UNION COLLEGE, NEW YORK – A group of mechanical engineering students, led by professor Ron Bucinell, will spend their spring break in Boru, Ethiopia, hoping to tap a clean water source for the village’s 5,000 residents.
This will be the first official trip for the College’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders, a non-profit international humanitarian organization that partners with developing communities to improve their quality of life, primarily through the work of engineers and engineering students.
Rebecca Damberg-Mauser ’08 was instrumental in starting Union’s chapter in 2007-08. The group, which spent most of the year getting up and running, now numbers about 19 students.
The idea for the water project sprung from Tehtena Tenaw ’09, who was born in Ethiopia. When Tenaw, the president of Union’s EWB chapter, returned home for a wedding last summer to the town of Dese, about an hour from Boru, she met with the Ethiopian Water Authority and the elders of Boru.
Until about two years ago, the village, which consists primarily of farmers and institution workers earning a maximum of $50 a month, had been getting its water from the Momay Spring. But a construction project accidentally caused the spring, which is located under a school, to close.
To assist with the project, Union enlisted the expertise of CDM, a national engineering firm with an office in Latham, N.Y. Two engineers there, Paul Cabral and Roy Richardson, met regularly with students to discuss technical issues and provide training.
In Boru, Union’s team will dig test wells, examine water distribution possibilities and perform a health survey of the area. The group leaves Saturday, March 14, and returns two weeks later. Another trip is planned for December.
“Restoring the well will mean that children will no longer have to carry five gallon containers filled with water back to their village on a daily basis,” Bucinell said.
Joining Bucinell and Tenaw in Boru will be Julie Fehlmann ’12, Philip Lambert ’ll and Max Becton ’ll. Cabral, from CDM, also will accompany the group.
Students held a series of fundraisers to help pay for the cost of the trip, which is approximately $8,000; the College also contributed funds.
“This trip exposes students to the human side of engineering,” Bucinell said. “It helps college students see that they can make a difference globally.”
Presidents throughout history have kept lists of political foes. But the Obama White House is the first I am aware of to pick targets based on polls. Even Richard Nixon didn’t focus-group his enemies list.
Team Obama — aided by Clintonistas Paul Begala, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg — decided to attack Rush Limbaugh after poring over opinion research. White House senior adviser David Axelrod explicitly authorized the assault. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned a White House official to coordinate the push. And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gleefully punched the launch button at his podium, suckering the White House press corps into dropping what they were doing to get Mr. Limbaugh.
Was it smart politics and good policy? No. For one thing, it gave the lie to Barack Obama’s talk about ending “the political strategy that’s been all about division” and “the score-keeping and the name-calling.” The West Wing looked populated by petulant teenagers intent on taking down a popular rival. Such talk also shortens the president’s honeymoon by making him look like a street-fighting Chicago pol instead of an inspirational, unifying figure. The upward spike in ratings for Rush and other conservative radio commentators shows how the White House’s attempt at a smackdown instead energized the opposition.
Did it do any good with voters not strongly tied to either party? I suspect not. With stock markets down, unemployment growing, banks tottering, consumers anxious, business leaders nervous, and the economy shrinking, the Obama administration’s attacks on a radio talk show host made it seem concerned with the trivial.
Why did the White House do it? It was a diversionary tactic. Clues might be found in the revelation that senior White House staff meet for two hours each Wednesday evening to digest their latest polling and focus-group research. I would bet a steak dinner at Morton’s in Chicago these Wednesday Night Meetings discussed growing public opposition to spending, omnibus pork, more bailout money for banks and car companies, and new taxes on energy, work and capital.
What better way to divert public attention from these more consequential if problematic issues than to start a fight with a celebrity conservative? Cable TV, newspapers and newsweeklies would find the conflict irresistible. Something has to be set aside to provide more space and time to the War on Rush; why not the bad economic news?
Here’s the problem: Misdirection never lasts long. Team Obama can at best only temporarily distract the public; within days, attention will return to issues that clearly should worry the White House.
