How Electoral Votes Are Awarded - A Complicated Process

There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs in every presidential election, but the process of determining how  electoral votes are awarded is one of the most complicated and widely misunderstood facets of  American presidential elections. Heres the thing you should know: The U.S. Constitution created the Electoral College, but the Founding Fathers had fairly little to say about how electoral votes are awarded  by each of the states. Here are some common questions and answers about how states allocate electoral votes in presidential contests. How Many Electoral Votes Are Needed to Win an Election There are 538 electors in the Electoral College. To become president, a candidate must win a simple majority of the electors, or 270, in the general election. Electors are important people in each major political party who are chosen by voters to represent them in the selection of a president. Voters dont actually vote directly for the president; they choose electors to vote on their behalf. States are allotted a number of electors based on their population and number of congressional districts. The larger a states population, the more electors it is allocated. For example, California is the most populous state with about 38 million residents. It also holds the most electors at 55. Wyoming, on the other hand, is the least populous state with fewer than 600,000 residents. As such, it holds only three electors. How Electoral Votes Are Distributed States determine on their own how to distribute the electoral votes that have been allocated to them. Most states award all of their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in the state. This method of awarding electoral votes is commonly known as winner-take-all. So even if a presidential candidate wins 51 percent of the popular vote in a winner-take-all state, he is awarded 100 percent of the electoral votes. Exceptions to Electoral Vote Distribution   48 of the 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote there. Only two states award their electoral votes in a different manner. They are Nebraska and Maine. These states allocate their electoral votes by congressional district. In other words, instead of distributing all of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote, Nebraska and Maine awards an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The winner of the statewide vote gets two additional electoral votes. This method is called the Congressional District Method; Maine has used it since 1972 and Nebraska has used it since 1996. The Constitution and Vote Distribution While the U.S. Constitution requires states to appoint electors, the document is silent on how they actually award votes in presidential elections. There have been numerous proposals to circumvent the winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes. The Constitution leaves the matter of electoral-vote distribution up to the states, stating only that: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. The key phrase pertaining to the distribution of electoral votes is obvious: ... in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the states role in awarding electoral votes is supreme. Electors and Delegates Electors are not the same as delegates. Electors are part of the mechanism that chooses a president. Delegates, on the other hand, distributed by the parties during the primaries and serve to nominate candidates to run in the general election.   Delegates are people who attend political conventions to choose the party nominees. Controversy Over Electoral Vote Distribution Former Vice President Al Gore has expressed concern about the way most states award electoral votes. He and a growing number of Americans support the National Popular Vote initiative. States that enter the compact agree to award their electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Electoral College Ties The 1800 election  exposed a major flaw in the countrys new constitution. At the time, presidents and vice presidents did not run separately; the highest vote-getter became president, and the second-highest vote-getter was elected vice president. The first Electoral College tie was between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, his running mate in the election. Both men won 73 electoral votes. Electoral College Alternatives There are other ways, yes, but they are untested. So its unclear whether theyd work better than the Electoral College. One of them is called the National Popular vote plan; under it, states would  cast all of their electoral votes for the presidential candidate winning the nationwide popular vote.  The Electoral College would no longer be necessary.

