Re-thinking Life !

It is no secret that the MENA region has had a sweeping education reform as the result of the Arab Spring, although the result of this reform, up till now, has not had the desired effect ( Read here ).  Lebanon is no strange to education reform. In the post-war torn country, Lebanon sought to reform its education sector to create social cohesion amongst its divided sectarian and religious groups (based on the premise that the cause of the 15 year civil war was religious and sectarian, although  many historians argue that social injustice, masked in religious and sectarian factions, was what spiraled Lebanon into a destructive civil war). Two education reforms were thus conceived and implemented, the Educational Recovery Plan in post war Lebanon in 1994, and the National Action Plan for Education for All in 2005. However, two questions arise as we ponder on education reform in Lebanon, a conflict-prone country: 1- Who takes decisions on the need, nature, and implementation of t...

Modern cities in the 21st century are defined by “individual empowerment”, “social inclusion”, “economic development”. “cultural prosperity”, and “sustainable development”. The rapid urbanization around the world ( see here ), makes it imperative for cities, as they grow in population, to meet the societal, economic, and cultural needs of its citizens who are growing increasingly diverse. But  you do not have to scrutinize the Arab cities’ ecologies to know that they are conceptually and pragmatically nothing near a modern city as illustrated above. A typical Arab city, let’s say my city Tripoli in northern Lebanon, is underdeveloped, lacks social mobility, individuals are undervalued, has marginalized groups, and the city development is temporal. The marginalization or assimilation of groups in the city is only growing by the day. I have seen this in every Arab city I have visited, with the exception of a few in the GCC. A key ingredient for continuous development is life-long lea...

Lebanon’s long term and concentric sectarian, bureaucratic practices have left the Lebanese people dwelling away from the capital  Beirut and Mount Lebanon with less social, political, economic, and education rights. You can palpate the gradual social inequality as you move from Lebanon’s center towards the inlands. It becomes a clear social schism on the outskirts of Lebanon . This social inequality has only exacerbated as a result of the Syrian crisis with more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees officially living in Lebanon (a country of only 6 million people and an area of only 10,452 km2). Among all sectors, education has suffered the most, in particular North of Lebanon, which although incorporates Tripoli, the second largest city in Lebanon, has had enormous problems with education equity and access to quality education for decades. The private education market in Lebanon outweighs the public education market by leaps and bounds  ( see my earlier post ) with 1.5 billion...

In an earlier post , I wrote about the increasing risk factor of cancer primarily attributed to smoking. I also wrote that Lebanon has the highest smoking rate among Arab countries, the highest cancer rate among developing countries, and competes developed counties in cancer rates. Many smokers want to stop but do not know how. They start with the will to do so, but often falter because there is no incentive. Telling them that they might die or get cancer as a result does not have an effect, as suggested by studies in psychology. This is  where Samer Gharib invented  Slighter (Smart Lighter). He used tracking technology and gamification to help the smoker track and v lessen his smoking by first having him being aware of the smoking habit and then by getting incentives to lessen his smoking. Slighter follows the basic routine of Learn, Control, Break. Slighter tracks your smoking habit so that you are aware of it. It triggers whenever you use it to light your cigarettes. Slig...

Last week, we had a visitor from a nearby village in Bekaa, Lebanon. He kept apologizing for  his not paying frequent visits, as the wont with typically Lebanese villagers, because his brother’s wife, Amal, was still undergoing excruciating  larynx cancer treatment in Beirut. Amal is only 19, has a son, and her husband is only 20. The villagers call him ‘walad’, kiddo,  because he got married at a young age. The doctor says that the cancer has spread in most parts of her larynx and that ostracizing the malign cells without killing the healthy ones is getting harder by the day. The doctor says, “ Don’t let your hopes high”.  The listeners hearken at the story of Amal’s ordeals of the invasive, malignant cancer with compassion but not with surprise. In this in-land Lebanese village, and many, many others in Lebanon, cancer incidences are ubiquitous. During  my short summer stay, I incessantly hear about or know of the death of a man, the diagnosis of a woman, or t...

It is no a secret that the past 50 years have seen a tremendous leap and bounds in technologies and (mega) construction. Although everyone is excited about it, this also raises the question, whereto? The idea that out of the thousand years humans have been in this world, only the past half a century has seen an unparalleled spring in materialism (humanism has deplorably spiraled down, perhaps this shows a reversed correlation?). Using Google Earth Engine Timelapse, I have captured how my hometown, Tripoli, Lebanon, has transformed (amorphously) in the past 32 years (1984 – 2016). Timelapse is a global, zoomable video that lets you see how the Earth has changed over the past 32 years. It is made from 33 cloud-free annual mosaics, one for each year from 1984 to 2016. Using Earth Engine, we combined over 5 million satellite images acquired over the past three decades by 5 different satellites. The majority of the images come from Landsat , a joint USGS/NASA Earth observation program that...

Around noon yesterday, at the zenith of the sweltering summer sun and the desiccated weather of the Lebanon’s in-land s, my 9-year-old son’s bicycle was stolen from my in-laws’ house garage where he invariably sets all his outdoor miniatures. As reported by a 10-year-old witness who lives next doors, an 11-year-old limping Syrian boy, let’s call him Kamel, darted into the garage, grabbed the bicycle, and wheeled down to the next village “Al-Nabaa” located on the outskirts of Majjdel Anjar, which is adjacent to my in-laws’ village Al-Sawiri in the Bekaa of Lebanon. Instantly, after we discovered the incident, I queried the Syrian tenants above my in-laws’ house who told us of the young culprit’s physical features. Later my wife’s grandfather told us the he asked a Syrian refugee framer,who works on my in-laws’ land, to seize limping Kamel as soon as they see him, as they claimed they encounter him passing by their two-room house everyday. My mother-in-law told me that my father-in-...