Mo's Blog

An exploration of servant leadership

2011-09-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

Introduction:

In this paper I look at servant leadership and explore how servant leadership as described in Peter Block's (1996) Stewardship and Robert Greenleaf's (2002) Servant Leadership: A Journey fits within certain theoretical frameworks. Namely, adaptive challenges and adaptive leadership as described in Heifetz's work, as well as the triple bottom line, the meta- theoretical paradigms, systems thinking, and Vroom-Yetton model of situational leadership.

First, I must describe servant leadership. However, before I can proceed, I want to point out that the treatment of servant leadership by Block and Greenleaf are similar but at the same time, have clear differences. Also, Block the recent author of the two, appears to be influenced by the writings of Greenleaf. In both authors' work, the leader becomes a servant leader by being in service to others. For Block the leaders and everyone in the organization are in service of those on the front line, i.e., those who produce the final product, sell it, or those who are in service of the customer in general. Greenleaf's view on the other hand, is more expansive; he not only writes about the leader being in service to the individuals in the organization, but also about the organization itself being in service to the larger community, "the organization as servant." Here, Greenleaf focuses on the role that trustees can play in various organizational settings as a way to ensure such a service is delivered to society as a whole. I have been privy to attending a part of a Board of Trustees meeting for AUS in which the board members and the board as whole acted in a servant capacity, trying to make sure that AUS is committed to its mission of service to the student and local community. During the meeting, several student were questioned about their programs and the larger role that their programs play in the community.

Another difference between the treatment of the subject by both authors is that Block is more concerned with democratic leadership and flattening the organization than Greenleaf. Still, Greenleaf does touch on the subject, but does not go as deep as Block. It would seem that Greenleaf takes democratic leadership as a matter of course in servant leadership. He writes about the concept of first among equals(primus inter pares) as a way for the leader to operate in teams. This position seems to be at odds with Block's view which calls for true equality in work teams. Each of the position has its own merits, however, that is the subject of another paper.

An area of similarity between the two authors is the relationship of servant leadership to community building inside the organization. Both authors seem to think that there is a link. It would seem that Block's ideas in this book about the relationship between community and servant leadership serve as a precursor to his book Community:The Structure of Belonging book. Both authors think that servant leadership and the environment that it creates in an organization is more conducive to creating a communal experience within the organization.

Servant leadership has its roots in religious tradition. Here two stories stand out, the story of Jesus Christ washing the feet of the disciples, an activity only reserved for the most lowly servants of the time. The other story is the story of a leader of a religious order named Leo, who traveled with a group as their servant, while unbeknownst to them he was the leader of the religious order to which they belonged. As the story goes, the success of the group was highly dependent on the presence of this servant to the degree that the group fell apart once he left the group(Greenleaf, 2002).

Servant Leadership and Systems thinking:

In our systems thinking class we studied how theories can fit into one of the five meta-theoretical paradigms: classic, dynamic, cybernetic, field, and evolutionary. Looking at the treatment of servant leadership in Greenleaf's book and his proposal that the organization becomes a servant fits within a field paradigm in that it expands the horizon of the feedback from within the organization to the larger external environment. Also this fits within the views of open systems theory in that it deals with the boundary of the organization as if it was a permeable membrane.

An evolutionary paradigm in many cases is equated with self organization. Block, and to a lesser degree Greenleaf, use the ideas about servant leadership as a vehicle for or in combination with distributed democratic leadership in which decision making in the organization is more collaborative and shared. Such a treatment belongs closer to an evolutionary paradigm, but does not necessarily mean self organization. Even though the choice to re-organize in response to changes in the external environment might be there, that does not mean that this will happen; individuals might be married to their old paradigms and positions which prevents them from seeing or accepting the change that is required. Also as with any re-organization, certain individuals might lose their power, therefore they would rather keep the status quo.

Looking at the story of Leo through the lens of systems archetypes, one can see the evidence of the addiction archetype(shifting the burden) in the story; here the group became dependent on Leo to enable them to do the work. Service in this form has the potential of being its own undoing. This story was mentioned in Greenleaf's book, but the issue of dependency was never dealt with. Interestingly, Block's book went to great lengths in discussing the need to avoid creating dependency and how it would be antithetical to the principals of democratic leadership. He went as far as equating it with patriarchy and treating others as children, not as adults. Still he came short when trying to prescribe solutions. The solution here might come from systems literature, the burden has to be shifted back, the intervenor has to gradually allow others to take responsibility.

Donella Meadows is well known for writing about systems intervention points to improve performance in a system. In her book Thinking in systems(1977), she lists her intervention points in order of difficulty, with numbers being the easiest and paradigm shift being the hardest to achieve. The proposed shift in thinking about leadership from being the one who is served to the one who leads by serving others would constitute a paradigm shift.

It follows that as a system or organizational intervention, a shift to servant leadership should be only considered after other interventions have been exhausted or at least the organization has moved from the the first six intervention points(numbers, buffers, negative feedback loops, positive feedback loops, information flows, and rules of the system.) The other intervention points are more conducive and can be implemented at the same time as servant leadership.

Another link between Meadows intervention points and servant leadership is that once it is “implemented” other intervention point have to be adjusted as in any system, the various components are interconnected and therefore interdependent. Specially, the systems rules, and information flows, and the power of self organization.

Servant Leadership and Adaptive Challenges

I must provide an explanation of adaptive challenges and technical issues. In Heifetz’s (2000) work, there is a distinction between adaptive challenges and technical issues; technical issues are issues for which the solutions exist and in which an expert can be brought in to administer the solution. Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, are problems for which no solution exists. I can see two relationships between adaptive challenges and servant leadership. First of all, applying servant leadership in and of itself is an adaptive challenge; there is no clear cut solution for how one as an individual or the organization at large can let go of self interest and be in service to others. To have everyone become a servant would "require changes in people's values, attitudes, or habits of behavior"(Heifetz, 1995, p85).

Secondly, adaptive work has the mindset of service. In his book, Heifetz (1995) describes the role of a doctor who is dealing with a cancer patient who needs a change of behavior. He writes: "The doctor's authority still provides a resource to help the patient respond, but beyond her substantive knowledge, she needs a different kind of expertise—the ability to help the patient do the work that only he can do"(Heifetz, 1995 P87). Heifetz makes the same point about the creation of dependency was reached by looking at servant leadership from the systems thinking archetypes. If dependency exists and the servant leader leaves the system or abandons the work, then the organizational adaptive work comes to a full halt.

In servant leadership literature, there is an emphasis on being a servant versus doing servant leadership. By looking at servant leadership as an adaptive challenge, some of this dichotomy is resolved; adaptive challenges include a technical component: The being includes the doing and transcends it. This applies as much to individuals seeking to be servant leaders as it does to organizations.

Servant Leadership and the Triple Bottom Line

The triple bottom line is about organizations measuring their success not only by using financial measures, but also by how well they treat people and the environment. Some have understood people to include both employees and the larger community, while others have a more limited sense that included one or the other but not both. The triple bottom line provides a more systemic view of the organization that fits squarely within the assumptions of open systems theory; the organization is both adapting and influencing of its external environment: resources, people and ideas flow in and out of the organization. Also by measuring impact on the environment, and the community the organization takes responsibility for its actions. Finally, measuring the impact of the business on the employees is a better indicator of performance than financial measures alone, which usually have a lag or delay and are therefore insufficient as a sole measure of organizational health.

The environmental aspect of the triple bottom line seems to be absent from either authors' work. This lack of concern environment could be either done on purpose to keep the focus on democratic values. Also at the time of the writing of either book, environmental awareness was not as high as it now. Finally, the organization can really afford to ignore the environment as it is a commons, and commons usually have no feedback loop to indicate their level or quality.

Unlike the case with the environment, where there are no immediate consequences for acting in an environmentally irresponsible manner, dealing with the employee can have immediate impact on the bottom line. Both Block and Greenleaf seem to agree on how organizations and leaders should treat their employees. Both agree about the lack of success of top-down command and control leadership and the success of democratic leadership.

As far as the role of the organization as servant, Block seems to favor more money making, this can be inferred from his focus on serving the front-line employees such as production and sales people. Greenleaf, on the other hand suggests that the organization should take on some of the role played by government. The argument here is that American large businesses have the needed resources to act in a manner that is similar to government , and at the same time are nimble enough to have good chances of success, unlike the bureaucratic government.

Servant leadership and the Vroom-Yetton Situational Leadership Model

According to the Vroom Vroom-Yetton model, leaders should act in a democratic, autocratic way, or somewhere in between depending on the situation. The choice of the way to act depends on the following factors: Quality of decision, volume of available information, level of information structuring, acceptance of stakeholders, the need for participation in the decision making, and potential conflict over alternatives.

Of this list two things are relevant for use in servant leadership, acceptance of stakeholders and the need for participation in decision making. If the leader is acting in a servant capacity, then she is more likely to be interested in serving others first(being a servant,) not leading others first(doing servant leadership.) It follows that this would lead to more acceptance of stakeholders and of the leader. Also because the leader wants to serve, the leader is in service to what the group wants to do. That would not be possible without participation.

There might be a potential paradox here with regard to stakeholder’s acceptance. If servant leadership increases acceptance of stakeholders or makes it appear that stakeholders will accept the decision because of the leader, not the decision, then the model would require the move in the direction of less democratic leadership. In other words, if the acceptance of stakeholders is dependent on who is proposing the decision, and the servant leader has a good amount of ethos with the group, than the group will accept the decision without being consulted with because of the leader. The paradox then is that the leader would not need to consult with the group and would make the decision on their own(moving to AI or AII,) thereby rendering a disservice to the group. The solution then is that the focus should be on the importance of stakeholder’s acceptance of decision regardless of who the leader is.

Conclusion-Implications for Social Change

I have shown how servant leadership fits withing open systems theory, and an evolutionary/self organizing paradigm. I have linked servant leadership to the paradigm shift in meadows' point to intervene in a system. Furthermore I pointed out the potential issue of creating of dependency when applying servant leadership and how that can possibly be solved using prescriptions from systems literature.

I identified two links between servant leadership and adaptive challenges and have resolved some of the issues of treating being and doing as opposites in an either/or dichotomy. I also discussed the potential reasons for the lack of environmental responsibility when looking at servant leadership from the lens of the triple bottom line. In order for servant leadership to be holistic, it has to expand its view to include the environment. Finally, I identified a potential paradox when applying the Vroom-Yetton model of situational leadership to servant leadership. Awareness of this paradox would result in better use of the model.

References

Block, Peter(1996). Stewardship:Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. San Francisco, CA. Berrett-Koehler.

Greenleaf, Robert(2002). Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition. Mahwah, New Jersey. Paulist Press.

Heifitz, Ronald(1998). Leadership Without Easy Answers. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.

Holman, Peggy et al(2007). The Change Handbook: The Difinitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems. San Fransico, CA. Berrett-Koehler.

Meadows, Donella(2008). Thinking in Systems. White River Junction, VT. Chelsea Green

New quotes

2009-03-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

I have come across the following quotes and thought some of them interesting:

"Considering the amount of stupidity out there it is amazing that humanity has come so far"

"Understanding reality is overrated"

"I will make the world a better place or die trying"

"He battled with stupidity and lived to tell about it"

"Dealing with stupidity on a daily basis, can leave you psychologically damaged if not completely insane"

"A man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it"

"You can't outsmart stupidity"

"Reality is even worse than you think"

Jordan when oil runs out

2008-12-12T05:19:00.000-08:00

I was thinking the other day about how the gulf states will probably be screwed when the oil runs out. I based this line of thinking on the fact they still depend on foreign labor and the fact that their local labor is largely incompetent.

That is when I started to ponder what would happen to Jordan 25 yrs from now when there is no more oil. The picture did not look good, despite all the talk about nuclear energy and using tar sand(which is very bad environmentally), I do not believe that we are doing enough or perusing the right combination of energy technologies. I talked about this a lot in previous posts.

The other area that got me worried is the fact that we have 13% unemployment while more 400000 Jordanians work abroad, mainly in the gulf states and send money back home. This money almost makes up one sixth of the Jordanian economy. What would happen 20yrs from now when these jobs and money are no longer there.

Jordan has to think long an hard about this and find a way to create jobs at twice the normal rate. Personally, I think that we can do it(yes we can;) A couple of weeks ago, there was a first page news paper article about factories in the QIZs closing or giving people the pink slip because of the situation with the global economy. It got me thinking about the fact that we import cloths from Turkey and China while at the same time exporting the same to the US. If the US as market is closed at the moment why not use this production capacity to satisfy the local market, instead of importing.

Internet Bandwidth

2008-12-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

I previously wrote about the need to increase internet bandwidth to make the internet more usable and provide the Jordanian internet surfer with more access to media rich content from all over the world.

Today I was looking at the websites for three ISPs in Jordan to see if they actually increased the bandwidth since they were "upgrading the servers" last month. To my horror, I found out that they actually decreased the bandwidth by 30%.

There is actually a trick here. Yes they did increase the maximum possible internet speed more than 400%, but at the expense of the reduction in bandwidth.

To put things in perspective, let us say that using my 1mb/sec ADSL account, that I want to watch two authors@google.com talks everyday. Each talk is approx 1 hr, so this amounts to approx 250mb. Based on a bandwidth limit of 7Gb, I would run out of Bandwidth on the 25th of each month.

I am not sure what the people in charge of strategy in these ISPs do, but it would appear they have never seen a proper plan or road map. Or maybe they did, but their plan involved internet speed but not bandwidth.

In any case, I think this sort of set back will not help Jordan progress, assuming it wants to. I really think that Jordan is more in need of internet bandwidth than it is in need of speed. What good is an 8Mb ADSL line if you run out of bandwidth after 8hrs of continuous downloading.

Serandomity, on embracing randomness in life

2008-12-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

On the one hand there is the concept of Serendipity whereby one finds something fortunate while looking for something else that is usually unrelated in the first place.

