Virtual Realiy

Over the past few years Virtual Reality took center stage in the worlds of education, entertainment, medicine and in a host of other fields.

In this note, however, I wish to touch on some softer aspects of the Virtual Reality term, namely how we perceive reality and how our minds occasionally drift into a world that is bordering on fantasy, be it for something we wish for or, on the other extreme, something we fear.

Needless to say, our level of fantasy is determined, amongst many other things, by the fertility of our minds.

Like a naturally fertile soil in which seeds when sufficiently irrigated and nourished will yield a healthy plant, fertile minds when supported by a depth of experience and imagination will yield good ideas that may include theories or fantasies.

Different nature of soils, e.g. acidic or alkaline, are needed for growing different plants. Likewise, if we think about fertile minds, their ability to produce a theory or a fantasy will depend on the nature of the individual mind. Some will yield theories and some will yield fiction and on a few occasions they may yield both!

Returning to the thought about perception and Virtual Reality, I believe that a novel written by a person with a fertile mind, whether it be romantic, historic fiction, science fiction, etc. or any combination of these, will take you into a virtual reality world which may in turn, depending on the fertility of your mind, help you in perceiving thoughts and ideas and perhaps allowing you to create new ones too!

Hani Badawi
November 9, 2019

Thinking Aloud

A few decades ago when I was embarking on a career in technical research I was unaware of the needed methodology for conducting and expressing my thoughts. Admittedly, I was also fearful of relaying my early thoughts lest they be incorrect or inaccurate.

At that time, the process of “Thinking Aloud” was brought to my attention by my Ph.D. Supervisor (Dr. Krante Anand) who went on to describe the importance of that process in as far as verbalizing one’s technical thoughts with the intent of honing and ultimately refining one’s research skills.

As time progressed, I realized that this was only the first step in him preparing me to enter the world of research. Soon thereafter he proceeded to guide and encourage me to continuously document my research results, to periodically submit my findings to technical journals and to present them at relevant international conferences.

Learning the above process was a lesson that had a profound impact on the evolution of my thoughts over the years and my ability to express them in writing and sharing them with others.

Of course there are other forms of thinking that I learned and used since the formative days of my career. These included amongst others: strategic thinking, critical thinking, lateral thinking and creative thinking. In the process of learning all these diverse forms of thinking, I certainly relied on my previously acquired skill of “thinking aloud”.

Many of the things we do in life are rooted in an experience we were exposed to along our life path and I’m sure that each of you must have had a similar explicit experience or multiple experiences like the one I shared here. Think about it and perhaps you may find that “thinking aloud” is useful!

Note: I owe a debt of gratitude to the late Dr. Krante Anand for his mentoring role and also our friendship that was cut short by his early departure many years ago. May his soul rest in eternal peace.


Hani Badawi
January 23, 2019

Look Inside Yourself

From time to time it is not unusual for us to spit-out critical comments, criticisms and condemnations in view of behavioral patterns and/or policies within our own society/country. I note that these feelings may be expressed with an even higher zeal and a more elevated frequency when we describe what we deem unacceptable behavioral patterns and/or policies related to other societies/countries.

What makes us do that?

The motives differ widely and are not always obvious because they depend on many factors, namely:

1- socio-cultural: (personality, attitude, lifestyle, education, health, religion, wealth, media etc.),

2- political (government, regulations, economy, treaties, constitution, etc.)

3- geographic (resources, terrain, climate, etc.)

It is noteworthy that the above stated three factors with all their sub-factors (and unnamed etceteras) are intertwined in many ways making it virtually impossible for us to reach a definitive conclusion as to what glasses we use to see and perceive the defects within any given society or country.

The more I think about the above, the more I believe that it is a bottomless-pit, because the more thought I invest in trying to understand the motives for these thought declarations, the less conclusions I’m likely to reach!

So, what should we do:

Depending on our individual core values/feelings and common sense inclinations, it would be better to direct our thoughts towards toning down the egotistic feelings and elevating our own values to better serve ourselves, our families and our societies.

