Leon on Everything

It seems with 170 plus dead and 5000 injured following the mega blast in the Beirut port on August the 4th 2020, the prime minister of Lebanon has accepted to have early parliamentary elections in two months. Early elections should be welcomed by most Lebanese. As they had been protesting in the streets against the corruption of their government since October the 17 th 2019. However, to truly make a difference, several things need to be done before getting to the elections. To start with, there should be ample time for the opposition to gather themselves into a political party and run for office. Two months is not enough for that. Five to seven months is a more reasonable timeframe. Then, an electoral law that can best translate the will of the people should be drafted. Ever since the liberation of Lebanon from the Syrian occupation in 2005 - in fact, ever since the end of the civil war, if not before -   the Lebanese electoral laws were based on the gerrymandering of district...

“It’s not about how much you make; it’s about how much you get to keep” anonymous Recently, due to COVID-19 and many IT engineers working from home, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, declared that his employees might be soon allowed to work remotely for as long as they want. But if they were to move out of the Bay Area to the Midwest, for example, they would have to accept lower pay to account for the lower cost of living in  their new city . This story starts to reflect a reality long known that wages are based on the average price level of where workers live, more than on  the individual productivity   of these workers as classical economic theory claims. I live in Montreal and am more familiar with the Canadian context. In this context, the biggest driver of the cost of living is the cost of housing . Indeed, in most cities in the United States and Canada, housing is the most significant factor. Therefore, say you earn a certain high wage in a big metropolitan city...

After three and a half years in Canada, I found myself once again sucked into the politics of my native Lebanon. Lebanon, since the end of 2019, has been facing a severe economic crisis. Several large-scale popular protests shook its political establishment. People have had enough of the economic situation, the corruption, and the rule of the jungle. Even for some, they had enough of the rule of Hizballah (the Shia Islam radical terrorist group). Yet, I who has renounced Lebanon. Who for years have been trying to leave Lebanon and now finally in Canada. I who am more and more trying to think of myself as Canadian as my citizenship application is being processed. I find myself sucked again into the cesspool that is Lebanon affairs and Lebanese politics. I find myself trying to go on YouTube to find news footage of what is going on in Lebanon. I find myself liking Facebook articles and posts related to Lebanon. I find myself even writing posts about Lebanon. three so far, with this one...

I am writing the first draft of this essay on the 25 th of May 2020. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of South Lebanon from a fifteen year-long Israeli occupation. A lot has happened since then, most notably a rewriting of Lebanese history about the role of the liberators of South Lebanon: the Islamic group Hizballah. History has been so thoroughly rewritten, and people have been so deeply brainwashed as to complete the amnesia that took place since the end of the Lebanese civil war. Sitting here in Canada, I can claim some distance and begin to recant some facts long forgotten by the Lebanese. From 1975 until 1989, Lebanese Christians and Muslims have killed one another mainly over religion. It was during these years that the most horrible incidents occurred in the nation’s existence. The most egregious examples were the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, the Massacre of Damour , and the killing of civilians on checkpoints based on the religion inscribed on their ide...

In the late 1980s, the crime rate in New York City reached an all-time peak.  Attempts were made to understand this crime wave and fight it better. The " Broken Window Theory " was advanced to explain how New York and other major urban cities in the United States have reached this sad situation. The theory gives as an analogy a house with a broken window. Passerby looking at it will deduce that its owners don't care much about it (they didn't fix the broken window) or are absent, and those with malicious intents will tend to damage the house. It might start by breaking another window and drawing graffiti on a sidewall. It will end with the total vandalism of the house and kicking out its inhabitants.  Several experienced software developers can attest to having witnessed a metaphorical broken code window in some of their projects. It might have started with some code copied a few times.   A golden rule here holds that twice is ok, but three times and you...

(A previous version of this essay was published here 5 years go) During these past few years (2014-2020), Artificial intelligence has been mentioned a lot in news stories and movies. This was mainly fuelled by the success of one branch of AI known as Machine Learning, and specifically its subbranch Deep Learning (Neural networks). With these successes and naming the technology “Artificial intelligence”, a lot of experts have engaged in a global discussion about its dangers as well as its potential. The most alarmist voices have talked about Terminator scenarios and the risk to the future of global employment, especially when the day that most white-collar work will be automated by these AIs. Billionaires like Elon Musk are funding projects to make AI safe for humanity . Some famous scientists like the late Stephen Hawking have warned us that the end was near with the advent of the thinking machine. Other computer scientists like Ray Kurzweil have talked up the coming of a t...