I've just added a link list for my Favourite Persian Blogs. My blog link list won't be complete with my Persian writing friends. Although the main visitors here are not reading Persian.
Today I was thinking about my cyber-friends, and I was imagining what would we do if we have an evening together :
Webgard : we go for a drink in some cheap downtown bar. He won't tell me his real name, but we talk about many things and go wandering quietly in NY tube, station to station until dawn.
Makan (The Young Publisher) : we go watching classic movies and a debate would start about wheter selecting Wales or John Ford. Finally, we agree on Hitchcock.
Hoder : he wouldn't have time to spend the evening with me. He would write an entry about my odorless political ideas.
PinkFloydish : No talk, no drink, no dinner. Riding hours and hours in Tehran streets, with Radiohead playing at max volume.
Sayna (The Dark Side of the Moon) : we just travel to 1124 Planet outside the solar system to watch the sunset forty four times everyday.
Soie : We read Salinjer works aloud all the afternoon and the evening in the streets, like lunatics.
I've uploaded 10 more photos of "Our Ancestors/Our Descendants" series. These 10 photos are in Descendants part of this two part collection. Check it out here at Quattero.
Next collection of photos will be about Tehran. Stay tuned...
Hail to the Thief! has been around for a long time since. Right after the presidential election of 2000, angry people have welcomed George Walker Bush with the phrase :
"The phrase 'Hail To The Thief' was coined by protesters at the end of the 2000 US Presidential election, when controversy famously surrounded Bush's rise to office. The battle between Bush and Democrat candidate Al Gore came to a bitter end, with the result in the key state of Florida dogged by recounts, amid allegations of unfairness in the voting process."
Hail to thief organization has own a nice motto, I do really love it :
Seyed Razavi believes that search engine companies would monopolise blogs :
However, centralised access points are ultimately open to monopolisation and political control. Political being defined as inclusive of business objectives which may or may not be consistent with social concerns. The objective of the Distributed Blog Search is political: to rest control from the Internet's gatekeepers and allow the fastest growing online format to decentralise access to content as much as it has decentralised access to publication.
...has some disaster behind. This date reminds us of what has happened to Allende and the people fighting for their freedom. This is a picture from "Salvador Allende Museum" showing a wall with the photos of missing people during Pinochet era.
Memories form another 11th of September; "A Harrowing Account of Escape" which is worth reading, 9/11 survivors' blog.
I've added nine new photos on Quattero. They are the first part of a two part series called "Our Ancestors/Our Descendants". I like this theme very much. See the Ancestors part and stay tuned for the other.
I'll be in Tehran for a week or so and I've arranged a day for wandering in city and taking photos with my friend, Yashar. Will do Vali-e-Asr Ave. (former Pahlavi) and Shemiran in general. Wandering around the streets, taking pictures. I'm so excited about this long walk and the sights which we are going to hunt.
I've had an email from Seyed Razavi about changes made in Blog Street Journal which tells that he has changed the way BSJ works. It was a magazine with a editor board and a group of contributers. Now it's something like Metafilter.
By the way I told Seyed that "I'll be There", and I'll be there writing about Iranian Bloggers as before. This is my last column there written long time before.
Things happen, you know....I owe you a few notes, I believe. One of my friends Pooya told methat I owe him one. It's more than a note actually, It's an essay or something. It's two years that I've quit politics. And he really wants to know why and how this can happen. I just keep telling him "I'm out....extremely out..." and he can't help HITTING ME HARD. I should do something about it.
After all, when I say "the world is worth fighting" - quoting Hemingway in previous post - , I mean something very personal, very near to the soul. It's gotta be something very radical inside, to fight for A BETTER WORLD. The word FIGHT always sounds to us as WAR, why? You can never fight for a better world using Stones, Sticks, Nukes, Guns, blah blah....
Keep thinking about being radical mentally. Natural Born Radical, how does it sound to you?