On the other hand there is the concept of randomity which means "The state or quality of being random or "An instance of randomness."

So what if a person is using randomness to experience or find new stuff. For this purpose I decided to coin the term serandomity.

Serandomity probably existed for a long time. One example is people throwing a dart to a map on the wall and then traveling to that place.

What is interesting now is that it has become much easier to embrace serandomitous than at any other point in history, thanks largely to both computers and the internet which allows the person to randomly experience new music, books, movies.

The formost example that comes to mind is stumbleupon.com which allows a great level in randomness of exploring the internet. One can also chose a random book to read using whichbook.com and listen to random music using stumbleaudio.com.

That being said, I would like to point out that serandomity as a way of life is not limited to technologically related stuff. Yes it is easier to do it technology. Nonetheless one can do it the old fashioned way, do a random act of kindness, go to a random restaurant, order a random dish, pay a random amount, and even say hi and good day to random strangers.

No Comment

2008-11-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

My Wish List For Obama

2008-11-05T00:32:00.000-08:00

Now that Obama is the president elect and soon to be the US president, here is my short wish list for him:

#1 Re-sign Kyoto or it's newest version

# 2 Pass a constitutional amendment that prohibits the US from disobeying International Law, irrespective of US national Interest.

# 3 Remove Vito power from UN security council, IMF, and the World Bank.

#4 Improve the US record in the area of Human Rights

#5 Remove the extra powers granted to the US president under Bush and pass a constitutional amendment to make sure that no future president can by-pass the system of checks and balances.

And while this list is somewhat short, any single task in it would be an extremely huge undertaking in the right direction.

I am not very optimist that any of this would ever happen, even for a cool president like Obama.

Spelling

2008-07-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

This kind of spelling mistake is common in Jordan and it is not just limited to cars advertised for sales, but also restaurant menus, websites, etc. Anyway, I found this one on the inside of windshield of a car.

Call this guy to buy the car in question, it can be found in Sweifieh.

The destruction of the ciggarete factory in Ras El-Ein

2008-07-13T05:29:00.000-07:00

I was able to take the pictures of the cigs factory in Ras El-Ein

My new environmental blog

2008-07-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce my new environmental blog:

http://mosenviro.blogspot.com/

I did not want to announce it until I had a dozen or so posts.

I think at least 2 of my posts will be controversial in the ME, especially the cloths post.

It is rather unfortunate that there is a general lack of concern about the environment here in Jordan. This is partially understandable, because people actually have other things to worry about. But it does not have to be this way as some of the pro-environment things make financial sense in the medium to long run.

I think overall, the government is doing a very poor job in creating environmental awareness, and here I would suggest things along the line of the EPA website and the energy star certification system.

Another thing that I mentioned before, is the govermnent going green and setting targets for CO2 emmisions reductions.

In a previous post I opinioned that the pursuit of Nuclear energy might not be a smart thing, and it turned out that my objections were not very far from the mark as it will take almost 8 yrs for nuclear energy to materialise. Instead I suggested wind energy, which can be deployed in as short as 6months and requires very little expertese to run.

Great sites to visit on the internet

2008-05-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

There are some great things you can "learn" on the internet(assuming you understand English.)

Following is a none comprehensive list:

*Youtube: This really is the coolest of them all. What do I use it for? For starters there is the authors@google lectures. I watch Monty Python episodes, Black adder episodes, SNL clips, Letterman, Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, Olbermann, Richard Dawkins lectures, Noam Chomsky lectures, Edwards Said lectures and so on.
*TED: This site brings the smartest, brightest, most creative people in the world and have them deliver "talks" about their cutting edge ideas once per year in the Technology Design Entertainment conference. One cool lecture that I watched was Dan Dennet talking about Memes. You can find many of these on youtube, but cut into 9-10min segments, while you can watch the whole lecture as is on TED.

Also most talks can be downloaded as MP3 or MP4 directly or through ITunes.
*freedocumentaries.org. Among the most interesting documentaries are the American Zeitgeist and another one about the Jewish Lobby in America.

Aside from the language barrier(which Jordan needs to work on,) I think the other big hurdle for people in Jordan in using these "free" resources and many others is the slow adoption of broad band internet. As of march 2008, there were only 49000 broad band subscribers, so assuming 4 people per household using the internet, that would be around 200K. Of the total internet users that translates to something like 15%, which is a rather low percentage.

I know that this percentage is growing, but that is really not fast enough. And to make these resources more useful, one needs to have a connection of at least 256K. The basic ADSL subscription starts with 128K, which is sufficient for everyday "browsing," but not even closely adequate for streaming video content. Furthermore the limitations of the number of Gigabytes downloaded per month is of no help either. Is is in a way like setting limits on the amount of stuff you can learn per month.

I really think that using these free internet "learning" resources will benefit Jordan. The question is, will the government do something to allow more people to access these resources. I think it would be a reasonable target to have 50% of subscribers using broadband in the next 3-5yrs.

How will the Jordanian Society Adjust to The New economic conditions

2008-05-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

I think that the Jordanian Society can adjust to the new economic conditions, not by accepting a lower living standard, but by being smart. There are many things that can be done in the short and medium term that would help the Jordanian Society wither the storm:

*Cut down on the number of people invited to weddings by 50% and the amount of food ordered. This would save the Jordanian society more than 25million JDs.
*Have no party or a very small party for the engagement. This would probably save 5 million.
*Reduce the amount of Jewelry given to the bride at the wedding. This should save 3 million.
*Having smaller families with 2 children only. This should save the society more than 120 million JDs. These savings come in many forms, smaller cars that are cheaper and consume less fuel, smaller apartments that are cheaper, less overall expenses, less cloths to be purchased, etc.
*Replace mobile phones every third year instead of every year . This should save the Jordanian Society more than 10 million Jds.
* Allow women to openly date and use the home landline. This would probably save another 3millions.
*Use the mobile phone for the moderately important to the very important stuff only. This would save 50million JDs.
*Use Skype for international phone calls. Another 5 millions.
*Smoking 20% less. This should save 50million JDs in direct and indirect costs.
*Buy smaller engine cars(only 1.6 ltrs or less.) This would save 25million.
*Use compact florescent lights in every house. This would save 43millions.
*Using energy efficient computers and LCD screens. This saves around 10 millions.
*Using insulation and double glaze windows in new buildings. This would probably save 30 million JD.
*Depeg from the dollar. Expected savings of more than 150millions. This comes in many forms, including cheaper oil and gas, cheaper imports including wheat, corn, and rice.
*If every single household got a solar water heater. This would amount to savings of 30million.
*Have a proper public transportation system. Annual savings of 50million JDs.
*Going Digital. This should produce more than 100million JDs in savings. This can happen in several ways including more people working from home, people doing all their banking online and not going to the bank, no space required for digital items, etc.
*Give incentives for owning Hybrid cars in the form of tax breaks . Annual savings of 70million Jds.
*Have Jordanian drivers improve their driving style. This will result in the reduction in the number of accidents by 20% and improve millage by at least 10%. The total saving would be around 60million JDs.

This is almost 800 million JDs saved per year and I can probably come with 10 other ideas to bring out the total to 1 billion Jds.

Presto, all the economic problems solved with almost no cost and no compromised to the living standard, just a minor change in habits and customs.

I can only see one of these solutions having a problem in implementation and that is reducing the family size, no thanks to the perceived contradiction between contraception and religion. Hopefully the government will work hard to erase this misconception.

What I like About American Movies

2008-05-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

Maybe because America is almost the size of a continent, or maybe because it has 300million people, or because it is advanced, or maybe all of these, American movies are so rich with different central characters, I do not think that any other cinema can compete with it on this particular front.

Some movie charters that you are not likely to find in any other cinema:

*Genius mathematician(s). This is can be found in movies like Good Will Hunting, Prime, Proof, A Beautiful mind
*The boxer. This can be found in movies like Cinderella man, Rocky
*The mad and not so mad scientist: Back to the future.
*Magician. The most famous in this case are The prestige and the Illusionist.
*Cheer up leader.
*Computer geeks, programmers, hackers. For example, war games, the Matrix, the net, Johnny pneumonic.
* The vampire hunter.
*The person undergoing psychotherapy.
*The archaeologist/treasure hunter. The prototype for this character is Indiana Jones.
*The psychic profiler.
*Smart theif in a grand theft movie. Like Ronin, the Thomas crown affair.

Traffic Accidents, part 2

2008-05-03T00:58:00.001-07:00

The other day, I was reading an article about how driving style affects fuel millage; the results were really interesting, if you you drive properly, within the speed limit and do not accelerate and decelerate suddenly(like most jerks with BMWs do,) your saving might be more that 10%(up to 30% if I recall)

So how would this fact help with car accidents? Well for the last 2 yrs, the government has attempted to improve the driving style with stupid advertisements like:

*Every 10 seconds one person dies from car accidents
*Ever year, X people die from car accidents
*Every day, X people die from car accidents.

These are nice facts to know but they should not can go on doing what they were doing and expect any change in results. 2 years of advertising produces virtually no decrease in accidents.

If people knew that they can save X Jds by driving like proper human beings, with lots of advertising and TV programming on the subject, there might be some chance of success. Even a few percentage point are welcome here.

A few yrs ago, this idea would have had a lower chance of success. However, with the current fuel prices, it might just work. And what if it does not work? Well, try something else until it does.

Coed Schools

2008-04-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

I happen to meet a person who went to the same school that I went to. We had a chat about various subjects and then he mentioned the fact that he enrolled his son in the same school we both went to because it was right next to house. He pointed, however, one problem for him, our old school has become Coed.

I pointed out to the guy that it is not the horror of horrors he makes it to be. After all, when his kid grows up 12 yrs from now there will be even more women in the work place and in college. So why not have the kid prepared to know how to deal with women.

I am aware of the possible problems of coed schools. However from my point of view, the good outweighs the bad a by a significant margin. In the long run there is some chances that life long friendships might develop between the girls and the boys. I view this as a very positive outcome. Also both the boys and girls would know how to better interact with the opposite sex.

It is worth mentioning that even Arab TV programs portray a society where men and women are not segregated, so why not start with the schools to transform the society.

When Will The Mighty Fall

2008-04-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

I am slightly optimistic that within my lifetime that Arab conservatism will be a thing of the past.

Why I am I optimistic? First of all, globalism seems to be causing microscopic chinks in the armor of Arab conservatism. And while these chinks might be very small, in time they shall be grand canyon wide.

The second reason is that it took 50yrs+ for communism to fall(not that it was a bad thing per say,) but in the end it fell so spectacularly in a matter of days or hrs. Similarly, Baghdad's collapse(that was a bad thing per say) in the second gulf war was so rapid , it left people scratching their heads.

I am hoping that in the end, that the collapse of Arab conservatism , when it happens(not if it happens,) will happen so rapidly that people will not know exactly what befell them. They will wake up the next morning to find it gone. Something similar to what happened to Kuwait on that morning of August 2nd 1990 when people found the Iraqi army in control of the country (a bad thing.)

I know the last one was a bad analogy and that the Iraqi army was eventually kicked out. I am hoping that the collapse of Arab conservatism will be final without any chance of resurgence. This is a goal that all Arab progressives should work towards.

The KSA facebook murder

2008-04-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

I was shocked to read the story of the murder of a Saudi Girl by her father because she was using face book.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/04/saudi-woman-beaten-murdered

So what is the solution for this problem. I think the solution will come from within, but with intense pressure from outside. I do not usually use chemical(or biological metaphors for that matter), but this time around I think that given a catalyst, and the right elements for the reaction, the ingredients will transform to the right kind of compound( a free society.)

So what sort of external pressure am I talking about; something similar to fair trade certification, but related to treatment of women and minimum human rights requirements. This could be a minimum requirement for membership in the WTO or the UN. The UN would deny access to it's various services(UNESCO, WHO, UNDP, UNIDO, etc) if members are not certified. I think this is a more sound idea than issuing stupid security council resolutions that get selectively implemented depending on the interests of the top 5 superpowers.

If Americans care enough that their coffee was purchased from fair trade sources, then maybe they should also care that their oil comes from countries that are certified to this new standard.

Jordanian Dinar

2008-03-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

The government decided against the advice of many economists to stick to it's JD pegged to the US Dollar policy. That was a big mistake. The government should have switched to a basket of currencies rate when the Euro hit one JD.

The economists' proposal was to have the dollar make 20% of the basket. For the time being, the government can start with a basket of 80% dollar, 15% euro and 5% Yen. Then by shifting 10% from dollar to basket, every 6-9 months, in about 3-5 yrs we would have the ideal basket of 20% dollars and 80% other currencies.

This type of gradual shift would enable some sort of stability and would not cause a lot of losses to people who invested in dollars or Euros.

The time for action was a few months ago, but as they say better late than never. When the government acts, it will lose approx 1 billion dollars from it's reserves. But over the next 3-5 yrs the government will more than make it up from savings in purchases.

Arab TV Programs

2008-02-18T08:24:00.000-08:00

I must concede that I am not a great fan of Arab TV series. However, I decided to list some of the things that I would like to see in terms of the way these programs are directed and produced. Here is the list in no particular order:

*I would like to see an Arab TV show that uses flashbacks or flashforwards.
*Even better, I would like to see a show that uses a flashback within a flash back.
*I would like to see Arab shows that have a synopsis of relevant past events at the beginning of each episode.
*It would be nice if it was the standard, not the exception for an Arab TV show to run for more than one season.
*I would like to see a complex, multi-layered, nonlinear plot that keeps the viewer guessing or causes him to think, to anxiously wait for the next episode.
*I would like to see a TV show where two or more story lines merge at one point.
*I would like to see a show narrated by the first person who happens to be the main character.
*The use of techniques like cold open, cliffhangers at the end of episodes, smash cuts and other plot devises
*This is not likely to happen anytime soon, but I would like to see a TV program that challenges the current social norms, not reinforce them.

