April 26, 2012 In writing this I realized I could write a whole post, if not a book, on each of these topics. So CLEARLY I will be writing about this more. If any of these topics spark your interest and you want to know more about them let me know in the comments and […]
Henri le Chat and Erik Satie: Partners in Ennui
April 19, 2012 My friend Jasmin S. Kuehnert, a cat lover like myself, sent me this video of Henri, a very French kitty. The music—most appropriate for this video– is by Erik Satie, who left the Paris Conservatory—his teachers called his piano playing worthless-— to play in the more accepting milieu of piano bars such […]
Packing My Bags & Heading South to NZ
April 12, 2012 While catching up on my backlog of newspaper and magazine articles, my eyes caught sight of this headline in this piece from April 2, 2012 in the NYT: ”New Zealand Casts Itself as Destination for International Students.”. It seems that our friends in the island country in the south Pacific have a […]
Celebrating 18 Years of Business!
Strange Bedfellows: Questionable Alliances in Higher Education
March 29, 2012 Tell me something, why do perfectly fine and accredited universities align themselves with shady start-ups in far-flung corners of the world? I ask this question because a week ago I came across an article in the NYT “An Albanian College Relying on U.S. Cachet” that speaks of exactly this very issue. Just […]
Now-Ruz: A Celebration of Life
March 22, 2012 Photo of Haftseen by Firooz Saofoura Zoroofchi According to a recent post by Shirin Sadeghi on HuffingtonPost: “The talk of war (against Iran) walks tall amongst the rhetoric of Washington.” As the U.S. and Israel increase the volume of their threats of war against Iran, Iranians in the diaspora and those living […]
Dumbing Down of the Electorate: Idiocracy in the Making
March 15, 2012 I once saw a bumper sticker that read “Stupidity Should be Painful”. This was years ago and I still remember it. And agree with it too. I don’t want to sound like an overeducated snob. But I believe that an electorate that turns solely to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh instead of […]
Turning Our Back On Education: Way to go America!
March 8, 2012 In a recent NYT article “Where the Jobs Are, The Training May Not Be,” Catherine Rampell reports that even though technical, engineering and health care specialists are in great demand in today’s weak job market, these fields happen to be the most expensive subjects to teach. “As a result, state colleges in […]
From Iran to Irangeles: A Tribute to Iranian-Americans
March 1, 2012 At this year’s Academy Awards, the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film was given to the Iranian filmmaker Ashghar Farhadi for his film “Separation.” In his acceptance speech, he spoke of how in the midst of the chatter between politicians and heads of states, the world forgets to see and appreciate Iran’s […]
Math on my Mind
February 24, 2012 After hearing friends rave about a new TV series called “Touch”, I finally broke down and watched the pilot on VOD. The series is about a man who lost his wife in the World Trade Center attacks and is left to take care of his emotionally-challenged eleven-year old boy who has a […]