Despite tragedy, TEDx event in Karachi, Pakistan goes on
About a month ago, on an April morning just a day before their event, organizers of TEDxBahriaUKarachi in Karachi, Pakistan hurried to finish preparations for their big day. The only problem? The city was shut down.
Weeks earlier, a blast in the Abbas Town neighborhood of the city killed 45 people, while another in the Landhi neighborhood killed three. Pakistan’s parliamentary election, set to enact the country’s first transition from one civilian government to another in 66 years, was soon approaching, and the country was in crisis.
Just three days earlier, a bomb attack on the office of a Pakistani political party killed three people and injured 30. The city shut down in mourning. Co-organizers Furqan Hussain and Sana Nasir struggled to plan an event in a city shuttered.
Co-organizers Furqan Hussain and Sana Nasir
Undeterred, Furqan searched for a shop that was open to buy supplies to create a sign for the event, while Sana worked to print event materials. “Furqan had to paint and prepare the TEDx stencil on his own along with extensive travelling across the city just to find any shop that was open and was doing business,” said Sana. “We had to deliver as much as we had promised. Karachi has been under crisis for long and us being Karachiites have learnt to survive through such days.”
The TEDxBahriaUKarachi team
The most difficult part, said Sana, was creating an event that would live up to the talks from TED she had seen, and the TEDx events she’d read about. “Under the TEDx banner we had to glue everything together and create an entire TED environment, the one that enlightens the mind and lets everyone take home at least one idea that can change their lives after that,” she said. “Our theme ‘Ideas for Survival’ coincidentally proved to be right on.”
But as signs were painted and programs printed, tragedy struck and another blast occurred. Shops and homes were wrecked. 10 people were killed. 25 were injured. Sana and Furqan were inundated with text messages and phone calls from people asking if the event was still on.
“We were confused and really heartbroken because it felt that all our hard work was about to go down the drain,” Sana said. “However, we as a team didn’t lose hope; we managed to inform everyone that the event was still on.”
And on the event went. Five speakers gave talks to an audience gathered together to share ideas — even amidst tragedy. Speakers included Maria Memon, a journalist from Lahore, Pakistan who was named a CNN Journalism Fellow in 2011; young Karachian inventor and teacher Syed Adnan Sabzwari; and Dr. Sabir Michael, a professor of sociology at Bahria University’s Karachi campus, who was born blind, but refused to let it prevent him from obtaining higher education.
Audience members watch the event
“The one thing we wanted our audience to take back [with them] was hope,” Sana said. “‘Ideas for Survival,’ the theme, sowed the idea of surviving in situations when there’s less or no hope. Our event, in fact, survived through such a harsh situation when we lost hope ourselves, but the idea to bring a unique platform like TEDx was strong enough to help us through our hard times. That was what we wanted, that same string of hope for our audience to hold on to and our speakers to deliver.
“No one forgets when people come up to them and thank them for doing something good for them,” she continued. “We cannot forget the time when our attendees came up to us and thanked us for short-listing them for the event. They now believed in the power of the ideas, in the power of X. Those were the best and the most unforgettable memories for the curators and the team. It felt as if all the running around and late hour work actually paid off.”
“TEDxBahriaUKarachi brought confidence to the people of Bahria and Karachi in general,” Sana said. “They now believe in themselves that we as a community are capable of bringing change, capable of understanding things, to organize an event with an international reach. The confidence that the voices in their community will be heard by not only them but by the people who belong to different races, cultures, religions and even ethnicities. They got to know what strong ideas are and how those ideas are given the right direction.”
(Photos by Safa Imtiaz Ali and Syed Wajahat Ali)
Dung beetles: Poo collectors. Land cleaners. Stargazers?
Photo: Emily Baird via LiveScience
What happens when you take a dung beetle into a planetarium? You figure out it knows a lot more about our galaxy than you’d think.
TEDx speaker Marcus Byrne is one of the several scientists behind a new study — published this week in Current Biology — that has revealed the dung beetle to be the very first animal proven to use the entire galaxy for direction, rather than individual stars or constellations. His TEDxWitsUniversity talk, “The dance of the dung beetle,” featured on TED.com in December, explained some of his earlier research on the creatures and their directional skills.
In his talk, Byrne explains how dung beetles use the sun, the moon, and polarized light as guidance while rolling scavenged dung back to their nests. But of course, research didn’t stop there. “We were sitting out in Vryburg (conducting experiments) and the Milky Way was this massive light source. We thought they have to be able to use this – they just have to!” he said in a press release about the study.
Soon, the team realized that at night, beetles have no problem directing dung balls when the sky is clear, even if no moon is visible, but come across major issues whenever it is overcast. “This led us to suspect that the beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation — a feat that had, to our knowledge, never before been demonstrated in an insect,” said fellow researcher Marie Dacke.
After many observations outdoors, Byrne and the other researchers brought their research inside the Wits Planetarium in South Africa. An article in Cosmic Lab from NBC News explains the tests:
The planetarium was programmed to show the night sky with the Milky Way, or the Milky Way without the brightest stars in the sky, or the brightest stars without the Milky Way, or just the diffuse glow of the Milky Way with no stars at all.
The bottom line was clear: Those bugs could keep track of how the fuzzy streak of the Milky Way was oriented in the sky, to make sure they rolled their balls of dung in a suitably straight line.
However, “not all light sources are equally useful landmarks for a dung beetle,” Wits University reports. “The scientists suspect the beetles have a hierarchy of preference when it comes to available light sources. So if the moon and the Milky Way are visible at the same time, the beetles probably use one rather than the other.”
Still, a dung beetle that knows the Milky Way is a dung beetle we’d like to know. To learn more about these captivating galaxy-gazers, watch Byrne’s TEDx Talk, or check out TED’s playlist of “7 talks that contain fascinating facts about beetles.”
10 TEDxTalks every American should watch before Election Day
As a New York Times article put it this morning, “The presidential campaign entered a delicate phase on Tuesday, suddenly becoming a sideshow to the hurricane.” In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it’s hard to remember that in just a week, Americans will be heading to the polls and, with their presidential selection, answering big questions about the future of the economy, education and their country’s place in this world.
In these 10 TEDxTalks, a global selection of speakers suggest altogether new ways of looking at these questions.
More banks, fewer problems: Scott Shay at TEDxWallStreet
Scott Shay is a small banker with a big idea: No more big banks. The way he sees it, the bigger they are, the harder they fall and the bigger the global disaster they can leave in their wake. At TEDxWallStreet, he appeals for a massive break-up — spreading out the risk, diversifying the field, lowering the dependency, and creating a more secure financial system overall.
Be optimistic about the US and China: Geoffrey Garrett at TEDxSydney
Americans are unsure what the future of China means for them. Many are apprehensive about it’s policies and even fearful of the competition escalating into a perilous rivalry. Geoffrey Garrett thinks the US-China relationship is better than ever. At TEDxSydney, he outlines a vision of the future where codependent superpowers can peaceably exist.
A new Sudan: Tarig Hilal at TEDxKhartoum
A fresh start: From the Revolutionary war to westward migration and the history of immigration — it’s an idea emblazoned onto the American psyche. Now, nations across Africa and the Middle East are looking for new ways to start over for themselves. In this powerful talk from TEDxKhartoum, Tarig Hilal tells the story of a hopeful generation of Sudanese that are coming to terms with their past and setting a new direction for their country’s future. A story that can remind Americans what it means to be start from scratch.
