Cultural Segregation
With the upcoming “Beirut Rock Festival 2009”, certain schools ended up distributing papers addressed to parents that mainly request that their children do not attend such an event. Although this wouldn’t seem troubling if the school actually cared for the students, but this is more of a cultural attack on a certain culture, and especially on select people.
The Letter Addressed to the Student's parents
The Letter states that the event is “Dangerous”, and although they appreciate music and enjoy it, they claim that during the event, certain “Gothic” groups will attempt to spread it’s culture, referred to as “The culture of death”, and will spread and display dark thoughts. The letter also states that there will be a high risk of presence and distribution of drugs, and that there is a severely high probability that there will be practice of certain “satanic” rituals. Finally the note questions the event’s ban on cameras and filming affirming that this will only serves the purpose to have no witnesses. Therefore it advises parents to not let their children attend such an event to “protect and preserve” them.
Filed under Lebanon, Opinion, Society | Comments (15)Political Decay
Wretched dark figures appeared in the sky,
And towards the earth spat drops of hate,
On the mountain people build dams so high,
To undoubtedly feast of that which came
Drunk, corrupted, they slowly decayed
Undead they walk, blinded by hate,
Vision tainted, conscience faded,
Wells of darkness they became
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NDU: A bad fall for Fall 09
“I feel that the university has betrayed me !!” (A CS student)
As the new semester starts at NDU, students line up to register their courses, eager to pick a schedule that would fit most of their time. However if you have been signing up to FALL09 one big disappointment awaits you. I do understand that teachers are limited and have their times, and I do understand that one cannot have too many sections for a class of a small group of people. However there has been a lot of inconsistencies with the offerings this semester, that upset a lot of students, this article tend to show such inconsistencies. After I heard too many bad feedback from my friends, and having experienced the whole process myself, I would like just to put things clear, because such things , and for the sake of professionalism, require an explanation. I would like to point out too that this inconsistency seams to be unique to this time only, and so is not a general habit.
Filed under Education, Lebanon | Tags: NDU, Offerings, Registration, University | Comments (12)Conquest of the CurrentLife
I was wandering what is the importance of the Afterlife and how most people (and possibly most religions) keep thinking about it and I have to say it got some good buzz along the years. This post is not about whether or not this afterlife exists, its more about focusing on what we can control as human beings and the relevancy of such Afterlife. This article is yet another opinion.
Filed under Opinion, Society | Tags: Afterlife, Death, Reincarnation, religion | Comments (8)Sensor Ship
Note for the readers:
It’s been a while since I wrote an article. This is article is “pretty” long I understand that some people dislike reading long posts (I tried to concise it the best I could) but I believe this post is worth reading for all the victims, blood, and traumatized people that are out there, you can however not care and not read, in that case this article is not intended for you but I still suggest you read just the first part. I have been observing the world recently, trying to trace the problems and I was meditating over Epictetus’ quote: “What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are”, indeed I have come to believe that all of our problems come from a failure of communication in certain way, failure to deal with each others, failure to understand each other.
Therefore this article attempts to trace the routes of such things by explaining the human nature and basic needs and how these needs are being “censored” and distorted by other people whether implicitly or explicitly. Of course this article talks about my personal opinions and assumptions on the topic, and its’ purpose is to provide ideas that you can meditate upon and start worrying about such issues since these issues’ severity is unknown to some people. The article features an epilogue and a prologue which are fictional stories used only to illustrate in a sense some thoughts in this article.
Prologue
Imagine that a person is having a lovely time with some friends, then people storm the house, an officer apprehends that person, that person gets beaten, tortured, then perhaps goes “missing” or is released with nothing, knowing that this person has not done anything but being there. This story might seam perhaps distant to you, or perhaps chances that it happen is remote, but then again YOU could be that person, and most likely there are high chances that you would be the officer, or supporting such a thing. Outrageous you might say, I say its not remote and it has happened before and can happen at any time, and that the way we are raised we are to become those officers offending not physically perhaps but psychologically a person for no valid reason but to entertain ourselves or because we have been raised like that. This perhaps is the most apparent reason as to why this article is written.
Filed under Education, Society | Tags: Human, Perspective, Psychology, War | Comments (6)ParadoX: One of the Many
I have been always amazed by the originality that one human being can have, be it intelligence, creativity, charisma and many amazing skills. But the question asked, is why not all men are like that, why do people often seem to find nothing to distinguish themselves from the rest, is it something that is acquired, or something that is granted upon birth?
Filed under Society | Tags: Society | Comments (10)The Factory
In life, a person would be seeking success, one form of success comes from being efficient in life, while it may vary for different people, success is often perceived as having a good job, great diplomas, a family perhaps, bottom line money, because money is what one needs to survive in the world. Being a child, it is the parents’ duty to lead the child to become that successful man/women in the future, so the parents need to plot the child’s life. The most common (and maybe only plan in Lebanon) is the following: Kindergarden, School, High School, College, Degree, Job. But this path is not always the correct one. This article is about discussing the current system and help find an alternative system.
Filed under Education, Society | Tags: Education | Comments (10)Cyber Bullets do not Kill
It has become frequent nowadays to hear about shooting in schools, two years ago in January 25th, there was a shooting at the Beirut Arab University in Lebanon, and in April that same year more than thirty people were shot dead in the United States in what was known as the “Virginia Tech Massacre”. These shooting are not restricted to some counties, many have been observed worldwide notably in Finland, Germany, Australia, Russia and Thailand. People started to point fingers at violent media accusing violent media, especially violent games, to be leading to real-life violence, while others took the defense of violent media. I believe that violent media should not be held responsible for such acts -although that it may be a small contributing factor- , mainly because violence rates are not increasing, research done is not conclusive, and because violent media may also have some positive effects.
Filed under Games, Society | Tags: Education, Gaming, School Shootings, Violence | Comments (12)The Phoenix Awakens
The world has changed and so have we,
United we would never be.
Consumed by selfish greed our leaders fall,
The propaganda war blinds us all.
Unless we change for a new tomorrow,
The Lebanese soil will cry in sorrow,
Recalling the days we Lebanese stood firm,
Against all odds, fighting by our own terms.
Corrupted Roots
This is why I don’t copy…
It has become a habit and a very well rumor in circulation that there is copying/cheating in the official exams, while this is not valid in some centers, and very outrageous in others, the media remains however blackened by that fact, which means that someone is covering up pretty well the traces.
This article’s main reason is to expose such trespasses and display the consequence of such acts and how it is affecting not only the people that are cheating but the other and even the country.
