Omar Badreddin's Blog

The Egyptian deficit and the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon

2011-05-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

As anticipated, the egyptian government deficit is soaring. Figures from the government point at 12 billion gap in expenditures in 2011, most of which is subsidies paid to basic food and gasoline. Unfortunately for Egyptians, this is accompanied by a general increase of food prices worldwide due to reduction in food supplies -blame it on the weather-. Also unfortunately for Egyptians, the country financial ranking has been downgraded, pushing up the cost of borrowing.

This is all taking place in a country known for an epidemic lack of efficiency, excellence in low levels of productivity, world class bureaucracy, and lack of democracy. Oh no, egypt is on the route to a democratically elected government, evident in employees everywhere asking for pay check raise. Oh no, pay raise!! this is a recipe for uncontrollable inflation. Yes, yes, and yes.

The prophecy that the Egyptian economy is on a blink of a total melt down is not uncommon, outside of Egypt. In Egypt however, people are unjustifiably optimistic. Maybe it is the weather, maybe it is the illusion that things cannot get any worse, maybe both.

Which prophecy will be in the driver seat? History tells us that Egypt has always been driven by external forces -even Egyptians believe in foreign professionals and products-. But this is just another prophecy itself.

Plenty of Sun in Egypt, Nobody Catching any Rays

2009-07-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

Egypt receives some of the highest annual solar radiation in the world, yet the desert country remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels. "There is a lot of unachieved potential here," says Amr Mohsen, chairman and CEO of Lotus Solar Technologies, an Egyptian firm specialising in solar applications. "The sun is not only strong, but you have everything you need to produce the cheapest kilowatt hour in the region."

Egypt lies in the North African sun belt with flat desert topography and perennially clear skies favourable to commercial solar technologies. Annual solar concentration averages 2,300 KWh per square metre, about 130 percent higher than Germany; yet per capita use of solar technologies is less than 10 percent of Germany's. Instead, the country relies on dwindling oil and gas reserves to generate over 85 percent of its energy requirements. A national strategy to utilise 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 anticipates a share of just two percent for solar energy, the remainder allocated to hydro and wind energy.

While photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are used to power some low-energy applications such as telecom relay towers and highway billboards, consumer initiatives to encourage the use of solar water heating have failed to generate widespread support. "The total area of domestic solar water heaters in Egypt is 400,000 to 500,000 square metres for a population of 80 million - and half (the units) don't work," says Mohsen. "In Israel, by comparison, the area is six million square metres for six million people."

Politics in the middle east

2009-07-08T18:52:00.001-07:00

In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan

2009-06-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

How do people make decisions about morality?

Gilligan has found that men and women use fundamentally different approaches. And since men have dominated the discussion of moral theory, women's perspective is often not taken seriously, and is considered to be less developed and sophisticated.
Her findings are based on interviews.

The male approach to morality is that individuals have certain basic rights, and that you have to respect the rights of others. So morality imposes restrictions on what you can do.
The female approach to morality is that people have responsibilities towards others. So morality is an imperative to care for others.
Gilligan summarizes this by saying that male morality has a “justice orientation”, and that female morality has a “responsibilty orientation”.

She also outlines 3 stages in moral development. The first is a selfish stage, the second is a belief in conventional morality, and the third is post-conventional. This is a progression from selfish, to social, to principled morality.
Female children start out with a selfish orientation.
They then learn to care for others, and that selfishness is wrong. So in their second, conventional, stage, women typically feel it is wrong to act in their own interests, and that they should value instead the interests of others. They equate concern for themselves with selfishness.
In the third, post-conventional stage, they learn that it is just as wrong to ignore their own interests as it is to ignore the interests of others. One way to this understanding comes through their concern with connecting with others. A connection, or relation, involves two people, and if either one is slighted, it harms the relationship.

“The moral imperative that emerges repeatedly in interviews with women is an injunction to care, a responsibility to discern and alleviate the ‘real and recognizable trouble’ of this world. For men, the moral imperative appears rather as an injunction to respect the rights of others and thus to protect from interference the rights to life and self-fulfillment. Women's insistence on care is at first self-critical rather than self-protective, while men initially conceive obligation to others negatively in terms of noninterference. Development for both sexes would therefore seem to entail an integration of rights and responsibilities through the discovery of the complementarity of these disparate views. For women, the integration of rights and responsibilities takes place through an understanding of the psychological logic of relationships. This understanding tempers the self-destructive potential of a self-critical morality by asserting the need of all persons [including themselves] for care. For men, recognition through experience of the need for more active responsibility in taking care corrects the potential indifference of a morality of noninterference and turns attention from the logic to the consequences of choice [refs]. In the development of a postconventional ethical understanding, women come to see the violence inherent in inequality, while men come to see the limitation of a conception of justice blinded to the differences in human life.”

One benefit of reading this book is coming to appreciate “I’m really not sure; it depends on the situation” as a thoughtful and sophisticated response to a question of morality.

Car accidents in Egypt

2009-06-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/middle_east_news/newsid_8089000/8089053.stm

It is time Egyptians need to wake up from the intoxication. Roads and driving tests has to be improved. The law has to be enforced on everyone, NO EXCEPTIONS.

Modeling survey

2009-04-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

consider taking this survey..

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=cFZqeVg0cGZzZkZpSFl1SVNjaFI2UEE6MA..

Work

2009-03-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

Why do organizations resist change?