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Behrooz Parhami's Blog & Books Page
Page last updated on 2022 December 31
This page was created in 2009 as an outgrowth of the section entitled "Books Read or Heard" in my personal page. The rapid expansion of the list of books warranted devoting a separate page to it. Given that the book introductions and reviews constituted a form of personal blog, I decided to title this page "Blog & Books," to also allow discussion of interesting topics unrelated to books from time to time. Lately, non-book items (such as political news, tech news, puzzles, oddities, trivia, humor, art, and music) have formed the vast majority of the entries.
Entries in each section appear in reverse chronological order.
Blog entries for 2022
Blog entries for 2021
Blog entries for 2020
Blog entries for 2019
Blog entries for 2018
Blog entries for 2017
Blog entries for 2016
Archived blogs for 2015
Archived blogs for 2014
Archived blogs for 2012-13
Archived blogs up to 2011
Blog Entries for 2022
2022/12/31 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] A message of hope for the last day of 2022 (see the next item below). [Top center] My year in books: This year, I broke my 2021 record in terms of the number of books read (one book every 3 days). I am also posting more book reviews on Facebook and Twitter, in order to share the reviews posted on GoodReads but not on other media. [Bottom left] From images chosen by New York Times to represent 2022: Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. [Bottom center] Math: Naming the parts of an equation. [Bottom right] Desserts anyone? Cherry-flavored sugar-free Jello, with cherry and pomegranate toppings.
(2) Happy New Year! This is a message we repeat every year, but then find out that the new year is much like the old year: full of challenges and disappointments; injustices and heartbreaks; rough sport and dead ends. Same old same old, as they say. But there are signs that 2023 may actually be different. In the US, fat cats, who have dodged accountability for years, may finally face justice. We may see the end of the brutal Islamic regime in Iran. We may witness Ukrainians prevail over the big bully to their north. Let's not lose hope!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Netanyahu has formed the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israel's history.
- Trump's tax returns released: He paid on average $296K in annual taxes for 2015-2020. [Summary table]
- Barbara Walters, who shattered many glass ceilings in broadcasting, dead at 93.
- IranWire cartoon of the day: Actress Taraneh Alidoosti and her increasingly impotent tormentor. [Image]
- IRGC's Quds Force Commander warns critical journalists that they will be 'hit' sooner or later.
- Iranian soccer players are threatened, harassed, & their families taken hostage, with nary a word from FIFA!
- Santa Barbara Independent publishes a "Year in Photos" issue: Here are some sample shots.
- Words of wisdom: Aging is like climbing a mountain; you get tired as you advance, but your vista expands.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 30, 2011: Iranian cinema and Zionist conspiracies!
- Facebook memory from Dec. 30, 2010: The most germ-ridden items on a restaurant table.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 31, 2019: A wonderful writing course on how to build great sentences.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 31, 2014: How the Himalayas were formed.
(4) Iranian women are being killed on the streets by armed security forces and at home by their families: "Honor" killings continue in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
(5) Iranian officials should be banned from social-media platforms that they block for their people: Mass-murderer Ebrahim Raisi continues to post on Instagram, a platform that his government blocks in Iran. Not only is he not banned, but he has been rewarded with a blue check mark. Disgusting! [Instagram screenshot]
2022/12/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Yesterday was a dry day between two rainy days in my neck of the woods, so I took advantage of the break in rain to walk along the trails of UCSB's North Campus Open Space. [Center] To those of us who grew up in the 1960s, there was just one superstar athlete: Pele, a national treasure of Brazil, a promoter of soccer in the US, and a global face of the sport, is dead at 82. His amazing 1968 bicycle-kick goal in a friendly match against Belgium lives on in framed photos and in the imagination of soccer fans worldwide. [Right] Parnaz Foroutan's novel, The Girl from the Garden (see the last item below).
(2) The people suffer: The 1834 short story "Claude Gueux" contains Victor Hugo's early thoughts on social injustice, which, 30 years later, he would flesh out in his magnum opus, Les Miserables. [English version]
"Gentlemen of the Right, gentlemen of the Left, the great mass of the people suffer! Whether a republic or a monarchy, the fact remains the same—the people suffer! The people are famished, the people are frozen. Such misery leads them to crime: the galleys take the sons, houses of ill-fame the daughters. You have too many convicts, too many unfortunates."
(3) Book review: Foroutan, Parnaz, The Girl from the Garden: A Novel, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Lameece Issaq, Harper Audio, 2015. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
There are actually two girls, not one: A contemporary woman, Mahboubeh, who lives in California, and an aunt, Rakhel, a child bride of the wealthy Malacouti family, who lived in a Jewish community in Kermanshah, western Iran, in mid-20th century. Part of the storyline is a competition between the childless Rakhel and Mahboubeh's mother, Khorsheed, who produces an heir, a vital need of a prosperous patriarchal family.
The author captures well the lives of women as meal-preparing/baby-making machines in traditional male-dominated Iranian society and their bravery and self-actualization under extreme patriarchy. The writing is beautiful and poetic, showing how oppressed women created little joys for themselves in a joyless environment, where women harbor suicidal thoughts for not being able to satisfy an heir-obsessed traditional family.
In addition to how women were oppressed in Iran some seven decades ago, many of them suffering or even dying "from the complications of womanhood," we also learn about social and religious traditions of Jewish Iranians and their highly-restricted and watchful community in a Muslim-majority country.
This book is yet another example of the extraordinary talents of Iranian women authors, who, in the past couple of decades have provided us with a steady stream of fiction and non-fiction titles. Writing provides an outlet for these women's frustrations in being treated as second-class citizens, not only by men but also by traditional, elder women. As I write this review, a feminist revolution is afoot in Iran under the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom." Iranian women are highly educated and serious contributors to literature and poetry, mostly in Persian, but, more recently, also in other languages, as well as to other art forms. Their writing, acting, painting, and other talents are being recognized internationally, to the chagrin of the ruling mullahs, their cronies, and other patriarchs.
2022/12/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Pianist extraordinaire: Ofeliya Parto, Iran's first female pianist, is one of the brightest students of maestro Javad Maroufi (9-minute video). What a shame that the Islamic Republic limited her performances to special concerts for women. [Top center] World architecture: Baghdad National Library, under development (AMBS Architects). [Top right] A playful Persian song that was really a critique of the prevailing social and economic conditions in the 1930s Iran: "Mashdi-Mamdali's Auto" featured in this playful song was an old, worn-out, poorly-maintained Ford bus, without a horn or seats, that had frequent flat tires, thus endangering passenger safety (3-minute video). [Bottom left] Evolution of the alphabet: From proto-Sinaitic, through Phoenician, Archaic Greek, Archaic Latin, & Roman, to Modern Latin. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: The fate of Trump's sand castle! [Bottom right] Book about Galileo (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- During negotiations two years ago, the Taliban indicated that Islam wants women to learn and work! [Tweet]
- After a blizzard, Niagara Falls turns into a winter wonderland! [2-minute video]
- FIFA World Cup winners by year of win: Most-recent-first. [Chart]
- Quote of the day: "Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas." ~ Marie Curie
(3) Book review: Livio, Mario, Galileo and the Science Deniers, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Jonathan Davis, Simon & Schuster, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Mario Livio is an accomplished astrophysicists who has also written many books to popularize science. I have previously reviewed his wonderful 2009 book, Is God a Mathematician? I also have Livio's Why: What Makes Us Curious (2017) on my to-read list.
Livio states three reasons for adding yet another book to the many books about Galileo Galilei: Putting Galileo's work in the context of modern astrophysics, by someone who is an active researcher in the field; Using Galileo's tale as a reminder of the importance of freedom of thought, in the wake of the renewed conflict between religion & science; Popularizing Galileo's contributions in the tradition of Galileo himself, who wrote his research results in Italian instead of Latin, the preferred scientific language of his day.
According to Livio, Galileo is the father of the scientific method, that is, of the process of formulating theories and trying to confirm or falsify them through experimentation. He performed many experiments and meticulously recorded their results, at a time when accurate measuring instruments did not exist. For his confirmation of the Copernican heliocentrism theory (that the Earth revolved around the Sun and that it was not the center of the universe), Galileo got in trouble with the church, being forced in old age to recant his beliefs and having to live under house arrest over the final decade of his life.
Galileo introduced us to many laws of nature and facts about the universe. Among his investigations and discoveries are the moons of Jupiter, phases of Venus, occurrence and variations in Sun spots, and mountains on Earth's moon. He also did much in the domain of laws of motion, such as how objects of different sizes and weights free-fall or slide/roll on inclined surfaces; theories that were later completed and refined by Newton.
Livio takes Galileo's persecution by the church as an opportunity to discuss equally absurd modern denials of evolution and climate change, concluding that we likely can't change the views of science deniers by supplying them with more data and evidence.
At times, the reader/listener may be overwhelmed by what seems to be too much information, such as details of conversations and back stories. But the many nuggets of information make it worthwhile to endure the elaborate details and the rather confusing, non-chronological coverage of ideas.
2022/12/27 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The time for royalty and royal titles has passed (see the last item below). [Top center] Memes of the day on Iran: Themullahs continue their harsh treatment of academics, artists, and other dissidents. A wave of arrests and calls for more executions of young protesters has the international community up in arms. [Top right] Miscellaneous memes from around the Internet, including an Iranian official telling the French police, with a straight face, to exercise self-control against protesters, wishful thinking, science humor, and finding out that the new Taliban = the old Taliban (the same medieval views about women). [Bottom row] Math puzzles: Proving that two angles are equal and evaluating algebraic expressions.
(2) The Nightmare after Christmas: There is the 1993 American movie "The Nightmare before Christmas" and there is the nightmarish experience of US travelers after Christmas 2022, caused by extreme weather across the country and associated flight delays & cancellations.
(3) Borowitz Report (humor): Elon Musk named most-exhausting person of 2022. The Twitter CEO wrested the title from Donald J. Trump, who had won the honor every year from 2016 to 2021.
(4) January 6 Committee's final report: I have been reading the 845-page report. Here is a small portion of the report containing two of the many examples of Donald Trump's willful & malicious false claims.
(5) A word game based on Wordle: An initial pattern is given to you, with each letter represented by a colored polygon. The pattern tells you about unique letters and possible repetitions. The rest is like Wordle. You guess a word and are told about which of your letters are correct and in the proper place and which ones are correct but not in the proper place. You have six guesses to discover the intended word. Here is an example, with colored polygons replaced by letters: SBDDHBP. The intended word has two repeated letters.
[Play on-line]
(6) Bird & burger: Photographed on Monday 12/26 outside a McDonalds restaurant in Goleta, CA, this seabird showed little interest in the hamburger it found, focusing instead on playing with the cardboard box!
(7) Prince Harry, Prince Reza, and hypocrisy: I am no fan of the idea of "royalty" and thus detest the titles prince and princess. What is this idea of "royal blood" that magically flows in your veins, when, for example, your grandfather or mother was a "commoner"?
Recent news coverage of Harry has told us that he too has abandoned the "royal" designation and wishes to live an ordinary life with his wife, Meghan. Yet, his name appears as "Prince Harry" on the cover of his forthcoming memoir, Spare. You can't have your cake and eat it too!
Reza Pahlavi, too, is referred to as "Prince Reza" by his cronies and followers. He has said on many occasions that he does not wish to rule Iran as a king but simply wants to be a facilitator of Iran's transition to a secular democracy. So, why is he all-smiles, or at least indifferent, when he is introduced as "the prince"?
2022/12/26 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Actress Taraneh Alidoosti: Don't think that I am in prison. This place isn't a prison but a university, where I have been learning a lot. It is full of professors, college students, poets, doctors, engineers, and athletes. [Top center] Robert De Niro expresses deep concern about the dafety of imprisoned Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti. #WomanLifeFreedom [Top right] A Sharif University of Technology professor has been summoned by Iran's Intelligence Ministry. [Bottom row] Say their names: Some of the hundreds of women, men, and children murdered by Islamic Republic of Iran's security forces.
(2) Do not take Ozempic for weight loss: You have likely seen Ozempic ads on TV, because they run several times a day on multiple channels. Among its side effects is weight loss, except that the ad seems to shamelessly promote weight loss as a benefit, not a side effect. You can imagine that desperate overweight people, having tried many diets and meds with no success, are pressuring their doctors to prescribe it. Don't fall for this scheme, as your body will go through hell.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dictators are each other's best friends: Turkey set to deport dissident Kurds facing execution in Iran.
- Data breach: A military database of fingerprints and iris scans sold on eBay for only $68!
- Two female Iranian chess masters ditch government-mandated hijabs in international competition. [Tweet]
- A curious mathematical near-identity discovered by John Conway in 1937: e^π – π ~ 20 (~ 19.9991).
(4) Please be super-vigilant about what you post or re-post these days: Iran's mullahs and their enablers have begun spreading lies about the composition of UN's fact-finding commission on the violation of human rights in Iran. Please do not help spread these lies! [Tweet, in Persian]
(5) The end of programming as we know it: "The end of classical computer science is coming, and most of us are dinosaurs waiting for the meteor to hit." Thus begins a Viewpoint column by Matt Welsh in the January 2023 issue of Communications of the ACM. Elaborating on this shocking thesis, Walsh writes that a shift in the underlying definition of computing is coming. "The new atomic unit of computation becomes not a processor, memory, and I/O system implementing a von Neumann machine, but rather a massive, pre-trained, highly adaptive AI model." In future, we won't be telling computers how to do things through writing code, but will teach them to do what we want them to do.
[Video teaser]
2022/12/25 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] On this Christmas Day 2022, I wish every one of my family members and friends the happiest of holidays and a peaceful transition to 2023. May the new year bring us changes that we need throughout the world, particularly in the US and Iran! [Top center] Lights of remembrance: Jewish families celebrating the seventh night of Hanukkah during World War II (1943) in Netherlands. [Top right] This year, the last night of Hanukkah coincides with Christmas Day: Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas to all! Yalda Night goodies also appear in this photo from 2014. [Bottom left] IEEE Computer magazine's December 2022 issue has a special section on smart and circular cities: Here, circular does not refer to the city's geometric shape but to recycling and sustainable consumption. [Bottom center] As we prepare to move forward to 2023, Iran's Islamic regime and the Taliban in Afghanistan continue their backward march toward the 7th century! Iran talks about executing and cutting the hands & feet of dissidents and the Taliban equate women's education with prostitution. [Bottom right] Cover feature of CACM's January 2023 issue (see the next item below).
(2) The many faces of resilience: This is the title of an article by Ted G. Lewis in CACM'c January 2023 issue. In complex systems, the occurrence of a small fault can have disastrous consequences. This fragility (or its opposite, that is, resilience) must be quantified if we hope to assess and compare systems. Interestingly, efficiency is the enemy of resilience, because removing redundancies reduces resilience. Perrow's and Bak's pioneering work in this area showed that resilience/fragility of complex systems depends, in part, on network topology or structure and can be quantified by the network's spectral radius. [Video teaser]
(3) Russia's war on Ukraine has killed tens of thousands: It has also devastated arts & culture by destroying or seriously damaging 340 museums, monuments, theaters, and libraries. [New York Times]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Wells Fargo pays $1.7 billion to settle claims about banking violations that harmed millions of customers.
- Java is a relatively small island that has more people than Russia, the world's largest country by area.
- Math puzzle: Given a^b = 343, b^c = 10, and a^c = 7, find the value of b^b.
- Having finished the distribution of his presents, Santa Claus joins the #WomanLifeFreedom movement!
(5) No one wants to be in Merrick Garland's shoes: The US Attorney General is walking a tightrope and is being blamed from all sides for walking at all and for not walking fast enough. Bringing a case against Trump and losing in court would be disastrous for him, for the Biden administration, and for the country. So, he wants to amass enough evidence to make the case a slam-dunk. It does seem that he has no choice other than indicting, given his statements that no one is above the law, but he is taking his time to do it the right way.
(6) US Congress passes the Masih Alinejad HUNT Act against the Islamic Republic of Iran: The Harassment and UNlawful Targeting Act was inspired by the Islamic regime's efforts to kidnap the dissident journalist.
2022/12/23 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] My minimalist Christmas decorations for this year (a difficult one, in many ways): A small tree atop a stack of books! [Top center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Mr. Messi, you have an impressive resume, but where do you see yourself in four years?" [Top rigth] Photo of the day: A historic meeting in Washington, DC, between Presidents Zelensky & Biden. [Bottom left & center] Major housing developments in Santa Barbara (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Show that in this diagram, the areas of the magenta square and green rectangle add up to the area of the blue square.
(2) Santa Barbara's La Cumbre Plaza will be the site of major housing developments: The Macy's building, SB's only remaining large department store, & its adjacent parking lots (enclosed in a red box) will be demolished and turned into ~700 condos. In a separate development by a different land-owning family, the vacant Sears building & its parking lots (seen at the bottom of the map) will be turned into more housing units.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection releases its 845-page final report.
- Severe winter storm engulfing much of the US causes travel disruptions and power outages.
- An eye-opening timeline of Donald Trump's statements & (in)actions regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
- Dissent movements and expectations of the media: Persian discussion on BBC's Pargar Program.
- BBC Persian program "In Other Words": Dr. Nayereh Tohidi on the #WomanLifeFreedom movement.
- College textbooks' content on climate change has gone down compared with a decade ago. [Report]
- UCSB's mega-dorm project is back in the news: A new report considers it to be a safety threat.
- Programmers Betty Jean Jennings (left in photo) and Fran Bilas operate ENIAC's main control panel in 1945.
- Why/How aircraft fuel is stored inside the wings. [8-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 23, 2016: Funny retelling of how US states got their 2-letter abbreviations.
(4) The Four-Corners Monument: A spot where you can stand in four different US states at once (Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico). [2-minute video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLgbIIXjgUo
(5) From Seinfeld star to computer security champion: John O'Hurley has traded in his role as a fictional CEO of a clothing company to become a tech entrepreneur working in the digital ID authentication domain.
(6) Extreme waste in the use of ICs: The typical CPU chip has a lifetime measured in decades, but it is used for only a few years, as the device/system it serves (cell phone, laptop, server) becomes obsolete. CPU chips are expensive and their production requires quite a bit of energy. "Reusing processors would create a 'food chain' of electronic devices that amortizes the energy required to build chips over several computing generations." [Based on "Life-Cycle Aware Computing: Reusing Silicon Technology", IEEE Computer, December 2007]
2022/12/22 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Three Yalda Night programs, yesterday and today (see items 2-4 below). [Bottom left] My Persian poem for Yalda Night in this year of #WomanLifeFreedom revolution. [Bottom center] Happy first day of winter! [Bottom right] Meme of the day: A bloody Yalda Night in Iran!
(2) Farhang Foundation's Yalda Night cultural program: Last night, Gord Afarid recited poetry from Shahnameh and offered interpretations in the style of minstrels ("nagh'ghals"). [44-minute recording]
(3) Socrates Think Tank Yalda Night event: Last night's program, with 140 attendees, included a 24-minute video presentation describing Yalda Night's history & traditions, musical performances, and poetry recitation.
(4) Talangor Group talk: Tonight's main talk, "Yalda and Christmas, Two Sides of the Same Coin," by Dr. Bahram Grami, was preceded by a brief presentation in memory of dissident Iranian poet Baktash Abtin and a brief description of Hanukkah and its traditions. There were ~75 attendees.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biden signs legislation that encourages the use of quantum computing for more-secure communications.
- Drones will help analyze gases released from volcanoes to assess the likelihood of an impending eruption.
- Mars InSight Rover mission ends: Dust accumulation on the solar panels has led to insufficient power.
- Math puzzle: If (x + sqrt(1 + x^2))(y + sqrt(1 + y^2)) = 1, what is the value of (x + y)^2?
- Facebook memory from Dec. 22, 2015: Day 2 of our trip to France on vacation over the Christmas holidays.
(6) Justice served, after many decades: A former secretary, now 97, who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp, has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,500 people.
(7) Europe to get its first exa-scale supercomputer next year: The 500-million-euro JUPITER system will be installed at Germany's Forschungszentrum Julich research institute.
(8) Robotic innovation: Thirteen mini-bots attached in a snakelike chain, which can slither and sidewind like a snake or transform into a hexagon to tumble downslope, will help explore lunar and other unlevel terrain.
(9) Regime critics on Iran's state TV: Once in a while, a talk-show host or producer invites a guest who derides the condition of the economy or criticizes specific government policies. Dictatorial regimes do this from time to time to show that they are open to criticism and care about people's problems. On occasion, the critic goes too far and says things that top authorities don't like. When this happens, the program's host or producer is punished, losing his job in many cases. This 7-minute video clip offers an example, where the host tries to push back on the guest's criticism, but apparently doesn't go far enough to save his own skin!
2022/12/21 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Yalda Night! (see the next item below) [Top center & right] Some post-World-Cup trivia: Countries that have won the title since 1930 (only eight) and the number of championships. [Bottom row] Tuesday's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk and holiday banquet (see the last item below).
(2) Yalda Night: Iranians celebrate the longest night of the year occurring at winter solstice (actually the day or sunrise after this darkest night), because in ancient times they believed that evil forces were strongest on this longest night of the year and they began to weaken over the following days and months. Let's hope that the evil forces of Iran's murderous Islamic regime weaken and disappear from the face of the Earth.
(3) Ukraine's international campaign: On his first trip outside Ukraine since the Russian invasion began, President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the White House and address the US Congress today.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Taliban bar women from college classes: Public executions and beatings of women are also back.
- Northern California shaken by a magnitude-6.4 quake: At least 2 are dead.
- Congressional committee decides to release six years of Donald Trump's tax returns to the public.
- Iran and Russia are investing $20 billion to build a trade route to circumvent sanctions.
- Anti-Semitic leaflets distributed in the Mesa neighborhood of Santa Barbara.
- Eight teen girls met on-line and then swarmed a 59-year-old man in Toronto, stabbing him to death.
- King Charles to become only the second British monarch to be depicted on currency.
- Quote of the day: "Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just." ~ Victor Hugo
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Roland Geyer (UCSB, Bren School) spoke tonight under the title "The Business of Less: The Role of Companies and Households on a Planet in Peril." There were ~40 attendees for the talk and the associated Holiday Banquet.
Since its inception thirty years ago, environmental sustainability has been based on the concepts of "eco-efficiency" and "win-win." Despite countless eco-efficiency and win-win efforts across the world, the state of the natural environment has further degraded instead of improved. Dr. Geyer began his talk by defining four periods that preceded today's situation.
- The rise of mass production and its attendant economy of scale, as exemplified by Ford Model-T.
- The rise of mass pollution, as city after city in the world became nearly unlivable (London, Los Angeles).
- The rise of mass resistance, as people began to see the scale of environmental disasters (Earth Day).
- The rise of corporate sustainability, or the misguided idea that businesses can be part of the solution.
Dr. Geyer explained why our current approach to environmental sustainability was doomed to fail and introduced a new set of principles that together provide a road map, for businesses and for households, to a world in which human prosperity and a healthy environment are no longer at odds.
As an example, eco-efficiency hasn't worked, because we tend to use the environmental-impact gains to make/use more of everything. Another problem is measuring impact in relative terms (per pair of sneakers, or per piece of garment). Such a relative gain is easily wiped out by a significant growth in the market.
There are a few signs of hope, though. Improvement in technology, for example, is making recycling easier and more cost-effective. Dr. Geyer recommended a visit to the SB-County-operated Tajiguas landfill (26 miles west of the city of Santa Barbara, along US 101), and its state-of-the-art recovery center, with some of the equipment imported from Europe.
[IEEE CCS event page]
[Speaker's personal Web page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2022/12/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Escher-style Rubik's Cube (demo). [Top center & right] Interesting buildings: The library at University City in Shenzhen, China, and Etihad Museum in Dubai. [Bottom row] A few shots of the sunset from inside Amtrak Train 11: Near Lompoc, on southbound route from San Jose to Santa Barbara. I shot this 1-minute video on one of the train cars which was devoted to viewing, with seats unassigned.
(2) Revoking Entry Granted to Iranian Mullahs and Elites (REGIME) Act: The US to revoke visas of murderous Islamic Republic officials and their children.
[Tweet]
(3) Watershed agreement to prevent the loss of nature worldwide: Some 200 countries have pledged to protect nearly a third of Earth's land & oceans as a refuge for the planet's remaining wildlife by the end of the decade.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Islamists' refrain (cartoon): "Quick! Say Islam is the religion of peace and friendship, or I'll kill you!"
- Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as a young man and in old age.
[Photos]
- Free PDF book: Behind the Mulberry Tree: A Novel (in Persian), by Ahmad Pouri. [Download]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 19, 2019: On the importance of truth and freedom of the press.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 19, 2013: Funny answers to legitimate test questions.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 19, 2010: On loving it when the Persian language is butchered by foreigners.
(5) Iran's Islamic regime has set up a Web site for people to report their complaints & demands: Mullahs think they are clever. They want dissidents to self-report, instead of being pursued and brought in by agents!
(6) Iran's Islamic "justice" and its scare/revenge tactics: While murderers and rapists have been on death row for years, two young street protesters were executed within 2-3 weeks of their arrests. Why the rush?
2022/12/18 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The 8-day Jewish Festival of Lights begins at sundown: Happy Hanukkah! [Top center] Facebook memory from Dec.18, 2013: Baby mobile for Iranian mullahs! [Top right] Inventor of precast pipe in Canada sits inside it during a test to boost confidence about its strength. [Bottom left] Dining at Sunnyvale's Chelokababi, famous for its Persian cuisine in the SF Bay Area. Some news clips about the joint are displayed. [Bottom center & right] San Francisco's Twin Peaks Park: Home to communications towers, a water reservoir, and fantastic views of SF Bay, downtown, and Golden Gate Bridge (video shot on the way down). And here are some photos (Batch 1, Batch 2) of interesting buildings I shot on San Francisco streets.
(2) Argentina defeated France 3-3 (4-2 on PKs) to claim the 2022 World Cup: In an exciting match, France came back from a 0-2 deficit and again from 2-3 to send the match into PK shootout. [5-minute highlights] Argentina & France each had two World Cup titles to their credit and were hoping to win a third championship. The game has been hailed as a classic and arguably the most-exciting match in World Cup history.
(3) World Cup third-place match: Croatia prevailed over Morocco 2-1. It wasn't a pretty game, but both sides put a lot of heart into it. [4-minute highlights]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Taraneh Alidoosti, popular actress of Oscar-winning film, arrested in Iran.
- Number of museums is one indicator of culture & respect for history: Countries with most museums
- Christmas decorations on side streets, off Mission Blvd., in Fremont, California: Photos (Batch 1, Batch 2)
- Math puzzle: Each letter represents a different decimal digit. What is PICNIC? WHITE + WATER = PICNIC
- Math puzzle: Find the probability that one bucket is empty after putting 5 balls into 5 buckets at random.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 18, 2021: Patriarchy and the complicity of "modern" women.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 18, 2018: "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
(5) Conflict of interest: While serving as US president, Donald Trump had $20 million of undisclosed debt to a company with ties to North Korea. [Source: Vanity Fair]
2022/12/16 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] On a metro car in Tehran: The diversity of Iranian women on full display. Going hijabless is becoming more common, but it is still an act of defiance and courage. I wonder whether hijabs will persist if they aren't brutally enforced. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Iranian mullahs reportedly have their Venezuelan bank accounts and visas ready. [Top right] Having lunch in Mountain View, California, at Ramen Izakaya Yu-Gen, with two of my three children (at a noverlty shop after lunch). [Bottom left] Islamic authorities in Iran, both those who ordered the shooting of street protesters and judges who issued death sentences in kangaroo courts, will someday face Justice in international tribunes. [Bottom center] Visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, today: See if you can decode the ASCII message on the wall. [Bottom right] An IBM 1401 installation and a modern server in a data center, at Computer History Museum. Here are 8 more batches of photos from the Museum exhibits. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
(2) A giant 16-meter aquarium in Berlin's Dom Aquaree hotel collapses: At least two people were injured. One million liters of water and 1500 exotic fish from 50 species spread throughout the building.
[Tweet]
(3) Freedom of speech? Twitter has suspended the accounts of at least half a dozen journalists from CNN, NYT, WaPo and other outlets, owner Elon Musk accused the reporters of posting 'basically assassination coordinates' for him and his family. [Washington Post report]
(4) Aida Rostami murdered by Iran's Islamic regime: The 36-year-old medic was treating protesters in Ekbatan and other western neighborhoods of Tehran until she disappeared earlier this week. Her tortured body was handed over to her family a day later.
(5) Quote of the day: "To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." ~ Nelson Mandela
(6) A final thought: There have been suggestions that Iranians around the world should forego traditional celebrations such as Yalda Night and Nowruz in honor of those who have perished during street protests and their aftermath. I believe that such celebrations are essential to maintaining our Iranian identity in the face of the Arab and Islamic culture forced upon us by the mullahs. Let's boycott Islamic mourning ceremonies instead!
2022/12/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "UCSB Reads" book selection officially announced: My review of Happy City. [Center] The Mathematics that Power Our World (see the next item below). [Right] Bill Bryson's The Body: A Guide for Occupants (see the last item below).
(2) Book review: Khoury, Joseph and Gilles Lamothe, The Mathematics that Power Our World: How Is It Made? World Scientific, 2016.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, with the dual goal of motivating the study of mathematics and explaining how things work, is targeted at advanced high-school students, undergraduates, and teachers. The five areas covered illustrate the use of diverse mathematical methods:
- What makes a calculator calculate?
- Basics of data compression, prefix-free codes, and Huffman codes
- The JPEG standard
- Global positioning system (GPS)
- Image processing and face recognition
In some cases (as in calculators and GPS), we are aware that math is at play underneath our user experience. In others, the math is hidden from us, but is no less important. All five areas are covered in sufficient depth to make the topic understandable and to inspire additional investigations, for example, through programming assignments or practical projects.
The 37-page Chapter 1 on calculators is made available by the publisher as a free PDF file.
(3) "Cave of Forgotten Dreams": I previously posted about Cosquer Cave in Marseille, France, whose underwater entrance has led to its preservation in pristine condition for more than 27 millennia. A comment on my Twitter post led me to a 2010 documentary film by Werner Herzog about another cave in the same region of France (Chauvet Cave). This Persian podcast discusses Herzog's film in some detail.
(4) Book review: Bryson, Bill, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In his engaging style that always draws the reader in, Bryson begins by playing the game of estimating how much it would cost in terms of raw material to build an average-sized human body, if we were to buy the elements needed (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and so on). Most of the items are fairly cheap, but there are also expensive elements that run the tab to around $120,000, excluding tax and labor. This isn't a high price for building a human body, but it still surprises many who expect a significantly lower price tag.
Wikipedia offers an interesting visualization regarding the mass of various elements in the human body. If you start from the feet, the 65% mass of oxygen takes you to the waist. Add 18% for carbon and 10% for hydrogen, and you get to the lower neck. At 3% of our mass, nitrogen corresponds to the neck. The rest of the elements collectively cover the head.
What Bryson's award-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything did for science, this book does for the wonderous human body. He covers everything, from the numerous bacteria species that help us survive and thrive, through our hard-working heart and amazing brain, to a mother's nipples gauging microbes in her baby's saliva in order to adjust the antibody content of her milk.
Intermixed with facts and figures (such as why 2/3 of men go bald as they age) and mind-blowing feats (such as a flight attendant surviving a 10,000-meter fall, cushioned by fir trees) the reader finds a wide array of useful information about lifestyles, diets, and their sociopolitical causes and remedies. We learn, for example, that the US healthcare system has twice as many financial administrators as physicians and that UK's austerity measures during the 2010s is implicated in ~120,000 preventable deaths.
Alongside advice on what to do to help the body along, Bryson also busts some myths, including the irrational fear of MSG and our obsession with antioxidants, promoted by a $2-billion-a-year industry. Rather than obsess over heart disease and cancer, we should be worried about the continuing overuse of antibiotics and future infectious diseases brought about by antibiotics-resistant bacteria. We need massive investment in research to discover new antibiotics.
Reminding us that our body is a catalog of wonders, Bryson provides much information on how each body part works and how the various parts fit together and evolve as we journey through life. Instead of celebrating this magical gift, many of us tend to destroy it by minimal exercising and maximal eating. Bryson thus leaves us with the message to eat a tad less and move a bit more. It takes surprisingly little effort to take full advantage of the body's wonderous abilities.
2022/12/14 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The voice of Iran's feminist revolution is being heard: The Islamic Republic of Iran has been kicked out from UN Women's Rights Commission. And Berlin, Germany, like many other cities around the world, is spreading the #WomanLifeFreedom message. [Center] Two Kurdish brothers from the city of Oshnaviyeh in Iran: #FarhadTahaZadeh & #FarzadTahaZadeh face imminent execution. [Right] Some of the hundreds of protesters killed on the streets in Iran's late-2022 uprising (Source: Amnesty International).
(2) World Cup semifinals: The first of two semifinal matches, played on Tuesday, had Argentina (a perennial powerhouse and twice-champion) play Croatia (a weaker team, but a finalist in 2018). Argentina took the lead with a PK by Lionel Messi and sealed its 3-0 victory with two goals by Julian Alvarez. [4-minute highlights]
The second of two semifinal matches, played today, had France (1998 & 2018 champion) face Morocco (a Cinderella team that is the first African team ever to reach the semifinals). Despite heroic effort by Morocco and many chances to score, France's experience prevailed, 2-0. [4-minute highlights]
So, the championship match is set between Argentina and France on Sunday 12/18, 7:00 AM PST (Fox TV). The third-place match will be played by Croatia and Morocco on Saturday 12/17, 7:00 AM PST (Fox TV).
(3) An important scientific breakthrough: US Department of Energy scientists demonstrate the first-ever fusion reaction that yields more energy than the reaction requires. Practical application of this proof-of-concept, which is how the Sun produces energy, will take many years. [A reaction to my tweet about this story]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Did you know that Canada & Denmark, which are located in two different continents, share a land border?
- Hila Sedighi, whose protest poems made her famous & got her in trouble with Iran's mullahs, speaks up.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 13, 2014: On the impossibility of arguing with conspiracy theorists.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 13, 2012: The coconut craze, as seen 10 years ago.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 13, 2012: Hugo's Fantine character remains relevant today.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 14, 2014: With family at Darband Restaurant in Thousand Oaks.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 14, 2009: The family celebrates the third night of Hanukkah at my uncle's.
(5) Adios fall quarter 2022! Today, I finished evaluating 14 research papers submitted by my students for the graduate course ECE 257A (Fault-Tolerant Computing), tabulated the grades, and reported the grades to the Registrar. The research focus was fault tolerance and robustness in biological systems, whose attributes may allow us to build ultra-reliable biologically-inspired systems (course Web page, with research topics). I am ready to go into holiday mode, beginning with a 5-day train trip to the SF Bay Area, before starting to prepare for winter 2022, when I will be teaching another graduate course, ECE 254B (Parallel Processing).
(6) The following quote is from Victor Hugo's 1829 novella "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" (French: "Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne"), which recounts the thoughts of a man condemned to die. Hugo was a stern critic of the death penalty.
"Here I must add that, in each social crisis, of all scaffolds, the political one is the most abominable, the most fatal, the most mischievous, the most necessary to extirpate. In revolutionary times, beware of the first head that falls. It excites the sanguinary appetite of the mob." [The quote in Persian]
(7) Final thought for the day: "The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves." ~ Victor Hugo
2022/12/12 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A cave with 27,000-year-old drawings, whose entrance is 36 meters under water: The Cosquer Cave is located in Marseille. [Center] Islamists' worries about women (see the next item below). [Right] Nasser Kanani's Al-Khwarizmi: The Founder of Decimal Arithmetic (see the last item below).
(2) A big worry of Islamist politicians in Iran: One of them has mused, "What are we supposed to do if a girl opens her embrace to an outsider (a man not related to her)?"
Me: Don't worry about this from your side. No girl will open her embrace to a man with your attitude & looks!
(3) Annie Ernaux, Nobel Laureate in Literature 2022, delivers her award lecture: She said that she writes not for specific audiences but from her own experience, aiming to avenge her people (the working class) and her sex. "We see it today in the revolt of women who have found the words to disrupt male power and who have risen up, as in Iran, against its most archaic form. Writing in a democratic country, however, I continue to wonder about the place women occupy in the literary field. They have not yet gained legitimacy as producers of written works."
[English text of the lecture, delivered in French]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Second protester executed in Iran: Majid Reza Rahnavard, 22, was accused of "waging war against God."
- World Cup deaths: A second journalist dies while covering the soccer World Cup in Qatar.
- Three-quarters of the US is covered in snow: This is the most widespread coverage in 17 years.
- Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law awarded to Mahsa Amini & people of Iran.
- Math puzzle: Solve the trigonometric equation (sin x)^5 + (cos x)^7 = 1.
(5) Kanani, Nasser, Al-Khwarizmi: The Founder of Decimal Arithmetic, in Persian, Ketab-e Daneshgahi, 2018. [ISBN: 978-600-99958-0-6] [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Khwarizmi or Al-Khwarizmi are the commonly-used short names for an Persian polymath, whose full name is Abu J'afar or Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi [ca. 780-850 CE]. His name's final part specifies that he was from Khwarizm, a large oasis region in western Central Asia, located just to the south of the (former) Aral Sea and to the north of the northeastern corner of today's Iran. Few details of al-Khwarizmi's life are known with certainty. We know that he must have studied mathematics and astronomy as an adolescent, since as a young man he was already an accomplished mathematician and astronomer. In the course of his academic training, he must also have become familiar with manuscripts written in Pahlavi and Sanskrit.
Among Al-Khwarizimi's credits are the invention of algebra (a term coming from the Arabic "al-jabr"), putting geography on a firm scientific footing through the compilation of longitudes and latitudes of many localities in a book whose title translates to "Book of the image of the earth," and authorship of several other books on mathematics and astronomy. The word "algorithm" (from Old French "algorisme" and Medieval Latin "algorismus") is also a modified form of Al-Khwarizmi's name.
Al-Khwarizimi, who lived at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, introduced the Arabic numerals, or more accurately the Hindu-Arabic numerals, to Europeans. Scientists of the House of Wisdom translated scientific and philosophical treatises into Arabic and also produced original publications that were translated into other languages. Thus, there was a healthy exchange of ideas between Islamic scholars and their European counterparts.
There is no doubt that Al-Khwarizmi was the greatest mathematician of his time; perhaps of all time, when one takes the context and circumstances into account. Al-Khwarizmi's treatise on Hindu-Arabic numerals, where he invented the use of zero as a place-holder in a positional notation, was lost, but a Latin translation, which was not faithful to the original, survived and provided a valuable source for Western scholars. As one example, a method to extract square-roots is known to have been in the original, but not in the Latin translation.
2022/12/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Three of the hundreds of youth/children killed by Iran's brutal Islamic regime during the ongoing protests: One can't help but notice that those murdered are all good-looking, stylish, and full of life. Down with the ugly, backward, and murderous Islamic regime! (Image credits: Masih Alinejad) [Bottom left] Today's Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Revolutionary messages, presented in the style of a first-grade Persian textbook: Dad gave his life; Mom was shot; Brother was arrested; So we can be free. [Bottom right] Islamic injustice in Iran: Two Baha'i women, Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Shahriari Sabet, who had previously served 10-year prison terms, have been sentenced to 10 more years in prison for their faith and educational activities (Tweet, in Persian).
(2) This weekend in the World Cup: The last two of the four quarterfinals matches were played on Saturday.
The first match was between Morocco and Portugal. Portugal, which shone in its impressive 6-1 victory over Switzerland, didn't look as sharp against a spirited Morocco side, bowing out of the tournament 0-1. Ronaldo was again benched for the entire first half and a few minutes into the second half. Morocco becomes the first African team to advance to the semifinals. [5-minute highlights]
In the second match, France, which faced England for the first time ever in World Cup's knockout stage, survived relentless attacks to win 2-1, thanks in part to a fine performance by its goalkeeper and a missed penalty kick by England. [5-minute highlights]
So, Argentina and Croatia will face each other in the first semifinal match on Tue., Dec. 13. Then, on 12/14, France will play Morocco. Both semifinal matches will be played at 11:00 AM PST (coverage on Fox TV).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US takes custody of a man who made the bomb that downed Pan Am flight over Lockerbie 34 years ago.
- China sides with Persian-Gulf Arab countries that challenge Iran's territorial claims over several islands.
- Math puzzle: If x – sqrt(x) = 13, what is the value of x – 13/sqrt(x)?
- World Cup semifinals will have 2 contenders (Argentina, France) and 2 Cinderella teams (Croatia, Morocco).
(4) The mullahs in Iran face three concurrent crises: Widespread protests by women & youth tops the list. Debilitating sanctions, brought about by the pursuit of a nuclear-weapons program and military adventurism are also widely discussed. Simmering under these well-known challenges is the succession fight. Khamenei is ailing and his wish to install his son Mojtaba as the next Supreme Leader faces widespread opposition, including from other clerics, some of whom question Khamenei's own religious credentials & qualifications for the job.
(5) Today's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Behzad Bojnordi Arbab spoke under the title "Large Observatories." There were 58 attendees.
We use diverse methods to learn about the universe outside our planet. One method is traveling to destinations of interest (Moon landing, explorers/rovers sent to other planets in the solar system, observational spacecrafts). A second method is examining fragments, such as meteors, that happen to collide with Earth. A third, most-powerful method is using instruments that detect various forms of radiation (gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet rays, visible light, infrared light, radio waves).
Most observatories detect visible light. To minimize the impact of Earth's atmosphere on detection, instruments are placed on high mountains or even outside Earth (space telescopes). The latest entry in this kind of observatory is the James Webb Space Telescope.
Radio telescopes are different in that they do not use mirrors. They use huge dishes that are porous, yet they are capable of reflecting radio waves. Large arrays of such telescopes can be interconnected to collectively act like a larger telescope.
It is interesting that sometimes instead of building new instruments and collecting new data, we use old data sets and analyze them with new methods, including taking advantage of machine-learning to discover previously-hidden information. It is also possible to overlap data from telescopes of various kinds to obtain a more-comprehensive picture of the universe. This can be likened to putting road maps and satellite images together in Google Maps to get a better feel for an area's geography.
2022/12/09 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Meme of the day: Iran's murderous Islamic regime has begun executing street protesters within 2-3 weeks of their arrest. [Center] Farhang Foundation's Shab-e Yalda (winter solstice) program: In a free on-line event, Farhang Foundation will present "The End of Zahhak," featuring Gordafarid. Wednesday, December 21, 2022, 6:00 PM PST
(Register). [Right] Amnesty International puts up a huge banner, with the word "shame" written on it, in front of Iran's embassy in Belgium.
(2) Today in the World Cup: Two of the four quarterfinals matches were played today.
In the first match, the highly-favored Brazil was eliminated by Croatia 1-1 (4-2 on PKs), thanks in part to the heroic efforts of the Croatian goalkeeper, including saving Brazil's first PK. [5-minute highlights]
The second match was between Netherlands and Argentina. Netherlands came from 2 goals behind to tie the match 2-2. Argentina prevailed on PKs 4-3. [5-minute highlights]
So, Argentina and Croatia will face each other in the first semifinals match on Tuesday, December 13, at 11:00 AM PST (Fox TV). Participants in the second semifinals match on 12/14 will become known tomorrow.
(3) Where was the ball? This is an interesting guessing game from New York Times, which you can play if you miss World Cup soccer action during the 2-day gap between the round-of-16 and the quarterfinals. The ball has been removed from some soccer photos and you have to guess where it was. [Play the game]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Strike by U. California academic workers may be close to resolution, as the two sides agree to mediation.
- Australia: This 29-minute video is about the mostly-empty continent/country with only 26M residents.
- Persian poetry recitation: A beautiful, politically-charged poem by Baran Nikrah. [3-minute video]
- Persian music: A Tunisian woman's instrumental rendition of the anthem "Iran, Ey Saraa-ye Omid."
(5) Iran's Islamic regime and its mouthpieces continue to blame economic sanctions for people's unrest: No, sanctions did not force hijab on women, did not treat women as dirt, did not kill peaceful protesters (including dozens of children), did not fill prisons with women & youth! [Tweet, in Presian]
(6) Arrest-to-execution in a couple of weeks: Iran's Islamic regime is digging its own grave by extra-judicial killing of street protesters, tried in kangaroo courts with no legal representation.
(7) Remember the punch-cards businesses gave us so that we could collect freebees after a certain number of purchases? Where did they go? Do you have some of them left in your wallet, car, or home, like me?
2022/12/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Time magazine honors Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky as Person of the Year. [Top center] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's sister: "My brother does not hear people's voices and incorrectly considers voices of his paid operatives & cronies as people's voices." [Top right] Time magazine honors Iranian women as Heroes of the Year. [Bottom left] Human rights rally in Southern California (see the next item below). [Bottom center] One flew over Mar-a-Lago: You still think you're the President, don't you? [Bottom right] Tonight's Talangor Group meeting (see the last item below).
(2) Marking the 75th anniversary of the International Human Rights Day: Rally at Laguna Beach (PCH & Ocean Ave.), southern California, on Saturday, December 10, 2022, 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. #WomanLifeFreedom
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dozens of members of an insurrectionist domestic terror group arrested in Germany.
- Some country's MPs are more courageous: Peru's MPs voted to remove the President for coup attempt.
- Two revolutions, 43 years apart: Grandparents' 1979 hijacked revolution vs. grandchildren's 2022 uprising.
- Persian music: A song dedicated to the precious girls & young women of Iran. [2-minute video]
(4) Socrates Think Tank talk: Ali Sedarat (journalist, human-rights activist) spoke on Wednesday under the title "Where Is Our 82-Day-Old Movement Headed?" There were 99 attendees.
I generally do not attend talks about politics. I am not saying that politics isn't important. It is indeed super-important, and just as everyone should be a feminist, one should also be active politically. But talks about politics tend to be long on overly-general & wishy-washy statements and short on helpful information. I am at a loss to put a few sentences into this short report that would summarize what was said today (up to the point when I decided to leave the meeting). Iran is experiencing transformative days, brought about mostly by the country's brave women and youth, who are demanding basic rights & freedoms. We should all get involved at all levels (locally, nationally, globally) to help this revolution along.
(5) Talangor Group meeting: Dr. Mahmood Sabahi spoke in Persian on "The Role of Religion in Politics: From Sumer to the Islamic Revolution." There were 79 attendees.
Sumer, or Sumeria, is the earliest known civilization in southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages (around the fifth millennium BCE). The earliest texts from the region date to 3000+ BCE. Dr. Sabahi began by discussing the epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian ruler ca. 2500 BCE whose exploits form the basis of many subsequent legends and religious traditions. He then moved along the historical timeline, outlining the role of religions and their associated power structures in political systems up to modern times.
In my humble opinion, in such discussions, the distinct notions of faith (a guiding personal or social belief) and religion (a power-seeking and controlling organization) are intermixed. A ruler's or politician's faith may affect his/her actions and policies, which isn't necessarily bad. The same ruler's or politician's religious affiliation is often in conflict with fair and just policy-making. This is why, in the West, we talk of separation of church & state, not of faith & state.
2022/12/06 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This afternoon, walking in Goleta's Lake Los Carneros Park. [Center] NYT's World Cup bracket (see item 6 below). [Right] Seventeenth-century Shaharah Bridge in Yemen.
(2) Math puzzle: Prove that if real numbers a, b, and c satisfy the equality ab + bc + ca = 1, then the value of (a + 1/b)^2 + (b + 1/c)^2 + (c + 1/a)^2 is no less than 16.
(3) Math puzzle: Here is a Fibonacci-like sequence. a(1) = 1, a(2) = 2, a(n + 1) = a(n) + 6a(n – 1). What is the limit of a(n + 1)/a(n) as n tends to infinity?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The US healthcare industry abuses hospice care: What was supposed to be a calling turns into a cash cow.
- Trump Org. guilty in tax-fraud case: How can a company be guilty but its owner/CEO escape prosecution?
- Two dozen bronze statues unearthed in Italy may lead to a rewriting of ancient history.
- Gaslighting: Merriam-Webster Word of the Year for 2022.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Trump calls for the termination of US Constitution, except Fifth Amendment.
- Films from Iran for Iran: A wonderful collection of films from women and non-binary filmmakers.
(5) A success story: How entrepreneur Greg Carr set his mind to, and succeeded in, restoring Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, which was decimated by decades of war & abuse. [13-minute CBS News report]
(6) Yesterday and today in the World Cup: In the first 2022 match to go into overtime, Japan & Croatia played to a 1-1 draw. Then, Croatia's goalie saved 3 of 4 penalty kicks to create a 3-1 advantage and put his team in the quarterfinals [5-minute highlights], where it will play Brazil, the 4-1 winner over S. Korea. Today, Morocco scored a major upset over Spain, 0-0 (3-0 on PKs), thanks to its heroic goalkeeper, and Portugal cruised to a victory over Switzerland, 6-1, with Ronaldo on the bench for most of the game and Ramos scoring a hat-trick [5-minute highlights]. The bracket at the start of the quarterfinals stage is shown above.
(7) Reversing decades of social progress: The US Supreme Court seems to be leaning in favor of an evangelical Web designer who does not want to design wedding Web pages for same-sex couples.
(8) War of the drones: Russia has been using Iranian-made kamikaze drones to bomb Ukrainian cities. Now Ukraine has reportedly used drones to hit two military bases and an oil depot inside Russia.
(9) Final thought for the day: "The learning process isn't finished when you acquire knowledge. ... Many people accumulate information. Far fewer use it to evolve and improve. The ultimate test of growth is closing the gap between awareness and action." ~ Adam Grant, writing in his newsletter of November 30, 2022
2022/12/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Creative protest by Iranian women on the streets of Tehran. [Top center] Herb souffle (kookoo-sabzi): The dish I made tonight with Sadaf dried herbs, eggs, and seasonings. [Top right] Cover image of the December 2022 issue of Communications of the ACM (see the last item below).
(2) This weekend in the World Cup: Netherlands ousted the US, 3-1 (5-minute highlights). The Dutch will next play in the quarterfinals against Argentina, which prevailed over Australia 2-1. France beat Poland convincingly, 3-1, including two beautiful goals by superstar Kylian Mbappe (5-minute highlights), to set up a quarterfinal match with England, which beat a well-playing Senegal, 3-0.
(3) The Islamic Republic's dictatorial regime faces its toughest challenge: A comprehensive account of Iran's 2022 feminist/youth uprising and its historical context, written by UCSB scholars Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson (to appear in the winter 2023 issue of Dissent magazine).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran's security forces kill/maim children: Hit by multiple pellets, 5-year-old girl loses sight in one eye.
- US Representative Paul Gosar may have "accidentally" deleted his tweet in support of Kanye West!
- How many countries are there in the world? Why there is no unique answer to this question. [Video]
- The 2021 Turing Award Lecture: Jack J. Dongarra talks about "The Evolution of Mathematical Software."
- Quote of the day: "If you kill a murderer, the quantity of murderers will not change." ~ Winston Churchill
- Facebook memory from Dec. 4, 2016: Two Iran-themed book talks (sort of) at UCLA.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 4, 2014: Group photo of ECE faculty members at UCSB from the late 1980s.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 4, 2011: When a female Iranian director called out a male director's misogyny.
(5) There are reports that Iran's morality police has been abolished: Even if true (the country's state-run TV has issued a denial), morality police isn't Iran's main problem. The main problem is the kind of misogynistic thinking that created the morality police in the first place! Harassers, acid-sprayers, and rapists will fill any void left by the departure of the violent morality police.
(6) Hamid Nouri's son accuses Sweden of "white torture": The notorious murderer serving a life sentence for his role in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran is distressed, because he is no longer served tea in a Swedish prison! The son should ask his father to show him what torture really looks like! [Tweet]
(7) A subtle form of gender inequity: In academia, gender inequity is often assessed by counting the number of male & female professors at each faculty rank and by comparing salaries at comparable ranks. An article in the December 2022 issue of CACM points to a different form of inequity based on subfield prestige. Women are underrepresented in all areas of computing, but gender inequity is more pronounced in subfields that are deemed as more "prestigious." Such subfields, and the higher-ranked institutions that typically harbor them, tend to be approximately 25 years behind the less-prestigious subfields in gender representation.
2022/12/02 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Remember that Mahsa Zhina Amini was arrested and subsequently murdered for wearing the modest clothing on the left. On the right, is an Islamic Republic supporter in Qatar (source). [Top center] Soccer spectators wearing jerseys with the names and ages of young people murdered by Iran's brutal Islamic regime. [Top right] Controversial goal (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Sixteen healing herbs and spices, along with their beneficial properties. [Bottom center] Persian poetry (from a Hafez ghazal): "The cloak I wear is not a sign of piety, but a cover for my many hidden faults." [Bottom right] Merchants of Doubt, by N. Oreskes & E. M. Conway (see the last item below).
(2) Japan's controversial second goal against Spain: In photos, the ball appears to have gone out of bounds before the pass that led to Japan's goal, which eliminated Germany. But video review indicated that it had landed on the line and not gone out completely. [FIFA video]
(3) Iranian regime goes back to its brutal ways, now that soccer is over: Government agents demolish the home of Elnaz Rekabi, the female rock-climber who competed in South Korea without a hijab.
(4) Book review: Oreskes, Naomi and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Bloomsbury, 2011.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Senator James M. Inhofe held a snowball on the floor of the US Senate, suggesting that the winter weather afflicting the US East Coast contradicted theories of global warming. Scientists who help spread doubt about consensus opinion that the Earth is warming from human-made causes are more sophisticated in their approach, but their motivation is the same: Getting funding from industries responsible for greenhouse-gas emissions. This is the second gargantuan science-denial campaign carried out for financial gain, the first having been the even more-preposterous denial that smoking causes cancer.
Techniques used in both campaigns included smearing critics, citing threats to personal liberties from government over-reach, and issuing voluminous reports through dubious think tanks. Just as the tobacco industry's efforts to obfuscate and delay were quashed and massive settlements were reached in 1998, climate-change denial will eventually be overcome, but at an enormous cost to our well-being and pocketbooks.
It doesn't help that scientists are by nature humble and cautious, given their belief in falsifiability and the need for endless revisions to scientific theories, whereas pseudo-scientists who peddle the interests of various industries project an aura of confidence and certainty, because they are driven not by science, but by ideologies and financial interests. Oreskes and Conway expose some of the hidden agendas and connections that drive the anti-science propaganda machine in one domain after another: Tobacco, pesticides, ozone-hole, acid rain, and global warming.
Director Robert Kenner turned this book into a 96-minute 2014 documentary film by the same title.
2022/12/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: The previous time USA and Iran faced each other in the World Cup was in 1998, with Iran prevailing 2-1. The match was held in Lyon, France (4-minute highlights). [Top center] Sportsmanship: US players comforting distraught Iranian players after their 1-0 match in Qatar. [Top right] Iran's World Cup team: 1998 vs. 2022. See if you can identify a major difference in appearance. [Bottom row] Math puzzles: Find areas of the red & blue regions and the hatched fraction of the square area.
(2) On the margins of the Qatar World Cup: A Saudi club has reportedly offered $200+ million per year to Cristiano Ronaldo. No doubt the club is owned by one of the thousands of Saudi princes, who spend the country's oil income on collecting luxury goods and trophies.
(3) Four big-name soccer teams eliminated from the 2022 World Cup: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Mexico. The weirdest case is that of Germany, which beat Costa Rica 4-2, but because Japan prevailed over Spain 2-1, the latter two teams advanced (tie-breaking rules favored Spain over Germany, both with 4 points).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hate speech rose sharply on Twitter immediately after Elon Musk took over the platform.
- Three Principles for Creating Safer AI: Stuart Russell's 18-minute TED talk.
- Artificial intelligence will kill us: Jay Tuck's 18-minute TEDx Hamburg talk.
- Humorous Persian poetry: Political prisoner writing to his wife with blue or red pen. [2-minute video]
(5) Food for thought: Future AI systems will be distributed, with thousands of nodes and communication channels, designed to be fault-tolerant, collaborating toward built-in goals. There is no one place for a human to pull the plug, in order to disable a malfunctioning or malicious system.
(6) Book review: Wiest, Brianna, 101 Essays that Will Change the Way You Think, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Abby Craden, Tantor Audio, 2018.
[My 2-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I was disappointed with this book right off the bat, because its 101 chapters (each occupying an average of 4.5 pages in the paperback print format and 6+ minutes in the audiobook) aren't essays, as suggested by the title, but mostly numbered lists: 15 ways to do something; 20 things to avoid; and so on. Therefore, the entire book contains 1000+ advice snippets, most of them superficially explained. Even allowing for some repetition, the reader is still faced with hundreds of different things to understand and to use in his/her daily life. Far too many different things, in my opinion. There is little wrong with the statements themselves, as we have heard them in other advice or self-help sources; it's just that they drag on and are, for the most part, unstructured, despite the itemized format. The book's high ratings are in my humble opinion undeserved.
2022/11/30 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Ellwood Butterfly Grove: Two photos of Monarch butterflies, taken by an acquaintance, using professional camera & lens (my own photos didn't turn out so well). The middle photo is from Wikipedia. Here's my own 1-minute video, shot on November 28. [Bottom left] Interesting architecture: Walden 7 in Barcelona, Spain. [Bottom center] Qatar spent 15 times as much as any other country hosting the World Cup: Its elimination after two matches proves that you cannot buy soccer legitimacy with money. [Bottom right] Minou Soumekh Michlin's I Kept Walking (see the last item below).
(2) Justice delayed (not ignored, I hope): It's not a good sign for our justice system that the man who directed financial fraud and led an insurrection is walking free, whereas his underlings and foot-soldiers are facing prison terms of up to 20 years. Let's hope that with the release of the charlatan's tax returns and multiple ongoing criminal investigations, this injustice is corrected soon!
(3) Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, a musician/songwriter in her own right, dead at 79: I liked McVie even better than the band's more-famous singer, Stevie Nicks. Here is my favorite song of hers, "Everywhere."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Qatar's World Cup official admits that 400+ migrant workers died on building projects for the tournament.
- Four players of Iran's beach-soccer team were dropped from the roster for their support of protesters.
- Hypocrisy in Iran: Hijabless relatives of security forces killing/maiming women who reject the hijab.
- Capturing a video of the Earth's rotation with a gyroscopic camera. [Tweet, with video]
(5) Book review: Michlin, Minou Soumekh (with Gali Kronenberg), I Kept Walking: The Unlikely Story of a Persian Woman with Polio, Laleh Press, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
As a child, Minou Michlin miraculously recovered from polio after undergoing surgery in Israel. Added to her health problems were challenges of growing up in a conservative Jewish society in 1940s Iran. The family was supportive in many ways, but in that time and place, Jewish girls were expected to find a suitable husband at a young age, which wasn't an easy task for someone who was deemed "damaged goods." Fleeing Iran to get away from family and cultural ties seemed the only option.
Married to David Michlin (2 kids; 5 grandkids), Los-Angeles-based Dr. Michlin is a professor emeritus of social work at Southern Connecticut State University. She worked as a social worker in Tehran's Jewish ghetto and oversaw day cares across Iran. Ghost-writer/book-coach Gali Kronenberg, himself a New York Times best-selling author, helped put the inspiring stories told by the first author into engaging English prose. What emerges is a personal tale of facing insurmountable barriers, along with much in way of Iranian and Jewish history and culture. Mixed in are glimpses of Israel and the United States.
The book is quite absorbing right from the start. We read in the first few pages that for Iranian Jews, Reza Shah's rise to power was a double-edged sword. His modernizing efforts and curtailing the influence of Shi'i clerics helped the Jews. But, when he cozied up to Hitler, his adulation of the anti-Semitic dictator quickly spread to the public. Swastikas began appearing on school blackboards. At one point, the family maid asked Michlin's mom to transfer the family's house and other assets to her for safekeeping and, in return, she would hide everyone in her village!
From this auspicious beginning, the book never lets up, pulling the reader along all the way to its happy ending. Short, single-themed chapters facilitate reading. Old family photos and a family tree add to the book's draw.
2022/11/29 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) World Cup soccer: Today's highligh for me was the match between USA and Iran, which the US won 1-0 to advance to the knock-out round (5-minute highlights). Iran would have advanced with a draw. I watched the match on the big screen of Arlington Theater, which offered a free watch party, and also photographed scenes around downtown Santa Barbara. On the margins of this important match, CNN reports that families of Iran's national soccer team have been warned about dire consequences of the players misbehaving on the field. In the other Group-B match, England beat and eliminated Wales, 3-0.
(2) Iran's #MeToo movement: Sharing stories about 43 years of individual and systematic government violence against women, beginning mere days after the Islamic Revolution. [Tweet, in Persian]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, erupted for the first time in 4 decades.
- A wonderful display of sportsmanship after the USA-Iran soccer match. [Tweet, with video]
- Borowitz Report (humor): Trump says he did not know the identity of dinner guest, owing to the white hood.
- Iran's parliament to recommend death sentence for anyone contacting foreign media.
- Ralphs deal for the not-so-smart shoppers: Buy one frozen meal at $4.99 or two at $5.49 each! [Photo]
- This is what librarians do on coffee breaks: Dominoes chain reaction, but made with books. [Video]
- Facebook memory from Nov. 29, 2019: My daughter and I, wearing our RBG T-shirts.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 29, 2015: The fascinating mathematics of secret Santa.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 29, 2013: My arrangement of watermelon and berries for Thanksgiving.
(4) Brutal dictatorships need occasional public facelifts, and soccer provides the perfect tool in this domain: Comparing Argentina's 1978 World Cup appearance with Iran's appearance in 2022, both under criminally murderous regimes. [Tweet, with historical-comparison video]
(5) Iran's World Cup strategy to overshadow its critics in the stands: A large number of Indian & Pakistani citizens who support Iran's Islamic government were given free tickets to attend the USA-Iran soccer match.
(6) Give women's soccer due credit: Ronaldo wasn't the first player to score goals in 5 consecutive World Cups. Brazil's Marta did it first. She also scored goals at 5 consecutive Olympics games. [Photos]
2022/11/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Today's memorial gathering for Kowkab Yussefian-Parhami: We got together at Flame International Restaurant on Santa Monica Blvd. with family members and friends this afternoon to celebrate my mother's life. She passed away on Nov. 14, 2022, at age 93. After greeting the guests and having lunch, I and several of mom's grandkids spoke about her life & our memories of her. Then, my niece Mina and nephew Avi played several favorite Persian songs of my mom on the keyboard, with my sister Farnaz providing the vocals. A slide show, prepared by my daughter Sepideh, with help from several family members, was running in the background throughout the event. We mingled afterwards, renewing family and friendship bonds.
(2) This is Islamic Republic of Iran: Eleven-year-old girl is confronted by a woman on the playground who complains about her uncovered hair.
[Tweet, with video]
(3) Iran Revolution 2022: Popular humorist/poet Mr. Haloo reveals some top-secret discussions among Iran's Islamic rulers about how to quash the ongoing protests. Apparently, they are worried about military personnel joining the revolutionaries and pointing their guns at commanders & rulers, not at the people. [Video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Future generations of Iranian women won't be any easier on the mullahs. [Tweet, with video]
- The fearless girl: A statue in Oslo, Norway, and a Kurdish girl in Mahabad, Iran. [Tweet, with photos]
- Will history be a guide for the outcome of the 2022 World Cup? [Tweet, with table]
- Family gathering on Saturday, featuring world-famous BBQ by my sister & brother-in-law. [Photo]
- Soccer World Cup status: Live table of standings by New York Times.
- Persian music: Instrumental rendition of the popular oldie song "Soltan-e Ghalbhaa."
(5) Celebrating 75 years of transistors: On my post of a story about 75 years of transistors, a reader commented that "they still can't create the Hi-Fi sound of good old Soviet Era vacuum tubes." Here's my response: "So what? They have replaced more than 99.9% of uses of the vacuum tube. They've made possible $500 multimedia wonders in our pockets & $1000 supercomputers on our lap. Anyone is free to manufacture vacuum tubes and use them in specialized products, for real or imagined benefits."
(6) Iran's soccer dilemma: Members of Iran's national team playing in Qatar are sportsmen who have risen to team membership as a result of their talent and various accidents. They are caught between people of Iran who view them as illegitimate because they have become a part of the regime's propaganda machine to deflect attention from the recent uprising on one side, and corrupt/incompetent managers at the club and national levels, where ex-military and spying-agency members have been installed to watch over this popular sport, on the other. Soccer, like the government-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has become just another tool for the regime's oppression.
2022/11/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Relief map of the Iranian Plateau and the surrounding countries. [Center] Science magazine cover image (see the next item below). [Right] The Fearless Girl: This statue is usually seen in front of Oslo's Grand Hotel, but its owner has temporarily placed it in front of Islamic Republic of Iran's Embassy and has tied a headscarf around her wrist to express solidarity with the people of Iran.
(2) Celebrating 75 years of transistors: The remarkable triumph of science & technology that put silicon in Silicon Valley and jump-started the digital age is marred by the fact that William Shockley, who along with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for co-inventing the transistor, devoted the latter part of his life to promoting racist views and advocating for voluntary sterilization of Black women. At the time, the scientific community did not condemn Shockley's abhorrent views.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dissident Iranian rapper #ToomajSalehi has been charged with "crimes" that usually lead to execution.
- The 2 women who first reported on Mahsa Zhina Amini's death are in prison & could face the death penalty.
- UN Human Rights Council will set up a fact-finding committee to investigate Iran's human rights violations.
- Major computing technologies of the past 75 years: Table from an article in IEEE Computing Edge.
- Yesterday at the World Cup: USA played to a 0-0 draw against England. [5-minute highlights]
- Math puzzle: If a/b + b/a = 5 and (a^2)/b + (b^2)/a = 12, find the value of 1/a + 1/b.
- This world's busiest pedestrian intersection is in Tokyo. [15-minute video compressed into 20 seconds]
- Facebook memory from Nov. 26, 2018: Most violence against women occurs at home by people they know.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 26, 2016: Veggie/fruit plate representing the Thanksgiving turkey.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 26, 2015: A beautiful Azeri folk song played by violin maestro Bijan Mortazavi.
(4) Iran beats Wales 2-0 on goals scored late in the 11-minute stoppage time: A previous goal by Iran was ruled offside, two of Iran's shots hit the goalpost, and one well-placed shot was saved by the Wales goalie. The Iranian team that showed up on the field today was very different from the disorganized, tentative squad that lost to England 2-6. Given today's 0-0 draw between England and USA, Iran may need just a draw against the US to advance, provided Wales does not beat England. [5-minute highlights]
(5) On the margins of of the World Cup: I cheered Iran, as it played a fine game to beat Wales 2-0. But seeing the Islamic regime's cruel security forces, who have killed hundreds including 50+ children during the recent street protests, cheer the same team while chanting pro-regime slogans, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Brutal dictators, including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Francisco Franco, have used soccer in the service of their propaganda machines and repressive regimes. [Photo]
(6) Voria Ghafouri has been released from prison: Not that Iran's brutal Islamic regime has suddenly become compassionate! It is politically inconvenient for the mullahs to keep a popular soccer star in prison amid soccer celebrations by people of all political leanings in the wake of the 2-0 World Cup victory over Wales.
2022/11/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Happy Thanksgiving Day! Our family is mourning a loss, but we still got together to give thanks for the gift of family bonds, friendships, and memories that enrich our lives forever. We fondly remember my mom and are thankful for the many happy memories we have of her and with her. We are honoring one of mom's wishes to have a framed photo of her with all the grandkids & great-grandkids at her memorial, planned for Sunday.
(2) World population just hit 8 billion, but the rate of increase is slowing and may turn negative by the end of the century. [Graphic: Science magazine, based on UN data]
(3) Financial crimes don't pay, except for politicians: Southern California man sentenced to 17.5 years in federal prison for bilking investors out of $35+ million with a phony scheme to market cannabis vape pens.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran's security forces have killed 100+ Kurds during street protests, about half of them in recent days.
- Quote: "A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel good."
~ Comedian Steven Wright
- Facebook memory from Nov. 24, 2019: Iranian women will crush all obstacles to achieving full equality.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 24, 2013: Sweden's innovative movie-rating system.
(5) You can recognize overt and covert supporters of Iran's brutal Islamic regime by who they criticize: Branding Masih Alinejad as an American operative is one of their favorite attack lines. [Tweet]
(6) Reason for shortage of skilled workers in the US: "Currently, 75% of new jobs require a college degree. Yet in the US and Europe, only 40% of young adults attend a 2-year or 4-year college—a percentage that has either not budged or only modestly risen in more than two decades." ~ From an editorial in Science magazine
(7) Iran's Reformists were placed on the back burner for a reason: There are whispers of bringing former President Mohammad Khatami back from the dead in order to quell the rising discontent. Iranian women and youth will not fall for this trick of replacing one Islamist with a less-abhorrent Islamist.
2022/11/23 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Yesterday's burial ceremonies for my mother Kowkab at Santa Barbara Cemetery. [Top center] Khamenei's beauties (see the next item below). [Top right] The point where four African countries meet. [Bottom left] Geometry and symmetry are essential elements of Islamic decoratuve art: This example is from Morocco. [Bottom center] The beautiful city of Kyiv, Ukraine. [Bottom right] Another example of geometry and symmetry in Islamic decorative art (location unknown).
(2) A question for Supreme Leader Khamenei: Are these goons, who kill people on the streets, your men? If so, then you should be ashamed and I have nothing to say to you. If not, why don't you bring them on TV and extract confessions from them that they are agents of CIA and Mossad!
(3) Preservation of wild horses in the US: A program that was a bit too successful, so now the government must prevent environmental damage by putting them in managed facilities or selling them to private owners through auctions.
[13-minute CBS News report]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Be the voice for scientists in Iran: This is the title of a Science magazine editorial, Nov. 11, 2022.
- Economist Adam Smith: "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
- Panini soccer stickers: A obsession for kids, parents, and grandparents!
[14-minute CBS News report]
- Biggest World Cup upset: Argentina, with its superstar Messi, defeated by Saudi Arabia 2-1. [Highlights]
- World Cup soccer: Highlights of the 6-2 victory of England over Iran. [5-minute video]
- World Cup soccer: Highlights of the 1-1 draw between USA and Wales. [5-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Nov. 23, 2019: Having pizza with the kids and mom.
(5) Half-liners: Very brief news stories of the week.
- Magnitude-6.2 quake in Indonesia kills at least 270.
- Mass shooter kills 6 at an LGBTQ club in Colorado.
- Women outnumber men in NY Philharmonic for the first time.
- NASA's Orion capsule reached the moon on Monday.
- Several top law schools withdraw from US News rankings.
- Amazon & Meta lay off workers; TikTok hires 3K engineers.
- Twitter may be near collapse due to mass resignations.
- Trump was reinstated on Twitter, but he may not return.
(6) Rampant sexual assaults in Iranian prisons: The Islamic regime claiming to represent God on Earth systematically rapes female and male prisoners as a deterrence strategy. [CNN report]
(7) Final thought for the day: "Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimists the parachute." ~ George Bernard Shaw
2022/11/22 (Tuesday): Remembering my mother Kowkab Yussefian-Parhami on the day of her funeral.
Today, my mom finally got her eternal resting place right next to my dad's grave at Santa Barbara Cemetery. Following is the English version of my Persian remarks at her grave-side burial ceremony. This isn't a direct translation of the Persian version but slightly different in details.
Kowkab Yussefian-Parhami, born in the small town of Saqqez, Kurdistan Province, Iran, passed away near Santa Barbara, CA, at age 93. Widowed 30 years ago, when her husband Salem departed at age 70, she is survived by 4 children, Behrooz, Behnaz, Mahnaz, Farnaz, 7 grandchildren, Sepehr, Sepand, Sepideh, Avi, Mina, Yalda, Kimia, and 2.5 great-grandkids, Jacob, Nicky, and the son of Yalda & Eric, due in January 2023.
Kowkab, or Kobi, Mamon, Mamoni, Mamon Kowkab, Safta, as some of her grandkids affectionately call her, grew up in the harsh, but pristine, environment of the mountainous western Iran. As a girl, she would tend to the family cattle, milk the cow, and walk a significant distance to the riverfront to fetch water and wash clothes. Kowkab was a typically strong Kurdish woman, with a zest for life. A couple of days before her passing, when she incoherently communicated with imaginary people and dead relatives, she broke into a Kurdish song from time to time.
Married at age 17 and giving birth to her first child a year later, her practical wisdom was far beyond her 6th-grade educational attainment. She enjoyed poetry and had handwritten and photocopied poems, along with proverbs & wise quotations, on display at her home. She kept herself up to date by watching satellite TV programs and radio stations, and she would share the latest political news with visiting family members or on the phone.
After making her first home in Tehran in 1946, she had to do it again multiple times, as her husband's engineering job with Iran's National Railroad Organization took him to different cities. She and her first three children lived in Jerusalem with her family for one year, when her husband attended a series of technical training programs in Paris, France. Being close to her mother, sisters, and brothers more than made up for the hardships of living in a foreign land with an unfamiliar language.
After returning from Jerusalem to Tehran, she had to set up new homes three more times in Iran and twice in the US. Her long residence at her last home in Iran near Vanak's Factory Square, roughly a mile from the trendy Vanak Square along Pahlavi Ave., was by and large a happy one. She was a gracious host, with her home serving as a hub, where family members visited often. The family lived in comfort, as respected members of the community, notwithstanding overt and covert anti-Semitism from certain religious zealots.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution brought hardships of many different kinds, especially after the outbreak of the 8-year Iran-Iraq war in 1980. Suddenly, food and other necessities were in short supply and a rationing program was implemented. It fell upon Kowkab to ensure that the family got its due rations and to stand in multiple lines each day, sometimes for hours, to obtain the rationed items. Her managing the family affairs in the face of shortages and amid blasts of falling bombs was remarkable.
In the aftermath of intensified misogyny and anti-Semitism brought about by the Islamic Revolution, Kowkab's children emigrated out of Iran one by one. The years between these departures and Kowkab & Salem joining them in the US in 1991 were tough for all parties, but particularly on Kowkab, after Salem suffered a stroke that severely limited his work and daily activities. Salem wasn't sure that they could adapt to life in the US, which would require leaving their homeland, friends & acquaintances, and a lifetime of memories and traditions behind. Kowkab insisted that they needed to be with the kids and grandkids, for their own sake and for the sake of their children's peace of mind, and she eventually prevailed.
Salem had a heart attack shortly after arriving in the US, and complications from heart-bypass surgery made him bedridden for the final six months of his life. Kowkab had to sacrifice again and put the needs of the family ahead of her own well-being, a job she performed remarkably well for the next three decades. She was the center of the family's life, always hosting the extended-family and other guests in her modest-size residence with sumptuous Persian meals. She would always cook much more food that was needed, urging everyone to take the leftovers home.
Each of Kowkab's children and grandchildren has fond memories of life with her. She lived independently, doing her own chores and walking to shops for groceries and other needs until very recently. She survived breast cancer, two broken/fractured femurs, and a heart-valve replacement surgery, but went right back to her normal life and hosting of parties. Her latest metastatic cancer diagnosis, which came out of the blue with no warning signs, was the final straw. Her health went downhill rather quickly after her hospitalization in late-August 2022.
In her final weeks, Kowkab went back & forth between being resigned to God's will, citing the fact that she had lived 93 fruitful years, and the will to cling to life a while longer, principally to see the entire family at Thanksgiving, hold Yalda's and Eric's son, and to attend Mina's and Babak's wedding in early 2023.
The family is sad that Kowkab missed these joyous occasions, but we have quite a few happy memories with her to cherish for life. Her children are also following her oft-repeated advice to continue to support each other and to have frequent gatherings as a family in her absence.
Rest in Peace, mamon joon! You have made your mark on our lives and on the world. You deserve some rest from the affairs of this hectic and cruel world. You will be in our hearts and minds forever!
[I composed a Persian poem in my mom's honor. The initial letters of the poem's half-verses spell her name.]
2022/11/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Our first family gathering after the passing of my mom: We remember her with a bouquet of flowers on a chair she usually occupied. [Center] Members of women's basketball team collectively remove their headscarves in support of Iran's feminist revolution (#WomanLifeFreedom).
(2) Iran's 2022 revolution: This photo reminds me of the French Revolution, as depicted in films. Empty-handed Iranian women and youth are fighting riot police and Revolutionary Guards, who show up in full tactical gear and armed to the teeth.
(3) Enlightened mullahs are few and far in between, but they do exist: Ali Akbar Hakamizada, author of The Thousand-Year Secrets (Asrar-e Hezar Saleh, in Persian), who questioned the superstitious beliefs of Shi'i Islam and pointed to the need for reforms, is one example. He was one of two people, along with Ahmad Kasravi, directly attacked by Ayatollah Khomeini in his 1943 book, Kashf al-Asrar.
(4) Social media and the banality of (online) crowds: The field of crowd science may hold the key to understanding recent abuses of social media. Perhaps James Surowiecki's observation that groups are potentially more-intelligent than even the smartest people in them (made in his best-selling book The Wisdom of Crowds) should be revisited. [Article in IEEE Computer magazine, issue of November 2022]
(5) Ranking the teams of the 2022 Soccer World Cup: A statistical double-Poisson model that considers the attacking and defending strengths of each men's team gives Belgium the highest odds of winning the World Cup (~14%), whereas Brazil tops the FIFA rankings.
(6) Soccer embraces data science: Teams at the World Cup tournament in Qatar will pick or bench players via data-informed performance breakdowns. Technologies like motion sensor-equipped vests, global positioning system tracking, and camera surveillance collect a wide array of data at matches. Mathematicians, data scientists, and physicists will then try to extract sense from this information. Researchers at Google's DeepMind and the UK-based Liverpool Football Club developed a model to predict player movements in filmed matches.
(7) Darkness and ugliness can survive only by eliminating light and beauty: Two of the goons who kill Iranian street protesters, including children.
(8) Final thought for the day: Why did FIFA agree to hold the World Cup in Qatar? Qatar has little in way of soccer tradition. It will restrict spectators' clothing and what they can bring into the country (liquor and pork products are two examples). They cannot practice their faith openly. Criticism of Islam or the Qatari government won't be tolerated. Gays will be arrested. Two days before the start of the tournament, Qatar reneged on a promise to allow beer sales in stadiums.
2022/11/19 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Let the World Cup 2022 begin (see the last item below). [Center] Young Iranian women won't accept the rule of old reactionary men any more. [Right] Math oddity: Archimedes discovered that if you add the volumes of a cone and a sphere, you get the volume of their bounding cylinder.
(2) My dear and kind friends: I thank you for your warm messages of sympathy. My mom was a valiant Kurdish woman who created many sweet memories for the family over her 93 years on Earth. So, even though she is missed in the physical world, she has earned an eternal place in our hearts and minds. May she Rest in Peace!
(3) Brave Iranian student lets an Islamic Republic official have it: We've asked you for years to meet and talk with us, but you ignored us. Now that you are caught in a crisis of your own making, suddenly you want a dialog. You have to accept that some people do not want to live according to your edicts, and you have to acknowledge their civic rights. The angry youths aren't foreign agents, as you depict them. [7-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- One of dozens of children killed in recent weeks by Iran's murderous regime. [FB post, with image]
- Earth population hits a new milestone: There are now 8 billion people living on our planet.
- A choral performance of "Shirin, Shirin," a Kurdish folk song that was my mom's favorite. [4-minute video]
- Pari Zangeneh's rendition of "Shekar-e Ahoo," another one of my mom's favorite songs. [4-minute video]
(5) Nancy Pelosi, the first woman speaker of the US House of Representatives, steps down: As Republicans look back, Democrats choose to go with fresh faces in leadership positions.
(6) Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11+ years in prison for defrauding investors: Unconnected criminals are routinely pursued and convicted, as they should, but politicians with powerful friends in the justice system aren't even investigated. Shame on us!
(7) Quote of the day: "Faith does not give you answers; it only stops you from asking questions." ~ Mohammad Zakaria-ye Razi, 9th-Century Persian philosopher & scientist
(8) G7 countries must recognize the revolution in Iran: They should condemn the killing of peaceful protesters, including dozens of children, by expelling the murderous Islamic regime's diplomats.
