Headline Jan 29, 2016/ ''' THE DROWNING WORLD '''

''' THE DROWNING WORLD '''

[2012-THEN] ELSEWHERE, LEADERS LIKE  UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have declared multiculturalism a failure-

While in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, parties that were once considered far right fringe have entered their respective parliaments, Dutch leader Geert Wilders openly compares the Holy Quran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Indeed, Anders Behring Breivik, the self-styled   ''perfect knight''  who killed more than  75  people in Norway one July, some years ago, as a part of what he saw as a necessary crusade against Islam,  cited Wilders in a 1500-page manifesto-

Along with other authors who have warned of the dangers of Islam in the wake of  9/11.

For France, their is no middle ground, warns  Didlier Lapeyronnie, a sociologist who spent  four years  in Parisian suburbs researching his book: Urban Ghetto: Segregation, Violence and Poverty in Today's France.

''We're at the precipice,'' he says. ''We can follow much of the Europe and close ourselves off,  becoming  xenophobic and hostile,  or we can remain open, period. It's up to the politicians.

''Right now, the violence in the suburbs is unorganised and sudden. It turns on itself. Who knows about the future?''

FOR SOME IMMIGRANTS, Life in France is good. Toufik Abdulrachman couldn't find work in Algeria, which is why he came to France 12 years ago. Althought it has been a hard slog, the father of two has a full-time work as a Halal butcher and  is part of community he need never leave.

'' There are no problems here, nothing,'' Abdulrachman says in between serving customers. '' I like it here.''

But for others, life is a misery. In Asnieres-aur-Seine, a stone's throw to the northwest of Paris, the talk on this particular spring morning is all of recent fighting between a local youth gang and one from the neighbouring community Gennevilliers. The toll is heavy:

A 15-year-old from knife wounds to his chest; another adolescent in hospital after being stabbed in the back. Local authorities have placed a curfew on minors.

Around the corner, a man in black jeans stands quietly, a black hoodie pulled down to hide his face. He is observed by Michel Kokoreff, a sociologist at the  Universite Paris-8 in Saint-Denis who spent ten years in Asnieres doing research for a study on the challenges people face to leave the suburbs.

Kukoreff whispers that the man in jeans could be a drug dealer. In the open market, a garlic vendor, on guard for trouble, sees us as strangers and calls out sharply: ''Who are you?''

This is life here: meeting with friends in the local cafe to talk about the growing schism in France and the worry that there will be nothing here for their children. Says Kokoreff: ''For the youth, the future is quite gloomy, for now.''

So it goes in Bondy, northeast of Paris and not far from Montfermeil, where a 41-year-old mother of three worries where to park her car so it won't get broken into, and what her kids will do when they leave school. 

Jobs are scarce. The family is barely making ends meet, even though her husband works for the commuter train service.

Sometimes she feels resentful about migrating: ''My husband was an engineer and wanted to continue his studies here, but after we arrived, he learned that he would have to start at zero,'' she says. ''Each night, we talk about the kids. It's about survival.''

And so it goes in nearby Saint-Denis, directly north of Paris. Mehdi Silmam chats with his cousin, Hocine Gigi, in a crowded pedestrian mall filled with shoppers, children and Romany beggars. Despite a good education, Silmam, 26, who is currently studying Chinese, can't find a job.

Trim of beard and with wire-rimmed glasses, he notes that the politicians and the media focus on things that may have little to do with the everyday lives of Arabs, but that underscores the stereotypes all the same: 

The law that bans face veils for example, when so few women here actually wear them.

Even Gigi, 30, a successful businessman who owns several bakeries in the region, can't imagine staying here  -because he worries about an increasingly divisive political climate will effect his three-year old daughter and his 18-year old son.

''My kids are why we have applied to go to Canada.'' he says. ''It's becoming toxic-here.'' 

Montfermeil residents Marc-Henri and Myriam Picard came to that realisation from different directions.

In April 2010.................. 

The Honour and Serving of the '' State-of-the-world Operational Research'' continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing. And see You all on the following one:

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of France. See Ya all on !WOW!  -and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Going The Extra Mile '''

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SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 28, 2016/ ''' *EUROPE -with below the sea-level- ECHOES* '''

''' *EUROPE -with below the sea-level-

 ECHOES* '''

[ 2012 ]  : ALL OVER EUROPE,   author Lisa Fitterman,  found immigrant areas seething with frustration and anger. But nowhere was it more evident as in Paris.