Canada CBC Radio 3 wants to do a program about Iranian bloggers, and Hoder has invited everybody to take part in this program by answering three questions. The questions and my answers are as follow :
Q. Why do you blog ?
A. Well, I've always been writing here and there. In an amateur magazine, in a student magazine and for an Iranian website. But the freedom I've felt in having a blog and blogging is not comparable with these. It's easy, cheap, global and free. And of course there are a few reasons that can be mentioned for any kind of writing which are self-expression through the words and the feeling of being read by other people, which the latter makes you think about what are you going to say in your text especially with blogging type writings. One click and that's it, your real self is out there to be read by millions.
Q. What do you think you will be doing ten years after now?
A. It's hard being exact telling how the future would be. But I think I'll be continuing my career as a software engineer and keep writing. May be somewhere in future I'd finished my undergoing project on Pink Floyd Persian Encyclopedia and a few other projects.
Q. Three years has been passed of 11 Sep. 2001, what's your opinion about the things happened three years ago ?
A. No one ever thought of such a thing; two planes being hijacked and hit to Twin Towers of World Trade Center. Two, three nights before the coincidence I've dreamed of people falling in a deep abyss, and I could only watch them falling with their mouths open to shout but no voice coming out. When I've seen the breaking news on TV, it has remained me of my nightmare. It was horrible to see the picture of that poor man jumping out of 60th floor. I can only say that the world has changed after 9/11 as happens after every mass killing. We have entered the third millennium and are sorrowfully watching the world changing to a hazardous, hostile place for living. Finally the main question remains, is this world still "worth fighting*" as Hemigway says? Yes, It is. It's always been and It will always be.
* "The world is a good place, it's worth fighting" - Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940.
You saw what has happened to my page?....The right column has been streched because the text output of referrer javascript was long and without any blank space. It has made the browser numb and dumb. The poor app can't find a blank space in text to wrap the line from there. It's happening because the address http://www.enetation.co.uk/comments.php has no space for wrapping it to the next line.
I'll remove the script for a few days. To settle down the problem. May be I should move the script to the bottom of the page...
P.S. - I've found the solution to this overflow problem here. This solution uses html tag DIV in such a way to limit the overflow.
In last two-three days, there were some odd things happening to Webgard's blog The Experience Machine. A few times it was completely unavailable which has made me afraid wheter it's been hacked. And today there is an image with "OUT OF ORDER" at the top and full of Japenese writing with an images ALT text which says : "be back in a sec..."
I think he's putting us on, may be :) .
I was walking in one of the major avenues of Tehran the other day when with total fascination I've seen an advertisement like this :
Which tells about a demolition car racing which is some sort of car race where drivers try to crash into other drivers' cars while their own car remains less damaged. Whitin a flash, I've reminded of the movie, Crash, a story of fetishistic passion for car crashes. Anybody who has seen this movie, describes it as sick and really disturbing for normal audience. And it really is. By the way, I like both J.G.Ballard and David Cronneberg and also have became mesmerized by how these two made a cold hell out of industrial city, Toronto in this movie.
After all, crash race wasn't one of the stuff to wait for them in Tehran. Sex, "Matrix Reloaded", Fashion, Eminem, HIV, eXtasy, Radiohead "Hail to the Thief" are all normal to see here and there. But lovely car crashes...I didn't even dream of it. Although this race - entilted Tehran Crash - has been abandoned by Police because of unknown reasons, but the fact remains that we are jumping the ages. Never had the time to find out what's classic and what's modern, we are in the jungle of post-modernism. Car drivers in the streets of this city still don't know the traffic law and the culture of automobiles completely.
Finally, I believe that, we - Iranians - are talented people for claiming fetishistic approach to anything, anywhere. So beware of highway cultured sick crash dummies!
Accroding to C|NET news onBusinessWeek Online TAMPA Police Dep. in Florida has abandon face recognition system for finding criminals by comparing faces in the crowd with database photos. This system has been highly criticized because of abusing people privacy.
Quote :
"From a security perspective, there's nothing worse than the illusion of security." -- Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union
I'm working on a gothic blog including literal pieces, poems and may be photography. It will be a general blog with concentration on gothic themes. Any ideas or anyone who wants to help?
P.S1 - The gothic blog is not available to visit, yet. I've selected the Blogspot subdomain which is the name of the blog, but no content inside for now.