[Tweet]
(9) FIFA Soccer World Cup round-robin stage: I plan to watch at least USA and Iran matches at the 2022 World Cup tournament. Here is the schedule for Group B. Shown in parentheses are Cox Santa Barbara channel numbers. Santa Barbara's Arlington Theater and Press Room (a sports bar) will also show many of the matches.
Monday 11/21, 05:00 AM PST, Iran v. England, Fox Sports 1 (70) & Telemundo (15)
Monday 11/21, 11:00 AM PST, USA v. Wales, Fox (11) & Telemundo (15)
Friday 11/25, 02:00 AM PST, Iran v. Wales, Fox Sports 1 (70) & Telemundo (15)
Friday 11/25, 11:00 AM PST, USA v. England, Fox (11) & Telemundo (15)
Tuesday 11/29, 11:00 AM PST, Iran v. USA, Fox (11) & Telemundo (15)
Tuesday 11/29, 11:00 AM PST, England v. Wales, Fox Sports 1 (70) & Universo
2022/11/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: My departed mom (1929-2022) over the past decade. [Top center & right] Tech talk on infrared sensing (see the next item below). [Bottom left] A group of academic employees, which includes research & teaching assistants, went on strike this week across the University of California campuses. My photo was taken today on the UCSB campus. [Bottom center] Teaching and learning: The two sides of the same coin. [Bottom right] Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (see the last item below).
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Leonard Chan (Raytheon, Goleta) spoke on Wednesday under the title "Sensing Across the Infrared Spectrum." There were 22 attendees.
In applications from smart phones to industrial machine vision, the past decade has seen an exponentially increasing demand for larger-format cameras with greater functionality. This is also true of infrared (IR) cameras used in commercial and astronomy systems, where in addition to format size, there is need for increased sensitivity, higher dynamic range, faster frame rates, and improved image processing across the entire infrared spectrum. Dr. Chan discussed the basic principles of an IR sensor and looked at the short-wave infrared (SWIR), mid-wave infrared (MWIR), long wave infrared (LWIR), and very long wave infrared (VLWIR) bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Current commercial and astronomical applications were addressed. Dr. Chan offered a few demos at the end of his talk, including capturing live images from the room and the audience, using a couple of different infrared cameras.
[IEEE CCS event page]
[Speaker's LinkedIn page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Rights groups say Iran's security forces have killed 50 minors over the past two months of street protests.
- Iranian drones used in the Ukraine war are made primarily from American, European, and Israeli parts.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Trump to try for historic third impeachment.
- Karen Bass beat billionaire developer Rick Caruso to become the first woman mayor of Los Angeles.
(4) Book review: Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, paperback edition, 2018. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Like Karl Marx, Adam Smith was more than a mere economist. He also delved into social, psychological, and philosophical implications of his proposals. His theory that free-trade is what creates wealth is meant to criticize both mercantilism and physiocracy. Mercantilism is the economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism. Physiocracy (French: physiocratie; from the Greek for "government of nature") is an economic theory developed by a group of 18th-century Age-of-Enlightenment French economists who believed that the wealth of nations derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development."
In The Wealth of Nations, Smith presents his ideas in four books.
Book 1 discusses the basic theories that form the groundwork for Smith's later analyses.
Book 2 deals with "stock," defined as assets used in commercial endeavor.
Book 3 presents a review of the economic history of the Roman Empire and societies since its fall.
Book 4 contains arguments against mercantilism, which encourages exports and restricts imports.
Book 5 justifies taxation for necessary costs of governance and warns against excessive government debt.
To most people, Adam Smith is linked to the expression "the invisible hand [of the market]." Smith himself used the expression only once in his voluminous book, but the idea behind the expression is present throughout his arguments. The gist of Smith's thesis is that nations can prosper if individuals are allowed to pursue their own self-interest, with no government regulation slowing them down. This book is almost on everyone's most-influential-books list. The terms "supply," "demand," "GDP," and "the invisible hand" are parts of our vocabulary today, thanks to Adam Smith.
Adam Smith's arguments for division of labor are clear and persuasive. If one worker can produce one pin per day by going through all 18 production steps sequentially, 18 workers, each specializing in one of the steps of the production process, won't produce 18 pins per day, but 50,000. This productivity-boosting division of labor, among individuals and nations, is possible only if we opt for free trade. Thus, wealth creation is immensely facilitated by free trade. Focusing the entire attention of one person on a simple step of the production has the additional benefit of facilitating innovations that lead to additional productivity gain.
As people seek to trade surplus production brought about by productivity gains, the problem of matching supplies to demands arises. This is where money comes in as one of the most-important human inventions: Excess supplies are traded for money and money is traded for anything that may be in demand, thus removing the time & place restrictions of bartering.
To explain the values and prices of commodities, Smith points to the water-diamond paradox: Water has a great use value, but little exchange value. For diamond, it's the other way around. Scarcity makes things valuable. Water is scarce in the desert, which increases its value in that context. Circumstances affects the price of commodities, raising or lowering them to above or below their "natural" values.
Smith's original presentation is long-winded and, for most people, quite boring. There exist a number of excellent summaries of this book, originally titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, including a Wikipedia article. I learned from the latter article that Smith has another major piece of work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
2022/11/16 (Wednesday): Here are three more book reviews on diverse topics.
(1) Book review: Holes, Paul, Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The Golden State Killer (GSK), aka the East-Side Rapist when he first struck in the SF Bay Area, has fascinated many, both because his case involving dozens of rapes and murders remained unsolved for four decades and for the way in which it was eventually solved by mining genealogy Web sites. I have reviewed Michelle McNamara's definitive 2018 account of GSK, I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Holes covers many other cold cases on which he worked over the years, but his focus is clearly on GSK and the fits and starts in pursuing him.
Holes' obsession with cold cases got him in much trouble, both in the workplace, where bosses considered such activities a waste of time, and in his personal life in terms of failed marriages.
Autobiographical elements of Holes' book are no doubt self-serving, but details of cases, their dogged pursuits, and solution strategies are admirable. In the author's own words, "I have sacrificed relationships, joy—even fatherhood—because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It's something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice."
(2) Book review: Alexievich, Svetlana (translated into English by Keith Gessen), Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, 236 pp., Picador, 1997.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In retrospect, I probably should have read an actual history of this nuclear disaster. Oral histories are nice in that they provide first-hand accounts of human experiences, complete with the personal challenges faced and emotions experienced, but they tend to be highly redundant and, at times, inaccurate.
The book's Nobel-Laureate author does an amazing job of collecting in one place the raw emotions and experiences of many individuals, from local residents and firefighters who were first on the scene to spouses and other family members indirectly affected by the unspeakable tragedy, based on interviews conducted in the early- to mid-1990s. Yet, the shortcomings of oral histories cited above are still there.
Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen: A poorly-designed nuclear reactor, run by incompetent staff; a deadly combination that could exist only in a culture of cronyism, laziness, and indifference toward the general public. As the reactor core was burning and releasing high doses of radioactive material into the surrounding area, authorities claimed that everything was under control, causing the public to let their guards down. Incompetence upon incompetence. Criminality upon criminality.
In the end, an estimated 4000 souls, residents and clean-up crew, perished and many more faced long-term health problems. Contamination from Chernobyl affected 23% of the territory of Belarus, but only 5% of Ukraine, where the plant was located, and 0.5% of Russia.
All world citizens should read or listen to some of the stories in this book, but, collectively, they likely exceed almost everyone's patience and need-to-know.
(3) Book review: Oreskes, Naomi, Why Trust Science, Princeton U. Press, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Oreskes (geologist-turned-history-of-science-professor at Harvard U.) presents arguments in favor of science. These arguments are timely, as the world, the US in particular, is deluged with anti-science sentiments and policy proposals. After centuries of success as the ultimate in fairness and truthfulness, science faces a crisis. Today, people with certain political leanings do not hesitate to doubt science if its findings clash with their cherished beliefs or economic interests.
Oreskes is careful not to imply that science is always right. On the contrary, she stresses the fact that sometimes even Nobel Laureates have changed their minds. Science is trustworthy because it has mechanisms for error detection and correction built in. Use of control groups, peer review, requirement for reproducibility, follow-up studies, and, in the extreme, retraction of published results provides a level of trust and transparency that is lacking in almost all other human endeavors.
Oreskes offers her arguments in the form of rebuttals to four commentaries from colleagues (Chapter 3, science historian Susan Lindee; Chapter 4, science philosopher Marc Lange; Chapter 5, economist Ottomar Edenhofer & philosopher Martin Kowarsch; Chapter 6, social psychologist Jon A. Krosnick). The commentaries/rebuttals, which form the bulk of the book, are sandwiched between background material in an introduction, Chapter 1, & Chapter 2, and concluding thoughts in Chapter 7 & an afterword.
About hostile questions at her talks, Oreskes has opined in an interview that she can tell when one is coming. Empirically speaking, "They're always men, almost always over 50-ish, and they stand up using belligerent body language." Oreskes was motivated to put her pro-science arguments on paper when an audience member at one of her talks asked what she considered to be a fair question: "Well, that's all well and good, but why should we believe you or trust the science anyway?"
2022/11/15 (Tuesday): Today, I offer two book reviews on the frontiers of artificial intelligence.
(1) Book review: Bostrom, Nick, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by Napoleon Ryan, Audible, 2014.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Suppose you have superintelligent machines which can perform a wide array of manual and mental tasks. Is owning such machines tantamount to slavery? Should we be forced to hire such machines as free-wage laborers? These are examples of deep questions posed by Bostrom in this volume, which is a valuable addition to the expanding collection of books on artificial intelligence (AI).
AI already outperforms human intelligence in many domains. General AI isn't yet at hand, but there is little doubt that it's coming. Furthermore, there is general agreement that we will face what some call "intelligence explosion," resulting from AI recursively improving itself to achieve "superintelligence." We don't know what form these superintelligent machines will take, but we should prepare for their potential dangers and think ahead about containment strategies.
An open question is whether AI superintelligence can love or hate, as humans do, or be motivated by pride or revenge, say? If superintelligence is developed based on whole-brain emulation, combined with evolutionary strategies for improvement, the answer is clearer. The whole-brain approach begins with digitally reproducing a brain, complete with its experiences, memories, and "values." In theory, this kind of value-loading will allow the AI to act compassionately and ethically.
But there is no guarantee that once the AI gains a decisive strategic advantage, it won't escape human control. Furthermore, even if the superintelligent AI is designed to act with a human or a group of humans in the loop, how can we be sure that the human elements are not corrupted?
Ironically, human thinking is the easiest part. We will likely come to trust AI more than humans in matters of logical argument and fact-finding. It is what humans and other animals do without thinking that is difficult to master for AI.
Besides whole-brain emulation, superintelligent AI may take one of two other paths. In the "child machine" approach, a term coined by Alan Turing, a "seed AI" would create new versions of itself by learning new things as a child does. The process of recursive self-improvement can quickly lead to superintelligence. In the genetic engineering approach, a population of genetically-enhanced individuals might exhibit collective superintelligence.
No matter which of the three paths above is pursued, we must begin preparing for the consequences and thinking about safeguards, because doing so after an intelligence explosion may be too late. A superintelligent AI, or the country that owns/controls it, might become an all-powerful "singleton." A self-improving superintelligence could possibly conceal its abilities and goals, until it has amassed sufficient powers to gain a strategic advantage in performance and self-preservation. Human gatekeepers may not be able to stop such a singleton.
(2) Book review: Tegmark, Max, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, unabridged 13-hour audiobook, read by Rob Shapiro, Random House Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Tegmark, a renowned physicist, classifies life into three stages or versions. Life 1.0 covered some four billion years, when both the hardware and software of living beings were at the mercy of evolution, growing and changing very slowly. Life 2.0 took over when the software that controls the evolving hardware expanded and grew substantially through learning and other social/cultural processes. We are now at the beginning of Life 3.0, when living beings' hardware and software are both augmentable and improvable, leading in time to intelligence explosion and superintelligence.
Tegmark offers a roadmap to the promises and perils of AI in an accessible format, covering a range of concerns that include impacts on warfare, political systems, and jobs, dispelling some common myths in the process. He tries to present a broad mix of competing theories and proposals, although the presentation is biased toward infotech, to the detriment of biotech, which many believe will drive much of the progress.
Once computer programs know us and our social systems better than we do, the balance of power shifts in their favor, making elections, markets, and much else obsolete. Ironically, this takeover does not require superintelligence. It may be achieved by machines that are improved versions of what we currently have.
The fever pitch of AI advances has led to what Yuval Noah Harari calls "philosophy with a deadline." We can no longer afford to take our time in debating important philosophical issues raised by AI, essentially forcing notoriously slow philosophers to keep up with speedy engineers.
Tegmark's Life 3.0 has much in common with Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence [my review]. Tegmark is less alarmist than Bostrom, in that he does not try to demonstrate the unavoidability of risk. He presents various scenarios and asks his readers to consider the possible outcomes. Whereas alarm may not be warranted, hard thinking on technological and philosophical issues we are about to face is absolutely necessary.
You can find much interesting info on Max Tegmark's MIT Web site.
2022/11/14 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Kowkab Yussefian Parhami (1929-2022): It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of my mother Kowkab this morning. Details of funeral and memorial services will be announced soon. RIP. [Top center] Iran solidarity: Tehran mountaineers display a banner that reads: "Long Live Baluchistan & Kurdistan!" [Top right] My salad creation for Saturday's family lunch, when we gathered to say farewell to my mom. [Bottom left] Where architects find inspiration! [Bottom center & right] Book talk: 30 Figures (see the next item below).
(2) Sunday's Socrates Think Tank book talk: Dr. Abbas Milani (Stanford U.) talked about his book, 30 Figures. The book is a memoir, told as stories of the author's interactions with 30 influential people. Dr. Mandana Zandian, who was also present in this Zoom session, talked in praise of the book (link to her review). The author's sister, Dr. Farzaneh Milani, a prominent scholar in her own right, also spoke briefly.
(3) Khamenei's propaganda machine: With his allies taking over one media outlet after another, and by shuttering down newspapers/magazines with even mild criticisms, dissenting voices have no outlet in Iran.
(4) Criminals running free: Nearly three decades after the 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 and injured hundreds, no one has been brought to trial yet.
(5) Soccer World Cup: Iran's Islamic regime threatens exiled sports journalists about consequences of unfavorable coverage during the Qatar tournament, due to start in a week.
2022/11/13 (Sunday): Here are a couple more book reviews from my substantial backlog of reviews.
(1) Book review: Kirchick, James, Secret City: Gay Washington, from FDR to Clinton, unabridged 26-hour audiobook, read by Ron Butler, Macmillan Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
LGBTQ+ people are everywhere, and Washington is no exception. In fact, census data shows that DC has the highest proportion of gay people in the US. Yet, they tend to be erased from historical records. Writing about LGBTQ+ people is tricky, because outing them against their will is frowned upon. Though the author is gay himself, or, perhaps, because of it, he didn't plan to out any politician in this decade-in-the-making book.
Depending on your knowledge of US history, you may or may not be surprised by the gay politicians encountered in this book. I was surprised by most of the names. For example, Bob Livingston was on the brink of succeeding Newt Gingrich as House speaker, when he was forced to resign due to a sex scandal.
The Kinsey Reports of 1948 and 1953 opened our eyes to the fact that there are many more gays among us than we realized, creating a fear of "the gay next door" and equating homosexuality with disloyalty to the US. One reason for fearing or distrusting gays was the fact that they could be blackmailed by threatening to disclose their sexual orientation. Yet, closeted gays could also be more loyal to people in power and could devote more time to their duties in view of not having the distractions of a family life.
Throughout the 20th century, gays gradually gained more acceptance. But there were periods of repression, such as in the eras of Nixon & Reagan, alongside more acceptance during the Clinton presidency. We are now back to one of those repressive periods, with Republicans slandering LBGTQ+ people as groomers of children.
Kirchick has spent years uncovering long-hidden stories and presenting them in ~700 pages, plus 100+ pages of notes & sources. He ends his book on a positive note, pointing to a Gallup poll indicating that the number of self-reported LGBTQ+ people has doubled over the past decade. They are certainly more visible now than ever before. "I am fairly sure that there's never been a better time to be gay in this country."
While I see how gays are more accepted now than ever before in certain domains, such as politics, I do not believe that others, particularly teachers, have it so easy.
(2) Book review: Brown, Lisa, Long Story Short: 100 Classic Books in Three Panels, Algonquin Books, 2020.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Illustrator Lisa Brown summarizes in three comic-strip panels (on occasion, a few more) each of the 100 selected classic books. Organized into the categories "Love," "Sex," "Death," and "Female Trouble," the chosen books include Atonement, Beloved, Don Quixote, The Inferno, Jane Eyre, Lord of the Flies, Madame Bovary, and Moby Dick. In short, all the books you have been wanting to read or reread, but haven't had the time, even during the COVID-19 pandemic!
2022/11/12 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian women will never go back to obeying compulsory hijab laws: This photo was taken in the city of Gorgan, northern Iran. [Center] This is the tea glass my father used for many years, before his passing in 1992: After hanging on to it for 30 years, my mom recently gave it to me for safekeeping. [Right] Women's hairs are frightening: The Iranian mullahs have never been so scared of anything!
(2) Watch how French business leaders say they are looking forward to the opening of the Iranian market after lifting of sanctions: They dodge questions about how they can do business with a brutal dictatorial regime.
(3) Amnesty International has submitted a petition with 1+ million signatures (a quarter of them from Iran) to the UN, asking for an independent mechanism to investigate the crimes of Iran's Islamic regime. [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nearly 300 election-deniers were on the ballot during the 2022 midterm elections: They all failed miserably!
- Quote: "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." ~ Mark Twain
- Pianist extraordinaire: Lang Lang plays in what seems to be an awards-show venue.
- Navajo proverb: "You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep."
- Facebook memory from Nov. 12, 2016: When my daughter interviewed her grandma for a school project.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 12, 2012: Thanks to all the caring people in the world (humor).
- Facebook memory from Nov. 12, 2010: Humorous Persian poem by Mohammad Reza Ali Payam (Mr. Haloo).
(5) Catherine Cortez Masto beats her Republican opponent in Nevada, giving the Democrats 50 seats and, thus, control of the Senate. Georgia's run-off race is now irrelevant to Senate control.
(6) In his forthcoming memoir, Mike Pence reveals what Donald Trump told him before January 6: Too little, too late, Mike! You should have spoken up before Trump and his cronies swept all the dirt under the rug and painted people like you as wimpy and unpatriotic. You should have testified in front of January 6 Committee to make sure that the treasonous ex-president never gets a chance to endanger our country again. You still speak about January 6 in terms of not seeing eye-to-eye with Trump. Treason vs. patriotism is no minor spat, Mike!
(7) Remember Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal," starring Tom Hanks? Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the man whose 18-year dwelling at Charles de Gaulle Airport inspired the book and the film, just passed away.
2022/11/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: The computer that guided the Apollo 11 Moon-landing mission of 1969 was a marvel of technology for its time. [Center] Remebering Vanik Tatavoosian (see the last item below). [Right] Attacks on Artificial Intelligence: When an adversary tries to use weaknesses of people to extract information for illegitimate purposes, we call it social engineering. AI can be attacked similarly to gain control or to modify the behavior of intelligent systems for nefarious purposes.
(2) Quote of the day: "Those who try to ban friendship between people of opposite sex by invoking the fire in Hell say their daily prayers in the hopes of sleeping with fairies in Heaven." ~ Ahmad Shamloo (Iranian poet)
(3) Major layoffs in tech: Meta has cut more than 11,000 of its staff positions. Twitter laid off half of its 7500 employees, before having second thoughts and recalling many of them.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump adviser characterizes his leadership and campaign operations as a sinking ship.
- Wikipedia earns respect: Once shunned, the free on-line encyclopedia is now embraced by professors.
- Preliminary study finds that meditation works as well as the popular drug Lexapro in reducing anxiety.
- Layered rocks in Western Australia, dating back 3.5 B years, are some of Earth's earliest known life.
- Iranian beach-soccer player celebrates his scored goal by showing solidarity with Iranian women.
- Simple math puzzle: If a + b = 1 and a^2 + b^2 = 9, what is a^4 + b^4?
- Solve for x (Problem from the Ukrainian Math Olympiad): 3^x + 9^x = 27^x
- Cruise ships are essentially floating hotels. Now, this concept plane aims to provide a flying hotel.
(5) Young men and women defy the Iranian mullahs by dancing on the streets: This is a joyful revolution, not like the one in 1979, which wiped the smiles off people's faces.
(6) Married life is the same, everywhere, for everyone, and at every age: "It's not easy to write about your husband. I bit through several pencils." ~ Queen Consort Camilla, 75
(7) A few quick laugh lines:
- Do you struggle with negative thoughts? No, I'm great at them.
- What's the quickest way to get a child's attention? Sit down and look comfortable.
- What do you call Old MacDonald when he runs the farm? E.I.C.E.O.
(8) Author Nina de Gramont, on making NYT's Best-Seller List: "If this had happened when I was 25, I'd think that it meant I was really brilliant. Happening at 55, I know it means I'm really lucky."
(9) Talangor Group Zoom meeting: Tonight's session was devoted to honoring the memory of Vanik Tatavoosian (1953-2022), a long-time member and one of the founders of the group. Psychotherapist Dr. Foojan Zeine provided some thoughts on mourning the loss of loved ones. Vanik's friends and collaborators spoke fondly of him and of his memories, comforting his wife Nazik and others.
2022/11/09 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Aerial photo of Tehran's Freedom (Azadi) Tower. [Top center] This is how software is created: "Don't worry. Keep coding. We can fix it later." [Top right] A rarely-seen aerial photo of Taj Mahal, India. [Bottom left] Meme of the day: Iranians of all walks of life and of all ethnicities uniting against Khamenei's brutal security forces. [Bottom center] Supporting Iran's feminist uprising: #WomanLifeFreedom #JanJianAzadi #MahsaAmini #NikkaShakarami [Bottom right] Tech talk on AI (see the last item below).
(2) Iran protests: Swedish MP, who has Iranian roots, fights back tears as he recites the names of children killed by Islamic Republic of Iran's security forces during recent street protests. [Tweet, with video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Borowitz Report (humor): USA the envy of world after $10 billion in campaign ads changes almost nothing.
- A banner reading #WomanLifeFreedom flies over Qom, supposedly a stronghold for the Iranian mullahs.
- Scenes of mullahs harassing women in public: This is why Iranian protesters despise mullahs.
- Women in Karaj, near Tehran, greet each other & male passersby with smiles and gifts. [Tweet, with video]
- A restaurant in Malaysia gives out discounts according to how thin you are.
[Photo]
- Beautiful math: Constructing the square-roots of consecutive natural numbers on the real line. [Video]
- Playing the guitar with the feet: Absolutely amazing! [3-minute video]
(4) Socrates Think Tank Zoom talk: Tonight, I spoke under the title "A Review of Methods, Applications, and Social Challenges of AI" (in Persian). I dedicated my talk to my ailing 93-year-old mother and also mentioned renewal of old friendships and support for Iran's feminist uprising as things that have been on my mind lately.
Defining artificial intelligence (AI), or plain intelligence for that matter, has proven more difficult than expected. Many people have thrown up their arms, taking the position that, even though we can't define AI, we'll recognize it when we see it! Despite the cycles of hype and disappointment in achieving general AI, success stories abound in making machines behave intelligently in limited domains. Examples include vehicle routing (Uber), logistics (airport gate assignments), and game-playing (Chess, GO). Meanwhile, we still have a long way to go in building machines that can pass the Turing test, as well as in domains such as machine translation, which may require the same, or even greater, capabilities. In recent years, we have come to realize that, as great as the technical challenges are in developing general AI, an even greater challenge is developing awareness and dealing with social implications of massive data repositories and automated decision-making. After collecting petabytes of data on each of us, there is no guarantee that machines, or their masters, will use the data to offer better services and optimal outcomes, rather than controlling and shaping our economic and social behaviors. A key consideration is thus ensuring a balance between facilitating technical progress and ensuring fairness and social justice. [Persian version of this summary]
2022/11/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season (see the last item below). [Center] Math puzzles: Evaluate the top expression involving 90 product terms, the middle expression with its 2007-term summation, and the bottom expression, given the value of x. (Credit: @mathisstillfun) [Right] Iranians see mullahs as the cause of the country's economic & social woes: So, they show their disdain by knocking turbans off mullahs' heads and, on occasion, beating them up. I am a non-violent person, but when the ruling mullahs have protesters (including children) shot in the head and those in the parliament call for the execution of all protesters, I set aside my ideals and become more pragmatic!
(2) Lessons from history for Iranian rulers: Egyptian plain-clothes security forces attacked street protesters on horses and camels. They were tried in court after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak. [Tweet, with video]
(3) Nikki Haley's racism on full display: In a rally for Herschel Walker, she said Raphael Warnock, a black US Senator, should be deported. Deported to where? Warnock is the Georgia-born son of a US Army veteran.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Some 78% (227 out of 290) of Iran's MPs call for executing all street protesters. [Tweet]
- Facebook memory from Nov. 7, 2015: Satellite image of the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 7, 2012: Three math and logical-reasoning puzzles.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 7, 2010: On languages spoken in Heaven and Hell.
(5) Iran beats Brazil to become the world champion of beach soccer: The players sided with street protesters in Iran through symbolic cutting of their hairs during goal-scoring celebrations, earning the wrath of sports and other Islamic Republic authorities, who barred well-wishers from greeting the team at the airport. [Highlights]
(6) Book review: Jemisin, N. K., The Fifth Season: Every Age Must Come to an End, unabridged 15-hour audiobook, read by Robin Miles, Hachette Audio, 2015. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
When I saw this book, I immediately wondered whether the author was a woman, using initials to disguise her gender, a la J. K. Rowling and E. L. James. Sure enough, Nora Keita Jemisin is not just a woman, but a black woman, a highly distinguished fantasy/sci-fi writer, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, 2016-2018 (for books in her "Broken Earth" trilogy, which begins with The Fifth Season), and recipient of a McArthur "Genius Grant" in 2020. The other two titles in this well-received trilogy are The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky.
The setting for this fascinating novel is a planet with a single supercontinent, whose inhabitants suffer from seismic activity and the ensuing extended winter, which they call a "Fifth Season," every few centuries. Jemisin reportedly took a volcano tour of Hawaii to see first-hand how seismic eruptions might affect the landscape and society. The planet's residents are divided into different castes by societal role, ethnicity, and species.
The plot begins when a powerful person, discussing the sad state of the world and the oppression of his race, threatens to use his super-powers to cause the worst Fifth Season in recorded history. The story then unfolds as the interleaving adventures of three female characters moving across the supercontinent. To avoid spoiling the intrigue, I won't reveal the ending or the connections among the various characters.
We earthlings can identify with the various elements of this story: Anti-Black and other forms of racism and racial oppression, the looming climate crisis, and the human-made nature of much of the threat. In July 2022, Santa Barbara Public Library selected The Fifth Season for its community reading program, which is how I learned about the book. Discussions and other public programming began in fall 2022.
2022/11/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: Find the measure of the 2 equal angles marked in the diagram. [Center] Claude Monet and his love for the color blue: There are speculations that before he was persuaded to use corrective glasses, blue was the only color Monet could see. [Right] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a rectangle, a quarter-circle, and a half-circle, what is the area of the rectangle? (Credit: @sonukg4india)
(2) Art for a revolution: The German version of the TV talent-search program "The Voice" features Rana Mansour, performing her English translation of the anthem for Iran's feminist uprising, originally composed by the now-imprisoned Shervin Hajipour under the title "Baraa-ye." [7-minute video]
(3) Yet another significant scientific publication for my daughter Sepideh: "Broad transcriptomic dysregulation occurs across the cerebral cortex in ASD," by Michael J. Gandal, Jillian R. Haney, Brie Wamsley, Chloe X. Yap, Sepideh Parhami, et al, Nature, Nov. 2, 2022.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Oprah Winfrey, who put Dr. Oz on the map by regularly featuring him in her TV show, endorses his opponent.
- Using goons to advance political agendas and to keep/usurp power has a long history in Iran.
- There are King Cyrus Streets in Tel Aviv and several other Israeli cities, but not in Tehran, Iran. [Photo]
- Stanford Math Tournament 2022: If x^2 + 2y^2 + 3z^2 = 96, what is the maximum value of x + 2y + 3z?
(5) Iranians suck at cooperation: A few opposition figures are criticizing Nazanin Boniadi for her activism on behalf of Iranian women, citing the fact that she has not fought a single day inside Iran. Get real, people! All the key women leaders inside Iran are either in jail or wary of going back to jail if they speak up publicly. What's wrong if someone who has a platform uses it to do good?
(6) The survival condo: With thick, super-strong doors and 5-year food supply, these condos will allow the super-rich to survive natural and human-made catastrophes. [13-minute CBS News report]
(7) Nobel Laureate Peter J. Ratcliffe received this rejection letter from Nature in 1992: Of course, not every rejection letter means a future Nobel Prize, but peer evaluations can be, and far too often are, wrong! [Image]
(8) Global Women's Summit: A number of women leaders, including @HillaryClinton, @USAmbUN, @NazaninBoniadi, and @AlinejadMasih will participate in a Washington Post live meeting on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, 6:00 AM PST. This is a good chance to have voices of Iranian women heard globally.
(9) Iranian women opposed to compulsory hijab supporting each other: On the streets of Tehran, a woman hands out chocolates and a message that reads "Thank you for beautifying the city with your hair." [Video]
2022/11/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Leafy buildings in Hainan, China (more unusual/innovative buildings). [Top center & right] Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (see the last item below). [Bottom left] What's happening to Twitter? Has it fallen into the MAGA sinkhole? Are rumors that liberals are leaving the platform true? [Bottom center] Accidental art in nature: Supporting Iran's feminist uprising (#WomanLifeFreedom). [Bottom right] The US job market is hot but cooling, consistent with the beginning of a recession (NYT chart).
(2) Math puzzle (GMAT 2017): Two horses are tied to diagonally opposite corners of a square field, using ropes of the same length. Each horse can reach half the field's area. Which is larger, the area that both horses can reach or the area that neither horse can reach?
(3) Book review: Rushdie, Salman (translated into Persian by Roshanak Irani; a pseudonym), The Satanic Verses: A Novel, Nima Publications, Berlin, 2003 (original, Viking, 1988).
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Many years after reading the original, the August 2022 assassination attempt on Rushdie prompted me to peruse a Persian edition of The Satanic Verses to show solidarity with those working on the protection of free speech across the globe. Roshanak Irani is very likely a pseudonym for the translator, whose life is just as threatened as Rushdie's. The translation is imperfect, so I found myself consulting the original text when I encountered ambiguities.
This fourth novel of British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie is loosely based on the life of Prophet Muhammad, using dream visions of two Indian expatriates, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, who are magically saved after their hijacked plane flying from India to Britian explodes over the English Channel. The novel achieved critical acclaim in the West and triggered violent reactions in the Islamic world, leading to the book's ban in many countries and death threats/attempts for blasphemy against the author and anyone associated with the book's publication & translation.
The titular satanic verses refer to Prophet Muhammad's revelation, later renounced as devil-induced, of the adoption of three Meccan goddesses in a dream sequence unfolding in Jahilia (land of ignorance). Upon the prophet's triumphant return to Mecca, one of his opponents hides in an underground brothel, whose prostitutes take the identities of the Prophet's wives. A second dream sequence features Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl purportedly guided by the Archangel Gabriel, who entices her village community to embark on an ill-fated foot pilgrimage to Mecca. A third dream sequence pertains to a contemporary fanatic expatriate Imam, a caricature of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Through the instrument of "magical realism," Rushdie deals with the immigrant experience in Britain, focusing on issues of suffering, identity, alienation, compromise, and conformity, which afflict all migrants. In a way, Rushdie paints his own inner struggles and conflicts. He has opined that the novel, a comic castigation of Western materialism, isn't about Islam, "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London, and Bombay."
2022/11/03 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Georgetown panel discussion on Iran's feminist revolution (see the last item below). [Center] Abbassian Historic House in Kashan, Iran. [Right] Support for protests by Iranian women and students (see the next to the last item below).
(2) This is how Iranian protesters are treated by security police: Beaten savagely and then shot point-blank. Even Iranian law requires that law-breakers be arrested, not beaten and shot at! [Warning: Violent video]
(3) Iran's Islamic regime has zero credibility: Security forces are shown in this video to destroy public and personal property, so that their bosses can later blame protesters for the same.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- CVS, Walmart, & Walgreens agree to pay nearly $14 billion to settle thousands of opioids lawsuits.
- Elon Musk assures civil rights groups that Twitter bans won't be rescinded until moderation process is in.
- New Yorker cartoon caption of the day: "My opponent is soft on all the violent crime I'm fomenting."
- Music students of Tehran U. of Art perform in celebration of #WomanLifeFreedom. [2-minute video]
(5) Work of women STEM researchers celebrated: A total of 1000 women researchers around the world have been named as top female scientists for 2022. [Forbes report, based on Research.com data]
(6) Persian poetry: This poem, written more than a year ago, aptly describes Iran's religious rulers, particularly their oppression of women. It is entitled "I have no religion at all." #WomanLifeFreedom
(7) Local Santa Barbara support for women & students of Iran: UCSB's Iranian Studies Initiative has posted several documents about local and global support for the women of Iran and for student activists. Among the posts is a Radio Zamaneh interview with the Initiative's Director, Dr. Janet Afary. Documents include County of Santa Barbara's resolution in support of the women of Iran, statement of support for our UCSB Iranian community, National Women's Studies Association stance in solidarity with Iranian protesters, and AIS/MESA joint statement of support for students at Sharif University of Technology.
(8) "Standing with Iranian Women": This was the title of today's interesting and informative webinar, with panelists Professor Azar Nafisi, author/journalist/activist Masih Alinejad, and analyst Dr. Suzanne Maloney. Ambassador Melanne Verveer moderated the discussion.
Event page: https://giwps.georgetown.edu/event/standing-with-iranian-women/
As Iranian women risk everything for their rights and leading the charge for change, despite continued attacks, it is critical the world understands their bravery and the gravity of the moment. The three panelists in today's program focused on different aspect of the current situation in Iran and also answered some general questions about the best ways of supporting Iranian women and holding Iran's Islamic regime accountable for its brutal crackdown.
The program began with the showing of a new video production of the song "Baraa-ye," which has become an anthem for the #WomanLifeFreedom uprising. Next, a female reporter joining the webinar from Iran, presented a brief overview of current events and attempts by the Islamic regime to violently quell the protests and to severely limit the flow of information to the outside world.
Dr. Azar Nafisi (author & professor of English literature) put the current street protests in the context of Iranian women's movements over the years and the long tradition of feminists/activists, beginning with the 19th-century poet/scholar Tahirih who was murdered for her words and ideas. Nafisi characterized the ongoing protests and the brave, uncompromising young women who lead it as a dream come true for previous generations of women.
Masih Alinejad criticized women politicians worldwide, including some who declare themselves to be feminists, and international human-rights organizations for staying on the sidelines. How can these entities remain indifferent in the face of women being flogged, imprisoned, or even killed for showing a few strands of hair from under their headscarves? Compulsory hijab is far from being a minor nuisance; it is an important tool for the regime to oppress women and to treat them as second-class citizens.
Dr. Suzanne Maloney (VP and Foreign Policy Director, Brookings Institution) assessed the situation as an analyst, rather than an activist, concluding that the ongoing protests, which come on the heels of a long history of women activism, are fundamentally different in their scope and intensity.
The program's recording will be made available soon.
2022/11/02 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Homa Sarshar spoke in Persian under the title "The Tale of Persistence." [Center] The evolution of Batman, 1939-2021. [Right] Laura Mersini-Houghton's Before the Big Bang (see the last item below).
(2) Amazing math: This series for 1/π^3, proposed by B. Gourevitch, has not been proven yet: However, imagine the work that went into its discovery and the beauty it represents, should it be proven correct.
(3) Educating the oppressors: A young Iranian girl is grilled by a TV reporter about why she doesn't believe in compulsory hijab. When the reporter is left speechless, the cameraman tries to help her, but he is also defeated by the savvy young girl, who tells the man that by comparing veiled & unveiled women to wrapped & unwrapped candy and men to flies, he is insulting women and himself.
(4) Misogyny rears its ugly head, even as Iranians protest under the feminist slogan #WomanLifeFreedom: Some men, as they walk the streets of Iran in protest, use obscene and sexualized chants against Islamic leaders and their female family members. Such chants have no place in a movement purporting to support women as human beings and freedom as an ideal.
(5) Book review: Mersini-Houghton, Laura, Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Xe Sands, Harper Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This combo popular-science/memoir volume begins with a heart-wrenching account of the author's family life in communist Albania, where the author's father was forced to go through an ideological purification process triggered by his receiving a job offer from a foreign university. Mersini-Houghton's dad instilled in her a sense of curiosity, and the family survived intact under very challenging conditions. That scientific breakthroughs can emerge from such difficult beginnings is part of the wonder of life!
We are conditioned to think that the universe came into being some 14 billion years ago from the explosion of a miniscule, infinitely-dense singularity, and it has been expanding ever since. So, to the question "What came before the Big Bang?" we answer "Nothing." In a way, this is unsatisfying. If our universe arose from nothing, did other universes too? Put another way, if the Big Bang caused our universe to emerge, what caused the Big Bang?
A competing theory is that there are many universes and that we are but a small part of a multiverse. In the author's terminology, our universe is a wave function of a much larger multiverse, making it anything but special. And here's where the explanation breaks down. Through much hand-waving and repetition of terms, the reader is supposed to understand what it means to use "quantum mechanics on the landscape of string theory"! None of it is explained (or can be explained, I suspect) in a manner that is understandable to non-cosmologists.
Some readers have opined that the sprinkling of biographical information in this book detracts from the scientific message. I, for one, find the mix enriching. It is just as interesting to learn where scientists and their passions for particular fields of study come from as to learn the origins of the universe. Despite all that the educational system in communist Albania did to kill innovation and free thinking in the author, she emerged triumphant and went on to become a leading cosmologist of our time.
2022/10/31 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Halloween memories from years past: This year I had engagements that prevented me from hosting local trick-or-treaters. [Center] Scenes from Isla Vista, the student community next to UCSB, getting ready for tonight's raucous Halloween parties and street festival. Law enforcement has a heavy presence. [Right] Shame on Iran's brutal Islamic regime for converting this bundle of joy to a weeping young girl, mourning the murder of her mother by the regime's thugs during street protests.
(2) Justice, Islamic Republic of Iran style: Kangaroo courts are being held in Iran for prosecuting and convicting street protesters. Trials last mere minutes, with no attorney present.
(3) The Taliban in Afghanistan and Iran's Islamic regime are in competition to see who can abuse & oppress women more: Female students outside Afghanistan's Badakhshan University are whipped by a Taliban officer while protesting for their right to higher education.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Five of the officials of Iran's Islamic regime live in mansions that put royal palaces to shame!
- Canada becomes the first country to call for removal of Iran from the UN Women's Rights Commission.
- Angered Iranian & Ukrainian activists gather in Times Square seeking the world's help against Iran.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 31, 2016: You can't scare a computer hardware engineer!
(5) Talk about hypocrisy! As teenagers are being killed by the Iranian regime for wanting to get rid of mandatory hijab and other misogynistic laws, IRGC commander and current Transportation Minister Rostam Qasemi appears in these photos with his unveiled girlfriend in Malaysia.
(6) Exposed by an investigative report: A "charity" affiliated with Iran's Islamic Human Rights Commission is operating freely in the UK and has even received financial assistance from the British government.
(7) This armed-to-the-teeth special-forces guard isn't going to face a foreign enemy but is headed to the headquarters of Iran's Medical Association, where a group of doctors are holding a protest rally. [Photo]
(8) A final scary post for this Halloween night: We may not be able to eliminate the 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures, but even reducing the rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius makes a big difference. We have no excuse for inaction. [Image]
2022/10/30 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Two math puzzles asking you to evaluate expressions, given some equalities (credit: @mathisstillfun). [Center] If you waver in your resolve to vote, remember RBG and do it for her! [Right] UCLA panel discussion on the ongoing protest movement in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) The non-technologist who had a deep impact on computing: Creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, author of II Cybernetics Frontiers (in which he coined the term "personal computer"), organizer of the first Hackers Conference, and leader of one of the first on-line communities, Stuart Brand was known for his unusual ability to discern interesting societal trends early on. We have learned a lot more about this influential pioneer, thanks to his recently-discovered lost journal.
(3) A wonderful STEM resource: IEEE runs TryEngineering.org as a public service. The Web site has invaluable resources for teachers who want to introduce STEM topics in their classrooms, students wanting to learn about engineering areas & careers, and tools/programs for STEM outreach.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been voted out of office and replaced with the leftist leader Lula.
- Bridge collapse in India leaves at least 132 dead. Is this the scariest Halloween ever or what?
- Drumming: A beautiful piece of music by Planet Drum. [3-minute video]
- Meme of the day: "Each bullet kills just one bird but makes thousands of birds fly."
(5) "Panel Discussion on the Roles of Gender & Women in the Current Protests in Iran": This was the title of today's panel discussion, as part of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran. Moderated by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge), the panel was composed of four panelists, whose viewpoints are summarized below.
- Merhangiz Kar (human-rights activist/lawyer): The most-recent uprising has its roots in the regime's efforts to pit women against each other, with regime-supporting, strictly-veiled women physically confronting those who wear a laxer form of hijab. This strategy backfired, with women who reluctantly wore minimalist hijabs choosing to remove it altogether. The idea of hijab as a stepping stone to gender apartheid was laid by Khomeini, and it was continued by subsequent Islamic officials. Khomeini was aided in his efforts by many women who were normally unveiled but chose to wear a headscarf or chador as a form of protest in the months leading to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Compulsory hijab laws led directly to other misogynistic laws.
[Book]
- Dr. Mohammad Ali Kadivar (Boston College): What has happened in Iran over the past 40+ days is both a social movement and a revolution. As a revolution, the movement may eventually be quashed through military crackdown, but the social-demands are on the way of enacting permanent changes. Women are taking off their headscarves en masse, and university students have already taken down the walls between women's and men's sections of cafeterias on campus. This movement does have some organizers and influencers, who sign statements and issue calls for action, but more needs to be done in this regard. Leaders are currently distributed and act in small groups of friends & acquaintances. An effective leader weaves a story that reflects the path to take from where we stand (our common history & humanity) to our aspirations.
[Book/Course]
- Zeynab Peyghambarzadeh (sociologist): While the current movement has an undeniable feminist component, as women fight patriarchy and misogynistic laws, there are also strong elements of modernity and anti-political-Islam thoughts in the slogans, including demands by LGBTQ+ groups. There is the main chant "Woman, Life, Freedom," with calls to extend "Woman" by using something more inclusive like "Woman*." Overt and extensive mentions of LGBTQ+ demands were unprecedented before the current uprising.
- Dr. Fatemeh Shams (U. Pennsylvania): Close links exists between literature/poetry and freedom movements in Iran. Rhyming slogans are parts of parcels of Iran's sociopolitical movements. Citing numerous examples of chants used by the protesters, Dr. Shams argued that their demands extend far beyond social reforms; they are verbally attacking the heart of the regime and its very existence. It's imperative that we pay attention to chants and slogans to understand the nature of the movement and to avoid falling behind or getting in front of it. Some tried to dilute the "Woman, Life, Freedom" slogan by adding "Man, Country, Development" to it, with little success. Ironically, an Islamic Republic official tried to hijack the main slogan by citing it in his speech, claiming that the regime is all for women, life, and freedom. Iranians in exile face a tricky situation, as they try to avoid certain slogans in the interest of greater unity. A prime example is the slogan "Down with Setamgar (Oppressor), Be It the Shah or Rahbar (Supreme Leader)." The protesters do not shy away from dissing the Supreme Leader or the Revolutionary Guards, as exemplified by rhyming "Jenayat" with "Velayat" and chanting "Hossein, Hossein, Kojaee; Yazid Shodeh Sepaahi."
2022/10/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Powerful memes for Iran's feminist revolution: The world is speaking up in support of Iranian women. #WomenLifeFreedom #MahsaAmini [Top center] Optical illusion: All the green lines in this image are straight. [Top right] The Global Semiconductor Alliance Women's Leadership Initiative stands with Iranian women in fighting their second-class citizenship status. [Bottom left] 3D art at the service of public safety. [Bottom center] Mango-olive salad: This is what I ordered for yesterday's lunch at Masala Spice, a local Indian restaurant. I don't know if this is a standard dish, but do try it if you find it. [Bottom right] Sign of the times: Countdown to the collapse of Iran's Islamic regime has begun.
(2) It Snows in this House: Book talk by Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion, Canada-based activist whose wife and daughter perished in Iran's downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS 752. [55-minute video]
(3) Two icons of courage & persistence honored by US Institute of Peace for standing up to brutal dictators: Iranian journalist/activist Masih Alinejad and Ukraine's President Volidymor Zelensky. [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least 120 dead, scores more injured, in Seoul, South Korea, during a Halloween-celebration stampede.
- Words of wisdom: You cannot treat people like garbage and worship God at the same time.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 29, 2018: The day I had to be in two places at the same time.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 29, 2016: The campaign to free Narges Mohammadi.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 29, 2015: Pondering the joys of the Persian language.
(5) Funny meme of the day (regarding women's magazines):
Page 10: How to lose weight fast.
Page 11: You're beautiful the way you are.
Page 12: Cake recipe.
(6) "Computer Arithmetic: Continuing a Long and Steady Emergence": This is the title of an article by Paolo Montuschi, Jean-Michel Muller, and Florent de Dinechin, published in the October 2022 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. The article defines the field of computer arithmetic and introduces a special issue of IEEE Trans. of Emerging Topics in Computing devoted to the topic.
(7) "Crying 'Cybersecurity!'": This is the title of IEEE Computer magazine's EIC message (October 2022 issue), stressing the point that "continual cybersecurity warnings will fall on deaf ears."
(8) Universities trail the industry in embracing digital transformation: This is the thesis of an article by Jay Liebowitz (October 2022 issue of IEEE Computer magazine), arguing that for universities to stay alive, "digital transformation must take place in many areas (from student learning to financial health to IT systems ...)."
(9) Final thought for the day: "We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained." ~ President Barack Obama
2022/10/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] The bravery of Iranian women is celebrated everywhere: On an IKEA billboard, in NYC's Times Square, and in social-media memes. [Bottom left & center] Thia photo from Saqqez, Iran, went viral and graced the front pages of dozens of newspapers worldwide. It was taken as thousands of people mourned the passing of 40 days from Mahsa Amini's murder while in the custody of Iran's morality police (New York Times front-page story). [Bottom right] Photo from a US national security meeting on the war in Ukraine: Where are the women?
(2) Ban Khamenei on Twitter: Would you believe that Khamenei uses Twitter to spread his messages of hate and to order the killing of teen-age protesters, while blocking the platform for nearly all Iranians?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Something has changed in Iran and its people: Freedom is within reach. There is no going back! [Tweet]
- The protest song "Bara-ye," performed by a group of artists under the auspices of Farhang Foundation.
- Posters of Ayatollah Khamenei are being removed from public places, because protesters are defacing them.
- Political advice: Voting is like driving: To go forward, select D. To go backward, choose R.
- Top officials have left Twitter after the completion of Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover of the company.
- Delicious rice cookies: Souvenir/gift from Kermanshah, Iran.
Photo]
- Performing "Sharghi-ye Ghamguin" ("The Sorrowful Easterner") for the cause of freedom in Iran. [Video]
(4) Hating everyone: Only in America do we see the Arab/Muslim-hating public use a Hamas-Israeli conflict as an excuse to escalate anti-Semitic acts. The far-Right is supposedly pro-Israel but its rhetoric and social-media influencers help spread anti-Jewish hate.
(5) Fiftieth anniversary: Half a century ago, Stevie Wonder, 22, reinvented the sound of pop by releasing the album "Talking Book," bearing the hit "Superstition." Hats off to a music legend whose influence is still strong!
(6) Today, my mom was watching one of the Persian TV stations based in Los Angeles: As usual, a bunch of old men were discussing Iran's feminist uprising! Where are the women and the youth?
2022/10/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A few images celebrating the women-led uprising in Iran. #MahsaAmini #NikkaShakarami [Top center] UCSB faculty and students held an event on campus in support of Iranian women pursuing their rights. [Top right] Women with all kinds of hijab and with no hijab have coexisted in Iran for centuries: The mullahs created a division among women to oppress all women and to advance their misogynistic agenda. [Bottom left] Persian calligraphy: A wonderful artistic creation by Master Esrafil Shirchi. [Bottom center] Down with the oppressor, be he the king or the supreme leader. [Bottom right] Houman Sarshar's The Jews of Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Misogyny is rampant among Iranians, even "intellectuals" in opposition groups: On a Facebook post about FIFA failing to implement its threats against Iran's banning of women from sports stadiums to watch soccer, a man suggested that Massih Alinejad should abandon her activism in the US, go to Iran, and enter into a sigheh marriage (Islamic polygamy). Instead of criticizing her ideas, they attack her as a woman. On the same post, there are also many sexually-explicit insults. The women-led uprising in Iran is needed as much for such men as for the brutally-oppressive mullahs.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- COVID's impact on education: Massive decline in US math scores and a slide in reading skills.
- Fashion show in Vancouver celebrates and supports Iranian women.
[Video]
- A Persian verse composed by poet Soroush Shafiian after visiting the grave of #NikkaShakarami.
- UCSB Faculty Salary Equity Analysis, 2021-2022: Conditions are improving, but we have a long way to go.
(4) Book review: Sarshar, Houman (ed.), The Jews of Iran: The History, Religion and Culture of a Community in the Islamic World, a book in the "International Library of Iranian Studies" series, I. B. Tauris 264 pp. or 352 pp., 2014.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I have previously reviewed Habib Levy's book, Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran: The Outset of the Diaspora, on GoodReads, giving it 4 stars: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4691174645
Houman Sarshar, born in Iran and raised in a Jewish family, has written extensively on the Jewish communities of Persian-speaking countries. His mission of documenting the lives of Iranian Jews is made more urgent by the community's shrinking size, having gone from ~100,000 in the 1970s to no more than 15,000 after Iran's Islamic Revolution. Exact numbers are hard to come by, given conversions to Islam and hiding of identities out of fear of persecution.
Iranian Jews have a 2700-year history. They have co-existed under bonds of friendship and mutual respect with the rest of the community. During the reign of Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979), Iran and Israel expanded their cultural and diplomatic relations, leading to the proliferation of research studies in Israel and elsewhere on Iranian Jews and their integration into Iran's predominantly Muslim society, so as to remedy the under-documentation of the social, political, and economic influences of Jews in contemporary Persian-language texts.
Sarshar was inspired by the biblical account of Queen Esther to write the book Esther's Children, in which he observes that Iranian Jews exist between living in hiding and acting as gate-keepers of Jewish and Iranian cultures, particularly musical and wine-making traditions. In this volume too, whose cover bears an image of the Jewish queen, the influence of Esther is evident, but the coverage is much broader. On page xiii, Sarshar writes, "Jewish Iranian studies is at last entering the next and indeed exciting stage of scholarship ... examining the social, historical, and cultural life of Jews in Iran with the objectives of arriving at hypotheses that reach beyond a mere systematic archival documentation of facts."
Sarshar thus aims to contribute to this new period of scholarship by including a set of ten diverse essays, beginning with the opening piece dealing with the Jewish settlement patterns in pre-Islamic Iran and ending with four essays on Jewish Iranian women's literary production. The book is thus not a simple historical overview but a broad-based examination of historical, cultural, and political dimensions of the lives of Iranian Jews.
I end my review with a list of chapter titles.
- New Vistas on the History of Iranian Jewry in Late Antiquity: Patterns of Jewish Settlement in Iran
- Lotera'i
- The Intellectual and Polemical Dimensions of Hovot Rafa'el
- Two Wars, Two Cities, Two Religions: The Jews of Mashhad and the Herat Wars
- The Origins of the Decorated Ketubbah in Iran and Afghanistan
- The Material Culture and Ritual Objects of the Jews of Iran
- The Things They Left Behind
- Voices of Marginality: Diversity in Jewish Iranian Women's Memoirs and Beyond
- Flights from History in Gina Barkhordar Nahai's and Dalia Sofer's Fiction
- Fantasies of Flight and Inclusion: Gina Nahai's Reclaiming of Jewish Iranian Identity in the American Diaspora
2022/10/22 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Double-birthday party at my house for my son and my niece, in which local artist David Tovar provided the musical entertainment, singing rock and country classics such as "Stand by Me," "Suzy Q," "Sweet Caroline," and "Fever" (Videos: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9) [Bottom left] Mothers of slain political activists in Iran are holding strong and won't be intimidated by regime threats. #WomenLifeFreedom [Bottom center] Jhumpa Lahiri's Translating Myself and Others (see the last item below). [Bottom right] The youngest-ever cabinet minister in Sweden is a 26-year-old woman of Iranian heritage.
(2) World's largest supercomputer experiences several failures per day: The exaflops Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which uses 21 MW of power to feed its powerful GPUs and complex interconnects (enough to power a small town), has a mean time to failure (MTTF) measured in hours, not days!
(3) English translation of a few Persian verses from Mowlavi/Rumi:
I was dead, I found life;
I was weeping, I found laughter.
Love's blessings transformed me,
and I became everlasting power.
My eyes are content now, my soul valiant.
I have the heart of a lion, and the glow of Venus.
(4) Book review: Lahiri, Jhumpa, Translating Myself and Others, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Sneha Mathan, Princeton U. Press, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Jhumpa Lahiri is a professor at Princeton U., teaching creative writing and translation. Before joining Princeton, she lived in Rome, "where [her] linguistic landscape dramatically transformed, and Italian emerged like a new island in an archipelago, just as Ovid describes in Metamorphoses ..."
I have previously reviewed In Other Words, Lahiri's love letter to the Italian language, in which she confides that writing in a different language allows her to break the molds and express herself more freely, perhaps even finding a new voice in the process:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3818863021
Because of this passion for thinking and immersing oneself in an original language, one may think that she looks down on translation. On the contrary, she has come to the conclusion that translation is nothing but a form of writing. In her May 2022 interview with NPR's "All Things Considered," Lahiri talked about how she fell in love with translating and how this love shapes her writing. In particular, she explained how translating the works of other authors and her own writings from Italian made her a better writer in Italian. She views the work of translation as both difficult and enjoyable.
When translating one's own writing, there is the constant temptation to re-write, correct factual errors, and remove inconsistencies. So, Lahiri views translation as just another round of editing, albeit an extremely rigorous one. After Lahiri translated her Italian novel Dove Mi Trovo into its English version, Whereabouts, she went back and updated the Italian version. A writer essentially translates his/her thoughts from an internal language to a chosen external language. For a multi-lingual person, internal thoughts can form in different languages.
We often praise the quality of a translation by saying that it remains faithful to the original. It was Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986] who recognized the possibility of a translation being so much better than the original and coined the expression "the original is unfaithful to the translation," thus giving translation the status of creative thinking.
Here is a good way for grasping the challenges of translation. Any writer has faced the problem of choosing an appropriate word from a long list of synonyms for the exact feeling or thought s/he wants to convey. There are nuances that make synonyms not exactly equivalent, creating problems even for the native speaker of a language. The problem becomes even more daunting when going back and forth between languages.
The book contains ten essays, sandwiched between an introduction and an afterword ("Translating Transformation"):
- Why Italian?
- Containers: Introduction to Ties by Domenico Starnone
- Juxtaposition: Introduction to Trick by Domenico Starnone
- In Praise of Echo: Reflections on the Meaning of Translation
- An Ode to the Mighty Optative: Notes on a Would-be Translator
- Where I Find Myself: On Self-Translation
- Sustitution: Afterword to Trust by Domenico Starnone
- Extra(ordinary) Translation: On Gramsci
- Lingua/Language
- Calvino Abroad
2022/10/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Meme of the day about Iran's feminist uprising triggered by the death of #MahsaAmini who was in custody for wearing "improper hijab": Rock, paper, scissors. [Center] IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk (see the last item below). [Right] Mapping the moon: NASA uses information gained from shadows to create an accurate 3D model of the lunar surface, in preparation for US astronauts returning to the Moon by 2025, in a mission focused on finding water in cold, permanently-shadowed deep craters.
(2) Iranians' excitement & anxiety these days has led to the spread of much misinformation & disinformation on social media: These two photos are good examples. The kicking-woman photo is from a deleted scene of a film, which was ironically made by Iran's Islamic regime. The other photo isn't even from Iran, but from Azerbaijan of 9 years ago. I am guilty of spreading the latter photo along with a false narrative. We should all check our sources diligently.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- CNN's Jake Tapper covers Iran's feminist uprising.
[Video]
- Huge fire with a barrage of gunshots reported at Tehran's Evin Prison, where political prisoners are kept.
- Iran's brutal Islamic regime shamelessly uses ambulances for arrests and for transporting security forces.
- Full episode of the PBS program "Firing Line," featuring Masih Alinejad. #WomenLifeFreedom
- Music from the very popular oldie song "Soltan-e Ghalb-ha," with protest lyrics. [2-minute video]
(4) Apple Computer continues its transition to USB-C charger as a replacement for its Lightning port because of a European Union law requiring a common charger for all consumer electronic devices by 2024.
(5) On the story of hijab: Dr. Mohammad Amini, an expert in contemporary Iranian history who recently passed away, published his research on hijab ~12 years ago. I highly recommend this insightful article, which is in Persian. RIP.
[Part 1]
[Paert 2]
(6) Quote of the day: "Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day." ~ Shams Tabrizi
(7) IEEE Central Coast Section's technical talk of 10/19: Speaking under the title "A Realistic Assessment of Intelligent Behavior and Machine Learning," Dr. Behrooz Parhami (UCSB, ECE) presented a historical overview of the field of artificial intelligence, with its ups & downs, along with the status of various problems that have eluded full solution, including technical difficulties in areas such as machine translation and social/ethical challenges in applying AI technology in a safe, unbiased, and just manner.
[Full IEEE CCS report]
[PDF slides]
[Speaker's Web page]
2022/10/18 (Tuesday): Memorable trip to Istanbul with a group of college buddies, Oct. 13-18, 2022.
Introduction: Following the reunion gatherings in Armenia (50th anniversary of our graduation from Tehran University's College of Engineering) in 2018 and Georgia in 2019, we decided to gather in Istanbul to mark our 54th graduation anniversary. Locations of these anniversary gatherings were chosen to make it easy for friends from Iran to attend, given the difficulty of obtaining visas and high travel expenses for going to countries in the West. The group was smaller than those of our previous gatherings due to the current economic conditions and explosive political situation in Iran. In all, we had 9 people in attendance, counting family members. I took many more photos and am posting here only selected shots that give a feel for our experiences.
Second row of images: On Friday, our first full day in Istanbul, we took a boat tour of Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara. Princes Islands are protected from development: Only approved renovations to existing houses are permissible. Foreign nationals aren't allowed to own property there. With very few exceptions, all vehicles must be electric. Here are samples of musical entertainment provided on the tour boat [Video 1; Video 2; Video 3]. In the evening, we tried some street snacks (broiled corn on the cob & chestnuts).
Third & fourth row of images: On Saturday, we visited Suleymanieh Mosque, the second biggest one in "the city of a thousand mosques," and its adjacent mausoleums of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and his wife, Hurrem Sultan. Then, we explored the neighborhood where the ancient Phanar Greek Orthodox College still stands and is operating as a primary/middle school. We next visited the Istanbul Aquarium, one of the largest in the world. It has sections corresponding to different regions of the world and their characteristic climates, with the section devoted to Amazon being most impressive. We ended the day by spending some time at an outlet mall, followed by walking on the streets near our Occidental Taksim Square hotel.
Fifth & sixth rows of images: On Sunday, we began our explorations with a visit to Hagia Sophia, the ancient landmark that has become a symbol of Istanbul. The minarets were added when it was converted from a church to a mosque. Later it was turned into a museum. The adjacent Topkapi Palace is also quite impressive. Later in the day, we visited the Dolmabahce (pronounced "Dolma Baghcheh") Palace on the shore of the Sea of Marmara, where Ottoman Sultans took residence, as they approached their final decades of rule. This palace with its adjacent harem-sara is a symbol of overindulgence. We ended the day by dining at a restaurant in Kumkapi District, with ample musical entertainment provided by traveling bands playing mostly Turkish & Kurdish songs. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
Seventh row of images: On Monday, we visited Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, a vast complex of covered and open-air alleys lined with small shops, selling everything from jewlery to herbs and sweets. Later, we got a glimpse of the city from atop Galata bridge, dining at one of the many restaurants underneath the bridge for an amazing seafood experience (again with live music). [Video]
Returning to the US: On Tuesday I had my return flight departing at 1:15 PM, so I didn't go on a tour of Spanja and its beautiful nature with other members of our party, who stayed until Thursday, 10/20. I had a class to teach and an IEEE lecture to give on 10/19. I was treated to three security checks at Istanbul Airport: Upon entering the airport, after checking (en route to the designated terminal), and at the boarding gate.
Final notes: As I awaited boarding my Turkish Airlines flight to SFO en route to Santa Barbara, I jotted down some thoughts on this enjoyable and memorable trip, where I renewed a few old friendships, some of them dating back to the late 1960s at Tehran University's College of Engineering.
Istanbul is a beautiful and diverse city, located at the watery intersection of the old and new worlds. It neighbors the Black Sea and situated on both sides of the Sea of Marmara, the latter connected to the Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea. Because of limited connectivity via a handful of bridges, the hilly landscape, and narrow, winding streets, traffic is a nightmare. Cars and pedestrians mingle on the narrow roads in a potentially deadly mix, forcing drivers to move very slowly.
The Turkish language is written with the Latin alphabet. This fact, combined with the use of many words from Persian, Arabic, and European languages, often with very slight modifications, allowed me to understand many store and directional signs. Also helpful was my exposure to the Azeri language when I attended first through third grades in Tabriz, Iran. Try to guess what the word "kebap" means!
Turkey was modernized and secularized by Kemal Ataturk (the last name means "Father of Turk"), whose profound influence on the country is quite evident. Some of that secularization has been undone in recent years, but there is little doubt that Turkey thrives because of Ataturk's visionary and bold reforms.
2022/10/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Bravery in the face of oppression: Iranian women are going back 40+ years to the days when they could choose their own clothing. [Top center] Cartoon about arresting school girls during protests in Iran: "Sir, we have a small problem here. The handcuffs are too big!" [Top right] IranWire cartoon of the day: Iran's Supreme Leader is drowning in women's hair. [Bottom left] A few shots from the plane during my SBA-SFO flight, en route to Istanbul: You see a couple of iconic sights from the San Francisco Bay Area, a parallel approach to landing by two airplanes, and a couple of very rare unoccupied airplane seats next to me! [Bottom center] Statue of #MahsaAmini, created by Ms. Paula Slater from California (#WomenLifeFreedom). [Bottom right] Landing at Istanbul Airport: I and a group of college classmates are celebrating the 54th anniversary of our graduation from Tehran University's College of Engineering at this magical city.
(2) Nobel-Prize-worthy warnings about banks apply equally to other financial institutions: "As Wall Street gets jittery, Stockholm honors three economists who warned about fragilities in the banking system."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Music from the very popular oldie song "Soltan-e Ghal-ha," with protest lyrics. [Video]
- Full episode of the PBS program "Firing Line," featuring Masih Alinejad. #WomenLifeFreedom #MahsaAmini
- "Holy Spider," a film based on a true story from Iran: A country that considers women's lives worthless.
- I am now a proud lifetime member of ACM, following 50 years of professional membership.
(4) A tale of two Persian anthems: One dictated from the top and costing millions to produce/promote in order to praise "the Commander" (Khamenei); the other coming from a little-known singer/songwriter, lauding the Commander's victims and going viral in a matter of days, free of charge.
(5) Support for Iranian protesters: The Computer Architecture Special Interest Group of ACM (SIGARCH) and IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Computer Architecture have issued a joint statement in support of Iranian protesters demanding freedom and gender equity.
2022/10/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] For friends of Iranian origins and their supporters, these and a couple of other T-shirt designs with slogans and symbols of Iran's new feminist uprising are available from Amazon.com. [Top right] Mona Lisa joins a long list of celebrities who have supported Iran's feminists uprising. [Bottom left] Clever shot: A young woman, holding a photo of herself as an 8-year-old. [Bottom center] Statue of General Qasem Soleimani has been removed: Regime operatives in Iran apparently got tired of erasing graffiti from the base of the statue. How interesting that the Islamic regime finds the slogan "Death to the Dictator" offensive, given that the dictator is unnamed and that Khomeini rose to power with the same slogan! [Bottom right] It's the season when we see pumpkins and pumpkin products everywhere: Here is a photo of the world's largest pumpkin, weighing a hefty 2554 lbs (~1150 kg). (Note: Guiness World Records actually lists a bigger one)
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran protests on two pages of the Sunday issue of New York Times.
- Book introduction: Taking off from Tehran, by Sheida White. [Cover image]
- Angela Lansbury, an award-winning actress and the voice of several Disney characters, dead at 96.
(3) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: The 2022 Prize was awarded to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dybvig, "for research on banks and financial crises."
2022/10/09 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Spending the weekend in San Diego with my daughter and younger son: [Top left] Mormon Temple by Interstate 5 (Internet image & my shot from the car), and morning snacks I prepared. [Top center] At a craft shop in Old Town San Diego. [Top right] More photos from Old Town San Diego, including a taco dish with bone marrow on top. [Bottom left] Selfies I took at Old Town San Diego. [Bottom center] A few landscape shots from where we walked on Saturday. [Bottom right] Kayaking on Mission Bay, alonside sea lions & birds.
(2) Iran's brutal Islamic regime keeps killing & maiming the street protesters, yet its supporters outside Iran, including the US-based NIAC, claim that Iranians are mostly protesting Western sanctions!
(3) Bernie has a point: We defend Saudi Arabia against its regional enemies, so that it can collude with Russia to raise oil prices? Why not let Russia defend it? [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Women's rights are human rights: Message from FMs of several countries to the brave people of Iran.
- A chain of 20 tweets containing 20 songs that honor/celebrate the 2022 uprising of Iranian people.
- Putin, the man who targets civilian sites with rockets, calls the Crimea bridge explosion "terrorism"!
- It's not just compulsory hijab: Iranian women & youth are fighting a long list of injustices & corruptions.
(5) Photographing Iranian women: "Iran is not a country that looks or sounds like its leaders. It's much more youthful. Much more liberal. And it's much, much more female." ~ Humans of New York
(6) Somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, every mermaid owns a luxury car: Twenty-thousand Porsches and Bentleys were lost when a cargo ship sank due to a fire started by one of the cars' batteries. [Story from March 2022]
(7) Nikka Shakarami died from bullet wounds during Iran's October 2022 street protests: Her mother is determined to expose the lies by Iranian officials and state TV. #WomenLifeFreedom
(8) Discussion on Quora about whether NIAC is a pro-Islamic-regime lobby in the US: There are a few statements to the effect that it isn't, but Samad Pakzad offers a long list of reason why it is.
2022/10/07 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] A photo from my second Distinguished Lecture (on interconnection networks) at U. Saskatchewan, September 22, 2022, sent to me by my hosts. The second photo, with Prof. Seok-Bum Ko, was taken in an ECE Dept. hallway, where an image of A. D. Booth (famous for his multiplication algorithm in computer arithmetic) is displayed. [Top right] UCSB CRML's summit on responsible machine learning (see the last two items below). [Bottom left] IranWire cartoon of the day: Three weeks after it began, Iran's feminist uprising is already the most-successful movement in the 43-year history of the Islamic Republic. [Bottom center] Another cartoon of the day: The ayatollah being chased by women's hair! [Bottom right] New memes, paintings, and music in support of Iranian women and other freedom fighters just keep on coming!
(2) Nobel Peace Prize: The 2022 Prize was awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus and two human rights organizations, Memorial of Russia and Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine.
(3) Keen observation: If I were you, in protest gatherings of Iranians abroad, I'd pay no attention to their chants, banners, or demands. I'd just count their numbers. What are millions of Iranians doing in so many different cities outside their homeland? Therein lies the answer! #MahsaAmini #WomanLifeFreedom [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This Florida community endured Ian with barely a scratch, proving that hurricanes need not be devastating.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Biden releases marijuana offenders to make room for Trump administration.
- Facebook memories from Oct. 6 of prior years: Environmrntal stewardship and Persian poetry.
- Introducing a book & an article: I learned about these at today's UCSB CRML 2022 Summit. [Images]
(5) UCSB Center for Responsible Machine Learning 2022 Summit: Today's 4th annual summit featured two keynote talks and a number of other sessions. I will write about the first keynote talk, "Differences and Similarities Between Your Brain and Deep Neural Networks," separately. I was hoping to also catch the second keynote, "Finding Patterns in Pictures" (by B. S. Manjunath, Distinguished Prof. & Chair, ECE Dept.), before I had to depart for San Diego, but a 25-minute delay in the afternoon program due to the lunch caterer being shorthanded forced me to leave 15 minutes into the talk. The summit's full program and recorded lectures are available through CRML's website.
(6) Keynote talk at UCSB CRML's 2022 Summit: Prof. Miguel P. Eckstein talked under the title "Differences and Similarities Between Your Brain and Deep Neural Networks," covering the example areas of visual search, gaze perception, and inferring other people's knowledge/expertise.
For visual search, Eckstein conducted an audience experiment, asking us to look for a toothbrush in an image shown to us for a brief time period. Most people found the small white-green toothbrush but almost everyone missed the huge blue one. A neural network has no trouble finding the blue one, but not using cues and common-sense knowledge about a toothbrush isn't really a strength!
Humans also do better in following someone's gaze direction. We tend to predict head and eye movements, leading to better performance, whereas neural networks follow head/eye movements strictly.
In the area of judging whether someone is an expert in a particular domain as claimed (e.g., medieval music or crypto), preliminary results give a slight edge to humans, but, in Eckstein's nomenclature for his scoring system, the game is still at halftime!
2022/10/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Support for Iranian women at New York City's World Trade Center. [Top center] Solidarity of Iranian women (#MahsaAmini #No2Hijab). [Top right] Maxxi Museum of Modern Art in Rome has set up an exhibit where women cut a clump of their hair and deposit it in a jar. The jar will be sent to the embassy of Iran's Islamic regime. I hope they also send a camera crew to capture the reaction of the embassy staff! [Bottom left] UCSB's new classroom building is almost complete: It will provide much needed relief for our campus's classroom space shortage problem. [Bottom center] Getting away from politics for a few minutes and posting something about beauty: Roses from two of my four bushes. [Bottom right] Tonight's Talangor Group talk on contemporary Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri (see the last item below).
(2) Nobel Prize in Literature: The 2022 Prize was awarded to Annie Ernaux, 82, a French author who wrote about her life, including abortion and affairs. She is only the 17th woman to receive literature's highest honor.
(3) "I know what is going on at the family homes of #NikaShakarami, #HadisNafaji, #MahsaAmini": Talented, full-of-life, and beautiful young women who were killed by Iran's Islamic regime. #HamedEsmaeilion lost his wife and daughter in the downing of Ukrainian Airlines #Flight752. [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mass-shooter kills 37 people, more than half of them children, at a daycare facility in Thailand.
- Unidentified professor of hydrology at U. Arizona shot dead on campus by a former student.
- OPEC+ countries agree to cutting 2M barrels of production per day to boost prices.
- Juliette Binoche and other French actresses cut clumps of their hair in solidarity with Iranian women.
- Clumps of women's hair are being mailed to the embassy of Islamic Republic of Iran in Rome.
- Historian Daina Ramey Berry joins UCSB as the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities & Fine Arts.
- For #MahsaAmini, for #WomanLifeFreedom: Houser plays "Soltan-e Ghalb-ha." [1-minute video]
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group meeting: After a short presentation by Faramarz Ghaffari on the hair-cutting ritual in mourning or protest, Dr. Bahar Davary (U. San Diego) spoke about "Sohrab Sepehri: The Wistful Poet of Our Time." There were ~90 attendees.
Sohrab Sepehri [1928-1980] is sometimes described as apolitical, writing about nature and beauty when much sociopolitical intrigue engulfed Iran. Dr. Davari theorized that Sepehri was way ahead of his time. He worried about the environment, nature, and the well-being of humans, animals, & plants, when almost no one thought about these issues. Sepehri's message was the importance of oneness with nature. He was also a painter. In fact, he considered himself more of a painter than poet.
Throughout the lecture, Dr. Davary recited a number of Sepehri's poems and also showed some of his paintings, interpreting the poems to show that deep down, they are actually political, because they implicitly condemn consumerism, waste, inequality, patriarchy, and coercion. Sepehri used simple, short sentences to express deep feelings and spiritual longings. In the word of one attendee, Sepehri wasn't wistful himself but had the ability to express the pains and yearnings of the society around him.
Sepehri's poems oozed with humanity and focused on the importance of human values. He believed that humans should not rule the Earth but should rather live in harmony with other creatures, big and small. He condemned the exploitation of nature and polluting of the environment, water resources in particular. Sepehri traveled widely and was well-versed in Buddhism, mysticism, and Western traditions.
2022/10/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "UCSB Reads 2023" Program announces book selection (see the last item below). [Center] In defiance of compulsory hijab laws, young Iranian women don't just show a little hair, but a lot of it! [Right] Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk on the great poet Nezami (see the next to last item below).
(2) Nobel Prize in Physics: The 2022 Prize was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, & Anton Zeilinger, for experiments with entangled photons, which find applications in quantum computing and sensing.
(3) Nobel Prize in Chemistry: The 2022 Prize was awarded to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and K. Barry Sharpless, for the development of what is described as an "ingenious molecule-building tool."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Senator Ron Johnson claims that Jan. 6 wasn't an "armed insurrection," despite Oath Keepers' admission.
- There is overwhelming evidence that chess grandmaster Hans Niemann cheated more than 100 times.
- The Mar-a-Lago stolen-documents case is headed to the US Supreme Court.
- US sports officials turned a blind eye to sexual misconduct at all levels of women's soccer.
(5) Khamenei blames everyone but himself and his cronies: After more than two weeks of street protests and the murder of hundreds by Iran's riot police and plain-clothes goons (Basijis), Ayatollah Khamenei emerges from his hideout and speaks up on 10/04, but instead of taking responsibility for socioeconomic problems & shortcomings that led to the protests, he blames Israel, the US, and their paid mercenaries for the unrest. No mention of teenagers & university students killed or injured. And not a word about intensifying criticism on corruption and lack of transparency, coming from even former supporters of the Islamic regime.
(6) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Bahram Grami was to speak under the title "Flowers and Plants in the Poems of Nezami Ganjeh-ee." There were ~100 attendees.
Nezami is one of the 5 pillars of Persian poetry, the others being Ferdowsi, Mowlavi/Rumi, Sa'adi, and Hafez.
I was disappointed that the speaker did not discuss the original topic, but covered the story of Khosrow & Shirin, without an emphasis on the role of flowers and plants in Nezami's poems. I had heard the story of Khosrow & Shirin and its interpretations several times before, so the topic wasn't of as much interest to me.
Here's one new piece of info I gained from tonight's talk: Nezami never used a foul word in his writings. He even described love-making and intimate relationships with polite words and constructions.
(7) Book selection for "UCSB Reads 2023": Charles Montgomery's 2013 book, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, has been chosen for campus and community reading during 2023.
"Most large American cities have poor designs. Sprawling suburbs lead to the need for longer roads, with their attendant construction & maintenance costs, nightmarish commutes, high gas consumption, increased air pollution, expensive utility & public-transport networks, and the burden of snow-plowing in cold climates. Older European cities, by contrast, are compact, allowing residents to walk or bike to more places and reducing the cost of city and emergency services. Besides the economic aspects just mentioned, residents of compact cities, with traffic-free areas and open spaces, tend to be happier, hence, the book's apt, though somewhat childish, title." ~ From my 4-star review of the book on GoodReads
2022/10/03 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Attacks on Masih Alinejad (see the next item below). [Top center] Cartoon of the day: The good news after devastating floods and storm surges! [Top right] Inspired by the bravery of Iranian women, Tim Fu designed this sculpture for installation at a square after the fall of the Islamic regime. [Bottom left] Iranian women won't tolerate subjugation: They are on the front lines of the ongoing protests and won't look back. [Bottom center] I have been bombarded by interesting and effective memes on the feminist protests in Iran: I will share only four, sent to me by friends inside & outside Iran. The memes include the painted face of a street marcher in Paris and women & men flashing victory signs as they pass each other on a street in Tehran. [Bottom right] UNC panel discussion on street protests in Iran (see the last item below).
provided key insights into our immune system and what makes us unique compared with our extinct cousins.
(2) Masih Alinejad is under attack again: She has led initiatives to inform the world and to hold Iran's misogynistic regime accountable for its oppression of women and other crimes. She is of course human and subject to errors and careless statements, such as declaring that she is a leader of Iran's protest movement. For this one mis-statement she does not deserve to be bashed and her many good deeds forgotten. Being a target of kidnapping and terror by Iran's Islamic regime is proof enough for the effectiveness of her campaign of revealing the Islamic regime's oppressive and criminal deeds.
(3) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: The 2022 Prize was awarded to evolutionary geneticist Svante Paabo for his discoveries on human species that
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- North Korea's missile flies over Japan, before plunging into the Pacific Ocean, causing panic.
- Former US National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster: Russian army in Ukraine is facing a moral collapse.
- In Iran, there is freedom of speech. You can say anything you want. Freedom after speech is a different story!
- Facebook memory from Oct. 3, 2018: Is Edison in Hell or in Heaven?
- Facebook memory from Oct. 3, 2015: When Toni Morrison was inspired by a flogged Sudanese woman.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 3, 2011:
(5) Iran protests spread and intensify: Plain-clothes security forces raid Tehran's Sharif U. Technology and other college campuses, beating and arresting dozens of students. Meanwhile, SUT's Alumni Association issues a mild, vague statement, alluding to some "incidents" and calling for a dialog. When was the last time Iran's Islamic regime talked to its critics, which it routinely characterizes as paid goons and foreign agents?
(6) "Women's Leadership, and Iran's Feminist Revolution": This was the title of today's panel discussion featuring Dr. Fatemeh Shams (U. Pennsylvania) and Dr. Esha Momeni (UCLA) and moderated by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (UNC Chapel Hill), about the current protests in Iran and their political and social history. There were ~60 attendees. [90-minute video recording]
Dr. Momeni: Hijab is part of a bigger discussion of controlling women's bodies, and its use isn't limited to religious laws. Reza Shah forcibly unveiled Iranian women out of a concern for the nation's image. He ordered changes in men's attire as well in his modernization program. In 1979, hijab became a symbol of the Islamic Revolution and laws were passed to institute and enforce it. Iran's hijab laws are parts of efforts to enforce a hegemonic masculinity (not just hetero-normality, which views women as objects of sexual desire in a binary gender worldview). Lack of or poorly-worn hijab is viewed as a symbol of Westernization and a strategy by the West to gain a foothold in Iran. Hijab laws are quite fuzzy and their enforcement arbitrary. The "improper hijab" that led to Mahsa Amini's arrest and murder is more or less the norm: A majority of women don the same kind of hijab. The arbitrariness of what gets women in trouble has a high social cost. At a minimum you are harassed or delayed on your way to some event. But it can be much worse if you are arrested, abused, or forced to pay a hefty fine. Women pay this price daily, as their lives are disturbed.
Dr. Shams: From the poet & religious leader Tahirih Qurrat al-'Ayn to today's women, the control of women's bodies and thoughts has been a priority for men. Rabia Bent-Ka'b (Balkhi) has been framed as a mystic poet/writer by multiple male poets, thus distorting the image we have of her. She was ordered killed by her brother on the suspicion of having an affair. Historiography is highly male-dominated and women scholars are not given their due credit and in some cases are totally erased from the record. What we were dealing with up to a few weeks ago was a veiled society. That has changed. Women are bravely removing their veils, signaling the end of that veiled era. Women, even if they are beaten-up and imprisoned, will likely not go back to the era of compulsory veiling. One danger is that even if the hijab patrol is eliminated, women will still be at risk as targets of razor-blade and acid-spraying attacks by hardliners, a la what was prevalent during the 1980s, when perpetrators were never punished (they were actually encouraged).
2022/10/02 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Memes about Iran and its brave women & youth rising against a brutal, corrupt, and misogynistic regime. [Top right] "Cut it out": Illustration by Italian artist Marco Melgrati. [Bottom left] The captain of Iran's national soccer team speaks up about the demands of street protesters (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Yesterday, rallies were held in many cities across the globe in support of Iranian women & other protesters. [Bottom right] Forty-three years of misogyny: This statue of farmers once stood in front of Iran's Ministry of Agriculture: Islamists of the 1979 Revolution covered the woman's head with a scarf and put tarp around her legs. After public ridicule, the statue was moved to Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art. #MahsaAmini #WomanLifeFreedom
(2) Soccer and politics: A few Iranian soccer players have spoken up in support of women's rights and other demands of street protesters. By so doing, they have risked their livelihoods (outspoken athletes have been ousted from club and national teams in the past). Meanwhile, Iran's Islamic regime finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Punishing popular soccer players or dissolving the national team a month before the Qatar World Cup will dash the people's hopes of making a strong showing on the world stage, thus adding fuel to the fire of protests. Even if the regime waits a couple of months before doling out punishments, there is no telling how the soccer-loving Iranian masses will react to the loss of soccer stars and club teams.
(3) The game "Card Nim" (by Dennis Shasha; CACM, October 2022): In this game, each player has a collection of numerical cards and there are a number of stones in the middle. In each turn, a player reveals a card and removes a number of stones equal to the number on the card. To win on a move, a player must play a card whose number equals the number of stones remaining. To lose on a move, a player plays a card whose number is greater than the number of stones remaining. [Image]
Q1: There are 5 stones left and each of the 2 players Bob & Alice has 3 cards bearing 1, 2, 3. Alice goes first. Who wins?
Q2: There are 10 stones left and each player has cards bearing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Alice goes first. Who wins?
Q3: There are 10 stones left, but now each player has cards of only 1, 2, 3, 4. Who can force a win?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Brawls after a soccer match in Indonesia produce 129 casualties, mostly trampled to death in a stampede.
- Project to build world's most-comprehensive map of cells in the human brain gets $500 million funding.
- President Biden's executive order re-establishes the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
- A blockbuster paper claiming the possibility of room-temperature superconductivity has been retracted.
- Joan Baez supports Iranian women by putting some Persian words to the song "We Shall Overcome."
- Comedian Shappi Khorsandi talks about women's struggles against Iran's misogynistic Islamic regime.
- Math oddity: sqrt(123456790) = 11111.11111
- One researcher's experience of returning to in-person conferences and exciting face-to-face interactions.
(5) Digital spaces and their perils: Two new books explore complementary themes of interest to everyone. Like, Comment, Subscribe zooms in on a platform (YouTube), while Meme Wars focuses on a movement (image-based spreading of ideas, particularly extremist views).
(6) Bringing rocks back from Mars: A small rocket will deliver rock samples collected by the Perseverance Rover from the floor of the Jezero Crater (which held a lake billions of years ago) to an orbiting spacecraft that would deliver them to a special facility on Earth by 2033.
(7) Should Iranians protest peacefully against the Islamic regime? Scenes like this (and others showing university students being attacked by Khamenei's goons) make me reconsider my advice to remain peaceful.
2022/10/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Panel on Iranian women writers of the diaspora (see the next item below). [Top center] Biden derangement syndrome: Less than two years into Biden's Presidency, Republicans have introduced 14 impeachment resolutions (10 of them targeting Biden). At the same point in Trump's presidency, five had been introduced (four of them targeting Trump). [Top right] My son tries his new e-bike behind the store in Isla Vista where he bought it: It has a top speed of 20 mph and a range of about 50 miles on a single charge. [Bottom left & center] What do addition carries and shuffling of decks of cards have in common? (see the last item nelow) [Bottom right] Iran news at UCSB: This page-1 story of Daily Nexus reflects the views of Iranians on campus on the political unrest in Iran. Separately, a number of UCSB faculty have asked the administration to take a stand on violations of women's rights in Iran and to reach out to the campus community who may need support. A response is reportedly forthcoming.
(2) "Imagination and Identity: Contemporary Iranian Women Writers of the Diaspora": This was the title of Georgetown University's Zoom panel discussion in which Dr. Jasmin Darznik (author/writer; The Good Daughter; Song of a Captive Bird; The Bohemians) and Marjan Kamali (author/writer; The Stationary Shop; Together Tea) read passages from their books and reflected on the question of their identities as writers, women, and Iranians. "Iranian woman writer" is a label that tends to overshadow personal identities such as "Jasmin" or "Marjan." An interesting point raised was about views of writing as both a refuge and a battleground. Another point was Westerners' views of Iran being based mostly on the last 43 years of its thousands of years of history. Dr. Persis Karim (Neda Nobari Distinguished Chair, Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies, San Francisco State University) moderated the discussion.
(3) Recent efforts at gerrymandering less serious than commonly believed: A NYT chart shows that the traditional Republican advantage coming from unfairly drawn district boundaries is the smallest in 40 years.
(4) During the current decade, per-capita beef and dairy consumption in the US will decrease by 25% (from 58 to 44 lbs for beef; from 196 to 147 lbs for dairy). [Source: OECD, 2020]
(5) "Adding Numbers and Shuffling Cards": This was the title of Friday's UCSB CS-PSTAT Distinguished Lecture by Professor Persi Diaconis (Stanford U.). Diaconis lectured in the old style of chalk-and-blackboard and distributed a handwritten sheet of formulas and references.
Addition of numbers creates carries, which slow down the process and complicate the circuitry. Curiosity about the nature of carries and their multiplicity are thus quite natural. It turns out that carries form a Markov chain with an amazing transition matrix. Surprisingly, this same matrix arises in the usual scheme of shuffling cards. Diaconis described the "seven shuffles" theorem that says seven shuffles are necessary and sufficient for producing a random deck of cards.
Diaconis has explored the connections of these results to all sorts of other mathematical problems, including the balanced ternary number system producing the fewest carries. Diaconis, who has always been interested in shuffling decks of cards, discovered the related problem of carries by accident, when he grabbed an issue of a journal from a shelf and found the following article.
Holte, J. M., "Carries, Combinatorics, and an Amazing Matrix," The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 104, No. 2, 1997, pp. 138-149.
Professor Diaconis gave a lecture with the same title at Stanford U. in 2019. [67-minute video]
2022/09/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] IranWire cartoon of the day: The 'master' and his toys. [Center] A fascinating and insightful memoir (see the next item below). [Right] Talangor Group's program (see the last item below)
(2) Book introduction: Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran is the work of Terence O'Donnell, who resided near the city of Shiraz during the 1960s and 1970s. His observations on the Iranian character, based on thousands of journal pages he wrote during his stay, are insightful and lively. According to O'Donnell, Iranians are courteous, capricious, deeply religious yet also playful, generous, and poetic. The book, also available in Persian, has been described as a work of shimmering beauty and sensitivity.
(3) Blaming the messenger: Journalist who reported Mahsa Amini's hospitalization due to head trauma is being held in solitary confinement. #MahsaAmini #WomanLifeFreedom
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hurricane Ian and its once-in-1000-years rains devastate Florida, turning deadly.
- After devastating the west coast of Florida, Hurricane Ian heads toward South Carolina.
- Hardline politicians in Iran are putting much effort into smearing street protesters.
- Violent crackdown of Iran's Islamic regime on street protests: Collection of video clips.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 29, 2015: A so-called "moderate" Iranian politician's view on women.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 29, 2015: On the usage of letters in spelled-out English numbers.
(5) New Yorker cartoon caption of the day: "The city is so quiet in the two weeks between people complaining about it being too hot and being too cold."
(6) Q&A on Nature's Fundamental Laws: Tonight's Talangor Group program featured Professor Cumrun Vafa (Harvard U.) in a Q&A session with ~85 attendees. The topics were quite varied, so they are difficult to summarize. In the rest of this report, I briefly list a few facts/theories that were cited and were quite interesting to me.
- Our universe consists of ~70% dark energy, ~25% dark matter, and ~5% ordinary matter.
- The law of conservation of energy is a consequence of symmetry, meaning that the outcome of an experiment is independent of time. But it holds only under certain conditions. For example, experiments could have had different outcomes at the start of the universe. The universe is still changing, but the difference of state between two nearby time instants can be ignored. Like all other physical laws, conservation of energy holds approximately.
- We know next to nothing about the universe in the first second of its existence, but we have a pretty good idea about what happened afterward. There are theories about that first second, but we aren't sure which one is correct.
- We don't know the nature of dark matter or dark energy. We know that they must exist in order for known laws to be valid, but we know very little about why/how they exist.
- Dr. Vafa has recently published the article "Dark Dimension Gravitons as Dark Matter," which proposes a theory for dark matter. [Full text]
- We can convince ourselves of the existence of many more than four dimensions by thinking about a straight line, which has one main dimension and one secondary dimension corresponding to its thickness. With approximate laws of physics, we can ignore the second dimension, without committing much error. Imagine a railroad track. It definitely has a second dimension, both because of the rail's thickness and the existence of two parallel rails. Yet, we talk about the movement of a train as a one-dimensional motion.
- Time spans only one dimension but space can have more than three dimensions. Dr. Vafa explained that multiple time dimensions would kill causality, given that we won't be able to talk about the past or the future. In my thinking, if time has two dimensions but it is discrete rather than continuous, then causality isn't endangered. There will be no past or future, but we will have preceding and succeeding time points in a lattice. I didn't get a chance to discuss this point with Dr. Vafa, because time ran out.
- Dr. Vafa has written the book Puzzles to Unravel the Universe, which aims to explain laws of nature in terms of simple puzzles.
2022/09/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian women lead the people's struggle for liberty and human/women's rights. [Center] Iranians, particularly women, who have been systematically oppressed over the past 4+ decades, are bent on pushing the Islamists out of the country's power centers. [Right] Angelina Jolie joins a growing number of international celebrities in expressing support for Iranian women. Be careful, however, when spreading the words of celebrities in support of Iranian women and other protesters. Here are some revelations about one such sympathizer, Roger Waters, the allegedly anti-Semite, pro-Putin, and pro-Assad rocker.
(2) Financial fraud scheme in Mississippi: Funds meant to help needy families were used to build a stadium and directed to influential people, including multiple sports celebrities.
(3) UCLA purchases $80 million worth of properties from the recently-shuttered Marymount California University in San Pedro to expand enrollment via a satellite campus, in order to meet burgeoning demand.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Housing bubble beginning to burst: Published July figures show a significant downturn.
- "I've Gotta Take It Off": Women's rights song, with scenes from Iranian women's fight against oppression.
- Women and men across the world cut their hair in solidarity with Iranian women. [Video]
- Isaac Newton's college notebook, written in his own hand, ca. 1664. [Image]
- Math oddity: Can you explain this pattern, which continues indefinitely?
- Math oddity: log(1 + 2 + 3) = log(1) + log(2) + log(3)
- "Puttin' on the Ritz": Irving Berlin's timeless jazz classic, wonderfully performed. [2-minute video]
- The joy of music: Marimba band of schoolchildren plays Vivaldi in South Africa. [2-minute video]
(5) "Theology of Revolution: In Ali Shari'ati and Walter Benjamin's Political Thought": This is the title of a 2020 paper by Dr. Mina Khanlarzadeh in Religions (Vol. 11, No. 10, 504).
From the Introduction: "The twentieth century Iranian revolutionary thinker and sociologist Ali Shari'ati composed his political thought in the sixties and seventies until—a year before the 1979 Revolution—he died. He was the most prominent thinker read and discussed among the 1979 revolutionaries. Ervand Abrahamian (1983, p. 466), in his book Iran between Two Revolutions, states that Shari'ati 'is justly credited as the main intellectual, even the Fanon, of the Islamic Revolution.' Shari'ati was also nicknamed the teacher of the revolution (mo'allem-e enqilab)."
(6) The posit number system and arithmetic: As useful as floating-point arithmetic has been over the decades, it does have shortcomings. High precision in longer formats comes at the expense of wasting bits for numbers that do not need all the bits. Furthermore, no matter how many bits one uses, there exist numbers that are too large or too small to be representable, leading to overflow and underflow. Posit is a recent proposal that aims to rectify these problems. Here are some references to bring you up to speed on this new number representation scheme and its arithmetic.
[The good, the bad and the ugly]
[Beating FLP at its own game]
[Improving the math of AI]
(7) Shameful misogyny from an unexpected source: A college president in Iran characterizes women protesters as whores mourning the death of another whore. Sexualization of women isn't limited to the mullahs. Patriarchy is alive and well in all institutions being governed by Islamist basijis.
2022/09/27 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranian protesters burn their hijabs and deface billboards with Khamenei's picture on them, as security forces shoot into crowds. [Top center] IranWire cartoons of the day: The scared little dictator and his goons. [Top right] Iran's Statue of Liberty (by an unknown artist). [Bottom left] Hurricane Ian (currently a category-3 storm) hits western Cuba and heads toward Florida. [Bottom center] My Persian poem honoring #MahsaAmini, who was beaten to death by Iran's morality police, capping decades of resistance to misogynistic laws by Iranian women. [Bottom right] My mom watches Persian-language TV stations to keep up with the news: I can't stand most of these. For example, today's programs praise the uprising of Iranian youth and women. Yet the same old men report and analyze the news. No sign of young Iranians or women!
(2) Most of the wheat traded worldwide comes from Russia & Ukraine: The US & Canada are also major exporters. Much of the world (light & dark brown on this map, taken from IEEE Spectrum magazine, September 2022) is dependent on imports.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hurricane Ian intensifies as it moves toward Florida; remnants of Hurricane Fiona devastate eastern Canada.
- Jupiter will be extra bright next week: Watch for it rising at sunset and setting at sunrise.
- The British pound falls to $1.1, its lowest level in 37 years.
- Putin grants Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden, who disclosed classified NSA documents.
- Singapore has replaced Hong Kong as Asia's premier financial hub.
- A young woman was killed by Iran's security forces: Six bullets hit her in the face, neck, & chest.
- To Ayatollah Khamenei: Come out of hiding and say something about the Iranian people's demands.
- Hair's deemed a symbol of life; hence, the Iranian practice of women cutting their hair in mourning or protest.
(4) Women Leaders Countering Authoritarianism: Roya Hakakian's eloquent testimony in front of US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. [7-minute video]
(5) NASA's DART spacecraft crashed into a small asteroid at 14,000 miles per hour, testing a method to protect Earth from large space rocks in the future.
(6) UkraineFest in Santa Barbara: UCSB Arts & Lectures presents a free event on Thursday, October 6, 5:00-8:00 PM PDT, in front of Granada Theater, downtown Santa Barbara.
[The folk band DakhaBrakha]
(7) Quantum-computing pioneer honored: Theoretical physicist David Deutsch will share this year's $3-million Prize in Fundamental Physics with three other recipients for their contributions to quantum computing.
(8) LinkedIn ran experiments on more than 20 million users without their consent: The professional networking service randomly altered the prevalence of weak and strong contacts suggested by its "People You May Know" algorithm, learning in the process that relatively weak social ties on the platform were twice as effective in obtaining employment as stronger social ties. However, the LinkedIn experiment has drawn some criticism for its potential to alter lives.
2022/09/25 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Jewish New Year (see the next item below). [Top center & right] Celebration of Rosh Hashanah with family members at my mom's: And here is a video of yours truly, explaining why celebration of Jewish festivals, including Rosh Hashanah, span two consecutive nights. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Try your hand at evaluating this expression without using a calculator. [Bottom center] An unusual view of our Earth: Seen from the side of the Pacific Ocean. [Bottom right] IEEE CCS tech talk by UCSB's Dr. Somayeh Dodge (see the last item below).
(2) Happy Rosh Hashanah to all my friends who celebrate the Jewish New-Year festival: The new Hebrew calendar year 5783 will start tomorrow and, like all Jewish holidays, is celebrated beginning with the night before. Observance of Rosh Hashanah involves several fruits and vegetables. For example, apple dipped in honey represents sweetness and pomegranate signifies fruitfulness.
(3) The slogan #WomanLifeFreedom defines the current Iranian uprising in which women are the clear leaders: Even the French daily Liberation put the slogan on the front page of its Sunday, September 25, 2022, edition.
(4) Trump's lawyers are probably beating their heads against Mar-a-Lago walls: In an interview with his Fox-News pal Sean Hannity, Trump essentially admitted to sending classified (or, according to him, mentally declassified) documents to his Florida residence on purpose, eliminating the line of defense that they ended up there by some accidental mishap.
(5) Independent Persian reports that a number of users in Iran have been able to connect to the Starlink satellite Internet service. [Starlink interactive map]
(6) Last Wednesday's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Today, data and data analytics pervade all domains of human activity. Geography and, more generally, spatial information, are no exception. Early geographic information systems date back to the 1960s, but the field has undergone seismic shifts with the emergence of big-data mindset, tools, and applications. Speaking under the title "Movement Data Science for Human Mobility and Animal Ecology Applications," Dr. Somayeh Dodge (UCSB Geography) reviewed the basics of geographic-information handling and a few key applications of movement data science.
Intentional movement through space is one of the traits shared by humans and animals to perform activities. Movement of individuals is fundamental to the dynamics of ecosystems, cities, and environments, and can be utilized as a key to the understanding and modeling of environmental and behavioral variability in social and ecological systems. As a result of ubiquitous tracking and the increasing access to movement data in both trajectory and aggregate forms, a number of disciplines, from animal ecology to urban planning, from biology to geography and public health, share an interest in understanding movement and activity patterns of humans and animals in natural and built environments.
While there is a shared interest in geography and ecology to understand and model movement behavior with respect to geographic space, there has been little cross-fertilization across these disciplines. Dr. Dodge reviewed recent advances in computational movement analytics from the lens of geographic information science, arguing for a convergent movement data science to study and map movement across the human and animal divide.
Brief tech bio: Dr. Somayeh Dodge (PhD, 2011, University of Zurich, Switzerland) is an Assistant Professor of Spatial Data Science at UCSB's Department of Geography. Before joining UCSB in 2019, Dr. Dodge was a postdoctoral fellow at The Ohio State University. Dr. Dodge currently serves on the Board of Directors of the University Consortium for Geographic Information and as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Spatial Information Science. Dr. Dodge has received several honors, including the prestigious NSF CAREER award. Her work has been published in top journals of the field. [See the speaker's personal Web page, IEEE CCS Technical Talks page, or the event flyer for more detailed versions of this tech bio.]
2022/09/24 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Brave Iranian woman single-handedly faces a large group of hijab-law enforcers. [Top center] The initials of Mahsa Amini form the word "ma" ("us," in Persian). She has indeed united all Iranians against Iran's brutal, incompetent Islamic regime. [Top right] Ready to fight misogynists, even if they are armed to the teeth (untitled artwork by Newsha Tavakolian, 2016). [Bottom left] Freedom, Woman, Life: Calligraphic artwork by Daryoush Mohammad Poor (cropped from the original). [Bottom center] Shiraz University of Art's Professor resigns in protest, citing in her resignation letter instances of interrogation, death threats, and other mistreatments over the period of her tenure at the university. [Bottom right] Iranian women continue to defy their authoritarian government and its misogynistic laws by burning their headscarves.
(2) Iran's President Raisi, arriving in NYC for the UN General Assembly, is greeted by Iranian-Americans with truck-mounted digital billboards displaying his crimes. [2-minute video]
(3) Iran's citizens receive text messages from the Big Brother, warning them of dire consequences of attending "illegal" gatherings which "help foreigners." [Tweet with image]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russian men flee the country in the wake of Putin's mobilization of reservists to expand his war.
- Holocaust survivor urges Iran's President to learn compassion, following his public denial of the massacre.
- The US slaps fresh sanctions on Iran's morality police for its violence against women.
- CNN's Christiane Amanpour pulls out of interview with Iran's President over his headscarf demand.
- Kettle dissing the pot: Taliban official warns Iran against violating womens rights!
- Example of how women die in police custody in Iran: Police throws a woman against a concrete barrier.
- Elton John performed in the White House and received a surprise National Humanities Medal.
(5) Iran's brutal regime beats up street protesters and blocks access to most popular social-media & news sites: Iranians keep switching to new anti-filtering software as existing ones are neutralized.
(6) Iran's misogynistic laws and their enforcers: An Islamist, who was beaten up on the street, faced the women protesters and told them they deserved to be raped! [Tweet]
(7) Protests intensifying in Iran over the death in police custody of a 22-year-old woman arrested for violating a headscarf law. [New York Times: Day 1 story; Day 2 story]
(8) Iranians across the world worry about family & friends: News of spreading street protests across Iran and violence by the country's riot police with orders to kill, combined with an Internet blackout, are troubling.
(9) Filmmaker Asghar Farhadi supports Iranian protesters and women's-rights activists: This is an improvement, compared to his previous declarations of not being a political person. But why does he refer to "their" (women's) goal and not "our" goal? Women's rights shouldn't be a women's issue only.
2022/09/23 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
Top row left & right: Samples of architecture seen in downtown Saskatoon.
Top row center: Some of the bridges over South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon: The river-front is made into a lush park with a walking path (1-minute video).
Second row left: Sculptures in Saskatoon's downtown area.
Second row center: The historic Delta Hotel (Marriott) in downtown Saskatoon, where I stayed: The hotel and an old train station (now a mall) are located at the two ends of 21st Street East, once a hub of commerce.
Second row right: A few more images from Saskatoon, including a map of the downtown area.
Third row left: On Thursday morning, I delivered my first of two IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Lectures under the title "Eight Key Ideas in Computer Architecture from Eight Decades of Innovation." The lecture was preceded by a brief tour of the campus, where I saw a portrait of A. D. Booth, of Booth multiplication fame, who worked there from 1962 to 1972.
Third row center: On Thursday afternoon, I delivered my second of two IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Lectures under the title "Interconnection Networks for Parallel Processors and Data Centers." The lecture venue was Saskatoon's Innovation Place, a technology park funded by the government of Canada. One of the photos shows the gifts I received from my hosts.
Third row right: After my lectures, I was treated to tours of Calian Advanced Technologies (a satellite telecommunications company, doing both engineering design and manufacturing) and Canada's Light Source synchrotron (a major tech facility, partly shown in the photos).
Canadian Light Source produces extremely bright light, millions of times brighter than the sun, by using powerful magnets and radio frequency waves to accelerate electrons to nearly the speed of light. This infra-red, ultraviolet and X-ray light is shone down beamlines to experimental stations where scientists can select different parts of the spectrum to "see" the microscopic nature of matter, right down to the level of the atom.
Bottom row left: Looking out the window on the second leg of my flight (SFO-Calgary), en route from Santa Barbara to Saskatoon: From the plains of NW United States to the mountains of SW Canada.
Bottom row center: As part of my visit to U. Saskatchewan, I had a brief meeting with Engineering Dean Suzanne Kresta, specializing in chemical & biological engineering. Among other topics, we discussed the under-representation of women in engineering and the role of design-team diversity in producing quality systems.
Bottom row right: Home, sweet home: After the last leg of my flight (SFO to SBA), I am glad to be home. Photos show SF Airport, SF Bay, and the Pacific coast near SF.
2022/09/21 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian women are dying: If not at the hands of violent "gheirati" husbands or boyfriends, then in the custody of intelligence services or morality police. Why are these grim, bearded, macho men so afraid of joyful, independent, strong women? #NoToHijab #MahsaAmini [Center] The word "trumpery" was in the dictionary way before we had Donald Trump. [Right] Nerdy joke about what clouds are made of!
(2) US Department of Justice charges 44 people with stealing $240 million from pandemic aid programs intended to feed children in Minnesota. [Source: New York Times]
(3) The Iranian mullahs' ruling strategy: It is almost certain that Iran's rulers don't really care about women's clothing or a few strands of hair sticking out from under a headscarf. Just look at the ultra-modern, made-up, sharply-dressed women appearing in government-sanctioned religious ceremonies or observe foreign reporters with scant hijabs interviewing regime officials.
They have imposed and are enforcing hijab laws on ordinary Iranian women to keep their battle with the masses away from important sociopolitical issues. When people are busy thinking about the inconvenience and unfairness of hijab (or similar social restrictions such as women being banned from entering stadiums or riding bikes), fundamental demands in the domain of freedom of speech & assembly, having political parties, fighting corruption, how the country's oil wealth is spent, and women being allowed to become judges or president, remain safe from questioning.
In other words, the regime has dug trenches close to where its critics are. It knows that if these trenches are breached, it has to defend its archaic, cruel, and corrupt ways much closer to the centers of power, where any breach would lead to its collapse.
[Adapted from an anonymous Internet posting in Persian]
(4) Hypocrisy of the ruling Iranian mullahs: As children of ordinary Iranians die for speaking up against corruption, demanding basic freedoms, or for a few strands of hair sticking out from under their headscarves, children of Iran's ruling class are having a mighty good time with the "infidels" in Western countries. [Images]
(5) Azerbaijani soldiers behead & mutilate the bodies of Armenian soldiers and civilians: These are disturbing images, but they need to be publicized for the benefit of humanity. Ditto for Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
(6) I have posted about this amazing expression for calculating π before: However, the expression is too beautiful to be limited to just one post. It allows the derivation of the nth binary or hex digit of π, without first deriving all the preceding digits.
(7) The evolution of floating-point arithmetic: Once upon a time, until the 1970s, each computer manufacturer had its own floating-point number format and its own rules for arithmetic in terms of precision, rounding, and inter-format conversions. Then, the IEEE Standard 754 Committee was formed and, by 1985, it issued a standard document that guided the development of floating-point arithmetic throughout the industry. The standard specified the main 32-bit (single-precision) and 64-bit (double-precision) formats, along with several ancillary formats. The standard was revised in 2008, when decimal floating-point formats as well as 16-bit (half-precision) and 128-bit (quadruple-precision) binary formats were added. The most-recent incarnation of the standard is IEEE 754-2019.
Now, with approximate or very-low-precision arithmetic being of much interest for machine-learning applications, IEEE is looking at the various existing proposals, with an eye toward extending the standard to such a format, perhaps as small as 8 bits.
[Nvidia/Arm/Intel project] [Tesla's efforts] [Graphcore/AMD/Qualcomm project] [Nvidia's LNS]
(8) Final thought for the day: Two-thirds of the world's population lives in countries where renewable sources are cheaper than fossil fuels.
2022/09/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Significant progress has been made over the past three decades in reducing child poverty in the US. [Top center] Iceland vs. Greenland. Or is it the other way around? [Top right] Talk on Zakariya Razi (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Three generations: Actress Reese Witherspoon, with her mom and daughter. [Bottom center & right] Memes of the day: Busing of migrants in the US and killing of Mahsa Amini by Iran's morality police.
(2) Mohammad Zakariya Razi [865-925 CE]: During the second day of Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA) virtual reunion, September 16-17, 2022, Dr. Nasser Kanani presented a fascinating overview of the Iranian polymath's momentous contributions to mathematics, chemistry, medicine, psychology, and philosophy. Razi had no teacher but used books that were available to him to learn about various topics. Razi's dismissive attitude toward religion led to much criticism and anger against him. A recording of this talk will be made available on suta.org. Here is a BBC Persian interview with Dr. Kanani.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Representative government faces its most serious threats in decades (New York Times lead article).
- River surge caused by Hurricane Fiona washes bridge away in Puerto Rico. [1-minute video]
- Introducing Computing Science Journal, a publication of the Informatics Society of Iran.
- How Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale warned us about the current state of women in the US.
- Rape & forced hijab have a common root: Patriarchal sense of ownership & power over women.
[FB post]
- Math puzzle: Is i^i a real number?
- Math puzzle: Math puzzle: Find the maximum value of (sin x)^2 + (cos x)^4.
- Anoushiravan Rohani accompanies a street musician in Vancouver, Canada. [2-minute video]
(4) Three quotes from an article in IEEE Computer, September 2022, by Hal Berghel (UNLV).
- "The student-centric university is more centered around the economies of job placement than the enrichment of knowledge."
- "The authoritarian mantra on education appears to be 'learn very little of a controversial social issue, and nothing well'."
- "Academic freedom and free speech are both binary variables—they either exist or they don't."
(5) Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Hossein Javaherian will speak on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, 6:45 PM, under the title "Ayurveda: Knowledge (Wisdom) of Life—Indian System of Preventive Medicine." Zoom ID 816 4277 8906 (Passcode 221414).
(6) CBS News interview with Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi: Once again a Western journalist is forced to wear a headscarf for the privilege of talking to a mass murderer! [14-minute video] #LetUsTalk #NoToHijab
(7) NASA to test its asteroid deflection strategy on the harmless moon of a larger body: If the 6 km/s crash of a fridge-size spacecraft is successful, the effect will be to slightly shorten the moon's orbit.
(8) NYT breaking news (9/19): Queen Elizabeth II is being buried in London today.
Me: How can an event we knew about days ago be considered breaking news?
2022/09/16 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the area of the outer equilateral triangle is pink? [Center] Depiction of some simple math concepts: Real numbers and their various subsets. [Right] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a semicircle inside a right triangle, calculate x.
(2) Math puzzle: Find the values of the 10 letters in the following equality, if each letter stands for a different digit. FIFTIES + SIXTIES = PRESLEY [Hints: I = 3 and F = E + 1]
(3) Internationally-acclaimed human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi refuses to appear before Iran's Revolutionary Court to answer fresh charges levelled against her while she was in prison.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Germany's business model, built on Russian gas and Chinese demand, faces a crisis.
- We all bear responsibility for extreme weather: Footage of the flood & mudflow devastation in Pakistan.
- Violent arrest of young Iranian woman for wearing no headscarf leads to her hospitalization and death.
- Assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie may lead to additional US sanctions on Iran.
- Zahra Sedighi-Hamedani and Elham Chubdar sentenced to death in Iran for defending LGBTQ rights.
- Marginalization of Third World Feminists in Academia and Politics: A panel-discussion webinar.
- Transformation of Iranian Women's Lives in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Webinar with Dr. Abolhassan Banisadr.
- An example of "female masculinity" in Lalehzari Persian music & dance (details in this Facebook post).
- Nineteenth-century carpet (Vank Cathedral, Isfahan, Iran): Note the 3D scene & carpets within the carpet.
- Math puzzle: From the equality log((x + y)/3) = (log x + log y)/2, find the value of x/y + y/x.
- Buddhist proverb: "Everyone gets the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell."
(5) The myth of Harvard architecture: Richard Pawson argues that diverse architectures labeled as "Harvard" may have more differences with each other than they do with the von Neumann architecture.
(6) It's hard to believe that the brutal treatment of Mahsa Amini during her arrest and booking by Iran's morality police led to her death: Watch these video clips to see how such murders can and do happen.
(7) A few chuckle-worthy or groan-worthy brief Q&As (from AARP Bulletin):
- Why do I need an MRI? To test you for claustrophobia!
- You think our marriage is like a vacation? That's not what "last resort" means!
- What's the best time on the clock? Six-thirty, hands down!
- Are you still opposed to organ transplants? Nope, I've had a change of heart!
(8) Final thought for the day: Only a thin line separates shipping migrants to other states against their will, or with false promises, from forceful shipping of slaves to plantations.
2022/09/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Yours truly as a grad student at Oregon State U., 1969. [Top center] ARITH-29 keynote talks (see the next item below). [Top right] Origins of the name "Bluetooth" in wireless communication: Harold Bluetooth peacefully united Norway and Denmark. His initials are used in the Bluetooth symbol. [Bottom left] Tonight's Talangor Group presentations on Khorasani poets and chess & chessboard puzzles (see the last item below). [Bottom center] The rare (1 in 100 million) blue lobster: This creature's color comes from astaxanthin, which binds to other proteins. Depending on those bonds, the shell gets a color. [Bottom right] Tomb of the departed poet Houshang Ebtehaj, Mohtasham Garden, Rasht, Iran.
(2) Two keynote talks at the 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Computer Arithmetic: I attended these talks, which were of particular interest to me.
On Monday 9/12, William J. Dally (NVIDIA) spoke about "Number Representation for Deep Learning." It was known for some time that in deep learning and other AI domains, low-precision numbers can be used to improve performance, without much damage to result quality. Dally reviewed the use of some specific number representations for deep learning.
On Wednesday 9/14, Joris van der Hoeven (Research Director at CNRS) spoke about "Integer Multiplication in Time O(n log n)." It was known for decades that multiplication is inherently more complex than addition, which has O(n) circuit complexity for n-bit numbers. The lower bound O(n log n) had been proven, but it had not been achieved until 2019.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- On the sidelines of UN General Assembly, global women leaders call for urgent action on gender equity.
- QAnon's latest conspiracy theory: King Charles III signed a proclamation making Trump US President.
- An act of generosity: Gift of $3 billion in stocks to be used for fighting climate change.
- A 22-year-old woman, arrested by Iran's morality police and hospitalized 2 hours later, is dying.
- Warning to old Toyota Prius owners: Your car's catalytic converter is in demand by thieves.
- Academic humor: Manuscript submitted may become manuscript accepted, if you are patient enough.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 15, 2016: Bakhtiari woman demonstrates the concept of the weaker sex!
- Facebook memory from Sep. 15, 2015: Introducing two books by Nasim Basiri.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 15, 2011: The positive effects of having a sibling of the opposite sex.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 15, 2010: Logical puzzle involving a sequence of names.
(4) Massive fraud in England's succession scheme (humor): Succession was rigged. Trump claims to be the rightful King of England. Plans to jail Charles III in the Tower of London.
(5) Talangor Group talk: Dr. Zohreh Ghahremani spoke in Persian under the title "Portraits of Classical Poets from Khorasan: Part 1, Early Poets." Yours truly made a brief presentation on "Chess and Chessboard Puzzles" before the main talk. There were ~75 attendees. [B. Parhami's slides]
What was known as Khorasan is now scattered in Iran, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. Dr. Ghahremani proceeded to discuss four early Khorasani poets: Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Attar, and Mowlavi/Mowlana/Rumi.
*Ferdowsi (literally, "from heaven") lived in poverty and, having lost his son, was worried about not being able to provide for his daughter. He spent 30-35 years writing his masterpiece, Shahnameh. Financial help from Soltan Mahmoud Ghaznavi eventually came, but it was too late. Khorasani poets, and Ferdowsi in particular, were bent on writing simply and repetitively (to facilitate understanding) and avoiding Arabic constructs/words in favor of Persian/Farsi (Dari dialect).
*Khayyam (literally, "tent-maker") studied math and astronomy. His math books and the manner of designing the Persian calendar were highly influential. Khayyam wasn't known as a poet. His first verses were discovered 2 years after his death. His thoughts centered around life and death. We humans are all concerned with life and death and with staying in the moment, so we can identify with Khayyam's poems. Edward Fitzgerald changed the focus a bit and was also accused of making up some of the poems.
*Attar (literally, "pharmacist"; his father's profession) came from a prominent family and was thus well-educated. He was one of the earliest mystic poets and influenced others, including Mowlavi. His most-famous book is Mantiq-ul-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds, in which a diverse group of birds go on a quest to choose a worthy leader), but his most-important work is Musibat-Nama (Book of Affliction, which elaborates on the 40 stages of the search for God).
*Mowlavi (aka Mowlana; known in the West as Rumi), a religious leader, was influenced by Attar and went to Konya at age 22 to meet him. At 37, Mowlavi met Shams-e Tabrizi, a disheveled old man at the time. This acquaintance and the ensuing enchantment, triggered his creativity, leading to a large volume of poems. Their mutual admiration lasted for 17 years, until the disappearance of Shams. Other companions replaced Shams after his disappearance, including Salah ud-Din-e Zarkub and Hussam-e Chalabi.
2022/09/13 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Post-storm skies: Last night at UCSB West Campus, looking at my house (on the left) and an adjacent unit. [Top center] Iranian mullahs bite the hand that fed them: State-controlled media report on the death of Queen Elizabeth II with innuendo and insults. [Top right] Today's talk on JWST (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Last night's food prep: I made some pasta with meat sauce, salad, and maast-o-moosir (yogurt with shallots). The other photo, from 9/10, features stuffed chicken breast with sides. [Bottom right] Iranian Baha'is are arrested and imprisoned under made-up charges of spying. No one asks why these "spies" openly declare their religion, instead of pretending to be Muslims and infiltrating key agencies!
(2) IEEE 29th Int'l Symp. on Computer Arithmetic: I am attending the 3-day virtual event from today until Wednesday. It's quite a challenge to organize a virtual international event. The talks begin very early in the morning and extend until noon in my time zone (US Pacific). They begin in mid-afternoon and end around 8:00 PM in Central European Standard Time. Organizers decided to make attendance free and also provide links to the published papers. This is a boon to researchers, particularly those residing in Third-World countries, where payment of registration fees would be a major burden.
(3) Remembering 9/11: Heart-wrenching report of CBS News "60 Minutes" on FDNY rescue efforts in World Trade Center's Twin Towers, 21 years ago. FDNY lost 343 members on that fateful day. [40-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- SoCal residents should enjoy the cooler temps: Another heat wave is expected at the end of September.
- Worse-than-expected inflation data leads to a 4.3% plunge in the S&P 500 index.
- Prince Charles (now, King Charles III) visited Iran in 2004, at the invitation of President Khatami.
- Iran begins counting down to World Cup 2022, with a successful old coach returning to lead its team.
- Theme from "Game of Thrones": Composed and played on piano by German-Iranian Ramin Djawadi.
(5) A Conversation with Mahnaz Afkhami: Iran's former Minister of Women's Affairs, joins Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, director of the UNC Center for Middle East & Islamic Studies, to talk about her memoir and her women's-rights advocacy. Thurs. Nov. 17, 2022, 2:00 PM PST. [Event page on Facebook]
(6) This classic Chaplin clip reflects the situation in Iran brilliantly: Regime-official mom helps filter the Internet, while her son sells filter-breaking tools from Canada!
(7) "Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with JWST": This afternoon, under the auspices of the National Air and Space Museum's John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History, Nobel Laureate and James Webb Space Telescope senior project manager John C. Mather discussed his groundbreaking research on the James Webb Space Telescope, the product of efforts by some 20,000 people.
Launched in 2021, with science operations beginning in 2022, JWST will peer into the past to find the first objects that formed after the Big Bang, the first black holes, the growth of galaxies, the formation of stars & planetary systems, and more. One hundred times more powerful than the celebrated Hubble Space Telescope, JWST could observe a 1 cm^2 bumblebee at the Earth-Moon distance, in reflected sunlight and thermal emission and promises to reveal more wonders of our universe.
[69-minute recording]
2022/09/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Remembering 9/11 (see the next item below). [Top center] It takes a mere four minutes for world population to increase by 1000: Where will the next 1000 babies of the world be born? [Top right] Ten years of global sales of electric vehicles. [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: Steve Bannon is finally getting his wall. Trump's wall may be coming soon too! [Bottom center] Math puzzle: This diagram contains a unit square at the lower left, a 5-by-5 outer square, and a blue square whose area is sought. [Bottom right] Pederasty in Persian Literature (Shahed-Bazi dar Adabiyat-e Farsi) (see the last item below).
(2) Twenty-first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks: The event's mass casualties and its economic fallout devastated us. Yet, the losses also led to a sense of unity and purpose in confronting extremism, regardless of its source. It is unfortunate that much of the camaraderie vanished during the Trump years due to his purposeful sowing of the seeds of division and distrust. Let's hope we get back on track in putting common American values ahead of our differences.
(3) Happy grandparents' Day! It is a blessing to grow up alongside grandparents. To young family members, they represent history, continuity, resilience, and unconditional love. This photo shows my paternal grandparents, with some of their children, ~90 years ago.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Joke going around in American legal circles: MAGA stands for "making attorneys get attorneys."
- Facebook memory from Sep. 11, 2019: A match made in La La Land, a la Turkish soap operas!
- Facebook memory from Sep. 11, 2019: My Persian poem for Iran's Blue Girl.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 11, 2017: Does the Earth weigh more today than it did 3 million years ago?
(5) Russia suffers military setbacks as a result of Ukraine's counteroffensives in the northeastern part of the country: Putin faces criticism by hawkish Russians who have been supportive of his war.
(6) Quote of the day: "If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality." ~ Norman Cousins
(7) Book review: Shamisa, Sirous, Pederasty in Persian Literature (Shahed-Bazi dar Adabiyat-e Farsi), unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by Maryam, Avay-e Boof, 2018 (original version 2002, ISBN: 9645509166).
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, banned in Iran almost immediately after its publication, is difficult to obtain. This review is based on a bootleg audio version of the book, available on the Internet.
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
The audiobook is also available on AVAYe BUF Telegram channel.
A key reason for banning the book is that Islamic officials are in denial about the existence of homosexuality in Iran, let alone admitting its prevalence for many centuries. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was widely ridiculed when he said in a 2007 US appearance that "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
The book, the only one of its kind, tackles the subject of male homosexuality in Persian literature, particularly in poetry, from the Ghaznavid period to the Pahlavi era. The author's thesis, which he proves beyond any doubt, is that "the beloved" in Persian literature is usually a young man/boy, the rare exceptions being in certain older poems. Homo-erotic musings among Persian poets date back at least 1000 years.
The book begins with a review of the nomenclature of homosexuality, as used by Persian writers and poets, along with its various categories (Chapter 1). Chapter 4 is devoted to homosexuality among Sufis. The book's other 6 chapters present overviews of the subject, along with poets & samples of work, from various historical periods: Ghaznavids; Seljuks; Kharazmshahids; Teymourian; Safavids; Afsharids; Zands; Qajars; Pahlavis.
2022/09/10 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iran's Ayatollah Jannati, 95, is happy to have outlasted Queen Elizabeth II! [Top center] Cyber art titled "Cyberspace"(artist unknown). [Top right] Engineering the James Webb Space Telescope: Cover feature of the September 2022 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine. [Bottom left] How the world's $100 trillion GDP is divided among countries. [Bottom center] Distinguished lecture by Dr. Farzaneh Milani (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Countries' shares of world military spending.
(2) "A Literary Journey: On Walls, Veils, Borders, and Thresholds": This was the title of U. Toronto's Second Annual Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Farzaneh Milani, Raymond J. Nelson Professor of Iranian Literature and Gender Studies, U. Virginia, on 9/09. There were ~40 attendees.
Dr. Milani intermixed personal reflections on her life with literary and feminist influences to describe her journey through life in Iran, relocation to the US, and her academic work, including the books Veils and Words (1992) and Words Not Swords (2011), along with books on Simin Behbahani (1999) and Forough Farrokhzad (2016).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Aerial footage of the aftermath of devastating floods in Pakistan, affecting 33 million people. [Tweet]
- Nevada county official charged with murder of investigative journalist exposing misdeeds in his office.
- California faces the threat of fire, rain, wind, and mudslide, all at once, as Hurricane Kay passes offshore.
- Mississippi gave QB Brett Favres company $1.1 M from welfare funds for 2 speeches he never gave.
- The faces of Elizabeth II [1926-2022] over the years. [1-minute video]
- Political humor: In England, they have installed a man as the Queen. This wokeness has gone too far!
- The Golden Age of Islam: An informative visual introduction. [9-minute video]
- Persian music: An oldie song, with rather silly lyrics. [2-minute video]
- The super-rich are prepping for societal collapse by building luxury bunkers and hiring military security.
(4) Quote of the day: "Yes, I did make a movie ... I hope people see it. But if not, we're all going to die anyway, so who cares." ~ Actress Jennifer Lawrence
(5) Persian poetry: Sholeh Wolpe recites bold, beautiful verses written by Farough Farrokhzad (1934-1967), with English translations. [8-minute video]
(6) Life story and sample works of the Iranian singing legend Esmat Bagherpour Baboli (1925-2004), better known as Delkash. [27-minute video]
(7) A most-deplorable act: Republican congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas presents convicted January 6 rioter with flag flown over US Capitol after her release from prison.
2022/09/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Women target-practicing in Malayer, a city in western Iran, during the 1950s. [Top center] Inflation-adjusted annual cost of public higher education in the US rose from about $10K in 1970 & 1990 to $23K in 2020 (NYT chart). [Top right] Queen Elizabeth II dead at 96: Britain's longest-serving monarch ruled for seven decades. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: In this diagram, with two squares and a triangle whose apex is connected to the middle of the opposite side by a unit-length line segment, what is x? [Bottom center] An evening with Iranian maestro Shardad Rohani, in an intimate setting (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Talangor Group talk by Dr. Sirous Yasseri (see the last item below).
(2) An evening with musician/conductor/composer Shardad Rohani: On Wednesday night, Socrates Think Tank presented the Iranian maestro in a Zoom meeting, with ~130 attendees.
After showing a video of Rohani conducting a performance of "Esfahan," the guest performer was introduced. He spoke about his musical experiences, including a 4-year stint as Director of Tehran Symphony Orchestra, following a long period of regular appearances with the group as guest-conductor. Rohani's stories were interspersed with videos of his performances with different orchestras at worldwide venues.
What follows is my selection of Rohani's work from YouTube.
"Esfahan," arranged & orchestrated by Shardad Rohani, melody by Javad Maroufi. [7-minute video]
Shardad Rohani's concert in London's Cadogan Hall. [Part 1, 26 minutes] [Part 2, 25 minutes]
Shardad Rohani, with Yanni, live at the Acropolis (dueling violins, at the end). [8-minute video]
Shardad Rohani conducts Tehran Symphony Orchestra, live in Milad Tower. [65-minute video]
Shardad Rohani conducts "Epic," performed live in Tehran's Vahdat Hall. [12-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At 73, King Charles III will rule England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.
- Membership list of Oath Keepers includes politicians, military members, and law-enforcement officers.
- Sharif U. Tech Association Virtual Reunion, Sep. 16-17, 2022.
[Registration link & event program]
- Heat wave: Summer of 2022 was the hottest on record in Europe and many other places on Earth.
(4) "Hype vs. Reality of 5G": This was the title of today's panel discussion organized by IEEE Educational Activities on LinkedIn Live. There were more than 1300 attendees. [62-minute video recording]
Despite being hyped at a fever pitch for several years now, with terms such as "ultra-wideband" and "extended range," 5G's impact on everyday life has been rather limited. This IEEE panel discussion brought together experts David Witkowski, Joe Madden, Prakash Sangam, and Monisha Ghosh for a discourse on the challenges created by how the wireless carriers promote 5G, and what the real value of 5G technology is likely to be.
It seems that 5G's greater coverage is a boon in rural settings; most other users don't experience much difference in 5G vs. 4G. As we prepare for the onslaught of hype on 6G, we need to understand that 5G's impact is mostly in the domain of communication infrastructure, rather than consumers or phones.
(5) This evening's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U., UK) spoke in Persian under the title "Geopolitics of Oil." A short presentation by Dr. Reza Toossi (Cal State U. Long Beach) on "The Role of Energy in Our Daily Lives" preceded the main talk. There were ~70 attendees.
Dr. Yasseri began his talk with a definition of geopolitics, including a list of personalities who were instrumental in the adoption and spread of the term. He then presented a historical overview, beginning in the early 1900s, when there were two world powers: The Russian Empire, which controlled a large land-mass in Asia and Eastern Europe, and England, whose navy controlled the waters of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to the south. There were skirmishes and wars between the two powers, but neither one could eliminate the other. So, a kind of delicate balance prevailed that adversely affected countries like Iran that sat between the two domains of influence.
Dr. Yasseri then proceeded to describe the changes in the energy scene, as uses of energy sky-rocketed, oil prices rose, and the United States entered the stage as a newly-minted world power. The US later became energy-independent, but continued to exert influence on other oil-producing countries. The US still maintains military personnel in excess of 600,000 in the Middle East and is the predominant world power controlling oil shipments from the region to Europe and elsewhere.
Near the end of his talk, Dr. Yasseri showed part of a 10-minute film clip of a 1973 speech by the Shah of Iran, which reveals some of the tensions that existed around the world regarding energy resources, the role of OPEC, and other geopolitical issues.
A lively Q&A period ensued, during which both technical/economic aspects of oil production and their political consequences, particularly in the case of Iran, were discussed. Perhaps, the title of the talk, "Geopolitics of Oil," or, more aptly, "Geopolitics of Fossil Fuels" (given the current importance of gas) should be expanded to "Geopolitics of Energy" in a future talk, as the share of renewables rises to beyond the current 10-15% of the total (excluding hydropower & nuclear plants).
2022/09/06 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] DARPA reincarnates the Soviet-era Sea Skimmer, a transport plane that can fly meters above the ocean. [Center] Iran's architecture: The exquisite beauty of ceiling tiles at Esfahan's Shah Mosque. [Right] Overlapping traits among Autism, ADHD, and Giftedness.
(2) NYT's annotated version of the affidavit that led to the search of Mar-a-Lago: The 32-page affidavit, with additional pages of exhibits and attachments, details FBI's concerns with the year-long efforts to retrieve classified and national-defense documents from Donald Trump and his actions to deflect and avoid compliance with a subpoena.
(3) Research quality and impact: According to a study of 6.6 million papers published from 2000 to 2019 by 7.6 million medical researchers (PNAS, Vol. 119, 2022, No. 36), gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Juul agrees to pay $438.5 M to settle a multi-state investigation into its role in the teen vaping crisis.
- Ukraine's children went back to school today: So did Uvaldi school kids in Texas.
- Germany asks for forgiveness 50 years after the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes during Munich Olympics.
- Homosexuality = Death: LGBTQ rights advocate Zahra Sedighi-Hamedani sentenced to death in Iran.
- Elham Chobdar is the second Iranian LGBTQ-rights activist to be sentenced to death in recent days.
- IEEE Symp. Computer Arithmetic: Sep. 12-14, 2022. Free on-line attendance if you register by Sep. 08.
- SBPianoBoys, Zeyn & Rhyan Schweyk, head to college to pursue dual degrees in engineering & music.
- Two interesting free technical talks (Sep. 8 & 13) about hot topics of the day, 5G and JWST. [Details]
(5) Insurrectionist ousted: Couy Griffin, a county commissioner in New Mexico, becomes the first official in more than 100 years to be removed under the US Constitution's bar on insurrectionists holding office.
(6) Afghan men are concerned: A Taliban official has opined that all circumcisions performed over the past 40 years under the Soviet rule and American occupation are deemed un-Islamic and thus invalid, because secular doctors did not chant "God is Great" at the time of cutting. Thus, all men must be circumcised anew.
(7) IEEE Women in Engineering celebrates 25 years: With more than 35,000 members, the group has planned a host of activities for 2022 to mark the occasion.
(8) "The Spectacular Collapse of CryptoKitties": Subtitled "A Cautionary Tale about NFTs and the Future of Cryptocurrency," this article by Matthew S. Smith in the September 2022 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine reiterates what many computer experts have been warning about.
(9) Final thought for the day (humor): An Iranian entrepreneur plans to open a US restaurant specializing in dizi, a kind of Iranian meat stew. The restaurant will be called "Washington DZ."
2022/09/05 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Today we observe Labor Day in America (see the next item below). [Right] Fifty years ago, the threat of terrorism, as we know it today, was born: On September 5, 1972, eight Palestinian terrorists attacked the Olympic Village in Munich during the Summer Olympic Games, taking hostages and eventually killing 11 members of the Israeli team (4-minute video).
(2) Happy Labor Day! Today, we celebrate the progress we have made on the path of providing humane working conditions and decent wages to those who make the world go around with their labor. The progress isn't complete, but we have come a long way from when mine workers were treated like cattle.
(3) Boris Johnson will be replaced by Liz Truss, starting tomorrow: The 47-year-old is Britain's third female prime minister. Truss will inherit an inflation crisis, the aftershocks of Brexit, a war in Europe, and sinking support for the Conservatives in opinion polls.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Pakistani official: "This is very far from a normal monsoon—it is climate dystopia at our doorstep."
- Why no bridge or tunnel connects Europe to Africa, despite the 9-mile shortest distance. [4-minute video]
- Everything can be faked with tech: Ships use fake satellite signals to evade sanctions or smuggle drugs.
- A war is raging between big companies and their employees on the need for physical presence at the office.
- Basic mathematical symbols and notation, nicely organized.
[Chart]
- Math oddity: The formula n^2 + n + 41 generates prime numbers for consecutive values of n, from 0 to 39.
(5) Exposing Iran's so-called "reform movement" for what it is: Its most-prominent member, Khatami, speaks "scientifically" about homosexuality being a crime that is punishable by death, according to the Quran.
(6) Walmart was duped into selling fake 30 TB SSD drives: One terabyte of SSD storage costs at least $50, so at $18, or $0.60 per TB, the fake drive was too good to be true. The scam artists had modified the drive's firmware to show 30 TB of storage when plugged into a Windows computer.
(7) Math puzzle: Consider the strings of symbols n n n = 6, where n is a whole number from 0 to 9. Insert mathematical symbols in each of the 10 strings so that the equality holds. For example, (0! + 0! + 0!)! = 6. You are allowed to insert only math symbols. Inserting digits or numbers is not allowed.
(8) Biden laid a trap in his Philadelphia speech: And Trump walked right into it in his Wilkes-Barre rally. The GOP had hoped that Trump would stay out of the 2022 midterm elections. But he made the rally, supposedly held in support of two Republican candidates, all about himself and victimhood, lashing out at everyone and everything, including the city of Philadelphia. Imagine bad-mouthing Philadelphia in a rally held in Pennsylvania!
(9) Skill at performing a physical task deteriorates when one is forced to verbalize how s/he does it: In an experiment with golfers, they were asked to sink three short putts in a row. After devoting some time to practice, it took them an average of 10 tries to succeed. Then the golfers were asked to describe their putting techniques between the practice session and the actual test. The average number of attempts needed more than doubled to 21. The more skillful you are, the greater the negative impact of verbalizing your technique. [Source: Adam Grant's August 31, 2022, newsletter]
2022/09/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] New Yorker cartoon of the day: The surreal world of cryptocurrency. [Center] IranWire cartoon of the day: Ali Khamenei grooms his son, Mojtaba, to replace him as Supreme Leader. Mojtaba was recently advanced to the rank of Ayatollah over objections by many senior clerics. [Right] UCLA Zoom talk by Dr. Mohammad B. Bagheri on logical positivism (see the last item below).
(2) The five pillars of American success have been in decline over the past two decades: Education, Immigration, Infrastructure, Encouraging & regulating investment, and R&D. [Adapted from Thomas Friedman]
(3) SCE power outage in Goleta: Our power went out around 1:00 PM and is expected to be restored at 4:30. Let's be more considerate in using power during the ongoing extreme-heat emergency!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ten people killed by two suspects in a series of stabbings in Saskatchewan, Canada.
- The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out 20 years of US progress in math and reading skills.
- US life expectancy fell by 3 years from 2019 to 2021, the largest decline in 100 years.
- The gap of worrying about COVID-19 between liberals & conservatives is narrowing. [Chart, from NYT]
- Glenn Kirschner on what Trump might have done with now-missing classified documents he took.
- Hype vs. Reality of 5G: LinkedIn panel discussion, Thurs., Sep. 8, 2022, 9:00 AM PDT. (Virtual; Register).
(5) Iran's Minister of Communication is an Australian citizen: His fellow-Iranians, who have fled the reign of terror & censorship which he has helped establish, are rotting in refugee camps as they try to enter Australia!
(6) "Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle, Part 2": This was the title of today's talk by Dr. Mohammad B. Bagheri under the auspices of the Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage. The speaker was identified as a "Researcher with UCLA." It would have been clearer if the speaker's actual affiliation/title were specified. The session included a second talk on pain medication and a Q&A session on women's health, which I did not attend.
building up on a talk he presented last month, Dr. Bagheri began by observing that positivism does not recognize anything but natural sciences, in which theories can be experimentally verified (or falsified). In particular, it considers fields such as psychology, philosophy, and even math as fake sciences. Later, positivists came to the conclusion that they have reached a dead end, thus coming up with the term "logical positivism," thanks to Bertrand Russell, who was a mathematician more than a philosopher. Logical positivism brings philosophy and mathematics under its umbrella. Logical positivism is still limited in what it can cover/explain, so, all forms of positivism are now considered dead.
In Dr. Bagheri's view, such discussions are particularly useful for people of Iranian heritage, who tend to be dismissive of scientific/logical thinking, primarily due to growing up with poetry and mysticism. A small group flip completely and become extreme positivists. The speaker's motivation in presenting this talk was to see if a middle ground can be found to unify our thinking. A lecture of Dr. Bagheri on critical thinking is available on YouTube. Dr. Bagheri also mentioned that he has a YouTube channel, which I have been unable to find.
The following are my supplementary notes from on-line sources: The doctrine of positivism is the brainchild the 19th-century French Philosopher Auguste Comte. He stated that the world was progressing through three stages in the quest for truth: theological, metaphysical, & positivist. He believed that theology and metaphysics should be replaced by a hierarchy of sciences. Positivism is similar in its outlook to scientism and is also closely connected to Naturalism, Reductionism, and Verificationism. Positivism later branched out into legal positivism, logical positivism, and sociological positivism. Positivists eventually came to the conclusion that their worldview leads to a number of unresolvable problems. Karl Popper opined that metaphysics is different from science but it isn't nonsense.
2022/09/02 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Math puzzles of the day: Find the fraction of the outer shape's area that is shaded.
(2) UCSB's Fourth Annual Responsible Machine Learning Summit: Friday, October 7, 2022, 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM PDT, Room 1010 Henley Hall. [Register]
(3) Miye Ota turns 104: The matriarch of the Ota family miraculously recovered from health problems to celebrate her 104th birthday at Hendry's Beach in Santa Barbara on Friday 8/26. Her son, the late Steve Ota, was my son's aikido sensei. [Photo]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- SoCal heat wave, bringing temperatures of up to 110 F, will last until Tuesday: Power conservation urged.
- Putin denies Gorbachev the honor of a state funeral and will stay away.
- Russian energy mogul who criticized the Ukraine war dies in Moscow after falling from 6th-floor window.
- Among items found in FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago were empty folders marked for classified files.
- California passes climate measures, allocating $54 billion for reaching net-zero emissions by 2045.
- Lesson from Alaska's election: Ranked-choice voting diminishes parties' role, empowering independents.
- A Michigan town's library may be defunded because its staff refused to remove an LGBTQ book.
- American women should remember to vote. This choice has not yet been taken away from them!
- Iran's 4th National Informatics Conf., January 4-5, 2023, Tehran.
[Announcement & call for papers]
- Understanding how waves work: Scientists & engineers use wave tanks to experiment. [1-minute video]
- Movie-making magic: Green screens and other ways of creating make-believe scenes. [1-minute video]
- Persian music: Japanese young man plays multiple instruments & sings in Persian. [3-minute video]
(5) Iranian mullahs weep for Iman Hussein and his followers, who went thirsty some 1400 years ago, but they are indifferent to the thirst of Iranian citizens in several cities suffering from severe droughts right now.
(6) County of Santa Barbara sues UCSB over its failure to follow the 2010 long-range development plan in the area of student housing: Housing availability has not increased along with enrollment growth.
(7) On the desirability of ranked-choice voting (RCV): Also known as instant-runoff voting, RCV allows a voter to rank the available candidates from first to nth. If a candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, s/he wins. If there is no majority, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated from further consideration and lower-ranked candidates in those lists move up one notch. One key advantage of this scheme is that when there are two major-party and a number of lesser-known candidates, a voter can still rank one of the latter at the top, without a fear that s/he would draw votes from more viable candidates. So, voters can vote honestly, rather than strategically.
2022/09/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (see the next item below). [Top center] Tonight's Talangor Group technical talk (see the last item below). [Top right] Poetic Persian proverb due to Naser Khosrow (see item 3 below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What is the height of this right-angled triangle with known base? [Bottom center] You don't need to make new signs for each protest: Here are some general-purpose protest signs! [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the area of this isosceles right triangle.
(2) Throwback Thurday: (a) Iranian high-schoolers in the 1960s, more than a decade before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. (b) These cartoon portraits of me were drawn by street artists in 1999, 2016, and 2022. The last two are by the same artist, Michael, on Santa Barbara's Cabrillo Blvd. Another such cartoon was drawn in Honolulu in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but I have not been able to find it.
(3) Poetic proverbs: Many Persian proverbs come from the works of great poets. Here is one which is part of the last verse in a poem by Naser Khosrow ("az maast keh bar maast"). It tells us to take responsibility for our actions and not to blame others for our misfortunes. The poem is the story of an eagle which is shot down by an arrow and, when it looks to see how this metal-wood implement has flown so high as to hit it way up in the air, it discovers eagle feathers as part of the arrow.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- New COVID-19 booster shots targeting Omicron subvariants could become available next week.
- Route Fire along California's Interstate 5 closes the freeway in both directions.
- Iranian novelist Abbas Maroufi [1957-2022], best known for 'Symphony of the Dead,' falls to cancer at 65.
- Incredible math: Indian mathematician Ramanujan discovered this formula for π. [Tweet]
- The wonder of math: A large number of circles formed by a family of equations lead to a Bird in Flight.
- Engineering in action: One way to convert circular motion to linear motion.
[Tweet]
- One way to generate electricity from nearby traffic. [Tweet]
- This brave Canada goose isn't intimidated by cows!
[Tweet]
- Facebook memory from August 31, 2017: Divination by [Conference] Program Committee.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 1, 2018: An exquisite Persian love poem from the great poet Sa'adi.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 1, 2013: The night when I was honored by my kind nieces.
(5) "Bridge Construction: An Overview of Common Practices for Historical Conventional, and Modern Bridges": This was the title of tonight's Talangor Group talk by Dr. Majid Sarraf (earthquake and bridge expert). A short presentation by Dr. Mohamad Navab on the National Grief Awareness Day, August 30, and mentions of a couple of other notable "today in history" events preceded the main talk. There were ~60 attendees.
Beginning with conventional bridges and their various components (foundation, substructure, and superstructure), Dr. Sarraf reviewed the main variants of bridges along with their construction technology, benefits, and drawbacks. Among topics discussed were pile, beam, truss, suspension, cantilever, and cable-stay. Also included in the discussion were construction techniques such as those used to set up bridge foundation and substructure under water. This 7-minute YouTube video contains some useful information.
During the Q&A period, I mentioned Henry Petroski and his book, To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, in which he uses the historical pattern of bridge collapses as a learning cycle: Successful design leads to skimping in materials and engineering, until a failure tells us that we have gone too far.
2022/08/30 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Spaceship Neptune: Florida-based Space Perspective will take tourists to the stratosphere using a capsule attached to a giant hydrogen-filled balloon. [Top center] Math humor: Integral of a.dx is ax + c. [Top right] Approximate reconstruction of what Egypt's Luxor Temple might have looked like 3500 years ago. [Bottom left & center] Amazing art: Look carefully at these paintings and you'll see details that are quite different from the first impression! Focus on the noses and eyes. [Bottom right] Science humor: Carbon dating (credit: Analytical Science Network).
(2) "Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with JWST": Nobel Laureate and James Webb Space Telescope senior project manager John C. Mather will discuss his groundbreaking research on Tuesday, September 13, 2022, 5:00-6:00 PM PDT, in-person and via YouTube.
[Registration]
[Presentation link]
(3) Not funny, in any language: A bittersweet essay by Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi, describing grief and eventual return to a functioning human after her husband of 36 years blindsided her with a divorce.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, dead at 91: World leaders pay tribute.
- Iran's attempt to seize an uncrewed US ship in the Persian Gulf interrupted by the US Navy.
- NASA will put an Alexa-enabled voice assistant on its next moon mission.
- Mercedes Benz EQXX prototype breaks the 1000 km barrier, for a range 75% more than Tesla Model 3.
- Worst heat wave of the year to hit Southern California this week: Record-setting temps expected.
- Game shows in the age of MAGA and litigation: "You don't have to answer that!" [Cartoon]
- A history of music in Iran: From Chaghamish to Chehel-Sotoon. [74-minute video]
- This 2-minute video clip is an example of many similar ones characterized as one instrument, n hands.
(5) Interview with Beth Holmes: Amazon Alexa's Principal Knowledge Engineer discusses her work and life as a technologist with autism.
(6) The late poet Houshang Ebtehaj (Sayeh) recalls the day when he cried in prison upon hearing one of his patriotic compositions over the prison's loudspeaker.
2022/08/28 (Sunday): Pictorial report on a day spent in San Diego's Coronado Island and Balboa Park.
(1) Top row of images: My daughter and I started our exploration of Coronado Island with a visit to the historic Hotel del Coronado (est. 1888), photographing the Victorian building from the ocean side and from its north side. We also went inside, snapping photos of its beautiful lobby, courtyard, and ballroom.
(2) Middle row of images: We next walked on a walkway along the beach, taking in the views of downtown San Diego, many shops/businesses, and art. We stopped by at a quaint coffee/tea shop, before heading toward the Bay Bridge, which connects the Island to the city center. As we drove over the bridge on our way back from the Island, I snapped a couple of photos of the San Diego US Navy shipyard.
(3) Bottom row of images: From Coronado Island, we headed to Balboa Park for an organ concert. Walking to the concert venue, we spotted an Iran exhibit or mini-museum as part of the Park's International Cottages. We also photographed a stone plaque bearing a description of the Cyrus Cylinder near the Cottage's entrance. The highlight of the day was a concert on world's largest outdoor instrument, the Spreckels Organ, donated to the City of San Diego by the Spreckels family, of sugar fame. San Diego Civic Organist Raul Prieto Ramirez treated us to some wonderful music, with one piece played by a guest organist. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
(4) Dining experiences: We began the day with this fruit plate. Upon arriving on Coronado Island, we had an early lunch at Lobster West, which advertises its fare as "ZAGAT #1 rated lobster dish in San Diego." Lobster is often served in fancy dishes, but we experienced unique lobster sandwiches. We ended the day's dining with dinner at Del Mar Seaside Grill, a combo Persian/Mediterranean restaurant with excellent food.
2022/08/27 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: An interior point of a square and midpoints of its sides are used to divide the square into four areas. Determine the unknown area (@mathisstillfun). [Top center] We really don't have much water on Earth: (Big sphere) All the water on or above the Earth; (Medium) Fresh water in ground, lakes, swamps, and rivers; (Tiny) Fresh water in lakes and rivers. [Top right] Math puzzle: In this circle of radius 2 centered at O, find the area of the yellow section (@mathisstillfun). [Bottom row] With my daughter in San Diego and hiking with her in the Crest Canyon Open Space Park: The lagoon seen in the distance in one photo and closer-up in others is one of many in the San Diego area. The canyon's open space is surrounded by houses with gorgeous views. You can see a hint of a rainbow in the first image
(2) Math puzzle: If a, b, and c are the roots of the equation x^3 – 16x^2 – 57x + 1 = 0, what is the value of a^(1/5) + b^(1/5) + c^(1/5)?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Climate-change deniers won't care about 1000 dead Pakistanis and millions displaced by floods. [More]
- University of California is no longer affordable: Total annual cost for an in-state student is nearly $40K.
- SoCal news: Bankruptcy court rules in favor of CA Lands Commission in dispute with Venoco.
- Eight-year-old cartoon, which is still relevant today: Mana Neyestani's take on Iran-West nuclear talks.
- "Libertango": Wonderful dancing and exquisite cello music by Yo-Yo Ma. [3-minute video]
- Humor: Some of you may agree with this statement; a few of you will be exciteder by it!
(4) Two new BBQ restaurants in Goleta: Yesterday, my son and I dined at a new BBQ joint on Hollister Avenue, next to Goleta Valley Community Center. Another BBQ joint, Shalhoub's Meat Company is set to open in Magnolia Shopping Center, at the former location of Woody's BBQ.
(5) An interesting film about Iran, "Rediscovering '12 Persian Folk Songs' by Blair Fairchild (1904)": An American diplomat, with no musical background, takes an interest in Persian music and documents a dozen folk pieces, publishing them years later after his retirement. [65-minute video]
(7) Final thought for the day: Native-Americans lived on this land for at least 7000 years, before Europeans came over. Why didn't God see it fit to send a prophet to guide them?
2022/08/26 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ancient DNA traces linguistic links that tie Anatolia to Europe: Cover feature of Science journal, issue of August 26, 2022. [Top center] We've had a crew hired by the homeowners' association working on resurfacing & painting our sun deck this week: The old grayish material/color was ugly and a pain to keep clean. The new peach-colored version looks a lot better. [Top right] Roundtable discussion on the overturning Roe-v.-Wade (see the last item below).
(2) A New genre: After the publication of Kellyanne Conway's memoir, librarians have added a third classification of "alternative facts" to fiction and nonfiction categories!
(3) Celebrity dissenters under assault in Iran: Two more filmmakers have been indicted. Actors, soccer players, and social-media influencers are relentlessly attacked by conservatives and Revolutionary Guards.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US retaliates against Iran-backed groups in eastern Syria for their rocket attacks on US bases.
- Climate change is real: The US has been hit with five 1000-year rain events in five weeks.
- Unprecedented droughts reveal treasures & historic monuments in shrunken lakes and dried-up rivers.
- Jamie Kirchick, author of Secret City: A Hidden History of Gay Washington, is interviewed on "Firing Line."
- The WH tells scientific journals to remove pay walls and provide free access to publicly-funded research.
(5) Imagine this young boy, living in a country that sits atop vast natural resources, being so excited about getting a piece of bread. Shame on those whose mismanagement and swindling has caused the people in the oil-rich Iran to face record poverty! [Video]
(6) Shol-kon, seft-kon: This is a Persian expression meaning "go easy, be strict," a kind of political flip-flopping to deflect criticisms of government policies. The Iranian regime has partially relented in the face of pressure from FIFA by allowing a limited number of women into a soccer stadium to watch the match between Esteghlal and Mes Kerman teams. I predict that as soon as the Qatar World Cup tournament is over, women will again be barred from attending sports matches.
(7) "Overturning Roe v. Wade, a Misogynistic Decision by the US Supreme Court": This was the title of a roundtable discussion in Persian, organized under the auspices of Voices of Women for Change. The panelists were Dr. Mariam Ghazvini, Sousan Manteghi Safakish, Mahboubeh Abasgholizadeh, and Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson.
I was surprised with the relatively low interest in such an important topic (22 attendees, with only 3-4 men). As the saying goes, women's rights are human rights, so we must bear in mind that the SCOTUS over-reach will not remain limited to the domain of women's issues. It so happens that they felt comfortable at this juncture, given the support of conservative men and women, to attack this right first. Be assured that other rights for all Americans, regardless of gender, will be on the chopping block. So, I am especially disappointed with low attendance by men in this event.
One key observation was that this SCOTUS decision doesn't affect only American women, but has global implications. We as Iranian-Americans are doubly affected: Directly, as people living in the US, and indirectly, because of US attitudes toward immigrants and similarity of abortion laws in our homeland and in our adopted country. Important differences have been observed in views toward abortion in different social groups, religions, and generations. The notion of honor among Muslim Iranian families puts additional pressure on young women, who happen to get pregnant before/outside marriage.
2022/08/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A sumo wrestling demo, today at UCSB: Japan's heaviest human ever, at ~600 lbs, and an Egyptian at ~500 lbs, were two participants, but the winner at the end of six matches was a 215-lb Japanese. There is a sumo tournament in Los Angeles in two weeks. [Center] Talangor Group technical talk on mind-reading computers (see the last item below). [Right] Aikido exhibition and awards:
After a couple of years of disruption due to COVID-19 and the untimely passing of sensei Steve Ota, a few of the people involved in Steve's dojo got together to mark the start of a new school at GVCC and to present Sepehr with his black belt, which he was about to receive when the school was forced to close.
(2) Mr. Haloo's take on, and questions about, The Disaster of Holy Ignorance, a book by Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad: The book posits that ignorance is significantly more dangerous when it is combined with religious beliefs, citing the fact that Imam Hussein and several other prominent martyrs were killed not by apostates, but by deeply religious Muslims. [84-minute video, in Persian]
(3) President Ebrahim Raisi's crimes against humanity are extensive enough to justify denial of a US entry visa for him to attend the UN General Assembly in NYC.
[Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Transportation news: California to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
- UCSB in Shanghai Ranking: 14th US public university; 32nd US university; 57th world university.
- The Manchester Atlas Computer pioneered the concept of virtual memory 65 years ago. [Plaque]
- Throwback Thursday: Kissinger watching an Arabic dancer during his visit to Iran in the early 1970s.
- Remote learning in the 1940s: Teachers speak over the radio during the US polio outbreak.
- Plastic processors costing under 1 cent: Simple, flexible, & fully-functional plastic microchips are coming.
- Sierpinski triangle: An example of how structure can emerge from randomness. [Tweet]
- I bought a bag of air today. The company that made it was kind enough to put some potato chips in it too.
(5) Under the hood of the first exascale computer: At a performance of 1.1 exaflops, Oakridge National Lab's Frontier supercomputer is more powerful than the next seven top supercomputers combined.
(6) Student-loan forgiveness: After months of anticipation and rumors, President Biden announces plans to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year.
(7) "How the Computer Reads Your Mind": This was the title of my Persian talk for the Talangor Group tonight. A short presentation by Mahdi Saremifar covering Iran's Khayyam remote-sensing satellite project preceded the main talk. There were ~70 attendees. [126-minute recording of my talk]
I began with the observation that reading your mind is good for business, that is, it can be monetized. Knowing what excites you, what keeps you up at night, and what you contemplate is invaluable for selling goods and services to you. Obviously, mind-reading is difficult and, at best, imprecise. So, as a complement to reading your mind, businesses strive to make your behavior and thought process more predictable. Because I dealt with many of the social challenges of AI in a previous talk for the Talangor group, I didn't dwell on negative aspects of AI technology in this talk. I pled with the audience to keep all the negative stuff in the back of their minds and to follow me in exploring clever methods for finding out about people's preferences and desires.
The starting point for this exploration was a class of puzzles involving sequences of numbers, words, or images, in which one is asked to guess the next entry in the sequence, given a few initial terms. Such puzzles are among common questions in aptitude tests. I provided many examples of sequence puzzles and explained why they may not have unique answers, leading to problems, particularly for brighter test-takers. These puzzles nicely model recommender systems: Imagine the known terms in the sequence representing movies you have watched or books you have read, with the next, unknown term being a suitable recommendation for what to watch or read next. Predicting the future (forecasting) is also similar in nature.
The key to predicting the next term in a sequence (or the next book to recommend to you, after you have read a number of books) is extracting patterns, that is, commonalities and differences, from the known terms (or books) and looking for those features in the proposed answers to the test question (or available books in the database). In the last third of my talk, I presented examples of pattern extraction, using fairly simple feature spaces and told the audience about video links embedded in the presentation slides which they can use to pursue the ideas in greater detail.
2022/08/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Colorful salt hills in Iran's Persian Gulf region). [Top center] New York's Manhattan Island: 1851 vs. 2022. [Top right] Storke Pond: Tuesday afternoon's guided walk took us to the Storke Tower on the UCSB campus, with its pond, which provides a sustainable habitat for turtles and fish. [Bottom left] Wrath of God: This hijabless woman was turned into stone! [Bottom center] Change of strategy in dealing with hijab violations in Iran: The government has apparently decided to monetize on women ignoring hijab laws, by using a system of fines, instead of criminal prosecution. [Bottom right] Many people say they will travel a lot after retirement: Not a good idea. Travel while you are young!
(2) Kevin McCarthy may have to make another trip to Mar-a-Lago to apologize. He said on Fox News: "I just have one rule of thumb. I really don't trust anyone that keeps a mural of themselves in their office."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Aug. 24 is Ukraine's Independence Day: Festivities included a parade of wrecked & captured Russian tanks.
- Angela Merkel awarded UNESCO's 2022 Peace Prize for her courageous decision to welcome refugees.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2018: Having burgers with my mom & kids at In-n-Out.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2018: This Trump Tower appears to be getting closer to reality!
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2017: Gregorian calendar vs. Persian calendar.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2017: Slide show from my memorable Seattle trip.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2014: How banks exacerbate the wealth gap.
(4) "A Brief History of Censorship in Iran: The Acumen of Doubt vs. the Inanity of Certainty": This was the title of today's Persian talk by Partow Nooriala (writer, poet, & literary/art critic), presented under the auspices of Socrates Think Tank. There were ~100 attendees.
Censorship has been a fact of life throughout the world for many centuries. It takes the severest forms in dictatorships, because dictators thrive in an information vacuum. The late Shah had a censorship apparatus that banned books, movies, and even certain newspaper cartoons. The saying went that you could criticize or ridicule anything and anyone, except for the Shah himself. The Islamic Republic and its leaders have taken censorship to new heights. You cannot be critical of the Supreme Leader, but now even criticizing lower-level officials and regime policies is also out of bounds. This is a direct consequence of one of the foundations of the Islamic Republic, the principle of the "Leadership of the Jurisprudence" ("Velayat-e Faghih") and the closely-linked notion of taghleed (ordinary people following the orders of a top clergy in every facet of their lives). According to these principles, mere mortals are incapable of making important decisions for themselves and need to copy a religious authority. It follows immediately that you can't independently decide what to read, what to watch, and what to believe, and must follow a faghih or his representatives in these regards. You need a Ministry of Guidance, a Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue & the Prevention of Vice, and many other entities that watch/guide what you do and what you think.
The word "censorship" comes to us from ancient Rome, where "censor" was in charge of monitoring the society's morals as well as conducting the census (a word from the same root). The Arabic word "momayyezi" is sometimes used in Iran. In the modern sense of the term, censorship in Iran emerged in the Qajar era, although even earlier, many thinkers were spurned or even killed because of their anti-religion musings. Censorship was eased to some extent after the Constitutional Revolution. Censorship intensified during the rule of Reza Shah to counteract opposition by the clergy to sociopolitical reforms. Upon Reza Shah going into exile and his son taking over, freedom of speech flourished, until the establishment of SAVAK (Shah's secret police).
Another golden era for free speech, lasting just one year, emerged after the fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty and before the Islamic Regime solidified its power. Iran currently ranks fourth from the bottom in terms of strict censorship. And Iran's censorship isn't just a matter of suppressing the press, writers, cartoonists, and filmmakers: The Islamic regime physically eliminates its critics through terror squads and kidnappings. Iran is ranked as one of the most-dangerous countries, not just for foreign visitors but also for its own citizens.
P.S.: After a couple of mentions of censorship in Western counties, I commented through chat: Equating a school board not allowing a textbook in a handful of schools with systemic, centralized censorship, with severe punishment up to death, is highly insincere.
2022/08/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranian family enjoying the beach before the onset of the Islamic Republic. [Top cneter] Men's shirt doubling as women's hijab: This UN worker in Iran apparently couldn't find a scarf! [Top right] Sepideh Rashno's opposition to misogynistic hijab laws is interpreted by Iranian mullahs as "collusion to disturb national security," "propaganda against the Islamic Republic," and "promoting prostitution." With these made-up charges, a very long prison sentence awaits her. [Bottom left] Beautiful math: The numbers 1-32 arranged in a circle, without repetition, so that any two adjacent numbers add up to a perfect square. [Bottom center] Amazing features of death's-head moth's guidance system are described in the cover story of Science journal's August 12, 2022 issue. [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: The emperor's perfect aim.
(2) Space-X's Starship: The biggest rocket ever, with its unprecedented payload capacity, is being developed for exciting space missions, including sending large robots to the Moon to probe lunar ice.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- By one key metric of research impact (number of most-cited papers), China replaces the US at the top.
- U. Delaware's star marine ecologist found guilty of research misconduct for data fabrication & falsification.
- Software update gives the Curiosity Mars Rover a 50% speed boost.
- Smash hit: Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" contains a frequency that crashes certain Windows XP laptops.