Xavier Lemoine  leafs through the thin police blotter on his desk. As the mayor of  Montfermeil, a small suburb northeast of Paris, it's one of the first things he does every and each morning.

The night before was rather quiet : a family house fire, a car set ablaze, teenagers driving a stolen vehicle and a brawl between two women. ''Not bad,''   he remarks between sips of coffee.

Stern, balding and bespectacled, Lemoine points to an aerial photo of Montfermeil on a nearby wall. It portrays a patchwork of houses, parks and strip malls, and right there in the middle, a tiny grey circle that draws the eye.

This is Les Bosquets, a dilapidated apartment building that was the crucible for fiery riots that raged through France in October and November of 2005.

Covering only  3%  of the town's territory, Les Bosqheuets at this time to nearly a third of  Montfermeil's  25,000 residents, many of whom hail from Turkey,  Sub-Saharan Africa and Maghreb  -which consists of Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania   -and who are devout Muslims.

Many are also unemployed, and there is burgeoning underground economy supported by the trafficking of drugs and false papers. ''Whole families are supporting themselves by these different trades,'' says the mayor. ''In 2005, 80% of the town's delinquents came from the area's housing projects.''

According to Lemoine, part of the problem is that the bulk of the people in the housing projects tend to favour their culture of origin over France's secular one, to the point that many of them don't even speak French. This means a community that's closed to the outside world, with its own languages and traditions.

''But France is not a multicultural society,'' says Lemoine. ''We're open. We like couscous. We don't want headscarves or Burqas.''

A few blocks from  Montfermeil's town hall, the flowerbed in the square that serves Les Bosqueta  looks from a distance like a riot of vibrant blooms. Upon closer inspection , it becomes a mound of crumpled cans, cigarette butts, empty bottles and rotting food.

Although Notre Dam Cathedral is just over 15km to the southwest, the square feels  light years   away from the tourists and overpriced bars.

On a late spring morning, the spare is filled with men; older men who have lost their jobs, and younger men who have never worked, period. They slouch in doorways, smoking and watching, suspicious. ''Are you a flic? they ask, using the French slang for  ''cop''.

When they do speak it is of racism, both subtle and not, of fruitless searches for work in a country that  defines them by their names, the colour of their skin, what they wear and where they live. They feel powerless.

''When you say you live in Montfermeil or  [neighbouring]  Clichy-sous-Bois, that's it,''  says Mohammad Gadar,  a  28 year-old father of a one-year old girl who is hanging out with his buddies in the local cafe. He says he's been looking for work for the past  18 months.

''It's hard to overcome the stereotype that we're all shiftless thieves and cons who sell drugs. It doesn't matter that I was born in France and I speak french perfectly.''

The secular  french Republic  prohibits any mention of race or religion for censuses or statistics, but according to a 2011 publication from the Pew Research Centre,  The Future of the Global Muslim Population, the number of Muslims living in the country right now is estimated at about 4.7 million, expected to grow to 6.9 million by 2030.

*And France is not alone. Studies predict that  40 years  from now Muslims will account for more than 20% of the European Union's entire population.*

Growth like this has given rise to far right nationalist movements that reject multiculturalism. From Sweden  to   Hungary to  Italy,  divides fuelled by mistrust, liberal immigration and high unemployment are getting wider.

And it's in places like Les Bosquets, one of  750  communities that throughout France designated as  Zones Urbaines Sensibles  {ZUS}   -urban hot  spots prone to  poverty  and  crime  -that you feel the growing divide between   ''us''   and    ''them''  ; between richer and poorer,  white and not.

There's a perception that these places are rife with voyous   -young unemployed thugs who allegedly hawk drugs, burn cars and occasionally fight each other.

The situation has also given  Marine Le Pen of the National Front  [the right wing anti-immigration party founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen] the opportunity to further the agenda of the party.

Elegant, blonde and straight-talking, she represents a new generation of French citizens who agree when she compares Muslims praying in the Paris streets to an  ''occupation''.

In Response to the rise of the right, and after a debate that divided the French, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government enforced an all-out ban on burqas and niqabs  [face veils],  threatening a  150 euro  ($200)  fine and lessons in French citizenship for those few women who flouted it.