TV's relgious programs

2008-02-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

To me the Government seems to be playing a very "unsafe" game with it's religious TV programming. There are several reasons why this is so:

*The programming seems to be advocating things that are in total disagreement with the king's vision for Jordan as a "Liberal" country.

*The ideas propagated are extremely socially regressive and are not compatible at all with the 21^st century; If carried out to their ultimate end, would result in a Saudi like state governed by Sharria. In the long run, and if implemented, such programs, would surly deliver a severe blow to Jordan as a touristic destination and would severely affect the national GDP, 16% of which comes from tourisms.

*While the programs claim consistency with science, I was able to detect more than a handful of scientific fallacies, not to mention tens of formal and informal fallacies . This is very dangerous as it allows people to believe in scientific ideas that are simply not true.

*A religious populace is closer to extremism than a mildly religious populace, placing the populace to the right of middle using this kind of TV programs, will result in a higher likely hood of extremist and possibly terrorism against innocent Jordanians.

So what do I propose? I propose going back to the old formula of neutered Friday religious programming. Make sure that the scientific facts stated in any of these programs are considered "scientific" in the larger world wide scientific community, not just a tinny scientific minority. No making up of scientific facts should be allowed.

I guess a lot of people here in Jordan advocate the rule of Sharria, ignoring the total failure of this project wherever it was implemented in modern times. I would advise these people to take a closer look at Afghanistan (pre, during, and post Taliban), Pakistan, Somalia, and other places. Many of these projects proved to be in many cases much worse than places were governance is mainly secular with some Sharria sprinkled in.

I can understand to some degree that the government wants to eat the cake and keep it at the same time. Alas, you can not have it both ways. Trying to use religion as an opium for the masses is very dangerous as religion can be as volatile as TNT or RDX. You never know when things are going to explode and in whose face.

To illustrate, let us say that someone watches these TV programs, they become more aware and realize that the government and the society is not adhering to Islamic law. According to these TV programs this none adherence is a very serious state of affairs. This causes a sort of hatred and a need to take action against the "infidel" government/society. Connect a few dots later and you have "homemade" none imported terrorism in the form of local suicide bombers.

Considering the current economic situation, the government should think hard about other less volatile opiates to occupy the people. The Lebanese model of having the people have as much fun as they can might not be such a bad idea. I always thought it smart to borrow a page of some one else's book.

Accidents

2008-02-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

I was watching the TV the other day and there was one of those new programs that are targeting the subject of car accidents. The guy was saying something like" The government has done everything in it's power to reduce traffic accidents, and now the ball is in the citizen's half of the playground "

IMHO, nothing could be farther from the truth, the government has done almost nothing to alter the crappy driving culture that we have. Let me just give few examples:

*No action is taken against people who treat lanes as if they do not exist.
*No action is taken against people who who never use the right and left turn signals
*No actions is taken against people who tailgate on the highways
*No action is taken against people who abuse their car's horn

The government can and should have an army of traffic police driving and stationed on all the highways. This should not be done as a quick fix, but should go on indefinably in the hope that slowly and gradually people would stop driving like jerks.

Furthermore, this army of traffic cops would need to be doubled during the summer as the number of cars almost doubles. Most of these cars come from the gulf where the poor quality of Jordanian driving almost pales in comparison.

Additionally, the ticketing of individuals coming from the gulf would not only be a good stream of income for the treasury, but would also insure a reduction in the number of accidents.

One more thing the government can and should do is to try to appeal to gulf states to improve their driving standards. Not only would this benefit these gulf states, but in the end it would also benefit Jordan.

Public Sector Jobs

2008-01-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

I was watching the news the other day and the PM was complaining to the parliament about the fact that the average Jordanian prefers government jobs to private sector jobs even though in most cases the pay is less. The PM was somewhat baffled with this problem, but to me the solution is rather simple.

People prefer government jobs for three reasons, shorter work hours, lower skills requirements and very little work done when compared with the private sector; one third of the time is wasted in prayers(especially if the mosque happens to be next to the government agency in question,) one third in smoking and drinking tea, and only one third remains for work.

I am blowing things a bit out of proportion here, but things are not very far from my description, so it is no wonder that people are averse to private sector jobs.

The solution for the government is very simple, increase working hours, increase the workload so that people are not sitting around on their asses, and creating jobs that actually require some sort of skill. The first two are somewhat easy to implement but the later would be somewhat tough to pull since most government jobs are not very different, skill wise, from flipping burgers at a Macdonald's.

2008 Gov Budget

2007-12-25T02:07:00.000-08:00

I had a chance to watch the minister of finance deliver his budget proposal on the floor of the parliament and was not happy at all.

The new budget aims to help the poor and needy and provide a more equitable distribution of income. Sounds great, however, the government plan is flawed as it hopes to achieve this by linking civil servant's salaries with inflation. IMHO, a sure recipe for double digit inflation rates.

Here is how things would probably play out:

1) Government increases civil servant's salaries and minimum wage in correlation with inflation numbers from the previous year.
2) Private sector increase wages based on the new minimum wage and then some more to attract some of the people who might consider government jobs.
3) Commercial sector increases prices due to both increased labor costs and also to take advantage of the increase in the average Jordanian's income(due to the wage increase.)
4) At the beginning of the following year the inflation numbers on which the new wages are computed are higher because all wages(prices) went up and the cycle starts again at number 1

The other thing that I fear from linking wages to inflation rates is that we might lose our competitiveness, and this is already happening to some degree; a number of factories are being moved from the industrial area in Irbid to Egypt because of the significantly lower wages(more than 65% less in some cases.) We might also end up losing some touristic business as the cost for visiting jordan is a bit on the insane side(especially hotels)

In the long run the government can only slow this by not going ahead with its plans. In the long run we need to have industries that have a significant amount of technical knowledge that would not be available in countries that depend on low wages to increase the competitiveness of their goods like Syria and Egypt.

Reading

2007-12-24T04:49:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I found this article on salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/

The Journalist was complaining about a new report that found that 25% of Americans have not read a single book in the last 12 months.

After reading that article I did not know if I should roll on the floor from laughing or cry for hours; It is safe to say that at least 75% of people in Jordan never read a book after leaving college(or high school if that was their highest level of education.)

The author goes on to describe American reading habits as depressing.

I am not sure what would happen to her if she knew about the reading habits of Jordanians, she would probably be dead from fatal depression by now and after that would spend an eternity rolling in her grave.

Here is the full report she sited:

http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead_ExecSum.pdf

Just for the record, I read more than 22 books this year and I am stuck in the middle of another five.

The New Government

2007-12-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

There are two things that I wanted to address in this blog post.

Let us start with the old news first and the new Jordanian Government. I actually wanted to write this a while ago but never got a chance. The speech delivered to the house of representatives by the new PM was great. If he can deliver on half of it, then Jordan might have a bright future. So, will he deliver this 50%? Being a realist, 25% looks more realistic and would still be much better than the previous government.

One reason why I am skeptical is lack of answer to the question: Where will the PM find competent people to carry out his plans, most of the competent Jordanians live abroad for various reasons and would not be interested at all in having middle level positions within the government. I did point out elsewhere in this blog the total incompetence in various ministries, including the ministry of health, tourism, and industry, just name a few. These ministries do not have the minimum level of knowledge to do their job correctly. Of course, I could go on ad nauseum.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea why the last PM last for whole two years; based on his performance he should have been moved to the upper house of the parliament 12 months ago.

The other matter that I wanted to blog about was this video:

http://www.dotsub.com/films/didyouknow20/index.php?autostart=true&language_setting=none_1180

Some of the interesting(scary) facts for us Jordanians:

*100% of Indian college graduates speak English, all 1.3 million of them.
*More than 50% of Americans under 21 have web content.
*More than 70% of US 4yrs olds use computer.
*More than 3000 books are published today in English.

I would like to note that to the best of my knowledge that Jordan has not taken advantage of one laptop per child OLPC(I think one possible reason is that it is not available in Arabic)

Considering the fast pace of changes outlined in the video, I have almost no doubt in my mind that the Ministry of education is ill-prepared to deal with the future shown in the video.

The first Stumble Upon review

2007-12-04T08:30:00.000-08:00

Mo's blog got it's first mini review on stumble upon:

"Don't miss this blog, as you'll be quite surprised at how inspiring Mraei is. For there is a lot here to get you really thinking"

I am greatly honored by this review. It is a bit of a shame that the first stumble upon review should come from England as opposed to Jordan.

Anyway here is the link to review page:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/mohammedraeiblog.blogspot.com/

Also the same person reviewed my Stumble upon page(check the link in the side bar), and here is what he had to say:

"Tman opines: "Jordanian blogger with an international mind." This man means business. I have not had time to read much on this visit - I must confess, but I'm very impressed with what I've seen so far. And by that, I should say, I've peeked at his alter-blog (a must see, as I've attested above!) where one may discover some most refreshing views on certain worldly topics which... I'll leave to you all to check out. I shall return later & update then! :-)"

Here is the full review page:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/mraei.stumbleupon.com/

Ignorance is Bliss

2007-11-25T05:34:00.001-08:00

The other day, I was thinking about how much I should increase the price for products that I sell. I knew that inflation will be 10%+ next year. But I can not really increase my prices by that much because there is competition.

Apparently my competition and the vast majority of the Jordanian population are ignorant of the concept of inflation. Which is a good thing. I mean if every one increased their salaries or prices by 7 or 10% then the inflation numbers would be in the mid teens or lower twenties.

Just to get an idea about how much inflation has hurt the Jordanian economy, if you made 300JDs in 2002, you should make 464 Jds in 2008. This is using the official government numbers. And while many people take the government numbers with a grain of salt, I think that on average they are somewhat accurate. Calculation of inflation does not take a lot of things into account. For example, price of laptops, computers, monitors, printers, fax machines, and other office equipment has seen a sharp decline of more than 40% over the last 5years. Blank CDs, and DVDs, USB flash drives have become dirt cheap. You can now have all the office equipment that you want for a fraction of what you would have paid 6 years. I remember that not every one could afford to have a copy machine in their company or office because the price ran in the mid 1500s. On the food front, meat prices on average have remained somewhat stable during the same period as meat is now imported from places like China and Brazil.

So in conclusion it is a great thing that most people do not adjust their income for inflation, otherwise it would be a great mess.

Update

2007-11-20T07:08:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I last wrote.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is the elections. I am not voting, and I am proud of it. One of our "relatives" is running for elections and I do not think that he will bring any good to the country. This election like all the others before it is still based on kinship and tribal ties. And to further complicate the situation, there are not any candidates with a sufficiently liberal and progressive political program. So I am basically boycotting the elections.

In totally unrelated news, I was very happy to learn during my trip to Germany in October that Germany only recently(last 12 months) passed mandatory building codes that require the use of insulating materials, something I talked about in my last blog post.

In further unrelated news, I had the chance to compare Jordanian Medical care with that of Germany, as we went there to do an operation for my mother. It is unfortunate, but private medical care in Jordan is really expensive when you adjust for income levels, things would look even worse if Euro price went down to 1.2 dollars. For certain types of procedures, an operation in Germany might cost a mere 20-40% more than Jordan.

As for the quality of medical care. The main difference that I could find was in the quality of service provided by the nurses, in Germany it was at least four times as good as it was in Jordan. So much so that I almost wanted to sculpt a statue of the nurses at the ICU.
I spoke to the family neurologist regarding this and he told me that private hospitals "claim" that they can not afford to raise the salaries of the nurses. But neither of us believed this and thought that the hospitals were greedy.

One thing that I should mention is the fact that my mother was discharged, without fully paying the medical bills as they were not all ready at the time of her discharge. They will be later on sent by mail. Something that would happen in Jordan in about a 100 years.

One other thing that I noticed during my mother's hospitalization is that fact that doctors in Germany write medical reports in accordance with a WHO standard wherein each diagnosis is assigned a special code and can be easily looked up on the internet. Because the code is the same regardless of language, it would be great if Jordan used the WHO standard as there is no standardization in medical report writing at hospitals. I will probably write a letter to the minister of health to this effect.

Govermnent Is Investigating

2007-07-23T22:49:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I read the something along the line:

"Government is investigating the use of Nuclear energy"

"Government is studying the feasibility of XYZ"

The main problem with this is that the Government is always investigating this or that, but more often than not, if you fast forward 5years later, you will find out that the investigation leads to no action.

What is even worse is that the government revisits certain issues with a new fully fledged investigation as if no previous investigation(s) took place. I call this reinventing the wheel.

In many instances plugging the new numbers into the old formulas would be sufficient. For example, let us say that wind energy was not a good idea when oil prices were in the teens of dollars, and the payback period was something like 20years. Using the new oil prices in the same old formulas would yield a payback period of say around 7.5 years. Of course, I am oversimplifying here.

But no, we need to waste tax payer's money, so we have to do a completely new study every 5 years.

Ok, I seem to have digressed a bit, so what I want to talk about is the issue of Jordan investigating Nuclear energy. I was very annoyed when I found out that Jordan is serious about this. Yes nuclear energy is nice, is environmentally friendly( if there is no Chernobyl like leakage), and in the long run is cheap to produce. But the question is, is it for Jordan?

Jordan is not the kind of country that can make huge investments in large chunks. For a country of Jordan's financial situation, it makes more sense to make a small investment of say 50-100million every year in renewable energy sources like wind energy.

Three years ago, I had to quote a 1MW wind energy converter. It was for around 380000 Euros. Using the logic from above, the government can choose to buy 1, 2, or even 100 units, in one year, and then maybe zero units in the following year and then maybe 50 in the year following that and so on and so forth.

Due to the relatively small price tag, there is a lot of flexibility in mixing and matching. Add to this the fact that the price of wind energy is going down every year and wind energy converters are becoming more efficient year over year, then you see that you will be getting more bang for your buck as time goes by.