- Susan B. Anthony: "The true republic: men, their rights & nothing more; women, their rights & nothing less."
- Honoring Dr. Firouz Partovi, former Professor of Physics, Arya-Mehr (Sharif) U. Tech. [165-minute video]
- Engineering in action: Monorail track switching in Osaka, Japan. [1-minute video]
- Clever student's answers to a few true/false questions. [Tweet]
- Sheyda-ye Hamedani recites his defiant, anti-mullahs poem after being released from prison in Iran.
(4) Outrageous case of injustice involving Trump's CFO: Steal a loaf of bread and you'll go to jail for years. Engage in financial fraud to the tune of millions, and you get a plea deal with 3-4 months in jail.
(5) Director Rakhshan Banietemad's powerful statement on economic desperation in Iran leading to mothers selling their bodies to feed their families. [5-minute video]
(6) An interesting chess variant: White has pawns and 3 queens (white pawns can turn into queens only). Black has pawns and 7 knights (black pawns can turn into knights only). Which side is stronger?
(7) My two IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor lectures at U. Saskatchewan, Thurs., Sep. 22, 2022:
- Room 2C88, 10:00 AM, "Eight Key Ideas in Computer Architecture from Eight Decades of Innovation"
- Boffins Event Center, 01:00 PM, "Interconnection Networks for Parallel Processors and Data Centers"
(8) A decade of milestones for ACM: Association for Computing Machinery, an international organization of computing professionals with ~100,000 members worldwide, has celebrated three important milestones over the past decade. The whole world observed Turing's Centenary in 2012. Then came 50 years of ACM's Turing Awards, computing's most-prestigious honor, in 2017. And this year is ACM's 75th anniversary!
2022/08/20 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Since the 1800s, US recessions have become both less frequent and shorter in duration. [Top center] French woman Isabella Boyer was the model for Lady Liberty. [Top right] Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania (see the last item below). [Bottom left] RIP Anne Heche (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Is more of this rectangle shaded blue or red? [Bottom right] Old is new again: Iranian wind towers, an ancient and natural cooling system, could inform modern urban planning.
(2) The tragic end of Anne Heche at age 53: The talented and witty actress, who was linked romantically to Ellen DeGeneres, had a few films to her credit, but she never became a mega-star. She went into a coma after a car crash on August 5, 2022, and was taken off life support on August 14. RIP.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Being indicted is shameful, except if you are part of the MAGA crowd, in which case it's a badge of honor!
- Frank Zappa was mocked in 1986 for his assertion that the greatest danger facing America is theocracy.
- This is how low people sink under a theocracy: Chest-beating and religious mourning in evening gowns!
- Data privacy concerns: Some 96% of apps that track reproductive health fail to protect users' data.
(4) Book review: Royte, Elizabeth, Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, Bloomsbury, 2008. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Selling bottled water has become big business, competing neck-and-neck with sodas, having already surpassed milk and beer. Royte begins her narrative by describing Nestle's water-bottling facility, located in the woods of western Maine. This largest plant of its kind in the US aggregates water from five nearby wells to produce water-filled plastic containers bearing the label "Poland Spring." Our ancestors, who fetched water from wells, springs, streams, rivers, and lakes, never imagined that this plentiful compound would one day be offered in bottles and jugs (or that they would buy other plentiful substances, such as gardening soil and sand, in bags).
In the rest of the book, Royte traces the history of bottled water through the decades. There are several inflection points in this history. We humans began polluting nearby water supplies or building large cities with inadequate local water resources, which forced us to transport water in aqueducts and pipes over long distances. In rural settings, we began bathing with and drinking tap water, until we became alarmed at the number of chemicals needed to make it potable. Over time, various engineering innovations made tap water safer, but they did not make it completely free from germs and other pollutants.
Then came one of the greatest marketing coups that convinced us to pay a couple of bucks per bottle to buy drinking water, instead of working toward improving the quality of tap water. Once selling water became big business, a number of related questions arose: Who owns water resources? Can a company set camp outside our towns to tap into springs and other groundwater? Who regulates water-bottling plants to make sure their products are safe? How do we know a product advertised as "spring water" isn't made by purifying tap water (or, worse, isn't plain, untreated tap water)?
Royte has done for the water-bottling industry what Eric Schlosser did for the fast-food industry in Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (My 5-star review on GoodReads).
That most of the claims about the qualities of expensive water products are pure hype has been demonstrated time and time again by anonymous taste tests and scientific analysis. In addition to dubious claims about quality, the water-bottling industry has a large environmental footprint: There are manufacturing and transportation impacts; and recycling claims for containers of bottled water do not pan out. As stressed by Tom Szaky in The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular, something being recyclable and actually being recycled are two different things (my 4-star review on GoodReads).
Royte concludes (p. 225): "[N]ot all tap water is perfect. But it is the devil we know, the devil we have standing to negotiate with and to improve. Bottled water companies don't answer to the public, they answer to shareholders ... Bottled water does have its place—it's useful in emergencies and essential for people whose health can't tolerate even filtered water. But it's often no better than tap water, its environmental and social price is high, and it lets our public guardians off the hook for protecting watersheds, stopping polluters, upgrading treatment and distribution infrastructure, and strengthening treatment standards."
2022/08/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday, 1: I attended Frank Sinatra's 1975 concert in Tehran's Arya-Mehr (Azadi) sports complex a year after my return to Iran (video). [Center] Throwback Thursday, 2: Scenes from Tehran, 50+ years ago. [Right] Talangor Group talk on Shahnameh (see the last item below).
(2) Overt anti-Semitism in Iran: This mullah says that even though Iranian Jews constantly conspire and commit crimes against Muslims, they are allowed to live in safety! [1-minute video]
(3) Women's sports: Iranian women volleyballers make history by reaching the finals of the Islamic Solidarity Games for the first time ever, winning a silver medal after losing to Turkey. And they did it wearing clothing that restricts their movements! The team's only previous medal was a bronze in 1966.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- CVS, Walgreens, & Walmart have to pay $650M to two Ohio counties for their roles in the opioid crisis.
- Women journalists speak of biases and obstacles they face in Iran. [15-minute video, narrated in Persian]
- Humor: Frequent urination protects you against kidney stones (as well as other stones)! [Video evidence]
- Math challenge: Try your hand at this 2021 Oxford math admission test.
- Optical illusion: Even when you know these boxes aren't moving, you can't help but see motion!
- This master-key opens any lock: I was unable to verify the claim from on-line sources.
- Iran's nature in a 7-minute slide show: Photos by Roya Barrette; music by Mohammad Nouri.
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Mahmoud Sabahi spoke under the title "The End of Shahnameh: The Fall of the Sassanids According to Ferdowsi" (in Persian). There were 78 attendees.
There is an oft-used Persian saying that "Shahnameh turns happy at the end." This saying, and another prominent one, "The chicks should be counted at the end of autumn," suggest that one should not judge too quickly, as things might change by the time we arrive at the end of a process.
Well, it turns out that Shahnameh's ending is anything but happy! It retells the story of the fall of the Sassanid Empire to Arab/Muslim invaders. Multiple wars were fought between Persians and Arabs. Various reasons are cited for the defeat of Iranian forces. One oft-cited reason is corruption among Zoroastrian priests, but the real reasons, somewhat like conditions leading to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, are much more complex.
After the decisive Qadisiyyah Battle, Yazd Gerd III, the last Sassanid King, fled toward Khorasan (northeastern Iran), hoping to find support there. Eventually, the Sassanid Dynasty fell ca. 651 CE. Dr. Sabahi read selected verses covering the conflict and the eventual Arab victory. Some of these verses are included in screenshots captured during the talk. The entire Shahnameh, in 8 volumes, can be downloaded for free from Bookiha.
Shahnameh has a dual character: It has a mythical component and a historical one. The ending is usually judged to be historically accurate, as it matches quite well with other historical accounts of the Arab invasion and the fall of the Sassanid Empire. Still, quite a few disagreements still exist about the nature of Iran's defeat by the Arabs, which changed the course of history for Iranians.
2022/08/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian translation of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (see the next item below). [Center] Math puzzle: Shown is a chessboard, with each square marked with the minimum number of knight moves required for the knight to reach it. Show that placing the knight in a corner will make the matrix symmetric and will also increase its maximum element from 5 to 6. [Right] IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk on machine translation by UCSB's Dr. Lei Li (see the last item below).
(2) Let's all stand up for free speech: One way to support Salman Rushdie and his fight for free speech is to read or re-read The Satanic Verses: A Novel. I have come across a Persian translation by Roshanak Irani (a pseudonym). Many years after reading the original (Viking, 1988), I will be reading this translation to show solidarity with those working on the protection of free speech across the globe.
(3) Almost all of those who were 20 or older when we defeated Hitler are dead now: This is why fascism and would-be dictators are beginning to rear their ugly heads again. [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Liz Cheney loses Republican primary battle: Heads for political engagement at the national level.
- Former VP Mike Pence condemns attacks on the FBI and leaves the door open to January 6 testimony.
- US Space Force tries using robotic dogs to patrol Cape Canaveral.
- Massive mudflow in California's San Bernardino County closes roads. [Video]
- Monday was the first anniversary of Taliban leaders entering Kabul and taking charge of the government.
- Saudi women's-rights activist Salma al-Shehab sentenced to 34 years in prison for her Tweeter activity.
- Kick him out of the UK: London-based Iranian ex-VP defends his book praising the fatwa to kill Rushdie.
- Persian music: Soheila Golestani performs "Setareh Ahoo" (music by Homayoun Khorram, lyrics by Sayeh).
(5) Thefts of catalytic converters: You may have heard through your local news outlets that almost everywhere in the US, catalytic converters are removed from cars by bands of thieves. I don't know how much they earn for each converter they steal, but the car owner is left with a repair bill of up to $3000. The thieves are apparently quite brazen, hitting cars parked right next to the victim's residence. Here's a list of cars most targeted.
(6) As multiple investigations unfold, Trump reportedly can't find competent attorneys to represent him: He is described as an impossible client by some and as a non-paying one by others.
(7) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Machine translation (MT) is the holy grail of AI. It was first viewed as one of the easier tasks for intelligent machines but then revealed its complexity, establishing itself among the most-challenging AI problems. Speaking under the title "Breaking the Language Barrier with Neural Machine Translation," Dr. Lei Li (UCSB CS) presented an overview of machine translation's 7.5-decade history, followed by his team's work on neural-network-based machine translation.
Machine translation has been instrumental in modern global business and daily life. A recent study has shown machine translation to be responsible for a 10% rise in trade on global e-commerce platforms. In recent years, powered by deep learning methods, machine translation has seen dramatic progress. Dr. Li discussed recent advances of MT technologies and models for bilingual translation, also briefly alluding to multilingual and speech-to-text translation scenarios, as well as challenges ahead in the domain of MT for every language.
Dr. Li discussed some of the remaining challenges in MT, using examples from various languages. In languages with vast amounts of textual material in original and translated forms, the learning process for neural-network translation is straightforward, but even there, many problems remain because of inherent ambiguity and imprecision in natural languages.
[IEEE CCS event page]
[Speaker's personal Web page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2022/08/16 (Tuesday): A pictorial report of my 2-day bus-trip to Laguna Beach, with a stop in Pasadena.
On Monday 2022/08/15, my travel group left Santa Barbara on a chartered Airbus, stopping in Old Town Pasadena for lunch. I skipped lunch with the group at Cheescake Factory, opting instead to walk to the City Hall, a beautiful building I had seen and admired during a previous trip. I photographed the building from different viewpoints (row 1 of photos above) and submitted some of the photos to the site Paatowgh-e Akkaasaan (Photographers' Hangout). The longshot photo of Pasadena's City Hall on the bottom left of the center panel was a top-10 pick on the site.
Before returning to my group, I also photographed a few other sites around the City Hall, including churches, some statues, and a commercial plaza with a Westin Hotel & other businesses (row 2 of photos above).
We checked into Ayres Hotel & Spa in Mission Viejo and, after a brief rest, rode the bus to the Laguna Beach Art Festival. We dined at the Festival, as we took in the art (row 3 of the photos above). Here are a couple of videos, featuring both music and samples of art on display. [2-minute video 1] [2-minute video 2]
The Festival's highlight was a living-art performance with live orchestra music entitled "The Art of Travel," in which well-known art pieces from around the world were recreated by actors on stage. Photography was not permitted, so I took a couple of photos upon entry and at the intermission and added a couple from the Internet (left panel in row 4 of photos above, and the top half of the middle panel).
On Tuesday, we took the bus to Sawdust Art Festival, across the street from last night's event, where posters advertising the event in earlier years were on display (right panel in row 4 of photos above). This larger art show features artists whose work did not pass the jury selection process at the main art festival. The grounds are covered with sawdust, hence the name (row 5 of photos above). Here are a couple of videos, featuring both music and samples of art on display. [1-minute video 1] [5-minute video 2]
2022/08/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The entire Iranian government, not just its Revolutionary Guards Corps, is a terrorist organization: Kayhan Daily, an official government mouthpiece, gloats over Salman Rushdie having met the wrath of God, predicting that Trump and Pompeo will be next. [Top center] Saturday's family gathering for belated celebration of my sister's and my brother-in-law's birthdays. [Top right] Maryam Hosseini's The Roots of Misogyny in Classical Persian Literature (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Someone was asked to find the square-root and he found it! [Bottom center] You can make pizzas with any kind of bread: These are my pita-bread pepperoni pizzas. [Bottom right] Siberian unicorn: Elasmotherium, a species that split from today's living rhinoceroses at least 35 million years ago, went extinct ~30,000 years ago.
(2) Do James Webb Space Telescope images contradict the Big Bang theory? They show too small, too smooth, too old, and too numerous galaxies, which seem to be incompatible with an expanding universe.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie was approved by all Iranian politicians, both hardliners & reformists.
- At least 41, mostly children, died in a church fire in Giza, Egypt.
- The "stepping feet" optical illusion: Colored boxes moving at constant speed appear to take discrete steps.
- Persian music: Darya Dadvar's 2007 performance of "Goftam beh Chashm." [7-minute video]
(4) Book review: Hosseini, Maryam, The Roots of Misogyny in Classical Persian Literature (Risheh-ha-ye Zan-Setizi dar Adabiyat-e Classic-e Farsi), Nashr-e Cheshmeh, 2009. (ISBN: 978-9643626037)
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The Iranian culture has been, and, in many respects, still is, patriarchal & misogynistic. The dawn of Islam in the region did not help, although some scholars claim that the negative impact of Islam on women resulted from misinterpretation of Quran and Prophet Muhammad's edicts. Women are viewed as property and reproductive machines, and are often characterized as cunning, satanic, half-witted, lacking in faith, and generally weak.
Patriarchy and misogyny form the background in many works of literature and, at times, come to the forefront in ugly insults and put-downs. The roots of avoiding women and considering them inferior humans dates back to the time of Aristotle and Plato. Even Sa'adi, who is among the most-revered classical poets, wasn't immune from misogyny, writing in one his verses, "A good, obedient, chaste woman will turn a dervish into a king." Another great poet, Khaghani, expressed shame when a daughter was born to him, praying to God that this stain be removed from his life.
Of course, there are also positive depiction of women in Persian poetry, notably in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. However, even in such works, where women are seen as queens or in other influential roles, one often encounters female characters who cause discord or lead men astray. Interestingly, if we go back further in history or study the more-recent periods after our classical poets, we encounter celebration of women as nurturers (e.g., Mother Earth) and/or wise beings (e.g., Scheherazade the story-teller). But such instances are rare and wisdom often manifests itself as an old man.
2022/08/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] On the assassination attempt against Salman Rushdie (see the next item below). [Top center] Beautiful math: The area of a simple polygon on unit-lattice (formed by a closed loop of non-intersecting line segments that connect the lattice points) equals i + b/2 – 1, where i is the number of lattice points inside the polygon and b is the number of boundary lattice points. This important result, known as Pick's theorem, has a relatively simple proof, which I will let you discover. [Top right] Quick! Someone tell this guy about center of gravity! [Bottom left] The "Yek Kalameh" ("One Word") treatise: According to this historical document, the "one word" that governs the organization and functions of Western societies is "law." [Bottom center & right] Persian poetry: A quatrain by Eghbal Lahouri & the Mowlavi/Rumi verse that inspired it.
(2) Iran must be held accountable for the assassination attempt against Salman Rushdie: Many years ago, they claimed that the fatwa to kill Rushdie had been revoked. Yet, one cannot unleash the crazies and then claim that they did not mean it (a la Donald Trump). Ayatollah Khamenei and his state-controlled media have praised Rushdie's attacker, who was a fan and follower of Khamenei and Khomeini. The connection with Iran is clear. Nothing that Iran says can be trusted. There was supposedly a fatwa against building a nuclear bomb, but now Iranian authorities are openly boasting about their A-bomb.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Salman Rushdie is reportedly alive after he was attacked in New York: The assailant is in custody.
- Austrian doctor takes her own life after months of abuse & death threats from anti-science bullies.
- Four Iraqi citizens bearing false French passports arrested in Buenos Aires: Links with Iran are suspected.
- John Bolton disappointed that only $300K was offered by Iran to an "assassin" to eliminate him!
- Drawing flowers based on the physics and mathematics of fluid interactions. [2-minute video]
- I have posted jazzy renditions of classical music before, but this one's truly special. [3-minute video]
(4) Stabbing of author Salman Rushdie by an Islamic extremist: The reformists' so-called "Golden Era of Imam Khomeini" is when the fatwa to kill Rushdie was issued.
(5) Liz Cheney's demise was set in motion by her father: "It has all the makings of a Greek tragedy. The tragic hero, a statesman of great ability, is driven by hubris to abuse power. The forces he unleashes spread uncontrollably—and eventually destroy his own daughter. He comes to her aid, but it is too late."
(6) A tale of two Williams: William Clifford discussed the theory of gravity as curvature of spacetime in 1860, when he was only 25. This theory was ignored for five decades, until Albert Einstein rediscovered and was given credit for it. Clifford is best-known, however, for a contribution to moral philosophy (ethics), which later became known as "sufficient evidence theory," or, simply, "evidentialism." At age 33, a year before his death, William Clifford formulated the notion of responsible believing and dismissed evidence-less belief as irresponsible. He argued that beliefs aren't private matters, because they can potentially affect other people's lives, directly or indirectly. Years later, Harvard philosophy professor William James criticized evidentialism and proposed the "right to believe theory," which gives anyone the right to believe in anything, without being required to justify the belief or explain it to others. William James sought to provide a philosophical cover for faith, in the process arguing that moral questions can't simply be settled by the facts. Which William do you believe?
2022/08/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Intellectualism in Iran (see the last item below). [Top center] Math puzzle: Find the height h of this figure formed by two right triangles. [Top right] Throwback Thursday: Penniless young family hitchhiking on US Highway 99 in California (November 1936).
(2) AG Merick Garland holds a news conference about the recent search warrant at Mar-a-Lago: DoJ has asked for permission to unseal the search warrant and the list of property seized during the search.
(3) The Russian Embassy in Tehran contradicts Iran: Authorities had claimed that the Khayyam surveillance satellite, launched from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz rocket, uses native Iranian technology. It was in fact built by Russian companies and will initially be used to spy on Ukraine.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Firetornado engulfs an area in northwestern Los Angeles County. [KTLA tweet]
- Hooshang Ebtehaj wrote many patriotic & anti-tyranny poems: He was also an avid supporter of Khomeini.
- The Commodore 64, which was introduced in 1982 and went on to become an all-time best-seller, turns 40.
- Math puzzle: How many real roots does the equation x^5 – 5x + a = 0 have?
- Juggling, as seen from above. [Video]
- Facebook memory from August 11, 2015: TED talk by a girl who didn't let her limitations define her.
(5) Censorship had positive effects on Iranian cinema: This is the opinion of Fatemeh Motamed-Arya, who thinks the censors removing violence, sex, & drinking from films gave Iranian cinema a respectable identity.
(6) Tonight's Talangor Group Zoom meeting: Speaking in Persian under the title "A Look at the History of Intellectualism, from the Constitutional Revolution to the Present," Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi (Dean, College of Arts, Sciences, and Education; Missouri U. Science & Technology) reviewed the contributions and failures of Iranian intellectuals during Qajar & Pahlavi dynasties and after the Islamic Revolution.
He began by defining the term "intellectual," which was coined in 1894 in France. In Iran, intellectual has sometimes been used, incorrectly, as a synonym of educated. Jean Paul Sartre viewed an intellectual's role as the small pebble in someone's shoe: Causing discomfort and triggering corrective action. An intellectual has the dual role of criticizing the government and the people (the masses). An intellectual asks questions and holds up a mirror in front of society, not to expose how things look today, but to show future paths and possibilities. Intellectuals are also in charge of connecting different cultures.
In Iran, the term "intellectual" was translated to the Arabic "monavvar-ol-fekr," which later became "rowshan-fekr" ("enlightened thinker"). Due to a dearth of educated people, much of the function of intellectuals fell upon the clergy at first. By the mid-19th century, the world was controlled by empires. Iran fought Russia twice and was badly defeated both times, which led to the humiliating Gulistan and Turkmenchay treaties, ceding significant chunks of land to Russia. In such an environment, intellectuals were both dissatisfied and ineffective.
Dr. Boroujerdi opined that the quality of Iranian intellectuals declined from the first to the second king in the Pahlavi dynasty, with additional deterioration evident after the 1979 Revolution. Intellectuals with religious leanings, notably Jalal Al-e-Ahmad and Ali Shariati, brought a kind of nativism with them, as they preached the abandonment of Western values in favor of a national identity informed by Islam. The Islamic Revolution threw everyone, including intellectuals, off their tracks, leading to noteworthy confusion and attendant mistakes.
Interestingly, Iran has a long history of intellectualism that has remained unexplored. The great poet Sa'adi wrote the treatise "Nasihat-ol-Molouk" ("Advice to Kings"), which is comparable to the best Western works of political advice of many centuries later. In it, Sa'adi describes a king as a kind of shepherd, serving the people. If we are dissatisfied with the work of a shepherd, we let him go and find someone else to do the job. A king does not own his country; he is the people's servant.
2022/08/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Travellers," a film by Bahram Beyzaie (see the next item below). [Center] On the importance of data thinking (see item 3 below). [Right] Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below).
(2) Bahram Beyzaie's "Travellers" (1992): I watched the 94-minute Persian film via a link provided by Stanford Global Studies, in advance of today's post-screening Zoom discussion. The session began with an introduction to Bahram Beyzaie and his work by Professor Abbas Milani and recorded reflections of Mojdeh Shamsaie (Beyzaie's life partner and the woman who played the bride in the film), followed by a Q&A session with Dr. Milani. I would have liked to see a few independent commentators, beyond Beyzaie's boss and spouse!
I am sorry to say that I was quite disappointed! There are some positive cinematic elements, but the storyline and script are disastrous. Many Iranian films, this one included, are like short stories that are stretched into novels through slow-moving scenes, repetition, inconsequential details, and redundancies.
The film's premise is realistic: A young couple is getting married and a family of four from the bride's side travels to attend the wedding. Their car crashes into an oil tanker, killing all four, along with their intercity-taxi driver and a guest; the tanker's driver and his apprentice escape injuries.
Everything else about the film is unrealistic or forced. The grandmother who is in denial. The groom who worries about himself more than an entire family's demise. The police officer, who was first on the scene of the gruesome accident, attending the wedding-turned-mourning ceremony, the tanker driver who shows up to ask for forgiveness but is beaten up by the wedding party, and ghosts of the departed appearing at the end to turn the mourning ceremony back into a wedding.
Part of the artificiality is a direct result of Islamic Republic's censorship rules: A fully-clothed and veiled woman lying in bed, no one comforting a woman wailing in grief, no expression of affection between people of opposite sexes. Iranian directors are sometimes praised for circumventing censorship rules and still finding ways of telling their stories. But, at some point, when the story, dialogue, and normal human emotions are butchered to please the censors, the viewer is betrayed.
Ironically, viewers of Iranian films have also adjusted to censorship and learned to read between the lines. However, dishonesty and pretense don't mix with art.
(3) We have to move from computational thinking to data thinking: Learning environments should be enriched by using real-life data. Just as we shifted from literacy to numeracy to techeracy as the basis of functioning effectively in the modern world, it's time to upgrade computational thinking to the next level. Here are definitions of the three components of thinking.
Computational thinking: A set of cognitive and social skills applicable to problem-solving processes.
Statistical thinking: The awareness that real-life data contains outliers, errors, biases, and variance.
Domain thinking: Understanding and exploiting intrinsic properties of a specific application domain.
(4) Thousands of the children of Iranian regime officials live abroad: They enjoy the benefits of living in free societies, while their parents lead chants of death to this or that country.
(5) Quote of the day: "You see the mob takes the 5th. If you're innocent why're you taking the 5th Amendment?" ~ Donald Trump's 2016 statements going viral after he invokes the 5th during today's deposition
(6) "Human Dignity: A Basis for Forming a Government in Exile": This was the title of tonight's Socrates Think Tank Persian Zoom talk by Dr. Alayar Kangarlu (Columbia U.). There were ~110 attendees.
Prosperous and happy societies are the ones that enable/encourage each individual to convert his/her innate potentials into tangible skills. Respect for human dignity, which is intimately related to national sovereignty and human rights, is an underlying requirement. Such countries, which constitute ~2/3 of those on Earth, have constitutions that are based on human rights.
Dr. Kangarlu referred multiple times to the scientific basis for human dignity, and thus human rights, but he did not elaborate, other than saying that humans are products of a long evolutionary process that has endowed them with exquisite capabilities. I don't subscribe to this "ashraf-e makhlooghat" ("noblest of all creatures") viewpoint, which puts living beings into a hierarchy, with us at the top. It's a small step from there to a caste system that classifies humans according to their perceived capabilities. Dr. Kangarlu promised to send the attendees information about a recent article on the scientific basis of human dignity.
Dr. Kangarlu opined that the achievement of a united, integrated world is being threatened by China and Russia (and their allies such as Iran) trying to erect a new iron curtain that separates the free world of liberal-democracies from authoritarian systems, thus shaping a bipolar world. In his view, what separates the two sides is the primacy of human dignity on one side and rewarding slave-like obedience on the other. Russia's energy supremacy in Europe and China's economic power and aggressive posture, particularly over the US, have led the two countries to believe they can get away with challenging the world order. But Russia's misadventure in Ukraine, and the West's reaction to it, have shown these calculations to be amiss.
The economic might of Iranians in exile exceeds the total budget of the Islamic Republic. Forming a government in exile and challenging the legitimacy of the Islamic regime in Iran is the best way for the opposition to push aside the current regime and install people's representatives in world institutions, up to and including the United Nations. Such a legitimate government in exile cannot be shaped from disparate groups, except by acknowledging the primacy of human dignity.
I found the premise of the talk rather unsatisfying. Concepts such as human rights are timeless and, even though they are fairly recent in formulation, no one expects significant changes in our understanding or defense of human rights. Mixing such timeless concepts with transient sociopolitical realities, such as the current strategy of Russia or China, or the energy landscape in Europe, is problematic. The Russian regime or its world view may change in a decade or two. Ditto for China. We can't base a world order or governing philosophy on such transient notions.
2022/08/09 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] At the start of today's UCSB sponsored group walk from Isla Vista to Ellwood Mesa trails, we were treated to yummy organic fruit from certified local farms. [Top center] Houshang Ebtehaj dead at 94 in Cologne, Germany: This poem of the beloved Iranian poet, who wrote under the pen-name Sayeh, is entitled "Dard" ("Pain"). [Top right] I use these painted stones and beach finds for decoration and also to keep my courtyard table cover in place during windy days. [Bottom left] Cartoon 1: Focusing on small problems, as we ignore a major problem and a catastrophic one. [Bottom center] Cartoon 2: Future traffic stop in the US: "Relax. I hid the contraceptive pills in the gun." [Bottom right] Cartoon 3: "The fourth little pig's house was made of wolf skulls. They aren't very sturdy, but they send a message."
(2) Color-blind accessibility manifesto: Nearly 8% of men and 0.4% of women are color-blind. So, relying exclusively on colors to convey information on your Web site or in print material will cut these people out. Use shapes and other geometric cues, instead of or in addition to, colors. Hundreds of world-renowned designers have signed on to this manifesto.
(3) EU puts forward what it calls the final text to resurrect the Iran nuclear deal: The designation "final" implies that the text must be accepted or rejected as a whole and that accepting/rejecting sections is not an option. Iran appears to be unpersuaded.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Four Muslim men murdered in a spree in New Mexico: Suspected killer is in police custody.
- Suspicion that certain classified documents were whitheld by Trump leads to an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
- S. H. Sanders: "When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing."
- A beautiful composition by Mikis Theodorakis, theme from the movie "State of Siege." [3-minute video]
(5) Security of brain implants: We know from experience that any electronic device can be hacked. There are no exceptions! Today, brain implants are used only to help treat serious medical conditions. However, the day when brain augmentation becomes a thing isn't that far off. We scientists should start thinking about problems way ahead of time, not react to them when they create a crisis. Let's talk about regulating brain implants.
(6) Well, for once, I find myself agreeing with 45: "Anyone being investigated by the FBI is not qualified to be the president of the United States." Uttered in 2016, on 8/03, 9/07, 10/15, 10/20, 10/21, 10/25, 10/30
(7) "Margin Call": An eye-opening drama about the 2008 financial crisis, what caused it, and how it affected our world. An unnamed investment bank becomes aware of its assets crossing volatility thresholds and tries to be the first out of the door by dumping the assets before others catch on. Firings and other internal conflicts ensue in the 24-hour time period depicted. A margin call refers to a broker's demand that an investor deposit additional money or securities into the account so that it is brought up to the minimum value, known as the maintenance margin. [2011; available on Netflix]
P.S.: There are multiple documentary films and docu-dramas about the 2008 financial crisis. They include "Inside Job" (2010), "The Big Short" (2015), and "Panic" (2019).
2022/08/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Walking in downtown Santa Barbara and along the waterfront on the final day of Fiesta (Old Spanish Days): [Top row] Parts of our history: How California got its flag; Memorial for Lincoln Elementary School, 1870-1979, whose site is now a city parking lot; A park on Cabrillo Blvd., across from the West Beach, from its Chumash origins to the glamorous Potter Hotel, which occupied the lot from 1901 until its destruction by fire in 1921. [Middle row] Other than the Fiesta edition of Sunday arts-&-crafts exhibits along Cabrillo Blvd., Fiesta programs had ended, both in De La Guerra Plaza & Paseo Nuevo Shopping Center. [Bottom row] Stearns Wharf is a premier tourist spot in Santa Barbara (along with the Old Mission). Near the wharf, an old Chumash home was on display. Along Cabrillo Blvd., I found Michael, who had done a cartoon portrait of me in 2016, and asked him to do an update. I will pay him another visit in 6 years, if both of us are still alive!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Weaving Persian carpets in Bulgaria: An endangered art form. [3-minute video]
- At the Illusion Art Museum in Prague: Works of illusion and perspective by Patrick Hughes.
- Amazing art: Image composed of thousands of dice.
[Tweet]
- Sa'adi's Persian verse: A sinner who has God in mind is preferable to a believer who feigns prayers.
- Facebook memory from August 6, 2018: This post was way premature! Will it come true in 2022?
- Facebook memory from August 6, 2017: When Iranian MPs competed to take selfies with a blonde.
- Facebook memory from August 6, 2015: No women, drunkards, criminals, or dogs allowed (signs in Iran).
- Facebook memory from August 6, 2011: The Air and Space Museum isn't empty at all!
- Facebook memory from August 7, 2016: Fiesta edition of Santa Barbara's arts-&-crafts street exhibits.
- Facebook memory from August 7, 2014: Mowlavi/Rumi on the stench of conceit, avarice, and gluttony.
- Facebook memory from August 7, 2013: Bertrand Russell, on the truth & supreme beauty of Mathematics.
- Facebook memory from August 7, 2011: Selected verses from the Persian poet Feiz-e Kashani.
(3) Nothing is sacred (play on Persian words): Iranians joke about everything, even somber Muharram mourning rituals. In this Persian meme, someone says, "I wept profusely when the chant leader talked about burning the gheimehs (a kind of stew, often served to mourners). I calmed down a bit when I realized he was referring to kheimehs (tents, temporary settlements)."
(4) Ayatollah Jannati, the 95-year-old head of Iran's Guardians Council hopes to end up as a martyr: A veteran of the Iran-Iraq War has responded that Jannati can realize his wish instantaneously by simply ditching his two bullet-proof cars and dismissing his 15 bodyguards, collectively costing struggling Iranians billions!
(5) An elderly couple from Milwaukee and a Los Angles man by lightning strike near the White House: A fourth person is in critical condition. [P.S.: Expect Trump to claim credit for no one dying by lightning strike near the White House during his presidency.]
(6) US Senate passes $430 billion anti-inflation bill along party lines, with Vice-President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote: Among the bill's provisions are tackling climate change, lowering cost of medication for the elderly, reducing energy prices, and forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.
2022/08/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Optical illusion: Squares A and B are the same shade and color. The best way of confirming this incredible claim is to use an image editor (e.g., Paint), cut one piece of square A, and move it next to square B. [Top center] Fourier transform explained in one color-coded sentence. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Smart student follows the teacher's advice to question everything! [Bottom left] Humor: When a nurse takes up gardening. [Bottom center] Santa Barbara Independent cover image, issue of Aug. 4-11, 2022: Love letter to Fiesta, plus complete event schedule. [Bottom right] Today, I went walking in Santa Barbara downtown & waterfront areas and on Stearns Wharf, dining at Buena Onda Empanadas before returning home.
(2) Kansas stuns the nation by rejecting a ballot measure that would have removed abortion-access protections from the conservative state's constitution.
(3) Bringing pigs back from the dead: Scientist have successfully revived cells in dead pigs. The revival system consists of a specialized machine and a synthetic fluid carrying oxygen and other components that promote cellular health and suppress inflammation. The hearts of the totally-unconscious pigs began to beat, as the OrganEx solution circulated in their veins and arteries.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump sues Clinton, claiming that statute of limitations shouldn't apply, given how busy he was as President.
- A dozen Iranian cities in the southwestern province of Khuzestan see high temps of 48.7+ C (120+ F).
- Shame on Iran's Islamic regime: Recent arrests of Baha'is accompanied by bulldozing of their homes.
- Forced confessions on Iran's state TV and the role of interrogators/"journalists" (21-minute video).
- MIT CSAIL's chart of all major neural networks. [Tweet]
- MIT-led research team builds AI that converts college-level math problems into code and solves them.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Justice Department urges Trump to hire Alex Jones's lawyers.
- This modified 1921 US dollar coin features a tiny sword that unlocks a secret vault. [Tweet]
- Dinosaur plays with visitors snapping photos!
[Tweet]
- Time-lapse video of 5 hours of flights over Europe, West Asia, and North Africa: Note the void over Ukraine.
(5) Marcel Baltazard [1908-1971]: This 12-minute documentary film (narrated in Persian) focuses on the third French head of Iran's Pasteur Institute, who served from 1946 to 1961, but also covers the Institute's history and development of vaccines for various contagious diseases.
(6) IEEE CCS talk: Professor Lei Li of UCSB's Computer Science Dept. will talk about "Breaking the Language Barrier with Neural Machine Translation." Wed., Aug. 17, 2022, 6:00 PM. [Free registration and details]
(7) We need reform in the US Congress: Did you know that Wyoming has a single Representative but two Senators? California has 53 Representatives and two Senators!
(8) Final thought for the day: Sharing these statements attributed to Abdu'l-Baha, to show support for, and solidarity with, persecuted Iranian Baha'is. #BahaiRights
2022/08/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Talangor Group talk on poet Forough Farrokhzad (see the next item below). [Top center] A Khayyam ruba'i (couplet, quatrain): From the mass of black mud, to the pinnacle of Saturn; I have solved all the general problems; I used tricks to untie difficult bonds; They all opened, save the bond of death. [Top right] The many versions of a female scientist: Analytical chemist Alexandra A. Phillips decided to tackle the problem of stereotyped female scientists by setting up an Instagram page and a Web page. [Bottom row] On the legend of Yusuf and Zulaikha (see the last item below).
(2) Tonight's Talangor Group Zoom meeting: Speaking in Persian under the title "Forough, the Hafez of Our Time," Faramarz Ghaffari presented his view of Forough being a master descriptor/critic of the society of her time, just as Hafez was a keen observer of his time. He recited several of Forough's poems as examples of her skillful and passionate compositions. There were ~85 attendees.
Forough Farrokhzad [1934-1967] is a beloved contemporary poet, whose bold/defiant/feminist poetry has become even more popular since the current Islamic regime took power in Iran. She used feminine language is some of her poems, but also composed poems in which her humanity overshadows her gender. Politically aware and a master of using allegories, she criticized the callousness of the powerful and the tyranny of religion.
The main talk was preceded by a not-so-short presentation by Dr. Hashem Etminan on the place of satire in Persian literature.
(3) Iranian terrorists awaited Israeli tourists at their Istanbul hotel: The assassination plot was discovered and the tourists were immediately taken from their shopping locations to the airport for a flight home. Several Iranians suspected of being IRGC operatives were arrested by Turkish intelligence.
(4) The Breonna Taylor case: US Department of Justice charges three Kentucky cops with falsifying info to obtain a search warrant and conspiring in a subsequent cover-up, and another cop with using excessive force during the search (shooting 10 rounds through a window and a glass door which were covered with blinds).
(5) "Yusuf and Zulaikha: From the Torah to Jami": This was the title of Wednesday night's Socrates Group Zoom talk by Dr. Nahid Pirnazar. There were 110 attendees.
The biblical legend of Yusuf and Zulaikha is based on a true story that has been embellished and distorted over time in sources from different cultures and time periods.
Beginning with the narrative in the Torah, Dr. Pirnazar has embarked on an as-yet-unfinished project to compare the various sources of the legend and understand & reconcile the differences. The additional sources include, but are not limited to, Jewish legends, the Quran & other Islamic texts, and divans of two poets: The 14th-century Farsihood poet Shahin and the 15th-century Persian poet Jami. There are also Christian, Indian, and European sources (the latter mainly paintings) to consider. The differences are extensive and much remains to be done in extracting the real story.
Yusuf resided in Egypt around 1800 BCE (plus/minus 200), under the rule of Pharaoh Sesostris II. Sources differ on details of the story, including dates. The essence of the story is as follows. An incredibly handsome Yusuf becomes a victim of his brothers' jealousy and is thrown into a well. A merchant hearing his cries for help rescues him and decides to sell him in a slave market. Yusuf astounds everyone who sees him by his wondrous beauty. Zulaikha, the rich and beautiful wife of Potiphar (Pharaoh's warlord), is struck by Yusuf's beauty and outbids everyone.
The rest of the story revolves around Yusuf overcoming Zulaikha's enticement & sexual advances and running away, only to return to Zulaikha many years later and reciprocating her love. Jami maintains that Zulaikha's marriage to Potiphar was never consummated, due to her husband's impotence, implying that Zulaikha's lust for Yusuf was thus not forbidden.
Interestingly, distortions in the story as told in Islamic and other sources later affected Jewish sources.
The main program was followed by poetry recitation, dance videos, and musical performances.
[Dr. Pirnazar's June 2022 presentation on "The Intellectual Heritage of Iranian Jews in Judeo-Persian"]
2022/08/03 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Gunman with loaded AK-47 rifle arrested outside the home of journalist Masih Alinejad, whose campaign against misogynistic laws has rattled the ruling mullahs in Iran. [Top center] Roses from two bushes in my patio, picked last night. [Top right] A bit of local Santa Barbara history: The annual Fiesta celebration aka Old Spanish Days, held August 3-7 this year, has a ceremonial President. It took 6 decades until the first woman was chosen to lead the ceremonies in 1985. Over the past 20 years, 8 of the Presidents have been women. [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day (by Mana Neyestani): Forced confession of an obviously beaten-up anti-hijab activist on Iran's state TV. [Bottom center] Made these broiled veggies and pepperoni-mushroom English-muffin mini-pizzas Monday night and took some to my mom, who loves pepperoni pizza. [Bottom right] Theodore Darlymple's In Praise of Folly (see the last item below).
(2) Record-setting journey in a rowboat: Four women (two former UCLA rowers, one former USC rower, and the owner of a yoga studio in Santa Barbara), 34 days, 2400 miles, from San Francisco to Honolulu.
(3) We must be the voice of Baha'is in Iran: Having been persecuted for decades, they now face a new wave of arrests with made-up charges of acting against national security and spying for Israel. #BahaiRights [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- By burying his first wife Ivana in his NJ golf club, Trump has converted it to a tax-exempt cemetery.
- Iran's President Raisi gifts to Putin a silk rug containing 3.5 kg of gold and 3/4 kg of silver.
- Orwell: "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations."
- Facebook memory from August 3, 2017: Two different views of the White House (45 vs. 44).
(5) Jared Kushner's upcoming memoir: When Jared asked DJT for Ivanka's hand in marriage, he discovered that the Donald preferred to have Tom Brady as his son-in-law.
(6) ACM webinar by Margaret Martonosi (Princeton U.): "Seismic Shifts: Challenges and Opportunities in the 'Post-ISA' Era of Computer Systems Design."
[Slides]
[On-demand viewing registration]
(7) Book review: Dalrymple, Theodore, In Praise of Folly: The Blind Spots of Our Minds, Gibson Square, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
A conservative cultural critic, columnist, prison physician, and psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple (born Anthony Malcolm Daniels in 1949) is an excellent writer with a knack for tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating humor. He also tends to stir much controversy. His writings, based mostly on his experience of working with criminals and the mentally ill, have been characterized both as simplistic/cliche-ridden and as brilliant/prophetic.
This book offers the thesis, supported by examples among theologians, philosophers, generals, judges, writers, astrophysicists, and others, that high achievers, praised for their accomplishments in one area, are more often than not naive and error-prone in matters that fall outside their areas of expertise. This is something that we might know intuitively, but seeing a large number of examples is both reassuring and entertaining.
Do not confuse this book with a Latin essay by the same title, a satirical attack on superstition in Europe by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was published in 1511.
2022/08/02 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Where the sky joins the Earth: The 10,588 km^2 salt sea of Uyuni is in the south of Bolivia at an altitude of 3656 meters. During the rainy season, water covers the salt sea and reflects the skies (1-minute video). [Top center] Misogynistic verses (see the next item below). [Top right] Facebook memory from August 2, 2020: UCSB campus, the paradise where I have worked and lived for 34 years. [Bottom left] Today's UCSB-sponsored group beach walk and some of my beach finds. [Bottom center] Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Facebook memory from August 2, 2014: My keynote talk at the eighth SUTA Global Reunion in Milan, Italy.
(2) Misogyny in Persian poetry: The great poet Nezami has some deplorable opinions about women. He does write in one passage of Eskandar Nameh about a city where the women are not only unveiled but don't even wear clothing appropriate to the time. A visitor inquires about the situation and is told that they teach men to control their urges, instead of telling women to cover themselves. But in other places, he praises a woman for having the mentality of a man and not of a woman (zan-sirat nist). The image above shows a few Nezami verses replete with misogynistic notions. [The full poem]
(3) Juris Hartmanis [1928-2022] dead at 94: A professor of computer science at Cornell U. since 1965, Hartmanis won the 1993 Turing Award (with Richard Stearns) for the seminal paper "On the Computational Complexity of Algorithms," which laid the formal foundations of modern computational-complexity theory.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Man with loaded AK-47 gun arrested outside the home of exiled Iranian journalist/activist Masih Alinejad.
- Bill Russell, basketball legend (with 11 NBA championships) and civil-rights icon, dead at 88.
- Euro Cup women's soccer championship: England prevailed over Germany 2-1 in overtime. [Highlights]
- Persian music: The oldie song "Majnoon-e To" ("Crazy for You"). [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from August 1, 2011: A couple of Persian verses from Anvari.
- Facebook memory from August 1, 2010: Computing with secret data is possible.
- Facebook memory from August 2, 2011: Solving a trivial equation in lieu of a complex, realistic one.
- Facebook memory from August 2, 2010: Advice on humility from the great Persian poet Sa'adi.
(5) There is no end to persecuting Baha'is by Iran's evil Islamic regime: There have been numerous reports over the past week of Baha'is being arrested across Iran. In some cases, those who had previously served a decade in prison have been re-arrested.
(6) Al Qaeda's #2 man and 9/11 mastermind: Eleven years after the elimination of Osama bin Laden, Eyman al-Zawahiri is killed by a precision drone strike in a posh neighborhood of Kabul; no one else was hurt.
(7) Book review: Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, unabridged audiobook on 17 CDs, read by Ellen Archer, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2014.
[Image file: .jpg; 768w, 768h]
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4891216969] Read 2022/08/02-02
[I listened to this audiobook during my trip of three weeks ago to the Silicon Valley to attend the ARITH-23 conference.]
[I wrote this review on August 2, 2016, and posted it to GoodReads on August 2, 2022.]
2022/07/31 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Activist Sepideh Rashno (see the next item below). [Center] Math puzzle: A rectangle is divided into 4 smaller rectangles of known areas and a unit square, as shown. What are the side lengths of the five rectangles? [Right] Masih Alinejad is on Iran's hit list (see the last item below).
(2) This vivacious young woman is #SepidehRashno: She was virtually unrecognizable during her forced confession (after days of interrogation, threats, and, likely, torture) on Iran's state-run TV. These inhumane "confessions" are designed to break and humiliate dissidents.
Galileo's "confession": "In the 70th year of my life, I have been brought to my knees in front of you, masters of the world and religion. Embracing the holy book, I declare that my false and misguided claim of the Earth rotating around the Sun was the result of drunkenness."
(3) Ukrainian academics continue to work under very harsh conditions: More than 200 Ukrainian educational institutions have been destroyed and those that remain struggle to maintain their research infrastructure.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran bars top female soccer referee from attending the World Cup because of her veil & uncovered legs.
- The treasures of Lake Mead: As the reservoir's water levels shrink, strange artifacts emerge from the mud.
- Why great leaders take humor seriously: An engaging 9-minute TED talk by two Stanford U. professors.
- Math puzzle: The value of this expression involving the integer N is k. Find the largest possible value of N.
- Facebook memory from July 31, 2017: When Turkey's Deputy-PM said women should not laugh in public.
- Facebook memory from July 31, 2013: Statue of the great poet Ferdowsi in Rome's Ferdowsi Square.
(5) "The Court is Lost" (Science editorial): "The US has an insatiable desire for technological advancement but is governed by founding documents that are completely unsuited for science and technology. This incongruity has manifested in recent disastrous actions by the Supreme Court on guns, abortion, and climate. The decisions suggest that the battle is being won by the portion of America who—while lionizing the past and clinging to the infallibility of words written in the late 18th century—can't put down their cell phones. Reactionary posts on social media wouldn't get very far without a hundred years of technical advances—and massive amounts of power to recharge mobile device batteries and run the server farms that support the digital world. ..."
(6) How a small group of young women took on a powerful network of Trump cronies: These women found themselves under vicious personal attacks, up to death threats, and formed their own support network.
(7) Advice from Adam Grant: We are often advised not to repeat ourselves. Yet, Martin Luther King Jr. made his 1963 March-on-Washington speech memorable and transformative by repeating "I have a dream" 8 times in the span of 2 minutes; and he had uttered the same words in previous speeches. Research has shown that over-communication is better than under-communication. "Great communication is like a song. It isn't enough to hear it once. You don't know the melody [or the chorus] until you hear it multiple times."
(8) Iranian terrorists in the US: Masih Alinejad wants women of Iran to be free in choosing their clothing and for women & men worldwide to support their cause. Yet, Iran's Islamic regime deems her a national security threat and sends assassination squads to kill her in the US. [Tweet]
2022/07/30 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Did you know that there are pollinators under the sea? Science journal tells us all about them in its cover feature of the July 29, 2022, issue. [Top center] World War II history: How four years of war changed the face of a soldier. [Top right] Kummakivi: A 5000-ton rock in Finland that has been balancing on top of another rock for 11,000 years. [Bottom left] "Picture a Scientist": A must-see documentary (see the last item below). [Bottom center] IEEE Computer magazine's July 2022 issue focuses on "Technology Predictions": Here are some of the theme articles. [Bottom right] The human brain as a maze to be explored.
(2) "Prosperity Theology Goes Online": This is the title of a column by Hal Berghel in the July 2022 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. "We are entering the latest incarnation of the religious great awakenings in the United States. While e-commerce has been ubiquitous for decades, uniting e-commerce with a great electronic religious awakening is new to our millennia."
(3) Course review: Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life, a series of 36 lectures in the Great Courses series (Prof. J. Rofus Fears, U. Oklahoma).
[My 4-star review of this course on GoodReads]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- War crimes: Russia is the new ISIS. Video shows Russian soldiers castrating a Ukrainian captive.
- AAAS: "CHIPS and Science Act" a most-important piece of science & technology legislation in a generation.
- Facebook memory from July 30, 2016: My symbolic support for women opposing compulsory hijab.
- Facebook memory from July 30, 2013: The slippery-slope of censorship.
(5) Women are left out on flexible, lucrative, and high-status careers: Only 20% of computer science degrees and 22% of undergraduate engineering degrees go to women. We need a better understanding of how the education and workplace cultures of these fields dissuade women.
(6) Shrinkflation: Manufacturers raise prices way above the inflation rate by shrinking package sizes. For example, Angel Soft toilet paper, which used to have 425 sheets on a roll, now has 320. So, even assuming the same price, the packaging change amounts to a 25% price hike, way above the inflation rate of 9%.
(7) "Computing Nearer to Data": This is the title of a July 2022 article in IEEE Computer magazine which reviews new & emerging technologies that allow in-memory and near-memory computing in an effort to reduce the effect of the von Neumann bottleneck (aka "the memory wall").
(8) "Picture a Scientist": This 2020 documentary film, available on Netflix (also as an episode of Nova on PBS), "chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. Biologist Nancy Hopkins, chemist Raychelle Burks, and geologist Jane Willenbring lead viewers on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, ranging from brutal harassment to years of subtle slights. Along the way, from cramped laboratories to spectacular field stations, we encounter scientific luminaries — including social scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists — who provide new perspectives on how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all." Please don't think that the cases put forward in this film are extreme. They happen every day in real workplaces.
2022/07/29 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Is there really a huge empty void in the universe? (see the next item below). [Center & Right] Mehdi Farshad's History of Engineering in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Dispelling an Internet myth that refuses to die: This image has been spreading on the Internet for years, with the description that "according to NASA, there is an empty void in space so big that if you traveled across it, you wouldn't bump into anything for more than 752 million years." There is no such empty void or hole!
(3) Dissent among religious leaders: Iran defrocked Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Nekoonam and sentenced him to jail & flogging for saying, among other things, that the vast sums of money spent on gilded shrines for the imams would be better spent feeding the hungry and taking care of other societal needs. [4-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Assault Weapons Ban passes the US House of Representatives 217-213. It will next go to the Senate to die!
- Khamenei's anti-Semitic rant on Twitter generates calls for banning him. [Tweet] [IranWire story]
- A vigilante mob storms concert halls in Iran and tries to cancel shows that have government permits.
- From old crime files: The elderly landlady of a boarding house in Sacramento, CA, was a serial killer.
- Math puzzle: Find the limit of this expression as x tends to 0 from above. [Credit: @mathisstillfun]
- Actors who played the children of the von Trapp family pay tribute to Julie Andrews. [3-minute video]
(5) Comedian Jon Stewart unloads on hypocritical politicians who support the war machine while paying only lip service to the needs of our veterans. [10-minute video]
(6) "A Century of Using Women's Hijab as a Political Tool": This is the title of a Persian article by Parastoo Sarmadi, in which she condemns politicians (predominantly men), who argue on the pros and cons of the hijab as a way of solidifying their power, instead of letting women decide for themselves.
(7) Book review: Farshad, Mehdi, History of Engineering in Iran (in Persian), Gooyesh Publications, 1983 (ISBN: 9786006040042). [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Since its first edition of 1983, this book has been re-issued in several versions, with various degrees of revision and editing, by different organizations, including the Alumni Association of Tehran University's College of Engineering. The 494-page PDF file on which I have based my review belongs to an undated 2nd edition.
The book consists of 13 chapters, described below, sandwiched between a preface and a concluding Chapter 15. A timeline or chronology of tech/engineering (Chapter 14), several appendices, a bibliography, and 28 pages of historical images appear at the end. Despite a number of shortcomings, such as uneven breadth & depth in coverage and poor-quality diagrams/images, History of Engineering in Iran is still
- The Beginnings of Technology in Iran (starting from the region being settled some 0.5 million years ago)
- Substances and Materials (rock, dirt, organic material, mortar, metals, oil-based material, glass, paints)
- Tools and Machinery (primitive tools, rotational, water/wind-based, flight, measurement, naval, electrical)
- Architecture and City Planning (architectural forms & functions through the ages, cities through the ages)
- Roads and Communications (road construction, The Silk Road, waterways & canals, sailing, lighthouses)
- Water Resources, Irrigation, and Agriculture (qanats, wells, purification, irrigation, agriculture, food)
- Bridges and Dams (bridge-building methods & underwater foundations, dam construction through the ages)
- Clayworks and Weaving (clayworks techniques & glazing, weaving material & machinery, carpet-weaving)
- Building and Structural Forms (evolution of frame-based and arch-based structures, architectural styles)
- Script and Measurements (script, masonry, paper-making, units of measurement for space & time)
- Engineering Know-How (applied geometry, math, geology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, education)
- Art in the History of Engineering (form in engineering, artistic elements, symmetry in shape & colors)
- Early Engineers in Iran (Zakariya Razi, Abu Reyhan Biruni, Ibn Sina, Khayyam, Nasir al-Din Toosi, . . .)
2022/07/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Shared uppercase letter glyphs among Greek, Latin, & Cyrillic alphabets. [Top center] Math oddity: Divide 1 by 998001 and you'll get a fraction in which all 3-digit patterns 000 to 999, except for 998, appear in order (credit: @mathisstillfun). [Top right] Magic circles: The numbers 1-80 appear on 80 intersections of this diagram, with the numbers on each circle adding to 324. Reading the outermost numbers, starting from the top and moving in clockwise direction, one sees the digits of pi = 3.14159265358... (credit: Michael Keith). [Bottom left] Clean and healthy environment recognized as a universal right. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day. [Bottom right] Talangor Group talk (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump threatens to sue CNN & other media for defaming him and calling his election-fraud claims baseless.
- The 2016 refrain "Lock her up" will become "Vote for me, or I'll be locked up" in 2024.
- Passerby in China uses water to revive a swallow that had fainted from extreme heat. [Tweet, with video]
- The Line: Visualizing a mirror-covered high-rise city, with a footprint of 170 km by 200 m. [2-minute video]
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group Zoom meeting: After a short talk on "Immigration," by Dr. Reza Sarmast, Dr. Ryan Homafar presented the main talk on "Evolution of Ghazal in Persian Literature" (in Persian; 80+ attendees).
[UC Irvine's introduction to Dr. Homafar's background and honors]
Poetry plays an important role in propagating the Iranian culture, given that several other art forms (notably music, painting, and dance) have faced certain restrictions. The word "ghazal" comes from "moghazeleh," which means "companionship of a woman," so it is often composed from a masculine perspective. Things changed over time, in terms of both the composers and the themes. It emerged during the Q&A period that ghazal, often containing 7-12 rhyming verses, was sometimes used as the "abstract" or summary of the longer ghasideh, containing 15-100, or even more, verses.
Dr. Homafar divided the 1000-year history of ghazal into five periods or eras, during which ghazal evolved as a result of sociopolitical events and forces, as well as due to the influence of notable poets. In these five eras, ghazal moved up from earthly love or everyday concerns to spiritual themes, eventually returning to its origin. Dr. Homafar recited many ghazals or parts thereof as examples during his presentation.
- The era of "eini'at" or objectivity: Roodaki's ghazals were earthly. Mowlavi/Rumi also offered examples of earthly poems, where matters such as death are viewed logically and matter-of-factly.
- The "elahi-erfani" or Godly-spiritual era: Ghazal assumed a spiritual tone, in part in reaction to pompous kings and poets who praised them profusely. Sana'ii, who himself was guilty of praising kings, later regretted his actions and began praising God. Mowlavi/Rumi took the spiritual focus of ghazal to new heights.
- The era of Hafez: The poems of Hafez can be said to have one foot in the sky and one foot on earth. His ghazals tend to be ambiguous and can be interpreted as describing earthly passions or spiritual concerns. This ambiguity is responsible for people using his poems as a kind of omen, with predictive powers. Simin Behbahani offers noteworthy recent examples of this style.
- The "gozar" or transit era of 14th-19th century CE: Persian poetry remained stagnant during this period; everyone mimicked Hafez, with various degrees of success. Dr. Homafar read verses from Gha'ani and Hafez side by side to demonstrate similarities.
- Modern ghazal since the 20th century: Politics entered the domain of poetry with the Constitutional Revolution and other transformative developments, including the 1979 Revolution and the ensuing Iran-Iraq War. Suddenly, words and notions that were kept out of poems began pouring in. One can cite many examples, but compositions of Simin Behbahani, one of the few poets to write about war and its consequences, stand out.
During the Q&A period, I asked a question about changes in ghazal's form and structure, having heard the speaker discuss changes of themes and vocabulary. I also inquired about the relationship of ghazal to other poetry formats.
Dr. Homafar's answer was quite detailed and enlightening. The short answer is that ghazal's form has indeed undergone changes. For example, Simin Behbahani experimented with different styles and brought many innovations to the form. Ghazal can be said to be a constant in Persian poetry. Almost all poets have composed ghazals, whereas ghasideh is almost nonexistent today. Couplets are also less common. So, one can view ghazal as providing continuity in Persian poetry through the ages and among many different poets.
At the end of the Q&A period, Dr. Homafar was asked to recite one of his own ghazals, which he obliged.
2022/07/27 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iran's Ebrahim Raisi, shown holding hands with Putin and Erdogan, has been likened to the cartoon character Pinocchio, who was deceived by a couple of con artists, the cunning fox and the dumb cat. [Center] Whether framed intentionally or by accident, this photo of Putin by an Iranian photographer has gone viral. [Right] Oppression of women: Iranian men engage, on occasion, in symbolic acts in support of women's rights and opposition to compulsory hijab, but when it comes to physically defending women against the brutal morality police, they are often reduced to bystanders.
(2) Americans seem to not like anyone any more: Approval ratings for politicians are at record-lows, but opinions of journalists, scientists, and educators aren't much better!
(3) A $280 billion bill to strengthen US's position in the semiconductor industry as it competes with China is headed for passage in the Senate and may become law within days.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Will a jury convict the parents of a 15-year-old mass-shooter who gave him a handgun for Christmas?
- A solar-powered drone has been flying in the stratosphere for 40 days straight.
- Believe it or not: Iran and Syria are set to help Russia charge Ukrainian soldiers with war crimes!
- Iran's Language Academy launches a utility for finding Persian literary sources by searching for words.
(5) Iran presses on with the enforcement of hijab laws in the face of growing opposition: An official has opined that because women are sexually attractive beings, the Quran commands that they be chaste. Anyone who ignores hijab laws has not been raised properly. [Meme]
(6) Traditional Iranian gyms (zoor-khaneh-ha) were directed a few years ago to pray for the well-being of Ayatollah Khamenei, "Iran's premier athlete/champion," with drums & bell, at the beginning of each session.
(7) "Ashkha va Labkhandha" ("Tears and Smiles"): This was the title given to the Persian version of the 1965 musical "Sound of Music." A unique feature of the dubbed version of the classic Robert Wise film, featuring music by Rogers & Hammerstein, was that all the songs were performed with Persian lyrics. Here is the story of the widely-acknowledged masterpiece in film dubbing. [Metronom podcast]
(8) Tchogha Zanbil (Basket Mound) UNESCO World Heritage Site: The site holds the ruins of the holy city of the Kingdom of Elam, surrounded by three huge concentric walls. Founded ~1250 BCE, the city remained unfinished after it was invaded by Ashurbanipal, as confirmed by the thousands of unused bricks left at the site. It was unearthed during the 1940s by a group looking for oil in Iran's southwestern province of Khuzestan and excavated over a period of ~15 years.
(9) The myth of data privacy: I never cease to remind people that data privacy is a myth. Even when we explicitly ask data aggregators not to share our data, or opt out of various data-sharing arrangements, our data may still leak out due to errors, dishonesty on the part of service providers who prefer to make a buck instead of honoring their privacy promises, or hacking. Here's a letter I received a few days ago from Frontier Communications, informing me that my home address was "inadvertently" shared, despite my explicit opting out. They offered $6.00 credit on my next bill as compensation for this error!
2022/07/26 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
![The passing of a colleague: Dr. Arthur C. Gossard [1935-2022]](images_folder/f22-220725-art-gossard-with-pres-obama.jpg)
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] RIP Arthur C. Gossard (see the next item below). [Top center] Iranian women are under assault from all directions by the mullahs and their patriarchal allies: One bird-brained Iranian official has recently opined, "If you allow women to put their headscarves on a stick, they will use their shorts next"! [Top right] Johanna Drucker's Inventing the Alphabet (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Today's walk: The UCSB-sponsored guided walk took us to UCSB Student Farm, where those involved with campus's Sustainability Program grow various crops, which are periodically harvested and offered for sale. I sampled a couple of the cherry tomatoes, which were delicious. We also visited Student Gardens, where small plots of land are given to students living in the nearby Family Student Housing to grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers for personal use.
(2) The passing of a colleague: Dr. Arthur C. Gossard [1935-2022] joined UCSB in 1987, holding appointments in Materials and ECE Departments. For his pioneering and impactful technical contributions, Art was honored by membership in National Academy of Engineering & National Academy of Sciences and the award of a 2016 National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama. [UCSB Engineering tribute page]
(3) Dead women also sexually arouse men: The CEO of Tehran's public cemetery reports of "corrections" to 98 tombstones bearing pictures of women without or with improper hijabs.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The southern US city of St. Louis is struggling under several feet of water. [Tweet]
- Heat wave in China caused road pavements to buckle, creating dangerous traffic hazards.
- People picnicking on an almost-dry riverbed in Estahban, Iran, escape a flash flood in the nick of time.
- Islamic Republic of Iran agents raided a dog shelter in the desert and killed all 300 dogs residing there.
- History in pictures: This is how beachgoers and bathers looked like in 1910. [Photo]
- Visualization of road construction during the Roman Empire. [2-minute video]
(5) Trump must be indicted: One of the strongest arguments for prosecuting Trump is protecting his supporters. As many of his devotees sit in prisons or face charges, their master is holding hate rallies to recruit the next clueless batch of insurrectionists to go to jail for him.
(6) Book review: Drucker, Johanna, Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present, U. Chicago Press, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Invention of the alphabet is one the most-important discoveries of our human civilization. The history of alphabetic writing, which is replete with myths and alternate explanations, is generally traced to the fifth century BCE, that is, the time of Herodotus and Socrates. Much has happened in the intervening 2.5 millennia and charting these events was overdue. Key milestones along the way include the much-stressed biblical account (Moses and his stone tablets) and the relatively recent discoveries of hundreds of alphabetic inscriptions in Egypt and Palestine.
In his foundational work, The Histories, Herodotus writes that the Phoenicians brought the alphabet to Greece, and that, over time, the sounds and forms of the letters underwent changes. Drucker supports the view that, inspired by the Phoenician alphabet-based script (itself likely inspired by older occurrences), Greeks living in Phoenicia invented their alphabet, which subsequently spread to the mother country over the period 1000-500 BCE. Discoveries near the end of the 20th century suggest that the first alphabet may have been inspired by the script of ancient Egyptians some 4000 years ago. Debate is still ongoing in this domain and a definitive history of how the alphabet came about remains to be written.
This 2003 interview with Dr. Drucker ("Art Meets Technology: The History and Effects of the Alphabet") contains a great deal of interesting and useful information about the topic.
2022/07/24 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Armenian woman of Isfahan: Original drawing by Eugune Flandin (1840s). [Center] Republican women are teaching the old crows in the party valuable lessons in courage & integrity. [Right] Gender equity, Islamic style: As much of the man's body is covered at the woman's is revealed.
(2) Persian music: This 100-year-old feminist anthem, "Daughters of Cyrus," was performed by Molouk Zarrabi, an Iranian activist, who was physically assaulted because of singing and being unveiled. [Lyrics]
(3) Liz Cheney wraps up the July 21 hearing of the Jan. 6 Select Committee: She pays tribute to several women among key witnesses who testified, despite knowing that they will be smeared "by the 50-, 60-, & 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege," and asks Republicans some tough questions.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- There is a new MAGA in Texas: Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
[Facebook page]
- The Oak Fire at Yosemite National Park is expanding and is currently 0% contained.
- Boston temperature reaches 100 F, breaking the 1933 record of 98 F for July 24.
- Iranian women's-rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh sends message of solidarity to American women.
- Persecution of Baha'is in Iran: Mother and two sons have been arrested in Bojnord.
- Unnecessary provocation: Khamenei advisor announces that Iran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb.
- Math puzzle: Consider the decimal representation of 100! How many 0s are there at the end of this number?
- Math puzzle: Math puzzle: If 3^x + 3^y = 10 and 3^(x + y) = 5, evaluate 3^(x – y) + 3^(y – x).
- Looking around from the top of Mount Everest: 360-degree panorama.
- Persian music: A performance by legendary singer Delkash at age 75. [2-minute video]
(5) Iran deploys pregnancy patrols to hospitals: Their charge is to intervene where planned medical treatment could affect a woman's fertility. Don't laugh; the US may be headed in the same direction!
(6) US states with more liberal abortion laws may prosper: College applications are up in such states and young professionals may prefer such states as their base for in-person or remote work.
(7) Engaging Afghan Women & Civil Society in US Policymaking: The Launch of the US-Afghan Consultative Mechanism": Thursday, July 28, 2022, 12:15 PM PDT, featuring Anthony Blinken.
[RSVP]
(8) Iran's mullahs clamp down on the opposition to compulsory hijab with even harsher punishments: Sending videos to exiled women's-rights activist Masih Alinejad is now punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
(9) Kelileh va Demneh (Kalila wa-Dimna): You can download for free a PDF version of the Persian translation of this book of old Indian fables, originally written in 1220 CE by Ibn Muqaffa in Arabic. [Images]
[P.S.: An English translation of this book of fables also exists.]
2022/07/23 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Nature asserting itself in a most-unlikely environment: Tree growing out of a rock in Arsanjan, Iran. [Top center] Artist was dealt lemons, made lemonade! [Top right] Nathan Lent's Human Errors (see the last item below). [Bottom left] It's all a facade: While the Russian reporter interviewing Iran's Minister of Telecommunications in Moscow is forced to comply with the Islamic dress code, a woman sitting nearby, outside the camera frame, is left undisturbed! [Bottom center] The drying Lake Mead (behind Hoover Dam): 2000, 2021, 2022. [Bottom right] Mothers of young Iranians killed by security forces during street protests gather in solidarity: Many of these brave women have been arrested or are serving prison terms.
(2) It seems that Iran's morality police targets only certain types of women: Those who participate in regime-sanctioned ceremonies and religious rituals are free to don any kind of clothing. #No2Hijab [[1-minute video]
(3) Massive brain drain: This official of Iran's clerical regime has apparently woken up from a 43-year slumber and realized that experts are leaving Iran, not just individually but through entire tech companies moving to other countries. [Image]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The ingenious design of an Italian antique safe from 1840. [1-minute video]
- Combo rock-star/cleric tries to spread Islamic Republic propaganda in the West! [1-minute video]
- Donkey-powered fan: Advanced technology to combat global warming!
- Persian music: A rhythmic piece, with spiritual lyrics. [2-minute video]
- Persian music: "Aaseman-e Kabood" ("Azure Sky"), performed by Rastak Rnsemble. [4-minute video]
(5) Book review: Lents, Nathan H., Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by L. J. Ganser, HighBridge Audio, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is about errors in us humans, not in the sense of "to err is human," but concerning the fundamental flaws in our bodies that evolution failed to correct or, worse, actively propagated. As we look at humans, animals, and plants, we are often awestruck by the efficiency with which various functions are performed. Yet, alongside those numerous optimal functionalities and beautiful designs, we have many instances of inefficiencies and dumb designs. Human Errors explains how the latter came about, why evolution didn't take care of them, and how they are affecting the lives of modern humans.
An example of a serious design flaw in our bodies is our throat being a passage for both food and air, leading to much discomfort and, on occasion, death. Nature offers multiple designs for vision in the form of eyes that have evolved multiple times along different paths. If it's true that evolution selects the best variation, why is it that the photoreceptors in our eyes face backwards, creating a large blind spot where a bundle of nerves exits the eyeball? Why is it that the recurrent laryngeal nerve takes a path that is twice as long as necessary, instead of going directly from our brain to our voicebox? The precursor to this nerve in our fish ancestors connected the brain, the heart, and the gills, which were on a more-or-less straight line. As fish evolved into creatures with necks, the path became quite inefficient, and, yes, it is worst in giraffes!
Besides errors such as the ones above that became impossible to correct through small changes (mutations), thus remaining intact, we also have errors that were actually propagated by evolutionary forces. If there is a mutation that leads to reproductive disadvantage many generations down the line but offers some immediate benefit, say, in terms of greater immunity to some disease, it may become a preferred trait that is actively favored by evolution.
Our bodies are incapable of synthesizing vitamins that many other organisms make, thus rendering us dependent of external sources in our diets. Our reproductive system is one of the least-efficient in the animal kingdom. An estimated 97% of our genome consists of broken genes, ancient viral DNA, and other "junk" elements, which though not completely useless, could have been a lot more efficiently structured. As a final example, consider cognitive biases and less-than-ideal heuristics in our brains, which make us prey for advertisers, casinos, and fortune-tellers.
Despite the errors cited above, and others enumerated in this wonderful book, Lent's objective isn't to scare us by implying that we are doomed. Rather, he marvels at our ability to survive and thrive, despite all these design flaws. At least some of these flaws came about because our evolutionary development was stifled by changes in our diets and lifestyles that were rather quick on an evolutionary time-scale. Others were bugs that were turned into features. Yes, our reptilian brain continues to deceive us every day, but we have developed ways of circumventing this shortcoming.
Despite the book's positive outlook, one isn't surprised that Creationists don't like it! For example, this review on creation.com finds many faults with Lent's assertions, claiming that most of the supposed errors aren't errors at all.
2022/07/22 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Menger sponge or cube: Recursively constructed from a unit cube by dividing each cube into 27 smaller cubes and removing 7 of them, this fractal object has the volume (20/27)^n, which approaches zero for very large n, and a surface area that tends to infinity. [Top center] "UCSB Reads 2023" (see the next item below). [Top right] Satellite-image reconstruction of the surface of Mars (source: Science). [Bottom left] Cover feature of Science, issue of July 15, 2022: Molecules capable of reversibly switching their structures under controlled changes in their environments (chemically, photochemically, or electrochemically) are of interest in nanotechnology for applications in molecular computing or responsive drug-delivery systems. [Bottom center] With 10 riders, it's just a matter of keeping your balance: Seat belts? Air bags? What are those? [Bottom right] Steven Strogatz's Sync (see the last item below).
(2) I have finished reading & reviewing the books on "UCSB Reads 2023" program short list. Here are the book titles and links to my reviews on GoodReads.
- All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
[Review]
- The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
[Review]
- Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
[Review]
- Happy City: Transorming Our Lives Through Urban Design
[Review]
- There, There
[Review]
(3) Book review: Strogatz, Steven, Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, Hyperion, 2003. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Strogatz (Professor of Math, Cornell U., famous for his ideas and results on "small-world networks," a Nature article of his on the topic having garnered ~50,000 citations) spoke at UCSB on June 2, 2022, under the title "Synchronization in Nature." My review below incorporates some of the ideas from his inspiring talk. Strogatz excels in bringing the joy of math to the masses, in much the same way that Richard Feynman did for physics. I have read and reviewed two of his expository books,
The Joy of x and
Infinite Powers.
Sync is composed of three parts, sandwiched between a preface and an epilogue, followed by notes.
We learn in Part I, "Living Sync" (Chapters 1-3), that sync is a difficult problem to study mathematically, because it is a highly nonlinear phenomenon. An interesting tool for getting a feel for sync is the Kuramoto Model, nicely presented in the "Ride my Kuramotocycle" interactive app for experimentation with the synchronization of phase-coupled oscillators. Using apt analogies, Strogatz presents the sync problem with minimal use of math. For readers interested in the hidden math behind the examples, G. Bard Ermentrout's Notices of the AMS review is quite helpful. In his UCSB talk, Strogatz provided examples of systems showing spontaneous synchronization, including five metronomes in a viral YouTube video, London's Millennium Bridge swaying from side to side on its opening day, and male fireflies flashing synchronously along the tidal rivers of Malaysia.
In Part II of the book, "Discovering Sync" (Chapters 4-6), we learn about pendula, planets, and Josephson junctions, along with their connections to the Kuramoto model.
In Part III of the book, "Exploring Sync" (Chapters 7-10), we read results on synchronization of chaotic attractors, Strogatz's and Art Winfree's work on the topology of singular filaments in excitable media, his work with Duncan Watts on "small-world" networks, and some final thoughts on synchrony and cognition.
In his UCSB talk, Strogatz also devoted some time to what happens on networks. In other words, he discussed synchronization under limited connectivity, which makes the problem even more messy. Whether or not sync is achieved depends on the minimum node degree in the network. Discussion of sync on networks reminded me of the old computer science "firing-squad synchronization problem," where finite-state machines are designed so that they all enter the common "firing" state simultaneously, regardless of their initial states and system size. I suspect that fireflies synchronizing over a wide geographic area may have something to do with the latter problem, but I'm not sure.
2022/07/21 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Only about a dozen world countries are capable of launching space rockets. [Top center] Twitter users are waging a campaign in support of Iranian women who are imprisoned for opposing compulsory hijab (#FreeNo2HijabWomen). [Top right] The Iranian regime is desperate: It is waging a campaign equating opposition to Supreme Leader Khamenei with saying no to Islam, even though he has at most 20 million followers among 1.8 billion Muslims. [Bottom left] Throwback Thursday: Engineer Karen Leadlay worked on analog computers in the Space Division of General Dynamics (1964). [Bottom center] American flag, with state names for stars. [Bottom right] Charles Montgomery's Happy City (see the last item below).
(2) Quote of the day: "I love everybody. Some I love to be around, some I love to avoid, and others I'd love to punch in the face." ~ Anonymous
(3) Accident on UCSB campus: CHP is investigating allegations by a skateboarder that UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang hit him with a car and then failed to stop to investigate or offer help.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran: Drop off your preschoolers; pick them up, after they've flogged themselves & wept for Hussein!
- An iconic Led Zeppelin song: Mary J. Blige performs "Stairway to Heaven" (live & studio).
- Tonight's Talangor Group Zoom meeting: Short & long presentations in Persian. [Flyer]
- Throwback Thursday, and Facebook memory from July 21, 2009: All dressed up for a formal occasion!
(5) Book review: Huffman, Felicity and Patricia Wolff, A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend: For Every Guy Who Wants to Be One, for Every Girl Who Wants to Build One, unabridged audiobook on 4 CDs, read by Shelly Frasier, Tantor Audio, 2007.
[I wrote this review on July 21, 2015, and posted an edited version to GoodReads on July 21, 2022.]
(6) Book review: Montgomery, Charles, Happy City: Transorming Our Lives Through Urban Design, unabridged 13-hour audiobook, read by Patrick Lawlor, Tantor Audio, 2015.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Most large American cities have poor designs. Sprawling suburbs lead to the need for longer roads, with their attendant construction & maintenance costs, nightmarish commutes, high gas consumption, increased air pollution, expensive utility & public-transport networks, and the burden of snow-plowing in cold climates. Older European cities, by contrast, are compact, allowing residents to walk/bike to more places and reducing the cost of city and emergency services. Besides the economic aspects just mentioned, residents of compact cities, with traffic-free areas and open spaces, tend to be happier, hence, the book's apt, though somewhat childish, title.
The book opens with a description of how Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, decided to make his city more livable by various means, including the creation of car-free streets and greater investment in public buildings & spaces. A city's design influences our relationships with other people and affects our participation as active members of the society. The author also cites Vancouver, Canada, and Copenhagen, Denmark, as thriving, pedestrian-friendly cities.
Everyone benefits when people spend less time in cars, are physically closer to each other, and have more opportunities to meet within the community. Suburban sprawl just doesn't make economic or social sense. We have four times as many traffic deaths on suburban roads as on city streets. Driving 20 minutes for grocery shopping, dining at our favorite restaurant, or watching a movie is sheer insanity. Fortunately, dense, urban living within mixed-use developments is being embraced across the globe.
That urban sprawl is detrimental to our well-being isn't a new idea. Much has been written in this area. Studies in psychology and neuroscience have established a strong connection between city design and happiness. However, given that communities like Stockton, California, known for its poverty, crime rate, and car-dependency, are still being built, another attempt at discouraging such developments is worthwhile.
2022/07/20 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Life always finds a way, even after we give up hope. [Top center] Tonight's IEEE CCS tech talk by Dr. Yufei Ding (see the next item below). [Top right] Tiya Miles' All that She Carried (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Book introductions: Rachel Ignotofsky is a California-based best-selling author & illustrator. Here are cover images and sample pages from two of her books. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: One-hundred-year-old celebrating the pay-off of his student loans. [Bottom right] Not a scene from "Jurassic Park": Komodo dragons, the biggest lizards on Earth, fighting over territory in Indonesia.
(2) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Speaking under the title "Full-stack System Optimization for Quantum Computing," Dr. Yufei Ding (UCSB CS/ECE) presented her team's interesting work, which is contributing to the second quantum revolution, the transition from quantum theory to quantum engineering or practical quantum computing. Along this path, we need methodologies for transferring the knowledge we have gained in building classical computing systems to the new context. Examples of gaps to be filled include general compiler support with efficient qubit mapping, domain-specific compiler designs enabled by new intermediate representations, design flow for quantum accelerators, and automatic surface code synthesis for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Award for Excellence in High Performance Computing (2019), NCSU Computer Science Outstanding Dissertation Award (2018), NCSU Computer Science Outstanding Research Award (2016), and Distinguished Paper Award at OOPLSA (2020).
[IEEE CCS event page]
[Speaker's personal Web page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
(3) Book review: Miles, Tiya, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Janina Edwards, Random House Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is more-or-less a conventional book on the horrors of slavery, but with a twist: Its narrative is informed by a cloth sack, now held at the National Museum of African-American History, that was passed on for some 200 years from one generation to the next. The author is a history professor at Harvard U. and a McArthur Foundation "Genius Award" recipient.
It was common for women slaves to have a sack filled with basic necessities, in case they had to depart in a hurry, such as when they were sold. The sack typically contained some clothing and personal items. Miles takes us to the 1850s South Carolina, where an enslaved woman named Rose gave a sack filled with a few precious items to her daughter, Ashley. It was meant as a token of love and a way of ensuring her daughter's survival. Soon after, Ashley, 9, was sold, and, decades later, her granddaughter, Ruth, embroidered a brief version of this family history on the sack.
Women slaves, and black women more generally, have a faint presence in archival records, so pursuing the history of this remarkable sack provides Miles with an opening to reveal some of the missing passages in our country's history. What emerges from this retelling of the history of slavery is a new appreciation for the resilience and love passed down through generations of black women, using their creativity and resourcefulness to overcome incredible barriers and steep odds.
Here is a one-hour C-SPAN book interview with Tiya Miles.
2022/07/19 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) My day-trip to Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles: Conveniently located across the street from Union Station West, the historic Olvera Street, with its Mexican Marketplace, unique restaurants, and other attractions, is worth a visit. I had allowed too much time, though, given that two key attractions (Museum of Social Justice and Avila Adobe, the oldest house in Los Angeles, dating back to 1818) were closed.
I ended up spending the final two hours of my visit at Union Station, where there were no electrical outlets to charge my drained cell phone (what looked like outlets had keyholes, perhaps accessible only to the cleaning crew). Amazingly, both of the nearby Starbucks Coffee Shops were outlet-free as well! I definitely need a high-capacity external cell-phone battery for such occasions, not to mention a hard-copy book in my backpack! Fortunately, my train had electrical outlets and WiFi, so I did a few Facebook posts about the trip and also got some work done during the 3-hour return trip.
Besides Olvera Street [2-minute video], I also walked in some areas of downtown, including China Town, with its quaint food and merchandise markets. Multiple street musicians performed on Olvera Street and surrounding spaces. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4]
One down side of my visit was the heartbreaking sight of the many tents erected by the homeless along city streets. Another shock was my encounter with a screaming young man and a weeping young woman (unrelated individuals, perhaps mentally disturbed, who were being attended to by the station security). I was also disappointed that I could not eat at any of the area's unique restaurants, because they were jam-packed, with barely a foot of spacing between diners.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- I so look forward to DeSantis and Trump going at each other in a Republican primary!
- US tech unemployment rate of 1.8% is half of the general figure (down from 2.1% in May).
- One of the finest examples of a smart, cool interviewee facing a dumb questioner.
- Today's top story: Nobody did anything about anything that you wanted them to do something about. [NYer]
(3) A mother, whose daughter was arrested by Iran's morality police, tries to block the police van: Shades of Tiananmen Square, except that the Chinese soldiers actually stopped the tanks.
(4) The new Editor-in-Chief of Communications of the ACM: This month, James "Jim" Larus, Professor & former Dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL and a former director at Microsoft Research, will begin a 5-year term as the EIC of ACM's flagship publication, succeeding Andrew Chien.
(5) Healthcare in the US: An unintended consequence of the reversal of Roe-v.-Wade is an increase in health insurance premiums to counteract an expected rise in high-risk pregnancies & abortion complications.
(6) Renewable (green) energy: Past efforts to coax geothermal energy from hot, dry rock deep underground have faltered. But new techniques could crack the problem.
(7) France introduces research integrity oath: The new oath is expected to become mandatory for researchers in all fields beginning their PhDs or renewing their PhD enrollment, starting in fall 2022.
2022/07/17 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The Al-Naslaa rock in Tayma Oasis of Saudi Arabia: No one knows how the perfectly-straight cut happened in this 4000-year-old natural wonder. [Top center] The Kailasa Temple: This remarkable mid-700s CE structure is the largest of 34 Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu cave temples/monasteries at the Ellora Caves, Maharashtra, India. [Top right] Unusual naturally-occurring Mushroom Rock in Algeria: The unique shape of such "pedestal rocks" is due to weathering and different rates of wind erosion at the rock's top and bottom parts. [Bottom left] AI does recycling: Computer-vision systems can sort your recyclables at super-human speed, according to the cover feature of IEEE Spectrum magazine. [Bottom center] Very small family gathering on Saturday 7/16: Afternoon walk, followed by dinner. [Bottom right] Computer Report (Gozaresh-e Computer), the journal/magazine of Informatics Society of Iran, enters 44th year of publication.
(2) IEEE provides library STEM activity kits that can be checked out like books: Using the kits, children can build robots, write code, and design video games.
(3) ACM podcast on wearable computing: Special guest host Scott Hanselman (of The Hanselminutes Podcast) welcomes entrepreneur, researcher, and hacker Charu Thomas (Founder & CEO of Ox).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Diabetics rejoice: A breath test for blood-glucose level monitoring is 90% accurate.
- Government report: Women make up less than 30% of US federal STEM employees.
- Iranian researcher discusses the admissibility of temporary marriage in exchange for free rent.
- Art: Drawing the four-season tree. [4-minute video]
- Futuristic vision of firefighting in dense cities with high-rise buildings. [1-minute video]
- A most-impressive rally in beach volleyball. [1-minute video]
(5) Russia is no friend to Iran: After his country sabotaged Iran's nuclear talks in Vienna by making demands that were outside the scope of the negotiations, the Russian ambassador to Iran said that the two countries are fighting in the same bunker against the evil West, whose only goal is to bring abhorrent behavior such as homosexuality to Iran.
(6) Iran's state media report on a lecture by Masih Alinejad, depicting her as the devil: An entire regime is up in arms against a woman who advocates for women's rights. To deflect attention from the country's dire economic and social conditions, the mullahs have taken the hijab fight to Iranian streets, pitting the veiled against those who oppose compulsory hijab. [#No2Hijab]
(7) The priorities of Iran's Islamic regime: Nuclear scientists are assassinated, key military equipment are blown up, and women are sprayed with acid, with the culprits still unknown. A woman takes off her headscarf in the morning, and she is identified & arrested in a city of 10 million later on the same day!
[Iran's new clothing directive for women] [The new directive side-by-side with one from the 1980s; Competing with the Taliban in marching backwards on women's rights]
(8) Police inaction: Scathing report details how lack of leadership caused ~400 police officers to wait rather than act to save the 21 victims on the Uvalde school mass shooting.
(9) Europe and parts of the US are bracing for extreme heat: Northern Europe will be most-severely affected due to inexperience and lack of preparation for 40+ C temperatures.
2022/07/15 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's The Disordered Cosmos (see the last item below). [Top center] Countries that spend way less than the US on health care achieve higher life expectancies. Time to change? [Top right] China's Pompeii: Skeletons, from 2000 BCE, of a mother trying to shield her child during a major earthquake that triggered massive floods. [Bottom row] Iran's Islamic regime has intensified its brutal enforcement of compulsory hijab laws: Women have also stepped up their opposition by taking their headscarves off in public places, burning their hijabs, and participating in other acts of civil disobedience.
(2) The problem with a patriarchal culture is that its misogynistic beliefs poison even the minds of writers and other "intellectuals." To Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, "Woman means reproduction, beauty, and marriage."
(3) I will be a keynote speaker at the 12th International Conference on Computer and Knowledge Engineering (ICCKE 2022), a mid-November virtual conference organized by Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. Title and abstract are in this image. Other details will be forthcoming.
(4) Book review: Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Bold Type Books, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a wonderful book, with a few shortcomings; hence, my 4-star review. The book isn't just about physics. It is also an autobiography of the author and contains her musings on the social significance and consequences of doing science, including obstacles faced by the underprivileged who want to become scientists. The book's shortcomings pertain to the way in which concepts of physics are described in the first quarter of the book. Far from putting complicated notions of cosmology into everyday language, the author simply uses jargon and hand-waving in her exposition.
She presents herself as a theoretical physicist, who, as a child, terrorized her single mother by persistently asking questions. She tells us that, just as matter comes in phases, with a phase transition occurring, e.g., when water changes from liquid to solid or to vapor, she too has undergone phase transitions in her life, from a black girl, who loved but did not understand particle physics, to a black woman who is one of the chosen few to understand how much we don't understand particle physics. She wrote the book to convey her love for science and the difficulties someone like her faces to hang on to that love.
Science, we usually think, is the ultimate equalizer. There is no such thing as White science or Black science. Christian science, or Jewish science, or Islamic science. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Science itself may not be racist or elitist, but the sociocultural systems that support scientific practice are discriminatory; they are racist and sexist. "Physics and math classrooms are not only scenes of cosmology ... but also scenes of society, complete with all of the problems that follow society wherever it goes."
The author, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and a core faculty member in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at U. New Hampshire, elaborates on the exclusionary culture of physics, which has been quite harsh on her, the first Jewish queer agender Black woman to become a theoretical cosmologist and the first Black woman ever to earn a PhD in the subject. I started the book with some misgivings about the potential for the author watering down the science to make room for social issues in a single volume, but I emerged a great deal more informed about obstacles, deliberately and inadvertently placed, on the paths of many people like her.
The author's struggles in reaching the top of her discipline made her more aware of the plight of undervalued and underserved people, because "part of science is emptying the garbage. ... Learning about the mathematics of the universe could never be an escape from the earthly phenomena of racism and sexism." She was hesitant to share a very private part of her life, but she eventually decided that "Rape is a part of science and a book that tells the truth about science would be a lie if I were to leave out this chapter."
One cannot study the physical world without confronting the social world. We must face the privileged stories of science head-on. The author considers Black slave women, who looked up at the night sky in awe and navigated the stars to freedom, as much her intellectual ancestors as Isaac Newton.
I end my review by presenting an overview of the book's contents, structured in four phases and 14 chapters.
Phase 1 (Chs. 1-4): Just the Physics; where the universe is for a time human-free.
Phase 2 (Chs. 5-7): Physics and the Chosen Few; certain controlling humans want to decide who studies theoretical physics.
Phase 3 (Chs. 8-11): The Trouble with Physicists; there's the universe and there's the very human process of developing a mathematical understanding of it.
Phase 4 (Chs. 12-14): All Our Galactic Relations; can we situate ourselves collectively and humanely in the universe?
2022/07/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranian men are supporting women's demands for their rights more than ever. [Top center] According to Shahnameh, Kaveh the Blacksmith saved Iran from the tyranny of Zahhak. Iran's next savior will be a woman, carrying her headscarf as a flag and joyously eliminating the Zahhak of our time. [Top right] Space telescope humor! [Bottom row] Tuesday's guided walk/tour of Goleta's Storke Ranch: Located on Storke Road, across the street from UCSB North Campus Open Space, the partially developed former ranch has a nature preserve that features vernal pools. The pools are dry during summer/fall, so I plan to go back in spring and/or winter to see the area buzzing with life.
(2) Hamid Nouri sentenced to life in prison: A Swedish court exerts its international war-crimes authority over one of the key players in the mass-execution of Iranian prisoners in the late 1980s.
(3) Trump and Meadows are in deep legal trouble: The man with a "big brain" and "good genes" is, through his lawyers and close advisers, blaming his erratic behavior on "the crazies" surrounding him at the WH. But, as Liz Cheney put it, he is an old man, not an impressionable child, and must be held accountable for his actions.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ivana Trump, the Czech-born first wife of Donald Trump, dead at 73: Cause of death may have been a fall.
- Humor: Mimicking how a few politicians walk! [1-minute video]
- Quote: "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~ Plato
- My daughter's quiche and flat-bread pizza.
[Photos]
- Math puzzle: Prove that adding the terms (n^3)/(2^n), for integer values of n from 1 to infinity, yields 26.
- Explain the following pattern: 1^3 = 1; 2^3 = 3 + 5; 3^3 = 7 + 9 + 11; 4^3 = 13 + 15 + 17 + 19
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group Zoom meeting: After a short program on "The Megatons to Megawatts Program" (using retired nuclear warhead material for energy production), presented by Mr. Hamid Shirazi, I talked about "Data Abuse & Tech Divide: Ethical Considerations, Social Impacts, and Policies" (both in Persian).
I began by warning the audience that moral and social problems do not have unique answers, as they are tied to personal beliefs and political leanings, so I am presenting my views regarding these problems, with the hopes of making others think about them. If you disagree with some of my viewpoints, we have a Q&A segment at the end where alternate views can be aired. Better yet, I encourage, indeed challenge, you to make your own presentation on these topics in a future meeting.
Big data is being pushed by the tech industry as the cure to all technical and social ills. Data, big or small, is indeed quite useful in many domains, including understanding genetic and other diseases based on analyzing vast amounts of data collected from patients. The same genetic information, however, can be abused if it falls into the hands of health and life insurance companies (denial of coverage, exorbitant premiums). Surveillance economy, consumer protection, engineering/technology ethics, amplification of biases by AI & ML, fake news, bogus product/service reviews, and digital slavery are among other dangers.
We are all familiar with wealth and income gaps, which are generally viewed as detrimental to the economic health of nations. Tech gap/divide, including its specific instances of information gap and digital gap, can also be problematic. In today's information-based economies, broad and fair access to information and associated technologies are key prerequisites to prosperity and justice. Setting up the needed public infrastructures and regulatory frameworks is an important function of governments. Other topics I touched upon included technological literacy (techeracy), digital natives vs. digital immigrants, and the dangers of leaving a segment of our society in digital dark ages.
[Slides for today's talk]
[Recording of the talk]
[Recording of my previous talk on AI]
[Image
2022/07/12 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] First full-scale images from the James Webb Space Telescope put Hubble images to shame (side-by-side comparison). [Top right] Conversation on the quantum world (see the next item below). [Bottom left & center] Iran's judiciary has begun a strict enforcement of hijab laws: It is referring the matter to intelligence agencies, implying that women's movement in opposition to hijab is led by foreign agents. A woman opposing misogynistic hijab laws was sentenced to 24 years in prison, twice as long as a billion-dollar swindler. [Bottom right] Wil Wheaton's Still Just a Geek (see the last item below).
(2) "Conversations on the Quantum World: Why Space Isn't What You Think It Is": This was the title of today's discussion by theoretical physicist Kathryn M. Zurek and experimental physicist Rana X. Adhikari, in the framework of Caltech's public lecture series. Science writer Whitney Clavin moderated the discussion.
It has been said by several prominent physicists that the fraction of those who understand quantum mechanics is tiny, even among physicists! So, I may be forgiven to try to gain an understanding of this intriguing topic every chance I get.
Today's focus was on quantum gravity. By now, we have a good understanding of spacetime and how gravity causes it to curve, thus affecting the behavior of objects and beings. An important question is whether spacetime is continuous or quantized. Take the analogy of a digital picture. Even though it may appear continuous at first glance, a sufficiently-magnified version will reveal the pixels. Could the universe itself be pixelated or quantized? Today's speakers discussed how they use innovative instrumentation and approaches to unify the microscopic world of quantum physics with the macroscopic world of gravity.
This kind of unification, that is, coming up with "a theory of everything," is the holy grail of physics research. Before quantum mechanics came along, we had a nice, unified model of the world. Now, quantum mechanics explains everything, except for gravity. So, it's more than a matter of mere curiosity to try to unify quantum effects with gravity. Physicists working in the field of quantum gravity aim for such a unification.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- One euro = One dollar: Parity between the currency units has been reached for the first time in 20 years.
- Trump attacks his staunch defender Elon Musk, after the billionaire tries to annul his bid to take over Twitter.
- The most-amazing camouflage: Here's a butterfly that looks like a dry leaf when it closes its wings.
- Surface tension at work: You can put a lot of liquid on a penny before any of it spills.
- Math puzzle: Prove that the sum of 1/sqrt(k), for integer values of k from 1 to 80, is between 16 and 17.
(4) Here's the latest musing by apologists for Iran's brutal Islamic regime: Repression and violence are the works of spies/agents who have infiltrated the government to damage its reputation!
(5) Book review: Wheaton, Wil, Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir, unabridged 24-hour audiobook, read by the author, HarperAudio, 2022. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In this sequel to his 2004 book, Just a Geek, Wil Wheaton, celebrated actor from "Stand by Me," "Star Trek," and "The Big Bang Theory," tackles mental health face-on. Wheaton has charted a career course unlike anyone else, and has emerged as one of the most-popular and well-respected names in science fiction, fantasy, and pop culture.
On May 25, 2022, I attended a UCLA Semel Institute webinar in which Wheaton talked about his new book in conversation with Katrina L. DeBonis, MD. Wheaton began by acknowledging that he felt uneasy promoting his book, as our nation reeled from the second mass-shooting in less than a week. I was so impressed by Wheaton's eloquence, compassion, and openness that I decided to read his book.
In his new book, equal parts funny and poignant, Wheaton opens up about love, his mental health challenges of depression, anxiety, trauma, confronting tragedy, and the worst parts of himself, while celebrating all the strange, awful, and beautiful adventures in between. Wheaton relates that he has come to accept that his dad never loved him (regularly humiliating him in front of others and laughing in his face) and that his mom placed him in a co-dependent relationship to satisfy her own ambitions.
Wheaton became a drunk to escape, later seeking therapy. He really could not talk to his parents, so he put his feelings in an e-mail to them. The e-mail went unanswered for months. He then decided that, even though not having parents sucks and leaves a hole in one's life, he would be better off without his parents. He was lucky to have a support network, including his wife, his sister, and adult cast members of "Star Trek" for love and guidance.
Wheaton's final advice is that even though recovering from mental-health challenges is hard work, you are absolutely worth the effort. You deserve to feel happy, to feel the sun on your face, and to experience love. It is important for traumatized individuals to work on themselves and their parenting skills to break the cycle of generational trauma. It's also important to do what you love. Wheaton himself gave up acting and the entertainment industry to become a writer and story-teller.
2022/07/11 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Book intro: Balslev, Sivan, Iranian Masculinities: Gender and Sexuality in Late Qajar and Early Pahlavi Iran, Cambridge U. Press, 2019 (also available in Persian). [Top right] I finally got started on a project to organize my books by subject category: The project, which also involves getting rid of unneeded books and merging my books kept at home and at work, will take a few months to complete. [Bottom left] Iran's Lake Urmia faces certain death: Rampant mismanagement of water resources has shrunk the lake over the past two decades (image credit: @IranianPlateau). [Bottom center & right] Hot topic of the day: Is Iran's Islamic government truly misogynistic or does it focus on arresting & punishing women for "improper hijab" to deflect attention from its utter domestic and international failures?
(2) Bahar Choir's International Unit: Arash Fouladvand's Bahar Choir, which is Paris-based, has been spreading its wings. It is forming a North-American Unit and it has an International Unit, which you see in this on-line performance of "Noushin Laban." [5-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russia gets military assistance: Iran will send hundreds of armed drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.
- Prince vs. spy: The Saudi spymaster who fled to the West after he was targeted by MBS. [14-minute video]
- California inferno at Yosemite National Park threatens some of the world's oldest trees.
- The life story of a lesbian Iranian volleyball player/referee who was forced into exile. [Video]
- Sri Lankans enjoy the amenities in their president's & PM's residences, after taking them over in protest.
- A new campaign against compulsory hijab & the brutal treatment of Iranian women by the morality police.
- It's never too late to learn: Musings of a man who taught himself calculus at age 65.
- Physics, mathematics, and symmetry: Laws of nature in action. [2-minute video]
- Math oddity: You probably think that π = 3.14159...; Here's a proof that π = 1.
- Ballet of arms: Sadeck Waff's paralympics choreography and another one for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
(4) The next IEEE CCS tech talk: Prof. Yufei Ding (UCSB) will speak on "Full Stack System Optimization for Quantum Computing," Wed. July 20, 2022, 6:00 PM PDT, Rusty's Pizza on Calle Real, Goleta. [Register]
(5) On forming new words: In English, and some other Western languages, Latin & Greek constructs are used to form many new words. For example, the Greek prefix "tele-" is used in forming "television," "telephone," "telecommunications," "teleconferencing," and "telework." Other versatile prefixes used in English scientific terms include "micro-," "inter-," "ultra-," "hyper-," "meta-,"and "hemi-."
Not all languages are lucky enough to have access to such simple extension modes. For example, in Persian, the prefix "door" ("far") has been used in "doorkari" ("telework") and "doorbin" ("camera," "binoculars"), but it isn't useful for other combinations.
(6) The return of supersonic passenger jets: Twenty years after the Concorde was grounded, start-ups and NASA are working on planes flying faster than the speed of sounds. [14-minute video]
(7) Scary analogy: Trump's 2020 coup attempt was like Al Qaeda's failed attempt to blow up WTC with an explosives-laden van. The second time, they came back with planes and succeeded. The planes are analogs of secretaries of state and other election officials Trump is helping install in battleground states. [Credit: Bill Mahr]
(8) If you do not raise your voice when they oppress or harass your fellow-citizens, others may not be supportive when they come for you: Mostafa Tajzadeh, the pro-regime filmmaker, who covered up or or justified Khamenei's crimes, has been arrested in Iran, along with a number of other artists, including two other filmmakers, Mohammad Rasoulof & Jafar Panahi.
2022/07/10 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Saturday's triple-celebration of my niece's birthday, 4th of July (belated, with the requisite BBQ), and the said niece's announcement of expecting a baby boy in January 2023. Congrats! [Top center] These three girls from Netherlands, who visited southwestern Iran, were told that the country requires girls to wear headscarves! [Top right] All set for a few days: Results of my own meal-prep night on Friday and leftovers (bottom right) from the family gathering on Saturday. [Bottom row] Talk by Dr. Sirous Yasseri on transition to renewable energy (see the last item below).
(2) Iranians just celebrated Eid Al-Adha (Eid-e Ghorban), an Islamic festival, with rituals that encourage cruelty to animals, as they are sacrificed on the streets. [Meme]
(3) Let's put today's ridiculously-high gas prices in perspective: We can drive 33% longer distance in 2022 with the same fraction of our income as we did 60 years ago!
[Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Persian piano music, played by Fariborz Lachini.
[Dar Fekr]
[Del Yar]
[Jan-e Maryam]
[Niloufar]
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2019: Greatness is never achieved by servitude and idol-worship. [Photos]
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2017: A man's most-basic need is the company of an intelligent woman.
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2014: Young Iranian girls chart their path around restrictions. [Photo]
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2011: Tahereh Ghor'ratol-eyn, 19th-century feminist and poet extraordinaire.
- Facebook memory from July 9, 2014: Remember the World Cup when Germany humiliated Brazil 7-1?
- Facebook memory from July 10, 2020: The day when Donald Trump said something 0.01 times!
- Facebook memory from July 10, 2010: A memorable night with old-time friends in Brentwood, California.
(5) "The Geopolitics of Energy and Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable and Clean Energy": This was the title of a two-part presentation in Persian by Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U.), in the framework of the Zoom gatherings of the 1968 graduates of Tehran U. College of Engineering (Fanni'68). Today's attendance was 21.
Part 1 of the presentation on June 5 was devoted to oil & gas, including the attendant transportation and market considerations. Here is a link to my Facebook post on Part 1.
Dr. Yasseri began by presenting an overview of various existing and forthcoming options for renewable energy.
Solar energy is tapped in two ways. Direct methods (converting solar energy to electricity by photovoltaic cells) and indirect methods (heating water or other substances and converting the resulting thermal energy to electricity). The cost of photovoltaic cells has been plummeting in recent years. China is a major manufacturer of these cells. Wind energy is generated by two different turbine types: horizontal axis (what we are used to seeing on wind farms) and vertical axis (a new scheme being pursued, which may have a bright future). Various methods of tapping into geothermal energy were also discussed. Some people consider nuclear energy among renewable sources, but there is some disagreement in this regard. If we include nuclear energy, about 15% of today's world energy comes from renewable sources, so we have a long way to go in cutting our dependence on fossil fuels. In the final segment of his presentation, Dr. Yasseri pointed to the dependence of the renewable-energy industry on certain hard-to-get elements, including lithium for batteries and rare earths for electronics and other high-tech uses.
During the Q&A period, I offered several questions and comments. I pointed to the notion of "green premium," which is the incremental cost of green energy relative to existing options. If oil-based energy costs us $x per kW-hr and solar energy costs $1.5x, say, the extra 50% cost is a penalty we have to pay to use green energy today. The problem is that in computing the green premium, the eventual costs of cleaning-up the environment and combatting global warming are not included. We pollute and defer the clean-up responsibility to future generations. Oil companies invest a lot of money in promoting this way of thinking and they buy politicians through campaign contributions to oppose additional investments in clean energy. In spite of these dishonest methods, the green premium for most kinds of renewable energy sources has been coming down and, in a few instances, the green premium has turned negative. Those who point to the high current cost of green energy purposely leave out the fact that if we do nothing, fossil fuel prices will rise as supplies dwindle, so we will be paying higher prices regardless, either today, via investing in clean energy, or tomorrow, in the form of higher fuel prices. Oil companies are following in the footsteps of tobacco companies, which for decades, denied that cigarettes cause cancer, and gun manufacturers, who still insist that easy availability of guns has nothing to do with the gun violence epidemic in the US. I also offered some comments about energy storage options, which, used in conjunction with a global or multiple regional grids, can solve the problem of unsteady supplies in the case of solar or wind energy. This kind of undertaking may be considered too expensive now, but necessity (mother of invention) and proper incentives will unleash the creativity of the private sector toward solving the technical and economic problems, much like what led to Space-X deploying many thousands of satellites to provide seamless Internet coverage worldwide.
2022/07/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Stay tuned for "UCSB Read 2023" book selection (see the next item below). [Top center] An evening with Anoushirvan Rohani (see the last item below). [Top right] Meme of the day: Many rich and powerful people visited Epstein's private island, where they paid to rape children. Who are they and why no one has been charged yet? [Bottom left] The majestic Mount Damavand in north-central Iran, entirely covered with snow (elev. 5609 m = 18,403 ft). [Bottom center] How a Santa Barbara mathematician beat the casinos: Dr. Eliot Richardson, the card-counting expert, who was banned from a wide array of casinos before switching sides and becoming a consultant for the casino industry, reflects on a one-of-a-kind career. [Bottom right] The Moon emerging from behind Mount Sabalan (northwestern Iran) and moving up in the sky.
(2) "UCSB Reads 2023" program short-list of books: The following 5 titles are being read by the program's Advisory Committee members for in-depth discussion and final selection in our August 8, 2022, meeting. If you have an opinion on any of these titles, I'd be delighted to hear from you.
- All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, Tiya Miles (2021)
- The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and ..., Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (2021)
- Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain (2020)
- Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery (2013)
- There, There, Tommy Orange (2019)
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- British prime minister Boris Johnson resigns under the threat of an upcoming vote of no-confidence.
- Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe assassinated by a lone gunman during a speech.
- European Parliament condemns US abortion ruling: Vows to protect abortion as a basic right in Europe.
- A seemingly-impossible math puzzle involving 100 prisoners strategizing to get free. [Statement] [Solution]
- Did you know that the Persian word for engineering ("mohandessi") appears in a Khaghani verse? [Tweet]
- History of Engineering in Iran: Book by Dr. Mehdi Farshad (Gooyesh Publications, 1983). [Free PDF]
- I keep getting these affirmations about my sense of humor, but my children remain unimpressed! [Image]
(4) Thursday night's Talangor Group event: The Zoom meeting, beginning at 6:45 PM, was supposed to have master-pianist/composer Anoushirvan Rohani as the guest for the introductory short program and a talk by Farmarz Ghaffari entitled "Forough, the Hafez of Our Time" for the main event.
The short 15-minute program ended up taking 135 minutes due to audience enthusiasm, necessitating postponement of the talk about Forough Farrokhzad. Rohani talked a bit about his 500+ compositions, many of them standards of Persian music (only about half of these compositions have been recorded). He played a few samples of his work, including the very famous birthday song and a number of other classics.
Rohani then answered questions from the audience, most of whom related personal memories from meeting or otherwise interacting with him on various social occasions ot growing up listening to his music. I shot a couple of samples (Video 1; Video 2) from Rohani's piano music, but the Zoom quality does not do justice to his performance. You can find many samples of Rohani's music on his Web site, which also includes photos and a store where you can buy books and sheet music.
Next week, Thursday, July 14, 2022, 6:45 PM, I will be the main speaker of the event, talking about "Data Abuse & Tech Divide: Ethical Considerations, Social Impacts, and Policies."
2022/07/06 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Working/relaxing at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace Starbucks on July 4th. [Center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Happy Fifth of July! [Right] Walking in Isla Vista this afternoon.
(2) America in black & white: A 22-year-old white man, who killed 6 and injured dozens in a Chicago mass-shooting on Fourth of July, was arrested without incident. A 25-year-old unarmed black motorist died from 60+ bullet wounds inflicted by 8 Ohio police officers in the aftermath of a traffic stop.
(3) At the Highland Park July 4 mass shooting, a 2-year-old boy lost both of his parents: Damn those who, by their inaction, allow these tragedies to recur! [NPR story]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Police brutality: Black man killed by the police had 60 bullet wounds on his body.
- Scary thought: Texts and Web searches about abortion have already been used to prosecute women.
- Math challenge: Evaluate the expression (1 + 2007^4 + 2008^4)/(1 + 2007^2 + 2008^2)
- Pianist with amazing skills, playing with passion: Michael Jackson's "Beat It" [3-minute video]
- Some celebrities turning 60, 70, or 80 in June/July 2022.
[Image]
- Persian music by Fattaneh, along with the story behind her popularity and rise to fame. [Facebook post]
- Persian music: "Mast-e Eshgh," a jazzy song by Rana Farhan, based on a poem by Mowlavi (Rumi).
- Facebook memory from July 5, 2020: Video for the oldie Persian song "Mast-e Esgh" ("Drunk on Love").
- Facebook memory from July 5, 2012: Americans are heaviest. Guess the next four overweight countries.
- Facebook memory from July 5, 2011: A challenging math/probability problem.
- Facebook memory from July 6, 2017: A wonderful Persian verse by Sa'eb Tabrizi.
- Facebook memory from July 6, 2015: Separation of Church and State is good for both of them.
- Facebook memory from July 6, 2013: Happy International Kissing Day!
- Facebook memory from July 6, 2013: Unfair attacks on Forough Farrokhzad have made her super-popular.
- Facebook memory from July 6, 2010: Selected verses from a Persian poem by Mowlavi (Rumi).
(5) Book review: Roach, Mary, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, unabridged audiobook on 7 CDs, read by Emily Woo Zeller, Tantor Audio, 2013. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
(6) Book review: Stone, Brad, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, unabridged audiobook on 11 CDs, read by Pete Larkin, Hachette Audio, 2013. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
(7) Book review: Silverman, Sarah, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Harper Audio, 2010. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
(8) Industrial-strength 3D-printing makes headway in aerospace, defense, and medical applications: The US is poised to lead in 3D-printing technology and can use it to boost a resurgence of American manufacturing.
(9) "The science of making work not suck": This is the title of an article in the latest 'Adam Grant Thinks Again Bulletin.' Grant is the author of the wonderful book Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife.
2022/07/04 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy birthday to America: On this day, we celebrate the freedoms that our forefathers fought hard to secure for us and other generations since then sacrificed to maintain. We do not celebrate our flag, but the ideals that are behind it. We do not celebrate our military might, but how it is used to safeguard our freedoms and help others protect theirs. There is a reason that Lady Liberty is holding a torch and not a gun! [Top center] Observing America's birthday is an excellent occasion for reflecting on our relationship with the original owners of this land. [Top right] Marcia Chatelain's Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Cartoon: The US Supreme Court's Tiananmen Square. [Bottom center] The average American has visited only 5 of these interesting places. [Bottom right] Cartoon from a San Diego newspaper: Dedicated to my readers in Australia!
(2) Women's independence: As we celebrate our country gaining its independence, half of our society is mourning a gradual taking away of its independence! Let's show that the other half is with them!
(3) Updated and reposted from July 4, 2016: Our country was born 246 years ago and I, for one, am grateful for that. America educated me in the early 1970s and later accepted me with open arms in the late 1980s, when my country of birth made life miserable for me and my family as members of a persecuted religious minority. Even though it is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize, from news headlines and campaign speeches, the generous and tolerant nation that took me in, I am still in awe of my fellow Americans for their warmth and compassion in my day-to-day interactions. Here is to the hope that the public face of America returns to matching the private sentiments of the vast majority of Americans!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Simple math fireworks: From a Jan. 2014 paper by R. De Luca & O. Faella in European J. Physics. [Image]
- Facebook memory from July 4, 2015: Visiting an old-time friend in Palo Alto, CA.
- Facebook memory from July 4, 2015: Spending part of the July 4 weekend with the family in Fremont, CA.
- Facebook memory from July 4, 2012: Subversiveness of the US Declaration of Independence & Constitution.
- Facebook memory from July 4, 2012: A Persian poem of mine inspired by "the great white hope."
(5) Book review: Chatelain, Marcia, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Machelle Williams, HighBridge Audio, 2020.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Fast-food franchises seem an ideal fit to poor black neighborhoods: They provide inexpensive food in areas that have come to be known as "food deserts," youth employment opportunities, and investment vehicles for local entrepreneurs. Yet, the reality is much different from this purely-economic assessment. Obesity and type-2 diabetes epidemics, dead-end jobs, and exploitative relationships between corporate headquarters and franchisees are some of the down sides.
Chatelain, a Georgetown Univ. historian, offers much information about black entrepreneurs & civic leaders, political activism in the form of sit-ins, uprisings, & boycotts, and inequities of white-vs.-black franchises, but her presentation is flawed. The dry, repetitive prose fails to keep the reader's interest. Additionally, there is a lack of theme or focus in much of the book. In the end, it is difficult to write down a summary of the book and pinpoint the author's motivation & objectives for writing it. Even the fundamental question of whether, on balance, the presence of McDonald's, KFC, and several other fast-food franchises has been a positive or negative influence in black neighborhoods remains unanswered.
While the book exposes some of the hidden history of the US Civil Rights Movement, it does not do so in a compelling and coherent way. Yet, the book has won a Pulitzer Prize and has garnered many positive ratings (an average of 4.5 stars on Amazon.com and 3.9 stars on GoodReads)! Perhaps my 3-star rating is a bit too harsh, but, despite my deep interest in race relations and social justice, I had trouble staying awake as I listened to the audiobook!
Here is a 7-minute PBS NewsHour story on the book and the author.
2022/07/03 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Photos from Friday 7/01 hike with my daughter at Torrey Pines State Natural Preserve in San Diego. And here are some cacti at the Park. [Top center] Fruit plate at my daughter's, after we went shopping and before dining at a Persian restaurant, followed by hiking. [Top right] Sweet memories from family gatherings, collected on the occasion of my niece's birthday. [Bottom left] A few Egyptian spoons dating back 3500-4000 years. [Bottom center] There There: A Novel, by Tommy Orange (see the last item below). [Bottom right] A 1500-year-old cave in India, carved out of a massive rock.
(2) Be safe on this 4th of July: "A statistician made a few calculations and discovered that since the birth of our nation more lives had been lost in celebrating independence than in winning it." ~ Curtis Billings
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Prominent anti-vaxxer, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, dead at 48.
- Magnitude-6.1 earthquake hits Iran's Persian-Gulf coast, near the Strait of Hormuz.
- Iran continues to persecute Baha'is: Father suffers heart attack, as agents take away his daughter.
- Devastating physical & cyber attacks on sensitive Iranian sites lead to an intelligence chief's ouster.
- Admitting to widespread Internet censorship, Iran's Supreme Leader claims he is doing God's work!
- Looking forward to the next 10 days of fun in the sun! [10-day weather forecast]
- Facebook memory from July 2, 2014: There are no such things as holy rage and pure hate.
- Facebook memory from July 2, 2013: "Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally."
- Facebook memory from July 2, 2012: A very effective exercise for losing weight!
- Facebook memory from July 3, 2014: Summer concert in the park, featuring a Beatles tribute band.
- Facebook memory from July 3, 2011: When my daughter and I visited the UC Berkeley campus.
(4) Kellyanne Conway had to say negative things about some people to boost her book sales: She decided to (partially) diss Kushner and a few small fish, sparing the big fish completely. And no one will feel sorry for her because of being mistreated in the White House.
(5) Book review: Orange, Tommy, There There: A Novel, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Ceurvo, and Kyla Garcia, Random House Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This powerful fictional story, featuring 12 Native-American characters headed separately to Oakland's Powwow (a gathering of Native-American people to meet and dance, sing, socialize, and honor their cultures), tells of the plight of urban American-Indians, who face challenges that are different from, and, in many ways, greater than, those faced by communities living on reservations. Superficially, Native-American experiences resemble those of other marginalized people. African-Americans, for example, have faced many of the same injustices, including forced mass-displacements. Yet, there are unique elements to the American-Indians' history that are worth pursuing. [Indigenous Peoples' Day Archives]
In his widely-acclaimed debut novel, whose title is inspired by Gertrude Stein's line "there is no there there" about Oakland, California, the city of her childhood, Orange, an Oakland resident and a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, writes with passion and urgency "about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people" (from publisher's summary). Orange focuses on city life and does not dwell on the romantic open plains of his ancestors, because, for that, "we have it in our heads, Kevin Costner saving us, John Wayne's six-shooter slaying us, an Italian guy named Iron Eyes Cody playing our parts in movies."
In California, it has become common practice at the start of formal meetings and large social gatherings to read an indigenous land acknowledgement statement, reflecting on the history of the land we now occupy and the often-overlooked displacements that brought us the privilege of living on a piece of paradise. If you want to go beyond such a mere acknowledgement and learn more about the lives of Native-Americans in today's America, this book is a good place to start.
2022/07/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Liar, liar, pants & skirt on fire! [Top center] Math puzzle: Equilateral triangles share a vertex as shown. Prove that the marked vertex and the triangles' centers are collinear (Mirangu.com). [Top right] Meme of the day: Men should lead us, because they remain calm and collected in the face of adversity. Women are just too emotional for top leadership positions! [Bottom left] Khara-Khoto: An abandoned city in Inner Mongolia, built in 1032. [Bottom center] Chair with paws/socks: My daughter's solution for metal chair legs denting or scratching the wood floor. [Bottom right] Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.
(2) Math puzzle: What is the value of the following infinite sum?
S = 1/2 + 1/4 + 2/8 + 3/16 + 5/32 + ... + Fib(n)/2^n + ... [Fib(n) is the nth Fibonacci number]
(3) Iranian agents have killed many opposition figures abroad: The killers are either living freely in the West or have been exchanged with hostages taken by Iran. Now, Belgium wants to pass a law that would allow Iranian criminals to be returned to Iran to serve their jail time there. This law, which would give a green light to Iran to intensify its terror campaign, must be stopped. [Facebook post, in Persian]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- One of the nine people at the very top of our justice system is a conspiracy-minded nut! [Tweet]
- The US Supreme Court may not be anti-science, but it's not pro-science either! [Tweet]
- Scary: Think for a moment about the fact that a US rapist can now choose the mother of his child!
- For the computer scientists among my readers: What comes after C, C++, and C#? [Meme]
- Fun fact: The sum of the first n perfect cubes equals the square of the sum of the first n natural numbers.
(5) The myth of the Apple Computer logo: The iconic logo, consisting of an apple, with a bite taken off, has been explained in several different ways. The real explanation is that the designer wanted to make sure the image would be interpreted as an apple, not another fruit with a similar shape. The bite puts a scale on the image and says, for example, that it is not a cherry. Now, for the myths. Contrary to some accounts, the bite isn't a word play on byte, unit of storage. And it does not represent the bite that Alan Turing took of an apple laced with cyanide to commit suicide, after the British government chemically castrated him for being gay. Steve Jobs, denied the latter explanation, but said he wished it were true. [Images]
(6) On the misogyny and bisexuality of great Persian poets: Following a discussion on allegations of misogyny against poet Ahmad Shamloo and scholar Mohammad-Ali Eslami Nadooshan, a Fanni classmate recalled a misogynistic French expression "Sois belle et tais-toi" ("Be beautiful and stop talking") which essentially represents what most Iranian poets thought of women. He referred me to an article entitled "Gender and Sexuality in Sa'adi's Golestan," which asserts that Sa'adi, like other great Persian poets, with the possible exception of Ferdowsi, was a misogynist and a bisexual. It is common knowledge that "the beloved" in classical Persian poetry often refers to a young boy, not a woman. Love of women is discussed, but it is deemed a physical, inferior tryst, in contrast to the heavenly love for another man. By the way, the same held in ancient Greece, wherefrom we get the expression "Platonic love," a reference to asexual love for another man. [Images of two book covers relating to the preceding discussion]
2022/06/30 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: With my immediate & extended family in the early-1950s and with U. Tehran College of Engineering classmates in the mid-1960s. [Center] End gun violence (see the next item below). [Right] Technical talk on exoplanets (see item 3 below).
(2) As I had predicted, talk about gun control has fizzled again: This happens every time. A few days of sloganeering after a mass shooting, followed by silence, until the next outrageous event (mass shootings occur nearly every day, but most of them don't make the headlines). We need more than half-hearted measures and patting ourselves on the back for coming up with a watered-down "bipartisan" agreement. We have to root out the evil of unrestricted gun ownership, including military-style assault rifles, which obviously have no relevance to self-defense or hunting. They are designed to kill people en masse.
(3) "Earth, Exoplanets, and Everything in Between": This was the title of Wednesday's fascinating talk by Dr. Knicole Colon, sponsored by the US National Air and Space Museum. [Recording]
Fun facts from the talk: Stars have an average of 1 planet, which means that some of them don't have any planet while others have multiple planets. So far, 5000+ exoplanets have been discovered. Such planets are too small and too dim for direct observation, so scientists detect them indirectly by measuring variations in the star's brightness as the planet passes in front of them.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sex traffickers sentenced in the US: R. Kelly to 30 years; Gislaine Maxwell to 20 years.
- Anonymity is a sought-after feature in period-tracking apps, following the reversal of Roe-v.-Wade.
- NOAA triples its computing power for weather & climate modeling via twin 12-petaflops supercomputers.
- At Los Angeles Union Station, on the way from Santa Barbara to San Diego on Amtrak. [Photos]
- Facebook memory from June 30, 2014: Why insurance paying for birth control makes double-sense.
- Facebook memory from June 30, 2011: Guess the average number of years a US President holds office.
(5) Another 15-year-old victim of "honor" killing in Iran: Such killers, often the husband, father, brother, or uncle of the victim, either go unpunished or receive token punishments. [Facebook post, in Persian]
(6) Plastic recycling is a big lie: We recycle only 5% of plastics. We reached nearly 10% a few years ago, but that was when we sent plastics to China and counted them as recycled, whereas they weren't.
(7) "Rising Tide: Tackling Sea Level Rise from Above and Below": This was the title of today's Caltech Watson Lecture by climate scientist Josh Willis (JPL), presented, and available for viewing, on YouTube.
Given the centrality of Earth's oceans for our climate, sea level rise isn't something that is happening only at the beach; it affects our entire planet and is one of the major environmental challenges of the 21st century. As lead scientist for multiple NASA JPL projects, Josh Willis and team are addressing this urgent problem from above and below. The Jason and Sentinel-6 satellites are measuring sea levels from space, and Oceans Melting Greenland, an airborne mission, is probing the island's warming coastal waters to help better predict the rising seas of the future. Willis discussed how these missions will provide revolutionary data for modeling ocean and ice interactions and lead to improved estimates of global sea level rise.
2022/06/29 (Wenesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Sign held by a man protesting the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe-v.-Wade. [Top center] Civil disobedience in Iran: Shirazis remain defiant after dozens of pre-teens and teens were arrested for breaking Islamic norms. [Top right] The Citadel of Bam (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Shown are a semicircle and two congruent right trapezoids. What is the measure of the marked angle? [Bottom center] Tuesday afternoon walk: I went on a UCSB-sponsored guided group walk around the campus lagoon, covering also Campus Point Beach and the lagoon island with its huge labyrinth. This program, featuring walks to explore local natural attractions will continue every Tuesday until the end of August. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Take an arbitrary triangle and build three squares on its sides. Show that there is a unique decomposition of the three areas, so that I = A + B, II = B + C, and III = C + A.
(2) A UNESCO World Heritage Site in Iran: Arg-e Bam (Citadel of Bam), is the largest adobe brick construction in the world. Built of sand and straw clay bricks, the sprawling structure is located in Bam, a southeastern town in Iran. The area of the citadel of Bam is approximately 180,000 m^2 and is bounded by mighty walls 6-7 meters high and 1815 meters long. The Citadel was severely damaged in a 2003 earthquake.
(3) I had predicted that women will bring Trump down: Mark Meadows' Assistant and January 6 Committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a 26-year-old with more courage than all the supposedly alpha-males surrounding Trump, proved me right. I had also predicted that Iran's Islamic regime will be brought down by women.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Impressive digital light-show on a skyscraper. [3-minute video]
- Persian poetry: Dr. Mostafa Badkoobei recites his politically-charged poem. [3-minute video]
- Persian music: The oldie song "Ey Yaar-e Jaani." [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 28, 2014: A magic trick that isn't so magical!
- Facebook memory from June 28, 2011: The US Constitution—A document under siege.
- Facebook memory from June 29, 2017: A humorous magazine cover, featuring yours truly!
- Facebook memory from June 29, 2013: Poems resulting from Google's auto-complete feature!
- Facebook memory from June 29, 2012: A concise history of money.
(5) Summer concerts in the park: Anyone who is in the Santa Barbara area on Thursday nights during July 2022 can enjoy an impressive array of free concerts (bring a lawn chair and a blanket) at the Chase Palm Park, near Stearns Wharf. The programs begin at 6:00 PM.
- 7/07, The Molly Ringwald Project: 1980s cover band
- 7/14, Blue Breeze Band: Motown/soul/funk/jazz fusion
- 7/21, Captain Cardiac and the Coronaries: 50s & 60s rock
- 7/28, Pepe Marquez Band: Santa Barbara-based Latin R&B
(6) Martians are scratching their heads: After two decades of seeing the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe, with its Windows 98 operating system, they witness a software upgrade!
(7) Persian poetry and calligraphy: A verse by the great poet Sa'adi. "If you come to me, I will give you my life, and if you don't, I'll die of sorrow. So, my fate is to die, whether or not you come to me." [Image]
2022/06/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cartoon of the day: The US Supreme Court joins Donald Trump in his efforts to take down Lady Liberty! [Top center & right] Patriarchy is like a poisoned water well: It kills even the brightest drinkers. Under items 2 & 3 below, I have shared claims that Mohammad-Ali Eslami Nadooshan & Ahmad Shamloo harbored misogynistic views. You be the judge! [Bottom row] Before returning home from visiting a friend in the Chatsworth suburb of Los Angeles, I did some shopping at Valley Produce. I am always impressed by the freshness and low price of mint bunches there. Another friend and I then dined at a Persian/Esfahani restaurant at the intersection of Reseda and Vanowen.
(2) A brilliant thinker or a misogynist? This Facebook post (in Persian) places the patriarchal & misogynistic views of Mohammad-Ali Eslami Nadooshan under the microscope.
(3) Was poet Ahmad Shamloo a misogynist? A believer in patriarchy? This Facebook post (in Persian) about one of Shamloo's interviews raises a number of valid points in this regard. And it creates some push-back in the comments! I have selected four snippets from the interview. The original FB post contains the full interview.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fifty migrants crossing into the US were found dead inside a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas.
- With sorrow ... we dissent: A spot-on analysis of the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe-v.-Wade.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Women declare themselves corporations so SCOTUS grants them rights as people.
- Unrepresentative SCOTUS: Two-thirds of the current members are Catholics, vs. only 22% of Americans.
- Math puzzle: Which value is larger, (6/5)^sqrt(3) or (5/4)^sqrt(2)?
(5) On inflation: Not too long ago, commercials for some fast-food joints ridiculed the outrageously-priced $6 restaurant burgers. Now we have $6 fast-food burgers and $15 restaurant burgers. The latter is 100x the 15-cent price of the original 1955 McDonald's burgers.
(6) Let's get rid of offensive scientific and technical jargon: I have written about this issue occasionally for at least 5 decades. A column in the July 2022 issue of CACM prompted me to renew my call for avoiding biases (I was going to write "blind spots," but caught myself; read on). It really is no big burden to avoid a dozen or so terms that can be deemed offensive. Here are a few examples: master/salve flip-flop; blind review; whitelist/blacklist; mob programming.
(7) Embracing critical voices: This is the title of a CACM editorial by Jeanna Matthews, CS Professor at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, in which she announces her role as the Chair of the new Viewpoints section. "ACM has not always been an organization that embraces voices critical of computing or of ACM processes. Embracing critical voices is an important step in involving younger members ... making ACM a broad tent with room for members of the computing community broadly defined. I see Viewpoints playing an important role in both highlighting and responding substantively to critical voices."
(8) Hidden assumptions and biases in author recognition: Writing in CACM, Carlos Baquero and Rosa Cabecinhas bring to fore some of our troublesome practices in giving credit to authors of technical papers. A notable example is the Matthew Effect, which is a biblical reference: "In the imaginary Alice, Bob, and Eve paper, if Eve is very well-known in the field and the others are less known, it is very likely that readers will attribute most of the paper's merit to Eve and probably say to others: 'I read this very nice paper from Eve's team.' Readers might not even recall the other authors' names."
2022/06/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cartoon of the day: Iranian mullahs always dream of turning the White House into a mosque. They seem to have started from the US Supreme Court! [Center] Article with 115 authors (see the next item below). [Right] Siamak Vakili's Theory of Boundlessness (see the last item below).
(2) Article with 115 authors: Having just joined AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), I received the June 24, 2022, issue of the weekly journal Science. One of the first things that caught my eyes was this article with 115 authors. And this isn't even a record. Some physics journals feature articles with thousands of authors. The record of 5154 authors is held by a May 14, 2015, paper in Physical Reviews Letters, in which 9 pages of actual research description are followed by 24 pages of author names and affiliations!
(3) Iran's sweet deal: In a country where inflation has been in double digits for many years, a regime crony got a 10-year multimillion-dollar bank loan at 4% interest, with no payment due for 3 years.
(4) Book review: Vakili, Siamak, Theory of Boundlessness (Nazarieh-ye Bi-Karanegui), Persian book in two volumes, Agah Publishing House, Tehran, 2015. [My 2-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The two volumes of this book are subtitled "Book One—Place" and "Book Two—Space-Place." I downloaded the Persian PDF files for the two volumes from Academia.edu and was able to also download a short version in English. I couldn't find a Web site for Agah Publishers or Agah Publishing House to get more details about the book, given that the available PDF files lack the usual front and back matter.
Using on-line sources, we learn that space and place are distinct notions, the first one coming from the Old French word "espace," which in turn has Latin roots ("spatium"). Place, on the other hand, comes from the Latin word "platea" (which carries the same meaning as another Latin word, "locus"). Distinct languages and cultures deal somewhat differently with the two notions. The notion of place is directly tied to human experience, so it is more familiar and concrete. By contrast, space is more abstract. Eminent geographer Yi-Fu Tuan opines that "place is a space infused with human meaning" (Space and Place: The perspective of Experience, U. Minnesota Press, 2001).
The more I read of the book's Persian version, the less I understood the author's intention, methodology, and destination. One can only guess that he wants to present arguments in favor of space being infinite/boundless. I found myself trying to translate the Persian text into English in order to facilitate my understanding, but I soon gave up and decided to look at the English version, where I could read the author's meaning directly.
Unfortunately, the English version doesn't make any more sense than the Persian one. For example, we read on p. 11: "... when we lose the place, time is also lost spontaneously. This indicates that the time is a follower of the place and cannot exist independently and substantively. Accordingly, the time cannot exist, and its existence is only accepted as a feature, a measurement criterion, a place, and a subjective element. Therefore, the sense of time ... is stronger than the sense of place. One of the reasons for this is that time has by no means an outer existence." If we believe in Einstein's notion of spacetime, the passage above is a near tautology, and its wording, aside from containing English usage errors, does not make any sense.
The notion of infinity, in space, time, and other domains, has been pursued by philosophers and scientists for many centuries, beginning with Aristotle. So, a glaring deficiency in Vakili's book is the total lack of references to earlier work on the subject. A Google search for "theory of infinity" produces 60+ million hits. A Google Scholar search for the same returns 1.2+ million results. An Amazon.com book search yields 1000+ matches. I cite these search results to show evidence for a great deal of thought and writings on the subject, even outside mainstream scientific and philosophical sources.
Vakili does provide citations, but to literary works, mostly by Persian-speaking writers and poets. I could not find a single reference to non-Persian sources in physics or philosophy. Reading the book, an uninitiated reader may be led to believe that Vakili is describing original ideas on these topics. On p. 13, the author gives us a nonsensical reason for not examining scientific and philosophical literature: "... we will not examine the time and the place in the literature. Rather, we will examine them both in philosophy and cosmology."
I end my review (see also the Persian version on GoodReads) by citing a couple of elementary discussions on infinity in space and time. On this "The Conversation" page, five experts opine on whether space is infinite (two say "yes," two say "no," one answers "maybe"). Reading Vakili's book one is left with the impression that there is no disagreement about the boundlessness of space. This Interesting Engineering page leaves less room for debate, concluding that time is finite, given that it did not exist before the Big Bang and will cease to exist in 5 billion years, once the universe dies, according to prevailing multiverse theories. However, Vakili is of the opinion that the Big Bang did not exist, which requires significant discussion and criticism.
2022/06/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] On to the Middle Ages: Contraception & same-sex marriage appear to be next on the US Supreme Court's chopping block. [Center] Final thought for the day: "The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [Right] Focusing on climate change (see the next item below).
(2) A choice of futures: This is the cover feature of Science magazine's June 24, 2022, special issue on climate change. "Most people now fully accept that climate change is occurring and is caused by human activities. In light of current public attitudes, one could be forgiven for thinking that the data that support these conclusions are relatively new. The truth, however, is that climate scientists have known and warned for decades that our activities are leading to dangerous climate change, the eff ects of which we are experiencing now. Technologies for alternative energy sources have also existed fordecades, yet political and financial interests have prevented their widespread uptake, as well as the transformational economic and social change needed to end our alteration of climate. Today, when our options are limited and our need is urgent, these same forces are preventing transformation. Even if carbon emissions are halted today, the climate will continue to warm, with profound impacts on the Earth system. In this special issue, we explore ways that science can help guide us to a more promising climate future, from understanding where we are in our climate trajectory and how natural systems may respond, to providing options for mitigating climate change and adapting our systems (and ourselves) to the forces we have unleashed."
Here is a list of articles, reports, reviews, and policy statements pertaining to the special issue theme.
*Can biofuels really fly?
*Strengthen climate adaptation research globally
*How trade policy can support the climate agenda
*Current global efforts are insufficient to limit warming to 1.5 C degrees
*Harnessing the potential of nature-based solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change
*Climate change and the urgency to transform food systems
*Getting ahead of climate change for ecological adaptation and resilience
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A career story, from the June 24, 2022, issue of Science magazine: Doing what you love to do. [Image]
- A paper co-authored by my daughter, Sepideh Parhami, posted on BioRxiv before peer review.
- Facebook memory from June 25, 2016: A batch of photos from my memorable first visit to Taiwan.
- Facebook memory from June 25, 2013: Review of the book The Logician and the Engineer.
- Facebook memory from June 25, 2012: Stop shouting slogans or raising your fists & get some work done.
- Facebook memory from June 25, 2011: Review of a comedy performance by Jerry Seinfeld.
- Facebook memory from June 25, 2010: My foray into humorous Persian poetry!
(4) Trump ally and conservative pro-lifer Herschel Walker, who supports a total ban on abortions (with no exceptions), has 3 more children than he previously disclosed: One of those "hidden" children has accused him of being an absentee father. What a way to honor life!
(5) US labs face severe post-doc shortage: Early-career researchers increasingly avoid low-paying, insecure post-doc positions, according to a report in Science. Today's strong job market gives fresh PhDs other options.
(6) Don't ask kids what they want to be when they grow up: Young children don't yet have a complete picture of career possibilities or of their abilities, so their answers can be unreasonable. They may be influenced by parents' expectations, peer pressure, or the cliche "You can be anything you want to be." Once they are forced to choose an answer, they may enter a state known as "identity foreclosure," defined as premature commitment to an identity, which makes it difficult for them to change their minds, as they encounter opportunities or gain a better understanding of the range of possibilities.
2022/06/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Verifiable and trustworthy AI (see the next item below). [Center] Brain implants get real (see item 3 below). [Right] Title IX's 50th anniversary: In the 50 years since legislation was passed to provide US women equal opportunities in education, the number of women athletes in colleges has increased tenfold. Of course, Title IX isn't just about athletics.
(2) Roe-v.-Wade is no more: The landmark decision has been officially overturned by a 5-4 vote of the US Supreme Court, ending 5 decades of abortion-rights protections and allowing states to ban abortions.
(3) Women vs. Guns, according to the Supreme Court of the United States: Women's right to choose is for the states to decide, not the judiciary. Permission to carry concealed weapons cannot be left to states.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The modest US gun-control bill passed by the Senate and the House goes to Biden for signature.
- A group of pre-teens & teens have been arrested in Shiraz, Iran, for failing to wear headscarves in public.
- The art of arranging stones into amazing patterns. [3-minute video]
- Persian music: Chance connection of a violin player & a singer at a Berlin metro station! [2-minute video]
- Persian music: Life story of the old-time singer Marzieh, in her own words. [10-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 24, 2018: Benford's Law on the distribution of digit values.
- Facebook memory from June 24, 2017: I wonder if Robert Mueller regrets not doing his job properly!
(5) The ultimate reality show will bring down the reality show star: The public hearings of the January 6 Select Committee are must-watch TV for me. While one can get a sense of the revelations from news summaries, I've been unable to skip watching the hearings live or on delayed streaming. They are spellbinding!
(6) Toward verified artificial intelligence: Techniques for building verifiable and trustworthy AI are among today's hottest research topics, as intelligent systems proliferate and pervade our decision-making processes. In a feature article by Sanjit A. Seshia, Dorsa Sadigh, and S. Shankar Sastry (July 2022 issue of Communications of the ACM), we read: "We need techniques to model ML components along with their context so that semantically meaningful properties can be verified. ... We need to develop an understanding of what can be guaranteed at design time, how the design process can contribute to safe operation at runtime, and how design-time and runtime techniques can interoperate effectively."
(7) AI-related quote of the day: "The future isn't better smartphones or AR glasses; it's making the sensorium itself directly programmable, and maybe even adding new senses entirely." ~ Samuel Greengard, writing about the future of brain implants in the July 2022 issue of Communications of the ACM
(8) Ex-professor Simon Ang sentenced to one year in federal prison: While charges that the U. Arkansas professor had improper contacts with China were dropped, he was found guilty of lying to an FBI special agent about patents filed under his name in China, without disclosing the inventions to his US employer.
(9) University of California issues a statement critical of US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe-v.-Wade, calling the decision antithetical to UC's mission and values.
2022/06/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] An abandoned Synagogue in Romania. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei uses Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps to clear a path for his swindlers & corrupt buddies. [Right] Some of the men Iran's Reza Shah came to despise.
(2) One of the biggest revelations in Thursday's January 6 Select Committee hearing: Multiple Members of Congress asked for blanket presidential pardons, both before and after the insurrection.
(3) Justice in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Five students, who demanded explanation for the vaccine-import ban that led to thousands of preventable deaths, sentenced to prison terms under the guise of acting against national security. The students had questioned the financial profits gained by a number of individuals and organizations, as they peddled ineffective domestic COVID-19 vaccines, while also profiteering from the black market on life-saving, imported vaccines.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A magnitude-6.1 quake kills at least 1000 in Afghanistan's Paktika Province: Casualties are still rising.
- Trump blames Kevin McCarty for the January 6 Committee not containing any "real" Republicans.
- Defying the compulsory hijab laws in Iran: Shirazi youth take to the street in latest fashions.
- Researchers find traces of 400 different insects in a single tea bag!
- Quote: "Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few." ~ George Jean Nathan
- Iranian regional music: A song from the western provice of Luristan. [2-minute video]
- Throwback Thursday: This photo of mine, with a sister and four cousins, is from the mid-1960s.
- Facebook memory from June 23, 2014: Have you forgotten the password for your life outside Facebook?
- Facebook memory from June 23, 2011: Give proper credit to the source when using intellectual property.
- Facebook memory from June 23, 2011: Diaspora, which aimed to dethrone Facebook, didn't quite succeed!
(5) Nomination of engineer/physicist Arati Prabhakar as President Biden's science adviser constitutes a triple-first for that position: woman, person of color, immigrant.
(6) AI researchers at 132 institutions want to replace the "Turing Test" of machine intelligence with 204 diverse tasks of the "Beyond the Imitation Game" (BIG) benchmark, currently not handled well by machines.
(7) First Iranian-American to assume WH arts advising position: "Farhang Foundation is delighted to announce that Mr. Andrew Tavakoli has been appointed by the President of the United States to join the President's Advisory Committee on the Arts."
(8) Name the top franchise in the world: Surprisingly, it's Taco Bell, for the second year in a row! Taco Bell's secret sauce is listening to the franchisees and giving them the freedom to experiment with new ideas.
(9) Faculty pay experiences largest drop in 50 years (ever since records have been kept): When adjusted for inflation, faculty pay dropped by 5% in the 2021-2022 academic year, according to American Association of University Professors, which conducted a salary survey with 900+ responding institutions.
2022/06/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The privilege to know comes with the duty to act. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Big problems, ineffective solutions. [Top right] Hazards of surfing for some Flat-Earthers! [Bottom left] The Persian Tirgan Festival (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Gas prices across the US, compared with the national average. [Bottom right] Will a woman ever lead Iran? (see item 3 below)
(2) Longest day of the year: We have just entered summer, which means that today we have the most daylight. Iranians celebrate the beginning of each season with an appropriate festival: spring (Norooz), summer (Tirgan), fall (Mehregan), and winter (Shab-e Yalda, the longest night of the year).
(3) Will the next leader of Iran be a man or a woman? What kind of question is this? It will be a man, of course! The fact that no one entertains the notion of a woman leader is a key ailment in Iran. There are many women political activists, inside and outside the country. Even though quite a few of these women have better name recognition and stronger credentials than their male counterparts, they are just viewed as rabble-rousers and not as potential future leaders. Even the royalists never mention any woman from the royal family: Shah's oldest child, the Swiss-based Princess Shahnaz (81) and his surviving younger daughter Farahnaz, born Masoumeh (59). Only Reza (61) is ever mentioned as the rightful future leader by royalists. No country can prosper if half of its leadership talent remains untapped.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The US should get ready for a messy presidential election in 2024: Adam Kinsinger warns.
- Russian Dmitry Muratov auctions his Nobel Prize medal, raising $103.5 million for Ukrainian children.
- A heat dome, carrying temperatures exceeding 100 F, covered the US Midwest this Monday (CNN).
- American Assoc. of Univ. Professors condemns the UNC system for political interference & systemic racism.
- Impact of COVID on college faculty: As observed and assessed by their students. [Infographic]
(5) I walked around Goleta's Old Town today, as I waited for my car to be serviced: I was shocked by empty lots of car dealerships in the area. Prices of new and used cars have shot up due to short supply and buyers are paying more than MSRP to get their hands on a new car. [Photos]
(6) Einstein's "God Letter": Einstein's only letter about God was sold in 2018 for nearly $3 million at Christie's of New York. The handwritten letter was a reaction to Eric Gutkind's book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.
[16-minute Persian video]
[7-minute English video]
[The Times of Israel article]
(7) Final thought for the day: Life advice from Pablo Neruda.
You start dying slowly | if you do not travel, | if you do not read, | if you do not listen to the sounds of life, | if you do not appreciate yourself.
You start dying slowly | When you kill your self-esteem; | When you do not let others help you.
You start dying slowly | If you become a slave of your habits, | Walking everyday on the same paths ... | If you do not change your routine, | If you do not wear different colors | Or you do not speak to those you don't know.
You start dying slowly | If you avoid to feel passion | And their turbulent emotions; | Those which make your eyes glisten | And your heart beat fast.
You start dying slowly | If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love, |If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain, | If you do not go after a dream, | If you do not allow yourself, | At least once in your lifetime, | To run away from sensible advice.
2022/06/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A very happy Fathers' Day to all dads and father-like nurturers & mentors, past, present, and future! [Top center] Happy Juneteenth! (see the next item bnelow). [Top right] Cartoon of the day: The GOP will play dead until the threat of gun control legislation passes! [Bottom left] Because of runaway inflation, some Iranian merchants no longer post prices: The sign in this photo reads "Chips and Cheetos sold at market prices." [Bottom center] Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1971 and 2020: A model for other countries to follow. [Bottom right] Math puzzles: Simplify the top expression and solve the bottom equation.
(2) Celebrating Freedom Day: Juneteenth, the 19th day of June, commemorates the end of slavery in America's confederate states. On this day in 1865, that is, 157 years ago, the Union Army established authority over Texas, setting free the slaves who still didn't know about the Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Persian poetry for Fathers' Day: Selected verses from a ghazal by Sa'eb Tabrizi.
- The distinguished lawyer who sounded the alarm and lowered the boom on the GOP. [WaPo story]
- Computer architecture podcast (Episode 8; 1 hour): Durable security and privacy-enhanced computing.
- Aziz Ansari, comedian & author of Modern Romance, marries forensic data scientist Serena Skov Campbell.
- A tour group of 120 arrested in Iran's Caspian-Sea province of Mazandaran for having too much fun!
- Facebook memory from June 19, 2014: How Iranian women marked Iran qualifying for the 2014 World Cup!
(4) Five short Fathers' Day quotes: By Tim Russert, Reed Markham, Anonymous, Al Unser, & Linda Pointdexter.
- "The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get."
- "Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you must do it again tomorrow."
- "By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."
- "Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me everything he knows."
- "If you enjoy being a dad, thank your kids. You wouldn't be one without them."
(5) How the UK became a laundromat for Russian oligarchs: On the mutually profitable relationship between the British government and Russian money-launderers. [13-minute story on CBS "60 Minutes"]
(6) Trevor Noah: From being "born a crime" (title of his memoir, because his parents' mixed-race marriage was illegal in South Africa) to the highest-paid comic in the US. [14-minute story on CBS "60 Minutes"]
(7) Final thought for the day: A conservative gay group has complained about being excluded from the Texas Republican convention. Well, what did they expect from the folk demonizing gays and considering every single one of them a pedophile?
2022/06/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The quantum-sensor boom: Atomic-scale sensing methods are being used in a variety of domains, from brain scans to COVID detection. [Top center] Carolyn Chen's Work, Pray, Code (see the last item below). [Top right] My local Ralphs store has gone both local and international! [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the area of the square. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: A point outside an equilateral triangle is at distance 3, 8, and 5 from its three vertices. What is the triangle's area? [Bottom right] Math oddity: Here's a weird triangle on a world map.
(2) Believe it or not: If printed on paper, Wikipedia would be a 7,471-volume encyclopedia, with at least 11 of those volumes carrying the designation "ART to ART" on their spines. This information snippet is from a post of mine on June 18, 2015. I wonder what the number of volumes would be today!
(3) Mystery plane grounded: Argentine authorities have seized a cargo plane carrying 14 Venezuelans and 5 Iranians, including ex-IRGC commander Gholamreza Ghasemi and several members of the Quds Force.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Femicide: Yet another Iranian woman, who married as a child, killed by her husband. [Tweet, in Persian]
- Republicans drag their feet in "bipartisan" gun-control talks, hoping that the matter will be forgotten soon.
- The Golden State Warriors win their 4th NBA titles in 8 years by defeating the Boston Celtics in Game 6.
- The panel "Holding the Taliban Accountable" advocates using international leverage to stop rights abuses.
- Lost in translation: "Need not apply" becomes "need no application" in Persian! [Tweet]
- Oudlajan: The oldest neighborhood in Tehran dates back ~400 years. [8-minute video, narrated in Persian]
- Move-out charity sale underway near UCSB: Students donate household items to benefit local non-profits.
(5) Book review: Chen, Carolyn, Work, Pray, Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Jennifer Lim, Princeton Audio, 2022.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book explores the relationship between work and spirituality, both the notion of work taking the place of spirituality, in the sense of leaving a lot less time for the latter, and using spiritual practices, such as meditation, mindfulness, and yoga, to improve work focus and productivity. While the idea merits attention, the book has too much repetition, making the reader less and less interested as the narrative drags on.
Highly-skilled workers, particularly those in tech fields, have been leaving churches and other places of worship in droves. This is in part because the time and energy they spend on work leaves little time for anything else (including social life) and partly due to such workers finding that their exciting and impactful professional contributions satisfy their need for belonging, identity, purpose, and transcendence. Interestingly, many tech firms offer on-site "spiritual care," for their employees, because they have discovered that Buddhist-inspired spiritual practices tend to increase productivity, in much the same way that perks such as on-site gyms, childcare, and free or low-price food boost employee satisfaction and performance.
The bottom-line is that highly-skilled workers tend to put their souls into their work, making spiritual connections with it. There are advantages to this devotion to work, but what happens when there is a tech downturn and older employees are laid off? Tech firms are loyal to their employees as long as the business is profitable. The same employees are readily discarded when times are tough, companies change hands, or they speak up on moral issues. The latter is a good argument for spirituality, whatever form it takes, to be separate and independent from work.
2022/06/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The supposedly pro-freedom Iranian Revolution has turned into an anti-women enterprise. [Center] Behrooz Parhami's "Talangor" tech talk on Artificial Intelligence (see the next item below). [Right] Throwback Thursday: Visiting the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California, on June 16, 2011.
(2) "A Fair & Balanced Assessment of AI": This was the title of my talk this evening to the Talangor Cultural Group, with ~70 attendees. The talk was an updated & tailored version of my May 8, 2022, Fanni'68 talk. Here are links to my description, slides, and recording (Passcode 4K%*b?bR; talk begins at the 59:30 mark) of the previous, nearly-identical talk. I will post a link to the recording of tonight's talk, if and when I get it.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hate crime: The mass-shooter in Buffalo apologized to whites, as he shot black shoppers!
- Yellowstone National Park sustained severe damage as a result of severe flooding.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ISSN 2161-0002): A peer-reviewed academic resource. [Link]
- UCSB is proud to have brought everyone together for an amazing in-person 2022 graduation experience.
- An intricate set of mechanical linkages provide a mesmerizing visual effect.
[Tweet]
- Quote: "The downside of fame is having to read about yourself." ~ Actress Helen Mirren
- The charms of Kermanshah, Iran: Natural beauty and tourist attractions. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 16, 2017: The US has more gun murders than the next 15 countries combined.
- Facebook memory from June 16, 2017: Why women are attracted to and excel in mountain climbing.
- Facebook memory from June 16, 2014: Nighttime satellite image of Iran and the Persian Gulf.
(4) Iran and women chess players: American chess champion @NaziPaiki sacrificed a lot professionally when, in solidarity with Iranian women, she decided not to participate in the 2016 World Chess Championships hosted by Iran. Some women chess players criticized her for the boycott, claiming that compulsory hijab in Iran isn't an injustice. A few of the latter women ended up leaving the country and removing their hijabs, without ever apologizing for their stance.
(5) Samin Ehsani, a Baha'i children's-rights activist in Iran, who was sentenced to 5 years in prison a decade ago, has been re-arrested and taken to Tehran's Evin Prison. [Tweet]
(6) Tiny heads-up displays: Mojo contact lenses pack batteries, motion sensors, and a micro-LED display, bringing the promise of a self-contained heads-up display one step closer to reality.
(7) Ukrainian engineers prevent Kyiv from plunging into darkness: In a daring move that carried some risk, they disconnected the country's grid from Belarus, Russia, and the rest of the giant IPS/UPS synchronous AC power zone controlled from Moscow and plugged it into Europe's 50-hetrz current traversing ENTSO-E's wires
(8) Congressional hearings on the January 6 insurrection: In three public hearings, the January 6 Select Committee has presented ample evidence on Donald Trump and a number of his closest associates breaking multiple laws of the land. The need for criminal referrals from the Committee has vanished, as the evidence is now in plain sight for the Justice Department to note and pursue.
2022/06/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Meme of the day: Laws from the 18th century need updating for 21st-century technology. [Center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, with a rectangle, two semi-circles, and four quarter-circles, find the ratio of the blue area to the red area. [Right] Tonight's IEEE tech talk (see the last item below).
(2) Food for thought: Isn't it ironic that supporters of the Second Amendment, purportedly advocating for gun ownership to stop a dictatorial government, are the ones we now fear as followers of a would-be dictator?
(3) Here come p-computers: Quantum computers (q-computers) have been all over the news lately, but much of their promise remains on the drawing board, rather than appearing in practical applications. UCSB professor Kerem Camsari thinks that probabilistic computers (p-computers) can offer some of the same benefits of q-computers, using technology that is already available. In a June 2 Nature Electronics article, Camsari and his collaborators discuss the promise of p-computers.
(4) Quote of the day: "I wouldn't want to be younger for a million bucks. There are problems with age, but we're wiser and more accepting, you know? It's falling into place how the world works." ~ Anne Tyler, 80
(5) "Women Building Peace": This is the title of a new series of podcasts, offered by Georgetown U. and BBC World Service, that explores the stories of remarkable women in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ethiopia, and Colombia. Hoping that Iranian women will be featured in a future episode.
(6) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talks for the second half of 2022:
07/20 Dr. Yufei Ding, UCSB, CS (Area: Hardware acceleration, and software support for it)
08/17 Dr. Lei Li, UCSB, CS ("A Review of Recent Progress in Machine Translation")
09/21 Dr. Leonard Chen, Raytheon, Goleta ("Sensing Across the Infrared Spectrum")
10/19 Dr. Nina Miolane, UCSB, ECE ("Geometric Learning for Shape Analysis from Bioimaging Data")
11/16 Dr. Somayeh Dodge, UCSB, Geography ("Computational Movement Analytics")
12/14 Dr. Roland Geyer, UCSB, Bren School (Area: Industrial ecology; author of The Business of Less)
(7) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Speaking under the title "Self-Supervised Language-and-Vision Reasoning," Dr. William Wang (Computer Science Dept., UCSB) introduced his team's recent work on visually-grounded language reasoning via the studies of vision-and-language navigation, emphasizing three benefits of self-supervised learning:
- Improving generalization in unseen environments;
- Creating counterfactuals to augment observational data;
- Enabling transfer learning for challenging settings.
A key challenge for AI research is going beyond static observational data and considering more-challenging settings that involve dynamic actions and incremental decision-making. Dr. Wang considered the problem of an autonomous agent navigating in an environment known to it via images captured in real time (no floorplans, maps, overhead views, or GPS) as it follows word instructions about how to get to a desired destination.
Here is an example of word instructions: "Leave the living room. Go through the hallway with paintings on the wall and head to the kitchen. Stop next to the wooden dining table." With each action, such as turning left/right or moving forward, the environment, as seen by the agent, changes. Success is determined primarily by whether or not the agent reaches the destination and secondarily by various other figures of merit.
Dr. Wang concluded by briefly introducing other reasoning problems that his groups are tackling.
[IEEE CCS event page] [Speaker's personal Web site] [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2022/06/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Saturday's family visit to Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History: [Top row] We saw a wide variety of butterflies at one of the special exhibits. [Middle left] A wall display showed the underwater topography of California's South Coast. [Middle center] An interesting exhibit about the Chumash, our local Native Americans. [Middle right & bottom row] The Rare Earth Special Exhibit featured a large collection of gems and minerals.
(2) Tribonacci sequence: It is formed like the Fibonacci sequence, except that it starts with 1, 1, 2, and each term is formed by adding the previous 3 terms. T(1) = T(2) = 1, T(3) = 2, T(4) = 4, T(5) = 7, T(6) = 13, ... , T(n) = T(n – 1) + T(n – 2) + T(n – 3). Derive a closed-form expression for T(n).
(3) Reign of terror continues in Iran: The ransacked home of a mother, whose son, Mostafa Karimbeigi, was killed in the 2009 Ashoura protests and whose daughter Maryam Karimbeigi was arrested by security forces.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ann Frank would have been 93 today. [Tweet by Auschwitz Memorial]
- Congratulations to Russia for taking control over the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. [Photos of devastation]
- The "law & order" party tried to illegally access Michigan voting systems 11 times.
- Erol Gelenbe: The computer pioneer & IEEE Fellow whose packet-voice phone switch made Zoom possible.
- Engineer claims AI chatbot LaMDA is "sentient": Google denies it.
- Ukrainians are resilient, proud people: This is how they are holding graduation ceremonies!
- Graduating students make a statement against Seattle Pacific University's LGBTQ+ ban.
- Simple acts of defiance allow oppressed people to remain hopeful: Woman dancing in a Tehran Metro car.
- Classical music: Vittorio Monti's "Czardas," with whistling. [5-minute video]
- Persian music: Mohammad Nouri's "Dar Khamoushi-haa-ye Sahel" ("In the Stillness of the Shore").
- Persian music: The oldie song "Rosva-ye Zamaneh" performed on qanun and tonbak. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 13, 2019: Children are blind to race. They have to be taught to be racist.
- Facebook memory from June 13, 2010: Technical books published by my dD, Salem Parhami [1922-1992]
- Facebook memory from June 14, 2015: How physics courses in medical schools save lives (humor).
- Facebook memory from June 14, 2012: Mowlavi's take on the limits of an erudite and reasoning mind.
(5) Reza Pahlavi, a savior or aspiring dictator? A recent address by Reza Pahlavi and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's fearful reaction to it in a speech, warning that Royalty actually returned to power after the French Revolution, have triggered many discussions on social media. Commentaries span a broad range, between two extremes. On one side are those who argue that we can't let fear of a new dictatorship stop us from acting to remove a brutal, misogynistic, and inept regime, which has terrorized Iranians and left the country's economy in tatters. On the other side are those who point to the lessons of the 1979 Revolution, observed directly or heard from parents and grandparents, that wishing for freedom and democracy won't cause them to appear magically. The truth is that as long as there are people with guns or influence, who love to live, or thrive under, a dictatorship, a dictator will rise to fill the need. [Images]
2022/06/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Commencement weekend has already begun at UCSB: These photos, taken on the way to and from the campus, show a couple of the gift booths, along with trash resulting from students preparing to move out. Today's first in-person ceremonies after 3 years feel good to students & their families. Commencement will continue with the main events, and much larger crowds, tomorrow and on Sunday. [Bottom left & right] Two stars of the first public-hearing session of the January 6 Commission: Rep. Liz Cheney and police officer Caroline Edwards. [Bottom center] Adam Grant's Think Again (see the last item below).
(2) "UCSB Reads 2023" Program kicked off today: The Program's Advisory Committee gathered in a hybrid meeting, with each member presenting 2-minute pitches for up to 2 books. The Committee will vote on-line to reduce today's long list to a short-list of 5 books, to be read over the next couple of months and discussed in a second meeting, when our top choice and a couple of back-ups will be selected. The image shows the chosen title for the just-completed 2022 Program. Here are my two pitches:
- When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, 2021, 352 pp. [My 5-star review]
- Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity, Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, 2020, 304 pp. [My 4-star review]
(3) Here's what's wrong with the Republicans: Fox News was the only network not covering the Jan. 6 hearings. Many Republicans are asking why the Capitol Police wasn't prepared to control a riot, not why the riot occurred or why we need riot control at the Capitol in the first place.
(4) New Yorker cartoon caption of the day: "It's a beautiful day, so I'm going to sit outside with my book and think about everything else I should be doing."
(5) Book review: Grant, Adam, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Penguin Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Flexibility is one of the most-important human traits, even more so than intelligence. History is replete with examples of businesses and societies that perished due to inflexibility. A prime example in the business world is the story of Mark Lazarius of BlackBerry fame. Lazarius, whose company dominated the smartphone market before iPhone came on the scene, resisted the suggestion of adding Internet access to his devices, all the way to his company's demise.
In a world that is changing faster than ever, rethinking through "settled" questions and updating our beliefs are necessary skills. Intelligence is the ability to think and learn. However, alongside these abilities, we need the skills to unlearn and rethink, that is, the willingness to admit that the situation and facts may have changed, invalidating what was once right.
As important as it is to know what we don't know, it is even more important to be a bit suspicious of things that we think we know. Reexamining and updating our beliefs is tough, as it can be disorienting and humiliating, but we have to learn to do it, or else face the danger of going the way of the BlackBerry.
Changing one's views requires the expenditure of energy. "Some psychologists point out that we're mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones." Scientists are trained and paid to rethink; it's part of their jobs. For many others, pride in what they know and staying true to their beliefs and opinions are the main reasons of insisting on old ideas and thoughts, which constitutes a distinct disadvantage in a rapidly-changing world. We should all aspire to think like scientists, not like preachers, prosecutors, or politicians.
A practical consequence of the difficulty of changing one's mind is that we should avoid making it even more difficult. Young kids are often asked what they want to be when they grow up. Not knowing much about career options or their own abilities, their answers are usually influenced by parents' expectations, peer pressure, or the cliche "You can be anything you want to be." Once they are forced to choose an answer, they may enter a state known as "identity foreclosure," defined as premature commitment to an identity, which makes it difficult for them to change their minds, as they encounter opportunities or gain a better understanding of the range of possibilities.
It is unfortunately the case that people who are better thinkers may be worse at rethinking. At any rate, we are rather poor judges of our abilities and knowledge. Aside from the fact that most of us think we are above-average in many regards, such as in driving ability, the well-studied Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that our confidence in being right actually decreases as we learn more about a subject.