The Honour and Serving of the *State-of-the-World Operational Research* continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and  Teachers of Europe. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Protective Environment '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 27, 2016/ *T H E.. A R T.. O F.. L I F E* .---. { THE ART OF WAR }

*T H E.. A R T.. O F.. L I F E* .---. 

{ THE ART OF WAR }

THE ROAD   -to being a better human is long long, and hard,  and lashed with many stones,   -and we all walk it alone!

In Herman Hesse's  Siddhartha, a novel about the spiritual evolution of a young man living in India at the time of Buddha, a young monk has to immerse himself in every experience before he can reach enlightenment.

In  Groundhog Day, the  Bill Murray's character has to be reborn each morning and travel through every variation of despair, nihilism, hedonism, compassion, love and death itself before he can achieve a state of grace.

How long does it take?  Danny Rubin, the writer of Groundhog Day, said he thought his character was reborn every day for ten years   -long enough to learn how to play the piano.''

Harold Ramis, the film's director, said that he thought Bill Murray was reborn for  10,000  years.    

We know in our hearts that it will take a lifetime to  be the humans we want to be. And then some....................

*We crave perfection, enlightenment and an end to all cares  -physical, financial, emotional, spiritual.* 

MACHIAVELLI'S   - The Prince,  the defining text of realpolitik, was written five centuries ago.

SUN TZU'S   -The Art Of War, the most famous book ever written about military tactics,  was first transcribed more than 2,000 years ago.

BUT we do not read  Machiavelli or  Sun Tzu because they wrote wise, gripping narratives about human beings struggling for survival and victory long ago and far away. 

We  read them because we genuinely believe that they have practical things to tell us about our life and work now.

We read Sun Tzu  because we think he will be able to help us when we have a falling out with  Doris  from accounts. We read Machiavelli because we think he has something relevant to say about the man at the next-desk getting promoted ahead of you.

The Art Of War  and  The Prince are artefacts, but they are published, sold and read as lessons in business strategy. 

Sun Tzu became the guru of every middle manager from Sydney to San Francisco when it was revealed that Mike Ovitz, the legendary Hollywood Agent, had a copy of the The Art Of War by the bedside.

But did Sun Tzu ever really help Ovitz?  Maybe. Although when you read a Sun Tzu line such as, -

''With regards to narrow passes, if you can occupy them first, let them be strongly garrisoned and await the advent of the enemy,'' it is difficult to see how much practical help it could have been when Ovitz was negotiating Sharon Stone's residual on Basic Instinct.

*And yet we can't resist the illusion that we might be able to learn what gifted people know. How could I decide that I don't need  How To Be Rich by J Paul Getty? How could I not buy a book  Only Fat People Skip Breakfast.... But at the end, all scholars of self-improvement, ultimately leave me cheated.

Because I do not want the odd helpful tip. Or even lots of unhelpful tips. We all want transformation, revelation and secrets divulged. We want a big bang that changes everything. I want a brand new me.

I want to know how to be much richer, much tougher, much thinner. I want a few tidbits of helpful information then I will buy The Good Food Guide. 

At first glance, the self -improvement industry seems to represent all our basest instincts. It is hard not to contemplate books titles such as  How To Get Rich  and   ''How To Win Dirty''   -and not believe that they are manifestations of all inside us that's greedy, gluttonous and venal.

But perhaps that is too hard, for all we want is to be better humans, and our constant seeking for paths to improvement is a natural, healthy instinct.

It's just that the road to nirvana is paved with many dead ends and wrong turnings. Not to mention books with titles such as  Millionaire Upgrade  me most of have been   how- to books for writers.

The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler. The  War Of Art  by Steven Pressfield.  Story by Robert McKee. But I came to them all with a specific problem, or set of problems, when I was stuck mid-book, and they helped me to fix it.

They are instruction booklets. I took only what I needed and had no expectations that they would give me a career. It is the difference between wanting to know how to change a tyre and wanting to know how to change your life.

For there are never easy answers, never quick fixes. 

Whatever the virtues of their books, Sub Tzu and Machiavelli actually can't help you with Doris in accounts. Only Fat People Skip Breakfast will not stop you being a porker if you do not conquer your oral fixation.

Reading  The Richest Man in Babylon by Gerge S Clason will not clear your overdraft. Captain WE Fairbairn was a highly trained killing machine, but reading  Getting Tough  will not do you much good in a pub fight. The road of live is hard, merciless and overwhelming.  