Now with Nuclear energy, it is a one time investment, and no flexibility exists whatsoever. As for getting more bang for your buck over time, this may or may not be true. But in all likelihood the next Nuclear plant for Jordan will be installed 10-20 After the first one.

Two other things come time to mind regarding nuclear energy. It is putting one's single egg in a single basket, which would not come in handy in case Jordan ever needed to go to war. And there is also the fact that Nuclear Energy requires technical knowledge which Jordan currently lacks. I do not know about you, but it has been a while since I heard about a local nuclear scientist. And I do not want my countries' Nuclear plant to be run by some Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Since almost nothing does come out of these government investigations, instead of wasting time and money trying to invest in new energy whether it is wind or nuclear, things can be done in the here and now and with almost no cost to make use of what we currently have; government can change new building codes to require mandatory insulation(that alone saves more than 30% in cooling costs.) The government can issue a ban on incandescent lamps starting 2010. The government can pass a minimum standard for energy efficiency for industrial facilities or office buildings. It can turn itself, or Jordan as a whole green.

Speaking of the latter, two months ago, I read that Dubai was considering going green. So why not us? Why not beat them to the punch? The only thing it takes is legislative effort.
Going green does pay for itself. I can speak about this from first hand experience; my 3 compact florescent lamps and solar water heater already paid for themselves and it does show in my electricity and fuel bills .

The Ultimate Promotion for Jordan

2007-07-20T00:16:00.000-07:00

I sort of could not believe myself when I stumbled on to this:

Actually I could since I know that most foreigners who live(d) here think highly of Jordan.

Anyway, it would be cool if the government used this to promote health services in Jordan.

Personally, I would not go as far as promoting large scale operations, only none-invasive medical tests(blood tests, X-ray, MRI, CT, bone density, urtherograms, uro-flowmetry, venus doppler, etc) and the occasional "scopies." I would only promote large scale operations when we have real medical malpractice law.

Also I hope that medical costs can be kept in check, or we might just become like the US and A.

And that lady in the video is cute. Hehe.

Democracy and Secularism

2007-07-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

I was very annoyed when I learned that in a recent Al-Jazeera.net poll, 83% of respondents considered Secularist extremism a bigger danger to democracy than Islamic extremism.

I am not very surprised by the results, because as I watched the AL-Jazeera TV show in which the poll was discussed, I discovered that there is a lot of confusion regarding what Secularism is really about. The confusion was apparent throughout the discussion by both guests, one of which was a "secularist thinker" based in the middle east and the other was a "Muslim fundamentalist" based in London.

The confusion largely arose from mixing the concept of Atheism with Secularism. Because of this mix-up of concepts, the Muslim fundamentalist kept accusing the other guy of being an apostate and kept "giving" him chances to repent and go back to Islam.

While many atheists are Secularist, there are many instances were Secularism does not mean Atheism; "believers can be, indeed have often been, enthusiastic supporters of secularism as a political principle, while remaining firm religious believers."

Let me give one small example, very close here at home, my mother who prays 5 times a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year does not support anything resembling the Saudi regime and it's version of an Islamic state. She thinks, that it is the wrong version of Isalm and prefers the milder and more secular version we have here in Jordan. This view is not limited to my mother, and is shared by many people who consider themselves religious, while at the same time not supporting a Saudi style Islamic state.

As for my interpretation of the poll results, I think the respondents' idea of "secularist extremism" is based on what they currently have for governments, i.e. mainly "Secular" Dictatorships. And considering the fact that most of the respondents are not happy with the existing Arab regimes, it makes a lot of sense that they would prefer the alternative, which in this case is "Islamic extremism."

An Islamic Dictatorship is as bad as a secular one. The main problem here is not in Secularism. The fact that Dictatorships in the Arab world happen to be Secular is only incidentals. How do we know this? We know this because the "real" democracies in the world are more secular leaning. So we can conclude that the problem is mostly with dictatorship and not with "Secularism;" Secularism is not an enemy of Democracy.

I know it gets good viewership ratings when Al-Jazeera has a show with the title "Isalmic extremism vs. Secular extremism, which one is hurting democracy?" but things are not as simple as that, it is not an either/or kind of thing. One shoe does not fit all; individual Arab states, might have some success with various degrees of hybridization. Having semi-secular and Semi-Islamic implementations.

Fatwa

2007-07-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I stumble on some terrible Fatwa(edict) by some Saudi, Pakistani, or Egyptian cleric. Let me give a few examples:

* "Fatwa against production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons." What is the point?

* Fatwa Against Terrorist Acts in Spain.

*A fatwa proclaiming trademark counterfeiting ‘The crime of the 21st century." This was a tactic used by Proctor and gamble to combat counter fitting in Saudi or some other Muslim country (2005)

* "Woman can only be left alone with a strange man if she breastfeeds him."(2007. This one was withdrawn by the mufti in question after some uproar. I found this in Black Iris's page)

*"Muslims should not play soccer like the Europeans do because it violates the Prophetic tradition (hadith) against imitating Christians and Jews"

Some specifics of this last fatwa:

"One should not use the terminology established by the non-believers and the polytheists, like: 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick,' 'goal,' and 'out of bounds.' Whoever pronounces these terms should be punished, reprimanded, kicked out of the game, and should even be told in public: 'You have come to resemble the non-believers and the polytheists, and this has been forbidden.'" (2005)

And one can find hundreds of other examples.

What did the Fatwas of these clerics bring to Islam or to Muslims?

Did they improve the lives of Muslims?

Did they help them progress?

Really, what is the point of a post hoc fatwa like the one about terrorism in Spain? Did terrorism stop elsewhere after it was issued? It looks like it was issued for political reasons.

Did these Fatwas help people go to "heaven" or avoid "hell."

Or did these Fatwas damage the image of Muslims all over the world, and create many enemies for Islam?

In this modern age, I see very little value in the ramblings of the mostly illiterate clerics (they sure can read, but they do not comprehend). I think the individual at this point in time can and should judge for himself. The need for fatwa probably arose at a time when few people could read, had access to books, or had any education in logic or moral philosophy.

With the wide spread literacy and availability of massive amounts of information at libraries and on the internet, the question of availability of resources has been rendered moot.

The only thing that I would call for is a proper education in moral philosophy to equip the person to make a sound judgment.

In my opinion it does not help if the Muftis doing the fatwas are better educated or if they have higher IQs. I have a problem with the fatwa concept as a whole being done by a third party(the mufti) and I would rather leave things up to the individual after education in moral philosophy as well as scriptures.

I would much rather see something similar to Protestantism happen to Islam; with Protestantism, the hold of the Catholic Church and papacy was significantly reduced. Similarly, I would like the same thing to happen to the Fatwa centers in Mecca and Cairo; I would like to see their hold on people shrivel, I would like to see more and more people thinking for themselves.

However, if people want to stick to fatwas (their problem), then there should be some sort of acid test to prevent the above mentioned fatwas from making it out of the fatwa center; something like:

*If it does not make sense to 70% of the people, then it should be discarded.

*If 70% of the people think the fatwa is retarded, then this fatwa should be withdrawn.

Of course, this would require testing the fatwa beforehand, using statistical sampling methods, on a sample of the general public to determine if it is palatable or not.

This should be done even if the fatwa in question had Hadiths to back it up, or if it was issued by the most distinguished Islamic scholar(s). Ultimately, religion has to make sense to it's adherents.

Anyway, if things were up to me I would issue a new "Fatwa" banning all other "Fatwas" excluding mine :-)

Online dating, Jordanian Style

2007-07-01T01:54:00.000-07:00

I noticed that to a majority of Jordanian women, online dating consists of the following

#1 Creating a profile on Myspace or Facebook, with or without a picture, or even with a fake picture(of a baby, Nancy Ajram, Elisa, Haifa Wahbi, a semi-naked Western female, a flag etc)

# 2 Leaving the profile blank

#3 hoping that the guy of her dreams would like her picture(or that of Haifa Wahbi) and would contact her to ask for her hand in holy matrimony.

Of course, I am not making things up and I have statistically valid data to prove it

o Out of 82 profiles(the sample size) for single females on facebook, only 33 bothered to write any thing

o Out of 30 profiles(the sample size) for single females on Myspace, only 15 bothered to write anything.

This tells me one of two things about this sample:

o 50-60% of the sample does not know how to fill a profile, maybe due to linguistic deficiency.

o 50-60% of the sample, views themselves as a "beautiful" women with nothing to say or intrinsic value to reflect, nothing to contribute. Just a Barbie, a Brittany Spears of sort, with no brains to go with the looks.

Either way, this is a sorry state of affairs.

Considering the sample size is statistically big enough, I can say with some confidence that what applies to this sample applies also to the larger population pool.

To be fair, I am willing to bet that profiles of guys on the internet will only perform slightly better. Maybe there is stuff written in the profile, but in all likelihood the content itself is crap. Hence the usual complaint of women about descent men being in short supply.

I also expect these numbers to change a bit one or two years down the line for the following reasons:

A) Thanks to this blog post :-)

B) Linguistic deficiency is likely to decrease

C) Hopefully, more women will have content to write.

Western Conspiracy

2007-06-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

Every week, my mom annoys me by watching Mohammed Hassanein Haykal on Al-Jazeera. After the show is done, she goes on about the American/ Zionist/ Western conspiracies to keep Arabs in the slums of history, about the documents he provided, the secret meetings he sited, etc.

Now, what gets me annoyed is not the fact that it's not true, it probably is. But I really do not see how this really changes anything. In my view this whole conspiracy thing is similar to hygiene factor in the management theory of motivation.

Let me explain briefly what a hygiene factor is. In motivation theory, there are motivators, and there are hygiene factors. Motivators are things that give positive satisfaction to the individual (for example recognition increases motivation.) Hygiene factors are things "which do not motivate if present, but if absent will result in de-motivation" For example, a lack of good salary usually results in a lack of motivation, but having a good salary will not guarantee motivation.

Now back to the conspiracy, it does not help Arabs to unit if they have a conspiracy against them. But would they really unit if it were not present?

My answer is no, they would not. I know that people who say yes would argue for a common religion, language and culture as good reasons why Arabs can unit.

Let me refute each one of these reasons and other grounds for the call for unity.

*Culture.

In my previous post, I tackled this subject and so will skip it all together.

*Religion.

Yes, most Arabs are Muslims, but they have totally different interpretations of religion. Arabs from Lebanon and Syria would not look kindly at the Saudi model of Islam and vice versa.

Should the "Arab state" be secular or not?

Should it have freedom of religion? If so how can this be applied in Saudi?

Would the Shea Iraqis be happy in an "Arab state" where they go back again to being a minority?

What would happen to religious minorities?

While they do get equal rights in some Arab countries, their rights are almost none existents in others.

The economy. Here I we have three problems:

The unequal distribution of income between oil states and none oil states.

Would there be a federal system like in the US where poor states piggyback rich states.

The totally different economic systems. We have a wide range of economic systems spanning socialism to capitalisms and anything in between.

Would the Saudi government allow opening of banks with interest from other Arab countries on Saudi soil?

Would Syria really have any decent thing resembling a real private bank?

Would something like the common "Arabo" currency ever see the day of light?

How can one reconcile the economy of Saudi with that of Syria?

The problem of protectionism and cheap labor. As it is, and without the need for a conspiracy, most Arab countries exercise various forms of economic and labor protectionism.

Would Jordan allow an influx of cheap Egyptian labor?

Would there be a minimum wage at the "Arab state" level?

Political System.

How can one reconcile the different government systems?

Would Syria accept democracy?

Would Egypt accept Islamic law?

Would Saudi accept a proper constitution and a secular democracy?

Would Lebanon want to be part of the same state as Syria?

Who would rule. And how?

Would there be a federal government?

Would Egypt have 25% of "federal" government positions, since it has 25% of the population of the Arab world?

Does the president of the Arab world have to be Egyptian?

What would happen to the various Arab kings and presidents?

What would happen to large ethnic minorities in Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Sudan? Will they have self rule?

The idea of "Arab Unity" sounds great when examined at face value. But the "devil" is in the details. And upon a somewhat detailed examination, it looks like Arab Unity has many things going against it and is very hard to achieve, even in the absence of a western conspiracy.

Even things like a unity of two Arabs countries seems almost impossible to work out. Using the criteria from above(economic, political, culture, religion) Let us take a quick look:

Jordan and Syria. No it would not work out
Syria and Iraq. No it would not work out
Lebanon and Saudi. No
Syria and Lebanon. No
Egypt and Lybia. No
Egypt and Ghaza. No
Jordan and Iraq. No

The other point that I would like to make is that Al-Jazzera did "Arabs" no good by airing such a program. It only helps foster a sense of victimhood. It creates the mentality that goes something like this: "We are victims of the west, no wonder our lives are going nowhere, they did this to us and there is evidence now."

Needless to say, we do not need any talk of present or past conspiracies, we need to focus on what we are doing and that is trying to "progress" and move forward. This can only happen by using progressive thinking, not regressive thinking.

Engagement Customs

2007-06-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

I had the lack of fortune (neither being fortunate nor mis-fortunate) of attending an engagement "Jaha." Now, I have been to several wedding "Jahas" before, but this was my first time in a fully fledged engagement Jaha, where the family of the broom-to-be, along with some VIPs goes to ask for the hand of the bride-to-be.

I found this custom to be totally useless and a waste of time. Just like various vestigial structures in human anatomy, this custom has lived on long after its function has been rendered obsolete.

I must concede that the problem of sticking to obsolete customs is not limited to the Jordanian society, but other places also, including the west.