I can't think of anyone who would not benefit from reading this book. I discovered the book by hearing its Persian summary in BPlus podcast #77.
2022/06/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Computer arithmetic pioneer, James E. Robertson (see the next item below). [Top center] Cartoons of the day. [Top right] Gender equity in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Both men and women can use the beach! Actually, what you see in this photo is likely illegal now. There are separate designated beach areas for men and women. [Bottom left] New logo for Iran's National Bank, after safe deposit boxes were broken into and emptied en masse. [Bottom center] English teas in cute containers: Souvenirs brought from Europe by my sister. [Bottom right] Academic's summer: External perception vs. reality.
(2) The Cherokee who envisioned redundancy in computer arithmetic: James E. Robertson [1924-1993], my grandfather in academic genealogy, was a professor of computer science at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he supervised Algirdas Avizienis, my PhD advisor. I was motivated to write about Robertson because of his son, David, MIT faculty member and author of Brick by Brick, contacting me as part of his research on his dad's contributions. A record of Robertson's contributions is available in this UIUC archive. Robertson was involved as an architect and arithmetic designer in the first two of UIUC's four influential computer design projects:
ILLIAC I (1952): An early von-Neumann architecture, kickstarting UIUC's homegrown series of computers.
ILLIAC II (1962): An innovative early supercomputer, with ideas that found their way into IBM machines.
ILLIAC III (1966): A fine-grained SIMD pattern-recognition computer, featuring a pattern-articulation unit.
ILLIAC IV (1971): The first general-purpose, massively-parallel supercomputer to reach the production stage.
He is best-known for speed-up methods in computer arithmetic via the introduction of redundancy, which allows precise computation using less-than-precise estimates for some intermediate entities. This principle is used in SRT division, still one of the most-beautiful and awe-inspiring ideas in computer arithmetic, whose name comes from the initials of Sweeney, Robertson, and Tocher.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US National gas prices surpass $5.00 per gallon on average: In California, the average is $6.40.
- OPEC+ will increase production in July and August to offer modest relief in the soaring energy costs.
- Study finds that women, black, and Latinx employees of Cal Staue U. are paid less than white males.
- The carbon-removal industry attracts significant funding from backers to fight climate change.
- UK government urged to investigate Iranian officials who held Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe hostage.
- A great suggestion: On campaign contribution checks, enter in the amount field "Thoughts & Prayers"!
- Teachers do not belong in jail: Call on Iran to release all imprisoned teachers right away. [Tweet]
- Most Iranian retirees sink below the poverty line, as inflation outpaces their income growth.
(4) The Islamists in Iran don't have an ounce of creativity or shame: They hijack songs by pre-Revolution Iranian artists and turn them into mourning chants. Now, it is revealed that the "Hello Commander" musical piece, unveiled with much fanfare, was also stolen from an Iraqi production.
(5) NVIDIA's Hopper GPU and Grace CPU: Named in honor of Grace Hopper, a pioneering woman computer scientist, the new family of products aims to cover from small enterprise workloads through exa-scale high-performance computing and trillion-parameter AI models.
(6) The computing field's use of Latin & Greek words/concepts: We should tell our students the origins of the most-common ancient words used in computing. Other than prefixes appearing in terms such as Internet and telecommunications, we have borrowed ancient concepts such as algorithm, firewall, and Trojan horse.
2022/06/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Deviant clothing" criticized by mullahs: Iran bans women's coats/manteaux cut above the knee and requires longer ones to be buttoned up at the front. [Center] Physics puzzle: This 3D cube is made of R-ohm resistors. What is the resistance between two opposite corners? As an added challenge, tackle the 4D hypercube case. [Right] Cathy O'Neil's The Shame Machine (see the last item below).
(2) US retakes the lead in the most-powerful-computer race: Frontier, a massive machine at Oak Ridge National Lab, is the first to demonstrate exa-scale performance. There are indications that China may have already surpassed this level of performance, deciding not to submit test results due to the US-China tensions.
(3) The rotating mask illusion: Yesterday, I posted the image of a coin and its upside-down version, which seemed to turn the raised features on the coin into indented ones. Here is a related illusion. Face recognition is an important brain function, so much so that a special brain region has been trained for it. In this video, a mask is rotated, so that we see its front, raised part and its back, indented part. But our brain can't help seeing the indented image as a raised one, because that's how faces are!
(4) Book review: O'Neil, Cathy, The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Previously, I reviewed O'Neil's best-selling 2016 book, Weapons of Math Destruction, giving it 4 stars and noting that the documentary film "Coded Bias" is based on it. This new book can be viewed as a continuation of O'Neil's 2016 magnum opus. The two books share a lot in common. Surveillance is about persuading consumers to share a great deal of personal data, so that they can be manipulated by marketers of products and services. Shame is, in part, about exploiting consumer weaknesses to shame them into buying products and services. Of course, having more data on consumers makes it easier to identify traits that can be used to shame them.
Shaming comes in at least two flavors: Upward shaming to force the powerful into ethical behavior is good. A prime example is how the Purdue pharma family was shamed into admitting their role in the opioids-abuse crisis, forcing them to fork-over their ill-gotten gains, and placing an indelible stain on the family name (some buildings and programs they sponsored have been renamed). The downfall of Harvey Weinstein due to the #MeToo movement is a second good example. Downward shaming, like punching down at the weak and already-fallen, is bad. Shaming the poor or the homeless does nothing to solve their problems. O'Neil opens her book by describing how Hopi Native-Americans use shaming rituals to enforce their cultural norms. This kind of sideways shaming may be okay if not done in a mean-spirited way. Unfortunately, sideways shaming could also be perilous, as we have seen in the case of vaccination and masking, in both directions.
O'Neil was a long-time victim of fat-shaming, before she took control and decided that she wanted to focus on remaining active and preventing diabetes, instead of striving toward the ideal weight. She writes about "the shame industrial complex," best exemplified by the wellness and weight-loss industries. What makes us suckers for diets and supplements is low self-esteem, an ailment that no amount of spending can fix. Hence, our perpetual consumption of diets, exercise regimens, and miracle-cures. Social-media platforms are uniquely positioned to reap profits from the shame industrial complex, so they have no incentive to prevent shaming and the associated abuse/violence.
O'Neil gave a book talk at UCSB on May 3, 2022, in which she explored the realities and dangers of social networking, the consequences of algorithm design, and defending human dignity in the context of predatory capitalism. I was planning to attend her talk and looked forward to it, but a last-minute change in my schedule prevented me from doing so. O'Neil's 13-minute TED talk, entitled "The Era of Blind Faith in Big Data Must End," covers some of the same ground.
2022/06/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Puzzle: Look at these two images normally and after you turn them upside-down. Explain what you see and why (credit: Amir Shobeiry II). [Center] Math puzzle: The smaller of the two squares has area 16 and the shaded triangle has area 1. What is the area of the larger square?
(2) World Cup soccer: Ukraine played well against Wales but ended up losing 0-1 due to an own goal to end its fairy-tale run at a chance to appear in Qatar. [10-minute highlights]
(3) Quote of the day: "Wearing unbranded and cheap clothes does not mean you're poor. Remember, you have a family to feed, not a community to impress." ~ Emma Watson
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Israel unveils a laser weapon capable of intercepting rockets, mortar shells, drones, & anti-tank missiles.
- Sales of Kellyanne Conway's memoir fall flat after she is attacked by both the right and the left.
- New Yorker cartoon caption of the day: "I'd like to meet the algorithm that thought we'd be a good match."
- Math puzzle: Find the value of x satisfying 16^x + 20^x = 25^x.
- Persian poetry: A poem by Rahim Moeini Kermanshahi [1923-2015]. [Facebook post]
- Facebook memory from June 6, 2020: Remembering D-Day (June 6, 1944).
(5) Business and economy seating at a gathering to pledge allegiance to Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei: Social distancing for regime insiders; cattle-like treatment for mere mortals. [Tweet]
(6) Karim Sanjabi: One of Iran's nationalists who bowed to Khomeini's wishes or were played by him. Khomeini used these "intellectuals" to gain legitimacy, before moving to eliminate or sideline them one by one. He finished his complete takeover by mass-murdering the leftists. [Facebook post, with videos]
(7) A gunman who killed a retired judge in Wisconsin carried a hit list that included US Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
(8) Hypocrisy: MAGA folk want us to move on from the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, but they are unwilling to move on from their electoral loss of Nov. 3, 2020, or, for that matter, from their 1865 loss in the Civil War!
(9) A few interesting recorded events in Georgetown U.'s Jalinous Lecture Series:
Magnificent Designs: Persian Influence in Textile Arts;
Celebration and Ceremony: Zoroastrianism and Nowruz, Easter, and Passover;
Kiarostami: Imagination and Existence in Film.
2022/06/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Persian calligraphy: Oh, cleric! Do not threaten someone who is already living in hell with being held accountable in the other world. [Top center] Today was the last of three days to wear orange to show support for victims of gun violence. Even though orange days are over, I pledge to continue working to bring about sensible gun laws, beginning with efforts at the city and county levels and working my way up. [Top right] Some large powers of 10: You probably won't encounter most of these numbers, but here are their names anyway! Curiously, 10^33 is missing from the list. [Bottom left] On-line presentation on energy: Part 1, oil & gas (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Persian poetry: Five selected verses from a ghazal by Hafez. [Bottom right] Last lecture in the UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran for this academic year (see the last item below).
(2) "The Geopolitics of Energy and Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable and Clean Energy": This is the title of a two-part presentation, in Persian, by Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U.), in the framework of the Zoom gatherings of the 1968 graduates of Tehran U. College of Engineering (Fanni'68). Today's first part was focused on oil & gas, including transport of fossil fuels and the energy market in Europe, particularly the shipment of Russian gas to Northern Europe. Part 2 on Sunday, June 12, 2022, will cover transitioning to clean energy and its associated problems.
Dr. Yasseri began by displaying the interactive map "What Powers the World?" that provides, for each country, the fraction of energy coming from fossil fuels, nuclear power plants, and renewables. In addition to seeing the share of each kind of energy in various countries, one can produce scatter-plots of the three kinds of energy around the world.
Dr. Yasseri's historical overview began in the early 1900s, when there were two world powers: The Russian Empire, which controlled a large land-mass in Asia and Eastern Europe, and England, which controlled the waters of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to the south. There were skirmishes and wars between the two powers, but neither one could eliminate the other. So, a kind of delicate balance prevailed that adversely affected countries like Iran that sat between the two domains of influence. He then proceeded to describe the changes in the energy scene, as uses of energy sky-rocketed and the United States entered the scene as a newly-minted world power.
A 10-minute film clip of a 1975 interview by the Shah reveals some of the tensions that existed around the world regarding energy resources and other geopolitical issues.
Gas is a relatively cleaner source of energy than coal or oil, but its transportation is complicated, dangerous, and expensive. Natural gas is usually liquified (LNG), shipped via special tankers, and converted back to gas at the destination. Lately, the use of pipelines is becoming common for gas transport to avoid some of the complexities and dangers, but gas (and oil) pipelines have to go through multiple countries en-route to the final destination, making them vulnerable to political squabbles and unrest, as we witness today in the case of Russian exports.
There are several choke-points in the world's shipping lanes for fossil fuels. The best-known of these is the Strait of Hormuz, which allows Iran to exert much influence. The second important choke-point is the Strait of Malacca, a source of tension between China and US allies in the region.
One of the charts shows that we will continue to rely to a great extent on oil and gas until the end of this century. New energy sources will expand gradually, assuming that problems with production, cost, and raw-materials they require are resolved. More on these topics next week.
[My Facebook post, containing the images in larger format]
(3) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran (last one for the 2021-2022 academic year): Dr. Nahid Pirnazar (UCLA; an expert on Judeo-Persian literature) spoke in Persian under the title "The Intellectual Heritage of Iranian Jews in Judeo-Persian." Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge; coordinator of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series) introduced the speaker and the discussant, Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (U. Maryland & UCLA), and moderated the Q&A session afterwards.
Dr. Pirnazar began by stating that she will discuss literary contributions in the Farsihood language (Persian, written with the Hebrew alphabet, augmented with special symbols to accommodate certain Persian sounds), not linguistic issues. The last image included in this report shows some of the correspondences between Hebrew letters and Persian letters/sounds.
Farsihood was developed because there were many Jews who knew Hebrew from reading the Torah, so, as the Persian script underwent transitions at the time, the use of the Hebrew alphabet provided a kind of familiarity and continuity for the intended audience. Farsihood literature remained obscure for a long time.
Farsihood was, of course, influenced by Iran's language and culture, but it also included some Islamic/Arabic terms, along with Hebrew/Jewish and Zoroastrian notions. Many of the mythical tales of Shahnameh also found their way into the Farsihood literature. It wasn't uncommon for Jewish poets, writing in Farsihood, to quote great Persian poets, such as Sa'adi, or to compose poems in their styles.
Dr. Pirnia read and interpreted verses and prose originally written in Farsihood, including passages describing Ardeshir's reign, the story of Yusuf and Zulaikha, and a short passage from the introduction to Simantov Melamed's Hayat al Ruh (The Eternity of the Soul).
Work on Farsihood literature has been going on for some time, but things are starting to get more interesting with new discoveries and interpretations. During the Q&A period, I pointed to some problems in terms of rhyme in the poems displayed by the speaker. Much work is being done, and remains to be done in the domain of cleaning up and correcting these works. Many Farsihood sources come to us from rare library copies, mostly in poor shape, with smudges, torn pages, and missing parts.
I also asked about possible discrepancies between historical accounts written in Persian and in Farsihood, in the same way that the story of Esther is told in different ways in Islamic and Jewish sources. Dr. Pirnia replied that the story of Esther is very real to Iranian Jews, but that it is considered a myth by others, despite its retelling in the Bible. Esther's tomb in the city of Hamadan, a Jewish sacred site, may in fact belong to some other queen.
This was a fascinating and eye-opening lecture for me. I look forward to examining Dr. Pirnazar's books.
[My Facebook post, containing the images in larger format]
2022/06/03 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The unbroken string of positive, encouraging fortune-cookie messages continues! [Center] Designers for Peace: Poster designed by Dr. Roshanak Keyghobadi, Assistant Professor at Farmingdale State College. [Right] The Age of AI, by Kissinger, Schmidt, and Huttenlocher (see the last item below).
(2) The amazing world of near-integers: From time to time, we run into an irrational number that is very close to a whole number. Here is an example: e^(π sqrt(163)) = 262,537,412,640,768,743.999,999,999,999
(3) Santa Barbara's housing market: A May 2022 advertising newsletter from SB Village Properties included the following stats on homes sold: Most expensive, $52 million; Least expensive, $820,000; Median price, $2.5 million; Average price, $4.35 million; Average days on market, 20 days.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- President Zelensky praises Elon Musk's Starlink for saving Ukraine from Russian propaganda.
- The Daily Show's bio of Tucker Carlson, the aristocrat pretending to be a champion of the working class.
- Here's a trick that helps you forget all the troubles that are bringing you down. [2-minute video]
- An old Russian film clip showing Tehran, ca. 1930. [5-minute video]
- Domino's pizza-delivery drone. [Video]
(5) White privilege: Trump Aide Peter Navarro was arrested at Nashville Airport for defying the January 6 Committee. He complained about being put in handcuffs and leg-irons. In a TV interview, he related that he has 4 years of life left according the life-expectancy charts and going to jail for a year would deprive him of 1/4 of his remaining time on Earth. Oh, the poor little White guy worries about being jailed for one year for the crime of insurrection! Hasn't he heard about how colored folks are killed during traffic stops, let alone how they are arrested or detained for petty crimes, such as passing a counterfeit $20 bill?
(6) Book review: Kissinger, Henry, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher, The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Eric Pollins, Little, Brown & Company, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, written by a former US Secretary of State, a technologist/philanthropist (who was affiliated with Google and Alphabet during 2000s & 2010s), and an MIT dean of computing who is also a corporate director, presents a high-level introduction to artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on political, social, and economic impacts, rather than on technical details. One may call it a geopolitical treatise on AI, which is seemingly targeted at politicians and business leaders.
Such a view is useful, even for a scientist like me, who can benefit from looking beyond academic research teams and technical aspects of innovation. Yet, I don't see how this book can enlighten the masses that don't already know a great deal about AI (and tech more generally). I was curious to learn how other readers have viewed this book, and, sure enough, there are low ratings based on superficiality, vagueness, and lack of new insights, alongside high ratings that cite informativeness, historical insights, and impactful premonition.
The second and third authors have the technical credentials to write about AI, whereas the first author's level of involvement is questionable. Kissinger's role here is reminiscent of Bill Clinton's in the novel The President Is Missing, which he wrote with the prolific thriller/mystery author James Patterson. At his advance age, Kissinger can barely put a couple of coherent sentences together when not reading from a script, so, very likely, a technology assistant did the work for him.
Recently, Kissinger opined that Ukraine should cede some territory to Russia in the interest of achieving peace. The equivalent of this "real-political" assessment for AI would be that we humans should accept some level of AI dominance in order to take advantage of useful services AI provides! Yet, the main message of the book is exactly the opposite. We are advised to keep tabs on AI and always have humans on the loop (supervising the process), if not in the loop (approving all decisions).
One point that the authors make forcefully is the possibility of AI gaining insights that are just beyond the human reach. This has already happened in chess, where new board configurations and move sequences overlooked by humans have been profitably exploited. Humans won't trust such insights, unless they are presented with justifications and roadmaps of how they were derived. Another intriguing thought pertains to the unforeseeable results of AI agents interacting with each other, as on a battlefield.
In one passage, after likening AI technology to nuclear arms, which are dangerous but their regulation has been somewhat successful, given the large footprint that makes covert testing and deployment rather difficult, the authors note that regulating AI via international treaties may prove impossible. Much of the value of AI arises from hidden features, whose disclosure would be tantamount to losing the edge they provide.
2022/06/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: A group of my college classmates (I was the photographer), ca. 1967. [Top center] New design for the American flag. [Top right] Chaos in the US Supreme Court: Civility seems to have melted away under John Roberts. [Bottom left & center] UCSB SAGE-Center talk by Steven Strogatz (see the last item below). [Bottom right] A small gesture: Wear orange June 3-5 to remind everyone of the death toll of gun violence.
(2) The Asch Experiments: Named after Polish-American psychologist Solomon Asch [1907-1996], the experiments measure the extent to which our desire for conformity (fitting in) motivates us to ignore the truth and go along with opinions we know to be wrong. [5-minute video]
(3) Indian parents sue their son for not giving them a grandchild six years after getting married: Iranian parents are upset they didn't think of filing such a lawsuit first!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Defining acronyms: GOP = Guns Over People
- Comedian Trevor Noah calls out the nonsense Republicans are promoting as causes of gun violence.
- British Museum head describes the historical significance of the clay object known as the Cyrus Cylinder.
- U. Central Florida offers an on-line Kurdish language course (Sorani or Central Kurdish) during fall 2022.
(5) "Salam Darmandeh": Protest Persian rap song, attacking Supreme Leader Khamenei and his supporters, who salute him with "Salam Farmandeh" ("Hello, Commander").
(6) "Synchronization in Nature": This was the title of today's inspiring UCSB SAGE-Center talk by Steven H. Strogatz (Professor of Mathematics, Cornell U.), famous for his ideas and results on "small-world networks," a Nature article of his on the topic having garnered ~50,000 citations. His 2003 book, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, is now on my to-read list. In addition to being a distinguished researcher, Strogatz excels in bringing the joy of math to the masses, in much the same way that Richard Feynman did for physics. I have read and reviewed two of his expository books, The Joy of x and Infinite Powers.
Today's talk consisted of three parts.
In Part 1, "Systems that Sync Themselves," Strogatz provided examples of systems showing spontaneous synchronization, including five metronomes in a viral YouTube video, London's Millennium Bridge swaying from side to side on its June 10, 2000, opening day, and male fireflies along the tidal rivers of Malaysia.
In Part 2, Strogatz discussed "The Simplest Model of Sync," essentially assuming complete connectivity in the associated graph model. Sync is a difficult problem to study mathematically, because it is a highly non-linear phenomenon. The notions of limited-cycle oscillation and the Kuramoto Model were presented. Mention was made of Dirk Brockmann's Web site and his "Ride my Kuramotocycle" interactive app that allows experimentation with the synchronization of phase-coupled oscillators.
In Part 3, entitled "What Happens on Networks?" Strogatz discussed synchronization under limited connectivity, which makes the problem even more messy. Whether or not sync is achieved depends on the minimum node degree. Researchers know that when the connectivity parameter μ crosses a certain threshold, spontaneous sync becomes inevitable. While we have upper and lower bounds on the value of μ, the gap [0.6838, 0.75] between the two bounds is yet to be closed.
During the Q&A period, I asked about the relation of the sync problem, as studied by him, to the old computer science "Firing Squad Synchronization Problem," where finite-state machines are designed so that they all enter the common "firing" state simultaneously, regardless of their initial states and system size. He said that he didn't quite know the relationship, but that sync does find practical applications in distributed systems.
2022/06/01 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] June is LGBTQ Pride Month: "The more I've been able to learn about gay rights and equal pay and gender equity and racial inequality, the more I've realized that it all intersects. You can't really pick it apart. It's all intertwined." ~ US soccer star Megan Rapinoe [Top center] Rainbows at Yosemites Falls, CA, USA. [Top right] One of the colorful paintings of the late Leonid Afremov (1955-2019). [Bottom left] Recycling is good: But dealing with the serious environmental challenges we face requires a lot more; it needs a circular economy with no waste. [Bottom center] Iranian soccer star Voria Ghafouri brings his daughter onto the field to send a message about banning women from sporting events. [Bottom right] Melanie Mitchell's book on artificial intelligence (see the last iten below).
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk for June 2022: Professor William Wang of UCSB's Computer Science Department will speak under the title "Self-Supervised Language-and-Vision Reasoning." Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 6:00 PM PDT, Rusty's Pizza, Goleta. [Register]
(3) Free summer cinema in Santa Barbara: Held at SB Courthouse Sunken Garden, Friday nights at 8:30 PM under the stars, the series extends from July 8 to August 26. UCSB students presenting valid IDs can watch the films two days earlier, on Wednesdays, at Campbell Hall.
7/08 "American Graffiti"; 7/15 "Dirty Dancing"; 7/22 "Thelma & Louise"; 7/29 "The Adventures of Priscilla"; 8/12 "Moonrise Kingdom"; 8/19 "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"; 8/26 "In the Heights: The Time Has Come"
(4) World Cup soccer: Ukraine overcame long odds to prevail 3-1 over the host Scotland. It will face Wales on June 5, to determine the team that will join England, USA, and Iran in the Qatar 2022 World Cup Group B. I am rooting for Ukraine! [8-minute highlights]
(5) Another assassination fatwa may be forthcoming: Iranian authorities are dissatisfied with the success of the movie "Holy Spider" at Cannes Film Festival (best-actress award for Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) and have likened it to the works of Salman Rushdie. The film is based on the story of a vigilante mass-murderer who hunted prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad and the real-life woman reporter who investigated the crimes. [Image]
(6) Today, I tried to walk home from UCSB via the gorgeous beach path: I was stopped by the high tide, being forced to walk up to the street level. Students are getting ready to leave town at the end of the academic year, hence many signs about available rentals. [Photos]
(7) Book review: Mitchell, Melanie, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Abby Craden, Melanie Mitchell, and Tony Wolf, Macmillan Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The book's contents are packaged in five parts (16 chapters), sandwiched between a prologue entitled "Terrified" and ~20 pages of notes. Here is the table of contents in brief:
Part I. Background (Chs. 1-3): The Roots of Artificial intelligence; Neural Networks and the Ascent of Machine Learning; AI Spring
Part II. Looking and Seeing (Chs. 4-7): Who, What, When, Where, Why; ConvNets and ImageNet; A Closer Look at Machines That Learn; On Trustworthy and Ethical AI
Part III. Learning to Play (Chs. 8-10): Rewards for Robots; Game On; Beyond Games
Part IV. Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Language (Chs. 11-13): Words, and the Company They Keep; Translation as Encoding and Decoding; Ask Me Anything
Part V. The Barrier of Meaning (Chs. 14-16): On Understanding; Knowledge, Abstraction, and Analogy in Artificial Intelligence; Questions, Answers, and Speculations
The author, who earned her PhD under Douglas Hofstadter, of the Godel, Escher, Bach fame, was attracted to computer science, despite having no background in it. She does a fine job of exposing AI's essence, main tools/methods, applications, and impact. She is particularly thorough in describing machine learning and the various forms it takes, weaving into the technical narrative interesting human stories about AI luminaries and their worst fears.
As I write this review, I am listening to another audiobook, The Age of AI: And Our Human Future (by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher). Mitchell's book has my highest recommendation, whereas The Age of AI is more hype than substance, apparently targeted at politicians and business leaders.
2022/05/31 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] America's gun culture: It's never too early to introduce a baby to machine guns! [Top center] Cartoons of the day: GOP's tough choice between guns and children! [Top right] Americans and their guns: Alarming images captured by Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: We have 3 squares and 2 line-segments, as shown. Find the measure of the angle alpha (credit: Mirangu.com). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Five circles of radius 2 are centered at the four vertices and center of a square of side length 5. Find the difference M – N of the two shaded areas (credit: @bilalsarimeseli). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the ratio of the areas of the yellow square and the green square.
(2) My IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Lecturer webinar: Here's the 91-minute recording of the historically-themed webinar entitled "Eight Key Ideas in Computer Architecture from Eight Decades of Innovation," presented on September 30, 2021.
(3) Good to see that the attitude "shut up and play basketball" no longer prevails: Steve Kerr, coach of NBA's Golden State Warriors, has had it with outdated gun laws and the resulting mass shootings.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Two brands of organic strawberries identified as the culprits in Hepatitis A outbreak in the US and Canada.
- Memes of the day: Outcome of the GOP economic policies, and the Second Amendment scorecard. [Images]
- Independent Persian reports that Instagram has deleted some content criticizing Iran's IRGC & Ali Khamenei.
- UCSB Jazz Ensemble at the Music Bowl on Tuesday 5/31: "The Girl from Ipanema." [8-minute video]
(5) Today's hot topics in computing, along with one-line definitions of jargon.
Computing (architectures, technologies, platforms)
- Cloud: Using a network of remote servers on the internet to store, manage, and process data
- Edge: Processing client data at the network's periphery, as close to the data source as possible
- Fog: Placing data, compute, storage, and apps somewhere between the data source and the cloud
- Neuromorphic: Designing computer systems modeled after the human brain and nervous system
- Quantum: Developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory
Data science: A scientific discipline dealing with knowledge and insights extraction from noisy data
Internet of things: Internet connectivity of everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data
Machine learning: Computer systems able to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions
- Reinforcement: The machine learns by getting positive/negative rewards for right/wrong decisions
- Supervised: Human supervisor feeds the algorithm information that facilitates the learning process
- Un- or self-supervised: The machine discovers patterns on its own and uses them for classification
Neural network (NN; shorthand for ANN)
- Artificial (ANN): Computing systems inspired by biological neural networks in animal brains
- Convolutional (CNN): A type of ANN specifically designed for image processing and recognition
- Deep (DNN): ANNs with increased number of hidden layers between input and output layers
- Feedforward (FNN): Any ANN wherein connections between the nodes do not form a cycle
- Recurrent (RNN): Any ANN with a directed or undirected cyclic path along a temporal sequence
[I will update this post, as other topics/terms come to my mind.]
2022/05/30 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Santa Barbara's "I Madonnari" Italian Street-Painting Festival: The annual Festival is held at the historic Santa Barbara Mission during the Memorial Day weekend. The photos in the middle row show some of the chalk art in early stages on Saturday, along with the artists, young and old. Also shown on the top right is Santa Barbara Mission's famous Rose Garden. Here's my 6-minute video tour from Saturday. Among the performers on the music stage were the talented Santa Barbara Piano Boys (Video 1; Video 2). The photos in the bottom row show more-or-less finished paintings on Monday. Here's my 6-minute video tour from Monday. The local Latin jazz band Mezcal Martini was one of the performers on the music stage (4-minute video).
(2) On this US Memorial Day, we honor the memory of those who fell to protect our freedom: Behind each loss or injury is a person, with interests and aspirations; a loved one to many. Kissing and hugging the flag and wrapping our misguided policies in it are cheap. Putting fewer of our soldiers in harm's way and doing something tangible for our veterans would be priceless!
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." ~ Mark Twain
(3) "The Geopolitics of Energy and Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable and Clean Energy": This is the title of a two-part presentation, in Persian, by Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U.), as part of the Zoom gatherings of the 1968 graduates of Tehran U. College of Engineering (Fanni'68). The first part will be on Sunday, June 5, 2022, 9:30 AM PDT (9:00 PM Iran time). Please contact me for the Zoom link, if interested.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- NRA convention speaker thanks Wayne LaPierre for all his thoughts & prayers after each mass shooting!
- New GOP credo: Life begins at conception and ends at elementary school.
- Did you know that Democrats grow fake meat in a "peach tree dish"? So says Marjorie Taylor Greene!
- After a few days of unseasonably-hot weather, I have prepared my courtyard for summer! [Photos]
- Math that amazes & delights: Periodic grid of cubes. [Credit: @HedronApp]
- From now on, taking of an earthling by aliens will be deemed a rescue operation instead of an abduction!
(5) Actress Zar Amir-Ebrahimi wins the best-actress award at Cannes Film Festival: She expresses concern for people of Abadan, who are mourning the loss of loved ones in the collapse of a high-rise building. It was indeed super-classy for Amir-Ebrahimi to show concern for hardships faced by the people who were complicit in destroying her acting career in Iran and forcing her into exile!
(6) Math puzzle: Draw a parallelogram ABCD. Consider points E & F on sides BC and CD, respectively. Given that each of the three triangles ABE, ADF, and CEF has area 1, find the area of the triangle AEF.
(7) Weeping for Abadan: The oldie song "Lab-e Karoun" from Abadan, Iran, was always associated with joy and dancing. This somber version of the song was performed to mark the anniversary of Khorramshahr's liberation from the invading Iraqi forces in the 1980s. Now, Abadanis are faced with another invading enemy force: The riot police sent by the Islamic government to suppress them, as they mourn and lick their wounds in the aftermath of a residential/commercial tower collapse, killing dozens. The riot police arrived in town before rescue teams. Ironically, this 2-minute ad for Metropol twin luxury towers ran on Abadan's state TV right until the collapse of the residential/commercial project, killing dozens.
2022/05/28 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Visual puzzle: Can you spot a butterfly, a bat, and a duck in this image? [Top center] Believe it or not: Charles Dickens read to Ada Lovelace, known as world's first programmer, while she was on her deathbed. And Florence Nightingale was a good friend of Ada. [Top right] Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center-left] Dr. Ammar Maleki's talk on measuring public opinions (see item 2 below). [Bottom center-right & right] Parastoo Abtahi's talk on improving haptics in VR (see item 3 below).
(2) "How Do Leading Methods Mislead? Measuring Public Opinions in Authoritarian Contexts": This was the title yesterday's Stanford U. webinar by Dr. Ammar Maleki (Tilburg U., Netherlands). Well-known as a pro-democracy advocate, Dr. Maleki is the author of From Civil Disobedience to Civil Misobedience, published in Persian (Az Nafarmani Madani Ta Badfarmani Madani).
Measuring public opinions is difficult everywhere, but it presents tougher challenges in authoritarian societies, particularly with regard to sensitive socio-political questions. Examples include asking about support of the Ukraine war in Russia or approval of President Raisi's policies in Iran. A phenomenon known as "preference falsification" is at play here.
polling organizations use a number of methods for face-to-face and phone interviews that have proven effective, based on experience, but these methods often fail in the case of sensitive topics. On-line surveys, which provide some anonymity, reduce self-censorship compared with face-to-face or phone surveys, but they suffer from self-selection and, thus, face the danger of not being representative. One can use a number of adjustments to improve the representativeness of on-line sampling. Internet penetration and widespread access to it, even in authoritarian societies, makes on-line surveys feasible, without worrying about unrepresentative samples due to access exclusion.
In the rest of his talk, Dr. Maleki presented results from a number of on-line surveys conducted by his team, comparing the results with those obtained via leading methods. He discussed how "multiple chain referral sampling" can be used for balancing and making a representative sample based on benchmarks (national census reports and Gallup survey data) and cross-checking the results with respect to various socio-economic factors, such as employment and income-level stats.
Dr. Maleki's work begins with the hypothesis that for non-sensitive questions, results from different surveys are in agreement. Examples of non-sensitive questions include asking participants about the importance of family, friends, or work. For a sensitive question, such as the importance of religion, a factor of 2+ difference was observed between results from various surveys.
(3) "From Haptic Illusions to Beyond-Real Interactions in Virtual Reality": This was the title of Parastoo Abtahi's PhD-defense talk at Stanford U. yesterday. Parastoo, whose father, Ebrahim, was a graduate student of mine decades ago, is headed to Princeton U. as a faculty member after graduation.
Virtual reality has been around for a long time, but only in recent years have we had VR headsets of sufficient quality to present a truly real experience to users. Even with recent advances, haptic rendering remains limited (vibration of a handheld object is really the only thing now), thus leaving a void for the sense of touch in VR. The goal of this thesis was to improve the sense of touch by providing a feel for textures and forces.
A possible approach is to bring a reasonably similar object to the user, as s/he reaches out to touch something. In her project, Parastoo used a drone to bring objects within the user's reach. In other experiments, a table-top robot was used for this purpose, but the limited movement speed for such a robot presented challenges that had to be overcome.
One helpful attribute of us humans is that our perception of touch is imperfect, so "haptic illusions" can be used to deceive us into believing that we are touching a sphere, say, whereas a digital approximation of the sphere is rendered. Another example is using somewhat different directions or sizes between the real objects touched and the experience of the virtual finger.
Beyond VR, one can use surreal experiences, such as increased size of our avatar (like what one experiences in a fantasy world at a theme park) or exaggerated motion speeds. These may run into human limitations, such as experiencing motion sickness, which must be resolved.
(4) Book review: Morgan, Marlo, Mutant Message Down Under, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Eliza Foss, Harper Audio, 2010. [My 2-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book has been characterized as a work of fiction by many reviewers who question the author's integrity. The bulk of reviews, however, are quite positive, earning the book an average of 3.8 stars on GoodReads, despite quite a few 1-star ratings. The author has admitted to "novelizing" her own experience.
Morgan uses the lifestyle of a remote tribe of Australia's nomadic Aboriginals, which she claims to have observed up-close during a 4-month walkabout through the Outback, to advocate for living with fewer worldly possessions and a smaller footprint on our fragile planet. This message resonates with me, regardless of whether the events described by the author are real or made-up.
Morgan tells us that she was summoned by the tribe to carry an important message to the world. The tribe described by Morgan is part of a 50,000-year-old culture that does not have a written or even formal spoken language, its members interacting primarily via gestures and mind-reading. They live in an environment with meager natural resources, when judged by our standards, yet they get by, always managing to find something to eat. More importantly, they nurture their environment, leaving some food for other creatures and making sure not to kill the sparse vegetation by over-harvesting. They cherish their wisdom, calling themselves "real people," in contrast to "mutant" humans.
Rather than continue with my description of other claims in Morgan's book, I think I can serve the readers of this review better by pointing them to the highly-critical review written by Chris Sitka, a white Australian woman with some knowledge of the Aboriginals. Sitka points to numerous factual errors and discrepancies in the book, ending her review thus: "In 1996 a group of Aboriginal elders, seriously disturbed by the book's implications, received a grant to travel to the States and confront Marlo Morgan about her book and to try to prevent a Hollywoodisation of it. ... This is very damaging to their very real struggle for survival."
P.S.: I learned about this book from its Persian translation by Elaheh Kianfar, under the title Lost Message (Payaam-e Gom-Gashteh, Nashr-e Aali-Tabaar, 2018).
2022/05/27 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Invisible casualties of war: When the Ukraine war is finally over, among its casualties will be tens of thousands of scarred-for-life children. [Center] Newsweek magazine's cover story: God forbid! [Right] Thomas Piketty's A Brief History of Equality (see the last item below).
(2) Have we already forgotten the massacre of 2nd-, 3rd- and 4th-graders in Texas? After each such tragedy, GOP politicians and NRA officials hide from us, until the event has been forgotten or another crisis has replaced it on the evening news. Keep the incident alive by repeatedly saying "never again"! Get involved in gun-control movements at the local level, to show the fake "pro-lifers" that you are the ones who truly value life.
(3) Fun with math: The equality sqrt(3 + 2 sqrt(2)) = 1 + sqrt(2) prompted me to derive similar equalities, in which a nested square-root expression equals a non-nested one. A simple generalization is sqrt(n + 1 + 2 sqrt(n)) = 1 + sqrt(n), which produces infinitely many examples.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- China & Europe lead the push to regulate AI: The US may come to regret inaction.
- Iran nuclear deal appears dead, as Biden leans toward keeping IRCG on the US foreign terrorist list.
- Efforts by many activists paid off and the friendly soccer match between Canada and Iran was cancelled.
- Iran seizes 2 Greek tankers in the Persian Gulf, days after Iranian oil cargo was confiscated near Greece.
- Today's America: Where it's easier to buy guns than baby formula!
- Performance of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" by an amateur singer and a one-man band.
(5) Campus housing project gets a key go-ahead: UCSB's Ocean Road workforce housing project, proposed as part of its 2010 Long-Range Development Plan, gains the approval of the UC Regents and will break ground in summer of 2023. The housing units will be located between the campus and the neighboring community of Isla Vista and constitute part of a plan to better integrate the campus with the residential neighborhood where many of our students live.
(6) Book review: Pagel, Mark D., Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind, W. W. Norton & Co., 2012. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this review on May 26, 2013 and posted it to GoodReads on May 26, 2022.
(7) Book review: Piketty, Thomas, A Brief History of Equality, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Fred Sanders, Harvard U. Press, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Piketty, a French economist, is the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century (my review). Capital and Piketty's new book have quite a bit of overlap, as the dangers of increasing inequality are discussed in both books. In Capital, Piketty argues that if wealth's rate of return exceeds an economy's growth rate, wealth-to-income ratio and inequality tend to rise. This is the normal state of capitalism, unless we intervene.
There's much disagreement among economists, but nearly all of them agree on a few tenets. No one questions the importance of well-defined property rights or the key role of incentives in economic growth and prosperity. The necessity of trading off growth for equality is another one of the points on which there is broad agreement. In capitalist societies, risk-takers are rewarded and thus get rich, as they should. So, some inequality is an inevitable part of capitalism. However, societies get in trouble when inequality crosses a certain threshold.
Piketty questions the centrality of growth to economic prosperity, favoring justice as the theme to be emphasized. He defends progressive taxation, with fairly high rates at the top of the income/wealth scale, as both desirable and necessary, challenging the view that high tax rates stifle innovation and productivity. Piketty reviews the rise of living standards around the world and traces the erratic path of inequality, falling for a while and then rising again.
Piketty passionately advocates for concrete steps to reduce inequality by instituting or strengthening programs that guarantee jobs, a minimum income, and a greener economy, through raising income and wealth taxes, including on large fortunes and inheritances. He also believes that employees should have more of a say in running corporations, as is done in parts of the German economy. To make this last proposal practical, he distinguishes between small and large businesses, with the voting power of owners declining, as the number of employees rises. He labels his proposed interventions "participatory socialism."
Unfortunately, as soon as the term "socialism" enters into the discussion, the ideas, worthy as they may be, become hard to sell. Even Europe's social democracies are starting to move away from socialism, as the hard-right gains more followers and power. Debate on the merits of free market (higher growth, better living standards) and government regulations (economic justice, equality) is not one to be resolved quickly, given its long history. Piketty argues that we better address the problem of inequality in short order, or an unpleasant social explosion awaits us.
2022/05/26 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Throwback Thursday: Scenes from the mistreatment of women Suffragists in the early 1900s, and a woman in a Marietta, Georgia, office using an IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine (ca. 1953). [Bottom left] Building collapse in Abadan, Iran, leaves dozens dead and scores trapped: The government's first reaction was to send the riot police, not rescue teams. [Bottom center] A foggy day on the UCSB campus (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Wil Wheaton's book talk (see the last item below).
(2) Yesterday on the UCSB campus: This quarter, while on sabbatical leave, I visit the campus once a week, usually on Wed., when I hold an office hour, attend the noon concert at the Music Bowl (UCSB Gospel Choir performed), and participate in occasional faculty meetings. My summer routine will start in about 3 weeks.
(3) Mental illness doesn't kill, guns do: America doesn't have a lot more mentally ill people than other advanced countries, but it does have a lot more guns. [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCSB returns to indoor masking policy, beginning May 27, 2022.
- Geometric animation: The infinite variety of symmetric patterns that arise as we vary the size of the circles.
- OST's a cappella performance of the theme from "Mission Impossible." [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2020: Remembering and honoring the life of my cousin Farkhondeh.
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2016: Iran's novel extra-judicial tools to ban or restrict the regime's critics.
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2013: Hardware limitations helped NASA's Space Shuttle program succeed.
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2011: The genius of Persian scientist, philosopher, & poet Omar Khayyam.
- Facebook memory from May 26, 2020: A father beheads his 14-year-old daughter and then mourns her loss!
(5) "Still Just a Geek" (an important talk and book intro): This was the title of yesterday's Semel Institute book talk by Wil Wheaton, celebrated actor from "Stand by Me," "Star Trek," and "The Big Bang Theory," based on his book, Still Just a Geek—An Annotated Memoir, that tackles mental health face-on and is a sequel to his 2004 book, Just a Geek. Wil Wheaton has charted a career course unlike anyone else, and has emerged as one of the most popular and well-respected names in science fiction, fantasy, and pop culture. Katrina DeBonis, MD (UCLA), joined Wil Wheaton in conversation.
Wheaton began by acknowledging that he felt uneasy promoting his book, as our nation reels from the second mass-shooting in less than a week. In his new book, which has been characterized as equal parts funny and poignant, Wheaton opens up about love, his mental health challenges of depression, anxiety, trauma, confronting tragedy, and the worst parts of himself, while celebrating all the strange, awful, and beautiful adventures in between.
Wheaton related that he has come to accept that his dad never loved him (regularly humiliating him in front of others and laughing in his face) and that his mom placed him in a co-dependent relationship to satisfy her own ambitions. He became a drunk to escape, later seeking therapy. He really could not talk to his parents, so he put his feelings in an e-mail to them. The e-mail went unanswered for months. He then decided that, even though not having parents sucks and leaves a hole in one's life, he would be better off without his parents. He was lucky to have a support network, including his wife, his sister, and adult cast members of "Star Trek" for love and guidance.
Wheaton's final advice was that even though recovering from mental-health challenges is hard work, you are absolutely worth the effort. You deserve to feel happy, to feel the sun on your face, and to experience love. It is important for traumatized individuals to work on themselves and their parenting skills to break the cycle of generational trauma. It's also important to do what you love. Wheaton himself gave up acting and the entertainment industry to become a writer and story-teller.
2022/05/24 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Eighteen-year-old with handgun and AR-15 assault rifle kills 19 in Texas elementary school: Another hoax by the liberals who want to take your guns away? Thoughts and prayers, but no legislation or regulation! The uniquely American mass-shooting phenomenon, complete with TV coverage, began in 1966, when a man climbed the U. Texas tower and mowed down the students below with a variety of guns, having previously killed his wife and mother. The incident is referred to as The University of Texas tower shooting.
(2) On yet another White House memoir: I don't trust anyone who slams Jared Kushner as "shrewd and calculating" (from Kellyanne Conway's "tell-some" memoir) but throws not a single word of criticism at Donald Trump, who brought his sleazebag son-in-law into the White House.
(3) On why Iranian Muslims recite a prayer when the lights come on: Backward mullahs and the superstition they promoted led to the rejection of the first electric light bulbs to arrive in Iran. Years later, a clever soul decided to electrically illuminate the tomb of Imam Reza in Mashhad, in order to shed evil spirits from electric lightbulbs. When the lights were turned on for the first time, those present recited a prayer, which became a custom that is still followed. [4-minute video, narrated in Persian]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- So, you are pro-life? Lives are saved by banning assault weapons, not books!
- Russian UN-Geneva diplomat resigns in protest: "Never have I been so ashamed of my country."
- Investigation report: Southern Baptist leaders routinely silenced sexual-abuse survivors.
- Massive sinkhole in China reveals hidden forest with ancient trees growing at its floor.
- Under-construction building collapses in Abadan, Iran: At least 5 killed & scores injured or trapped.
- As much as students crave stronger connections with their professors, office-hour visits remain infrequent.
- Facebook memory from May 24, 2014: My thoughts on the day after the Isla Vista mass-shooting tragedy.
- Facebook memory from May 24, 2012: When Google removed the name "Persian Gulf" from its maps.
(5) Even at this early development stage, self-driving cars are safer than human-driven ones: The press sensationalizes every autonomous vehicle crash, while crashes of human-driven cars rarely make the news.
(6) Finally, a glimmer of good news on improving gender diversity in computer science education: There is enrollment growth across all degree levels. The share of women students edged upward, from 21.5% last year to 22.7% in the 2021 Taulbee Survey.
(7) "Realizing Women, Peace and Security in Ukraine": A program sponsored by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security. "Despite bearing the brunt of the conflict, women peacebuilders and women human rights defenders are at the frontlines, and we are seeing that clearly in Ukraine." [Recorded virtual event, featuring 6 distinguished panelists and grassroots women leaders: 97-minute video]
(8) Book review: Levitt, Steven D. and Stephen J. Dubner, Think Like a Freak, unabridged audiobook on 5 CDs, read by the second author, Harper Audio, 2014. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[I wrote this review on May 24, 2016, and posted it to GoodReads on May 24, 2022.]
(9) Persian poetry from a Facebook memory: I posted a wonderful verse 12 years ago, not knowing at the time the verse's Iranian poet. The verse has assumed the status of a proverb, advising that one should seek permanent remedies, not band-aid solutions. [Read more about the poet, including a few sample verses]
2022/05/23 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Quote of the day: "My Rira! Before leaving this Earth, one must leave signs, so humans know we lived here and the evilest ones on Earth killed us. On this May 23, when you would have turned 12. I love you." ~ Hamed Esmaeilion, who lost his wife & daughter in the downing of Flight #PS752. [Top center] Optical illusion: Circles? [Top right] Newsweek magazine's cover feature: A new age of big storms threatens coastal cities like New York—and we're not ready! [Bottom left & center] Colloquium on student activism at Iran's AMUT/SUT (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Meme of the day.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Efforts by US women national soccer team bore fruit with the signing of an equal-pay agreement.
- Facebook memory from May 23, 2014: We may be too stupid to recognize a super-intelligent alien we meet.
- Facebook memory from May 23, 2010: Many of our fears are based on emotions, not logic.
- Facebook memory from May 23, 2010: From the fun of scientific research to the grunt work of applications.
(3) Facebook memory from May 23, 2020: Today is the 8th anniversary of 6 young souls and their dreams being erased from this world by an evil mass shooter, purportedly because his sexual needs were unmet by women who had higher standards than this lowlife. It's difficult to imagine what the six victims could have contributed to our world and how their family members & other loved ones are dealing with the empty spots in their hearts. Mass shooting is a uniquely American phenomenon. Yes, it does happen elsewhere, but not at the horrifying rate we experience it in the US. Shame on us for not dealing with this problem, among whose main causes is easy access to guns, including military-style weapons of mass murder.
(4) "Revolutionary Engineers: Learning, Politics, and Activism at Arya-Mehr University of Technology, 1966-1979": This was the title of today's mixed, in-person/on-line, MENA Faculty Colloquium at Northwestern University in which three speakers outlined some aspects of a broad research project they are conducting on student activism in the decades leading to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
- Dr. Sepehr Vakil (Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences, School of Education & Social Policy, Northwestern U., and Faculty Affiliate, Middle East & North African Studies Program) presented an overview of the research project, along with a brief history of Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology (AMUT/SUT) and its place in Iran. AMUT was established in 1966, with the Shah himself acting as the honorary Chancellor, appointing "presidents," formally referred to as "Vice Chancellors," to run the University's affairs. Mohammad-Ali Mojtahedi was the founding Vice-Chancellor, with philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr becoming the University's second Vice-Chancellor. The MIT-educated Nasr set out some conditions about prioritizing Islamic culture, that the supposedly-secular Shah accepted. Nasr was suspicious of the west and of science & technology. Later, AMUT added a second campus in the central city of Esfahan.
- Dr. Mina Khanlarzadeh (Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Education & Social Policy, Northwestern U.; PhD, Columbia U.) spoke about the experience of women students at AMUT/SUT. Revolutionary students viewed the increased presence of female students as a government conspiracy to "soften" the guerilla-like male students. In reality, many female students were also revolutionaries. In the revolutionary climate on campus, love was forbidden: You shall love the revolutionary cause, not another individual. Once joining the revolutionary cause, a student had a life expectancy of ~ 6 years. Students were chided, put on trial, and, in one case, killed for entering romantic relationships. Women tried to look like revolutionaries, so feminine fashions and make-up became taboo. Some began to don headscarves, which symbolized resistance to the regime.
- Dr. Mahdi Ganjavi (Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Education & Social Policy, Northwestern U.; PhD, U. Toronto) began by noting that the history of student activism was suppressed by the Pahlavi regime and only selectively told by the Islamic regime, so there is much to explore. Student activism was a problem, not just for SAVAK, but also for the American Embassy. Briefly, student activism in Iran began in the mid-1940s, underwent suppression in the aftermath of the 1953 coup, became radicalized in the 1960s, and developed into a major social & political force in the 1970s. Some of this history is told in Shahrzad Mojab's book, Iran Through the Prism of Student Movement. Students had developed clandestine ways of reproducing and distributing pamphlets. At times, groups of faculty members joined in supporting the students and their demands. In the last two years before the Islamic Revolution, the government tried to dissolve AMUT and transfer all operations to the Esfahan campus, where students would be easier to control.
The photo showing AMUT's set-up to accept applications from incoming students, even though the government had indicated that there would be no new admissions at the Tehran campus, brought back a lot of memories for me. I was secretary of AMUT's Faculty Council at the time and signed the declaration of student admission, which was distributed to all major dailies in Tehran. I had a few tense weeks after that, expecting SAVAK to show up at my door, but, I guess, the Shah's regime was occupied with bigger problems at the time. I mentioned this fact during the Q&A period and offered to help the project advance to the extent that I can, given that the circumstance of my departure from Iran did not allow me to take along many documents and my memory may not help me reconstruct all the events after more than five decades.
2022/05/22 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Humor: Venn diagram for BAT, MAN, and WOM. [Center] Mikhal Dekel's Tehran Children (see the next item below). [Right] The Beautiful poetry of Donald Trump (see the last item below).
(2) Book review: Sears, Rob, The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump, Canongate Books, 2017.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
It's not difficult to write satire about Donald Trump, as he provides you with ample source material. This is why comedians and late-night talk-show hosts thrived during his presidency. Often, simply reading his many tweets (before he was banned from the platform for emitting dark, dangerous tweets, rather than the usual idiotic ones) could be interpreted as satire.
What Sears has done is somewhat different. He has taken snippets of Trump's words, rearranging and mixing them to produce text that can pass as poetry, at least in the modern sense of the term. With this exercise, Sears may have shown us "a hidden dimension of Donald Trump," unearthing "a trove of beautiful verse that was just waiting to be discovered." An example of the resulting poems, "I am the least racist person there is," is recited in this YouTube video.
GoodReads user Harrison recommends this book to anyone who enjoys satire, commenting: "Folks, this book is great. These poems are fantastic. That I can tell you. And I am really smart. Believe me, I know words. I know the best words. Everyone agrees. That's a true fact. ... Trump is poetic. So poetic, with tweets. It's tremendous, what Sears did. Crooked Hillary uses too many words in her books. Far too many words. You just can't trust her. Too many words to trust."
(3) Hate speech isn't just harmless words: It is pure evil that can lead impressionable or mentally unstable people to pure-evil acts. [Four pages from a feature in People magazine]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The term for living creatures who aren't permitted to control their own reproduction: "Livestock"
- Russian state media show videos of Fox's Tucker Carlson as part of their propaganda against the US.
- Official music video: Jennifer Lopez performs "Let's Get Loud" (from July 2020).
- Facebook memory from May 22, 2013: When Wolf Blitzer asked an atheist whether she thanked the Lord.
- Facebook memory from May 22, 2011: My daughter's timeline of Iran's recent history and her dad's life.
- Facebook memory from May 22, 2010: A Persian poem of mine, with a special message in its initials.
(5) Book review: Dekel, Mikhal, Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book's Israeli-born author learned in 2007, while working at City College of New York with colleague Salar Abdoh, that far from being a German sympathizer, Iran actually tried to save its Jews, whose roots went back many centuries (and had, therefore, fully assimilated into the Iranian society), from Hitler's wrath.
Even more, Iran provided shelter to about 1000 Jewish children from Poland, who became known as "Tehran Children," until they could be moved to Israel. Dekel came to realize that her father Hannan, her aunt Rivka, and their cousin Noemi were among Tehran Children; up to that point, she had thought of her father as a Tehran Child, not as a Holocaust survivor. Furthermore, she had thought of Tehran as something that helped define her father, and not as an actual place. In her words, "Little has been written on this history ... in part because for a long time, and despite decades of Holocaust research and a boom of Holocaust stories in popular culture, the history of those who fled the Nazis into the Soviet Union and the Middle East still did not fall under the category of 'Holocaust history.' And so I began to write it."
Dekel's telling of the story of Tehran Children isn't just about one family, or even one ethnic group. It is a timely reminder of the plight of all refugees fleeing war zones and ethnic cleansing throughout history.
2022/05/21 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The first 262,144 bits in binary representation of π, depicted in a 512 × 512 bit-map, with 0 and 1 appearing as black and white pixels, respectively. There are several variants of this representation, including a spaghetti-like pattern resulting from blurring the image and increasing its contrast. [Top center] Schrodinger's cat escapes the box and brings uncertainty to time! [Top right] Gun-lover's Bible: This gun hidden in a Bible was made for Francesco Morozini (1619-1694), the Doge of Venice. The owner could pull the silk bookmark to shoot, while the book was closed. [Bottom left] Math puzzle (credit: Mirangu.com): A square is divided by 3 line-segments, as shown. If the red and blue areas are equal, what is the ratio a/b? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: The large square is 2 × 2, centered at P, and the small square is 1 × 1. What is the perimeter of the shaded region? [Bottom right] This Will Not Pass (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Workplace mass shooting in Iran: A fired employee of Mostazafan Foundation kills 3 colleagues and himself.
- Facebook memory from May 20, 2015: On wanna-be FB friends with fake names and nearly-blank pages.
- Facebook memory from May 21, 2020: There's no woman in this picture, or is there?
- Facebook memory from May 21, 2019: Iranian-Americans opposing the mullahs are still very divided.
- Facebook memory from May 21, 2017: Young Iranian couple performing an Azeri song.
- Facebook memory from May 21, 2014: Sangak-bread bakers dance for joy, which isn't authorized in Iran.
(3) Book review: Martin, Jonathan and Alexander Burns, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future, unabridged 15-hour audiobook, read by Dennis Boutsikaris, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
By now, the routine is familiar: A reporter or a team of reporters has some juicy bits of information about Trump and his cronies. They hold on to the info, until they have packaged it with hundreds of pages of material that we already know, to turn it into a hot-selling book. This is a highly inefficient way of disseminating information, and it is also immoral. Reporters have a duty to share important information with the public right away, the only exceptions being when someone's life or national security would be endangered by disclosing the information. Authors of nearly all recent books about Trump are guilty of monetizing sensitive bits of information by hiding them, until their books are announced.
As a long-time member of the academia, I recognize the process described above as resembling something we have come to call "the least publishable unit." Here is an over-simplified description of the trend. Upon the completion of a research project, the findings are chopped up into small pieces, with each piece packaged with known results and filler material to produce a research paper. Thus, results that could have been presented in one publication appear in a dozen or more, contributing to a mind-numbing information explosion. Researchers aren't the only ones to blame; the academic rewards system is also at fault.
Martin & Burns present an account of an 18-month crisis in American democracy, beginning with Trump's election-hoaxes in the second half of 2020 and ending with the first year of Biden's presidency, during which Trump continued pushing lies about the 2020 election and kept undermining his successor in the White House. A big part of the story is, of course, the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and those who aided and abetted the rioters. Trump continues to claim that the patriot rioters are being treated unfairly, promising to consider pardoning them if he returns to the White House.
A second big chunk of the story is the behind-the-scenes struggles of Biden and his team in the choice of a running-mate, keeping the left wing of the party in check, and efforts, largely unsuccessful, to bring back bipartisanship, which has been dying a slow death in recent years. Just as "mainstream" Republicans despise and are fearful of Trumpism, establishment Democrats feel sabotaged by the two extremes within their party: The progressive wing, flanked by "The Squad," and the "moderates" like Joe Manchin (who has entertained the idea of leaving the Democratic party to caucus with the Republicans) and Krysten Sinema (another Republican in Democrat clothing, who is very proud of her cleavage and its effect on uptight GOP men). And, to be sure, there is always Senator Lindsey Graham to ridicule, with ample justification.
The most-shocking revelations in the book come from recorded private conversations of top Republicans, including sound bytes in which Kevin McCarthy says, on January 10, 2021, that he had considered asking Trump to resign, because his second impeachment resolution was likely to pass. While McCarthy continues to stand by Trump in public statements and appearances, privately he has admonished the former president and indicated that he is responsible for violence on January 6.
I, like many other Americans, am addicted to reading books about Trump. The fact that each additional book offers only a minimal amount of new information does not deter me, given the importance of understanding and foiling Trumpism. After so many books on Trump, an overall understanding of what went wrong is still lacking. Perhaps the forthcoming report of the January 6 Select Committee will shed more light on what is ailing our increasing-divided country.
2022/05/19 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Throwback Thursday: Visiting the tomb of Hafez in 1976, with computer pioneer Prof. Maurice Wilkes. He was the keynote speaker of a symposium we held at Tehran's Arya-Mehr U. Technology. On the right, you see the exquisite symmetry and colors of the ceiling in Hafez's tomb. [Top center] The 10-vertex, degree-3 Petersen graph (see the next item below). [Bottom left & right] Math puzzles: Within a regular decagon, the red square has area 1. What are the areas of the other two squares? The puzzle on the right is similar, but with triangles, instead of squares. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: The first three equations can be used to find x, y, and z, but, as is the case for nearly all puzzles, there is a shortcut.
(2) Canadian activists demand the cancellation of a friendly soccer match with Iran: They deem such a match inappropriate, given the many Canadian victims of the downing of flight #PS752 and Iran's restrictions on women playing sports and on entering stadiums as spectators.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Why aren't Taliban leaders sanctioned? They have broken every promise they made on women's rights.
- Drug-smuggling tunnel, connecting a warehouse to Mexico, discovered in San Diego.
- Critic vs. critique: A critic is a person; a critique is a piece of work, an in-depth evaluation of a subject.
- Washington Irving: "Great minds have purpose, others have wishes."
- Anonymous quote: "The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them."
- Facebook memory from May 19, 2019: One of Sa'adi's poems that has assumed the status of a proverb.
(4) Fun mathematical fact: The minimum number of vertices for a graph of girth 5 and degree 3 is 10, corresponding to the Petersen graph. The girth of an undirected graph is defined as the length of the shortest cycle within it. The Petersen graph has a host of other interesting properties, including being a Moore graph.
(5) The Jewish journalist who interviewed Iran's Raisi: Well, it's complicated! At the time of the interview, she was a Shi'i Muslim, later denouncing her adopted faith and returning to her Jewish roots as an atheist.
(6) Jabbar Baghchehban [1886-1966]: Mirza Jabbar Asgar oglu Asgarzadeh, aka Jabbar Baghtchehban, was an influential Iranian credited with establishing the first kindergarten and the first deaf school in Tabriz. He was also the inventor of Persian language cued speech. [6-minute video, narrated in Persian]
(7) Freudian slip: Intending to condemn the Ukraine war, former President George W. Bush calls the Iraq war unjustified. He then jokes about the mistake, something that the families of US servicemen and Iraqis who died in the war can't possibly consider funny! [NPR story]
(8) In Iran, sports, like everything else, are politicized: Athletes who toe the regime's line prosper and those who take the people's side are sidelined. Showing or broadcasting the picture of popular soccer player Voria Ghafouri has been banned by the mullahs. [Persian tweet]
(9) The vibration-detection capability of quantum communication: Twin-field quantum key distribution offers the byproduct of detecting the tiniest vibrations in the ground, useful for landslide & quake prediction.
2022/05/18 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] IEEE CCS technical talk by Dr. Behrooz Parhami (see the last item below). [Bottom left & right] Today's World Music Series noon concert: UCSB Gamelan Ensemble (2-minute video). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: What fraction of the big square's area is covered by the four small squares?
(2) The world is showing some movement in the direction of reason: Hezbollah loses its parliamentary majority in Lebanon. US Representative Madison Cawthorn loses his primary race in NC. Too early to celebrate, though, as several Trump-backed candidates either ran unopposed or prevailed in hard-fought primary races.
(3) "Revolutionary Engineers: Learning, Politics & Activism at Aryamehr University of Technology, 1966-1979": In this Northwestern U. MENA faculty curriculum, Sepehr Vakil, Mina Khanlarzadeh, and Mahdi Ganjavi will discuss "STEM education between a coup and a revolution." Monday, May 23, 2022, 10:30 AM PDT. [Register]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Finland and Sweden end decades of neutrality by formally applying to join NATO.
- Beautiful music: Sonbol Taefi and Elika Mahony perform "Make Haste to Love." [4-minute video]
- The cognitive effort of running a household is as intense as running a Fortune 500 company.
- Persian poetry: Recitation of a poem, attributed to Mehdi Maleki. [1-minute video]
- This is how a stunt-double man and woman celebrate their union! [1-minute video]
- Dancing is an integral part of the Persian culture: In Tajikistan, even the president shows his moves!
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Tonight, in an in-person event with 15 attendees, held at the Calle Real Rusty's Pizza in Goleta, Dr. Behrooz Parhami (Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UCSB) spoke under the title "Hybrid Digital-Analog Number Representation in Computing and in Nature," a last-minute substitute talk due to illness of the originally-scheduled speaker.
The discovery that mammals use a multi-modular method akin to residue number system (RNS), but with continuous residues or digits, to encode position information led to the award of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine. After a brief review of the evidence in support of this hypothesis, and how it relates to RNS, Dr. Parhami enumerated the properties of continuous-digit RNS, and discussed results on the dynamic range, representational accuracy, and factors affecting the choice of the moduli, which are themselves real numbers. He then took a step back and briefly explored hybrid digital-analog number representations and their robustness and noise-immunity advantages more generally. He concluded with suggestions for further research on important open problems in the domain of hybrid digital-analog number representation and processing.
Speaker's technical bio: Behrooz Parhami (PhD, UCLA 1973) is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and former Associate Dean for Academic Personnel, College of Engineering, at University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches and does research in the field of computer architecture: more specifically, in computer arithmetic, parallel processing, and dependable computing. A Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IET and British Computer Society, and recipient of several other awards (including a most-cited paper award from J. Parallel & Distributed Computing), he has written six textbooks and more than 300 peer-reviewed technical papers. Professionally, he serves on journal editorial boards (including for 3 different IEEE Transactions) and conference program committees, and he is also active in technical consulting.
[IEEE CCS: Event page; Technical Talks page] [Speaker's: Web site; Publications page]
2022/05/17 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] I learned about this exhibition of art by Kamran Khavarani too late to attend the opening reception on May 14, 2022. Will definitely make plans to visit some time before its end on June 17. [Top center] Protests against soaring food prices continue in Iran, with government crackdown and Internet outages spreading. This video shows an unarmed old man brutally beaten & protesters shot at. [Top right] I'm now ready for summer-like weather: After a few hot days, I was motivated to clean my courtyard and patio furniture for use in the coming months. The new umbrella, ordered on-line, replaces the one that broke in last week's sustained high winds. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the large circle's area is shaded blue? [Bottom center] Mathematical curiosity: Plot of the function y = x sin(1/x). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the ratio of the diameters of the two circles and the ratio of orange and blue areas.
(2) Many Web sites collect everything you type, even before you hit submit: The data collection is usually done by third-party software components, including those supplied by the Russian tech company Yandex.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- President Biden & Dr. Jill Biden visit Buffalo, NY, to honor the victims of a racially-motivated mass murder.
- Hezbollah suffers major electoral defeat in Lebanon.
- How racists influence society: Surges in Google searches for "Replacement Theory," and the instigators.
- Math puzzle: If x + 1/x = 1, what is x^29 + 1/x^89?
- Facebook memory from May 16, 2014: The world has its ups and downs, don't worry (Hafez verse).
- Facebook memory from May 17, 2011: On wife-beating in Islamic societies.
(4) Brain-computer interfaces come of age: Dennis DeGray, paralyzed since 2006, has regained a semblance of control over his body via a brain-computer interface (BCI). Implanted in 2016, BCI enables DeGray to move a cursor on a computer screen by thought, via machine-learning algorithms. DeGray has learned to control videogames, robotic limbs, and a simulated aerial drone.
(5) Until further notice, down with liberalism: In this Persian article, Mehdi Tadayyoni writes that Iran cherry-picks some liberal economic principles, such as removal of subsidies, which recently led to skyrocketing prices for essential goods, when they benefit the government, while ignoring other tenets of liberalism. Heavy tariffs on car imports is an example of the latter, which has led to poor-quality domestically-produced cars selling at higher prices than luxury cars in other countries. A similar kind of cherry-picking is occurring in the US: Certain personal freedoms, such as owning guns and spewing hateful speech are honored, while others, such as women's choice and right to vote, are curtailed.
(6) Iran's soccer shenanigans: I have written before about how FIFA is complicit in Iran's repression of women, who are not allowed to attend sporting events.
For many years, FIFA has been threatening Iran with sanctions if the ban on women's attendance was not removed, but the threats never had any teeth. Iran would remove some of the restrictions in a couple of matches, assigning a small section of a large soccer stadium to women and selling the tickets to women linked to the government, so technically satisfying FIFA's requirement of not banning women.
Now, in response to the latest FIFA threat ahead of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the government has announced that, until further notice, league matches will be held with no spectators, citing the spread of COVID-19 infections as a reason! As we say in Persian, "khar khodeti"!
2022/05/15 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The Scaligero Castle is a fortress built in the 14th century in Sirmione, Italy. [Top center] China history: Gilded medallion with a dragon & amethyst spheres (Qing Dynasty, 1736-1795). [Top right] Inverted tower: Initiation Wells, Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra, Portugal. [Bottom left] Historical document: Mahatma Gandhi's 1939 letter to Adolf Hitler. [Bottom center] The first picture of the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is the result of 10 years of work. [Bottom right] UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Talk by Dr. Mina Kalantarzadeh (see the last item below).
(2) Saying that a child of rape or incest turned out okay, so we must force women to carry such children to term, is like saying a driver survived a head-on collision, so we must have more head-on collisions.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The on-line data detective tracking Vladimir Putin's alleged atrocities in Ukraine and elsewhere.
- Iran plunges into darkness again, as the regime cuts Internet access to hide its massacre of street protesters.
- Iranian women continue to defy compulsory hijab laws and saying no to the Islamic Republic. #No2IR
- The underwater canyon off the coast of the Persian Gulf in Iran. [Tweet]
(4) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Dr. Mina Khanlarzadeh (Northwestern U.) spoke in Persian under the title "The Performance of Female Masculinity in Lalehzari Music." Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge; coordinator of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series) introduced the speaker and moderated the Q&A session afterwards. Monday, at 3:00 PM, Dr. Khanlarzadeh will present the same lecture in English.
Men performing as women used to be quite common throughout the world, in large part due to misogyny and restrictions on women appearing in public. So, I was intrigued by the notion of women performing as men, effectively turning the tables.
In the three decades preceding Iran's Islamic Revolution, the Lalehzari (or kucheh-bazari) musical genre, which was heavily influenced by Arabic music, became popular among Iran's underclass, with performers often coming from the same underclass. Characterized by the mainstream culture as debauchery, even criminality, and lacking social consciousness, Lalehzari music was performed in theaters/cabarets/cafes for very specific audiences and was shunned by Iran's radio or TV programs.
The women involved in such performances were neither victims nor lesbians. Rather, they found performing as men empowering. The men they depicted were super-masculine, uneducated "laat" types or generous-to-a-fault "mashtis." These two masculine archetypes were in opposition to "fokolies" (those wearing suits and ties), who were viewed as self-centered and not into helping others or defending their friends. Many of these women were not considered beautiful per Hollywood-dictated norms, yet they were quite attractive to their audiences.
These women performers formed a kind of sisterhood, meeting weekly to compare notes about the fights they got into or acts of generosity they committed. Those more successful as Lalehzari performers were involved in charitable acts, such as adopting and raising children or giving alms to the poor. Critics of these women viewed them as retrograde and belonging to the past, whereas to their fans and audiences, they represented modern, take-charge women.
Throughout her presentation, Dr. Khanlarzadeh played short clips of music from the 1960s & 1970s to illustrate various points, including the fact that, far from being sexualized and objectified by the entertainment industry, these women wielded a great deal of power that actually threatened some among their male audiences.
2022/05/14 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Grand reopening of UCSB's North Campus Open Space: After 10 years of restoration work in the space formerly occupied by a golf course, UCSB officially opened the space to the public this morning. The area's plants and wildlife were featured in stations positioned around the Mesa Trail, where visitors could collect stickers to receive a T-shirt. Included in the photos above are a station highlighting native vegetation and Chumash history and an overlook sponsored & staffed by Audubon Society.
(2) Health organizations fear effects of abortion ruling: The medical journal Lancet has published an editorial that asks: "What kind of society has the USA become when a small group of Justices is allowed to harm women, their families, and their communities that they have been appointed to protect?"
(3) Musk puts the Twitter deal on hold: The reason he cites is that he has discovered a lot of bot accounts, something that everyone already knew! The true reason is that he realized he was overpaying, given that Twitter's value, like those of other tech companies, has been sinking in recent days.
(4) Math puzzle: Can you cut a regular hexagon into 5 pieces, so that the pieces can be rearranged to form a square? The solution to this puzzle was first published in 1901.
(5) The mysterious disappearance of a revolutionary mathematician: "While living in an internment camp in Vichy France, Alexander Grothendieck was tutored in mathematics by another prisoner, a girl named Maria. Maria taught Grothendieck, who was twelve, the definition of a circle: all the points that are equidistant from a given point. The definition impressed him with 'its simplicity and clarity,' he wrote years later. ... In 1970, Grothendieck abruptly left. He left the I.H.E.S., he left the twelve to sixteen hours a day of thinking about math, he left his wife and his three children. His work on the Weil conjectures was not yet complete: his theory had solved only three of the four conjectures. His stated reason for leaving was that he had found out that five per cent of the I.H.E.S.'s funding was coming from the French ministry of defense. But those who knew him say they felt that this could have been resolved and was not the real reason."
(6) Racist, anti-Semite mass-shooter kills 10 (9 of them black) at a Buffalo supermarket: The shooter's 180-page manifesto leaves no doubt the attack was White-Supremacist terrorism.
2022/05/13 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Forum on freedom to write (see the last item below). [Top center] Message in a bottle: High-tech version, involving not a one-page note, but many gigabytes of data! [Top right] Humor: As we approach graduation season, here's a guide to academic regalia. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: In this diagram containing a rectangle and a half-circle, compute the area of the green region (credit: @0y6tr4). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the green rectangle. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the area of the green circle, given that the orange rectangle is 1-by-2.
(2) Reports from Iran indicate that security forces have been shooting street protesters in the Persian-Gulf port of Mahshahr: Cutting of Internet access in the area signals plans of even more-violent crackdowns.
(3) The sad state of women's rights in Iran: I stand with Iranian women against systematic misogyny, including cyber-attacks disrupting the social-media accounts of feminists and women's-rights activists.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The author who invented the fictional Gilead is alarmed by the US Supreme Court's efforts to make it real.
- A new slogan for the US Republican party: Make America Gilead Again!
- Iran's cyber-army has targeted feminist & women's-rights Instagram accounts with coordinated attacks.
- As subsidies are abolished and prices of basic goods skyrocket, panic-buying ensues in Iran.
- Four 1-minute clips of poetry recitation by old-time Iranian radio/TV stars. [FB post]
- "Bella Now": Inspired by the struggle to free all political prisoners in Iran & Afghanistan [5-minute video]
- Iranian regional music & dance: A song from the western Caspian Sea coastal region. [2-minute video]
- More than 10 years in the making, UCSB's North Campus Open Space project is officially finished.
- Facebook memory from May 13, 2011: Oh, no, its Friday the 13th again!
(5) Intel launches new artificial-intelligence chips, directly challenging NVIDIA, which dominates the AI market with its hardware and the CUDA software platform.
(6) How a tiny tuning-fork helped prevent SUV rollovers and plane crashes: In 1992, Asad Madni led BEI Sensors and Controls, which specialized in sensor and inertial-navigation devices, with aerospace and defense-electronics industries being the sole customers. The cold war had ended and the UCLA graduate had to make adjustments in his line of work. Lucky for the automotive and commercial aerospace industries, which benefited from his work on a little quartz sensor at the heart of the all-important GyroChip.
(7) "Translating and the Freedom to Write: Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan": This was the title of Friday's PEN America roundtable discussion, in which Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge) talked to three translators of works by freedom writers. In PEN America's annual "Freedom to Write Index," Iran and Turkey consistently rank among the worst, while Azerbaijan continues to harass its most-prominent writer. [Recording]
- Katherine E. Young talked about her translation of the works of Azerbaijani novelist Akram Aylisli, who has been under house arrest for nearly a decade, after the burning of his books in 2013.
- Yasemin Congar indicated that the prison memoir of Turkey's Ahmet Altan has been published in different languages around the world, but no Turkish publisher dares to touch it.
- Frieda Afary has worked on translating the writings of Iranian human/women's-rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who has written about Iran's extensive use of solitary confinement in its prisons.
2022/05/12 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The Hippodrome of Caesarea, Israel: With dimensions of 300 m by 50 m and estimated capacity of ~12,000, the structure was built around 10 BCE. In the 2nd century CE, the south end was reconstructed as an amphitheater for use in gladiatorial contests. [Top center] Dear readers: Your cultured and artistic status was confirmed yesterday by a fortune cookie. Congratulations! [Top right] Iran's large spy network in Europe (see the next item below). [Bottom row] Wednesday 5/11 World Music Series noon concert at UCSB's Music Bowl: The Jasmine Echo Chinese Ensemble performed traditional Chinese music & a couple of Western pieces, using traditional Chinese instruments. The versatile musicians formed smaller combo groups for some of the pieces. Multiple members conducted the entire Ensemble. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
(2) Throwback Thursday: On May 12, 2017, I posted about the history of rial, Iran's monetary unit. The rial is now worthless, as is the tooman/tuman, which is 10 rials. A few years ago, the government removed four 0s from all monetary figures, effectively making 10,000 rials (1000 tumans) the new official unit, a la the term "one grand" in English. This unit, the new tuman, or simply tuman, has now become worthless. One US dollar is equivalent to 43,000 tumans or 43 new tumans, making each new tuman worth about 2 cents. A dozen eggs cost 200 new tumans. People have begun using 1000 new tumans, or 1,000,000 old tumans, as an unofficial unit. A low-quality, domestically-produced new car (known locally as a "death trap") costs 300,000 new tumans or 300 new new tumans. Imported luxury cars cost upward of 3 billion tumans (3000 new new tumans).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Brush fire in SoCal: Parts of Orange County are threatened by a 200-acre fire in Laguna Niguel.
- The US Supreme Court's overturning of Roe-v.-Wade, and reactions to it: A comprehensive analysis.
- Conservatism is no longer respectable: Memes about 45 and his favorite US Supreme Court appointee.
- Anti-Asian hate rears its ugly head again: Three Korean women are shot at a Texas hair salon.
- Facebook memory from May 11, 2011: A beautiful Persian couplet from Ghaa'aani.
- Facebook memory from May 12, 2010: A few Persian verses from Hafez.
(4) Iran's paid operatives in Europe: Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian "diplomat"/spy-chief arrested in Belgium, along with three others, for planning terrorist attacks, possessed a little green notebook bearing 285 names of other Islamic Republic operatives throughout Europe, who were on his payroll. Iranian opposition activists are urging the German government to release the names of 144 of these operatives who are based in Germany.
(5) Brave critic: This guy lets Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have it, by saying that a leader should act transparently and be held accountable for his decisions. [9-minute video, in Persian]
(6) Undergraduate student graduation recital: Soprano Serybe Aryeh performed Monday night (May 9, 2022) at UCSB's Karl Geiringer Hall. [Sample of her work, from 2019]
(7) The kids are allright: Egor Polyakov and Alexandra Miroshnikova, young employees of the pro-Kremlin website Lenta.ru, posted stories about the truth of the Ukraine war and fled the country. The stories were soon taken down, but not before they were archived on the Web. Another group hacked all Russian TV channels, inserting anti-war programming instead of the normal government-produced programs.
(8) We seem to have forgotten Afghanistan, but the Taliban continue their assault on women: A new decree requires that women should be covered from head to toe, wearing either a burqa or a niqab.
(9) Final thought for the day: Let's assume Biden is dumb and Trump is smart, as the MAGA crowd claims. I would take a dumb, compassionate person, whose heart is in the right place, over a two-timing smart person, who schemes to increase his personal power and wealth at all cost.
2022/05/11 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB's Davidson Library, with a display of Ted Chiang's Exhalation: Stories in front of it (see the next item below). [Top center] Drangonfly 7 x 7 chess: This variant of chess, with no queen pieces, alternate positioning of bishops & knights, and different rules of play, was invented by Christian Freeling in 1983. [Top right] Orlando Figes' Natasha's Dance (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Simple math puzzle: Shown are three rectangles and areas of two enclosed white regions. Find the area of the gray region. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Shown are a rectangle of height 8 and width 9, along with a semi-circle. What is the ratio of the red area to the green area? [Bottom right] Math puzzle: In this messy pile-up of geometric shapes, find the length of the top side of the triangle sitting on the pile.
(2) Author talk for the "UCSB Reads 2022" program: Ted Chinag spoke at UCSB's Cambell Hall Tuesday night about his book, Exhalation: Stories (my 4-star review), this year's choice for collective reading at UCSB and surrounding communities. The book, composed of nine short stories, from really short to novella-length, is the second collection of short stories published by Chiang.
Topics explored in Exhalation: Stories include humanity & its place in the universe, artificial intelligence, bioethics, virtual reality, determinism vs. free-will, and time-travel. Chiang studied to become a physicist, later switching to computer science, always intending to write sci-fi on the side. He joked that his Asian parents would not have approved of writing as a day job, so he knew not to ask. His science training shows in his stories' solid foundations and clear expositions.
The talk culminated year-long campus activities, including discussing the book in various UCSB courses and in a number of lectures and panels. Planning for "UCSB Reads 2023" is already underway, and I am looking forward to participating in the program.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biden announces his plans for lowering prices and fighting inflation. [Starts at the 33:45 mark of this video]
- The feminist face of Russian protests: Article in The Moscow Times.
- A 22-year-old Iranian girl, set on fire by her father for having a boyfriend, dies: The father was acquitted.
- Californians consider both University of California and California State University unaffordable.
(4) Book review: Fonda, Jane, Prime Time: Making the Most of Your Life (Love, Health, Sex, Fitness, Friendship, Spirit), unabridged audiobook on 10 CDs, read by the author, Books on Tape, 2011.
[I wrote this review on May 10, 2012, and posted it as a 4-star review to GoodReads on May 10, 2022.]