And then, in my heart of heart, I know that I can learn more from one page of Graham Greene than I can from en entire shelf of books promising to make me richer, tougher or thinner.

But I also know that our desire for more than we have is what dragged us from the trees, and what makes us get out of bed every morning,  -and what drives us on every day and what yet may lead us to glory.

We crave richer. We crave  tougher. We crave peace of mind.

And when is it enough?

It's never enough until your heart stops beating.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders of the free world, Parents, Students, Professors, and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Fresh Blood  '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 26, 2016/ ''' THE VERY KINGS OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT ''

''' THE VERY KINGS OF 

SELF-IMPROVEMENT '''

BUT EVERYWHERE I LOOK there is evidence of a pathological obsession for being richer, tougher, prettier, smarter, fitter and  -above all  -better.

As fallible, neurotic, profoundly messed-up human beings, we all have an insatiable appetite for  self-improvement.

Or is that just me?

I am shocked to discover that for every  Penguin Classic  or slim volume of poetry on my shelves, I seem to own many more books on getting rich, getting fit, losing weight, stopping smoking, learning a language and treating in one's knees.

I am a sucker for  self-improvement, a junkie for self-help, a crack agent of self-motivation. Or is that just my library?

There are books by world-renowned experts here. Captain WE Fairbairn's 1942 martial arts classic : Get Tough! How To Win in Hand-to-Hand Fighting. And How To Get Rich by Donald Trump.

There is The Prince by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu's  The Art Of War. And books about neurolinguistic programming and creative visualization and how to end a street fight with just one blow.

*But do I really need all this stuff? Has it done me any good? Does it actually do anyone any good?

Captain WE Fairbairn invented the Fairbairn commando knife and is the father of modern  hand-to-hand combat. Every student in the world with fire in his blood should own a copy of Get Tough! But Fairbairn takes a chapter to tell you how to tie a German soldier to a tree  -with his own legs.

Even If I learn how to do it really well, how often is that going to come in useful to me?

And as much the world may admire Donald Trump, can I really learn the secrets of his success in his chapters entitled  ''Bullshit Will Only Get You So Far''.  ''Look Closely Before Changing Careers''  and  ''Think Big and Live Large''?

As with most maharishis of motivation, you always feel that Trump can't explain the secret of his success because he doesn't really know it himself. 

The most interesting pearl of wisdom is Trump's revelation that while most big swinging bums believe in a firm handshake, he personally believes in no handshake at all.

So try it, why don't you? People will think you're a weirdo. And it will certainly not make you as rich as the Donald. 

Not all the self-improvement texts I own are by experts in their field. I also have a large collection of books by charlatans, nut jobs and nobodies. I own books about getting rich by people who are not rich, but in jail.

But when it comes to improving myself, I seem disturbingly willing to suspend belief. I am like a country hick queuing up to see the bearded lady, the mug punter who can't see when the cards are marked, a sucker for that snake oil.

A Lot of self-improvement industry promises  ''short cuts to success''. Short cuts to the richer, tougher, fitter man that we all want to be. This is especially true in the money end of the market-

Perhaps because we want to be rich more than we want to lose our love handles, or master the elbow strike to the temple. But of course there are no short cuts to anything worth  having.

If you are losing weight or learning martial arts or building a property empire worth billions of dollars,  ''you do not do it in ten easy steps''. 

It takes a lifetime,   ''not a lunch time'' . 

And yet,  -and yet, we just can't help believing that it is possible to learn wisdom of the ancients in a $ 9.99 paperback. Even those who would sneer at the costly banalities of a non-book such as-

Spencer Johnson's  Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way To Deal With Change in Your Work, And in Your Life {the one with the mouse who gave up, and the mouse who didn't} are likely to quote knowingly from: The Prince or the grandaddy of them all, The Art Of War.

 The Honour and Serving of this delightful Operational Research continues. Thank You all for reading and see you all on the following one.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society  and Ecosystem 2011.

''' The Art Of War '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 25, 2016/ ALL-STUDENTS : *THE BEST* - !THE POOREST?

ALL-STUDENTS : 

*THE BEST* - !THE POOREST?

THE PHENOMENON  of relative deprivation applied to education is called  -appropriately enough  :  the ''Big Fish Little Pond Effect.'' The more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities.