News Meal
Finally I get myself a XML news feeder software. Matter of fact, in past 2 years I've been a stationary traveller in the cyberland; using different computers in different places for accessing the internet. And that made a liquid user out of me, with no software/hardware dependencies. I usually use web mail and do the job of a newsfeeder myself, surfing every favourite news zines.
But here, in Tehran where I'm staying for my summer holiday, I'm using this single old PC for everything, so I've decided to try a XML news feeder to see wheter it's working good or not.
I've added Metafilter, William Gibson Blog and Google Blog to the list. This XML RDFs is something good for passing the content on the web from censored zones and syndicate this content on a safe zone. Hoder is doing it on Gooya.
You know that's technology, never becomes a habit by hearing about, but becomes an addiction once used.
Staying Awake in Blogs Cafe
Now, it's 3 am. Sleepless again, I'm surf english blogs by Iranian bloggers. And yeah, there are a few things to remember from this nightly surf :
1st stop : On the edge of poems
You left me at 4 pm today.
Sorry, but I’m not sure I'm gonna miss you.
And I'm neither sure if I wanna even try to...
I think I'll better keep the memory, even though I know I wouldn't check it much...
-- From Soie
2nd stop : Whispers.... On my travel down the valley of Iranian blogs, one things comes up at me and that is outdated blogs. All of them have been started hopefully and with a lot of humble writings and dreaming about the future in blogging. But after a period of time, the people behind these blogs, lose interest or get caught badly by life problems and they forget the blog; the beloved once they have whispered the most intimate things in her ears.
3rd stop : Life Deformed
Unfortunately the living conditions in Iran,makes things look so different from what they should be.We have to live such a deformed life. When you get out of all that pressure for a while you can feel that there is a big difference but you see every thing so bleary.Things are so obscure.It suddenly sheds so much light to your life and it reveals a lot of new corners and objects.It makes you so confused in the begining but if you don't get intimidated and do not shut your eyes and keep them open to see and explore these new things and try to buy them costly you will get a good reward.New doors will open up to you and you will find out hopeful prospects of life infront of you.
-- From Mosafer
4th stop : Practical, Pure Laughter!
Yesterday I was telling my freind about the two prank calls (mozahemat telephony) that I ran on my cousin and brother in law in that day. [...] Anyways both calls ended with lots of laughter, and some screaming.
My freind was asking me what was my point of doing such thing?? I couldn't come up with an answer, in fact why not?? When you have a chance for a big laughter why not use it? I was raised into that, into sarchasm, practical jokes, semi stand up comdeis . Humor runs in my family, in fact we believe that there is a gene associated with sense of humor, and in our home unfortunatley my mom doesn't posses that gene.
-- from Well...Me
It seems enough for tonight...gotta go to bed now...the journey in blogs cafe of Persian valley to be continued...
"A number of these groups see the U.N. as an arm of U.S. and they talk about that explicitly. I remember a conversation with someone from Hezbollah who told me, for him, globalization is McDonaldization. Bin Laden talks about the U.N. as part one of the weapons of the United States."
A Transcript to the Great Blackout
Newsweek 25 Aug issue cover story is about the great blackout. Among the articles this one is worth reading; Newsweek - What Went Wrong.
There were this quotation in a part of the feature :
"Our level of tolerance is so low we're always at the edge of being prepared to launch"
-- NORAD spokesman Doug Barton
And I'm wondering how general this sentence can be, describing every aspects of US national affairs. They are on the edge, always on the edge.
Iran and the Bomb : Three Endings
What if Iran just refuse any flash inspection by international agency of atomic energy? Chinese Shijie Xinwen Bao reporter, Lu Ling (via World Press Review ) talks about three endings in the story :
Iran will fight (with US) to the end.
Iran and the United States will reach a secret deal.
Google (v)
There was this hot discussion about using Google (or google) as a verb on William Gibson Forums, and after two-three weeks or so someone came up with this informative post. So wait for google (v), googlophilia, googlophobia, googlewoogle, etc.
More Sc-Fi
One of my usual commenters from Enetation staff has written about Philip K. Dick, sci-fi writer. I've googled his name and found a semi-official site. It was the first time for me, hearing his name. Gotta read a little bit more about him. The link to the site is philipkdick.com - The web site devoted to science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick
