Make Sense of the world
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Since early June, an estimated 15 to 26 million people across the United States have participated in protests against the death of George Floyd and the persistence of systematic racism in America. Recent trends have shown that support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement — more...
Every year during the festival of Eid al-Adha, Muslims around the world sacrifice an animal — a goat, sheep, cow or camel — to reflect Prophet Ibrahim’s (Abraham) willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismail (Ishmael), after Allah (God) instructed him to in a dream. Before he could do so, Allah...
Every year, on Indian Science Day in February, India commemorates the discovery of the Raman Effect by Sir C.V. Raman. In 1930, Raman won the Nobel Prize in Physics and has been revered by Indians ever since. Fast forward to 2019, and the US National Science Foundation placed India third when...
Many countries are facing declining growth rates due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Morocco is no exception. Given lockdowns and flight restrictions implemented worldwide from March, the tourism and hospitality sectors — usually the third-largest component of GDP — have suffered enormous...
Hagia Sophia, with a history of 1,500 years hosting different religions, will now be reconverted from a museum into a mosque. This recent shift after a Turkish court decree has sparked extensive debate internationally, and we are now seeing political maneuvers heating up fault lines that divide...
As the coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, China is taking advantage of the chaos and the preoccupation of governments with battling the pandemic. Beijing has long been opportunistic, so it is using what it sees as a unique confluence of circumstances to strengthen its strategic,...
On July 10, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan issued a decree reconverting the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque, thus realizing a long-cherished dream of conservative currents in Turkish society. Originally built as a cathedral by the Romans, the Hagia Sophia functioned as Istanbul’s main mosque...
Everyone in business knows that as a general principle, the fastest-spreading, most revenue-positive ventures and messages wind up having the most influence. That's true not just for individual people, but for businesses, business models, technologies, communications protocols, you name it. Fast...
On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered many businesses statewide to shut down in response to the raging resurgence of COVID-19 in nearly all 50 US states. That same day, a friend of mine landed in San Francisco after having spent six months living in Japan. On his flight, a United...
In a previous article on Fair Observer, I describe an unusual new way of communicating the most important parts of “scientific truth” through potentially noisy, biased news media. The key innovation is to consider them together, all at once, as a kind of jigsaw-puzzle about scientific truth,...
Communication between governments and citizens has changed over the years. The digital era has provided state actors with new channels to spread their messages. Different channels offer different types of outreach. Nevertheless, successful communication requires consistency and...