But I digress; I have no concern with the west for now; their customs and traditions in question are generally on the benign side. That is defiantly not the case with the custom of "Jaha." As a matter of fact, I can at least point out four big problems with this concept:

1) It does not place any value on the individual, but the value is derived from the clan, the tribe, the VIPs and the family. The elders have to do the talking, and the "young" broom-to be has to keep his mouth shut. The person in question could be a rocket scientist, and he would still have to allow someone else to talk, even if this person was illiterate.

2) The whole thing assumes that the bride-to-be has no power over yes or no, as she is never present, but instead her father has to do the acceptance or refusal on her behalf.

3) No women are present. This made sense when women did not contribute to the society and had the kitchen as their sole domain. Now things have changed. It would not hurt if various VIP women started to be included in this stupid custom. After all, we started to have female ministers and members of the upper/lower house of the parliament. If they are good enough to run a ministry, or represent the "people," why not be part of a stupid "Jaha."

4) In none pre-arranged marriages, the whole thing is an act. But if one is going to act, why act some stupidity he/she inherited from antiquity.

I know that old traditions/customs die hard. While we can not get rid of our vestigial organs, we can make a conscious choice to replace our customs with new ones or update them for the times. We need to be aware of how stupid, degrading, retarded, and useless they can be. We really need to ask if they are appropriate for the 21^st century.

The Clueless FDA

2007-06-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

For the last four years, I have been trying to sell compressed air filters to various plastic factories that produce food packaging, without much success.

These filters are used to remove compressor oil from compressed air and prevent it from contacting the packaging. If it is present, this oil could be a potential health risk in the long run for the consumers as this oil is always mineral based and not food grade. This is almost like eating the oil in your car engine, after you have used it to drive the car for 6000km.

I must say that I was not very surprised when not a single plastic factory bought from me, or anyone else for that matter. After all, the health of the average consumer is not worth 500JDs per year.

And I must say that it does not surprise me either that the Jordanian FDA does not know anything about this. Having dealt with the Ministry of health(and the Jordanian FDA) both as a business owner and when I represented the Dairy industry at the Jordanian Institute for Standards, I knew that these people do not know their asses from their elbows, all they know is that the material is food grade, therefore the final package is food grade.

Of course, for anyone who knows anything about the food industry, this is a clear case of non sequitur. The Jordanian FDA should be ashamed of itself for not knowing anything about this matter, but also for not knowing so many things.

The greatest problem with the Jordanian FDA is that the stuff are lacking both in experience and technical knowledge. And while they can be a bit excused for the former, in the age of the internet and electronic documents, the latter is an excusable crime.

IMHO, the Jordanian FDA is a partial waste of the tax payers' money and is only partially effective.

Office for Sadistic Affairs

2007-06-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

A typical conversation inside the government's Office for Sadistic Affairs(a fictional office)

X: Sir, we won't make the budget this year.

Y: Right. Is there a way can get more money from the poor bastards, while at the same time making their life miserable.

X: Sure Sir

Y: Like what?

X: We can increase the revenue stamp fees and at the same time make the stamps not available at post offices. Instead they would sell at the closest grocery store, which could be up to a mile away from civilization and would probably sell them for twice the price.

Y: Really!!! Great.

X: Sir, we already tested this at several post offices and it was a great success; already, several citizens shot themselves in the head, mutilated themselves, or tried to jump from the top of a mountain.

Y: Uh-huh, wow.

X: So, we can make it standard procedure everywhere if you would like.

Y: Make it so.

While such an office does not really exist in the government, the various ministries are filled to varying degrees with employees just like X and Y. Of course, the conversation would not be as "intelligent" as this, but the result would be about the same.

Parks

2007-06-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

It does not happen often happen that I praise the government on anything, not because I am a government hater(which I am not,) but largely because the Government, more often than not, does not deserve my praise.

However, this time around I must praise the Government for the Hussein Gardens(park.) This is probably the first time that we have a decent park inside Amman itself. It is also the first time that kids have play grounds to play football in, instead of playing on the street and endangering their lives.

Now, the criticisms part, we need more of this, and soon. Probably, a couple of extra parks for Amman itself. But also in other cities like Zarka, Madaba, and Irbid.

It would be nice, also, if the government did not build these out of tax payer's pockets which are already empty.

Arab Values

2007-06-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

I was reading some article in the Dustour news paper where they interviewed some people about the subject of "Interracial" and inter-religious marriages.

One of the people interviewed started mumbling about the Arab values and the inconsolable difference between Arab culture and Western Culture.

Needless to say, this got me really annoyed. You see, there is a general assumption about the static nature of Arab values and culture. On top of it there is the misguided belief that values are shared between people in the various Arab countries or even within the same country.

First of all, I would like to get one thing straight, the values were always changing at different points in history, going from one extreme to the other, pretty much like a pendulum. For instance, the era that produced "A thousand and one nights" can be one example of a rather "liberal period." And then the rise of Wahabis in the Arab peninsula can be considered the pendulum swinging the other way around.
Another example is Jordan itself, it was more liberal up the mid 80s and then it went through a period of conservatism which we can not rid ourselves off even to this day.

Secondly, moral and cultural values differ between the different Arab countries and also within one county or even city; West Amman is "liberal," whereas east Amman is not. Amman as a whole is more liberal than say Maa'n.

Then we look at countries; Jordan is more "liberal" than Egypt or KSA, but less so than Syria or Lebanon. For example, a lot of Jordanians might get a cultural shock if they went from Jordan to Lebanon. And a lot of the Lebanese would consider the Jordanians culturally retarded when they visit here.

Third, a lot of the so called Arab values have not even survived to the 21st century. Most people have lost their honesty, generosity, and many other things that are parts of the core of Arab values. The only thing that people mean when they talk about "Arab values" is the relationship between the sexes, and drinking and they leave all the real important issues unmentioned.

So in view of all of the above, the talk of Arab culture as static and a none changing fact taken for granted is not only misguided, but obviously a sign of historical and cultural ignorance. The core of Arab values is not what people are talking about.

Tribal Law

2007-06-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

I knew this from before, but it did not get to the foreground of my brain until today.

We are now almost 8 years into the 21st century and tribal law is still applied in matters related to accidental killings.

Yes, if someone ran over someone's child and killed him by accident and even if there were witness to testify to this, the driver in question would still have to go through the archaic process of "Atewh" and paying the "Dyeh" as compensation. And this process can almost destroy the life of the driver in question, because sometimes, the family of the deceased might decide to secure their retirement from the "Dyeh" money. Not to mention that the guy could rot in jail until the family of deceased decides that they have no problem with letting him out.

This process makes no sense what so ever. What even does not make any sense is that the government has no problem with it. Maybe modernizing only applies to certain things, but not to others.

I am not sure how this process can be replaced. But we need not look very far; many countries have never had any tribal laws and are doing just fine and have rather successful civil laws in place.

Deportation

2007-05-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

I was walking on the pavement(street) when I noticed a verbal fight between an Iraqi who was driving an Iraqi car and a Jordanian driver who was driving a Jordanian car.

I have no doubt that Iraqi guy was driving like a jerk(not because he is Iraqi but because 90% of people who have BMWs or Mercedes in Jordan drive like jerks, irrespective of their nationality.) I am blogging about this because the Jordanian guy was threating to have the Iraqi guy deported.

Now, I have seen this situation at least 10 times before; A Jordanian threating an Iraqi or an Egyptian person to have him deported. To me this shows:

1) A mean streak in the Jordanian people. ( Would these people be happy if some Jordanian living in the UK was threatened with deportation)
2)There is a general misuse of power from the people in the government. I have no doubt that this person who is threating has a relative in the police or Mokhabarat(secret service) and I have no doubt that their relative would be glad to have the person in question deported. Hence, my point number 1

I am not sure if there is any remedies for this situation. Maybe in 20yrs when there is no "Wasta" or when people are tested for having an evil streak before they get hired for the police or the secret service.

Or even better, maybe in 20yrs time, all Arabs would be allowed to stay anywhere in the Arab world without worrying about residency issues or being deported. Just like they now have in the EU(actually they have had that for more than 10yrs now)

Wadi Rum Trip Pics

2007-04-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

Wadi Rum

2007-04-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

I just came back from my first trip to Wadi Rum and the word amazing does not even come close to describe what I experienced.

Just like everything else in Jordan, this resource is only half heartedly tapped. Government efforts have no more than 15% to do with the moderate success of this place.

I am not suggesting that there is a need for large scale government interference to improve things. Any large scale government inference usually ends up with disastrous results. I formed this opinion after speaking at length with the "tourist guides" in Wadi Rum.

So what am I suggesting? In the very popular business book "The Tipping Point," the author talks about how the accumulation of small changes can make a huge difference. So following the same kind of thinking I would only suggest some very small changes most of which are "cosmetic" in nature . Or as one can learn from the movie "The Prestige," you might have an excellent magic trick, but you need to dress it up and sell it to the audience if you want to make it big and not just be stuck with small crowds.

So here is the list:

· Do some Search engine marketing. I did a search on Google and there was nothing under hiking in the first 30 results. And on top of it when you visit the following site, you get no information under Jordan:

http://www.traildatabase.org/

· Consult with the local people as to whether or not they want mobil transmission inside Rum. This is important if someone needs medical help. Currently there is very limited Mobil transmission.

· I asked the local tour guides: "What if someone broke their legs or was stung by a Scorpio?" His answer was that they take him to an "Arab medicine doctor" because there are no medical facilities inside rum.

· After some negotiations, look at the possibilities of training these tour guides in providing first aid and possibly having them carry first aid kits.

· Have some sort of medical helicopter stationed inside Rum to provide rapid medical aid if there is a need to move people to the closest city hospital.

· Provide some guidelines for tourists in terms of what to visit if they are not physically fit.

· Ask the local camp owners/tour guides about what they need to "improve" Rum for tourism and just do it. The impression I got was that no one really consults with them.

Of course, I am not your run of the mill nay sayer who just complains about the government and then does nothing. I just did some cosmetic changes to the Wadi Rum and the Wadi pages in the Wikipedia.

Pictures

2007-04-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

Picture 1
Air port road lights on at 4:00PM!!!!!
Someone should get fired and be replaced by an automatic system

Pictures 2 & 3
Truck piggybacking

Tales of Jordanian Management

2007-04-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

This series of posts will remind some people of the letters Scott Adams gets from various employees telling about management stupidity. Lucky for American employees, there is a Scott Adams to publish these letters.

The average Joe here has no outlet to tell about the idiotic management they deal with. So I decided to take it upon my self to report some of the idiotic behavior that I see on the ground while performing my job.

Tale # 1

This company is the largest company in it's field in Jordan with branches in Europe and in America. This company is having a hard time retaining engineers, because despite having double digit sales, and profit growth, this company has a "red line" when it comes to hiring new engineers and is willing to make them work day and night.

Tale # 2

Company X stopped purchasing of any none consumable goods for over 4 months because they have a new purchasing manager.

Tale # 3

Another company missed out on a special offer twice because the maintenance manager was busy with supervising the construction of a new office building and did not have time to sign a PO.

Tale # 4

An underling at a customer of mine tells me that her new boss would not sign any papers because he does not understand how things work. So in the mean time things are on hold.

Tale # 5

I revisited a customer regarding a product that I sell. My contact tells me that after he spoke to the owner, the owner was very surprised that they did not already purchase the product 1 year ago when I first offered it to them.

Then he tells me that they need a few weeks to revisit the subject, because they are too busy with their new plant.

Tale # 6

I visit a customer of mine. They tell me that they were visited by some foreign consultants who told them the same exact stuff I told them three years ago. And now they will consider making the changes. Duh.

Tale # 7

I am still waiting for a purchase order from a potential customer, because the the person who signs the PO has been traveling for the last three weeks. Mind you, this company sells in the millions.

Tale # 8

I call a customer over 3 times so that he would take advantage of a special offer for a limited period. Maybe two months after the special offer period expires, the customer wants to order, but first he asks if it is possible to give him a discount. Duh

World Overpopulation

2007-04-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

I was thinking some more about the problem of world overpopulation and it's effects on the environment and that was when it hit me; why not have a Kyoto like agreement with regard to world overpopulation.

There would be a quota for each country specifying the allowed population growth. And in the same way that Kyoto deals with green house gases, countries would be allowed to have more population growth if they are below their quota and would have to pay dearly if they exceed their quota or make it up in the next cycle.

Additionally, industrial countries with low population growth rates would give some sort of incentives to countries that have a high one. This incentive would be an award based on meeting the targets which would be set for every 10yrs and would be reexamined every 5yrs to make sure they make sense.

Yes, industrial counties are to benefit more in the short run. But in the long run every one would win. Third world countries are in a way like smoking addicts, they know they need to stop their population explosion but do not know how.

The industrial countries probably did not care in the past. But with global warming and the earth's eco system going bankrupt, they should.

Of course, unlike Kyoto, this should be binding and be enforced through the UN.

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-04-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Last week, I went to a free screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," here in Amman and it scared the shit out of me (as it was supposed to.)

I have been an environmentally responsible person for the last 12yrs, and I never bought arguments from such books as " The state of fear." regarding Global warming not being a threat. Heck, I can experience global warming first hand;. Summers have become unbearably hot and annual snow has become a thing of the past. Hell, we would be lucky if it snowed once every 3-5 yrs.

I think a lot of people in America will wake up and start doing something about it. But as far as China and the rest of the third world, I still think that they need something to wake them up from their slumber.

In my own view Kyoto was not stringent enough on countries like India and China, who sort of have a cart blanch until around 2015.

Jordan, is not better either. And despite the fact that it is a rather small country with per capita pollution slightly less than the world average, I still think that Jordan should take global warming very seriously and set an example in the region.

To the best of my knowledge there is no fuel economy or car emissions standards. I remember, 11 years ago, when I renewed my car registration in the US, they used to stick a device inside the car's muffler/exhaust to test for emissions. Alas, no such thing happens here. I am even willing to speculate that the people in the ministry of environment never hear of such a thing.

