The week in re(ar)view

Trends
The present trend of hartals and oborodh and blockade has become a regular scene. The 4 very short days of no-blockade was like a holiday instead where all the people went out to work and subsequently got stuck in traffic jam for hours. But the country got back on track on non-movement on last Monday. According to the 14 party coalition, the blockade will continue until the following prettily bulleted demands are met:

:Reconstitution of Election Commission
:Removal of Chief Election Commissioner and 3 others
:Correction of voter list
:Last but not least: Bangladesh becomes a superpower

Comment of the week
18 November, “Resist Awami League sponsored anarchy and vandalism by making countrywide demonstrations a success” BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan.

Translation: Fight AL anarchy with better, more effective and more violent BNP anarchy.

Save the CEC
On 14 November Dhaka Metropolitan Shop Owners Association (DMSOA) decided not to sell anything to Chief Election Commissioner M A Aziz and his family. That means no meat, bread, shrimp, imported water or toilet paper. Of course, for the last he can and probably does resort to all the national dailies that blast him in print.

Of course, where there are haters there are supporters. Think Michael Jackson. A group of traders and farmers on 17 November couldn't bear to see the poor CEC suffer. They think an 'innocent' person should not be made to suffer like this.

Our question: in what other way should he be made to suffer? After all, his indecision has made the entire country suffer in all kinds of ways.

Navy needs new calculators
On 15 November the Navy cancelled procurement of very expensive spare parts a day after the Daily Star published a report on their calculating excess. Apparently spare parts costing 1.5 crore for six high speed boats was being purchased at 6.19 crore. Probably some of the people involved in the deal had important personal payment to make for example marble tiling in him e and down payment for son's daughter's husband's BMW. More likely the exaggerated figure was due to malfunctioning calculator. The Navy should then buy new calculators. Contact Mood Dude and Gokhra for state-of-the-art calculators costing 1 crore each specially designed for
Navy.

By Gokhra and Mood Dude

RS Mailbx

Dear Editor of Rising Stars
As a visitor from Canada who works in the mental health field, I appreciated the informative article on schizophrenia by Ferzeen Anis in the last issue of Rising Stars. This is an important problem that especially affects young people. I liked the focus on the bio-medical basis for this illness, as so many suffer stigma and discrimination. However, we can be more hopeful, I think. With sympathetic help, many people with schizophrenia can live relatively healthy lives. Interested readers can visit www.heretohelp.bc.ca for more information aimed at service users and youth.
With best wishes
Alex Berland

Parent's, Coaching centers and Us
The article last week about Mission: Coaching Centers was pretty fun to read. Surely, the current generation is too “cool” for mummy's to handle. Come to think of it, what would we, the teenagers do as we ourselves grow up to be parents?

Obviously, there wouldn't be agonizing lectures for our kids; they would be born of infinite wisdom thanks to our genes. Then again, we wouldn't need to analyze and spy on our children too, partly because tom cruise is getting old and there aren't too many other quality spy movies around. Besides, we are already educated enough to know that teenage boys are naturally attracted to the 70 to 30 waist to hip ratio of girls. It's uncontrollable. On the other hand, teenage girls are biologically going to reject every single nice guy unless she's confronted by a dominant, high status masculine guy. Knowing all this, we, the future parents, are surely not going to bother our children's attraction choices right?

Let's talk about relaxation for a change. We don't need to hang out at our children's teaching place to share moments of happiness and sadness. After considering the arrangements that exist in the current coaching centers, why even go there in the first place? Let the children study on their own, they have all the talent, potential and motivation they'll ever need. There's no need to show our faces.

If we do need to share our emotions comfortably and quickly, there's always the latest technology available. In fact, there's a pretty interesting possibility that future teenagers might consider ipod or Hindi songs to be ultra backdated, so we must stay updated and hence remain “cool”.

Come to think of it, our parents are really giving their all to make sure the current generation never misses out from the age old, traditional...“MOTHERLY LOVE”.

On the other hand, wouldn't the future generation expect the same from us?

By Mashrur Rahman

After Chelsea's success in the English premier league for the past two years, many have started a heated debate on who should be getting the credit for the team's success, managers or players. It's a well-known fact that a star-studded team alone cannot win any title, but when you consider the other side of the story, it is possible for a mediocre team to win a title if they're led by a great manager.

Many might question the credibility of this statement, but then again, two simple cases can illustrate this point quite vividly. F.C Porto, with their relatively average team, won the Champions League under Jose Mourinho, but Real Madrid, with their star studded team couldn't even win the league title for three whole years.