My Experience As A Teacher Essay - 1272 Words

Fieldwork Summary Paper Miele 1 My Fieldwork Experience Within Classrooms As I graduated into Concordia College I was already positive that education was going to be the major I was going to study and pursue a career in. With the motivation of my aunt, whom is a teacher, I always looked up to her. The only aspect I wasn’t sure of was what grade I would want to teach. I have always loved kids, which is way I have always been leaning towards teaching within early-childhood grades. Within this course I was given the opportunity to sit and observe classrooms of grades of my choice. I decided I would sit within a kindergarten class, a third grade class, and a fifth grade class. With this experience I was able to get an idea of what grade I would want to continue a career in as I followed my dream as a teacher. The first class I attended and observed was a kindergarten class taught by Mrs. Brenda Buccheri Miele, in which was my aunt. Not only was I excited to observe what it was like to teach a kindergarten class, but I also was also excited to watch my aunt in action for the first time. As soon as I entered the kindergarten classroom at Concord Road Elementary School, I couldn’t help but smile because of all the little projects the students had put together and hung around the room. Being that it was my first time observing a classroom I was a little nervous to meet the kids and spend four hours with them. I didn’t know how they would react to me being there, or if theyShow MoreRelatedMy Personal Experience : My Experience As A Teacher1051 Words   |  5 Pages Today, I came prepared to teach my lesson as I was supposed to but times got switched up and plans got changed. In some ways Im glad this happened because it taught me an important lesson of being flexible. 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I had the privilege of spending four weeks in a 1st grade classroom with thirteen incredible students, I also had the chance to get feedback from their outstanding teacher. I thought the students and the teacher enjoyed the lessons I prepared. The students seemed to have learned a lot from the activities I had planned for them. I found that I faced several challenges during my very first lesson. I prepared a greater than/less thanRead MoreMy First Supervisory Experience With A Preschool Teacher Essay871 Words   |  4 Pagespreschool teacher, I get many opportunities to contact with different directors and supervisors in the school environment. During six years of preschool teaching, through interacting with varied supervisors and working in several schools, I have experienced many positive and negative ones. I have also learned many valuable lessons from these experiences. As we know, everything is not always wonderful. Just as my experience, it is not always optimistic. In this journal, I would like to share my first

Cloud Computing Security Exploits - Theory and Principles

Question: Describe about the Basic principles and theory of cloud security exploits? Answer: Basic principles and theory of cloud security exploits Cloud computing majority comprises of delivering computing resources like applications, storage, infrastructure as services provided by service providers to the end users. All kind of services are accessed by web browsers which is like on demand. The cloud service providers offers service based on requirement and ensure good quality. Basically cloud computing is three types Infrastructure as service (IaaS): It provides networking devices, memory and storage as services. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Development platform provides to the users to design of their own applications depends on their need. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): This provides the application for need of the requirements. Rent the application instead of buying it. These three services provides the different services to the end user and at the same time provides the information on security issues and risks of cloud. Brute force attack: Normally hackers use multiple machines to get good computing power for the cyber attacks because the attacking process are very complicated requires very huge amount of computing power which indeed takes years to complete. Because of IaaS just one registrations is enough for the attackers to get the huge computing power from cloud service providers. Hackers can do attacks in quick time using advantage offered by the cloud computing with just on registration in very short time instead of months which is very bad sign for many encryption strategies. For breaking the password brute force algorithm used but it requires very power machines with very huge capacity of computing. To get successful password it requires huge effort because millions of passwords needs to checked to find the correct password based on the encryption alogirhtm. Hackers are getting cloud computing platform to launch this type of attack. Thomas Roth, a German researcher, demonstrated a brute force attack in the Black Hat Technical Security. He managed to crack a WPA-PSK protected network by renting a server from Amazons EC2. In approximately 20 minutes, Roth fired 400,000 passwords per second into the system and the cost of using EC2 service was only 28 cents per minute. To get successful password it requires huge effort because millions of passwords needs to checked to find the correct password based on the encryption alogirhtm. Hackers are getting cloud computing platform to launch this type of attack. To send large burst of packets to victim hosts cloud computing services are used. For example, hacker launched DOS attack on to the client network with help of rented server from amazons EC2 cloud infrastructure and run the heavy flooding algorithm which sends flood of packets to victim network. It is just of $6. Web browser attack: Web browser used to send service request by client and the service communication uses the Simple Object Access Protocol messages and transmit them using HTTP with format of Extensible Markup Language. One