August 14th, 2014 Ecuador is creating a new city of knowledge called Yachay; a Quechua Indian word that means knowledge, or learning. It is building a research university and city in Urcuquí, Imbabura Province to function as an academic, technological and scientific. The campus expands over an area of approximately 12,000 acres near the snowcapped […]
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10 Fast Facts on Mauritania
August 7th, 2014 Recently, I saw a performance by the Mauritanian singer Noura Mint Seymali, who plays the 9-string harp, the ardin (reserved only for women), and her talented musicians at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The Skirball hosts free summer concerts bringing in international artists and performers to give us Angelenos a […]
15 Fast Facts on Higher Education in Armenia
July 17th, 2014 Brief Overview: Armenia is the smallest of the former Soviet republics. It sits landlocked and earthquake ridden in rugged mountains tucked between Turkey (to the west) and Azerbaijan. It covers an area of 29,743 sq km.(slightly smaller than Maryland). It has a population of 3,060,631 (July 2014 est.) with 1,079,000 residing in […]
Fourth Of July Fun Facts
July 4th, 2014 The Fourth of July: The day Americans celebrate their country’s independence. It’s a day you probably know well, and one that you anticipate with pleasure; but there are probably a lot of fun facts about the nation’s birthday that you aren’t familiar with. Click to see slide show of 10 interesting facts […]
RIP: Maya Angelou
June 26th, 2014 Last month we lost the great Maya Angelou. Our guest blogger, Tom Schnabel, had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Angelou in 1995 when he hosted the radio show Cafe LA at KCRW, the public station housed at Santa Monica College. We’d like to share Tom’s recent blog about having Dr. Angelou as […]
IRAN: Happiness, Stealthy Freedom, and Faces of Iran on FB
June 12th, 2014 Happiness is… If you’ve been following the news from Iran recently, you must have heard the one about the group of six young women and men who posted a clip of themselves happily dancing to Pharrell Williams’ hit song “Happy!” As quickly as their video had gone viral, Iran’s morality police had […]
25 Interesting Facts About Hungary
May 15th, 2014 Several years ago I had the pleasure of traveling to Budapest to attend the EAIE Conference. The Soviet Union had recently collapsed and its satellite states and neighboring countries, such as Hungary, had abandoned their socialist regimes and embracing democracy and western European trends. Hungary was one of the first communist-era countries […]
20 Interesting Facts about Mongolia
April 17th, 2014 Mongolia lies in central Asia between Siberia on the north and China on the south. It is a land full of vast emptiness, nearly twice the size of Eastern Europe and with a population of 3,226,516 (2013 est.), it is the least populous country in the world. It is slightly larger than […]
World Music Teaches You Everything
April 3rd, 2014 Music tells the stories of our world I majored in Humanities as an undergraduate because it was broad-based and I could take many courses, from California Geography to Entomology to history, philosophy, languages and literature. Later, I took an MA in Comparative Literature for similar reasons: I could read the great writers […]
Celebrating Spring
March 13th, 2014 With nervous pleasure, The tulips are receiving A spring rain at dusk ––Richard Wright Cultures around the world celebrate spring as a time of renewal, healing, and rebirth, moving from the darkness of winter to the much-anticipated light of spring. Whatever form of celebration this takes, it is a time of new […]