People At A Coffee Shop

What he wanted to know, but was too polite to ask, is if he and his wife are in danger.(Names and faces are not included in the post for a reason. Read on.)
الأسماء والصورة غير متاحة لعدة أسباب

The man on the ‘L’ didn’t know she is in the U.S. legally. He saw a young woman alone, wearing a headscarf, and that was enough for him.

“Go back to where you came from.” he yelled.
لم يكن يعرف الشاب الأمريكي أن (ل) تقيم في أمريكا بشكل قانوني، لهذا عندما شاهد شابة وحيدة ترتدي غطاء الرأس، تقدم لها وكان كافياً أن يقول لها بكل جرأة لها: “ارجعي من حيث أتيت”

“I’m not in your home,” the graduate student replied. The encounter took place last week, the day after the presidential election.
ردت عليه طالب الدراسات العليا، بكل بساطة: ” أنا لست في بيتك”، حدث هذا الأسبوع الماضي بعد يوم واحد فقط من انتخابات الرئاسة الأمريكية

The woman’s husband asked an American he had met if they could talk. He had spent a year entirely dedicated to studying English and he was in the habit of listening carefully.
زوج هذه الشابة سأل أمريكي في لقاء عابر، إذا كان من الممكن أن نتحدث، هذا الشاب تعلم اللغة الإنجليزية خلال السنوات الماضية بشكل مكثف.

He asked if the American was worried about what was reported to be happening across the country. What he wanted to know, but was too polite to ask, is if he and his wife are in danger. Have they become targets?
كان سؤاله، إذا ما كانت أمريكا قلقة بشأن ما ذكرته أن يحدث في جميع أنحاء البلاد؟ كل ما ما كان يريد أن يعرفه، هل هو وزوجته في خطر، ومن المحتمل أن يصبحوا هدف؟ كان مؤدبا في طرح هذا السؤال.

He is here studying sociology with an emphasis on culture and religion, which includes the kind of fanaticism all too familiar in his part of the world.
هذا الزوج هو هنا لدراسة علم الاجتماع، مع اهتمام بعلم الاجتماع الثقافي والديني والفاشية التي هي سائدة في بعض مناطق العالم.

During his first stay in the U.S. he had been hosted by an African-American woman whom he refers to as his “American grandmother.” She assured him he is welcome here. For his wife’s safety he hopes that is still true.
في أول أيامه عند قدومه إلى أمريكا، كان يقيم في بيت سيدة أمريكية- إفريقية، يشببها أنها جدته في أمريكا. كانت هذه السيدة تؤكد على الترحيب به هنا في هذه البلاد هو وزوجته.

The friendship between the Middle Eastern couple and the American started like many do at our local coffee shop, by sharing an electrical outlet. They quickly discovered their views on life aren’t so very different and that their various mobile devices run on the same AC current.
بدأت الصداقة بين الزوجين القادمين من الشرق الأوسط والرجل الأمريكي في مقهى المحلي للقهوة، كما نفعل هنا دائما، وذلك بمشاركة فيش الكهرباء. مع الوقت إكتشفو وجهات نظرهم المتشابهه حول بعض القضايا، كما أن الأجهزة الكهربائية المختلفة تعمل على نفس التيار.

If you anguish
over what claims you can believe
and whom you should trust in the debate over climate change, pull up a stool and join the club.

There’s a scientist named Neal who often escapes from his lab to work in the windows of our humble coffee house. He deals with the biogeochemical transformations of organic carbon in surficial environments.

Neal’s good at explaining things.

He’ll walk you through the molecular makeup of the atmosphere and explain how solar energy penetrates our environment, raising temperatures.

You’ll learn that the thermal energy radiated back into space has a longer wavelength than energy coming in, and that it is trapped by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Earth heats up, ice shelves collapse, ocean currents get confused, etc. etc. Mostly it’s not good.

If you happen to be skeptical about climate risks (perfectly understandable what with certain preachers and talk radio and everything), Neal will challenge you to recognize one simple fact. And that is this:

Climate change projections are subject to exhaustive peer review.

Peer review pits independent research teams against one another. They like nothing more than to debunk each other’s theories. They replicate experiments and triangulate computer modeling. It’s a barb-wired-enclosed process that attracts the best minds in the field. Reputations and front teeth hang in the balance.

Neal Blair is a professor in the departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. His work is cited internationally. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford.

Neal’s among the 90 percent* or so of environmental and earth scientists who interpret the body of peer-reviewed data as proof that human activity is raising CO2 concentrations to dangerous levels.

Maybe some morning one of the scientists who dismiss climate change as a hoax — one of those in the small minority — will join us for a cup of coffee. We’d like nothing more than to put our phones on vibrate and listen to the peer-reviewed data on the other side of the debate.

* this percentage is often quoted as a higher number

It was early in the ‘80s.

The manufacturer of an electronic chess game claimed that it could defeat Anatoly Karpov, the reigning chess champion of the world.

It was nothing more than a glorified single-purpose toy. This was years before IBM’s Deep Blue posed a serious challenge to human chess players.

A law firm was called in to counter the product’s claims. Attorneys looking for a chess master narrowed their search to a club in a storefront in a near suburb. There they found Richard Lang, a university professor who had long been ranked in tournament play.

The lawyers invited Richard to lunch at the prestigious Chicago Athletic Club where he was required to put on a borrowed blazer and a tie. He ordered the chicken-salad sandwich and they talked. The suits quickly realized they had found their knight errant.

The man and the machine squared off in what turned out to be an unfair match. Richard didn’t break a sweat. The device never recovered from the first game. Its marketing team immediately dropped its bogus performance claims.

My friend doesn’t remember an opening gambit or anything special about his strategy. But there’s one lesson he did draw from being the champion of the human race: No chicken salad sandwich is worth $25.