security mechanism WS-Security is used for the SOAP messages confidentiality and SOAP messages data integrity which are transmitted among the clients and servers. Data integrity maintained by using digital on the message and for Confidentiality message encryption is used to protection on eves dropping. This kind of mechanism ensures authentication of the client and validation of messages at server side so that message not tampered. Web servers validating the signed requests at that time attackers by using the XML signature wrapping and exploit the weakness, attack launched when SOAP message exchanged between the web server and authenticated user. Attacked duplicates the users login session and added the bogus elements into message which will wrapped, it makes the original body message under the wrapped and malicious code is replaced on top of the contents of the message, this modified message sends to server and the server validation fine because the original body not changed so the server is tricked and authorize the message that has been altered. Because of this hacker gain the prohibited access to the resources which are protected and operations which are intended. All cloud computing services via web browser so wrapping attacks can be launched easily on to the cloud service provider servers, which makes the users as victims. In 2008 discovered cloud service provider who is vulnerable to the wrapping attack. This is because later identified as bug in validation process done by amazon cloud. It is vulnerability in SOAP message security validation algorithm. Interception and modification can be done to legitimate user SOAP request, this exposes the victims accounts in the cloud to the hackers with unprivileged access. The same XML signature wrapping technique can be used to heck the account in amazon AWS just by altering the authorized signed SOAP messages and hacker get the permission to access, delete, create user account. Theft: Storage service provided by the cloud computing makes the business organization very cost effective and no need of administration overhead over the sensitive data. This will reduce cost in buying new servers and maintaining them. So many companies are storing data using cloud. One major cloud service provider do maintain all the sensitive data of business organizations. Consider example of Netflix use the amazon web service for storing data of TV episodes and movies, Dropbox storage service to many user for their personal information. These kind of Cloud services are as daily part of every ones life. So all the sensitive information stored at single place so single target for attackers which gives huge information at little cost compare traditional way. Online retailer Zappos was the victim of online cyber theft in that breach stolen accounts are 24 million. The stolen information comprised of names, email address, billing and shipping addresses, personal phone numbers, the last four digits of credit card numbers, as well as encrypted versions of account passwords. These days many people using the social networking sites for interaction with the friends and shares profiles and personal information also. According to survey 35 percent people are using social sites have accounts in all sites which makes the attackers to grab the attention to get the information. Recently linkedln the worlds largest professional networking website has 175 million users has breached and approximately 6.4 million stolen hashed passwords dumped into russian website and more than 200 thousand passwords are cracked. Stolen username and password from one website can be used to access the other websites as it is very successful for many users. Recently dropbox found some logins are malicious who used the login details obtained from other social website. Insider attack: Companies and organizations can't trust the people inside when it storing the users data, so it is very important to store user data even insiders can't access without proper protocol. In cloud while moving all users data which is maintained by organization into some private cloud which is maintained by some third party, is it safe to trust the third parties over the data. Rouge kind of administrators has privilege to steal the unprotected data and can do brute force over the passwords and get the customers data on demand. The insiders who knows the cloud operational capabilities can identify the cloud vulnerabilities and attack on it to get the sensitive information. Malware Injection Attack: In this attacker observes the web based server request and response methods to find the vulnerabilities and try to inject the malicious code into the server to change the normal execution and expose what required. Like web-based applications, cloud systems are also susceptible to malware injection attacks. Hackers make the malicious application or application or virtual machine to target the cloud service Saas, Pass or Iaas, after the injection completed the malicious code stated executed as validated modules and hacker do what ever he or she wants. SQL injection is major one which is just like script inserted into web server via its request and exploit the server. In 2012 SQL injection attack rate increased to 69%, this is report given by fire host. Counter measures: Security Policy Enhancement Cloud service registration can be done by who has credit card and utilize the service which is giving advantage to hackers to get the fraud credit cards and get the access of service and getting computing power of cloud based solutions and exploit the user data. They are doing all illegal activities like spamming and attacking the other computing systems. By Doing blocking of users who are publicly announced by some investigations teams and monitor the credit card fraud and changes the policies such way that cloud computing power can't be utilized by the attackers via weak registration policy. Mange and administration of networks in proper way so that least vulnerable to attackers. For example, Amazon re defined user policy like isolate any offending instance