are few and does not represent vast majority of extremist people.

As soon as the verdict was announced, the supporters od Mumtaz Qadri, who had already gathered in front of the Adiala Jail started chanting slogans against the government and created unrest. The pelted stones on passing by traffic and Adiala Jail management had to deploy police force to disperse the protestors.
Later, Qadri supporters took out protest rallies in other parts of the city damaging public property and burning tires on the road. I never understood what Pakistani protestors are trying to do exactly when the burn tires on the road. It doesn’t harm any government official or judge or anyone but themselves. The common public faced worst kind of traffic jams on different roads due to these protestors.

So it is clear that the justice is far from being served yet. Mumtaz Qadri can file appeal in the High Court within seven days. The lawyers fraternity called an emergency meeting of the District Bar Association (DBA) at the Distric court Rawalpindi soon after the verdict was announced. The participants of the meeting held with DBA President Malik Khalid Jawad in the chair, strongly opposed the court verdict saying lawyers would move the ATC ruling. He said that ATC did not take into account the teachings of Quran and Sunnah and section 338-F of Pakistan penal code in taking the decision in Salman Taseer murder case. The fraternity also raised slogans supporting Qadri and will take further action on Monday.

So now you see that the justice has not been served yet. There is a 50% chance that Mumtaz Qadri will get away with a murder with religious communities and lawyers backing him.

If Mumtaz Qadri gets away with this, it will be an ultimate failure of law. And it will only encourage people to use the controversial blasphemy law of Pakistan against non-muslim.