The debate arises from the fact that after Chelsea's dominance in the English Premier league, many have accredited this feat to the quality of the players brought in with the money of Roman Abramovich. Now the simple fact remains that even Real Madrid had players of that caliber on paper, they could have won against any team in the Spanish League, but they didn't. Claudio Ranieri was the manager of Chelsea when the club was acquired by Abramovich and was given the option of spending an almost unlimited budget, which Ranieri used to buy in over £100 millions worth of new players. Yet, that season, Chelsea became second. Why? Ranieri wasn't a bad manager; in fact, he was the one who guided Chelsea into the Champions League qualification, but the main reason was that he had bought players who just didn't click with the overall team play. When Mourinho came, he sold players, bought players, but made such a team that it went on to celebrate being the Premiership champions in a record-breaking season (most clean sheets, fewest goals conceded, most victories, most points earned). Now the important fact is that they didn't win the title in the 50 years before that.

Consider Manchester United, a world-famous English football club and one of the most successful football clubs in English football history, having won the FA Premier League/Football League 15 times, FA Cup 11 times, the League Cup twice, the European Cup twice, the UEFA Cup Winners Cup once, the Intercontinental Cup once, and the European Super Cup once. Now the point is, if you do study the history of Manchester United, you will see that most of their titles were won in the Alex Ferguson period, simply because of the fact that he put together a team, time after time, that somehow clicked in such a well mannered way that winning titles would be inevitable. Most managers have a hard enough time putting together a winning team in their career, but this guy managed to do this three times before, and he is again putting one in the 2006 season. Very few people know that Alex Ferguson was on the verge of being sacked in the beginning of 1990, but then again, it's because of him that the team has such a worldwide widespread popularity. He has a knack for picking out the future stars from his youth teams, which eventually saw players like David Beckham, the Neville brothers, Paul Scholes in the team, who helped Manchester United winning the title in 1995, and a few more later in the future. Again, in the 2006 season, after a few bare seasons, it seems that he has once again put together a team which is cruising at the top having a three point cushion over former champions Chelsea.

The point is that, no matter what caliber player you have, it takes a very good manager for a team to have a consistent success in whatever tournament, league they are playing in. If Mourinho can win the Champions League with a team like F.C Porto, then why can't Real Madrid do it? The fact is, as many would agree, the best signing Chelsea ever did was to sign in Mourinho. A manger can make the difference between a team's relegation, and its
promotion, or its title clinching season.

By Asifur Rahman Khan

Superstitious Potter!

I have a complaint against beloved Rowling. Why is she partial towards a single number? Yes, 7 is the number. Is she trying to prove the magical quality of seven? Has the superstition 'lucky number 7' been acting on her? Let's find out how she is doing it.

There are 7 books in the Harry Potter series.
There are 7 years of studies at Hogwarts.
Harry's birthday is in July which is the 7th month of the year.
The Weasley family has 7 children.
The 'Alohomora' spell can be found in the Standard Books of Spells in Chapter 7.
There are 7 Quidditch players in a team.
There are 142 stairs at Hogwarts which adds to 7 (1+4+2=7).
Gryffindor Tower is located on the 7th floor.
Nicholas Flamel and his wife have a 7 year age gap.
Hogwarts' students have to buy all 7 of Lockhart's books.
There are 7 hidden passageways out of Hogwarts shown on the Marauders' Map.
Flitwick's office (where Sirius is locked in the 3rd book) is located on the 7th floor.
There are 700 ways to commit a foul in Quidditch.
The Tri-Wizard Tournament was first established 700 years before it's appearance in theGoblet of Fire.
Fred and George charge 7 sickles for a canary cream.
There are 7 locks in Moody's trunk.
Moody was locked in the 7th lock of his trunk.
The Room of Requirement which is used for DA meetings is on the 7th floor.
The prophecy is in row 97 in the Department of Mysteries.
In the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Snape is filling in for Professor Lupin, he instructs the class to turn to page 394. 3 + 9 + 4 = 16: 1+6 = 7.
There are 7 Animagi registered with the Improper Use of Magic Office.
Voldemort thinks seven is the most powerfully magical number, and therefore Dumbledore thinks he probably created seven Horcruxes.
It ends here and there's something more amazing waiting for you. There are 25 instances of number 7 as you can see in the list. And if you add 2+5 you get 7. What a coincidence!

By Efadul Huq