which is raised like spam or malware coming through Amazon EC2. Access Management Private and sensitive data of end users is stored in cloud users can get the access to their data under the given access control mechanisms. For the physical computing systems continuous monitoring on the request coming and response served to it and analyzing the traffic makes the security techniques more efficient. Many security tools like firewalls andintrusion detection are used to restrict the illegal access and grant the legal access to the data. Majority all traffic is monitored to catch hold of illegal access of data. Apart from all above, authentication standards, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), used to access to the cloud applications and data in secured way. Authorization and authentication decisions between the entities handled by SAML while XACML focuses on the mechanism for arriving at authorization decisions. Data Protection Insiders may do stealing of data intentionally or accidentally but lose of data can happen in any case. So policies have take care of the data stealing by the insiders. It is very difficult identify the behavior of insider who steals data. Need deploy better security measures for the insider threats. Tools like data lose prevention and malicious behavior patterns identifications encrypting of sensitive information while storing it self, decoy technology for authentication and authorization. Security Techniques Implementation The major security concern in cloud computing is malware injection attack. These kind of attacks can be nullified using Table maintained for File Allocation kind of system architecture. In the FAT table instance of all customers will be there so in advance can be recognized them using FAT table. Now the old instance and new instance are there to compare to determine the validity and integrity of the instances so that malwareinjection can prevented like this. In other way of nullifying the malware injection is storing the hash value of the original service instance image file and by performing the integrity check between the original and new service instances images to identify the malwar injection instance. In this malware injection can be ident fied. Web services are vulnerable to XML signature wrapping and lot many methods proposed to nullify this vulnerability found in XML based technologies. XML schema hardeing is used to strengthen XML Schema declarations. A subset of Xpath, called FastXPath, is proposed to resist the malicious elements that attackers inject into the SOAP message structure Future Work Cloud computing is major important developments for giving service to different level where every service can offered via browser in just one click away. As the more benefits, more security vulnerabilities are there and bringing more challenges for all service providers and more vulnerabilities still exist in cloud so hackers are exploiting those security holes. For providing best quality to the end user required to nullify these security flaws at the best possible level. Recently more news regarding the NSA eye on the information which is been leaking from third parties and going into the hands of NSA which is something like you are not the one who is looking into your data. Scott Hazdra said in the news that U.S and many companies keeping eye on the data stored in the internet and clouds and transmitting as it is to the required sources which is not good for the users who uses the cloud. It is big security risk and may be threat to the users who store the information on the internet. This kind of one risk can't be avoided in the wolrd of internet and increases more with cloud features. At any point privacy is always big concern with the cloud which is like companies or third parties and insiders who can breach into cloud to steal the information and big threat is intrusion of the government also. Confidentiality is big threat to the companies who store information as because competitors try to steal the information, so all companies store the information in encrypted form irrespective of competitor. This is costly for hackers when compare to advantage they get from information so less attacks but now in cloud everything stores there one shot many pots. One compromises all compromised which is big plus for the hackers to try and steal data with little extra cost. This is one of the big problems in the current cloud industry. Security of data and privacy protection of data is major issues and they are basic important issues which are separation of sensitive control of access. It is very important for cloud solution providers to provide kind of security which is lik e levels of organization while providing protection to the users. Some frameworks and utilities are required to build while accessing the cloud and data so that privacy to users can be provided. Mobility of companies is very common in industry so customer service to users while activating and deactivating the account should be done very quick and good service is needed. Cloud makes life of users completely into internet which makes their more explored and into internet. Every user try store irrespective of type of data as it is more friendly so at any stage Any information can be observed over internet about any person. This gives advantage to the hackers to crack the accounts of very far distance people so that unable to trace if any personal information is compromised. Previous employees should not able to get the insides of the organizations cloud as is it quite natural that inside people get clarity on the vulnerabilities on the cloud and where to exploit and when to exploit these details gives advantages for the employees who leaves the organization and try to attack on the cloud for their personal needs. So it is very essential that cloud organization takes required steps while removing any employee. Cloud organization suppose to be very transparent about their agreements with the government so that people aware what to keep what not. It is very offensive that organizations provide