Another thing, many people will watch the movie and maybe not pay attention to the part regarding the world population growth. According to the movie, it took 10000 generations to get the world population from 0(2) to 2 billion, but it will take less than 50 yrs to reach 9 billion.

This is a very scary state of affairs. And in it lies one part of the solution. Personally I think that producing children in an overpopulated world is a crime. I know that in all likelihood that I will commit such a crime either once or twice. I know that it is selfish on my part, but I think I will not be able to help it.

I really think population control is a major key for this; I really think that the industrial world should threaten countries with high population growth rates with sanctions.

When I posted my Jordan overpopulation blog, one of the comments was about Jordan not having an over population problem. Considering what I have seen in the movie and other sources that I have found on the internet. Overpopulation is a big problem, not only for Jordan but for the planet in general.

While experts estimate that the earth can only support around 1.2-4 billion people. My own estimates are around 1-2 billions. At this level all of them would have a very decent living standard and none would have to suffer from poverty. They would have lots of riches to share and they would not need to fight over resources.

If we want a good world for our kids, we can not afford to be nice when the world is less than 50 yrs away from total destruction; it is time to educate the vast majority of our population about pollution control, and population control(contraception, etc.)

I still meet people who say that they ended up producing 9 children because they could not help it or because it was God's will. If it was up to me, these people would be in jail by now.

If you want a to help prevent global warming, have less kids. Also visit any or all of the following website:

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

http://www.algore.com/cards.html

http://www.overpopulation.org/

Some of the energy saving tips will also save you money.

New addition to the links in the side bar

2007-03-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

I have not blogged for a while. The main reason is that I was depressed over the fact that a job offer in the US has not materialized yet. And to tell the truth I have been miserable here with a country that is socially changing at the same pace as a slug crossing a football field. Of course to say that the country is changing socially(and at any pace) is my way of deluding myself. The country is actually taking one step forward and two and half steps backwards.

Off course, while I was not blogging I was doing other stuff. I did get to try NoodAsia and the all you can east sushi at Nai. Both were great and good value for the money.

Apart from my gastronomic adventures. I discovered a few things on Youtube including interviews with Sasha Barak Cohen, many interviews with Richard Dawkins, and finally the "all mighty" Mr.Deity.

One note regarding Sasha Barak Cohen(Ali G and Borat.) He is Jewish. Letterman is also Jewish. I wish there would be any Funny Arab guys in Hollywood who are half as funny as these guys. There is currently not a single one(not Muslim, Christian, or even atheist.) And I somewhat doubt it has anything to do with discrimination.

People in the west do not associate Arabs with funny, and no Arab(first, second, or third generation) comedian/comic has materialized to dispel such a notion. Which is understandable, just look back at my Jordanian humor blog post.

As for Mr.Deity, I was a bit reluctant to post anything about it on my blog; after all this is a conservative country. But finally I decided what the heck. I have added a link on the side bar to Mr.Deity. In my personal view this is appropriate humor for a post modern 21st century.

Moving Backwards

2007-02-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I went to renew the license for my company at the Municipality of Amman. Last year when I renewed the licence I had to fill out two forms. This year, I had to fill out five forms that had exactly the same information. So I told the guy who was helping me that it was only two forms last year. His reply was that it was last year not this year.

Luckily, aside from the extra time to fill the extra three forms, the rest of the renewal processes took about the same time as last year.

In it's website, the municipality states among it's goals:

Administrative development.
Optimum use of resources
Reducing costs of services through citizens’ increased collaboration

Since the renewal time this year has taken more time, not less, I would say that the municipality is failing miserably at achieving its goals and is only paying lip service to them.

The three additional forms are sure not an optimum use of resources, they are not a reduction in cost and they do not contribute an iota to administrative development.

This is somewhat an annoying feeling, but I get the feeling that we are not progressing at all and are actually moving backwards.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

2007-01-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

Today I went with my friend to the Mega store in Mecca Mall to buy Jimmy Carter's new book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

Not surprisingly, we did not find the book because it's sales in Jordan was prohibited by the censorship department.

I did criticize the censorship department before in an earlier blog post when the sale of "Da Vinci's Code" was prohibited. Luckily at the time the censorships department removed the blockage and the book was sold again.

Well, I hope this time around that censorship department would come to its senses and just call it quits and go home. Personally, I do not mind if they went home and still got paid for doing no censorship what so ever. We live in the 21^st century and it is almost impossible to do censorship. This book will get into the country one way or another, so why bother.

Bad Signage

2007-01-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Call this bad signage or lost in translation or what ever you will.

For the last 10 months , every time I passed by Mecca Mall, I wanted to take a picture of this sign for the Japanese restaurant at the end of Mecca street. I finally got to do it and I am happy.

It is somewhat unfortunate that this picture was taken at night, but you can see what I am talking about; What is written in Arabic means "The Japanese restaurant for Japanese food."

Education in Jordan, part 2

2007-01-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

This a follow up to my previous blog post.

I was thinking about what Jordan needs to do to improve the university level college education. Here is what I think should be done:

Performance evaluation of professors by students based on which the university decides if he should go or should stay; get a raise or a salary reduction.
If a professor has a high student failure rate for example more than 25% he should get the pink slip.
English should be the official language of education in all public and private universities. After all, we live in a globalized world whose lingua franca is English and not Arabic. This will also help Jordan export labor to countries other than the gulf, for example Ireland, Australia, Canada and other places in need of English speaking skilled labor.
Pay attention to world wide university rankings and try to move up the ranks.
Professors should be hired with at least 4 years of industry experience, where applicable, to ensure they are not so far away from reality and more on the practical side.
At least 20% of university professors should get their PhDs from the Top 500 universities world wide.
At least 20% of University professors should be USA, UK or Ireland natives. This will ensure that students are exposed to a different kind of teaching. I know this will cost Jordan a lot, but nothing is for free.
Courses for each discipline should be checked for their relevance to the real world applications for the field of study. I know some courses have to be taken just for the sake of maintaining accreditation, but still, the content should be improved as much as possible so that it is more on the practical side.
Professors should be certified in training (training of trainers). This is somewhat different from education, but it does make things a bit more practical.
Yes, more funding for research and for the universities in general, but this should not come from increasing education fees or from higher taxes.
More scholarships.

Linspire

2007-01-02T01:27:00.000-08:00

Maybe 5-6 weeks ago, I started experimenting with various Linux distributions that can be booted from a CD or run from a USB drive without affecting the system set up or changing anything on the hard drive.

Just one day before the end of the year I decided to install Freespire on my hard drive. Lucky enough, the installation was easy, and my computer can boot either Windows or Freespire.

I said it on multiple occasions, I hate M$. I hate their consumer policies, their monopolistic behavior, and ridiculous pricing. So it was very logical for me to look for other alternatives.

Freespire is a free version of Linspire(formerly known as Lindows). After using it extensively for over the last few days, I can say it is a very decent alternative for Windows.

On the plus side, it is 100%, has a one click install feature directly from the internet called (click and run,) has a system level spell checker that runs in all applications, has a multi chat client built in, has free office like software, just to name a few.

Keeping in mind that it is a free software, one should not complain too much about the negatives and there are two major ones. The first one is printer support, if you have an HP or a Canon that is not a big problem, but if you have other brands, it is. The other negative is language support. Arabic will be supported at the end of 2007 and translation of menu items is underway.

Overall, this a very good product. We in Jordan still do not feel the evil of M$, because most people still use pirated Windows XP or 98. Things are already changing and M$ is putting some nails in the coffin of piracy. If people had to actually pay for office and windows XP, the cost of software will probably exceed the cost of hardware, and no computer in Jordan would be sold for less than 500 JDs.

I read an article about Linspire offering south Korea an annual license for all the population( 50 miliion) for 5million dollars. That is a few cents per person. Maybe Jordan should get such an offer. Even at 5million dollars for 5million people, that is a great bargain. Jordan can save 10s of millions in software cost instead of paying royalties and what not to the Vole.

From now on, I think my usage of M$ products will go down by over 70% and that should make me very happy.

Here is the link for Freespire

http://freespire.org/

Education in Jordan

2006-12-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

Maybe a couple of months ago, I was reading an article in Jordan Business Magazine about why Jordan should try to go for educational tourism instead of medical or regular tourism. According to the article, students spend 4 years to get their education; therefore, they end up spending significantly more than what people would spend on either medical tourism or regular tourism.

I have no problem with this logic and it does make a lot of sense. My problem, however, is that education in Jordan is still basically crap when compared with the rest of the world.

I spoke to someone who works as a lab teacher in a private university, and he told me horror stories about the quality of education here. For example, one private university kicked out a few students without good reason and they were reinstated by the higher education board.

Public education is not much better either. The fact still remains that not a single university in Jordan, public or otherwise, made it to the top 500 Universities in the world list. Just check the link:

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006TOP500list.htm

This is a very sorry state of affairs. If you look at how full of our selves we are about education in Jordan, you would think that half of our universities are in the aforesaid list. But the truth is that not a single one is and we just like to delude ourselves.

I am not sure what the minister of higher education does. But I think someone should tell him about this list and our none-existing presence in it and see what he has to say.

One, final thing, I was very happy to see the University of Cairo making the list. It is probably the only Arab University in the list. Egyptians, keep up the good work.

Manholes in Jordan

2006-12-21T03:41:00.000-08:00

I stumbled on this website which has pics of manholes in Japan:

http://frangipani.info/photography/v/manholes_of_japan/

It got me thinking, wouldn't it be cool if manholes in Jordan were also pieces of art?

Most Popular Websites in Jordan

2006-12-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

Using Alexa.com, I found the 10 most popular websites in Jordan, here goes the list:

#1 Yahoo.com
#2 MSN
#3 Google.jo
#4 Google.com
#5 Windows live
#6 Maktoob.com
#7 Hi5.com
#8 kooora.com
#9 aljazeera.net
#10 alrai.com

This list is interesting on many levels, just compare it with the list for the UK

#1 Google.co.uk
#2 Yahoo
#3 EBay
#4 Google.com
#5 MSN
#6 BBC
#7 Myspace
#8 Amazon
#9 YouTube
#10 Windows live

The most striking difference between the two lists is that it would seem that people in Jordan have missed out a bit on the Myspace phenomena and are using instead the half as popular Hi5. In a way, it is nice to know that online "dating" is very popular in Jordan, but I think it is better to follow the rest of the world and use Myspace.

The other thing that was also missing in Jordan's top list is YouTube, it is not very popular in jordan to make it to the top 10 list.

Online shopping and selling is not very popular in Jordan for various reasons, it was very logical to see Amazon and Ebay not making the Jordanian top 10 list. Maybe in a couple of years they would. Assuming I stay in Jordan, I would be looking forward for the day when Amazon has a huge warehouse with books and other goodies somewhere in the middle east.

Voting Out

2006-12-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

I was a bit shocked when I heard about the fist fight between the journalists and members of the house of representatives. If things were up to me I would call for early parliamentary elections to kick out most of these good for nothing representatives.

Yes, that is correct. Just yesterday, in my Anti 4x4 blog post, I wrote: " I am not sure what the representatives in the lower house are busy with, but I have no doubt in my mind that whatever new law they are working on, it will not add much value to the lives of us "average" citizens." Well, today, during an interview with AL-Jazeera, the head of the Journalists association talked about the fact that most people are not happy with the representatives in the lower house.

As a partial solution, maybe we should have parliamentary elections every two years instead of four, that should put some heat on the lower house to perform in accordance with what the people want. This is sort of what they have in the US, and they call it mid term elections.

Unfortunately, this is somewhat hard to achieve since it would probably require a constitutional amendment. And as far as I know constitutional amendments are very hard to come by.

Star Bucks Sucks

2006-12-10T01:27:00.000-08:00

Back in 1995-1999, star bucks coffee was sort of OK, even good sometimes(depending on the blend). But things changed and Star Bucks became the Vole(M$) of Coffee houses(Maybe it always was). Trying to shove crappy products down our throats for a really expensive price.

On my last trip to the US back in June, I could not even finish a Star Bucks coffee. And when people talked about how great Star Bucks coffee was, I always wanted to punch them in the face.

In my heart of hearts, I always knew that Star Bucks coffee sucked. But what made me an expert? Are all these people who worship at the altar of Star Bucks wrong? Yes, I did try over a 150 different coffee brews in 5 states in the US and in 5 countries in the European continent, but does that make me a coffee expert? Could it be that my personal taste is just different from the masses who know better?

Well, I finally found expert confirmation for what I knew all along. In blind tests Star Bucks coffee looses all the time. Star Bucks coffee only tastes good because of the power of the brand. Just check out the links:

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/after_hours/lifestyle_products/article.jsp?content=20060926_105646_1532

http://www.coffeereview.com/allreviews.cfm?search=1

Star Bucks only made it to the list with a single entry and it got a stupid score of 90% which just barely qualified it for this list. Some of Star Bucks' other blends have a horrendous score of just 78. Even the coffee that I used to make at home would probably get a better score than that.

So Star Bucks Lovers, enjoy your "under-brewed and very unremarkable. Stale" coffee.

Anti 4 x 4

2006-12-10T00:55:00.000-08:00

I stumbled on a UK based anti Urban 4x4 website. It got me thinking, we need to be "anti" urban 4x4 too. Hell, we need to be "anti" any car that has an engine bigger than 2.0 ltrs.

Why? Because these cars are great polluters and guzzle up fuel like there is no tomorrow. They produce twice the emissions of the regular 1.4-2.0 ltr cars and therefore harm the environment twice as much.

So why doesn't the government do something about it? Why does doesn't the government have any fuel consumption, or EU like emissions requirements for new cars? Come to think about why doesn't the government have any regulations of value when it come to cars?

