Totally inappropriate footwear and my damp feet!
Bayt Shama’ya Afandi, Damascus, Syria
I work on some fascinating projects at the AKDC@MIT. One that we’ve just started on, and will be uploading in small increments over an extended period is a a new Special Collection in Archnet, the Michel Ecochard Archive. A collection of images of 19th-century Damascus is the first installment to be made available. I’m so intrigued by the images, I wanted to tell you about them here, and about the larger collection you will eventually see more of.
French architect and urban planner Michel Ecochard, 1905-1985, spent much of his career working in the Muslim world, starting in Damascus following his graduation from École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1929, then Beirut from 1931 to 1944, Rabat from 1946 to 1952 and finally Paris from 1953 to 1983. Continue reading
Emotional testimony v. Cold hard facts!
Did you see this headline? “Dental assistant fired for being ‘irresistible’ to boss”
When I first heard it, I thought it must be from The Onion or some other satirical news outlet, because it just seemed to ridiculous. I didn’t actually hear the report until the evening on ABC News when I learned the incident had not only occurred, but the Iowa Supreme Court had upheld the right of the dentist to do so. Ryan Foley, reporting from Iowa city in an Associated Press article wrote:
December 24, 2012 (WPVI) — A dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant that he found attractive simply because he and his wife viewed the woman as a threat to their marriage, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The court ruled 7-0 that bosses can fire employees they see as an “irresistible attraction,” even if the employees have not engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong. Such firings may be unfair, but they are not unlawful discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act because they are motivated by feelings and emotions, not gender, Justice Edward Mansfield wrote.
An attorney for Fort Dodge dentist James Knight said the decision, the first of its kind in Iowa, is a victory for family values because Knight fired Melissa Nelson in the interest of saving his marriage, not because she was a woman.
I don’t even know where to begin questioning the absurdity of the ruling.
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You can get through airport security much more quickly these days courtesy of the CLEAR program. For a modest annual fee you can be screened in advance so that you can pass through airport security in an express lane with minimal searches. All you have to do is pay to be screened in advance. I find this disturbing. I don’t think airport security should be for sale.
I travel by air fairly frequently, I’d say at least twice a year throughout my adult life, including years in which I traveled more than 2-3 times a month. I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at getting through security quickly, and I also have some ideas how to speed things up. This program won’t help.
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This image has been making the rounds of social media and popped up on the walls of some of my friends today. These services don’t have -1 or dislike buttons, but I dislike. I dislike it very much!
The post argues workers in regular jobs are tested, so welfare recipients should be, too. Well I don’t think random drug testing should be required for those who are fortunate enough to be employed, either. I had been taught that a basic, fundamental precept of our legal system has been that we are a country in which everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence and protection from unnecessary search and seizure. Our rights as free, independent citizens were to be infringed on only in the most dire, necessary circumstances. In my opinion, random drug testing should be permitted only for workers in jobs where public safety is dependent on their sobriety. I’m not convinced that other employers have a right to test at all unless there is demonstrable reason to do so, either in terms of the nature of the position or in terms of job performance. If an employee does an impeccable job at work and is always there when he should be, what does it matter that he has lost every weekend for the past year due to drug induced blackouts. I do not believe a big brother state, let alone a big brother employer.
Let’s also remember who we’re proposing to test.
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On the CBS Evening News, Bob Schieffer just made the point that no matter what the polls say, everything ultimately depends on voter turnout, and that Republicans have been better with turning out their supporters in recent elections. This really worries me. I am not registered with a party but I am, philosophically, a liberal. I believe put those policies are best for America and so I nearly always vote Democratic. But I must confess that in this election my interests are also personal.
I worry Republican advances in Congress will jeopardize aspects of the new health care law. Provisions of the law are still coming into effect, so many people don’t realize how beneficial it is. Rollbacks will have minimal impact on me as a resident of Massachusetts, but I spent last year in another state and I can assure you, this system is better. I’m still cleaning up some of the financial mess from an inadequate insurance plan last year.
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It seems like there has suddenly been a proliferation of interviews with voters, especially undecided voter, in the media, especially NPR. One view that I’ve heard repeated with such regularity that it could almost be described as “conventional wisdom” is that a Romney Presidency is likely to be better for the economy than a second Obama term. The argument maintains that Romney has business and management experience of the sort that will help him turn the economy around. There’s only one problem with this bit of conventional wisdom, and that is that is that it doesn’t hold water.
The nature of Romney’s experience does not necessarily qualify him to manage the national economy any better than Obama’s. Romney worked at Bain Capital. Such organizations come in deal to with a company to the greatest profit for investors. Firstly it raises the regulation of nitric oxide http://midwayfire.com/minutes/Approved%20minutes%202-12-13.doc viagra france or NO. acts as a muscle relaxant and relaxes the muscles situated near the male organ. Most websites online prescriptions for cialis will split the user’s and admin’s advert codes into the same ad units using a simple 5-step approach to get over buzzing in the ears in this article, I I’d like to list the seven most commonly encountered ototoxic drug forms, so you are aware of the pharmaceutical agents when you suspect that a certain medication is causing your ringing in the ears. 1. The buy generic cialis erection in penis occurs when large amount of citric acid and phosphatase, which makes the male organ strong. Kamagra is very much effective for the viagra cheap next page people who wanted to overcome their sexual problems. The company may be dissolved, broken up, sold off, leveraged, or whatever. Employees, customers, suppliers and everyone else are secondary.
A nation is not a corporation and it is not a business. A nation should be managed for the good of the whole, which means the greatest good of all. Things a government does often will make terrible sense from a purely economic standpoint, but that’s not why we do them. Just saying!
There’s always a part of me that feels just a little naive and sentimental when I post a video like this one. But I suppose I am a little of both those things. I strongly believe in the essential goodness of human nature, and that when a society offers people an opportunity to excel, most will rise to the occasion. Congressman Barney Frank once said, that government is simply the name we give to those things we choose to do together. That is the view taken in this video, and it is one thing I like about it.
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Compiled by Scholars at Risk
China: Joint Statement by International Support Committee to Liu Xiaobo
Human Rights Watch, 10/12
Campus opens next to world’s biggest refugee camp
Reuben Kyama, University World News, 10/12
The Big Bang Theory of Education
Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy, 10/11
Call to waive fees for Syrians in UK
David Matthews, Times Higher Education, 10/11
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