data to government without any information to the user. This kind of leaks gives advantage to government officials so that they try get the required users private information to full fill their personal needs. This is completely illegal. References: 1) Victoria Ivey, Dec 16th 2014, cloud-securitylink:https://www.cio.com/article/2380182/cloud-security/5-tips-to-keep-your-data-secure-on-the-cloud.html2) Ted Samson, Feb 25th 2013, cloud securitylink:https://www.infoworld.com/article/2613560/cloud-security/cloud-security-9-top-threats-to-cloud-computing-security.html?null3) IBM cloudlink: https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/in/en/security.html4) Cloud Security Fundamentalslink: https://www.sans.org/course/cloud-security-fundamentals5) Security ascepts of cloudlink: https://cloudsecurity.org/6) Charles Badcock, Mar 03, 2014, Cloud Threatslink: https://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/9-worst-cloud-security-threats/d/d-id/1114085 7) Adam Greenberg, Mar 06, 2015, top concern regarding cloud adoptionlink: https://www.scmagazine.com/study-financial-firms-cite-data-security-as-top-concern-regarding-cloud-adoption/article/402201/8) CSA cloud security alliancelink: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/9)https://www.sa fenet-inc.com/data-protection/virtualization-cloud-security/10) https://www.porticor.com/11) https://www.symantec.com/cloud-computing-software/12) https://www.mcafee.com/in/solutions/cloud-security/cloud-security.aspx13) https://www.vormetric.com/data-security-solutions/cloud-data-security14) https://www.cloudcredential.org/certifications/pcs/15)https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cloud-service-security-principles/cloud-service-security-principles

Puppetry in Pakistan Essay Example

Puppetry in Pakistan Essay In order to understand and appreciate culture, beauty and art one has to study theatre and performing arts. It develops ones personality and teaches you how to critically analyze things. One of the oldest and most important art forms depicting a countries culture is its theatre. The word theatre is derived from the Greek word theatron which means, Place of seeing. As a performing art it focuses entirely on live performers creating a self contained drama. There are a number of philosophies, artistic processes, and theatrical approaches while creating plays and dramas. Some are based on political or spiritual ideologies while others are based on purely artistic concerns. Some focus on a particular story, some on entertainment while others as a catalyst for social change. Theatre is thought to have had its earliest origins in religious ritual where it was used to enact myths or stories central to the belief of a culture or create comedy through parody of such narratives. It has therefore existed since the advent of man, as a result of the human tendency for storytelling. Forms of Theatre Since its origin, theatre has taken on many forms, utilizing speech, gesture, music, dance, and spectacle, combining the other performing arts, often as well as the visual arts, into a single artistic form. These components are used in producing theatre which can be done in many ways. Theatre can be performed with no money at all or on a grand scale with multi-million dollar budgets i. e. professional theatre. Then we have the repertory companies. Most modern theatre companies rehearse one piece of theatre at a time, perform that piece, retire it after sometime, and begin rehearsing a new show. We will write a custom essay sample on Puppetry in Pakistan specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Puppetry in Pakistan specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Puppetry in Pakistan specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Repertory companies rehearse multiple shows at one time. These companies perform these various pieces upon request and often perform works for years before retiring them. The other type of theatre is producing theatre or presenting theatre. A performance requires both a theatre company and a theatre venue. When a theatre company is the sole company in residence at a theatre venue, this theatre (and its corresponding theatre company) is called a resident theatre or a producing theatre, because the venue produces its own work. Other theatre companies do not have their own theatre venue. These companies will therefore perform at rental theatres or at presenting theatres. However many performance groups have challenged the theatre-space and have been thus performing in non-theatrical spaces. These performances take place outside or inside, in a non-traditional performance space, and include street theatre and site specific theatre. Performers are sometimes paid, especially for street festivals, children shows or parades but often street theatre performers are unpaid or gather some income through the dropping of a coin in a hat by the audience. Commercial Theatres in Pakistan In Pakistan many local and commercial theatres have been working since Partition in 1947. Commercial theatre arrived in Lahore in the early 1980s due to the joint efforts of Naheed Khanum, Amanullah, Mastana and Baboo Baral. While these theatres were functioning in the cities, the rural areas were enjoying the local professionals. The minstrels (bhands) entertained gatherings at wedding ceremonies and rural sports. Heejrras and Behroopias These along with transvestite artists (heejras) and impersonators (behroopias) still entertain millions of Pakistanis in towns, villages and tribal settlements and are also a part of our indigenous street theatre. Puppetry in Pakistan Puppetry has been an integral part of our street theatre since Partition. Before contemporary puppetry started folk puppets (katputlis) used to entertain the audience of Pakistan. This art was inherited by Pakistan from Rajistan, a part of the Indian Subcontinent. Ancient Art Form Puppetry is a very ancient art form, originating about 30,000 years ago. It is a form of theatre or performance which involves the handling of puppets. Puppets have been