11th March

General Knowledge

The article points out to the internal political crisis of Islamabad which has resulted into the non-resolution of Kashmir issue so far. When Musharraf visited India a few days back he reiterated the Kashmir issue which he failed to do so in spite of ruling Pakistan for a decade.

New Delhi did well to keep his visit low profile contrary to his intentions. Musharraf spoke about quick resolution of Kashmir issue. If not done so, he warned India for further Kargils to come. General seems to be in a dilemma whether to be a loyal army men or a visionary statesman. This backdoor diplomacy has prevented resolution of Kashmir issue. If the General was so keen to resolve the issue then he could have done it while he was ruling the country for a decade. The tragedy with Pakistan is while the rulers remain engaged in consolidating their power and protect themselves from their opponents, there is hardly any room to resolve external issues. It happened with Musharraf when he sacked the high court justices as well as CJ. The same is the story with Zardari as he sacked some of the judges as well as cancelled the electoral candidacy of leader of opposition party Nawaz Sharif. As Nawaz Sharif plans a march to Islamabad against this along with lawyers and supporters, the pressure is on Zardari by General Kayani, the army chief, to settle the matter.

It is known that army rule has never been able to resolve the Kashmir matter. On the contrary, J&K region saw a stable and orderly transition of govt after the elections. Thus, before solving the Kashmir crisis, Pakistan needs to put his own house in order first.

Jurassic Peck

The article talks about the current developing undergoing at the Montana State University in US to reverse engineer a dinosaur from a chicken. Besides the possible consequences the article asserts the use of this technology for more productive purposes.

Studies have confirmed birds to be the direct decedents of dinosaurs. The reason they look different is because they have evolved proteins that suppress the dinosaur characteristics. Paleontologists at Montana State University at US are trying to reverse engineer a dinosaur from chicken. Although the creature thus formed wouldn’t be an exact replica of the original but retain some of the characteristics like claws, fangs or even tail like appendages. But there is no possibility of this experiment to have a Jurassic Park style ending since they are only playing around with chicken development and not the genome. Even if the creature escapes the reproduction possibility is zero and in case of mating, would produce only a normal chicken. However, in the event when action of some genes enhances, nobody can comment on consequences. It should be remembered that just because the technology is available, scientists should not go about experimenting blindly without thinking about consequences. 

Instead, such reverse engineering technologies should be used to regenerate endangered species or those species that recently got extinct. They would have their environment already set. There is no point in regenerating species that got extinct millions of years ago as they won’t have their ecosystem to survive anymore.