Remember that, regardless of which age/social/ethnic/creed/etc. group that we belong to, our leanings, biases, convictions and other feelings may possibly have changed over time. So much so, it is somewhat hypocritical to pass judgment on behavioral patterns that we may have once adopted!

Start with positive, constructive self-criticism, work on self-improvement and back-out of general criticism.

After all, as the saying goes: Charity begins at home!

Hani Badawi
January 6, 2019

Day Dreaming!

Remember those days when we were young and carefree, when our thoughts spontaneously carried us into a future of our own making, when thoughts of feelings, places and things that we imagined transported us into a world that only existed in our mind?

That was the time in our life when our imagination was allowed to wonder freely without the physical boundaries and barriers, in there many shapes and forms, that we were to later encounter!

A very few of us may have had a fertile imagination and whose early dreams may have partially or fully been realized whereas many of us move on beyond our youthful thoughts never to go back for even a short visit of our imaginary world!  In either case, however, our life is inevitably conditioned by many factors which would have been impossible to fathom or foresee at our younger years.

What our minds may do to us at a later phase of our lives is to travel back into an imaginary world where we would conjure up making changes to our lives to effect a different course than the one we ended up charting.  

Whatever our age may be, our day dreaming may serve as a source of self entertainment. The trick is to not let that entertainment lead to disappointment or regret!

Hani Badawi

May 4, 2018

A Proud Moment

I was recently caught by surprise when I was asked by a friend to come up with a story about a time in my career when I experienced a Proud Moment. At first I had a momentary brain freeze and felt like a deer in the headlights! Luckily my memory at this stage of my life remains reasonably vivid, so, upon taking a deep breath I was able to recall one such event and I commenced to narrate my story!

The one that came to my mind took place many years ago when I had just started working for a highly innovative company where my job description entailed supervising a team of brilliant scientists most of whom had just earned their doctoral degrees from very reputable US schools.

I was thrilled by the challenge that the job promised and was amused by what my boss at that time told me. He said “I am relying on you to herd the wild cats in your group”!

Actually, when I had the chance to get to know each member of the group, it turned out that each and every one had a strong opinion about their research ideas and projections albeit some of these converged and others diverged from the vision of the company. In summary, I realized that, whereas they predominantly had fresh innovative ideas, they needed guidance on how to go about managing their ideas and time and aligning these with the company vision and mission too. A tall challenge for them as, in their graduate studies, they did not have to conform to any equivalent limitations and disciplines.

Adding to my challenge, amongst the group members, who were mostly in their mid to late 20’s, there was an older scientist in his late 30’s. Although academically adept, he was described to me by the company management as “stubborn and a poor team-player”! I will refer to him as Dr. Oldman!

At the time I took on the responsibility of managing the group, Dr. Oldman was on probation for not only the above mentioned shortcomings, but also for what was deemed to be a “below average technical performance”! At that point I realized that my job will have challenges beyond my initial impression of what to expect and how to go about it! Furthermore, based on the above shortcomings I was guided by management that I have three months to work with him on a performance recovery plan that, should he not show the expected improvements, he will be asked to look for an other job elsewhere!

At the time I joined the company I had many years of managerial experience under my belt and believed that I had the necessary skills to deal with the Dr. Oldman issue but I still feared that this was going to be a daunting challenge! Remember, this issue was only going to be a part of a bigger picture that entailed managing a group of fifteen young scientists that I needed to coach in addition to the fact that I had to learn and digest the technical details of the company’s business model and associated roadmap!

After a few sleepless nights I decided that I’m determined to devise what’s needed to make this a successful mission.

Fortunately, with the benefit of my previous experience, I was able to balance my time equitably between all of the above job requirements. Amongst many other meetings, I had weekly one-on-one meetings with each member of my group and we jointly set clear goals and tasks with clear timelines for each individual and for the team as a whole. Of course, as you can imagine, my approach for harnessing the best out of each group member needed to be aligned with their specific skill-sets and aptitudes and I’m sure you can imagine that an extra effort needed to be assigned to Dr. Oldman and, indeed, that’s exactly what I did!

