How do you deal with continuous contradiction?

Nobel Peace prize for Obama? Why not?

I have recently stumbled across a couple of blogs which expressed surprise at the news that Barack Obama is one of the candidates of the Noble peace Prize.
My take on the issue and in no way am i an expert on Obama related stuff is the following:

Most people , especially those who feel at odds with this newsbit forget that Obama wasn't just born yesterday and became president the day after. To become president, usually, you probably have a long history of political life/activity/activism whatever, which led you to being chosen the Democrats party representative which in turn allowed you to run for president.
Therefore it is not necessary that Obama the President is being rewarded in here but maybe the long and maybe exceptional political life of Obama which eventually led him to the White House in his case..
Makes sense doesn't it?

Fooled By Randomness?

Watching Nassim Taleb yesterday on TV gave me the desire to post something despite being so overloaded by work i even forget what day it is.
I for once, am a firm believer in randomness. Accepting that life is random, that we don't really know everything , that we can't predict much and still finding a way to live with all of that is the kind of freedom and state of mind that might allow people to live better and maybe even suffer less when they do actually get to suffer.
We try to explain and control our environment but most of the time we do that in retrospective way fooling ourselves into thinking that it was so obvious all along and it could have been predicted. Pondering about this concept during the day led me to the conclusion that believing so does not necessarily contradict neither religion nor science in general, something which i found pretty interesting. More randomness is the price we pay for being arrogant and take big risks.
We almost never make empirical observations/conclusions . We prefer to use events to rather reinforce our own point of view of how we think things work or should work. We never admit that we don't know too much and we forget that you can learn more from a loser then a winner.
On a different note, when will we ever learn to be more efficient and less lazy at work?

On the true origin of Underground Hip Hop

Communication Breakdown

One of the most daunting problems I have to deal with since my return to Lebanon is to no surprise, People. It's not about the way they dress, nor their system of beliefs, nor their hopes , dreams or the lack thereof.
I am highly shocked , to say the least, at the failure of a lot of lebanese I met so far to communicate with each other in a proper civilized manner. The context of this problem goes beyond political or religious discussions and actually extends to everyday conversations, whether at work , home or any other gathering place.
I am starting to see the same pattern repeating itself over and over. Its a general tendency to crush, intimidate, or insult the person at the other end of the communication line.
After a long and painful observation period , I have come to the conclusion that this collective behaviour is nothing but a manifestation of the low-self esteem and inferiority complex that haunts most lebanese.
Proving someone else to be wrong, or putting them into a corner seems to be the most favourite method of "feeling better about one's self". So they thrive to outsmart each other in every single sentence, even claim to understand something they actually know nothing about, and eventually offer to give you lessons about the subject.
This obsession with the "I" thats obviously predominant in this society, is actually an indicator of a highly dysfunctional society, to the point of Paranoia....
Hopefully , my stay in this psych ward will not start to affect my own mental sanity.

Next Stop SouthSide

You'll adapt or maybe not

Six Months after I've been to Beirut, I seem to have failed to accomplish the prophecy made upon me by almost every individual I've met so far, The famous "You'll adapt" Prophecy. Every time that I've tried pointing out something that I thought was really wrong, I get looked at weirdly like If I fell from another solar system.
So I sadly would like to inform you that I wont be able to make it, I refuse to adapt to wrong doing and just cause "thats the way things happen round here" is not reason enough.
I want to still get angry at every idiot that blinds me with the "cool projectors" he installed on his Jeep, car or pickup truck while driving at night. I've been around and I've had deers, cats and the like jump in front of my car while driving at night, but only in lebanon do you have PEOPLE crossing the road in the middle of the night like if they're on a slow motion picnic! God damn it!
And no I do not want to adapt to people whois first uttered words when they first meet you are "where are you from" before they even have introduced themselves.
AND I certainly don't want to get convinced that syrian construction workers are animals and they should be treated as such. And I will keep treating them well and paying them them well and try to memorize their names.
I don't want to get used to people mixing three languages thinking its cool saying stuff like " lek , lets go la3end le Boulanger"...
I don't want to talk about politics at work, and I certainly don't want to bribe the consultant engineer.
On another note, pretty sunny weather in Beirut today so why don't we go skying in the morning and then swimming in the afternoon. yes RIGHT!