Previously, I talked about the child seat issue. We have no regulations for that. Car safety is not an issue for the government, so we have no regulations to deal with mandatory air bags, promotion of dry air/nitrogen tire filling, or a minimum safety when it comes to car crash tests. I am not sure what the representatives in the lower house are busy with, but I have no doubt in my mind that whatever new law they are working on, it will not add much value to the lives of us "average" citizens.

Stumble Upon

2006-12-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

I did mention this in an earlier post, it is called Stumble Upon. I had a couple of weeks to use it now, so I have a lot more to say about it now than I did before.

Stumble Upon is a website/service/toolbar that recommends websites for you based on what you like. How does it do that? Two ways, the first one is during the initial registration where you indicate your areas of interest. The second way is while you surf the internet, if you like a site you go to your Firefox/Explorer toolbar and press "I like it."

Now the stumbling part. You open up a blank browser window and you go to your toolbar and you press "Stumble." It randomly opens up a website that is related to stuff that you already like, no matter what it is.

While my description does sound a bit geeky, it is really very simple. Stumble upon took me to websites that I never expected to exist and some of them were really cool. It is a totally different way of experiencing the internet, very different from experiencing the web through Google by actively searching for websites and very much like the shuffle feature on Apple's iPod, you never know what website will show up next.

Marriage Age

2006-12-03T00:09:00.000-08:00

I was happy to know that the average marriage age for women in Jordan went up to 27. I hope that it will go up to something like 29 or 30. Women need to work more before they get married and Jordan really needs to put the breaks on population growth.

I did not get the chance to check the main reason for the increase in the average marriage age, but I am willing to bet that the cause is more economic than it is social. Yes I think that more people are dating today and more women are working and slightly delaying marriage, but the economic situation probably did cause more men to delay marriage until they can secure the ridiculous financial requirements of marriage in Jordan.

One step that the government should take to help reduce the population growth rate is to increase the legal marriage age to something like 21. I am sure many people would want to hang me over such a suggestion, but if the government assumes that people will listen to what the TV advertising says and use birth control, that will not work.

I am willing to bet that at least one quarter of Jordanian men will not stop impregnating their women until they get a male child. There is nothing any TV advertising or other mass media campaign can to do change the mind of such people. A possible tactic the government could use is to tax people who have more than 2-3 children. Of course this should not be applied retroactively. And if that does not work, the government should put these people in jail for acting so irresponisbley.

I know these suggestions are very radical and fascist on my part, but it can take tens of years for social habits to change on their own, especially in a country like Jordan. By then the Jordanian population would have doubled or tripled and it would be too late

Bush Speech Writer

2006-11-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a website called stumbleupon.com, I stumbled upon a site called George W Bush Speechwriter

http://www.actofme.co.uk/bush_speech/bushspeechwriter.html

Thanks to this software/website, you need not wait for the president to utter his Bushisms, but now you can create any Bushism you like and with Bush's own voice no less.

Needless to say, it is really fun.

As for Stumble upon, it recommends websites for you based on websites that you currently like.

Jordanian Humor, part 2

2006-11-28T12:02:00.000-08:00

In view of the comments I got on my previous blog post, I decide to elaborate:

What makes a great comedy, not just an average comedy?

I think the ultimate acid test for great comedy is:

* It should make you laugh your ass off.
* It should withstand time and repetition. i.e., even after seeing it so many times 20 years later you should laugh your ass off.
* People who speak the same language but who live in another country should find it equally funny.
* Even though it is being viewed on the screen, the audio only version should be funny also.

Currently the available Jordanian comedy fails on all of these accounts.

The first two are somewhat self explanatory. As for the third, I think most people from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt would not find the Jordanian sense of humor very appealing. However, the reverse is not true especially in the case of the Lebanese and the Egyptians.

I do not think that it matters that we as Jordanians think of ourselves as funny people, the ultimate test of funniness is if others who speak the same language as we do consider us funny. Alas, that is not the case.

With regard to the fourth requirement, I noticed that you can just listen to the best comedy without watching it and it would still be as funny as if you were watching it. Again, I do not recall watching any Jordanian humor that passes this test.

Jordanian Humor

2006-11-27T07:42:00.000-08:00

It is generally agreed on outside Jordan that the Jordanian sense of humor pretty much is anything but funny.

So, I was thinking about how this situation can be improved a bit; In art, if one wanted to become good in art, he would study the work of Monet, De Kooning, Van Gogh, Giacometti, to name a few. These are the greats of Modern Art. Similarly, if one wanted to be good in philosophy, one would study Kant, Nietzsche, and so on.

Now, in my humble opinion the greatest works of Arab comedy were in the seventies, and though every Jordanian probably watched these great works at least 10 times, the Jordanian sense of humor is still annoying at best.

I am not sure if this would help, but I do not think it would be such a bad idea, if Jordanians who aspire to do something related to comedy took a look at the works of great British and American comedy shows and movies: Monty Python TV shows and movies, Faulty Towers, Saturday Night Live, Living Color, and so on.

I am sure that a lot of the comedy there is not culturally transferable. Nonetheless, I think that this can serve as a sort of inspiration. Furthermore, watching material of this sort can spark new ideas for new comic material, i.e., it would work as a catalysts for funny ideas to come out of the brains of those funny Jordanians to be.

Light To Unite

2006-11-26T07:36:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody!!! A friend of mine passed this onto me and now I am passing it on to all of you.

Log onto www.LightToUnite.org and light a candle in order to help raise funds for the fight against AIDS.

Bristol Myers(a global pharmaceutical company) will donate $1 for every person who goes to their website and lights a candle to fight AIDS, up to a maximum of $100,000.

When I visited the site the counter was just over 62,000...so lots more candles need to be lit. World AIDS Day is Dec.1 and we all hope to have all the candles lit by then.

We Are Smarter Than Me

2006-11-17T03:13:00.000-08:00

Yes we are. Hehe.

I love helping the rest of humanity through things like wikipedia, wiktionary, grid computing projects like fightAIDs@home and Einstein@home, so the moment I read about the "we are smarter than me" effort to write a business book, I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and signed up.

www.wearesmarter.org

With so many contributors for such a project, I imagine the editor(s) will have such a hard time trying to make the text more coherent and presentable. I hope the outcome of such a project would be something that the collective authors, who will probably remain unknown, can be proud of.

Six months ago, I had a similar idea to this, but not with so many authors. The idea was to commission something like 10-20 authors to write a book (not a handbook), each author would be well accomplished in his field and each one would write 1-2 chapters. The job of the person, who got the idea for this book, is to provide a general outline for the other authors to work with. Also he would write the intro section and the epilogue and eventually put everything together. If need be the whole effort would be managed as a project using project management tools and what not.

Speaking of wiktionary, I decided to make a minor change for the benefit of the rest of humanity (hehe,) so I replaced bloggette which is the female form of blogger with bloggerette; the main reason for this is to avoid confusion with bloggette which also means a small blog. I hope that Webster dictionary catches up and fixes their dictionary so this word can be canonized as English language(hehe.)

Blond Bond

2006-11-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

As a hardcore Bond movie fan, I had to go to the opening of the new 007 movie here in Jordan. I enjoyed the movie a bit. The action was good and so was the suspense.

The acting of the lead actor Daniel Craig, however, was not very impressive and he lacked both the looks and the charm of Pierce Brosnan . But, I am sure some women would say that he was very cute and had more muscles than Brosnan, so I will leave it at that.

As for the actresses in the movie, I did not find either actress to be overly good looking and they both came somewhat short of my expectations from a bond movie.

I would like to make one comment regarding the plot. Towards the last third of the movie the movie ends in a way, or at least gets you to think that it has ended. Then you realize that there is more action to come and the movie gets another climax at the real end.

I am not sure if they want to stick with the new blond bond, or just dump him for another guy. Unfortunately, it will be another year or more before we find out.

Fight Aids The Wrong Way

2006-11-13T04:16:00.000-08:00

I do not watch TV, but yesterday I had the misfortune of passing by the TV in the living room while the government advertising for Fight Aids was on. I will not talk much about how uncool it was. I want to talk about it's content.

The minister of health talks about preventing AIDS, by not having "sex outside marriage." The minister did not feel comfortable about calling a spade a spade, so he took liberty and omitted some facts to preserve the "innocence" of the average Jordanian viewer. The part he omitted is about protected sex.

The official government position is that we are a moral society and if sex does occur out side marriage it is usually rare and for money. We all know that is not the case. I am sick and tired of the government playing the moral face, and acting like people are stupid.

Security Measures At The Mall

2006-11-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

Since I visit the Mecca Mall often, I started observing the security procedures and concluded that they were crap; I was able to identify at least ten ways in which one could get a gun or even explosive devices into the mall.

I am not sure why, but it looks like the government is still relying on intelligence sources and not doing much auditing of the security procedures at the malls and other public areas that could be targets for terror attacks.

I mean they should have learned by now from 09/11 of last year.

Lady In The Water

2006-11-10T03:37:00.000-08:00

On the recommendation of my friend Alaa, I went with him to see the movie " Lady In The Water."

This turned out to be a great movie from the thriller/fantasy genre. The acting of Paul Giamatti, was excellent to say the least. The thriller aspects of this movie reminded me a lot of the movie "Identity". None of the characters know their role in the greater scheme of things and in the first round they all figure it out incorrectly. The plot is somewhat multi-layered and complex and it is very nice watching it unfold.

After watching the movie, I decided to see on the internet how well the movie did. I found out that it did not do so well in the US box office largely because of bad reviews by the critics in the pre-release period. This confirms my hypothesis from my earlier blog posts regarding the critics not knowing their asses from their elbows.

The critics had a large problem with the director/writer making a cameo appearance in the movie. I say to them:" I fart in your general direction." I think most directors would like to make a cameo appearance in at least one of their movies. And the fact that the director did just that, does not take anything away from the greatness of this movie.

I am not sure what sort of of stuff they teach in movie critics school, but judging by the crap that comes out of critics' mouths, I would say it is no good.

Rihani @ The Mall

2006-11-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

The other day, I went with my friend Alaa' to Mecca mall and tried out Rihani. Well, we actually sat at Sen5es, but because their menu was not ready yet we had to order from it's sister restaurant Rihani.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the food was very good and not too expensive. We got 4-5 big appetizers, a soup, a soda, and a whole grilled chicken for 17JDs including tax. So basically for 2 people, expect to pay 15-21 JDs for very good quality Lebanese food.

Preemptive Psychotherapy

2006-10-31T13:46:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about something and then I had the thought of "Preemptive psychotherapy." I got curious to see if such a thing existed, so I tried a Google search and a Yahoo search. Yahoo came up with nothing and Google came with one link which actually just mentions the term but had no relationship to any sort of psychotherapy.

"Preemptive psychotherapy," should not be such an alien idea if psychotherapy is considered "Care of the soul" as there should be no limits on how often care of the soul should take place. And who said that souls that do not suffer from "depression" should not get any "care."

Now regarding the cost of such a thing, I am sure that for many people who do not have "problems," the cost would be prohibitive.

Revised Eid

2006-10-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of the Eid(actually this has nothing to do with spirit of the Eid, but with my need to offer my two(more like 10)cents,) I hereby offer my suggestions to improve the Eid:

1) Phone call before coming over to visit. The fact people do not call is a case in point regarding old habits dying hard. Back in the 70s most people did not have phones, so that is why they used to visit without calling advance. With everyone and his cousin having a mobil nowadays it no longer makes sense not to call in advance and see if people are staying home or going out.
2) Give gifts instead of giving money; if one got money, one spends it. That can not happen with a gift. Also with gift, one can remember a few years down the line that he got a certain gift from a certain person for the Eid of 2006.

Actual Inflation Numbers

2006-10-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

Approx 2 weeks after I wrote my Pizza Inflation blog, I learned that the actual inflation numbers for 2005 and 2006 are around 7%, so I was actually on the mark.

It also makes sense that the government decided to postpone the increase in fuel prices to the middle of next year. Otherwise, we would have ended up with something like 8-8.5%.

Female Employee Quota

2006-10-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

The other day, I went to visit one of my annoying customers (90% of my customers are annoying to varying degrees). Any, what is somewhat peculiar about this customer is that this customer is in Naour which is very close to Marj Al Hamam, and to Amman in general. I would even consider this customer inside Amman. The peculiar part is that this customer has over one 100 employees and not a single one of them is a female. So when I was there annoyed at this fact, that was when it hit me; why doesn't the government have a law that specifies a quota for women workers just like they did for the lower house?

I can already see problems in the implementation, especially in areas where companies do not have their own buses and the public transportation service to this area is poor.

Well for starters, the government can start with a very small quota, something like 5-10% for companies with more than 50 employees. Additionally, the Government need not fully implement such a project. It can start with a pilot project in the Sahab industrial zone, or something of sort.

One of the other hurdles that could face such an endeavor is the that fact that we are in the 21st century, and still some families prohibit their daughters from engaging in any sort of work or even seeking employment.

This is a very sorry state of affairs. But the Government has to start somewhere. And that somewhere is with a quota system.

Government Copies My Ideas

2006-10-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Back in May, I wrote:

"I have really no solution for this problem; I really do not know how to make the Jordanian people want to work, or accept menial jobs instead of no jobs. Maybe having mandatory military service would help, not the previously used 2 yrs version, which I bet sucked big time, and cost the government too much, but a 90 days version. Suggesting this is a bit hypocritical on my part, because I would not even do military service for money."

Here is the link:

http://mohammedraeiblog.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_mohammedraeiblog_archive.html

This week, I was reading the newspapers and guess what, the Government wants to bring back the mandatory military service and for 90 days. Is it coincidence or someone in the Government is stealing my ideas?

Jordan Sucks Up The Water

2006-10-18T00:32:00.000-07:00

I was looking up some facts about Jordan and other countries on the Wikipedia. Then I nocticed something: On the page for Jordan, Jordan had an area of 89,342 km², with water being negative 0.01%. Yes Negative. I am not sure if this a typing mistake. But if not, it sort of does explain our water problems.

Qualifications Of The Minister of Culture

2006-10-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

Subject to securing a work permit, I am willing to relocate to the USA, Western Europe, Canada, or any country where English is the primary language.
I was talking with my friend about various culturally oriented issues and the subject of the minister of culture came up. As I do not watch the news or read the local paper I did not know who the culture minister of the month was. My friend said that the last or current one was/is a poet. He also said that he was not very good. I said that is normal, the best doctor can not run a hospital; the best sales man is not well suited to be a sales manager and so on. This is well know in the management world and is well documented, but somehow the government did not hear about it. So they still put mediocre performing people to serve as ministers. Anyway, I will be going a list of qualifications for the various minister's positions. Today I will start with the minister of culture. So here I go:

1) No moustache, and no big belly
2) Good command of English language. Command of additional languages a big plus.
3) A BS/BA degree as minimum but no PhD's as PhD's tend to be too impractical
4) Lived abroad for at least a few years
5) Does not consider the Maa'n Dabkeh Group great
6) Visited at least 20 art shows and knows a few local artists
7) Attended many cultural events in and outside Jordan, including art shows, theater, music concerts and the like.
8) Can work with other people and has a vision
9) Has limited interest in control
10) Can work with local artists, musicians, the foreign embassy donor community on "promoting" and "improving" culture, through the holding of various events and also improve the quality of local TV and Radio programming.
11) Must have an IQ of at least 120
12) Must have an EQ of at least 110

One other suggestion regarding choosing ministers, I know that in most countries, ministers are chosen by the prime minister. But that is very stupid, IMNSHO(in my not so humble opinion.) This a job and I think a job at the level of minister should no be decided by one person (the prime minister in this case). In an ideal situation, the minister would choose 3 candidates for each position, and a non partisan panel would interview these candidates, review their credentials and previous work and choose the most qualified person for the job.

This is somewhat a better system, but then the problem that arises is how to choose the best people for this panel? I do not know the answer yet, so I will leave it for another blog.

They Never Learn

2006-10-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

When I travel to the US, EU, or even Lebanon, I visit shopping malls. These shopping malls have least one rest room on every floor. This is somewhat logical. But it would appear that logic and common sense are a scarce commodity here in Jordan.

The "old" building of the Mecca mall has restrooms only on the food court floor and only at one end. This is very annoying for people who go to the mall as they have to specifically go to that particular floor if they wanted to use the restroom.

One would expect such a problem to be rectified in the new Mecca mall extension. Alas, it is somewhat stupid on my part to take such a thing for granted; even logical stuff can not be taken for granted in a country like Jordan.

Anyway, the Mecca mall extension, still has a problem in terms of the fact that you can not find restrooms on every floor. This is sad, as I do know for sure that in engineering handbooks for commercial buildings, they list everything from bathrooms, HVAC, to floorings, etc. They do not even leave the minutest detail to chance. It is a shame that people who designed the extension building probably did not bother to read these handbooks, or maybe never heard of them.

Jordan TV

2006-10-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if I wrote about this before, but despite the fact that I do not watch TV in general, I can not help but complain about Jordan TV. I am not sure what is wrong with these guys, but they never have a decent looking female news announcers. The beauty level of these news announcers is much lower than the Jordanian average. I highly suspect that:

A) TV Jordan does not pay good salaries or good benefits

B) Wasta and cronyism

C) Hiring announcers with a certain ethnic heritage and not others

Really Funny Article

2006-10-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

I found this really funny article on the thenation.com website:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/us_to_undermine_gates

The not so funny part is that if you did not know that this article is not a humor one, you would totally believe it.

This sort of thing is not very far fetched.

If they said that this was not a humor article and that they uncovered a secret US government program for such Misanthropic aims, I have would totally believe it.

Fight AIDS

2006-10-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

I leave my computer on at least for 14 hours every day, during that time I am away from the computer for at least 4.

Well, the other day I got an e-mail from IHIQS regarding donating computer time towards a certian distributed computing projects, which I no longer can remember.

Anyhow, I did some digging up on the internet to find out how I can help the rest of humanity by donating free computer(CPU) cycles.

One of the most interesting projects is the fightAIDS@home.

To help, visit the following website:

http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/

There is no money involved what so ever.

To know about other distributed computing projects, there is a list on the Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

The Genius

2006-10-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

Some of us do not want to pay $$$$ for software, and the truth is some companies like M$ overcharge many $$$ for their software.

Some nice guys/gals write software and put it up to be used for free. There are several websites that have tons of free software, like zdnet, and download.com and so on. The problem is that they do not tell you in a really meaningful way which software is really good. They have a star based rating system which is marginally helpful in the absence of a meaningful review

Enter my cousin's "free ware genius" website:
http://www.freewaregenius.com
With this website, you will probably never need to pay for software again. That being said, the nice guys/gals who write the free software need to earn a living, with that in mind I would suggest that if you like the software you have downloaded, that you make a small donation to the software writer, if his/her website or download page allows it.

Vital Friends

2006-10-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I finished reading "Vital Friends." This is a great book and very easy to read. It is only 152 pages if you exclude the appendices. So, it can be finished in a few sittings.

Here are some of the books findings:

*People who have friend(s) at work are significantly less likely to quit.
*They are also happier
*Have less health problems

The book recommends that companies enourage on the job friendships and not to totally seperate one's social life from ones work life.

The Book then talks about the different types of friends and the different roles they play in helping ones well being and career at work.

Finally, the book talks about how to grow these friendships and making them
stronger.

I have the hard cover edition, which I got as a gift from my cousin. If you are not happy with work, one of the reasons could be the fact you have no best friends at work. If this is the case, go ahead and buy the hard cover edition. Otherwise, you can wait until the soft cover or paper back version is out. Even for those of us who are happy with their work and friendships this book offers some good information and would help you better understand your friendships.

Pizza Inflation

2006-09-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to Pizza Hut for the Iftar Buffet. It was pretty full. The food was half and half, not so bad, and not so great. I remember a few Ramadans ago when the food was actually crappy and it was served somewhat cold. The thin crust pizza this time was actually good. They got us flat Pepsi the first time and replaced it when we told them it was flat.

Anyway, we paid 7Jds including tax. And this was only for the soup, pizza, pasta, and drink. This is a sharp 17% increase from last year(or the year before.) I am not sure if this it is due to inflation which would be scary or if they did it to pay for the new decorations. If it was because of the former, then I think this year's inflation numbers will not be less than 7%. And since this would look pretty bad, I expect the government to hide the numbers until the end of the next year or the middle of the year after. I also expect this inflation cycle to go on for at least another couple of years and that is being optimistic, which I am not.

Good Shoes

2006-09-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

This a new pic of me at Prime Mega Store Cafe.

My lips look red not because of lipstick but because of the Mochachinno.

Btw, something good now happened in Jordan. For the first time since my unfortunate return to Jordan 10yrs ago, I can actually find good quality shoes in Jordan for a not so bad a price. At least 3 new shoes places opened up in the new Mekka Mall extension. Brands like IMAC(Italy) and Aldo are now available. And while this will not make my life much better, it will likely make it less worse, if you know what I mean.

Not a Joke

2006-09-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is not joke, but I found out that Sri Lank has a higher literacy rate than Jordan. The difference is less than two percentage points, but still.

Anyway even with a literacy of 89%+, Jordan has a long way to go, because in my own not so humble opinion, at least 25% of those considered "literate" can not do a damn thing with their literacy.

I am not sure who decided on the currently used literacy measures, but I think they need to be tougher by at least another 20 points. The current system, I believe, allows those who are barely literate to pass as literate. The measure does not allow for degrees of differentiation. For example, "barely literate," "Moderately literate," and "Fully literate." In my own opinion at least 25% of the Jordan population does not qualify as literate.

Just like in some other societies, I suggest including computer literacy and basic numeracy under the umbrella of literacy. This of course would be harsh on the Jordanian society, because under these new terms, the literacy would fall down to something like 15-60%. This is fine with me and is much better than deluding our self and being happy with our fake 90% literacy rate.

Freeware

2006-09-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

Cousin Samer launched a new website, a sort of guide for free software. Why pay money when you can get something for free?

The most important thing is that there are free Anti-virus and Anti-spyware software that you can actually install and almost forget(which is the way it should be)

Here is the link:

http://www.freewaregenius.com

The String Quartet Tribute To PJ Harvey

2006-09-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

I have been a string quartet tribute fan since I discovered them 3-4 yrs ago. This is the fifth one that I own. I got it as a gift 2 weeks ago(thanks to my cousin). Alas, it was not as good as expected. Unlike for example "Strung Out On Ok Computer," This one fails miserably at capturing the emotional nuances of PJ Harvey's music. With the exception of a couple of songs , this tribute is mediocre at best.

Never Underestimate The Power of Human Stupidity

2006-09-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this piece of old news (from last week) regarding the KSA religious police ban on pets.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,212980,00.html

IMHO, this looks very bad for Islam and Muslems. KSA stupidity is one of the main reasons many Westerners think Muslems are "towel head" retards.

Interesting Quotes

2006-09-14T02:27:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on some interesting quotes by Robert A. Heinlein( He is famous for the novel Starship Troopers on which the 1997 movie by the same name was loosely based.)

These are the quotes I like the most:

"A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain - then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system? "

"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."

"I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes."

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."

This one for Bush supporters: "No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority. "

"Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place. "

"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. "

"Sex without love is merely healthy exercise. "

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid)."

"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. "

"Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again."

Queue

2006-09-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I wish the Brits occupied Jordan a few extra years to instil in us a love of queuing. Alas, that was not the case.

One of the most amazing(disgusting) things about Jordanians, not only do they do not queue, but also they do not recognize a queue when they see one, and therefore, they just ignore it and go directly to the counter and start asking or buying stuff.

I went into a pharmacy and there was one person standing in line, so I waited. A guy with his child comes in and bypasses both of us and starts talking to the pharmacist. I was annoyed but decided to let it go. Then another woman comes in and ignores both of us and just starts asking the pharmacists for stuff. I figured that if the pharmacists did not recognize a queuing problem when he saw one, there is nothing for me to say or do. So I said thank you and left to buy from somewhere else. The Pharmacist did not even bother to ask why I left or what I wanted.

After leaving I wished there were no criminal penalties for people who murder queue violators. Alas, life is unfair that is not the case.

Pay More Customs Duties!!!!???

2006-09-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

I was really annoyed by the new add campaign by the government regarding supporting our country by paying taxes and customs duties. It would seem that the government is not thinking right or thinks that we are morons. No amount of advertising money would convince the average Jo to pay more or be happy when he is paying customs duties or taxes. The main reason is that average Jo feels that he is being ripped off tons of taxes and not getting enough in return in terms of government services.

Despite all the scientific evidence regarding the marked decline in human performance with increased environment temperatures(above 25 degrees), the government still considers air conditioning a luxury and accordingly charges customs duties for air conditioning units. The next thing you know bread will be a luxury and it will be charged customs duties.

Every single person I met from the EU or America who has been here was really shocked by the level of sales tax the Jordanian people pay.

Food at Negressco

2006-09-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago, Negressco started serving salads and sandwiches. I did get to try the salads last week and they were both good and reasonably priced (for a bar). The people who were with me tried the sandwiches and were happy.

Last Weeks Dinner

2006-08-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

The following pics are from last week's support Lebanon dinner

Me with Alaa and other people.

I got the number 1 ticket, but I did not win anything

blink

2006-08-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

I finished reading blink. Just like "The Tipping Point" by the same author, this a great book that is a really fast read. This book is well researched and has tons of new useful information. It will help you understand and maybe even neutralize your unconscious biases. It will help you understand how usually people make decisions about their surroundings in the first split seconds. It tells how these decisions can be very accurate and how they can be our downfall. I give this book 8.5/10.

Half Light

2006-08-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

The other day I went to the cinema to watch Half Light.

This is a very good Horror/suspense movie with a small amount of romance thrown in there. It does start slow though and the pace does not pick up until the first 20min of the movie are over. Demi Moore(the lead actress,) is probably not the most suitable for this roll and it did show in her acting which was not top notche(not even close). Additionally, though still attractive and hot, she is starting to look old. I guess she felt like doing a horror/suspense movie to add to her movie resume or maybe as a change from the movies she normally acts in.

It is worth it to watch this movie both in the theatre and also on DVD. A far as how scary this movie is, I give it 7.5/10 on the Scarometer scale.

Research participation

2006-08-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

I found this link for a Harvard research thing. I am not sure how helpful it is, but the tests are sure fun to take. Check the link:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/index.jsp

The New Abdoun Bridge

2006-08-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write this blog a few months ago(maybe I did.) Anyway, I will not comment about the fact the new fourth circle-Abdoun bridge took a long time to build or the fact that the project was started at the wrong time of the year causing tons of traffic problems.

I want to comment about the fact that the shops and restaurants on Abdoun Circle did not get any form of compensation for the Damages they incurred during this time period. The Government should compensate them even if partially; just to cover for the fixed costs. Alas that is not the case. I am not sure if the law would allow for this or if they would win in the end, but I hope that they can sue to get some money from the Government.

Public Transporation System

2006-08-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Minister of health visited my Uncle's funeral service. He came late at night at around 10:00pm. Everyone was sucking up to him(myself excluded). The most notable butt licker was the head of the pharmacist's association, he was pretty disgusting.

Anyway, every one was asking the Minister some questions(as part of sucking up,) and I do not know who asked what, but the minister said something about the fact that they(the government) should have improved(or put a plane to improve) the public transportation system before the last fuel price hike.

The question is why didn't they? It is totally inexcusable. The other question is why is this comment coming from the Minister of Health? Why doesn't the Minister of Transportation say something about it? What do ministers of transportation do besides building bridges and tunnels at the wrong time of the year and cause more traffic problems than before?