Re-thinking Life !

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...

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...

In the last 15 years, the education sector has shown a full blown exponential growth in terms of enrollment rates , governmental expenditures, investments, (and of course tuition fees, notably in the private education). This gaining of exponential momentum is remarkably evident in the  MENA education sector more than anywhere in the world. Perhaps this is Partly due to the Arab Spring, most governments in the region have taken serious steps and announced large spends toward improving social infrastructure (education and healthcare). However, Despite high spending on education by respective MENA governments, the quality of education in the region has remained below global standards , an issue that parents and the job market have been pointing towards. Employers in the region always preferred foreigners rather than nationals to fill vacant/new positions as the locals were always perceived as not having the requisite skills required for some jobs. Public resentment always existed; h...