used since the earliest times to animate and communicate the ideas and needs of human societies. They were human’s first means of communication and have been part of ceremonies, rituals and carnivals. According to a puppeteer David Logan, Puppetry is a highly effective and dynamically creative means of exploring the richness of interpersonal communication. By its very nature, puppetry concentrates on the puppet rather than the puppeteer. This provides a safety zone for the puppeteer and allows for exploration of unlimited themes through a safe and non-threatening environment for communication. He further says, Designing a puppet involves the same processes that a performer uses in building a character. A puppet must always have a valid reason for being. The marvelous thrill of puppetry is that puppets by their very nature do things that are not humanly possible. This allows for the imagination to explore countless different possibilities. The Earliest Forms of Puppets The earliest kinds of puppets were in the form of tribal ritual masks with hinged jaws or jointed skulls used in religious ceremonies. Puppets later evolved from these masks into doll like figures with moving limbs. There are five distinct forms of puppets. Each has its own individual characteristics, and certain kinds of dramatic material. Certain types have developed only under specific cultural or geographic conditions. They are classified as hand or glove puppets, rod puppets, Marionette or string puppets, flat figures and shadow figures. The Hand or Glove Puppets The hand or glove puppets have a hollow cloth body that fits over the manipulator’s hand; his fingers fit into the head and the arms and give them motion. The figure is seen from the waist upward, and there are normally no legs. The head is usually of wood, papier-mache, or rubber material, the hands of wood or felt. The performer normally holds his hands above his head and stands in a narrow booth with an opening just above head height. The manipulators of hand puppets range from 1-4 in person. The virtue of the hand puppet is its agility and quickness; the limitation is small size and ineffective arm gestures. | | | Glove puppets Rod puppet The Rod Puppets The rod puppets are also manipulated from below, but they are of full-length, supported by a rod running inside the body to the head. Separate thin rods may move the hands and, if necessary, the legs. Figures of this type are traditional on the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali. In this figure the hand passes inside the puppet’s body to grasp a short rod to the head, the arms being manipulated by rods in the usual way. One great advantage of this technique is that it permits bending of the body, the manipulator’s wrist corresponding to the puppet’s waist. The rod puppet is suitable for slow and dignified types of drama. It requires always one person, and sometimes two or three, to manipulate each figure on stage. The Marionette or String Puppets The Marionette or string puppets are full-length figures controlled from above. Normally they are moved by strings or more often threads, leading from the limbs to a control or crutch held by the manipulator. Movement is provided to a large extent by tilting or rocking the control, but individual strings are plucked when a definite movement is required. A simple marionette may have nine strings—one to each leg, one to each hand, one to each shoulder, one to each ear (for head movements), and one to the base of the spine (for bowing); but special effects will require special strings that may double or treble this number. The manipulation of a many-stringed marionette is a highly skilled operation. Controls are of two main types—horizontal (or aeroplane) and vertical—and the choice is largely a matter of personal preference. String puppets at Rafi Peer theatre Table-top Puppetry In Table-top, puppetry is performed on top of a table. Mostly these puppets are rod puppets, mainly because rods are the simplest and easiest method of operation. Rods are attached at the elbows, back of feet, back of body and back of head. Like most rod puppets, there’s no real set methodology, style or look of the puppets. They can be anything from aliens to humans to abstract items. Because they are used in combination with a table or bench, it is usual for these puppets to be small in height, usually an average of 30 cm (11. inches). This particular style is best suited to inside performances in small venues; the larger the puppet the harder it is to operate on a table top, but the smaller the puppet, the harder it is to see in a large theatre. Shadow Puppets Shadow puppets are a special type of flat figure, in which the shadow is seen through a translucent screen. They may be cut from leather or some other opaque mate rial or they may be cut from coloured fish skins, as in the traditional theatres of China, India, Turkey, and Greece, and in the recent work of several European theatres. They may be operated by rods from below, as in the Javanese theatres; by rods held at right angles to the screen, as in the Chinese and Greek theatres; or by threads concealed behind the figure. The shadow theatre is a medium of great delicacy, and the flimsy character of shadow puppets exemplifies all the truest features of puppetry as an art form. Puppetry as seen in Pakistan Like many other societies around the world the Pakistani society also sees puppets as an important tool of communication. With the passage of time this tool undergoes various modifications but the basic technique remains the same. According to Faizaan Peerzada, the President of Rafi Peer Theatre located in Lahore, â€Å"a puppeteer is one who is able to portray his ideas through any object given in his hands†. Famous Puppets and Puppeteers of Pakistan Talking about puppets we have been very fortunate to have had the privilege of enjoying Uncle Sargam, Haiga, and Maasi Museebatay in the puppet show Kalian. We have grown up with these characters and they still remain an integral part of our childhood memories. Kalian was a very popular