(5) Book review: Figes, Orlando, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, Metropolitan Books, 2014.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is an important book about Russia for those who want to understand the enigmatic country, particularly in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. Noting similarities with Tolstoy's War and Peace is inevitable, especially given that historian Figes begins his narrative by invoking Natasha, the young countess of Tolstoy's magnum opus, effortlessly performing a peasants' dance, despite growing up in an aristocratic family with different dances. Figes' description of Natasha's dance is reminiscent of the Irish folk dancing of the aristocratic Rose DeWitt in the movie "Titanic," when Jack Dawson takes her to the ship's stirrage section. Rose, too, knew nothing about Irish folk dancing, but, after a few minutes, the unfamiliar dance becomes a natural form of expression for her.
Figes opines that Natasha's dance is symbolic of "an encounter between two entirely different worlds: The European culture of the upper classes and the Russian culture of the peasantry." The two facets of Russia came together during the war of 1812, with the aristocracy, stirred by the serfs' patriotism, breaking free from foreign societal conventions in search of a sense of Russian nationhood. Still, Russia as a single nation or culture remains a myth.
In addition to the 8 chapters (1. European Russia; 2. Children of 1812; 3. Moscow! Moscow!; 4. The Peasant Marriage; 5. In Search of the Russian Soul; 6. Descendants of Genghiz Khan; 7. Russia Through the Soviet Lens; 8. Russia Abroad), the book contains an introduction, a set of maps with notes, a glossary, a table of chronology, and a guide to further reading. The book's focus is on the two centuries between the mid-1700s and the early-1900s, although links to the Mongol Russia are explored in Chapter 6. The book's narrative ends in the Brezhnev era, which brought about the rather different Russia that we know today.
Sandwiched between Natasha's dance in Chapter 1, presented along with an ode to the carefully-planned & artistically-built city of St. Petersburg, and the 1962 emotional return of Igor Stravinsky to Russia during the Khrushchev thaw, in Chapter 8, is an expansive review of Russian literature, visual arts, architecture, music & opera, ballet, and film in the context of Russian history, including Napoleon's 1812 invasion, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution & the ensuing 5-year civil war, and the ongoing conflict between Moscow (subject of Chapter 3, a la "New York! New York!") and St. Petersburg.
Figes does an excellent job of exposing the Russia that Winston Churchill famously described as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Everything about Russia is different: Even Russian novels aren't novels in the traditional sense; they are often characterized as realistic histories, philosophical treatises, and sociopolitical commentaries that are devoid of fantasies. To quote Albert Einstein: "Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss."
2022/05/10 (Tuesday): Today's book reviews include a memoir and two math-for-everyone marvels.
(1) Book review: Ellsberg, Daniel, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author and Dan Cashman, HighBridge Audio, 2004.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I first heard of the Pentagon Papers when I was a graduate student at UCLA. The 1971 release of Top-Secret documents, officially entitled "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force" and covering the US political & military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, upended the public confidence in government's truthfulness. The Johnson administration systematically lied not only to the people of the United States but also to US Congress, hiding its secret expansion of the war in Vietnam and much of the ensuing consequences.
For disclosing the Top-Secret document, Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were officially dropped when the Watergate scandal revealed unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg. The 47-volume, 7000-page encyclopedic report, containing both historical analyses and original government documents, was eventually declassified and released to the public in 2011. The Pentagon Papers are discussed in multiple film and TV adaptations, including "The Post" (2017) and "The Pentagon Papers" (2003).
Ellsberg wasn't just an ordinary think-tank employee. He had deep knowledge of Vietnam, obtained through fighting there, a direct hand in decisions during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, and close relationships with key players in the Vietnam Task Force. Most everyone involved in policy-making about our engagement in Vietnam knew that the US could not win that war. Yet, they collectively decided that admitting defeat wasn't an option and helped in, or at least did not object to, building a facade that showed everything was going well.
In this book, Ellsberg moves effortlessly between describing his observations in Vietnam, during his 2-year stint as a US State Department observer, and commenting on secretive decisions, always accompanied by deceptive actions to mislead Americans about what was actually going on in Southeast Asia. Descriptions of his movements inside Vietnam under Viet Cong fire and atrocities committed by US and South Vietnamese armed forces are detailed and gripping.
Incidentally, Secrets was first published in 2002, as the Bush administration prepared for invading Iraq, under very similar false pretenses and deceptions. If you are looking for a convincing argument that government secrecy, particularly in war time, is poisonous for our country's democratic aspirations, then look no further than this monumental book.
(2) Book review: Strogatz, Steven, The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Jonathan Yen, Tantor Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The author states that he wrote this book for people who are intimidated by math but do have a desire to learn about it. I don't fall in this category, as I love math and use it regularly in my work (as a computer engineer) and leisure (as a puzzle enthusiast). Yet, I loved the book, because I learned much from it. In math, as in other domains, there is no topic that cannot be better understood by looking at it from a different perspective.
The book arose from Strogatz's well-received New York Times column. Beginning with the basics, such as how the invention of the symbol "6" freed us from having to say "fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish" when referring to the fish we caught, Strogatz considers the importance of such inventions and the discovery of their relationships. "This is how mathematics grows. The right abstraction leads to new insight ... we invent the concepts but discover their consequences."
Strogatz divides his topics into five domains, corresponding to key subfields of math, and discusses their fundamental concepts in Parts 1-5. He then devotes Part 6, "Frontiers," to advanced ideas and trends in each of the five domains.
- Numbers: Arithmetic (rock groups; the enemy of my enemy; commuting; division)
- Relationships: Algebra (finding your roots; my tub runneth over; power tools)
- Shapes: Geometry (square dancing; something from nothing; take it to the limit)
- Change: Calculus (it slices, it dices; all about e; step into the light)
- Data: Statistics (the new normal; group think; twist and shout; the Hilbert hotel)
Strogatz's knack for providing intuitive explanations for mathematical concepts is reminiscent of the way in which Nobel-Laureate physicist Richard Feynman brought physics to the masses. In another one of his wonderful books, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe, Strogatz takes a detailed look at calculus, its unbounded powers, its centrality as the language of the cosmos, and the ways in which it contributes to our everyday lives.
No matter how much or how little you know about math, this book contains some delights for you.
(3) Book review: Strogatz, Steven, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Bob Souer, Tantor Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Strogatz's accessible introduction to and overview of calculus is a delight. Even those who were scared away from the subject in high school or college may at last understand calculus as an essential tool of modern science and technology, along with how it was conceived as a result of a string of events, beginning in ancient Greece and proceeding to the 20th-century discovery of gravitational waves, overcoming roadblocks and challenges at every turn.
Strogatz considers calculus the greatest discovery of humankind, because none of the achievements of modern science and technology would have been possible without it. Even though calculus grew out of geometry, it isn't just about describing curves and shapes. It also helps us deal with how things change, which is the domain of differential equations. Combined with probability and statistics, calculus has produced many of today’s key R&D areas.
Infinite Powers expands greatly on Chapter 4 of another book by Strogatz, The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, which is a broader look at mathematics. Herman Wouk [1915-2019], American author best-known for historical fiction, was inspired to write the book The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion, after learning about calculus from interviewing Nobel-Laureate physicist Richard Feynman. Strogatz also considers calculus the language of the cosmos.
Strogatz discusses at length why linear problems are a lot more-tractable than nonlinear ones and how "the infinity principle" allows us to break down a wild and complicated problem into an infinite collection of simpler parts, which can then be analyzed and their results added back together to get a solution for the original problem. Infinitesimal changes can be viewed as being linear, without much error, by keeping only the linear term and ignoring all the higher powers.
To me, one of the most-fascinating applications of calculus is its use by immunologists to model how the HIV virus behaves during the period when a patient's viral load appears stable, leading to the questionable conclusion that no treatment is necessary. It turned out, however, that the stability resulted not from the virus being dormant but, in a manner similar to having a faucet running and a drain open at the same time, viruses continued to multiply at roughly the same rate that the body's defenses cleared them. Administering multiple HIV drugs during this stage, rather than waiting for the later, out-of-control replication stage, helped turn HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition.
2022/05/09 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IEEE Computer magazine's April 2022 cover feature: Several articles on machine learning, along with an editorial introduction entitled "Algorithms: Society's Invisible Puppeteers." [Top center] Visual challenge: How many faces can you spot in this tree? [Top right] UCSB's Dr. Leah Stokes (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the measure of the angle theta in terms of the angles a and x. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Given an equilateral triangle and three squares as shown, find x. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the ratios of the perimeters and areas of the square and circle.
(2) Harold J. Plous Memorial Award Lecture: In an in-person/streaming event at UCSB's Mosher Alumni House, Dr. Leah Stokes (Political Science) spoke under the title "What Can I Do? A Guide to Climate Action." Dr. Stokes is a model scientist/activist, whose research is driven by practical policy actions. The key message of her lecture today was that there is a lot we can do in our homes and businesses to help slow down global warming. Our efforts are best spent on improving infrastructure, such as electrifying our homes and using heat pumps instead of furnaces and air-conditioners. Avoiding the use of disposable plastic bags and other plastics, while laudable, won't cut it.
In his introductory remarks, Chancellor Yang stated that, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Plous Memorial Award lectures had been postponed for 3 years. Today's lecture was the second lecture from the backlog. Last week, Dr. Alenda Chang (Film and Media Studies) spoke under the title "Playing for the Planet."
The next Plous Award Lecture will be delivered by biologist Carolina Arias.
The Harold Plous Award is given annually to one young assistant professor in UCSB's College of Letters and Science on the basis of distinction in research or creative activities.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Pandemic milestone: The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US will surpass one million within a week.
- "A Knot Called Palestine": Iran Emrooz article by Armin Langroudi (in Persian).
- Borowitz Report (humor): Kavanaugh asks if anyone has seen briefcase he accidentally left at bar last week.
- Stanford U. receives $1.1 billion donation for establishing a school for climate change and sustainability.
- AI/ML specialist: What society thinks I do, what other programmers think I do, and what I really do! [Image]
- Kurdish music: The Kamkars perform "Larzan." [3-minute video]
(4) Hats off to Poland: For accommodating hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, not in crowded, unsanitary refugee camps but at Polish homes.
(5) World's oldest unearthed civilization isn't in Egypt or Sumer (today's Iraq): It is in central Iran, next to a large ancient sea that disappeared over time, leaving a desert and covering the structures, including a gigantic temple, for archaeologists to discover. [12- minute video, narrated in Persian]
(6) Final thought for the day: The word a**hole is nowhere to be found in the US Constitution. So, anyone behaving like an a**hole has no rights and should be kicked out of his/her position of power!
2022/05/08 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Double-celebration of Mothers' Day and my daughter's birthday (see the next two items below). [Top right] Two natural beauties in one frame: Colorful flowers and gorgeous sunset. [Bottom row] Behrooz Parhami's talk on artificial intelligence and machine learning (see the last item below).
(2) Happy Mothers' Day to my mom, my three sisters, and all the women friends whose motherly instincts and love make the world go around!
As we honor our mothers in the West, let's not forget that in Iran and elsewhere, mothers are separated from their children and other family members, as they serve long prison terms for the "crime" of advocating for human/women's rights and justice-system reforms. Brave mothers and other women have demonstrated repeatedly that they won't be silenced by made-up charges of treason or acting against national security. And let us also think of mothers in war zones, who have little to celebrates under assault by war criminals.
(3) Happy birthday, my dearest daughter, as you celebrate your birthday on Mothers' Day, just like when you were born and when you celebrated your birthday in 2005. Wishing you a wonderful special day and the very best of luck, as you start your life as a career woman in San Diego!
(4) "Algorithms with Predictions": This was the title of Friday's UCSB CS Theory Colloquium by Michael Mitzenmacher, Harvard U. Professor of Computer Science and author of:
- "Algorithms with Predications: How ML Can Lead to Provably Better Algorithms" [arXiv version]
- Probability and Computing: Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Analysis [PDF]
The talk's main theme was using predictions, such as from machine-learning, to circumvent worst-case algorithm running time, with the aim of deriving algorithms that have near-optimal performance when these predictions are good, but maintain provable bounds, even when the predictions have large errors. Several examples of recent results were presented to show how predictions can be used effectively while still allowing for theoretical guarantees. A toy example is searching in a sorted list. Binary search has O(log n) latency, but if the position of the item can be guessed or predicted, the performance becomes O(log(prediction error)).
(5) A Persian essay about motherhood and making women feel guilty: Iranian superstar singer Googoosh admits, after a suggestive question from interviewer Homa Sarshar, that she has failed as a mother. Her son, Kambiz, has also complained that his mother did him wrong. Where was the society and where were the support systems to help Googoosh, who was a child bride and a child performer, exploited by her father to make him rich? Where are her husbands, and why aren't they blamed or held responsible for the neglect her son claims to have experienced? Googoosh herself is as much of a victim as her son. Mothers aren't, and shouldn't be viewed as, the sole cause of a failed marriage or problematic childhood experiences.
(6) "Let's Not Call Everything Artificial Intelligence: A Realistic Assessment of Intelligent Behavior and Machine Learning": This morning, as part of the Fanni'68 group of graduates of Tehran University's College of Engineering, yours truly presented a semi-technical overview of AI & ML.
Defining artificial intelligence, or plain intelligence for that matter, has proven more difficult than expected. Many people have thrown up their arms, taking the position that, even though we can't define AI, we'll recognize it when we see it! Despite the cycles of hype and disappointment in achieving general AI, success stories abound in making machines behave intelligently in limited domains. Examples include vehicle routing (Uber), logistics (airport gate assignments), and game-playing (Chess, GO). Meanwhile, we still have a long way to go in building machines that can pass the Turing test, as well as in domains such as machine translation, which may require the same, or even greater, capabilities. In recent years, we have come to realize that, as great as the technical challenges are in developing general AI, an even greater challenge is developing awareness and dealing with social implications of massive data repositories and automated decision-making. After collecting petabytes of data on each of us, there is no guarantee that machines, or their masters, will use the data to offer better services and optimal outcomes, rather than controlling and shaping our economic and social behaviors. A key consideration is thus ensuring a balance between facilitating technical progress and ensuring fairness and social justice.
[My talk begins at the 59:30 mark of this recording, Passcode: 4K%*b?bR] [My PDF slides]
2022/05/06 (Friday): Today's three book reviews cover math/logic, bioinformatics, and science history.
(1) Book review: Kordemsky, Boris A., The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations, Dover, 1992 (first published in 1956). [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Kordemsky has been praised for making math fun for his high-school students. This book was edited, and contains an introduction, by Martin Gardner of the Scientific American "Mathematical Games Department" fame.
The book's 359 problems are presented in 14 chapters (184 pages): Amusing Problems; Difficult Problems; Geometry with Matches; Measure Seven Times Before You Cut; Skill Will Find Its Applications Everywhere; Dominoes and Dice; Properties of Nine; With Algebra and Without It; Mathematics with Almost No Calculations; Mathematical Games and Tricks; Divisibility; Cross Sums and Magic Squares; Numbers Curious and Serious; Numbers Ancient but Eternally Young. The puzzle statements are followed by 118 pages of answers.
Here is an example puzzle from the "Amusing Problems" chapter: Combine plus signs and five 2s to get 28; combine plus signs and eight 8s to get 1000. Here's another example from the same chapter: What is the sum of all digits if you write the numbers 1 through 1,000,000,000; you are asked for the sum of the digits, not of the numbers, which would be 10^9(10^9 + 1)/2.
I own quite a few books on mathematical and logical puzzles. This book is a wonderful addition to my collection.
(2) Book review: Stevens, Hallam, Life out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics, U. Chicago Press, 2013. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
While the buzz phrases "big data" and "data-driven x" are relatively new and are pushed by various actors as ground-breaking and exciting, science has always been data-driven. What's new is our expanded ability to process and find patterns in vast data sets with help from powerful computers. We still tend to visualize biologists and chemists as wearing white lab-coats, surrounded by chemicals and petri dishes, in a wet lab, whereas, today, scientists in nearly all disciplines spend a considerable portion of their time in a dry lab, facing computer displays and dealing with computational analyses, modeling, or simulations.
Bioinformatics, a discipline at the intersection of biology and computing is concerned with the acquisition, storage, analysis, and dissemination of biological data, most often DNA and amino-acid sequences. The word "bioinformatics" is derived from "biology" and "informatics," which, along with the French form "informatique," is the preferred word for "computing" or "computer science" in Europe. "Bioinformatics" is nicer-sounding than "biocomputing"; furthermore, the latter term has come to signify the design and use of computing devices built from biological components.
In a broader sense, bioinformatics is the study of information content and information flow in biological systems and processes. Even though bioinformatics (aka computational molecular biology) emerged in the 1960s with the efforts of Margaret O. Dayhoff, Walter M. Fitch, Russell F. Doolittle, and others, it came into prominence in the 21s century, when, on the heels of successes in the sequencing of genomes for simple organisms, the sequencing of the human genome became feasible.
In Life out of Sequence, Stevens draws from his own field work, interviews, and published research to explore the dynamic relationship between biology and computing, that is, the manner in which biology shapes and is shaped by digital technologies. Stevens's highly-accessible account informs us of the ways in which computers influence the organization of research in biology and how they assist with data collection and knowledge production. The role of data in biological research is far from a one-way journey from the lab to the computer. Data also plays a key role in shaping the experiments.
(3) Book review: Gribbin, John and Mary Gribbin, The Cat in the Box: A History of Science in 100 Experiments, Race Point Publishers, 2017. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
There are many ways of telling the history of science and quite a few of these ways have been tried. For example, one can present a chronology of important contributors/scientists. Or, one can construct a timeline of major discoveries/ideas. Focusing on key experiments is an interesting approach. Science relies to a great extent on experimental verification of theories, but there also exist scientific contributions, notably in math and computer science, that do not rely on experiments.
This richly-illustrated book tells the story of scientific advances from the third century BCE to 2016, by selecting 100 (actually 101) key experiments and discussing each one in 2-4 pages. In the following, I name some of these experiments to give you a flavor of book's coverage.
01. The upward thrust of water (Archimedes)
11. All the colors of the rainbow (Isaac Newton)
21. Weighing the Earth (John Michell)
31. Thinking about the power of fire (Sadi Carnot)
41. The Levithan of Parsonstown (William Parsons)
51. Feeling the squeeze (Jacques & Pierre Curie)
61. Journey to the center of the Earth (Emil Wiechert)
71. Splitting the atom (Ernest Walton)
81. The alpha helix (Linus Pauling)
91. Clocking onto relativity (Joseph Hafele & Richard Keating)
"The Cat in the Box" of the title refers to #75, the famous thought experiment of Erwin Schrodinger, suggesting that a cat in an unobserved chamber can be both dead & alive. The book ends with the bonus Experiment 101, the detection of gravitational waves in 2016. "Experiment 101" represents the ultimate scientific experiment, in the same way that the course "Physics 101" captures the essence of physics.
2022/05/05 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iran's Safavid kings (1501-1736) didn't promote only religious superstitions: They also regarded astrology as one of the most-noble sciences. A revered astrologer of the court was given the title "Munajjim-bashi." [Top center] Architectural marvel in Kashan, Iran (credit: @amir.hossein.mirmoeini). [Top right] One of the biggest pre-Roman mosaics ever found: The elaborate Palace of Aigai is considered the second most-important structure of classical Greece after the Parthenon. [Bottom left & center] Clock-face markings, using 1s or 3s only: Can you improve on the expressions shown, in the sense of using fewer 1s/3s? [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Shown are a circle and two squares, with the circle's center on the side of the bigger square. Find the circle's area as a function of a (credit: Mirangu.com).
(2) May 2-6, 2022, is Teacher Appreciation Week. Words from someone who has been a teacher for 54 years:
"In the school of life, everyone's a teacher. If you are willing to learn, everyone has something to teach you."
(3) As the trial of Hamid Noury, an Iranian official who was directly involved in mass-execution of prisoners in the 1980s, ends in Stockholm and he faces the prospects of a long prison term, Iran indicates that Ahmadreza Djalali, a dual Swedish-Iranian citizen, will be executed in two weeks. I bet that behind the scenes, Iran has offered to exchange #AhmadrezaDjalali with #HamidNoury. Yet another case of overt hostage-taking by Iran!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Justice Samuel J. Alito's SCOTUS draft opinion on overturning Roe-v.-Wade fact-checked.
- Karine Jean-Pierre to become White House press secretary when Jen Psaki leaves her post next week.
- Licensed and helmeted woman is stopped in Iran for riding a motorcycle. [Video]
- Relic from the Roman-Gallic Wars: This spearhead has been in the bone for 2070 years! [Tweet]
- The historic Palangan Village in Iran's Sanandaj Province hosts the "1000 Dafs Festival." [2-minute video]
- Math puzzle: For what values of n is the sum 1! + 2! + 3! + . . . + n! a perfect square?
(5) Math puzzle: For triangle ABC, how many points P in the ABC plane are such that the three triangles PAB, PBC, PCA all have the same area?
(6) Familial relations between Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Green Movement Leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who has been under house arrest for more than a decade. [10-minute video]
(7) Math oddity: The number tan(9^(9^(9^9))) is well-defined, but we will likely never know whether it is positive or negative, more than a billion or less than a billionth, or even/odd when we drop its fractional part.
(8) Restricting women's choice isn't about protecting babies: If this were the case, we'd have free healthcare for mothers & babies, paid maternal/paternal leave, and assistance with childcare for working moms.
(9) Life is much more than birth: The Republicans seem to think that life begins at conception & ends at birth. They like to force women to give birth but oppose any form of support (maternal/paternal leave, healthcare) to ensure that the newborns remain healthy and thrive. They should be called pro-birth, not pro-life.
2022/05/04 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB's World Music Series mini-concert at noon (see the next item below). [Top center] SCOTUS set to overturn Roe-v.-Wade (see item 3 below). [Top right] Today's lecture by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi of UNC Chapel Hill (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Spineless GOP candidates kneel before #45. [Bottom center] Set theory symbols/notation. [Bottom right] Bloated supervisory/management ranks: This diagram is the CS/programming version of something that has been around for some time.
(2) Today's noon concert at the Music Bowl featured UCSB's Middle East Ensemble: The program included a song belonging to the Turkemans of Kirkuk, a region in northern Iraq, a song from Turkey's Istanbul area, with Turkish and Sephardic lyrics, a song from Egypt, and a few Arabic dance tunes, with some audience participation. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4]
(3) The US Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe-v.-Wade: Why not stop abortion at the source? Vasectomies are reversible, so, making every young man have one will prevent all unwanted pregnancies. It will be reversed when a man is deemed financially and emotionally fit to be a father. This stops abortions and a host of other societal ills. But, perhaps, our misogynistic society isn't ready for regulating male bodies.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russia is pulling out of International Space Station collaboration due to sanctions.
- Brain drain: The US is planning to capitalize on highly-educated citizens leaving Russia.
- Israeli researchers are applying 3D-printing technology to the repair of coral reefs.
- Trevor Noah's complete remarks at the 2022 White House Correspondents' Dinner. [26-minute video]
- Math puzzle: Evaluate the infinite expression sqrt(1 + 2 sqrt(1 + 3 sqrt(1 + 4 sqrt(1 + 5 sqrt(1 + ... ))))).
- Our blue planet and its wonderful creatures. [3-minute video]
(5) An operative of Iran's IRGC Quds Force arrested in Europe: He was involved in plans to assassinate an Israeli diplomat in Turkey, an American general in Germany, and a journalist in France.
(6) "Multiple Consciousness in Diasporic Works of Iranian Armenian Authors and Artists": This was the title of a Duke U. Iranian Graduate Students Association talk by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (UNC Chapel Hill), based on her forthcoming third book, to be published by Edinburgh U. Press next year.
Dr. Yaghoobi showed examples of visual arts and literature created by Iranian-Armenians in diaspora, which reflect their experiences as a marginalized minority, scars inflicted by the Armenian genocide, whether or not it impacted them directly, and longings to return to their homeland. Many of the items discussed were of transnational nature, in that they reflect not just the Armenian experience but can be viewed as representing hardships faced by other marginalized and displaced people.
The program began 25 minutes late (this must be some sort of a record!), so I couldn't stay for the Q&A segment due to other commitments.
2022/05/03 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
On Monday and Tuesday, I was out of town, helping my daughter relocate to San Diego. We loaded a U-Haul truck on Sunday evening, which I drove to San Diego on Monday morning. The rental was one-way, so I returned on an Amtrak train Tuesday evening. We had a late lunch on Monday at a shopping mall in SD's Del Mar Heights, where we shrunk outselves!
Monday evening and much of Tuesday was spent unpacking and bringing the living room, dining area, and home-office to usable condition, with some work remaining to be done in the kitchen and bedroom. A real bed will be arriving soon and WiFi connection will take a couple more days.
It's amazing how many e-mail messages and other tasks can pile up over a 2.5-day period!
2022/05/01 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy International Workers' Day, aka May Day! (see the next item beow). [Center & Right] Lecture on the connection between poetry & power (see the last item below).
(2) May Day: We white-collar workers seldom come in close contact with the so-called blue-collar workforce. We see them around and appreciate their indispensable contributions to our society, but we are prone to be unaware of their daily struggles, which are fundamentally the same as our own: worrying about health, family budget, kids, elder parents, insurance, and old-age security. There is one fundamental difference, though: they have to face these issues with far fewer resources and often with less support. All of our conveniences, the house we live in, the infrastructure we use, the food we eat, and so on, would not exist without them. Happy International Workers' Day to all hardworking citizens of the world!
(3) Trump's latest big-lie: "I am not stupid." He keeps repeating this at his campaign rallies, hoping that, like his "stolen election" big-lie, it will stick.
(4) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Dr. Fatemeh Shams (U. Penn) spoke in Persian under the title "The Tension Between Poetry and Power in Post-Revolutionary Iran." Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge; coordinator of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series) introduced the speaker and moderated the Q&A session afterwards. After the talk, Dr. Ahmad Karimi Hakkak (U. Maryland; UCLA) offered a commentary on Dr. Shams's latest book, A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic (Oxford U. Press, 2021).
Dr. Shams began by expressing regrets that a major project on an important aspect of Persian poetry, taking her many years to complete, does not get a chance to be published in Iran. Both Dr. Tohidi and Dr. Karimi-Hakkak expressed hope that a Persian translation can be produced in the West and disseminated on-line.
The lecture covered diverse topics, including the role played by poetry & poets during the 1979 Iranian Revolution & establishment of the Islamic Republic, reasons for Iran's new rulers paying so much attention to poetry, the identity of state-sponsored poets, how they entered the literary scene, what they write about, & who sponsors them, and the relationship between poetry, language, despotism, & collective memory.
- Islamic Revolution & Islamic government: Dr. Shams began by relating a memory from a series of poetry recitation events in Mashhad, which always began by reciting a sura from the Quran about poets and poetry. In the sura, poets are characterized as untruthful people, with followers among those who have lost their way. This tension between what Quran says about poets and how poetry is used by those in power to advance their goals was one of the factors motivating Dr. Shams to write about the relationship between poetry and power.
- Why the mullahs promote poetry: Poems, particularly those that rhyme, provide an excellent source of revolutionary slogans that the masses can enjoy and remember. A prime example is the poem containing the verse "Deev cho biroon ravad, fereshteh dar-ayad" ("Once the demon leaves, the angel emerges"), which assumed the status of an anthem immediately after the Revolution. Use of poetry in school textbooks is also a tool for indoctrinating the country's youth.
- State-sponsored poets & their narratives: One of the Islamic regime's programs is training/supporting "revolutionary," "committed," or "ritualistic" poets. Supreme Leader Khamenei holds regular poetry nights and, of late, he also attends a night of ritualistic poetry ("maddahi"). Staging these nights, with cameras and broad news coverage, requires an extensive organizing entity. Poets are identified by organizers and encouraged to submit poems, before being invited to attend.
- Poetry, language, despotism, & collective memory: Poets cozying up to those in power isn't a new phenomenon. It has existed throughout Iran's long history. Dr. Karimi-Hakkak pointed to the tension between Reza Shah and Mohammad-Taqi Bahar (Malek al-Sho'ara), who was imprisoned for his opposing views, but was later persuaded by Mohammad Ali Foroughi to compose a poem in praise of Reza Shah.
- During the Q&A period, I raised a related topic: The use of poetry, especially in humorous form, to criticize those in power, an art form that Iranians have taken to new heights. I asked whether this is a noteworthy development or just a way of blowing off steam? Dr. Shams answered that humorous poetry is indeed important and has a long tradition. Khamenei himself insists that poetry nights include at least one humorous poem, and, ironically, that poem tends to cause controversies & discomfort. Poets are often asked to cut certain parts of their poems from the oral presentation and, at least in one instance, from social-media postings.
2022/04/30 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ancient Rome in the 4th century CE: This incredible 1:250 scale model sits in the Museum of Roman Civilization. [Top center] Persian poetry: A playful quatrain by Abbas Sadeghi Zarrini. [Top right] Architectural marvel: Santa Maria del Fiore in Firenze, Italy, with its 13th-15th-century marble floor. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: We have regular octagon, a regular pentagon, and a square, as shown. What is the measure of the angle bearing a question mark? [Bottom center] Optical illusion: Three concentric circles that look anything but! [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the rectangle's area as a function of a and b.
(2) People of Iran have no say in who will become the next Supreme Leader: The Supreme Leader makes all the important decisions and, at times, overrides the decisions of the country's president and parliament, yet he isn't accountable to anyone. He doesn't hold news conferences, doesn't give interviews, and feels no obligation to explain his decisions, even when he reverses earlier ones. Iran's president is just a scapegoat, to be blamed when something goes wrong. Iran's Assembly of Experts may have already chosen the next Leader, but it won't divulge who he is. They won't even share the names of members who serve on the subcommittee in charge of deliberations in this regard. [5-minute video, in Persian]
(3) My daughter is partially packed for her Monday move to San Diego, where she will continue her career as a data scientist with Mindera Health, after 4+ months of working from home, while looking for a place to live in "America's Finest City" (and a darn expensive one too). I will travel with her, returning on Tuesday.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ohio Republican lawmaker Jean Schmidt says pregnancy from rape is an opportunity for women.
- UN's Human-Rights Rapporteur Alena Douhan to receive red-carpet treatment in Iran.
- Iranian Baha'i woman held in unknown location: Her family members have no idea where she is.
- Summary and Interpretation of Three Epic Love Poems by Nezami Ganjavi: Book by Dr. Mehdi Abedinejad.
(5) "The Evolution of Gender Discourse in Modern Iran": This is the title of Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi's latest paper (in Persian), published in Freedom of Thought Journal, No. 11, spring 2022, pp. 77-90. [PDF]
(6) A couple of ducks have made our housing complex in Goleta their home: They were seen in the pool area for a few days but were driven away for fear of water contamination. On Friday, April 29, 2022, they were hanging out on a patch of grass next to the mailboxes of the 900s cluster. [Photos]
(7) "Neural Networks: Optimization, Transition to Linearity, and Deviations Therefrom": This was the title of today's talk by Mikhail Belkin (UCSD), who discussed the theoretical underpinnings of why gradient-based optimization methods for deep learning have been so successful in practice, despite our expectation of major nonlinearities. We often imagine a curve or surface with many local minima, that suggests the likelihood of getting stuck in one of those local minima. In reality, once the number of parameters (dimensions) grows, system behavior becomes modelable in a linear manner, with high probability of gradient-based methods working perfectly. Recent deep-learning models span millions and, in the extreme, 1+ trillion parameters. Very general, wide neural nets, with linear output layers, are essentially linear functions. Optimization methods can be adjusted to reduce the chances of over-fitting that often results from having a very large number of parameters. A number of new results allow the handling of some of the deviations from non-linearity.
[Speaker's Web page]
[Belkin's thoughts on deep learning]
[Expository article on deep learning]
2022/04/29 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This Roman bathhouse in Khenchela, Algeria, is still in use after 2000 years. [Top center] ACM turns 75 (see the next item below). [Top right] London, imagined as it looked ca. 120 CE (~1900 years ago). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the regular pentagon's area is shaded blue? [Bottom center] Spiral of Pythagoras. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: We have two circles of radius r, with their centers separated by r. What is the radius x of the small circle?
(2) ACM celebrates its 75th anniversary: The name "Association for Computing Machinery" was chosen in 1947, because in those days computers looked like factory equipment. The name has stuck, despite subsequent efforts to change it to something more appropriate.
In the intervening 75 years, the number of ACM members has risen from the original 52 to nearly 100,000 in 190+ countries. ACM publishes dozens of prestigious journals, holds hundreds of conferences annually, and maintains an extensive digital library of computing resources.
ACM will hold a special celebration at Palace Hotel in San Francisco on June 10, 2022, to review its history and to discuss, in multiple panels, important challenges facing our profession.
(3) Math puzzle: We have 4 points on the XY plane. The smallest distance between any two points is 1. The largest pairwise distance is D. What is the minimum possible value of D?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ukrainians' heroic efforts help restore electric power under heavy Russian shelling. [6-minute video]
- An American software developer is on trial for being a military-trained "sleeper agent" for Hezbollah.
- Executions in Iran rose 25% in President Raisi's first year, with twice as many taking place in secret.
- Iran's "Jewish Studies Center" brings in one place all of the Islamic regime's anti-Semitic efforts.
- Optical illusion: Escher Rubik's cube. [Video]
- Mariculture: Growing food in our oceans is possible & necessary, as we head toward 10B people on Earth.
(5) Efficiency vs. resilience: Over the past few decades, we built an efficient global economic system, without realizing that it was highly vulnerable to shock. The COVID-19 pandemic, and, later, the war in Ukraine, made us realize that extreme efficiency (in supply chains and elsewhere) is achieved by sacrificing resilience. We are now in a world of sanctions & tech-exchange restrictions that make openness in research & development a relic of the past. This new world demands prioritizing resilience over efficiency. [Moshe Vardi's CACM column]
(6) Jubilations & alarms over Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter are premature: Twitter is a business and what Musk does with it will be driven primarily by the bottom line, not ideology. If lax control leads to more hate speech, Neo-Nazi propaganda, or child pornography, say, users/sponsors will walk away, something that businessman Musk would not like to see. It is in Musk's financial interest to keep Twitter pretty much intact, with only cosmetic changes.
(7) Incredibly, US Department of Education has shared personal data of FAFSA applicants with Facebook: The "feature" has now been disabled, but it is unknown how many applicant profiles are already compromised.
(8) Hitler's newfound popularity: Iran's Kayhan daily, an official mouthpiece of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, runs a report praising Hitler on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
2022/04/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Street scenes from the 1950s in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Iran. I'll let you guess which is which! [Top center] Wednesday, at Sprouts Farmers Market in Goleta, California. [Top right] The beauty and amazing colors of nature. [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: More effective than a ghost costume for scaring people on Halloween. [Bottom center & right] Keelan Overton's lecture on Persian tilework (see the last item below).
(2) Two things happened on January 6, 2021: One was the Capitol riot. The other was planning to overturn the election by discarding legitimate electors and replacing them with fake electors.
We talk more about the former, which actually had little chance of succeeding, even if a few lawmakers had been killed and Mike Pence had been hanged. The second one, though, came very close to succeeding and its perpetrators are more dangerous to our country than the ragtag band of rioters, who are being prosecuted.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In 1896, the Indiana House of Representatives considered a legislative bill that would have made π = 3.2.
- Persian music: Little boy plays the "Ey Iran" anthem on santoor. [Video]
- Math puzzle: What is the rightmost (least-significant) decimal digit of Q = 216^5192 + 25^4317 + 97^7892?
- Facebook memory from Apr. 28, 2016: Religion at its best and at its worst.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 28, 2015: A wonderful Persian verse from Sa'eb Tabrizi.
(4) Standing up for women's rights: A number of departmental soccer teams at Tehran Polytechnic University refused to participate in competitions because women students were barred from watching. If only Iran's club and national teams would do the same!
(5) When smoke gets in your wine: California wildfires have led to an unpleasant aftertaste in some wines, which vintners, grape-growers, and scientists are working to remove.
(6) Stop passing the harasser: This practice has been common in the Catholic Church, where priests accused of sexual misconduct are simply transferred to another diocese. In academia, too, a sexual harasser of one campus can become a prized recruit of another. A campus may stay quiet about problematic conduct for fear of lawsuits or due to signing a settlement agreement with the departing employee. Now, universities are starting to incorporate a "reference check" with an applicant's previous institution as part of the hiring process.
(9) "Iran Unglazed: Local, National, and Global Histories of Persian Tilework": Dr. Keelan Overton (independent scholar, based in Santa Barbara; PhD, 2011, UCLA) delivered today's installment of the UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran.
Tiles have constituted important features of Iranian architecture since ancient times. Tiles weather-proof simple clay bricks, while also serving as ornaments, particularly in combination with calligraphic writings. Dr. Overton highlighted the circumstances that have informed the transformation and reception of Persian tiles over the last two centuries, including documentation, plunder, preservation, exhibition, commodification, and most importantly, audience.
At stake is a balancing act between prevailing narratives of world heritage and local and national histories, as well as the reconciliation of museum exhibits and their original architectural homes. Today's lecture, based on an in-progress, Getty-sponsored monograph, sought to unglaze the study of Persian tilework by moving beyond pristine surfaces and illuminating contested, conditional, and at times even ugly histories.
2022/04/27 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] FIFA's empty threats against Iran continue: In a letter to Iranian authorities, FIFA has asked for immediate resolution of the problem of women not allowed to attend sports matches. Ejecting Iran from World Cup 2022 will awaken the mullahs from their 1400-year slumber. [Top center] Officials in Kyiv dismantle the Ukraine-Russia Friendship Statue. [Top right] I am in awe of Narges Mohammadi: As the Iranian human/women's-rights activist observes her 50th birthday, getting ready to report to prison for the umpteenth time, she smiles and tells everyone to be hopeful. [Bottom left] Part of an illustrated periodic table of the elements (complete, high-res PDF version). [Bottom center & right] Small Island, Big.Song: An enjoyable concert at UCSB's Multicultural Center Theater, with a program that explored the cultural connections between the descendants of seafarers of the Pacific and Indian Oceans through the Austronesian migration. Many unique instruments, sounds, and beats! (Sample music).
(2) Patriarchy permeates every aspect of Iran's culture: In this movie clip, a grandmother baffles her young granddaughter by invoking the saying "Collect your hens, the roosters are on the loose." Girls/women are held responsible for, and are blamed for, boys/men misbehaving.
(3) Consequences: US states passing restrictive laws will find out, as Iran did, that taking people's freedoms away will lead to brain drain. There are already indications that college students are shunning such states.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nearly 60% of Americans, including 3 of 4 children, have been infected during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The US and Russia swap prisoners, walking them simultaneously between two planes parked side by side.
- Borowitz report (humor): Kevin McCarthy amazed by incredible new invention called tape recorder.
- Archaeology in your alley: This Roman mosaic floor was discovered in the old town of Hvar, Croatia.
(5) Persian music: This 14-year-old Iranian girl from Isfahan can reportedly play 25 different musical instruments proficiently. Here, she demonstrates some of her skills, performing the oldie song "Shahzadeh-ye Ro'ya" ("Prince of My Dreams"). [5-minute video]
(6) The Paris-based Bahar Choir holds a concert in London: The program will be aired on BBC Persian. I will post a link, when it becomes available (in a couple of months, I think). [Medley of selected songs]
(7) Stalled progress in academic gender pay equity: American Association of University Professors' annual faculty compensation survey has revealed that women are making roughly $0.82 for every dollar their male counterparts earn. The gap has barely budged over the past decade (the figure was $0.81 in 2010-2011).
(8) In desperation, Russia shoots itself in the foot: By refusing to sell gas to Poland and Bulgaria, Russia is helping destroy its market share. Once these countries look for and find alternate suppliers, they are very unlikely to resume dealing with Russia.
(9) Bioinformatics vs. biocomputing: "Informatics," or its French form "informatique," is the preferred word for "computing" or "computer science" in Europe. However, bioinformatics and biocomputing aren't the same. The former, aka "computational (molecular) biology," refers to an interdisciplinary field combining biology and computer science; the latter refers to the design and use of computers built from biological components.
2022/04/25 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] West-to-east, south-to-north, and odd-even numbering of the US Interstate Highways network. [Top center] Golden military helmet from ~4600 years ago: Discovered in southern Iraq, the helmet belonged to the Sumerian King Meskalamdug. [Top right] Street sign in Iran: Did you know that "Hafez-e Jonoubi" ("South Hafez"), when translated into English, becomes "Hafez-e Shomali" ("North Hafez")? [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Shown are two circles and two straight lines. Find the length x, given the other three lengths. [Bottom center] Nerdy T-shirt, featuring non-binary logic. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Two circles are inscribed in a semicircle, with both of them tangent to an altitude. What is the measure of the angle α?
(2) Quote of the day: "A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit." ~ Arnold H. Glasow
(3) Separation of church & state is being tested: The complaint of a fired high-school football coach who had his team pray on the field after each game reaches a seemingly sympathetic US Supreme Court.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The board of Twitter approves Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover offer.
- Deep mathematical beauty: The Cayley graph of the group [6, 4], with a Hamiltonian path. [Image]
- There's so much talent in the world: Inay & Monday perform Bond's "Victory" on guitar and violin.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 25, 2017: The day when 4000+ Santa Barbara residents marched for science.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 25, 2014: The day I left the digital Stone Age by ditching my Blackberry.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 25, 2012: On algorithmic information theory and conservation of information.
(5) Book introduction: In The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI, UCSB Technology Management Program's Paul Leonardi and Harvard Business School's Tsedal Neeley help businesses deal with the pressures and challenges of going digital. [Cover image] [Article]
(6) Book review: Kerman, Piper, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, Spiegel & Grau, 2011 (paperback edition 2012). [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this review on April 25, 2015, and posted it to GoodReads on April 25, 2022.
(7) Iran is spending a fortune in Lebanon: This Islamic Republic official boasts about the large numbers of homes, schools, clinics, mosques, roads, bridges, and electrical infrastructure they built for the Lebanese. The 2-minute video clip ends with a woman's testimonial that Lebanon owes everything to Iran. Meanwhile, Iranians lack clean drinking water, suffer from dust-filled air, face sky-high food, drug, & clothing prices, and many have sunk below the poverty line.
(8) For the first time in US history, an Air Force general is convicted by way of court martial: Major General William T. Cooley was found guilty of sexual misconduct.
(9) Final thought for the day: "It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
2022/04/24 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Five & ten symmetries with two rhombuses (credit: @ThomasTBurgess1). [Top center] Most of us can draw 2-way, 3-way, and maybe 4-way Venn diagrams: But drawing a 7-way Venn diagram with its 128 regions isn't for everyone! [Top right] Maria Montiel's "Monochrome Gardens" (credit: @Eyauukart). [Bottom row] Santa Barbara Earth Day celebration on Saturday (see the next item below).
(2) Saturday's Earth Day celebration at the Arlington Theater in downtown Santa Barbara: The program included talks, poetry reading, art displays, and short-film screenings. Also on display were green vehicles, electric bikes, and windows that can power buildings via embedded, film-like solar cells. I enjoyed myself and learned a lot during the day. I usually dont win anything at raffles or drawings, but today, I won one of two certificates allowing me free visits to 14 Santa Barbara museums that have formed an environmental alliance.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Florida judge rules that airlines cannot require passengers to have tickets.
- Most Europeans couldn't communicate in their home country if they were sent back in time to 600 CE. [Map]
- The world according to Eratosthenes, ca. 220 BCE. [Map]
- Calculus is cool, but it may lead to divorce: Here's the divorce complaint of Richard Feynman's 2nd wife!
- You have heard of half-and-half pizza when a couple's tastes differ: Here is the tah-dig version!
- Math puzzle: Triangle AEF is built inside unit-square ABCD. Derive the measure of the triangle's F angle.
- Math puzzle: What is the constant term, when the expression (x^12 + 1/x^18)^25 is expanded?
- Example of a "thousands of flowers" Persian-carpet pattern.
[Tweet, with photo]
- A banana I found in a backpack that I don't use much: It must have been there for months! [Photo]
- Classical music, with pizzazz: Wonderful violin trio. [3-minute video]
(4) Presidential election in France: Emmanuel Macron has been re-elected to a second term, but his 17% margin of victory over Marine Le Pen is smaller than in their last face-off.
(5) Trump used to tell his supporters that he would pay their legal fees if they got in trouble: The tables have now turned and Trump supporters are paying his mounting legal fees!
(6) A toxic co-dependency: Kevin McCarthy is well aware that he cannot achieve his political ambitions without Donald Trump and his supporters (voters and minions). Similarly, Trump has no other senior political supporter in Congress. He would smear and belittle McCarthy in a second, just as he has done to other non-loyalists with much less serious missteps, if he had another option. The two have no choice but to tolerate each other.
(7) The Bin Laden papers: When US Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, they took back with them an unexpected treasure-trove of personal papers and documents, written out on paper or stored on computer hard drives. Al-Qaeda/ISIS specialist Dr. Nelly Lahoud, who is fluent in Arabic, has been studying the papers to understand Al Qaeda's mode of operation and other secrets. Lahoud's conclusion is that Al Qaeda and its leader had been significantly diminished after the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden was personally surprised at the strength of US reaction to the attacks. [CBS News "60 Minutes" 13-minute video] [Book cover image]
2022/04/22 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Happy Earth Day 2022: With each passing year, we get closer to a climate disaster, making Earth Day even exceedingly more-important than before. Every day should be Earth Day! [Top center] Special Earth Day observation: The same spot in the Arctic Ocean, 105 years ago and today. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: An equilateral triangle is divided into 4 triangles, as shown, with the areas of two of the triangles given. Find the area of the middle triangle. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this triangle with known side lengths, angle B is divided into three equal parts, as shown. Find the measure of the angle α (diagram not to scale). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the radius of the circle (diagram not to scale).
(2) Santa Barbara Earth Day events on Saturday 4/23 at the Arlington Theater (complete list).
10:00-17:00: Green-car and e-bike show, behind the theater
11:00: CEC's "Reverse, Repair, Protect Mission," presented by Policy Director Michael Chiacos
12:00: Short films, from Wildling Museum, NOAA, and other sources
13:15: Climate and Culture: Winners of various poetry and art contests
13:45: Recycled fashion show, featuring second-hand clothing (organized by UCSB students)
19:30: Ticketed concert, featuring local bands: Party like it's 1972
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Earth Day calendar puzzle: How many digits are there in 22! (22 factorial)?
- More evidence of Russian war crimes: Satellite images show mass graves in a town 19 km west of Mariupol.
- Florida revokes Disney World's special tax status over Disney's opposition to its "don't say gay" law.
- Following much promotional fanfare, CNN+ streaming service shuts down a month after its launch.
- From the Russian Empire, to the USSR, and back to Russia: A 24-minute history lesson on a map.
- Gibraltar's earliest humans date back 7500 years: Here's a re-creation of a woman's face from the period.
(4) Shocking release of audio files: To me, the shocking part isn't what Kevin McCarthy said about Trump and his dishonesty in denying it. I already knew him to be a scumbag who would do anything to become Speaker of the House, should the Republicans gain majority next year.
The more-shocking part to me is that some person or group held on to these audio files for 15 months, before releasing them to the American people, despite knowing them to be significant evidence of dishonesty and power-grab on the part of public servants.
So, people, who pretend to care about democracy and keeping people informed, withheld evidence from the public in an effort to boost the sales of a book. Bob Woodward did the same for his book, when he withheld evidence of Trump deliberately lying about the seriousness of COVID-19 and its airborne transmission.
(5) The next IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Nina Miolane (UCSB ECE) will discuss "Geometric Learning for Shape Analysis from Bioimaging Data." Wed. May 18, 2022, 6:00 PM, Rusty's Pizza Event Room, 5934 Calle Real, Goleta. [Details & registration]
(6) "Small Island, Big Song": UCSB Center for Taiwan Studies and Multicultural Center present a program that explores the cultural connections between the descendants of seafarers of the Pacific and Indian Oceans through the Austronesian migration. Tue. April 26, 2022, 6:00 PM PDT, MCC Theater. [More info]
2022/04/21 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] IEEE Spectrum magazine's April 2022 feature interview, "In AI, Small Is the New Big": Dr. Andrew Ng, has become "something of an evangelist for what he calls the data-centric AI movement, which he says can yield 'small data' solutions to big issues in AI, including model efficiency, accuracy, and bias." [Center] Documentary film screening and discussion at UCSB (see the next item below). [Right] A gem of an audiobook: Stephen Sondheim in His Own Words (see the last item below).
(2) Tonight's documentary film screening and discussion, Pollock Theater, UCSB: "Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache" covers the illustrious career of Guy-Blache, who founded her own studio and wrote, directed, and/or produced 1000 films. Directed by Pamela B. Green from eight years of research, "Be Natural" celebrates a woman who pioneered the art of cinema at its inception and looks into the enduring legacy of her accomplishments. Narrated by Jodie Foster, the documentary features interviews with many filmmakers and actors. The post-screening discussion featured director/co-writer Pamela B. Green and co-writer/exec-producer Joan Simon in a conversation with Cynthia Felando (UCSB Film & Media Studies). [Images]
(3) Today's meeting of the UCSB Faculty Legislature: One highlight was the introduction of the winners of UCSB Academic Senate's Teaching Awards, beginning with Chancellor Henry Yang's congratulatory message.
Distinguished Teaching Awards: Gordon Abra (Sociology); Ken Hiltner (English); Jennifer King (Geography); Jen Martin (Environmental Studies); Danielle Whitaker (Education); Vanessa Woods (Psychology)
Outstanding Graduate Mentor Awards: Bhaskar Sarkar (Film & Media Studies); Jill Sharkey (Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology); M. Scott Shell (Chemical Engineering)
Outstanding TA Awards: Stephanie Arguera (Education); Trevor Auldridge (Sociology); Janeva Chung (Biology--MCDB); Hannah Garibaldi (Film and Media Studies)
The rest of the meeting was spent on reviewing the campus status in various domains, including COVID-19 mitigation efforts, freshman/transfer applications & admissions stats, Staff Celebration Week (May 2-6), Commencement preparations, formation of a review panel for Munger Hall, UC campus support for scholars at risk, and revision of the method for teaching evaluations by students (replacement for ESCI).
Three formal votes to approve various academic proposals concluded the meeting.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Military parachute event, not coordinated with the Capitol Police, triggers evacuation of the US Capitol.
- Persian music: In celebration of Ridvan, Sonbol Taefi performs "Eid-e Gol o Vasl-e Yar." [4-minute video]
- Film footage of the Shah's 1939 wedding to his first wife, Princess Fawzia Fuad, held in Cairo and Tehran.
- Throwback Thursday: A high-school friend recently dicovered this postcard, which I sent to him in 1962.
(5) Book review: Sondheim, Stephen, Stephen Sondheim in His Own Words, unabridged 2-hour audiobook, BBC Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This audiobook is a collection of segments from interviews with Stephen Sondheim [1930-2021], originally published in the Guardian and the Observer. In the interviews, the genius American songwriter comes across as pensive, cultured, and quotable. For example, he mused in 1987 that "All works of narrative must have a point to do with the consequences of one's action. If it turns out well it's comedy; if badly, tragedy."
Sondheim, best known for "West Side Story" (1957), "Gypsy" (1959), "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1962), "A Little Night Music" (1973), "Sweeney Todd" (1979), and "Into the Woods" (1987), did not like to repeat the formulas that proved successful. Rather, he preferred to experiment with new material and styles. The son of a Jewish garment-maker father and an abusive mother, he went on to win 8 Tony and 8 Grammy Awards.
Sondheim was a closeted homosexual for much of his life, marrying Jeff Romley in 2017. He believed that writing song lyrics is a lot harder than writing music or play scenes. In writing lyrics, "you are restricted; you have certain rhythms and meters and rhymes." He credits Oscar Hammerstein, his mentor and surrogate father, for teaching him to underwrite, not overwrite, because music is a very rich art in itself.
2022/04/20 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB's World Music Series noon concerts are back! Today's performers were Los Catanes del Norte (Video 1; Video 2; Video 3). [Top center & right] Smithsonian-sponsored talk on space archaeology (see the next item below). [Bottom row] Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk by Professor Sumita Pennathur of UCSB's Mechanical Engineering Department (see the last item below).
(2) "Ancient cities and Landscapes from Space: How Remote Sensing is Transforming Archaeology": This was the title of tonight's talk by Professor Timothy Murtha (U. Florida), under the auspices of Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. [The talk on YouTube]
Dr. Murtha began with a brief introduction to the field of space archaeology, in which NASA has played a key role. He then detailed a study of the Maya lowlands in Central America, undertaken by a large group of researchers from different disciplines. The project aims to study not just large structures that have been the focus of archaeology so far, but also small dwellings that often surrounded the bigger structures. Dense vegetation in the area of study makes it difficult to discover land features. Various technologies are used to penetrate the vegetation and see the earth underneath, leading to amazing discoveries.
(3) A prominent one-line proof: The upper bound 22/7 for π is established by the following clearly-positive definite integral, which evaluates to 22/7 – π: Integral from 0 to 1 of [x^4(1 – x)^4/(1 + x^2)]dx
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A majority of college graduates don't work in their field of study: One in seven earn under $15K/year.
- Africa-wide Quran-reading contest held in a stadium with 60,000 spectators: Iran's mullahs are envious!
- Ziba Shirazi, interviewed by Roqe, Ep #174. [Begins at the 1:33:00 mark of this 145-minute video]
- Sound advice: Be careful when following the masses, as the M is sometimes silent.
(5) Research in natural-language processing: Today's UCSB CS colloquium featured two speakers with Cal Tech and AWS affiliations. The topics were a lot more specialized than I expected. So, I learned little about NLP and machine translation. Here is a record of the talks anyway.
First, Giovanni Paolini spoke under the title "Structured Prediction as Translation Between Augmented Natural Languages." Next, Allesandro Achille discussed "Reversible and Irreversible Learning in DNNs," were reversibility means the ability to forget past training.
(6) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Tonight, in an in-person event with 22 attendees, held at the Calle Real Rusty's Pizza in Goleta, Dr. Sumita Pennathur (Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UCSB) spoke under the title "MEMS-Based Innovations for Optimized Management of Type I Diabetes."
Dr. Pennathur began talking without the benefit of her PowerPoint slides, while her team worked on three different laptop computers to see if any one of them could properly interface with the digital projector. She did a great job of holding the audience's interest and attention, telling stories about her background (her name Sumita, she said jokingly, reflects her education at Stanford U. and MIT) and what motivates her in doing her work at UCSB and at start-up companies she has founded.
Once she regained the use of her PowerPoint presentation, Dr. Pennathur recapped the points she had made orally and moved on to discuss some of the details of devices she has developed and built to assist in frequent self-monitoring of blood glucose levels and appropriate insulin adjustment & administration in order to avoid hypo- and hyperglycemia and life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis.
Artificial pancreas systems now on the market do allow real-time communication between continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps for closed-loop delivery, but they are bulky, require a separate wearable glucose sensor on the body to achieve closed-loop operation, and have suboptimal delivery. Hence, the need for a small-footprint, low-power, and easy-to-use artificial pancreas system that takes advantage of recent advances in microfluidics and microfabrication.
[IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
[Speaker's Web site]
2022/04/19 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] UCSB Libarary's last Pacific Views Lecture for 2021-2022 (see the last item below). [Right] Beef kebabs: A new item I noticed at my local Costco store.
(2) Fake journals, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty: Faculty members are expected to publish research papers as a way of showing that they are contributing to their fields of specialization. Those who are incapable of coming up with new ideas, or who are greedy (not to mention dishonest) and want to claim more credit than they deserve, be it for accelerating an academic promotion or earning a salary raise, copy other researchers' works and publish them under their own names.
Some such "researchers" are lazy or sloppy, copy-pasting text, formulas, and diagrams from their sources. Such thieves are easily caught, although this may happen after the damage has been done (they have earned an undeserved promotion or salary increase). A couple of days ago, I became aware that one of my co-authored papers, appearing in IEEE Trans. VLSI, had been plagiarized by two different groups of "researchers," who published the copied work in two separate journals (IJERT; IJATIR). I reported the case to the journal editors, but, unfortunately, do not expect any action, given the ill repute of the journals involved.
Others are somewhat more sophisticated, slightly modifying the stolen material to make detection more difficult. We now have plagiarism detection tools, that is, programs that search the Internet for exact or approximate copies of material appearing in a paper suspected to have been plagiarized. Again, detection may occur after the damage has been done.
Some publishers now run similarity-check tools on submitted papers to detect plagiarism before evaluating a paper for publication, which is a positive step. But it is unknown at this time whether the tools are capable enough to catch a clever thief. Ironically, the thief must spend a lot of time on modifying the stolen work in order to minimize the detection probability, a time that could have been spent on creating original work!
The trend toward open-access publishing (author pays a fee, reader gets free access) has exacerbated the plagiarism problem. We now have a large number of predatory publishers who publish anything, without proper evaluation, to earn a profit. If authors are charged $1000, say, as the publication fee, then a journal publishing 1000 papers a year earns $1 million. A dishonest publisher has no incentive for quality-checking, as it earns more money by publishing questionable papers.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an invited paper entitled "On Research Quality and Impact: What Five Decades in Academia Has Taught Me," which, among other topics, discusses fake journals and predatory publishers. A slightly-shorter version of the paper has been translated into Persian.
(3) "The Business of Less: The Role of Companies and Households on a Planet in Peril": This was the title of Tuesday's Pacific Views Lecture of the UCSB Library, in which Dr. Roland Geyer (Professor of Industrial Ecology, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB) challenged the prevailing notions of "eco-efficiency" and "win-win," through which corporations have hijacked the environmental movement.
Dr. Geyer began with an overview, in which he divided the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the present into four periods: (1) The period up to the 1930s saw the rise of mass production, typified by the introduction of Ford Model T and putting lead in gasoline to improve efficiency. (2) The 1940s and 1950s were characterized by the rise of mass pollution, exemplified by the Love Canal tragedy and smog-filled big cities. (3) The period from the 1960s to the mid-1980s saw the rise of mass resistance, including the designation of Earth Day, whose 52nd anniversary will be marked tomorrow, and environmental regulations. This year is also the 50th anniversary of the landmark MIT study, The Limits to Growth. (4) From the mid-1980s, we note the rise of corporate sustainability efforts, which include a disavowal of a dichotomy between environmental protection and business success, along with the advancement of "win-win" narratives.
Dr. Geyer then presented some data points about primary production and secondary (recycled) material to show that we still have a long way to go in converting the current more-or-less linear economy to a circular one. Despite expansion of our recycling efforts, production and consumption have increased by a larger factor, giving rise to an increase in primary production. One way out of this vicious cycle is to increase our spending on people/labor, as opposed to material. We should try to buy stuff with little or no packaging and treat ourselves to a massage or concert, instead of a new electronic gadget. Furthermore, we cannot make significant progress along the path of saving our planet without regulations and mandates. Voluntary reuse/recycling programs and incentives such as cap-and-trade have proven quite ineffective.
P.S.: Here is Dr. Geyer's op-ed in The Guardian, "It's Unavoidable: We Must Ban Fossil Fuels to Save Our Planet. Here's How We Do It."
2022/04/18 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: Shown are an equilateral triangle and three squares, the smallest of which is unit square. What is the triangle's side length? [Top center] A page from a school textbook for Iranian girls: The narrative makes girls ashamed of their bodies ("foul smell of your period") and advises deference to men. [Top right] Math puzzle: Shown are two half-circles in a unit square. Find their diameter. [Bottom left] Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Humor for my Persian-speaking readers: Unfortunately, the 37th Alley has been martyred. [Bottom right] Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority (see the last item below).
(2) Book review: Stevenson, Bryan, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Spiegel & Grau, 2014.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this review on April 18, 2016, and posted it to GoodReads on April 18, 2022.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hina Rabbani Khar becomes Pakistan's Foreign Minister, a decade after she first assumed the post.
- Quote of the day: "Education isn't something you can finish." ~ Isaac Asimov
- Facebook memory from Apr. 18, 2019: A quatrain from Omar Khayyam, with advice against hoarding.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 18, 2014: Verses from a beautiful Persian poem by Parvin E'tesami.
(4) Book review: Milgram, Stanley, Obedience to Authority, Harper Prennial, 1983. Originally published under the title Obedience to Authority: An experimental View, 1974.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Hitler was a single person who could not have slaughtered millions of Jews and other innocent victims with his own hands. He needed a large number of people, both supervisors and executioners, to carry out his wishes, even when they considered the orders to be abhorrent or immoral.
During the early 1960s, Milgram conducted a series of psychological experiments, now considered among the most important in the field, in which human subjects were instructed to administer what they thought to be progressively more-painful electric shocks to other human beings. The experiments highlighted the surprising ease with which ordinary people can be commanded by authorities to act with malevolence against innocent individuals. According to English novelist C. P. Snow, "far more, and far more hideous, crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion."
This book elaborates on those experiments and implications of their results, first published in J. Abnormal and Social Psychology. Obedience is the deeply-ingrained dispositional cement that binds humans to systems of authority. It is an impulse that overrides training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct. The urge to obey among Milgram's subjects was so strong that, despite the tensions they felt, all of them reached an electric shock level of 300 or more before stopping.
At an abstract level, most individuals would agree that our moral judgments must override authority when the two are in conflict. But Milgram's experiments, and similar studies since then, have confirmed that this abstract belief may not extend to practice.
In case you are wondering about how experiments of this nature can be conducted ethically, the usual set-up is to recruit random subjects as pain-inflicting "teachers" and to seek the services of actors to play "student" victims who feign feeling pain and protest, despite receiving no shock at all.
2022/04/17 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The equation of egg, in honor of Easter and Passover: phi is the golden ratio. [Top center] Traditional Passover breakfast items: Matzohs, halegh, hard-boiled eggs. [Top right] Nerdy T-shirt: Maxwell's Equations. [Bottom left] Humor: Mathematical limerick. [Bottom center] This evening at Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach. [Bottom right] Math: You have heard of triangular numbers, the nth one being n(n + 1)/2. Square-pyramidal numbers are defined analogously, but in 3D. What is the nth square-pyramidal number?
(2) The unfolding January 6 story: It's less like a who-done-it, a la Agatha Christie, and more like a how/why-done-it, a la Columbo! In the Columbo TV series, each episode opened by showing a crime, with the criminal in plain sight. Liutenant Columbo's task consisted of finding the manner of, and motive for, the crime.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Volunteers scramble to preserve Ukraine's digital culture before the country's servers are destroyed.
- Persian music: An Iranian children's group performs to help the plight of cancer victims. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Apr. 17, 2018: Fox News begins, "Light, camera, fiction!"
- Facebook memory from Apr. 17, 2011: On spreading of rumors on social networks.
(4) The 2022 Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series: "Empire and Borderlands at Interplay: A Structural Approach (First Millennium BCE — First Millennium CE)," Wed. April 20, 2022, 4:00 PM PDT.
(5) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series event for Wed., April 27, 2022: Dr. Keelan Overton will speak in English about "Iran Unglazed: Local, National, and Global Histories of Persian Tilework," 11:00 AM PDT.
(6) This lavishly-decorated Omar Khayyam book of poetry sank with the Titanic: A second ordered version burnt in London during WE II. Will anyone dare to commission a third version?
(7) Iran's loss is Germany's gain: Dr. Nargess Eskandari-Grunberg, former political prisoner in Iran is serving as the mayor of Frankfurt. BBC Persian tells her life story in this 27-minute interview.
(8) Roya Hakakian: BBC Persian tells her life story, from a love affair with Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution to working as a journalist, writer, and poet in exile, in this 32-minute interview.
(9) Final thought for the day: A prisoner need not be behind bars or in chains. One can be a prisoner of his/her own biases or of other people's expectations.
2022/04/16 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Passover & Easter (see the next item below). [Top center] Resilient Afghan girls: Looking at this young girl and her beautiful smile, you would think that she has no worries in the world. But she is denied the right to attend school and will likely be forced into an arranged marriage before becoming an adult. [Top right] Second night of Passover at my sister's, with my niece playing the piano. [Bottom left] Japanese art: Laborer enjoying Sake, by Doraku, early 19th century. [Bottom center] Well, what did you expect from a key named "Escape"? [Bottom right] Benjamin Errett's Elements of Wit: Matering the Art of Being Interesting (see the last item below).
(2) A very happy Passover to my Jewish readers! And happy Easter to my Christian readers! This year Passover and Easter are on consecutive days. The two holidays have common roots and similar traditions, but they can be separated by up to a month in some years. Passover, a spring Jewish festival, which began last night, on the eve of its first day (as is common for all Jewish festivals), is observed based on the lunar calendar. To ensure that the holiday is synchronized with spring, the Jewish calendar adds a 13th month, Adar 2, to some years in order to make up for the 11-day difference between the lengths of lunar and solar years. This article has a nice explanation of the needed calendar adjustments and how they are carried out.
(3) Iran's own polling shows that more than 70% of Iranians oppose compulsory hijab laws: Here is an unprecedented Iranian state-TV debate on the pros and cons of forcing hijab on women.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ever wonder why there are no restaurant ads for Passover specials?
- Math problem: Solve for x the equation x! = x^3 – x.
- Have you heard of right-angled hexagons? Here they are! [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Apr. 16, 2021: Russians performing a lively Kurdish music/dance routine!
- Facebook memory from Apr. 16, 2018: We professors do have a sense of humor!
- Facebook memory from Apr. 16, 2012: There are more engineer & lawyer jokes than any other profession.
(5) RISC-V dives into the AI domain: Adoption of the latest incarnation of "reduced instruction-set computer" architectural philosophy, which is free and open-source, is taking off like a rocket, with the fuel provided by the demand of AI and machine-learning applications. An extensive redesign was needed to make the implementation of RISC-V more compact and energy-frugal, so that thousands of them can be deployed.
(6) Book review: Errett, Benjamin, Elements of Wit: Mastering the Art of Being Interesting, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Erik Synnestvedt, Gildan Media, 2014. [My 4-star review of this book on >GoodReads]
We all yearn for coming up with the right words at the right time. I don't know about you, but it happens to me often that I think of a witty response to some remark, a long time after the opportunity has passed. Like everything else, being witty requires preparation and practice. Extensive reading is a big part of the preparation. Reading this book is also quite helpful, although it's not really a how-to book.
Errett begins by defining wit as an act of spontaneous creativity. Being witty is different from being funny, although a witty remark is often considered funny. Errett then presents different facets of wit in 12 chapters. He deems wit an endangered quality of our modern world. Discussion of wit has, for the most part, been replaced with talk about creativity.
Here are a few examples of witty remarks or responses:
- Always remember never to use the words "always" and "never."
- Upon being arrested, Energizer Bunny was charged with battery.
- He was a modest man, with much to be modest about.
- If money doesn't grow on trees, why do banks have branches?
- I have lost 20 pounds! — I'm sure you'll find them at McDonald's.
- You should go out for a walk on an empty stomach. — Whose?
A witty remark is never offensive or down-putting, rather it relies on the element of surprise to impress and delight. With preparation and practice, witty remarks come effortlessly, in much the same way that a jazz musician isn't thinking during improvisations. Wit is associated more with kindness than cruelty, although it can be used to do both good and evil. A prepared, mean-spirited remark, even if funny, isn't wit. Wit must arise in the moment, during normal interactions.
2022/04/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: TI's funny-looking "The Little Professor" calculator, on display at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge University, made learning arithmetic fun for children, beginning in 1976. It was initially priced at $17, with the price dropping to $13 by mid-1977. [Center] Throwback Thursday: Did you know that at one point, a street used to pass under the Eiffel Tower. [Right] The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt (see the last item below).
(2) Parisa Rajabi, is facing deportation from Turkey to a violent husband: In February, Mona Heydari was beheaded by her husband in a case of "honor" killing, after being returned from Turkey where she had fled.
(3) Iran's security services have re-arrested human/women's-rights activist Narges Mohammadi in the wake of her Washington Post and "Iran International" interviews: The Islamic regime has also unleashed its cyber-trolls on Mohammadi's social-media posts as part of its grand strategy to attack and discredit dissenters.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- "Abu Rayhan Biruni's Scientific Legacy": SUTA-Sweden's on-line event, Sun., Apr. 24, 2022, 9:00 AM PDT.
- WiFi for the Moon: Argotec and JPL's relay satellites could deliver bandwidth for more than 90 missions.
- Move over scarecrows: How drones are being used for autonomous pigeon harassment.
- Five charts that explain the global chip shortage, and why there's no quick solution.
(5) Book review: Sullivan, Teresa A., Elizabeth Warren, and Jay Lawrence Westbrook, The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by Suzie Althens, Yale U. Press, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a re-issue of a 2000 book, with a new preface that examines the persistence of old threats and emergence of new threats to the American middle-class in the two decades since the book's original publication. The fragility of the title refers to people being crushed by heavy debt burdens and thus being forced to declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy laws were introduced to allow people who get in serious financial trouble, whether as a result of uncontrollable circumstances (such as job loss or serious illness) or because of unwise personal decisions, to have a chance at a fresh start.
The personal-bankruptcy crisis in the US is viewed as a natural consequence of a free-market approach to getting rid of bad debts. Taking credit-card debt as a case in point, all users of bank cards share in losses from those who are unable to repay what they owe, by being burdened with a high interest rate, typically around 18%. In Europe, and to a lesser extent in Canada, credit isn't as easily granted, but strong safety nets (such as generous unemployment benefits and free healthcare) constitute a social approach to dealing with the inability to pay back debts.
Personal bankruptcies are handled according to Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 of the bankruptcy law. Chapter 7, the more common option, is often used by people with substantial unsecured debt, such as medical and credit-card bills. Chapter 13 liquidates the assets to pay off one's liabilities. Because Chapter 13 only reorganizes the debts and provides more time for paying them off, it is a good option for people who earn enough money to cover an adjusted repayment schedule.
Almost all borrowers defaulting on credit or declaring bankruptcy are middle-class. The poor don't have enough income to get loans. Amazingly, people at the bottom tier of the middle-class are too poor to go bankrupt, given rising attorney fees, courtesy of Congressional "reforms" that have made the bankruptcy process, entailing $750-$1500 in attorney fees at the time of the book's original publication, much more complicated and, thus, quite expensive.
After two chapters entitled "Americans in Financial Crisis" and "Middle Class and Broke: The Demography of Bankruptcy," the book's next 5 chapters focus on main reasons for bankruptcies in the US (un-/under-employment, credit cards, sickness/injury, divorce, housing), before ending with Chapter 8, entitled "The Middle Class in Debt." Two appendices present the data used in the study and list other published studies in this area.
2022/04/13 (Wednesday): Pictorial report on my visit to Getty Villa Museum's exhibition on Ancient Persia.
The exhibition, which runs through August 8, 2022, is a collaborative project of Getty Museum with Farhang Foundation and several other entities. There have been many exhibitions on ancient Persia, but this one is unique in that it connects the Persian Empire (550 BCE to 650 CE, involving the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian dynasties) to its contemporary civilizations in Greece and Rome. The following narratives are lightly-edited versions of the official Getty descriptions.
*The first part of the exhibition examines the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire in mid-6th-century BCE, when Cyrus the Great captured western Asia Minor (in present-day Turkey) and conquered the Greek settlements there. Achaemenid sculpture, silver vessels, and jewelry are on display alongside Greek depictions of the Persian wars (490-79 BCE). The Greek cities long established on the western coast of Asia Minor and the native people in nearby Lydia, Caria, and Lycia at first resisted Persian demands for submission but eventually came to terms with living in a great empire. These regions produced works both in Greek and Persian style, reflecting the complex cultural influences around them.
*The second part of the exhibition begins around 330 BCE, following Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. The victorious Greeks inherited rule over Iran and much of the ancient Middle East for some time, but in the 3rd century BCE another Persian dynasty, the Parthians, emerged and soon became the dominant state of the Near East, remaining in power for nearly 500 years. It was also the primary rival of Rome, which replaced the Greeks as the new superpower of the Mediterranean, with the borderlands of Mesopotamia being a frequent battleground. The Parthian art on view in the exhibition, including luxury silver drinking vessels made for the Parthian aristocracy, is highly eclectic, displaying a mixture of Greek, Mesopotamian, Achaemenid, and nomadic Iranian influences.
*The third and final part of the exhibition is devoted to the Sasanian Empire, which, beginning in 224 CE, created a new Iranian self-image with distinctive trappings of kingship and splendid royal art, a more centralized administration, the founding of many cities, and an aggressive military policy. Despite near constant warfare, the Romans and Sasanians recognized the advantages of maintaining a balance of power and were often allied in fighting mutual enemies until the Arab conquest in 651 CE. On display are palace decorations and Sasanian silver plates and vessels ornamented with depictions of royal court life, along with Late Roman and Byzantine silver that served similar purposes.
*A separate online digital experience created in conjunction with the exhibition allows visitors the opportunity to soar over a 3D re-creation of Persepolis and take an interactive "walk" through the palaces, terraces, audience halls, and chambers of the massive complex in southern Iran, enlivening the many relief sculptures and architecture with their original colors and textures.
Exhibition's announcement and description [Museum's Web site]
Books on the exhibition [Gorgeous coffee-table book; Shorter highlights book]
Getty's Digital Persepolis [My video sample from 3D projection at the Museum; On-line version]
Description of the photos above: [Top row] Entering the Museum, announcement of the exhibition, and some outdoors shots. [Second row] Shots highlighting the Museum's architecture and some of the descriptive posters placing ancient Persia in the context of other civilizations. [Third row] The Museum Store and its Herb Garden. [Bottom row] Some of the exhibition's murals, pages from its guidebook, and objects on display.
2022/04/12 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Professor Mona Jarrahi of UCLA is the 11th winner of IET's prestigious A. F. Harvey Prize, which carries a cash stipend of 350,000 British Pounds. Her lecture, beginning at the 15:30 mark of this video, is entitled "Realizing the Untapped Potentials of the Terahertz Spectrum." [Center] Maryam Ghorbankarimi's book talk on Rakhshan Banietemad (see the next item below). [Right] Warren Berger's A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (see the last item below).
(2) Book forum: Today's webinar in Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies "Rethinking Iran" series was entitled "ReFocus: The Films of Rakhshan Banietemad," by Maryam Ghorbankarimi, based on her edited book of the same title. [The webinar on YouTube]
Ghorbankarimi is a filmmaker and film scholar, studying transnational cinemas and cultures, with special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality in Iranian cinema.
Rakhshan Banietemad is a skillful and influential film director/screenwriter, whose films combine sociopolitical commentary with family themes. She is popular with Iranian audiences and critics and has also earned important honors from international film festivals. Banietemad began her career with a focus on documentary films. Later, she gained recognition for her dramatic features, but she continued making documentary films. She is an inspiration and role model to numerous Iranian filmmakers, both women and men. Banietemad is active in humanitarian & women's-rights causes, both through her films and via community involvement.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Gunman fires 33 rounds in New York City subway shooting: Al least 29 shot or otherwise hurt.
- Virginia GOP official resigns after his post calling for lynching of the Pentagon chief resurfaces.
- Putin purges more than 100 FSB agents in apparent retaliation amid Ukraine invasion quagmire.
- Egyptian mummy from 3500 years ago is digitally unwrapped with 3D imaging technology.
(4) Book review: Berger, Warren, A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Michael Quinlan, Brilliance Audio, 2016.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Warren Berger has written extensively on the relationship between how people ask questions and their inventiveness. Questioning has been defined as "the ability to organize our thinking around what we don't know." The keyword here is "organize," so not all questions are created equal. People sometimes use questions to criticize, attack, or show off, rather than to seek additional information to fill gaps in their knowledge or quench their curiosity. Of course, answers cannot be found without posing appropriate questions, what we call hypotheses in scientific inquiry. Our world is teeming with answers awaiting the right questions that would lead to their discovery.
Berger is of the opinion that children enter school as question marks and leave as periods, so they seem to be losing their curiosity and ability to ask questions. What causes this critical loss? Ironically, knowledge is a hindrance to questioning. The more we know, the less we question. Fear is another roadblock. We need to make questioning safe for kids at schools (and for adults at workplaces), by making it part of the expectation. An interesting exercise is to ask students to formulate questions on a sheet of paper. Only questions are allowed. No answers!
Our modern world places too much emphasis on problem-solving skills and not enough on problem-finding aptitude, which is the essence of creativity. In an article entitled "Why Problem Finders Are More Creative than Problem Solvers," Saga Briggs suggests three steps to finding problems that lead to creativity:
- Don't take issues at face value
- Play devil's advocate
- Ask questions before seeking answers
Questioning isn't important only for knowledge acquisition. We need to be able to ask proper questions of political candidates to discover their views. In a rapidly-changing world, answers don't last, so we need to keep asking questions to remain functional human beings. Moreover, the ability to ask good questions in intimately related to one of the most-important skills we need to navigate the modern world: Performing effective on-line searches. There are now problem-finding-centered school curricula, in which students are encouraged to formulate their own problems, rather than directed to solve problems posed by the teacher.
Here is an 8-minute TEDx London talk about the just-mentioned curricula. You might also want to check out Berger's 62-minute talk at Microsoft Research or his 11-minute TED-like talk on the subject.
2022/04/11 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Traditional Iranian costumes on 1974 stamps from Iran. [Top center] Math problem: Evaluate this multi-level fraction. (Credit SQRT, @mathisstillfun) [Top right] Beautiful colors: Nature in full bloom. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Three squares are shown. What is the ratio of the area of the green square to the area of the blue square? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: We have two tangent circles and two tangent lines to them from a point outside. The three tangency points are shown. What is the angle beta in terms of the angle alpha? (Credit: @Mirangu1) [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Shown are two squares within a unit square. What is the ratio A/B of the colored square areas?
(2) Saudi Arabia's MBS gave Jared Kushner $2 billion: And the Republicans insist on investigating Hunter Biden? Kushner was a senior presidential adviser, with responsibilities that spanned several cabinet departments and with a great deal of influence on his father-in-law, Donald Trump.
(3) For those who are curious about Russia: I have posted a review of Anne Garrels' 2016 book, Putin Country: A Journey into Russia.
Alternatively, you can listen to her NPR book-interview. I am now reading Orlando Figes' epic book, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, which I will review in due course.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ballet tells gymnastics #MeToo: The ballet world is shaken by allegations of sexual abuse.
- The Paris-based Bahar Choir will hold concerts in London (April 23, 2022) and Paris (April 29 & 30).
- Math puzzle: If 2^x = 81 and 3^y = 64, what is xy?
- Interesting approximations involving e and π: e ≅ 3 – sqrt(5/63) and π ≅ (1 + 1/π)^(1 + π).
(5) Pakistan's parliament chooses opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister: Former PM, Imran Khan, was ousted in a vote of no-confidence. Khan, an educated man, and an aristocratic playboy, said in late 2021 that the Taliban's traditions, including how they treat women, must be respected. Good riddance!
(6) The future of construction: Our buildings will soon feature bricks that can produce/store electric energy. Several technologies (biological, solar-powered, concrete batteries, and super-capacitors) are being tried.
(7) I am honored to have been chosen as a Charter Member of IEEE Computer Society's newly-designated Distinguished Contributors. "The IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor Program was introduced in 2021 as part of the Society's 75th Anniversary. The program showcases the immense combined technical expertise and innovation power of its membership while recognizing volunteer commitment. In the program's first year, 52 Charter Members and 66 members by application were awarded this designation." Tracing its roots to 1946, the IEEE Computer Society currently has ~400K members.
2022/04/10 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Today, we need to have peace in our thoughts more than ever. Here are a few posters with the theme of peace and love in different languages. [Bottom row] Panel discussion on "Latest Developments in Afghanistan and Implications for Iran" (see the last item below).
(2) Book review: King, Ross, Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling, abridged audiobook, read by Alan Sklar, Blackstone Audio, 2003. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this review on April 9, 2012, and posted it to GoodReads on April 9, 2022.
(3) The man known for building modern schools in Iran: Mirza Hassan Tabrizi, better-known as Roshdieh (his schools' name), didn't give up when religious leaders destroyed the schools multiple times. [8-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russian war crimes continue: Rocket attack on railway station in Ukraine kills at least 50 civilians.
