Counting Probabilities in Movies: Impossible

My tiny brain cannot comprehend the delusions perpetrated by movies. I was perplexed and doubtful - but never sure - of these delusions.

Have the screen play writers ever wondered what they are producing? How would people perceive the writers?

They do mention here and there the odds a hero is up against. But. Take into (some level of) free will of so many people and things surrounding the heroes. That hardly seems to count. Occasionally, one or two things won't go according to the plan and that's it. That's just not enough to even remotely satisfy or honor randomness at work in the world of chaos in which the plots are set.

Do they have anything else but "escapism" as an excuse for fooling themselves and their audience? Probably not. Maybe that's the point that even if the possibility of doing a feat is 1 in a million times - it's doable. However, the process of getting there is brutally by passed in the name of Greece's self-delusional fantasies..

We mistake high definition graphics and few moments of breathtaking actions as a recipe for stretching beyond the limits. Not even a chance. Censorship is required by those with deep introspection into these matters.

Wealth of the Poor

How about maximizing GDP?

In England there was commons land. Common people depended on this land for their livelihood and shelter. They were poor people who didn't even have modest incomes, who only survived on what they could find in the forests, lakes, etc., for themselves and/or for their cattle. Similarly, it provided them housing and shelter. The land,as a public good, made life liveable and gave a sense of security against economic upheavals and lack of basic goods - things too inevitable in today's civilized market economies in war-ridden scenarios.

The rich people had their eyes on it, maybe for long. In 1066, after the Norman's Conquest, things changed drastically. Rich and powerful lords invoked the god of greed and free markets, and approached the king for its 'privatization'. "Your lordship, your pro-poor policies are making these people sluggish and dormant. Inefficiency reigns. Producivity suffers. And the idol of progress is angry upon us. End protectionism. End this injustice that blocks pur way to [indefinite] Progress." And they told many other stories their PhD economists wrote. King nodded in yes. He had to give in for the sake of (indefinite) progress. Let the game begin.

All the poor people were banished from the commons land, which became not so common by then. And was sold to the fittest, ie the wealthy, the powerful. Can't make any compromise on competition, ye see. Their houses (read: fragile huts) were destroyed, and the rest was just part of the package which was to be theirs no more. Survival became difficult, if not impossible. Previously, they could graze their sheep and drink its milk or eat fresh fish from flowing lakes or rivers and survive, but now the conditions became worse. You can imagine that. Where did the desperate souls go? Fuel industrial revolution for insanely meagre pays, in insanely inhuman conditions? Well that's what scholars are betting their guesses on.

During the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), there was commons land on which poor people used to graze their cattle and perhaps drink water from. Rich and powerful people approached him (PBUH) to allow their cattle to enter it for grazing; to end this economic corruption of Inefficiency and low Producivity; to let free markets reign.

Holy Prophet's Judgement: "rich are forbidden from their entrance into commons land and are instructed to find some other pasture or land for their big flocks, lest they overgraze the rightful share of poor people's pasture."

The judgement given by Prophet (PBUH) is totally opposite to the one given by anti-poor forces and shows the basis of Islamic economics to be welfare of the people and especially the poor.

Adapted from a lecture by economist Dr Asad Zaman, www.asadzaman.net

Success & Humiliation

One Chairman Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission told the following tale to a group of young Pakistani researchers going abroad:

“A man planned to work for an insurance company. He heard about another man in the profession who was very, very successful.

He visited him to seek his advice and left. After 15 days, he came back to him, and said: “I can’t do it.”

The successful one asked, “Why can’t you do it?” The first person replied, “There is too much humiliation in it. People don’t listen to me, they quarrel, they push; they are too humiliating.”

The successful one replied: “I’ve been doing this thing for the last 15 years. People often didn’t listen to me. Sometimes they pushed me. Some even slapped me on my cheeks. But nobody ever humiliated me!”

The moral?