puppet show on PTV written and directed by Farooq Qaiser during 1980s and 1990s. Farooq Qaiser was the first to introduce commercial puppetry in the country alongside the traditional Putli Tamasha that was there already and still exists in some villages of Punjab and other provinces. A Unique Honor of Pakistan Pakistan is perhaps the only country after United States that has its own puppet character or show i. e. Kalian like Sesame Street. This show not only entertained us but also made us learn a lot of things. Uncle Sargam always had a message to convey to the audience. It used to ridicule the politicians and also highlighted various social issues. Farooq Qaiser therefore managed o raise certain issues through puppets which otherwise was impossible during Gen. Zia’s rule. While Farooq was running his puppet show on television, Rafi Peer theatre was performing puppet shows on stage. The theatre started from Karachi, where they performed 35 plays in schools in the 80s and in 1992 shifted to Lahore. They built Asia’s largest Puppet Museum on Bedian R oad which has puppets from 30 different countries. Puppet history and most of our beloved puppet characters can also be seen there. | | Rafi Peer theatre Apart from Rafi Peer theatre, the other organization that is keeping the puppet theatre alive is Lahore Art Council. They have a puppet show every Sunday, 12:00 p. m. which focuses on children entertainment and education. It is a half an hour performance of hand puppets that is based on the story telling culture in Pakistan since the script is based on folk tales. The entire act gives a very indigenous feel and takes you back to your childhood days when stories of the cunning wolf and the slow tortoise were told to us by our grandparents. Personal Experience While attending one such puppet show I got to experience the excitement and enjoyment of children around me as well as my own. The story was about Pauli, a parrot that is seen nurturing and caressing its egg while singing â€Å"mein sadkay jaoon, mein wari jaoon apnay piyaray piyaray anday kae †. While talking to herself she is making plans of inviting the birds Mannah and Fakhta for tea and serving them with cucumber sandwiches and cake. While Pauli goes to make arrangements for the guests, Goga the rat comes along and makes Pauli’s nest its sleeping place. When Pauli returns she is enraged to see the rat in its nest and pokes it with her beak. Goga the rat apologizes for his mistake and is fascinated by Pauli’s whistle. He asks her what that is and requests Pauli to teach him how to whistle. Pauli tells him to make his mouth round and blow out. She tells the children in the audience to learn and try whistling along with her. She then goes off stage to cut cucumbers for her sandwiches leaving Goga incharge of her egg and to continue trying with his whistle. Goga fails quite a number of times and then asks the children to help him. The audience whistles along with him and hence he succeeds. In the meantime when Pauli is still away Shero, the lion appears onstage and tells Goga that he is repairing his house and needs volunteers. Goga always ready to help, accepts to volunteer but he first has to prove his strength. Shero tells him to uproot a nearby tree whose wood will be very useful for his house. Goga fails to do so in all his attempts but his enthusiasm and determination impresses Shero who decides to take him along. Goga forgets about the egg and goes along with him. While the egg is lying unprotected in its nest a monkey comes along, steels the egg and places an artificial one instead. He then hides it in a tree trunk and disappears from the scene. When Pauli returns she cuddles the egg but discovers to her horror and surprise that its not her egg. She cries out loud in despair and calls Shero to help her find it. Pauli looks everywhere frantically and finds it lying safe in a deep hole. She tries to reach it but can’t. Shero tries to pull it out but gets his paw stuck instead. In his strenuous endeavors to pull his paw out we hear Pauli chant â€Å"Zor laga kae hiya†. When Shero finally retrieves his trapped paw he calls the very helpful Goga to come and rescue the egg. Goga dives in and emerges with the egg undamaged. Pauli promises never to lose it again and to protect it always. In the end the egg hatches into a baby Pauli and both the mother and child are seen embracing one another. Pauli and Shero| Monkey who steels the egg| Role of Audience in Puppet Shows Thus we see that the act of puppetry does not only involve the puppet and the puppeteer but the audience also plays a very important role in its progression. For instance when Pauli goes offstage in search of the culprit she tells the audience to call out her name when they see someone with her egg. The children call out â€Å"Pauli, Pauli† whenever the monkey comes on stage. When Pauli comes she asks them who it was. The kids tell her that it is the monkey who has stolen her precious egg. The art of puppetry is therefore not only entertaining but highly didactive since it teaches us some very important lessons of life. For instance, this very act taught the kids to help one another in times of need, to be careful with their precious possessions and never trust anyone but themselves. Problems Faced by the Puppet Industry The puppet show had a lot of cultural traits such as the dialogues were in Urdu language, there were songs and lyrical dialogues, social and moral message, costumes, traditional chants, common names of the characters and the script itself. Puppets are an important part of out ethnic theatre but the art itself is dying out since only a few people and organizations are working to keep it alive. The team at Alhamra Art Council is facing many problems since the funds provided by the government are not sufficient. The seating arrangement is poor, there are not enough resources and space for the stage and the turn out of audience is small. The government of Pakistan should concentrate more on keeping these traditions alive and should make efforts to bring them to the international standards.