Dr. Oldman initially put up some resistance to my prescribed regimen of goal-setting, ratings, etc. but he finally started being respondent by the end of the first month.

Two more months passed and Dr. Oldman continued tirelessly to work with me to prove to himself, to me and to the whole company that he is worthy of retaining his job. So much so, that at the end of his probation period he was able to demonstrate a tremendous comeback and he attained, with flying colors, all his goal targets! Needless to say, at that point I finally breathed a sigh of relief! This however was not the Proud Moment!

The Proud Moment occurred nine months later when, to my heart’s content (and teary eyes!), he received the quarterly award of “Company’s Best Innovator”.

Hani Badawi
April 17, 2018

Our Legacy

Have you ever wondered as to what your legacy will be after you’ve departed from your physical being?

Is it important to leave a legacy behind?

How far in time will one’s legacy live?

How is one’s legacy remembered and by whom?

These are deep and personal questions and I’m raising them here with the intent of stimulating my mind and hopefully yours to ponder further on this subject.

Unlike what historians or biographers do in capturing the legacies of famous, notorious, influential or criminal mortals, as individuals we don’t seem to have the same motivation to document the legacies of our departed family members or friends and the same argument holds true about others doing that for us.

Luckily a very few individuals will keep a diary throughout all or part of their lives and some will even write an autobiography, but these are even fewer and far between.

I suppose we all have memories of our departed family members and friends and, in some way, by reviewing those memories in our own mind and/or by discussing them with others we are somehow generating a verbal and mental image of their legacy. Alas, it is less common that we formulate a written version of our thoughts and we often find ourselves regretting that we did not keep good records of the sayings and doings of our departed ones.

By the same token, memories of our lives as seen by others will follow the same trajectory as the above described one.

I will deviate a little from the topic here to briefly address a physical phenomenon known as radioactive element decay time. All radioactive elements continue to lose their radioactivity over time and the metric that scientist most commonly use is known as decay constant (or half-life). Radiation emitted from the isotopes of the different radioactive elements will decay with different time constants and I won’t take a deeper dive into the physics of this matter any further, but please hold that decay notion!

Bearing all of the above in mind, it is fair to say that the chances of having one’s legacy survive within a fairly narrow circle of friends and family will likely follow a memory decay process analogous to what happens to radioactive matter with differing decay times depending on what continues to be remembered and what was documented during one’s lifetime and/or after one passes on!

Hani Badawi
February 27, 2018

Fresh Air: Experience, Feelings and Thoughts

As yesterday was a very bright and sunny day in Evanston, IL, I was propelled to take a long walk by the Lake with the intention of getting some “fresh air” and breaking loose from the indoor confinement that is often dictated upon me by the usually unfriendly winter weather in this otherwise beautiful and scenic part of the world!

In addition to the reward of breathing in and filling up my lungs with fresh air, my visual senses and appreciation of nature were rejuvenated and my brisk walk reinvigorated my physical functions.

Clarity of the sky and the relatively warmer weather combined with a superb surrounding nature and architecture, all worked together in harmony to create a magical experience prompting me to keep taking photos all along the way!

Photos, lamentably, do not capture the feeling of fresh air!

Begs the question: Is Fresh Air only a physical sensation?

Here’s a thought: We may have a positive encounter or experience in the course of our lives that we may declare as “a breath of fresh air”. I wonder if it’s truly a sensation of fresh air or is it “like” breathing fresh air?

Perhaps the exhilaration derived from the foregoing situations allows us to imagine the feeling that we normally experience when physically breathing clean and otherwise unadulterated fresh air! On the other hand, that exhilaration may simply lead us to take a deeper and more relaxed breath which by some mental magic is truly “fresh air”!

Hani Badawi
February 27, 2018