Book these days: Black Swan

Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Although the primary subject of the book - distillation of a life-long personal, academic and professional inquiry - may sound technical being related to finance and econometrics, the book interests all. Its not just that the application of the subject is universal, it's also that the cross-disciplinary approach and wealth of examples makes it a much more interesting book. Too enjoyable for escapists and hedonists. Psychology and philosophy have this aspect being accessible and relate-able to many, if not all, as their interests revolve around humans and their various problems, theoretical and practical.

It's 1970s. Lebanon (or the old Levant) enjoyed centuires of societal harmony despite as a hub of diverse cultures, ethnicity, religions, and sects of all sorts; as a meeting place of East and West, although more European than Eastern. (Fact that Europe exlcuded it from itself just gives a clue about their "openness" and the yearning to be in there by those relegated to East points to their "authenticity" and "independence".) Any prediction of a sudden, unnoticable, rare and catastrophic breakdown and dissolution of this harmony was beyond "imagination." It was not to be.

It was to be. Sudden. Unpredictable by conventional thinking, which was based on empirical data of centuries that only predicted more cohesion and unity in diversity than a bloody, long civil war between Muslims and Christians. The prime minister, relative of Taleb, had as reliable a clue about the situation as PM's car driver.

This is what Taleb calls a Black Swan. "All swans are white," was a belief paraded as a scientific truth by many who did not get dose of humility in school. It only took sighting of 1 black swan in Australia (perhaps) to demolish this "fact." Hence the idiom: as rare as a Black Swan.

The book is a decent dose for those who're too cocky about their expert-ness, especially of financial and mathematical models. At another level, it is also a critique of those obsessed with trying to fit things into neat and clean forms, types and categories, ignoring nuances and not-so-apparent distinguishing elements. At another level, it also questions our temptations to "explain things away" and find causes and motives to every fact or happening as immature babbling of an untrained mind.

Author belongs to the large pool of profane minded thinkers, intellectuals and writers, i must add. They are skeptic about everything else, but not about their value-judgments and exclusivist  mechanistic view of the world and creation, and their rejection of transcendence and fate. They believe in accidents as if accident is god or gods? They don't explain that. They're not skeptic about dogmas of modernity, and very unequivocal about their rejection of any "chance" of transcendence.

Overall, interesting book to read before sleeping.

Chenab College Jhang: Love's Labour

(A very old piece. Just sharing to honour my early teenage alma mater.)

Junior bloc, up till 5th grade. Spent 1 year here. Nervous days of a new comer...

Senior Boys' Wing: The Castle, the Heart, the Magnificence of the school. Where kings, lions, and even monkeys mutate

A somewhat amorous view of senior girl's wing :D

I spend some of the finest years of my early teenage life (age 10-14) years studying in this auspicious and graceful place, Chenab College Jhang (often term as thana CCJ by its notorious inhabitants), some 20 kms outside Jhang city. For many years, I have not visited it, not only my teen age's, but my life's love. I revere it to the extent that it has kept visiting me in my dreams always showing how greatly it's progressing, touching new heights to this very day. And when I hears reports about its glory, its present, I find the visions of elevation it shows me as true. 'Departing' is a gloomy verb, at least for me. Waves of feeling of sadness overcrowd my heart when I think of it, dream of it, because I am away from it. Not a day came when i'd be nervous or unhappy - even during exam days ! - to enter it and live the experience in an exceptionally beautiful and harmonious interplay of academics, freshness, discipline and nature. May the enchantment never end. Maybe it's just that CCJ wants me to keep loving it like i did as a student, unaware of politics within administration or other ugly things (if any). Maybe I want to reunite with it. It is not just a building, or a stately place with wondrous gardens and greenery. It is not a job-shop either where pupils are manufactured and sold to retailers or wholesalers. It is a ground for those with heart, a ground where minds nurture, where nature of man comes face to face with itself. May it achieve high ideals of man's khilafa. Aameen.