Not even Team Obama can forestall unpleasant reality. And among those America now faces is Mr. Obama adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, eclipsing the $2.9 trillion added during the Bush presidency’s entire eight years.
Another reality is that Mr. Obama’s fiscal house is built on gimmicks. For example, it assumes the cost of the surge in Iraq will extend for a decade. This brazenly dishonest trick was done to create phony savings down the line.
Mr. Obama’s budget downplays some programs’ true cost. For example, his vaunted new college access program is funded for five years and then disappears (on paper); the children’s health insurance program drops (on paper) from $12.4 billion in 2013 to $700 million the next year. Neither will happen; the costs of both will be much higher and so will the deficits.
Mr. Obama’s budget also assumes the economy declines 41% less this year and grows 52% more next year and 38% more the year after than is estimated by the Blue Chip consensus (a collection of estimates by leading economists traditionally used by federal budget crunchers). If Mr. Obama used the consensus forecasts for growth rather than his own rosy scenarios, his budget would be $758 billion more in the red over the next five years.
Then there’s discretionary domestic spending, which grows over the next two years by $238 billion, the fastest increase ever recorded. Mr. Obama pledges it will then be cut in real terms for the next nine years. That’s simply not credible.
Then there’s his omnibus spending bill to fund the government for the next six months, laden with 8,500 earmarks and tens of billions in additional spending above the current budget. What happened to pledges for earmark reform and making “meaningful cuts?”
In the face of our enormous economic challenges, top White House aides decided to pee on Mr. Limbaugh’s leg. This is a political luxury the country cannot afford, and which Mr. Obama would be wise to forbid. Or did he not mean it when he ran promising to “turn the page” on the “old” politics?
(Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.)
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — World record-holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia will compete in the 10-kilometer Great Manchester Run in May.
“I like Manchester, it is a good fast course and I’m looking forward to returning,” Gebrselassie said. “It fits perfectly into my program.”
The 35-year-old Ethiopian will attempt to break the course record of 27 minutes, 25 seconds set by Kenya’s Micah Kongo in 2007, which beat Gebrselassie’s old mark by four seconds.
Event manager Andy Caine expects Gebrselassie to challenge his own road race world record for the distance of 27.02 and become the first man to break the 27-minute barrier.
“When Haile competes anything is possible and we’re doing everything we can to help him to do so,” he said. “Course changes have removed six testing turns which in the past have slowed the runners and this will definitely make it a much faster terrain. Also, if he wants pacemakers I’m sure we can provide good ones.”
SUNNYSIDE, WASHINGTON — Mawi Asgedom urged Sunnyside teenagers to set goals, work hard and focus on battles greater than their latest schoolyard spats.
“No matter what happens to you in life, don’t complain,” he told about 200 Sunnyside High School English and history students Wednesday in the school’s auditorium.
Asgedom, 32, was born in northern, rural Ethiopia during a civil war that lasted nearly 30 years. Rebel groups often conscripted boys as young as 12 and men as old as 65, he said, into battle against a socialist military junta.
“They don’t play over there when it comes to war,” he said.
Asgedom’s family of five fled to Sudan when he was 3 and lived three years in a refugee camp with no running water, electricity or paved roads. They were selected in a lottery by World Relief to come to the United States.
The married father of a 4-month-old baby boy considers himself lucky his family stayed together. He knows many that didn’t.
His ordeal wasn’t over. He was thrust into a Chicago-area school speaking only his native language of Tigrigna and bullied by other boys for his ethnic background.
Encouraged by his parents to persevere, Asgedom played sports and excelled in school. He later graduated from Harvard University and delivered the commencement address, with then-Vice President Al Gore sitting next to his mother, Tseg Asgedom, in the front row, he said.
On Wednesday, Sunnyside students alternately laughed at his jokes and fell silent during sad moments of the story, such as when he described how his mother had to chew food and spit it out so his baby sister could eat during their flight from Ethiopia.
Students left inspired to work harder and express more thanks, they said.
Sophomore Maria Cervantes said she sometimes grumbles about how hard high school is socially and academically.
“If I was to put myself in his position, it would be even harder,” she said.
Classmate Ana Guerrero vowed to study more.
“I’m a person that slacks off a lot,” she said with a laugh.
Asgedom chronicled his life saga in his book “Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard.” It’s publication in 2002 earned him a spot on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
The Sunnyside School District purchased 500, giving away signed copies to about 350 to 400 to students and community members, said Dave Rodriguez, a graduation specialist at the high school. The rest will stay at the school for English and history classes.
Rodriguez said about 30 students each from the high school and the middle schools have been studying some of Asgedom’s motivational teachings for several weeks. The speaker met with them for a private workshop earlier in the day.
That’s when he really struck a chord with students, Rodriguez said. For example, many of them also struggle with poverty and displacement.
“That doesn’t have to be an excuse for you not to succeed,” he taught them, Rodriguez said.
The Sunnyside School District spent $12,500 to hire Asgedom, including the cost of 500 of his books. The district spent federal grant money designed to aid students with limited English skills.
KHARTOUM (Sudan Tribine) – A planned trip by the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir to Ethiopia today, for the annual supreme joint committee meeting has been cancelled for unknown reasons.
The pro-government Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website reported that the committee will convene on April 11th in the Ethiopian capital without referring to the meeting that was scheduled for today.
Last month Sudan official news agency (SUNA) reported that Al-Bashir will be leading the Sudanese delegation to Ethiopia on March 10th for the annual supreme joint committee meeting co-chaired by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi… [read more]
HENGELO, THE NETHERLANDS – The organisers of the Fanny Blankers Koen Games announced yesterday that Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie will attack his own World record for the One Hour in Hengelo on 1 June 2009.
The Fanny Blankers-Koen Games is an Grand Prix status meeting as part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour 2009.
Gebrselassie nicknamed ‘Mister Hengelo’ will start for the 11th time in Hengelo, where he broke his first World record in the 5000 metres in 1994.
He first attempted the One Hour run in hengelo in 2002 but had to pull out of the race partway through with an injury.
But last year Running before a near capacity crowd at the Mestsky Stadium at Ostrava’s Golden Spike meeting on 27 June, covered 21,285 metres over the course of 60 minutes to break the previous best, 21,101 metres, set by Mexican Arturo Barrios in La Fléche, France, on 30 March 1991. En route, he also broke the World record for 20,000 metres, covering 50 laps in 56:25.98, well within the previous 56:55.6 also set by Barrios.
Haile Gebrselassie will be guided by his friend and manager Jos Hermens who himself is a former two-time World record holder for the Hour. Hermens clocked-up 20.90765 metres on 28 September 1975 on the track of Papendal near Arnhem, bettering Gaston Roelants 20.784 metres from Brussels, 20 Sept 1972.
The second time Hermens broke the World record was on 1 May 1976 also on the Papendal track with a distance of 20.944,40 metres. With this distance Hermens remains the best European athlete ever over the hour.
Half Marathon attempt in The Hague
Gebrselassie will start coming Saturday (14 March) in the 35 edition of the Fortis City-Pier-City Half Marathon in The Hague. The Ethiopian is going for a World record at the half marathon, which is held by Samuel Wanjiru, who clocked 58:33 on the fast Hague course two years ago. Gebrselassie is trying to run the 27th world record in his career!
This will be the first official trip for the College’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders, a non-profit international humanitarian organization that partners with developing communities to improve their quality of life, primarily through the work of engineers and engineering students.
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — World record-holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia will compete in the 10-kilometer Great Manchester Run in May.
“No matter what happens to you in life, don’t complain,” he told about 200 Sunnyside High School English and history students Wednesday in the school’s auditorium.
HENGELO, THE NETHERLANDS – The organisers of the Fanny Blankers Koen Games announced yesterday that Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie will attack his own World record for the One Hour in Hengelo on 1 June 2009.