Students who would be at the top of their class at a good school can easily fall to the bottom of a really good school. Students who would feel that they have mastered a subject at a good school can have the feeling that they are falling farther and farther behind in a really good school.

And that feeling  -as subjective and ridiculous and  irrational it maybe matters. How you feel about your abilities  -your academic  ''self-concept'' in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It's a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.  

MORE THAN HALF OF all American students who start out in in science, technology, and math programs  -or STEM as they are known-  drop out after their first or second year.

Even though a science degree is just about the most valuable asset a young person can have can have in the modern economy, large numbers of would-be-STEM majors end up switching into the arts- Where academic standards are less demanding and the coursework is less competitive. 

That's the major reason that there's such a shortage of qualified  American-educated scientists and engineers in the United States.

To get a sense of who is dropping out   -and why-  lets take a look at the science enrollments of school in upstate New York called Hartwick College. It's a small liberal arts college of the sort that is common in the American Northeast.

Here are all Hartwick  STEM  majors divided into three groups  -top third, middle third, and bottom third according to their  test scores in mathematics. The scores are from SAT, the exam used by many American colleges as an admissions test. The mathematics section of the text is out of 800 points.

STEM majors

Math SAT

.- Top Third         569

.- Middle Third     472

.- Bottom Third    407 

If we take SAT as a guide, there's a pretty big different in raw ability between the best and the poorest students at Hartwick.

Now let's look at the portion of all science degrees at Hartwick that are earned by each of those three groups

STEM DEGREES %

Top Third         55.0

Middle Third     27.1

Bottom Third    17.8

The students in the top third at Hartwick earn well over half of the school's science degrees. the bottom third end up earning only 17.8% of Hartwick's science degrees. The students who come into Hartwick with the poorest levels of math ability are dropping out of math and science in droves.

This much seems like common sense. Learning the advance mathematics and physics necessary to become an engineer or scientist is really hard- and only a small number of students clustered at the top of the class are smart enough to handle the material.

Now let's do the same analysis for Harvard,one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

STEM majors

Math SAT

.- Top Third         753

.- Middle Third     674

.- Bottom Third    581.  

HARVARD students, not surprisingly, score far higher on the math SAT than their counterparts at Hartwick. In fact, the students in Harvard bottom third have higher scores than the best students at Hartwick.

If getting a science degree is about how smart you are, then virtually everyone at Harvard should end up with a degree  -right?  At least on paper, there is no one at Harvard who lacks the intellectual firepower to master the coursework. Well, let's take a look at the portion of degrees that are earned by each group.

STEM degrees%

.- Top Third         53.4

.- Middle Third     31.2

.- Bottom Third    15.4 

Isn't that strange? The students in the bottom third of the Harvard class drop out of math and science just as much as their counterparts in upstate New York. ''Harvard has the same distribution of science degrees as Hartwick.

Think about this for a moment. We have a group of high achievers at Hartwick. Let's call them the Hartwick All Stars. And we've got another group of lower achievers at Harvard. Let's call them the Harvard Dregs.

Each is studying the same textbooks and wrestling with the same concepts and trying to master the same problem sets in courses like advanced calculus and organic chemistry, and according to test scores, they are of roughly equal academic ability.

But the overwhelming majority of All Stars get what they want and end-up as engineers or biologists. Meanwhile, the Harvard dregs  -we go to the far more prestigious school-  are so demoralized by their experience that many of them drop out of science entirely and transfer to some nonscience major.

The Harvard Dregs are Little Fish in a Very Big and Scary Pond. The Hartwick All Stars are Big Fish in a Very Welcoming Small Pond. 

What matters, in determining the likelihood of getting a science degree, is not just how smart you are. It's how smart you feel feel relative to the other people in your classroom.

By the way, this pattern holds true for virtually any school you look at   -regardless of its academic quality.

[*These stats are derived from a research paper entitled ''The Role of Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions,'' by sociologists Rogers Elliott and A. Christopher Strenta et al. the SAT scores are from the early 1990s, and may be somewhat different today*]      

With Most Respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the United States of America. 

!WOW! and the world at large,   -deeply admires your support to the cause of education in the Developing World. And with special honours for:

Dr. Mohammed Jawaid Khan/University of Virginia, University of California, Technologist Amin Malik/ Chicago.

See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' The Essence of A Better World '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless