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Sunday Morning Coffee

April 29, 2012

It’s been unseasonably cool so far this spring in Abu Dhabi, but yesterday it was hot: 99F. And this morning my iPhone tells me that the weather is about to turn … seasonable.

For those of you who think in Celsius (something I haven’t yet learn to do after eight-and-a-half months as an expat), that means its 26C at 8:00 a.m., going up to 38.

My apartment is about to be divided into two different temperature zones. My wife loathes air conditioning and wants to keep the windows open — to enjoy the desert breezes — but I can’t work at my desk when I’m sweating.

Meanwhile, over my coffee and camel link, I find the following tidbits in today’s National.

“Emirati visitors help boost ailing Egyptian tourism industry”

“Egypt is open for business. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for tourists to enjoy Luxor, Aswan, and the Pyramids when it is relatively empty, to enjoy the beaches on the Red Sea or the Mediterranean when they are not extremely crowded.” — Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour (Egypt’s minster of tourism since last February) [Read article]

“Burj Khalifa floor for sale, to developer Emaar’s surprise”

“A US website is offering an entire floor of the Burj Khalifa at auction – despite developer Emaar denying any knowledge of it. … ‘As far as notable real estate auctions, this one tops them all,” Bill Lange, the president and chief executive of LFC Group, said in a statement. “The auction will attract serious buyers who understand that this is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase an entire corporate floor in the Burj Khalifa at a price they determine through online bidding.’” [Read article]

Featured Comment: “The truth on mixed marriages: only the strong will survive”

“The divorce rate in the UAE is on the rise and, as much as we would like to blame the Turkish soap operas as some newspapers have suggested, the truth is a lot more complex. Many factors are contributing to the destruction of that sacred bond that in most cultures is meant to last a lifetime. … The majority of mixed marriages are between Emirati men and expatriate women. But since there are many eligible, attractive Emirati women, why do many Emirati men choose to marry women who come from different cultures? … In many cases, the in-laws are mercifully thousands of kilometres away, only a factor during holidays, over the phone or via Skype, which can dramatically improve the husband’s general quality of life. A marriage with distant in-laws, fewer financial obligations and a wedding that can be conducted in the courts in less than an hour is simply irresistible to many Emirati men.

“To ensure that Emirati men make the right decision and are aware of the challenges that accompany cross-cultural marriages, a course could be offered before they make such a life-changing decision, intended to educate both people about the reality and the obstacles that lay ahead of them.

“Not only could a course be offered before the wedding, but also during the term of the marriage and when problems begin to arise. A culture of marital support needs to be freely offered and better promoted to ensure that couples are educated and have a place to turn when all else fails.” — Taryam Al Subaihi [Read article]

The best piece of news in the paper, from my perspective, is about the team from NYUAD that took first place in the energy competition at the Hult Global Case Challenge. Four NYUAD  sophomores — Madhav Vaidyanathan (India), Songyishu Yang (China), Muhammad Awais Islam (Pakistan), and Gary Chien (Taiwan) — and NYU alumnus Neil Parmar (Canada),who actually writes for the National, received the award for a plan to help SolarAid provide solar lighting to one million homes in Africa by 2013. The Challenge also had competitions for initiatives in education and housing. Bill Clinton announced the winners in New York.

You can read about it here: “NYU Abu Dhabi team shines with solar plan.” See also Parmar’s piece “Winning formula aims at powering up Africa.”

I’m especially pleased about the team’s success because the NYUAD student who initiated the effort — Madhav Vaidyanathan — was one of the candidates whom I interviewed during the first admissions weekends that I attended in November 2009. Don’t tell him, but when people used to ask me why I was so excited about NYUAD during the months before we opened, I used to cite the polymathic Madhav and our ability to get him excited about NYUAD as sign of the promise of the institution.

Posted in NYUAD, Technology | Comments { 0 }

OLPC for Haiti

May 30, 2010


Almost three years ago, I signed up for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Give One, Get One program. For $400, I donated one of the program’s laptops to a child in the developing world and received one myself. I was interested in Nicholas Negroponte’s idea of putting together a sub-$100 laptop that could be given to every child in a developing country, and I wanted to have a chance to check out the hardware for myself. Here is the mission statement of the OLPC program, taken from its website:

To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

As the website puts it, OLPC is “not a laptop project. It’s an education project.”

It’s a nice little piece of hardware: sturdy, convertible to tablet form, with built-in wifi and a color screen that you can easily read in sunlight. The keyboard is water repellent, though a bit too small for adult hands. Its operating system, called “Sugar,” is based on Linux, and it comes with a number of activities built into it. I thought my younger son would enjoy it, but by the time it arrived he’d already begun playing with Mommy’s computer — drafted into the Microsoft army at the age of two, alas — and now he’s enamored of my iPad.

So the OLPC has been gathering dust. I decided to sell it on eBay, noting that original models are still fetching $150-180. And then I learned about “OLPC for Haiti,” a program in which used OLPCs are being sent to Haiti and given to children displaced by the earthquake. So my barely used OLPC laptop is heading south to Haiti, where I hope it will make a difference to someone in need.

If you have an OLPC that you’d like to donate, you can learn more about the OLPC for Haiti program here.

And below you can watch a video of the TED Talk that Negroponte gave in 2006, describing the OLPC program.

And a follow-up talk from 2007, describing the program in its second year.

Posted in Technology | Comments { 1 }

Penguin Books of the Future

March 4, 2010

I’ve written here about how much I’m looking forward to the Apple iPad (yes, still, despite the faulty MacBook I wrote about in my last post).

This week I’ve been teaching from two Penguin Books editions, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920). I’ve read and used a lot of Penguin’s books over the years. One of my college roommates had shelves and shelves of Penguin paperbacks — at that time the spines were a light green — because he looked the look of them but even more the feel of them in his hands. Newer Penguins have a different link, but they still have the same feel.

All that may be about to change.

Earlier this week, Penguin’s CEO John Makinson gave a demonstration in London of some prototype e-books that Penguin is preparing for the iPad. Have a look at one of the futures of the book:

Maybe I’ll be holding an iPad the next time I teach Brown or Wharton!

Posted in Scholarship and Teaching, Technology | Comments { 2 }

MacBook Screen Rot

March 2, 2010

I still love my MacBook, even though it’s developed a case of screen rot.

I don’t regret switching to Mac as my primary computing platform, but let’s face it, Macs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Macs hardware is elegant, but in recent years Macs have been plagued by significant manufacturing flaws. Probably more than we’ve heard about. The woes of the 27″ iMac — the flagship of the iMac line — have been well documented. I’ve just discovered, however, that those machines aren’t the only Macs with yellow screen problems.

I recently noticed what looked like a yellow splotch on the left side of the bottom third of my MacBook’s screen. The splotch has grown and expanded sideways. So I thought I’d contact FAS Computing support to see if it is something that warrants warranty service. It apparently does. What I’m told is that”all Apple computers of recent origin have problems with the quality of their display hardware.” Moreover, I should expect that the screen “will indeed continue to darken and spread as the phosphorous layer in there deteriorates — it’s a manufacturing defect. The only way to resolve this is having the unit replaced by warranty.”

So that’s what we’re going to do. Luckily, our tech support will copy my hard drive to a loaner unit so I won’t be without a Mac while we wait for the repair, which apparently can take anywhere from a week to two months.

Ironically, the problem has occurred just as I was starting to convince my wife to make the switch herself. I guess we’ll be holding off on that.

Posted in Technology | Comments { 2 }

USB Lightsabers

February 26, 2010

Well, Chani, how many of these should I buy? (I’m thinking six: a Jedi and a Sith each for me and my two boys.) They’re available from ThinkGeek.

And, while I’m there, I’m might get myself one of these, as well:

Posted in Pop Culture, Technology | Comments { 6 }