- The letter S of the Latin alphabet: Interpolation from regular font to boldface font. [Tweet]
- The second-highest mountain lake in the world is atop Sabalan Mountain in Iran. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Apr. 9, 2020: PhotoShopping women out of historical photos, Iranian style!
(5) Who are the two people least likely to carry on a conversation? How about the two Seans, Penn and Hannity? Penn says he still doesn't trust Hannity, but unity in support of Ukraine is too important to not spread the word in any way possible. Hannity still inserts his crazy talking points within and between questions, but Penn has done the cause of Ukraine a great service. He is intimately familiar with Ukraine and its president (he was making a documentary in the country when the Russian invasion began). [24-minute video]
(6) "Latest Developments in Afghanistan and Implications for Iran: A Panel Discussion": This was the title of today's discussion, in Persian and Dari, under the auspices of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran. After introductory remarks by the director of the lecture series, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge), two panelists offered their views on the status of woman in Afghanistan. A third panelist, Dr. Nilofar Sakhi (George Washington U.) was scheduled to participate, but she couldn't make it.
[Unfortunately, due to other commitments, I could attend only part of the meeting, but I will complete this preliminary report by watching the panel discussion's recorded version, when it becomes available.]
Afghanistan is often characterized as the graveyard of empires. I don't remember who opined that it is also the playground or laboratory of international charity groups, where they experiment with unproven programs of dubious value. Educated Afghan women are quite active in fighting for their rights and they may have been helped in their efforts by the work of such international organizations. But, educated women form a small minority in Afghanistan. Overall, the aforementioned programs have not been successful in bringing men into the fold to support women. In other words, a 2-decade opportunity for building social infrastructures in support of fairness, equity, and justice may have been lost. So, I attended the meeting, eager to learn about the reasons for this failure from the distinguished panelists.
*Homeira Qaderi (writer, educator, women's-rights activist), "How Women in Afghanistan Have Strived for Their Rights": Afghanistan has always limited women, and traditions such as stoning women for illicit sexual affairs pre-dates the Taliban. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, it fought in every village and street. Today's war in Ukraine is similar, but it is both more limited in scope and much better documented through social media (during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there were no social media to document it and Afghans heard about it via TV, which wasn't available in every home, and radio, which broadcast government propaganda). The Soviet invasion was followed by a civil war, which destroyed the little that was left intact by the Soviet army. Extreme poverty led people to think only of survival, so the young girls' struggles were not supported by their parents. Therefore, resistance was essentially crushed. Women began sewing and knitting as a way of coping and supporting their hard-pressed families. The practice of self-immolation also spread. Arranged marriages became common and girls saw no way of surviving without accepting such marriages. When the US invaded Afghanistan, women's issues were all but forgotten, becoming just a tool for fundraising and certain people gaining political power and earning international awards. Ministry of Women did little more than celebrating Women's Day and holding exhibitions of handicrafts. Unfortunately, most Afghan women are aware only of physical violence, being much less informed about economic or other forms of violence.
*Farah Karimi (Head of the Dutch Parliamentary Delegation to the OSCE PA and former UN Consultant for Capacity Building of the Afghan Government), "An Expert Reflection on International Responses to the Crisis in Afghanistan": Karimi began by explaining her place/role in talking about Afghanistan. She visited Afghanistan during the Taliban rule. Description forthcoming.
2022/04/09 (Saturday): Today, I offer my reviews of two books about Iran and its business climate.
(1) Book review: Kazemi, Abbas and Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi, Megamalls and Large Commercial Complexes in Tehran: A Sociological Study, Tehran Municipality, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Iran's capital city of Tehran is quite different from the rest of the country. Certain of its posh neighborhoods resemble European capitals, with slums that house the poor and the disenfranchised only a few kilometers away. Its population of 9+ million constitutes roughly 11% of the country's total inhabitants. Tehran is not only Iran's seat of political and financial power, but also a center of commerce, communication, and culture, including numerous museums.
Iran's sick economy and the attendant high inflation rate, resulting from mismanagement of natural & financial resources, rampant corruption, and the effects of economic sanctions, have made investments in real estate attractive for both government-run entities and private parties. Highly visible signs of excessive real-estate development, with fairly low occupancy rates, are residential towers in the city's northern neighborhoods and gigantic commercial complexes (including megamalls) throughout the city.
Dr. Kazemi's and Dr. Amir-Ebrahimi's 660-page sociological study was carried out for Tehran Urban Research & Planning Center (Markaz-e Motaale'aat va Barnaameh-Rizi-ye Shahr-e Tehran), a unit of Tehran's Municipality, with many PhD-holding researchers. The report is structured in 11 chapters of varying lengths, with a few pages of front matter, a 17-page bibliography, and a 4-page index (which, in my PDF review copy, lacked page numbers).
This is primarily a reference work and not a book that one would read from cover to cover. For my review, I sampled key parts of the book and plan to go back to it from time to time. The book's many charts, tables, photographs, and news-media clippings make it possible to browse it for a high-level view of its scope and the issues it addresses.
Chapter 1 ("Introduction") traces the history of commercial centers since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. One motivation for building megamalls is cited as the government wanting to move the city's public spaces from streets and parks to shopping centers.
Chapter 2 ("Theoretical Outlook") ponders the question of whether shopping centers can truly be considered public spaces; it also considers the effects of such commercial centers on social norms and public behavior (food courts, etc.). Keeping women's attire and demeanor within limits that are tolerable to the government is a major headache for both developers and merchants.
Chapter 3 ("Methodology") outlines the methods and data sources used in the study and presents, in Table 1, a list of the 14 commercial complexes that form its basis. Other tables present the profiles of experts and shoppers interviewed for the study.
Chapter 4 ("Expansion of Shopping Centers in Asia") provides a regional context for developments in Tehran.
Chapter 5 ("The Political Economy of Tehran's Autonomy") deals with laws and regulations affecting the development of commercial centers and the attendant ups & downs with shifts in economy and political power.
Chapter 6 ("Classification of Shopping Centers in Tehran") deals with commonalities and differences in the studied shopping centers by categorizing them into suburban, city-center, and novel/unconventional developments (Table 12). Map 1 contains a scatterplot of all of Tehran's shopping centers of various kinds, not just the 14 studied in detail. There are other maps/charts, highlighting the distribution of commercial centers by neighborhood and by size, type, & age.
Chapter 7 ("The Evolution of the Culture of Shopping Among Tehran Residents") discusses, among other things, whether people consider shopping an enjoyable activity or a chore, their modes of transportation, and time spent at shopping malls.
Chapter 8 ("Ethnography of the Selected Neighborhoods") considers the geography, history, economics, and demographics of neighborhoods where the 14 selected commercial centers are located and the mutual influences among the factors above and how they were affected by the commercial development, including the latter's environmental impacts.
Chapter 9 ("Ethnography of Users of the Commercial Centers") deals with the characteristics of shoppers, including their lifestyles, hobbies, and social-media use, including how their demeanor is affected by the luxury that surrounds them.
Chapter 10 ("Expansion of Commercial Centers and Its Consequences") discusses the social impact of the rapid expansion of shopping centers and how they affect society, including their perceived neoliberalizing and feminizing effects on the city.
Chapter 11 ("Conclusion") pulls things together by discussing issues such as consumerism, social classes, and fulfillment, including how these important notions, as well as the city fabric, are affected by large commercial centers and megamalls. This concluding chapter ends with some suggestions for principled development of commercial centers in a way that minimizes social disruption and alienation. As in the West, some of these malls will no doubt be devastated by shifts in consumer demographics and preferences, requiring planning in the direction of alternate uses of their spaces and structures.
Given the sad state of US shopping malls in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote in a Facebook post on March 28, 2021, that "Shopping malls must be re-architected: Big anchor stores, food courts, and many other elements no longer make sense and need reexamination. In my area [southern California], multiple shopping centers have vacant anchor stores and chances of their revival are slim." Given that on-line shopping is also taking off in Iran, I suspect that a similar fate awaits Tehran's megamalls, once the tech-savvy youth reach middle age.
(2) Book review: Coulthard, Nigel, Iran, Hussein's Dilemma: A Key to Understanding the Reality and Challenges of Iran, Books on Demand, 2014. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Born in Wales and educated in Great Britain and France, Coulthard has an interesting background. As a youngster, he spent many years in the pre-Revolution Iran. He studied electrical engineering and physics and also earned an MBA as well as an Advanced Diploma in Persian Studies. Later, he lived in Iran with his Iranian wife during the Khatami and Ahmadinejad presidencies. He held engineering and management positions with several international companies and served as Country President for a major European engineering group in Iran.
Spanning several decades of Iran's contemporary history, from the Shah's heyday in the early 1970s, through the Islamic Revolution (1979) and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), to the internationally sanctioned and isolated Iran of the 2000s, this book aims to introduce Iran to people in other countries, particularly those pursuing business ventures in the widely-misunderstood nation and culture. A Persian translation of the book, by Mohsen Mahmoodi, is available under the title Among the Iranians (Dar Miaan-e Iraaniaan; Mehregan Kherad, 2014).
The "Hussein" of the book's title refers to two people. One is Imam Hussein, a grandson of Prophet Muhammad, who has become one of the symbols of the Iranian identity, particularly after the Islamic Revolution, by virtue of his gruesome death in the battle of Karbala, an event that has produced the sternest Islamic mourning ritual during the month of Muharram. The other is US President Barack Hussein Obama, who tried to bring Iran out of its isolation and into the international community.
A broad mix of often-humorous and occasionally-grim stories about Iranians, alongside autobiographical anecdotes, make the book entertaining as well as informative. Iran, Hussein's Dilemma is structured in three parts, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue.
Part 1 presents general information about the country, its inhabitants, and the flow of people's lives. Among the topics covered in this part are history, differences with Arab states, the notion of "taarof," demography, religious mourning rituals, regional caste system, travel, and tourism.
Part 2 focuses on business & politics, including how Iran is perceived by the West, the nuclear question, and trouble spots in the relationship with the US. Specific topics addressed include the opaque inner-circle of power, missed opportunities for reconciliation between Iran and the US, and whether Dick Cheney was an Iranian agent!
Part 3 paints a picture of capitalism in Iran and how one might run a business or carry out a project in the country. Chapters or sections in this part cover business norms, expenditure, cash & control procedures, currency, inflation, exchange rates, taxation, negotiations, and HR questions.
2022/04/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] What happens when a bionic body part becomes obsolete? The company Second Sight is under attack, because it left patients with retinal implants unsupported. [Center] Stanford conference on Ehsan Yarshater (see the next item below). Right] Pickover's The Physics Book (see the last item below).
(2) Ehsan Yarshater Conference: Moderated by Dr. Abbas Milani, today's conference included presentations by Mahnaz Afkhami, Dr. Mandana Zandian, and Dr. Ali Banuazizi.
Ehsan Yarshater [1920-2018] wasn't only a distinguished scholar who helped spread Iranian history, culture, & literature through his original contributions, but also a builder of institutions facilitating the scholarship of others. In this conference, scholars reflected on Ehsan Yarshater's remarkable contributions and lasting impact.
Yarshater was Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, the founder and director of Columbia's Center for Iranian Studies, and the founding editor of the Encyclopedia Iranica, the latter taking much of the last 35 years of his life. Stay tuned for a recording of this wonderful event.
P.S.: Dr. Milani recommended watching Yarshater's 5-minute acceptance speech upon receiving the Eighth Annual Bita Prize for Persian Arts in 2015 (begins at the 29:00 mark of this video).
(3) SAT and ACT scores became optional for many colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic: Much was written about how requiring these tests impedes efforts to increase diversity. Now that several prestigious universities have gone back to requiring the tests, there is an analysis claiming that SAT & ACT may protect diversity. This reversal reminds me of periodic announcements of certain foods as cancer-causing and health-promoting!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed: She becomes the first black woman to sit on the US Supreme Court.
- Battle of the sexes: SCOTUS is now composed of three female liberals and six male conservatives.
- Data-harvesting code in mobile apps sends user data to "Russia's Google." [Arstechnica story]
- Extensive analysis of Web pages concludes that gender-neutral "people" is often interpreted as "men."
(5) Computational resources used for AI training grow ~10x per year: This is one of the take-aways from this 18-minute talk by Robert Ober (NVIDIA), speaking for UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency, under the title "AI Cluster Trends." Currently, AI clusters use 100s to 1000s of synchronous GPUs, and the rate of increase creates problems in both the cluster cost and its power consumption.
(6) Book review: Pickover, Clifford, The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection, 250 Milestones in the History of Physics, Union Square Co., 2011.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book follows Pickover's highly successful The Math Book (2009) and The Science Book (2018), the first one of which I have reviewed on GoodReads. I have also reviewed Pickover's A Passion for Mathematics: Numbers, Puzzles, Madness, Religion, and the Quest for Reality.
In The Physics Book, Pickover chooses 250 topics, extending from the Big Bang in the beginning of time to Quantum Resurrection in the distant future, and describes them in chronological order. The Big Bang description is followed by two entries from billions of years ago, before getting to Atlati and Boomerang from tens of thousands of years ago. The bulk of entries are between ~3000 BCE and 1999 CE, followed by four entries for billions and trillion of years into the future. The pace picks up around the year 1600 and becomes even faster from the 1800s, reaching a crescendo in the 1900s. As in The Math Book, each topic is described in an illustrated, engaging, encyclopedia-style article.
2022/04/06 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Is there another toilet-paper shortage I don't know about? [Center] For my Persian-speaking readers: Banner about fasting during Ramadan, containing content and spelling errors! [Right] Tehran Municipality's idea of an Iranian woman: Sculpture installed right in front of Iran's top technical university, where a significant fraction of students are women.
(2) Misogyny in Iran comes from the very top: Supreme Leader Khamenei has said in multiple speeches that Iranians must forget the Western notion of gender equality. In this 2014 speech, he criticizes the West's treatment of women as goods & cheap labor, forgetting the deep-seated & abhorrent misogyny in Iran/Islam.
(3) Humor: Only an Iranian can praise the history, nature, climate, and people of Iran for hours, making everyone wonder why s/he doesn't live there.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kyiv City Council began acting like a start-up to bring technology solutions to the war-torn city.
- Borowitz Report (Humor): Scientists—Earth endangered by new strain of fact-resistant humans.
- I bet you didn't know this: The volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a is pi*z*z*a.
- Persian dance: Expertly performed, with colorful costume, in a beautiful venue. [2-minute video]
(5) Cartoon caption of the day: Moviegoer coming out of the theater—"That sucked—you couldn't talk, you couldn't text, and you couldn't pause it to go to the bathroom."
(6) Francisco Gonzalez, a former neighbor of mine at UCSB West Campus Faculty Housing, and a founding member of the pop band Los Lobos, dead at 68. [Los Angeles Times tribute]
(7) Humor from Iran: Islamic Republic authorities regret freeing British citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratrcliffe. After the announcement of World Cup 2022 groups, which places Iran and England in the same Group B, Iran could have added a 3-0 win over England as one of the conditions of her release.
(8) What's behind the air-taxi craze? A wave of electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicle (eVTOL) start-ups aim to revolutionize transportation. [IEEE Spectrum magazine article, March 2022]
(9) Donald Trump's interview with presidential historian Julian Zelizer (Princeton U.) and his co-authors: The interview was held at Trump's request "to correct the record," and Zelizer wrote about it in The Atlantic, noting that "the former president made an unusual effort to influence how historians will view him." Zelizer is the editor of an upcoming book, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment. While Trump admitted for the first time that he didn't win the 2020 election (adding, however, that it was rigged and stolen), his comments confirmed "that he construed the presidency as a forum to prove his dealmaking prowess; that he sought flattery and believed too much of his own spin; that he dismissed substantive criticism as misinformed, politically motivated, ethically compromised, or otherwise cynical. He demonstrated a limited historical worldview: When praising the virtues of press releases over tweets—because the former are more elegant and lengthier—he sounded as if he himself had discovered that old form of presidential communication. He showed little interest in exploring, or even acknowledging, some of the contradictions and tensions in his record." [Glenn Kirschner's discussion of Zelizer's article]
2022/04/05 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meme of the day: Ukraine needs our assistance and protection. You can help financially or by spreading the word on war crimes committed by Russian forces. [Top center] A big bunch of mints, harvested outside my house, where it had grown spontaneously (perhaps by winds carrying seeds from my neighbors' vegetable gardens). [Top right] Math puzzle: Determine the areas of the triangles A, B, C, and D as fractions of the area of the equilateral triangle. [Bottom left] World Cup 2022 bracket and groups (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Exhibition on ancient Iran at the Getty Villa Museum (see item 3 below). [Bottom right] Lying keeps getting harder: Satellite images analyzed by NYT refute Russian claims that civilians were killed in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, after Russian troops had left. I am waiting for war tribunals!
(2) World Cup 2022 bracket: For those following USA & Iran teams, here are their group-stage games.
November 21, 2022 (Monday): Iran vs. England (05:00 AM PST); USA vs. TBD (11:00 AM PST)
November 25, 2022 (Friday): Iran vs. TBD (02:00 AM PST); USA vs. England (11:00 AM PST)
November 29, 2022 (Tuesday): USA vs. Iran (11:00 AM PST; concurrent with England vs. TBD)
(3) "Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World" opens at the Getty Villa Museum in Pacific Palisades (17985 Pacific Coast Highway), California: The exhibition, which will be on view through August 8, 2022, is "the first major U.S. exhibition to highlight the relationship between the Classical World and Ancient Iran. In addition to the spectacular ancient works on view that explore the artistic and cultural connections between the rival powers of Iran, Greece, and Rome, the exhibition is supported by two innovative digital experiences: a 360-degree immersive film onsite at the Villa and a highly interactive online website."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi indicted on charges of plagiarizing his latest film, "A Hero."
- Only an Iranian uses a car horn to greet someone, bid good-bye, celebrate, exhibit ire, swear, & say thanks.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 5, 2015: Two verses on old age from the great Persian poet Sa'adi.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 5, 2013: An interesting legal case having to do with whether prayers work.
(5) Quote of the day: "If you don't know what dictatorship is, you are probably living under one." ~ Ifnazio Silone (pseudonym for Secondino Tranquilli, author of The School for Dictators)
(6) After a long span of virtual events, UCSB's Pollock Theater has returned to in-person film screenings and accompanying discussions, beginning with tonight's "Death in Venice." [Partial program for spring 2022]
(7) "Death in Venice": Luchino Visconti's highly-acclaimed 1971 film was screened tonight at UCSB's Pollock Theater, as the first in-person film screening in more than two years, followed by a conversation between moderator Stephanie Malia Hom (UCSB French & Italian Studies) and Professor Joan Ramon Resina (Stanford U.), author of the 2022 book, Luchino Visconti: Filmmaker and Philosopher.
The film, based on a novella (or long short story) by German author Thomas Mann, tells the story of an orchestra conductor (Dirk Bogarde) who travels to Venice in order to recover from an illness and recharge after a disastrous concert. His stay in Venice is less than pleasant, as his visit coincides with the onset of cholera in the city and he becomes obsessed with an adolescent Polish boy (Bjorn Anderesen, with his mother played by Silvana Mangano), going back and forth in his experiences between reality and fantasy. The lush music of Gustav Mahler is enchanting.
Despite the film's artistic values and philosophical musings about art, beauty, obsession, and death, sparse dialog, extended shots, and redundant scenes needlessly stretch a story that could have been told in 30 minutes into a feature-length film. Interestingly, very little of Venice is shown in the film, with much of the story happening in a luxury hotel and on its beach. [Images]
2022/04/04 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] More evidence of war crimes in Ukraine: In areas where Russian troops have pulled out, Ukrainian are discovering many dead civilians shot execution-style, several of them with hands tied behind their backs. [Top center & right] Today, Farvardin 15, is the birthday of a pioneering woman poet, Parvin E'tesami: She would have been 115 today. Her accompanying poem, shown in her own handwriting, was composed for her tombstone. [Bottom left & center] Tonight's book talk by Elizabeth Kolbert (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Today's UCLA lecture, "The Fall of Reza Shah" (see the last item below)'
(2) "Regeneration": This was the title of tonight's talk at UCSB's Corwin Pavilion by author Elizabeth Kolbert, based on her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Kolbert is best known for her Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, and Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Kolbert's new book takes a hard look at the world we are creating and whether technological solutions are adequate for dealing with the damage humans have caused to the environment.
(3) "The Fall of Reza Shah": This was the title of today's talk, in English, by historian Dr. Shaul Bakhash (George Mason U.), under the auspices of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran, coordinated by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge). At the conclusion of Dr. Bakhash's talk, Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi (Director, School of Public & Int'l Affairs, Virginia Tech) spoke as a respondent, praising the book's coverage and scholarship. What follows is a mix of info from the talk and its response.
Reza Shah rose to power as a result of a coup against the Qajars in 1921, aided in part by the British, who saw in him, then an army general, the potential for unifying Iran. One hundred years later, some anti-Islamic-Republic protesters in Iran invoke his memory fondly and bless his soul. His image among Iranians is more positive than that of his son and post-exile successor, Mohammad Reza Shah, who is seen as a weak ruler.
Despite Iran's declaration of neutrality in 1941, at the outset of World War II, British and Soviet forces invaded Iran from the south and the north, occupied it, and brought an end to Reza Shah's reign. This talk, based on Dr. Bakhash's latest book by the same title, described the British role in forcing Reza Shah's abdication and their flirtation with the idea of doing away with the Pahlavi dynasty altogether by restoring the Qajar Dynasty to power. A couple of influential Iranians managed to convince the British that there was little support for the Qajars and that a lawful shift of power in the framework of Iran's constitution was a wiser course of action. The Brit's desire for regime change came closer to realization than previously realized.
Dr. Bakhash covered Reza Shah's journey into exile, his severely-restricted life in Mauritius (which included an almost-total ban on visits by family members), the reasons and circumstances of his later transfer to Johannesburg, and, briefly, his finances in exile and the settlement of his estate. At the time of Reza Shah's death in 1944, the South African government wanted to collect inheritance taxes, an act that was vehemently opposed by his son Mohammad Reza. Legal action ensued and South Africa eventually withdrew its claims of taxes owed. The cash value of the assets, in the form of a BP100,000 check (worth ~$6 million today), was sent to Mohammad Reza Shah, who refused to share it with his siblings.
At the time of abdication, Reza Shah was a very rich man. He went into exile with a group of 18 relatives and a secretary, and virtually no money. His wealth was transferred to his son, to be used for charitable causes. He viewed his existence in exile, as a prisoner, a kind of death in life, particularly because of his dislike of Mauritius. Pleas by his son Mohammad Reza Shah finally convinced the British, who needed the young Shah's cooperation, to move Reza Shah to Johannesburg, but denied the old shah's requests to travel to Latin America and elsewhere, which they deemed impractical at the time of war. His family were allowed to visit him in Johannesburg. During the day, the deposed king listened to Persian-language news on BBC, German radio, and Radio Tehran, when it was available.
Interestingly, Reza Shah was buried three times, once in Cairo and twice in Tehran, the last burial occurring when his mummified remains were accidentally discovered by construction workers. Ayatollah Khalkhali, who was a notorious executioner in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution and ordered the bulldozing of Reza Shah's mausoleum, did not find his body.
Reza Shah was a disciplined and authoritarian leader who didn't really like the press or the parliament, but he did lay the foundation of modern Iran, including the setting up of the requisite bureaucracy that survives to this day. Dr. Bakhash's talk to some extent dismissed the vast influence of Germany on Iranian industry and administration, which made the British and other World War II allies nervous.
The Fall of Reza Shah has not been translated into Persian yet, but a couple of publishers have expressed interest in pursuing a Persian edition.
2022/04/03 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Amazing architecture and tiling: The ceiling of Vank Cathedral, Esfahan, Iran. [Top center] Persian calligraphic art. [Top right] Math puzzle: Describe a simple way of finding the ratio of the purple area to the yellow area. [Bottom left] Two math puzzles: Compute the infinite sum and derive a relationship between the areas P, Q, and R of the three squares shown. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: What is the sum of the five marked angles? [Bottom right] Cover image of the Persian edition of Afshaneh Najmabadi's The Story of Daughters of Quchan (see the last item below).
(2) World Cup 2022 full match schedule: On the first day, Mon., Nov. 21, Iran will face England (5:00 AM PST) and USA will play the yet-to-be-determined winner of a 3-way European playoff (11:00 AM PST).
(3) The Boston Symphony Orchestra honors the people of Ukraine: BSO and Tanglewood Festival Chorus dedicated their 3/31 performance to the people of Ukraine, opening with the Ukrainian national anthem.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California mass-shooting: Six dead, 10 injured, this morning in downtown Sacramento.
- Spring-break bash (Deltopia) goes haywire in Santa Barbara, leading to mass medical emergencies.
- Women's rights: Intense competition between Iranian mullahs and the Taliban on restricting women!
- Persian dancing: A compilation, from around the world. [2-minute video]
- Persian music & dance: "Nowruz Khosh Aamad" (Melika Fathi Dance Company). [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Apr. 3, 2011: A touching Persian poem by Forough Farrokhzad [1935-1967].
- Facebook memory from Apr. 3, 2010: Kidding with the beloved Azeri poet, Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 3, 2010: A few members of three generations of my family, twelve years ago.
(5) Book review: Najmabadi, Afsaneh, The Story of Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History, Syracuse U. Press, 1998. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I read the Persian edition of this book, bearing the title The Tale of Quchan Girls: Forgotten Facets of the Constitutional Revolution (Sweden: Baran, 1995).
Najmabadi holds the Francis Lee Higginson Chair of History and of Sudies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. She arrived at her current position in a roundabout way. I learned, through a social-media group for the 1968 graduates of Tehran U.'s College of Engineering, that Najmabadi entered Tehran U. in the same year as we did. In the nationwide university entrance exam, she was second-ranked, the first-ranked applicant being the late Parviz Rafinejad, who was our classmate in EE. Even though, in those days, top-ranked college applicants invariably chose engineering or medicine, Najmabadi's interest in nuclear physics led her to choose the Faculty of Science, eventually earning an MS in physics from Harvard U. She later pursued social studies, earning a PhD in sociology from Manchester U. Her other books include Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (2005) and Familial Undercurrents: Untold Stories of Love and Marriage in Modern Iran (2022).
During the reign of Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar, government tax collectors in Quchan, Khorasan Province (northeastern Iran), would snatch girls away from parents who were unable to pay their taxes, selling them at exorbitant prices and getting rich as a result. Girls were also taken as war booties by Turkomans who raided northern Khorasan regions. The story spread by word of mouth, forming one of the narratives used in the Constitutional Revolution.
The book is structured in two parts. Part 1 is the 28-page tale of the girls of Quchan. Part 2 contains seven essays and analyses (a total of 220 pp.) on the tale in Part 1 and its ramifications. Among other questions, Najmabadi asks why this very important tale has been pretty much forgotten in historical records and what we can learn about women's status in Iran by the said amnesia.
This state of affairs was in part due to the weakness of the central government that gave provincial rulers excessive powers and partly due to the influence of foreign governments, Russia in particular, over Iran's administrative structure. Russia was a clear beneficiary, as many of the snatched girls ended up in Russian territories. When the crop was meager, either due to pests or drought, residents not only sold their daughters, but also their wives to pay the exorbitant taxes that were based not on a fraction of income but levied on a per-capita basis.
Eventually, the story of repression reached the Majlis, leading to the removal of the governor of Khorasan. This story also drove part of the narrative for Iran's Constitutional Revolution, which, among other things, aspired to institute social justice and the rule of law. Perhaps the story of Quchan girls provided the impetus for women to enter the political domain so as to participate in writing Iran's history to remedy the masculine perspective dominant until then.
2022/04/02 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Qatar 2022: World Cup tournament groups are set, with three teams still to be determined. Iran and USA will face off again in the group stage, after Iran's surprising 2-1 victory in 1998 (see also the next item below). [Top center] Math puzzle: Solve this equation for x. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: In this diagram, with 9 unit-squares and 4 quarter-circles, how large is the blue area? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: We have an equilateral triangle in a unit-square. Find the areas of the three colored triangles. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Shown are a regular hexagon, two squares, and a semicircle. Is the red vertex located on the semicircle?
(2) Iran doesn't play by FIFA rules: Iranian officials downplay the incident of women being banned from entering a soccer stadium despite holding tickets. They sell tickets to women to satisfy FIFA's requirements, but then ban and pepper-spray them at the gates.
If FIFA did not care so much about losing revenues from banning noncompliant countries & teams, the problem would be solved in no time. Iranians take soccer very seriously, so banning their team from Qatar World Cup 2022 would lead to street riots and a quick reversal of the policy to ban women. FIFA must act now!
And where are Iranian male soccer fans in this fight? Why don't they support the women by boycotting matches from which women are banned?
(3) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Sumita Pennathur (UCSB, Mechanical Engineering Department) will talk on Wednesday, April 20, 2022, under the title "MEMS-Based Innovations for Optimized Management of Type I Diabetes" (Rusty's Pizza, 5934 Calle Real, Goleta, 6:00 PM). [Details & free registration]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Math oddity: There exists only one integer N that can be written as N = x^y = y^x for x ≠ y.
- An approximation to pi that differs from it by roughly one-billionth (10^–9): fourthroot(2143/22)
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2021: My musings about the Iran-China strategic pact. [English] [Persian]
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2021: About April Fool's Day (today) and its Iranian counterpart (tomorrow).
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2019: 43rd anniversary of the referendum creating Iran's Islamic Republic.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2018: This year, Passover is on Sat. 4/16 and Easter is on Sun. 4/17.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2017: Half-dozen rather-realistic April Fool's news headlines.
(5) Despite their outward support for the Taliban, Iranian authorities are anxious about Afghanistan's future and its impact on Iran: An analysis in a journal aligned with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps lists the points of worry, if the Taliban were to return to their earlier violent reign.
(6) Geofencing: A virtual tool being tried in Sweden, a country with one of the lowest vehicle death rates in the world, to automatically restrict some aspects of a vehicle's motion, so as to make traffic-flow safer.
(7) Iran #MeToo: More than 300 Iranian women in cinema call attention to workplace violence, harassment, and expectations of sexual favors. [Story, in Persian]
(8) The pandemic causes a reassessment of the need for grading: I tell my students that I don't like exams & grading any more than they do, but assessing student work is a necessary evil, given our system of education. Now, U. Richmond's Prof. Elisabeth Gruner advocates putting an end to the tyranny of grades. "I've been teaching college English for more than 30 years. Four years ago, I stopped putting grades on written work, and it has transformed my teaching and my students' learning. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner."
2022/04/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: Find the lengths of two of the sides of a quadrangle, drawn within a quarter circle. [Center] This isn't an April fool's prank: Last night, I managed to solve the tax puzzle for 2021 and filed my tax returns. Of course, the IRS may not believe anything I wrote on my return, when it receives it today! [Right] Bill Gates' important book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (see the last item below). [Breaking news: Biden proposes, and the US Congress approves, the designation of April 1 as Donald J. Trump Day.]
(2) Russia faces more than just economic hardship from military expenses and international sanctions: A significant tech brain drain has already begun, to the delight of other countries that will attract the experts. An estimated 70,000 computer specialists have left the country since Russia invaded Ukraine five weeks ago.
(3) Math puzzle: In a 101 x 126 array, we write the numbers 1 through 12,726, once in row-major order and once in column-major order. Each array element at the end will contain two numbers. How many of the 12,726 elements will have a repeated number?
(4) It's possible that we'll go extinct as a result of internal volcanic activity, not from an external event such as an asteroid strike: Two giant blobs in Earth's mantle, halfway between the surface and the core, one under Africa & the other under the Pacific Ocean, contribute to the movement of continents and to volcanic eruptions.
(5) Book review: Gates, Bill, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton, Random House Audio, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Gates provides an accessible assessment of where we are in our fight against global warming and how far we still need to go to avoid a global disaster brought about by climate change. As one would expect from Gates, his solutions are technology-based. He reviews a large number of technologies that are already available for making a dent in solving the problem, but he also acknowledges that there is still room for innovation. The alternative view that fixing one problem with technology can produce other problems is advocated by Elizabeth Kolbert (Under a White Sky), among others.
A point made by Gates early on is that talking about greenhouse-gas emissions in terms of absolute numbers does not make sense to most people. If we say that the US emits 6.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, there is no way for the average reader to assess how bad the situation is. He advocates formulating everything as a fraction of the 51 billion tons global total we currently put into the atmosphere annually and must eliminate in order to reach net-zero. He divides sources contributing to this total as follows:
- Making things (plastic, steel, etc.): 31% of emissions
- Plugging in (electricity): 27% of emissions
- Growing things (food): 19% of emissions
- Getting around (transportation): 16% of emissions
- Keeping warm or cool (heating, air-conditioning): 7% of emissions
In very rough terms, we can remember these numbers by thinking about three nearly-equal contributors to emissions: (1) Making things; (2+5) Power, heating, cooling; (3+4) Growing, moving.
We must address all five areas. It would be a mistake to discount heating & cooling, because they contribute only 7% of the total emissions. Designing efficient/smart buildings can easily reduce the 7%, whereas dealing with the larger contributors may need longer-term plans and heavy investments. Every little bit counts, so, we must begin with the low-hanging fruit.
One effective way to think about our actions is to assign to each contributing component a "green premium," defined as the additional cost of choosing a green alternative over the one that emits greenhouse gases. At present, clean solutions tend to cost more than high-emission ones. However, this higher cost is rather unfair, because it is derived by ignoring the true economic and environmental costs of high-emission solutions, such as using fossil fuels.
Let's take an example. Assume that gasoline costs ~$2.70 per gallon in the US, averaged over several years. If electrofuels cost ~$8.00 per gallon-equivalent, a factor of about 3 higher than fossil fuels, then the green premium is $5.30 per gallon. Thinking in terms of the green premium allows us to see where the greatest need for innovation lies. Of course, it is possible for green premium in some areas to become negative, in which case we have the best of both worlds. In addition to telling us where to invest and innovate, green premiums also allow us to use subsidies strategically to direct demand to more desirable alternatives. Electric-car subsidy is a prime example.
This is an important book. The idea that we should aim for net-zero, rather than simply think about reducing emissions, is significant. As an example, replacing coal-powered plants with natural-gas-powered ones will cut emissions in half, but the latter plants will still be emitting greenhouse gases in 30 years, hindering our efforts to reach net-zero by 2050. So, in a way, replacing coal with natural gas may be a step in the wrong direction!
2022/03/31 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Iran was never a secular society. This ad from ~50 years ago announces that Tehran's Moulin Rouge Cabaret would be closed for the entire month of Ramadan. [Top center] Throwback Thursday: This 2-rial coin, now worth 0.005 cent, was used some 5 decades ago to make local calls from pay phones in Iran. Because if the coin did not fall through into the pay phone's coin reservoir, you could not make the call, the expression "his/her 2-rial coin did not fall through" became a way of indicating that someone doesn't get a point. [Top right] Dress design inspired by mosque tiling patterns and other architectural motifs from Iran. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: In this diagram, O is the center of both the circle and the square. Determine the length x. [Bottom center] Jack Dongarra: The 2021 ACM Turing Award honoree (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: We have a square within a quarter-circle, as shown. Determine the length x.
(2) The programmer who paved the way for supercomputers: Jack Dongarra, recipient of the 2021 ACM Turing Award, has been honored for his work on basic concepts and code that enabled software to keep up with hardware inside the most powerful computers. In the 1970s, Dongarra helped write the Linpack software library, which offered a means for running complex mathematics on what eventually were called supercomputers and to assess their level of performance.
(3) As men smiled & danced on the field, women were humiliated & tear-gassed outside the stadium: When will FIFA act on its threats of sanctions against Iran for excluding women from sporting events?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Throwback Thursday: History of a Persian song from 70+ years ago, "Neshaat," aka "Aamad Now-Bahaar."
- Persian music: Mahdieh Mohammadkhani performs "Bogzar Az Koo-ye Ma" with a big orchestra.
- Humor: Unfriending (or is it Academy Awards Ceremony?) in the Stone Age. [Cartoon]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 30, 2017: The European Union turns 65, reaching retirement age.
(5) US men's national soccer team clinches a spot in the Qatar 2022 World Cup by losing 0-2 to Costa Rica: Yes, it is strange to earn a spot by losing, but that is because goal differential is used as a tie-breaker in case of equal number of points. Having won 5-1 against Panama, the US had a comfortable cushion in goal differential. Costa Rica was clearly the better team and would have won with a wider margin, were it not for spectacular saves by the US goalie. [10-minute extended highlights]
(6) Silkroad Ensemble: Tonight's "Home Within" program of the Ensemble at UCSB's Campbell Hall combined Kinan Azmeh's haunting clarinet music and a whirlwind of images, produced in real time, by Syrian-Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad to mirror the seven years of war that have made their country unrecognizable. The program was "Dedicated to 500,000 Syrians ... and still counting." There was a Q&A session following the hour-long performance. My tickets included an at-home viewing option, which I gladly used. Starting to doubt if I have grown too lazy to ever be comfortable with attending a live performance, when there is an at-home viewing option!
[Screenshot images]
[2-minute video]
2022/03/29 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Architectural marvels: Mysore Palace in India and fountain at Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco. [Center] Afsaneh Najmabadi, History Professor, Harvard U. (see the next item below). [Right] Cover feature of IEEE Computer magazine, issue of March 2022: How artificial intelligence and software engineering complement each other in various ways.
(2) Afsaneh Najmabadi: I learned through a social-media group for the 1968 graduates of Tehran U.'s College of Engineering, that Najmabadi entered Tehran U. in the same year as we did. In the nationwide university entrance exam, she was second-ranked, the first-ranked being the late Parviz Rafinejad, who was our classmate in EE. Even though, in those days, top-ranked college applicants invariably chose engineering or medicine, Najmabadi's interest in nuclear physics led her to choose the Faculty of Science, eventually earning an MS in physics from Harvard U. She later pursued social studies, earning a PhD in sociology from Manchester U. Now, as a faculty member at Harvard, she holds the Francis Lee Higginson Chair of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. I have come across her 1998 book, The Story of Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History, which I look forward to reading. My 1995 Persian edition bears the title The Tale of Quchan Girls: Forgotten Facets of the Constitutional Revolution.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Palestinian gunman kills at least 5 people near Tel Aviv, in what is the third terrorist attack in a week.
- War of deep-fakes: A video of Zelensky was spread in which he urged Ukrainians to surrender to Russia.
- Between explosions: Ukrainian musicians play classical music in a subway station used as bomb shelter.
- Firing squad for trans rights supporters? Yes, says former GOP lawmaker Robert Foster.
- Red-hot car market is no more: US auto sales slump, as less-affluent buyers walk away.
- Book talk in English, "The Fall of Reza Shah": By Shaul Bakhash, April 4, 2022, 3:00 PM PDT. [Register]
- Math magic: A few remarkable mathematical identities involving logarithms, sketched by Ramanujan.
- A problem from American Invitational Mathematics Examination, AIME 2022. [Tweet]
- Math puzzle: If x + y = 2 and 2^x + 2^y = 6, what is 4^x + 4^y?
- Persian music: Wonderful rhythmic improvisational piece on santoor. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 29, 2017: Fist-bumping president preferable to an ignorant one.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 29, 2017: Four perfectly round circles that look anything but.
(4) Ralph Waldo Emerson: "We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things, which is the mean of many extremes."
(5) Ransomware is a relatively new crime category in computing: Many folks don't realize that, even if we are not directly targeted, just as with shoplifting, we all pay ($412 million in 2020 alone, according to Nir Kshetri & Jeffrey Voas, writing in the March 2022 issue of IEEE Computer magazine).
(6) Biden's 2023 budget: The $5.8 trillion budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning in October includes funding increases for the military & the police, a minimum tax on billionaires, and a deficit of $1.15 trillion.
(7) Banning women from sports stadiums in Iran: This ban & other restrictions are imposed under the guise of protecting women. Protecting them from whom? From the morons, who put restrictions on them! Why don't you put restrictions on yourselves to curb your vile acts? #WomensRights
2022/03/28 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Australian researcher Kylie Moore-Gilbert was propositioned by a prison boss in Iran while she was kept as a government hostage. [Top center] Math puzzle: Circles C1, C2, and C3 have radii 3, 2, and 1, respectively. Find the radius of circle C4 which is tangent to all three circles. The circlular curve omega, centered at O, is shown as a hint. [Top right] On the Russian oligarchs (see the next item below). [Bottom Left] Circle terminology: What would you put in the empty space on the lower-right? [Bottom center] Math competition: Deriving the value of a factorial-based sum series. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the rectangle's area, given that its height is 2 cm less than the quarter-circle's diameter and its width is 9 cm less.
(2) Russia's super-rich are called "oligarchs": Why aren't the American super-rich similarly characterized? Because there is a difference. We don't have an oligarchy in the US. While some American billionaires do have an interest in government and in influencing political decisions, many don't. And not all of them support Washington or whoever is in the White House. In Russia, too, there exist billionaires who aren't oligarchs. But because most currently-rich Russians got rich via government favors at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they are by and large pro-government. They rely on government protections (and also need the government to leave them alone) in a lawless, authoritarian society. In a 2018 poll on Russians' attitude toward oligarchs, some 43% had negative opinions of them, with 39% being neutral.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Suspected poison attack targeted Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian negotiators.
- Russian oil tankers turn off their tracking systems to evade sanctions.
- Red-hot car market no more: US auto sales slump as less affluent buyers walk away.
- The story of Ferdowsi's tomb in Toos, Iran. [2-minute video, narrated in Persian]
(4) Will Smith reduced to tears during his Oscar acceptance speech: I always thought of Smith as arrogant and self-important, but he gave an emotional and tearful speech about the opportunity to portray the father of tennis stars Venus & Serena Williams and what it means for blacks in Hollywood and the broader community. [Addendum: See the last blog entry below.]
(5) The Oscars slap is being investigated: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is investigating the incident of Will Smith walking on stage and slapping Chris Rock, after he joked about Smith's wife. When the incident happened, I thought it was fake/scripted, but, apparently, it was not.
(6) USA men's national soccer team defeats Panama 5-1: Both the US and Mexico will very likely go to the 2022 tournament in Qatar. Canada, which is atop the CONCACAF standings, has already qualified.
(7) Book review: Fey, Tina, Bossypants, unabridged audiobook on 5 CDs, read by the author, Hachette Audio, 2011. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this book review on March 28, 2012, and posted it to GoodReads on March 28, 2022.
(8) Final thought for the day: In my blog entry about Will Smith's Oscars acceptance speech, I characterized it as emotional & tearful. At the time, I thought that his assault on Chris Rock was fake/scripted. I now realize that his emotional acceptance speech may have been fake and part of his effort at damage control for what will surely be viewed as an inappropriate act resulting from rage, not love. His behavior, that is, becoming enraged by attacks on what he considers his "property," was a textbook example of patriarchy. Rather than remove the previous entry, I will link it to this addendum.
2022/03/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) The 94th Annual Academy Awards: The hosts (Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes) quipped that the Oscars hired three women to host, because it was cheaper than hiring a man! One highlight of the show was a tribute to 60 years of James Bond films. Another was a 50th-anniversary tribute to the "Godfather" trilogy, the first film of which appeared in 1972. There was also an "In Memoriam" segment and a plea to support Ukraine in every way possible. See also the next item below.
(2) Here are the Oscar winners in some of the popular categories. [All nominees & winners]
- Actress in leading role: Jessica Chastain ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye")
- Actor in leading role: Will Smith ("King Richard")
- Actress in supporting role: Ariana DeBose ("West Side Story")
- Actor in supporting role: Troy Kotsur ("CODA")
- Motion picture: "CODA" (Rousselet, Gianfermi, & Wachsberger, producers)
- Directing: Jane Campion ("The Power of the Dog")
- Documentary feature: "Summer of Soul"
- International feature film: "Drive My Car" (Japan)
- Animated feature film: "Encanto"
- Original score: Hans Zimmer, for "Dune"
- Original song: "No Time to Die" (Billie Eilish & and Finneas O'Connell)
(3) Beware of QR-code scams: Security experts warn against fraudulent QR codes, including some attached to parking meters, that trick drivers into entering their credit-card info at a bogus Web site.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Satellite photos show the destruction of Russian ship as it attempted to bring supplies to Mariupol.
- Women in sci/tech: Prof. Lisa Randall, theoretical particle physicist and cosmologist, Harvard University.
- Masih Alinejad calls out the UN for putting Iran on a body that monitors women's rights across the globe.
- Math puzzle: Prove that if 2x + 1 is divisible by 3, then 10x^2 + x – 2 is divisible by 9.
(5) Book review: Compilation, NPR Holiday Favorites, written and read by various authors/performers, HighBridge Audio, 2008. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this book review on March 27, 2014, and posted it to GoodReads on March 27, 2022.
(6) Book review: Daryaee, Touraj (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, Oxford U. Press, 2012.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this book review on March 27, 2013, and posted it to GoodReads on March 27, 2022.
(7) On Reza Baraheni: I posted on November 16, 2020, "Writer/poet Reza Baraheni once related that during Shah's reign, he and cohorts tried to write political poems in a manner that people got the message but SAVAK (Shah's secret police) didn't, but it worked backwards; people didn't get the message, while SAVAK did!"
P.S.: Many have praised Baraheni's writings and political activism. I learned from a response to my tweet that he (Baraheni) once wrote a "love letter" (or, as we say in Persian, "naameh-ye fadaayat-shavam") to Ayatollah Khomeini, praising his unwavering strength, courage, vigilance, and vast political wisdom, which is viewed by young Iranians as betraying their generation. [The letter's original source]
P.P.S.: Reza Baraheni's Wikipedia page says that Baraheni tried hard to endear himself to Khomeini, but the Ayatollah rejected him. He wrote, on January 30, 1979, in Iran's Etall'at newspaper that "Soon [after Khomeini's return] there will be a permanent and deep democracy in Iran, and we will enter an era where poverty, repression, bankruptcy, hopelessness and capitalist greed will end and Iran will be saved from economic chaos and bad governmental planning."
2022/03/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Political art: How M. C. Escher would have depicted the Washington gridlock. [Top center] From National Geographic: See if you can figure out what is seen in this photo. [Top right] T-shirt celebrating peace, equality, love, inclusion, hope, diversity, and kindness. [Bottom left] Feast fit for a king (See the next item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: What is the minimum number of pieces into which this square board must be cut so that the resulting pieces can be rearranged to form a standard chessboard? [Bottom right] Fraser MacDonald's Escape from Earth (see the last item below).
(2) On Friday, the last full day of my younger son's stay in SB, my mom threw a party for him: She had made rice with two kinds of stew (fesenjoon & karafs) and others contributed several dishes. The two-part salad is my work. Sepand will left for the SF Bay Area on Amtrak today.
(3) Dropped off my younger son at Santa Barbara's Amtrak station for his trip back to the SF Bay Area: He will return in June for another family gathering. Before the train's arrival we spent some time walking at the Santa Barbara waterfront, where we ran into a cruise ship anchored near Stearns Wharf and SB Harbor.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Zelensky: "Look at Mariupol.This is exactly what happened in Aleppo." [Persian report]
- Apple eyes a hardware subscription service, which would essentially gurantees sales for new products.
- Zeinab Jalalian is the longest-held female political prisoner in Iran: She is serving a life sentence.
- Primitive, yet highly effective, water-pumping technology for irrigation.
(5) Book review: Keaton, Diane, Then Again, unabridged audiobook on 7 CDs, read by the author, Books on Tape, 2011. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this book review on March 26, 2014, and posted it to GoodReads on March 26, 2022.
(6) Book review: MacDonald, Fraser, Escape from Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket, Public Affairs, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
MacDonald presents a captivating history of early American space exploration, which includes lies, spies, and (fear of) socialism in 1930s Pasadena, before and after Cal Tech's 1936 founding of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL is now officially a part of NASA, but it is still being run by Cal Tech. A key influence in the founding of JPL was Frank Malina [1912-1981], an engineer whose life and contributions were shrouded in mystery. Assisted by Jack Parsons [1914-1952], a friend with no college degree but with intense interest in explosives, Malina launched the first high-altitude rocket in the US.
MacDonald upends the standard narrative about US space history, which invariably entails mention of Robert H. Goddard's liquid-fueled rockets that didn't go very far and Werner von Braun's V-2 rockets that did reach space. The history then proceeds to the Soviet Sputnik and a frightened US playing catch-up and putting astronauts on the Moon.
MacDonald was drawn to this subject when he heard of the work of Frank Malina, a little-known engineer who aspired to build an experimental program for designing a viable rocket. The Malina/Parsons team was at first made up of technologists and tinkerers, but Malina, inspired and guided by mathematician/physicist/engineer Theodore von Karman [1881-1963], later recruited theoretically-inclined people into the program. Malina was convinced that building a rocket is very complicated and the big team it needs would be beyond the scope of a university undertaking, hence the impetus to found JPL.
When Malina arrived in Los Angeles and began working at Cal Tech, he was terrified by the rise of fascism. He supported labor unions, especially as they championed the cause of migrant workers. His advocacy for change drew him to membership in the Communist Party, an ironic turn of events, given that he later climbed to the height of the US military-industrial complex and became the first space-millionaire as a result of founding a company, Aerojet, with Jack Parsons. Malina is responsible for making rocketry respectable, something that is done by serious engineers, rather than attracting only wackos.
Malina and Parsons tested their first rocket in 1936. The 1945 "WAC Corporal" was the first rocket to reach really high altitude. Then, a 1947 executive order allowed FBI to look into the lives of engineers and scientists on the smallest of suspicions. FBI was concerned about the presence of activist engineers at JPL. It wasn't a matter of politics, but loyalty. Jewish, Chinese, and other engineers were pursued. Many engineers lost their licenses, and some ended up in jail.
In 1967, FBI finally decided to pursue Malina seriously, prompting him to flea to France, where he got a job with UNESCO. Later, the US pressured UNESCO to fire Malina, which ironically coincided with him becoming a millionaire as a result of selling his Aerojet company. We now know that Parsons was one of FBI's confidential informants, providing information about Malina and others.
I attended a Cal Tech talk on Thursday, March 24, 2022, in which the book, its significance, and the author's sources were discussed, as Erik Conway, JPL's official historian, interviewed MacDonald. Escape from Earth is based on the contents of archives at Cal Tech & JPL (the latter maintains its own archives) and FBI files, alongside Malina family information & documents that supplemented project-related material at the two archives and dossiers released by FBI.
2022/03/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] The 115 US Supreme Court justices who have ever served include only 5 women and 3 people of color. Sonia Sotomayor is in both categories, as will be Ketanji Jackson Brown. [Top right] At only 4' 10", she cast a giant shadow: Georgetown remembers Madeleine Albright (1937-2022), the first women Secretary of State in the US. [Bottom left] It isn't only Kurdish women who pick up arms to defend their community: Ukrainian women also have the same fighting spirit. [Bottom center] Earth scientist & artist Usha Farey Lingappa discusses the origins of photosynthesis in today's 28-minute talk at Cal Tech. [Bottom right] South Dakota hotel owner pledges to ban native Americans from his hotel, triggering protests, staff resignations, and a lawsuit.
(2) Trying to roll back decades of progress in civil rights: "The Supreme Court was wrong to legalize interracial marriage." ~ Republican Senator Mike Braun, referring to the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The wife of SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas exchanged text messages with Mark Meadows on Jan. 6.
- How Jon Stewart humiliated and called out Tucker Carlson, when he was with CNN in 2004.
- The movie "Don't Look Up" inspires additional research on how to deal with a planet-killer asteroid.
- Quote: "The search for human freedom can never be complete without freedom for women." ~ Betty Ford
- Don't watch this 4-minute high-wire act, with no net or air bag underneath, if you have a weak heart!
- Aleksandra Kilczewska, specializing in Persian, Afghan, and Central Asian dances, speaks about her art.
- Iranian music: Enjoy Reyhan Boroumand's whistling rendition of "Nowruz Waltz." [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 24, 2016: Witty one-liners, such as a reality check bouncing!
- Facebook memory from Mar. 24, 2014: Iran even attacks UN officials; think about the fate of ordinary folk.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 24, 2011: Elizabeth Taylor in Iran, wearing a traditional local dress.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 25, 2020: Open your eyes to see misogyny all around you.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 25, 2016: A fine sample of Persian calligraphy.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 25, 2011: On the nature of memristor and how it was discovered.
(4) Iranian novelist, poet, critic, and political activist Reza Baraheni dead at 86: He taught at U. Tehran, several US universities, and U. Toronto, and helped found the progressive Writers Association of Iran in 1966, an entity that was surveilled & its members persecuted by both the Shah's & the current clerical regime.
(5) Putin, man of the hour, who is on everyone's mind: Apparently, this art form is quite old. I have seen the images of four lions on a sheet of paper, distributed shortly after CIA's 1953 coup in Iran, turn into an image of the Shah. I will post a link if and when I find the images on-line.
(6) BBC Persian launches the Shirazeh podcast series, with each episode discussing one influential book about Iran published between 1921 and 2021 (the 1300s in Iranian calendar).
2022/03/24 (Thursday): The three books I review today are all about remarkable women.
(1) Book review: Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin, When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Nan McNamara, Harper Audio, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In the mid 20th century, computer programming was viewed as a clerical job, so it did not attract men. For this reason, women found opportunities and excelled at it, making up nearly half of early programmers. Then, as the technical nature of programming became known and the job began to pay well, men rushed in and displaced women, who disappeared through attrition resulting from not being promoted. Television programming, too, was dominated by women in the early years of the medium. Pioneering women producers and stars of the early years typically copied or brought over their radio programs. As observed by Armstrong in a 2021 NPR interview, "If you see a lot of women doing something, it is probably because the men have either not gotten there yet, or they've already left."
In this intertwined multi-biographical volume, Armstrong, an entertainment writer and TV historian, documents the lives and careers of four trailblazers of the industry, who invented the formats of talk shows, sitcoms, and soap operas: Irna Phillips [1901-1973], the director/writer/actor who is known as the mother of daytime dramas; Gertrude Berg [1899-1966], the actor/writer matriarch of the radio/TV fictional family, the Goldbergs; Hazel Scott [1920-1981], an accomplished jazz pianist, who was the first African-American women to host her own TV show; Betty White [1922-2021], the producer/host/actor whose illustrious career continued, until her death just shy of turning 100.
After the initial easy years, all four women faces pressures and had to fight for their careers, none more so than Hazel Scott, given her blackness and unfair targeting by the House Un-American Activities Committee (McCarthyism and its attendant black-listing also affected Gertrude Berg).
Among many nuggets of information in this book, we learn that a show about the life of a Jewish family would automatically lose about 15% of the audience, a fact that entered the calculations of commercial sponsors. Any hint of nor-breaking, such as portrayal of non-traditional families, also negatively impacted audience appeal and thus the chances of attracting commercial sponsors. In the early days of TV, commercials were read by announcers between program segments or by the show's performers mid-story or as asides.
Unfortunately, we will never see some of these women's work, given the live, local, and unrecorded nature of TV in its early years. Nationwide distribution required that shows be put on film, an expensive proposition in those days (Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz insisted upon filming "I Love Lucy," thus immortalizing their classic show, which is still running in syndication). Of the four women, most people are familiar only with Betty White, owing to her recent work. So, Armstrong's dusting off of the four women's early contributions fills an important void in TV history and women's place in it.
(2) Book review: Stone, Sharon, The Beauty of Living Twice, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Sharon Stone, the glamorous actress who rose to fame with the controversial blockbuster hit "Basic Instinct," suffered a deadly brain hemorrhage in 2001 and underwent a risky procedure, with a 1% survival chance, which gave her a second life. She went on to raise millions for HIV/AIDS research and other causes. In this candid, warm, and graceful memoir, Stone offers some startling personal revelations (for example, that she and her younger sister were victims of long-term sexual abuse by their grandfather) and urges forgiveness: "I have learned to forgive the unforgivable. My hope is that as I share my journey, you too will learn to do the same."
The second life of the title may also refer to Stone emerging from the trauma of sexual abuse, in her youth and, later, during her acting career, to become a caring and functioning adult again. She doesn't name names, but writes about a host of film-set characters who had expectations of a sexual nature. Ironically, what seems like an exploitative role in "Basic Instinct" was liberating to Stone, because it allowed her to act out her rage against her grandfather. She has only recently begun a relationship with her mother and, at 63, is optimistic about her family dynamics.
The Beauty of Living Twice has helped Stone examine her life and answer some tough questions about herself, but it has also created additional questions. Equally important, it has allowed readers to shed her image as an aloof and icy glamour queen in favor of a hurt, but kind and determined, individual.
(3) Book review: Abedin, Huma, Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds, unabridged 22-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
My perusal of this book was the result of a long-running curiosity about why some accomplished and stunningly-beautiful women get entrapped in relationships with inferior and/or morally bankrupt men. The case of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner is the crown jewel of such stories. The book averages 4.6 stars from Amazon's 800 reviews. Looking through the reviews, I noticed about 4% of 1- and 2-star reviews by readers who thought the book was a publicity ploy. I suspect that Ms. Abedin being a South-Asian Muslim has something to do with much of the negativity. Yet, the remarkable number of 5-star reviews from readers, who consider the book a well-written, serious work, and a page-turner, more than offsets the negative reviews.
I was mildly disappointed by the book. Yes, it contains some compelling information about Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC), her White House days, Senate and presidential campaigns, and her stint as US Secretary of State, but there are also page-after-page of minute details that the average reader might find of lesser interest. Huma Abedin rose to high political positions in her early 20s and later became an indispensable aide to HRC. Her Muslim faith and exotic background (Indian father, Pakistani mother) served as a valuable connecting tool in HRC's international travels and meetings.
Abedin's commentary comes across as naive in some places and as insightful in others. She was alternately awestruck when meeting celebrities and remained cool and high-functioning in the circus-like atmosphere surrounding the most-famous woman in the world. She tried to iron out any wrinkles in HRC's schedule and take care of her every whim: snacks, meals, and wardrobe included. Yet, when she got into personal trouble in her relationship with sex-addict husband Anthony Weiner, it was HRC and Abedin's co-workers who took up the roles of comforters and supporters.
The segments of the book on Anthony Weiner and his indiscretions, which Abedin learned about as she was pregnant with their son, are well-written and effective in conveying the overnight transformation of her fairy-tale marriage into a nightmare. But, again, Abedin alternates between being in denial of Weiner's serious betrayal and deeming his behavior deplorable. She seems to subscribe to the theory that if there was no physical relationship with women, then marriage vows are not violated by mere exchange of explicit photos and flirtatious massages.
A similar disconnection is seen in Abedin's treatment of Bill Clinton (WJC) carrying on an extramarital affair and how HRC dealt with it. One is left with the impression that WJC's relationship with an intern was a minor indiscretion in some passages and a serious betrayal in others.
A third kind of inconsistency is seen when Abedin writes about her faith. She is a modern woman, but also a practicing Muslim, who prays & fasts, avoids eating pork, and does not drink. She considers these attributes quite personal and easily mingles with people of other faiths and with those who drink at parties. Yet, she seems to condone limitations on women in Saudi Arabia (where her family was based, as her parents held academic positions) and other backward Muslim societies, seeming to imply that women wear restrictive and uncomfortable clothing by choice.
Overall, this is a book worth reading. One gets the urge to jump forward when Abedin elaborates on uninteresting details, but I did manage to listen to the audiobook "from cover to cover," despite its 22-hour length. One can't help but wonder what course Abedin's life would have taken had she not met Anthony Weiner and had HRC won the race for US presidency, which she arguably lost, in part, due to Weiner keeping some of her e-mails on his laptop computer!
2022/03/23 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Dining with the kids (see the next item below). [Top center] Schrodinger's smiley emoji. [Top right] Atrocities in Ukraine (see item 3 below). [Bottom left] John D. Kelleher's Deep Learning (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Tornado in Georgia lifts house with residents in it, and throws it on a nearby road; the other image is from Alabama. [Bottom right] Or Fatemeh Zahra: The word "Yaa" in Persian could mean "Or" but the proper equivalent in this case would have been "Oh"!
(2) I'm finally done with winter quarter 2022: Reported the grades and e-mailed feedback to students on a dozen research projects for the course ECE 254B (parallel processing). Celebrated with the kids by having lunch at Santa Barbara's Meet Up Chinese Restaurant, where a robot brought us parts of our order. Now, it will be a few hours of rest, catching up with sleep, dealing with a bloated e-mail in-box, and finishing my tax return!
(3) Ukrainians are using two kinds of weapon against Russia: Conventional military equipment to inflict casualties on the invading forces and cell-phone cameras to document Russia's war crimes in killing/injuring people, and destroying infrastructure, residential buildings, schools, and hospitals. One of the photos shows a mother, who used her body to protect her newborn during an attack, breastfeeding him/her on a hospital bed.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Irish blessing: "May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten."
- For Tiramisu lovers: A couple's restaurant in Treviso debuted the dish in the early 1970s.
- Iranian spring-themed music and dance: "Nowruz Waltz" [2-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 23, 2015: Right to own guns vs. right to be safe from gun violence.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 23, 2012: Tired of "death to" chants, Iranians yearn for "long live" chants.
(5) Book review: Kelleher, John D., Deep Learning, 296-page paperback, and unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Joel Richards, Essential Knowledge Series, MIT Press, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I listened to the audio version of this title, containing an accessible introduction to AI technologies enabling computer vision, speech recognition, machine translation, driverless cars, and many of our other daily conveniences, as a way of familiarizing myself with concepts of deep learning, but then acquired and read the hard-copy paperback edition in order to gain a level of understanding not possible without paying due attention to formulas and diagrams/images.
Computer scientist John Kelleher offers a concise but comprehensive introduction to the fundamental techniques at the heart of the latest surge in artificial intelligence research & development. After reviewing the history of AI and its ups and downs, resulting from successes and disappointments, Kelleher explains that deep learning enables data-driven decisions by identifying and extracting patterns from large datasets. The rise of deep learning was in no small part due to the availability of such large datasets from sources such as healthcare records, climate research, space telescopes, and sensor networks.
Kelleher describes important deep-learning architectures, including autoencoders, recurrent neural networks, and long short-term networks, as well as more-recent developments such as generative adversarial networks and capsule networks. He also covers two fundamental algorithms in deep learning, namely, gradient descent and backpropagation. He ends by discussing possible developmental paths and challenges faced in further advancing deep learning methods and their applications.
2022/03/22 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Dar-ul-Fonun: The museum in Tehran that used to be Iran's first secondary school. [Top center] Woman in a photo of a Ukrainian family shown lying dead on the street after being hit by Russian mortar fire identified as Tatiana Perebeinis, 43, a Silicon Valley tech worker. [Top right] Engineering solution to the dearth and high price of parts in Iran resulting from economic sanctions. [Bottom left] The state of computing in Europe: Cover feature of CACM, issue of April 2022. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Iran is once more rewarded for hostage-taking. [Bottom right] Culture penetrates better than ballistic missiles or "Death to America" chants: The Bidens' traditional Nowruz haft-seen spread at the White House.
(2) Creative people are problem-finders, not problem-solvers: Our modern world places too much emphasis on problem solving and not enough on problem finding. [Key idea from Warren Berger's A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, which I will review in due course.]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Imagine Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson crying during confirmation & telling us how much she loves beer!
- Republicans diss athletes for not honoring the flag: Does one honor the flag by beating the cops with it?
- Math: What's wrong with this derivation? –1/1 = 1/–1; sqrt(–1/1) = sqrt(1/–1); i/1 = 1/i; i^2 = 1.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2015: With my departed friend Hamid and his family in Palo Alto, CA.
(4) Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2014: "A tree can be tempted out of its winter dormancy by a few hours of southerly sun—the readiness to believe in spring is stronger than sleep or sanity." ~ Amy Leach
(5) Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2011 (little has changed in 11 years): Conservatives and liberals continue to shout and throw mud at each other, making it increasingly difficult for the US to converge on practical solutions to what appears to be a steady decline in economic and social conditions. The latest in this series of political, ethno-class, and generational insults comes from the former Wyoming Senator, Alan Simpson, during a totally unrelated discussion on Social Security, when he berated our younger generation as those who are "listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg."
(6) "Computer Communications in 50 years": This was the title of today's Zoom talk by David Tennenhouse (Strategic Advisor, Researcher, Engineer).
The talk began with a retrospective on communication networks of the past few centuries and how three technical forces (storage, computation, information theory) have driven their evolution. In computing and communications, it is difficult to see 10-20 years ahead, let alone 50 years, but if we want computer communication to change in a big way by 2070, then we need to start sowing the seeds today. The Internet, and its packet-switching technology is now well over 50 years old, which means it's past time to lay the groundwork for its disruption.
My question: Can we talk about where computer communications will be in 50 years without also addressing the question of where computer technology (computing capability) will be in 50 years?
The speaker's answer was that the two questions are definitely related but, then, within the confines of a one-hour talk, one is forced to focus on a limited domain.
My motivation for asking the question was that, in the past, some developments in computing capabilities have increased the need for communication, whereas others have led to distributing the compute load, thus reducing the need for communication bandwidth. This relationship is most visible in sensor networks and IoT, where energy-intensive data transmissions are often avoided by doing redundant local computations requiring less energy or by means of compressed sensing.
2022/03/21 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Badshahi Mosque, Pakistan. [Top center] Calculus notation & conventions. [Top right] Disk of Nataraja: Caught in a moment of his dance, Shiva, the many-limbed figure embodies Hindu ideals of beauty and physical perfection. [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: Marriage proposal in the age of $7+/gallon gas. [Bottom center] Elementary-school homework in China: Determine the height of the table. [Bottom right] A segment of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar's diary, showing the wife he slept with on various nights.
(2) Putin is afraid of being assassinated: He has poisoned so many people, that it's not hard to see why he is projecting. He has reportedly fired and replaced ~1000 personal attendants for fear of infiltration.
(3) Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife, Olena Zelenska, perform "Endless Love": Wouldn't our world be better off if all leaders told jokes, played music, painted, or generally paid more attention to the arts, instead of being fascinated with weapons and political power?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Women in sci/tech: Hats off to Lise Meitner (1878-1968), a famous Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist.
- Persian music: Iran-based Istgah Orchestra performs "Samanoo." [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2018: Women bringing down misogynistic rulers is poetic justice!
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2014: Love does not hurt; Loneliness, rejection, loss, and envy do!
(5) The historical Muhammad: Discussions on the historical Jesus abound, reaching conflicting verdicts on Jesus, the real person, as opposed to Jesus the legend. This BBC Persian "Pargar" program conducts a similar discussion on how much or how little we know, based on historical evidence, about Muhammad the person.
(6) Comic Omid Djalili: Born to Iranian parents in Britain, Djalili jokes that he is making a film about constipation, but it won't be coming out any time soon! He has polished up his Persian language skills and will be offering a comedy program in Persian for the first time on BBC Persian.
(7) Hindu proverb: "There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading to the same place. The only person wasting time is the one who runs around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong."
(8) Let's make protecting the Persian language against the second Arab invasion a priority: Iran's Islamic Revolution has tried to do what the first Arab invasion of 14 centuries ago couldn't quite accomplish, viz. erasing the Persian cultural heritage and parts of the Persian language from people's lives, replacing it with Islamic rituals and Arabic notions.
For example, some clerics maintain that Nowruz is a light-headed tradition with no profound basis (one went as far as saying Nowruz is for cows & donkeys, because the growth of grass gives them more food) and should thus be abolished in favor of Islamic eids (Mab'ath, Ghorban, Fitr).
Others, are a bit less extreme and have appropriated Nowruz as an Islamic tradition. A visible symbol of the second approach is reciting an Arabic prayer at the moment of spring equinox (saal tahveel), a practice carried out all the way from the Supreme Leader down to the lowest-level clerics.
I was surprised to learn yesterday that a Nowruz greeting message sent by an alumni association of a certain Iranian university to its members contained the said Arabic prayer as its main content (image). Meanwhile the Persian culture thrives outside Iran, as Iranians in diaspora organize major celebrations for Nowruz and other Iranian festivals (see, e.g., yesterday's blog post about Farhang Foundation's celebration of Nowruz at UCLA) and Persian-speaking groups in many different countries incessantly guard our beloved language (video). Of course, I don't like the language police's pronouncement that we should not use any word that isn't pure Persian, but do pledge to guard Persian by avoiding foreign, and particularly Arabic, words/constructs whenever possible and practical.
2022/03/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Happy Nowruz and Persian New Year! May the year 1401 be infinitely better than the last two years (here's my 2-minute recitation of the poem; see the next item below for a description and translation). [Top right] Farhang Foundation's announcement of its Nowruz program at UCLA's Dickson Court on March 20, 2022. [Middle & Bottom rows] Nowruz festivities at UCLA (see the last item below).
(2) My Nowruz poem: Each year, since 2002, I have composed a traditional Persian poem that celebrates the arrival of spring and its gifts of renewal and hope, challenging myself by having the initial letters of the poem's verses or half-verses spell a cheerful or congratulatory message. Here, Initial letters of the poem's first and second half-verses spell its Persian title, "Nowruz Pirooz," which translates to "Winsome/Triumphant Nowruz." You can read my previous Nowruz poems and a few other pieces on my poetry page.
As was the case for the last two springs, bringing myself to be cheerful wasn't easy this year, given continued challenges from the pandemic, with the outbreak of the senseless war in Ukraine adding to the difficulty. Here is the result for spring 2022 anyway! A rough English translation follows.
Kiss of raindrops, chirps of partridges and starlings Flowers draping each stretch and every bend
Cheerfulness, dancing, and the strumming of harp Charm of Nowruz and tranquility of green plains
Noble traditions and principles from our ancestors Dancing and stomping from the delight of spring
The promise of a year much better than the last Time for passionate embraces and lasting love
New year's gifts arriving from one direction Hopes of uniting with the beloved, from another
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran confirms targeting a site in Iraqi Kurdistan with missiles, claiming it was a "Zionist conspiracy center."
- "Refocus: The Works of Rakhshan Banietemad": Book forum, Tue., Apr. 12, 2022, 9:00-10:00 AM PDT. [Link]
- Book introduction: Neuroscience and Philosophy, MIT Press, 2022. [More info]
- Math: For the complex number x satisfying 1 + x + x^2 = 0, evaluate x^49 + x^50 + x^51 + x^52 + x^53.
- Persian music: Old-time folk singer Sima Bina performs a Nowruz song.
- Kurdish music: Iranian Kurds celebrate Nowruz in the western city of Kermanshah.
(4) Farhang Foundation's annual Nowruz celebration at UCLA: After a 2-year absence, the annual Nowruz event returned to UCLA's Dickson Court, adjacent to the historic Royce Hall and Powell Library. There were a number of dance performances, music by LA Daf Ensemble, puppet shows and activities for the kids, alongside a traditional haft-seen spread. Food trucks and a tea house served the large crowd. I attended with a group of 12 family members and we dined at Flame Persian Cuisine on Westwood Blvd. after the program.
- Ava Choir, based in Los Angeles, performed a number of spring-themed pieces. [Sample 1] [Sample 2]
- Sample Persian dance performance and an impromptu Kurdish dance, which wasn't part of the program.
2022/03/19 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] The traditions of Nowruz, Easter, and Passover (see the next item below). [Middle left & center] Nowruz is around the corner: Here are my haft-seen and a Persian new-year prayer that has been suggested as a proper replacement for the Arabic prayer forced on Iranians for many decades. [Middle right] "The Face of War": Portrait of Putin, made with 5000 bullet casings, by Dariya Marchenko. [Bottom left] Math oddities: An infinite sum with a surprising result, and a mysterious set of identities involving 12 integers and their powers. [Bottom center] As lower- and middle-class families struggle at the gas pump, oil companies earn record profits. [Bottom right] Factorization diagram for numbers 1-100.
(2) "Celebration and Ceremony: Zoroastrianism and Nowruz, Easter, and Passover": This was the title of yesterday's panel discussion, sponsored by Georgetown U. Persian Studies Program, that explored perspectives on religious traditions coinciding with the arrival of spring. Mutual influences of the Nowruz, Passover, and Easter traditions, and their roots in Zoroastrianism, were pointed out by the panelists.
For example, there are several Passover rites among Persian Jews, which are influenced by Nowruz traditions and are unique to them. The symbolism of food (lamb, fish, pomegranate, green onion) is another aspect that is shared among religious traditions. Ironically, secularization led to greater divides among the various faiths, which had lived together in peace for many centuries. The three panelists were:
- Dr. Jamsheed Choksy, Distin. Prof., Dept. Central Eurasian Studies, Hamilton Lugar School of Indiana U.
- Dr. Jason Sion Mokhtarian, Assoc. Prof., Dept. Near Eastern Studies, Cornell U.
- Dr. Maria Doerfler, Ass't Prof. of Late Antiquity, Dept. Religious Studies, Yale U.
(3) On Dr. Mohsen Ranani's Persian essay, "Let Us Salute Iran's Wounds": To be honest, I'd love to salute Iran's wounds, but there are so many of them, with new ones being inflicted at an alarming rate, that I just can't keep up! It seems that Dr. Ranani was just awakened from a deep sleep and recognized the power of Iran's women's movement, years after the rest of us spoke and wrote about it. Of course, one might argue that it is better being late to the party than never going. But I can't give him the benefit of doubt, given his body of writings. He has argued that the Iranian young elite should stay in the country rather than leave, not recognizing that unlike older professionals such as him, with jobs, homes, and many other resources, recent graduates do not have the luxury of ignoring material comforts and foregoing personal development in favor of charitable work out of a sense of nationalism, as those in power fill their pockets before emerging from some Western country. Among Dr. Ranani's opinions is that Iran's Islamic government is hopelessly inept, so citizens should go around the government to do good. This anti-government pronouncement is fine on the surface, but it ignores the fact that the said inept government is killing and imprisoning people, an inconvenient truth that cannot be ignored by simply focusing on doing good in spite of government hurdles.
(4) Working on the final instructional task for winter 2022: Assessing a dozen ECE 254B research projects.
- "Modeling of Interconnection Network Reliability"
- "An Overview of Chordal-Ring Networks"
- "Variations on the Fat-Tree Network"
- "Parallel Disjoint Paths in Parallel Processing Networks"
- "Adaptive Routing in Networks"
- "Low- vs. High-Dimensional Mesh Networks"
- "Oblivious Network Routing and Its Limitations"
- "Table-Assisted Routing Algorithm in 2D & 3D Network-on-Chip Architectures"
- "Properties and Applications of Cayley Graphs in Interconnection Networks"
- "The Degree-Diameter Problem in Networks"
- "Revisiting Perfect Difference Networks: Application Prospects from HPC to Manycore Chips"
- "A Comparison of Packaging Characteristics of Novel Hierarchical Interconnection Networks"
2022/03/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Nowruzistan (see the next item below). [Top center] Throwback Thursday: Lieutenant Behrooz, during summer military training in the mid 1970s. [Top right] Rock art: Grand piano. [Bottom left] It has been 180 days since the Taliban banned girls from attending school. [Bottom center] It's important to have an appropriate quotation for every situation! [Bottom right] Emmy Noether: The woman mathematician who changed the face of physics during her short life.
(2) Nowruzistan: Nowruz, the celebration of spring, isn't just an Iranian thing. People in Afghanistan, India, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and several other countries in the region also observe this ancient festival. If Iran's Islamic regime weren't pursuing an idiotic foreign policy based on suspicion and spite, building up on this shared heritage could have led to regional good will and perhaps even to an EU-like economic coalition.
(3) Prayer for the Persian New Year (humor): Dear God: For the new year, I ask you to give me a fat wallet and a slim figure. But please, please, make sure you don't mix the two up, like you did last year!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- War crimes continue in Ukraine: Mariupol theater, turned into bomb shelter, is destroyed by Russia.
- How Russia's mistakes and Ukranian resistance alterned Putin's war. [Financial Times graphics]
- Saudi Arabia executes 81 in one day in a show of force by an emboldened Mohammad bin Salman.
- Sting operation in Florida for human-traffickers and child-predators nets 108, including 4 Disney employees.
- Nowruz & Persian New Year 1401 will begin at 8:33:26 AM PDT, Sun., Mar. 20, 2022 (7:03:26 PM Iran time).
- View from an oil tanker, as it navigates choppy waters on the Kattegat Bay off the coast of Denmark.
- Proof that a dog has 9 legs (math humor): No dog has 5 legs. A dog has 4 more legs than no dog. QED.
- Iranian/Afghan music: Mahdieh Mohammadkhani and Aryana Sayeed perform "Sarzamin-e Man."
(5) Music at a war-crimes scene: Irina Maniukina, 44-year-old, mother-of-two, Ukrainian pianist performs a final Chopin melody, before leaving her shelled apartment near Kyiv. [2-minute video]
(6) Drama at CNN: Chris Cuomo was fired by CNN for violating rules of journalism in helping his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, build a defense against allegations of sexual misconduct. Now, Chris is suing CNN for $125 million and is trying to drag down another CNN anchor, "brother" Don Lemon, with him.
(7) "Regeneration": This is the title of a free UCSB talk by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert, best known for her book, The Sixth Extinction. Her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, takes a hard look at the world we are creating and whether technological solutions are adequate for dealing with the damage humans have caused to the environment. [UCSB, Corwin Pavilion, Mon., Apr. 4, 2022, 7:00-9:00 PM]
(8) Math puzzle: We have a triangle with side lengths x, x + 1, and x + 2. The angles opposite the three sides are b, 2a, and a + b, respectively. Find x.
2022/03/16 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Recent changes in crude-oil & gas prices (see the next item below). [Top right] Math puzzle: Shown are 2 half-circles & a circle inside a quarter circle. What fraction of the quarter-circle's area is shaded? [Bottom left] Russian activist appears with an anti-war protest sign during a live TV news broadcast. [Bottom center] Ketab-e Iqbal Naseri, an illustrated Qajar-era Persian language primer. [Bottom right] Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk by Dr. Tim Sherwood (see the last item below).
(2) Crude-oil prices collapse: After climbing to the highest levels since 2008 in early March, prices return to the pre-war levels. We will see whether gas prices, which shot up with the spike, will go back down or profiteering by oil companies will keep them at the current levels.
(3) To cut or maintain academic ties with Russia: Many academic institutions have condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and some have cut research cooperations. However, cutting ties completely may not be in the cards. Firstly, academic ties persisted through the Cold War. Secondly, penalizing Russia's academics, one of the country's most-moderating forces, may be ill-advised.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Young mathematician Yulia Zdanovskaya was killed on March 8 in Kharkiv during Russia's attack on the city.
- AI applied to drone images helps locate a pebble-sized meteorite that landed in western Australia in 2021.
- Young UCSB ECE faculty member Kerem Camsari wins a grant to build a probabilistic computer.
- US citizen Solmaz Sharif, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, publishes her second book of poems.
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Tonight, in an in-person event with ~25 attendees, held at Rusty's Pizza in Goleta, Dr. Tim Sherwood (UCSB CS) spoke under the title "Temporal Computing: From Machine Learning to Superconducting Logic."
Dr. Sherwood began by reviewing advances in computer technology and the computer industry over the past four decades as a lead-up to asking the question, "Where will computing be in four decades?" This is what university research is all about: laying down the foundations for building cheaper, faster, and more energy-efficient systems, now that existing technologies are struggling to offer continued exponential advances.
With existing digital technologies, signal propagation delay is a hindrance, an extra challenge to be dealt with in order to build faster systems and algorithms. Rather than fight against it, what if we could instead twist this delay into something actually useful, as already done by nature? Over the past several years Dr. Sherwood's labs have been developing a new foundation for computation based entirely on controlled signal delay that operates through the application of simple but powerful temporal operators (similar in spirit to AND, OR, and NOT but operating instead through signal delay alone).
While the idea of computing with time is theoretically interesting, Dr. Sherwood's group has shown it to be also surprisingly efficient in practice. Drawing insights from programming languages, machine learning, circuit design, information theory, cognitive science, and formal methods, Dr. Sherwood described a new energy-efficient method of temporal computation, based on MIN, MAX, INCREMENT, and INHIBIT operations, that appears to both closely match edge- and pulse-based forms of computing and lead to natural application in common learning and classification tasks.
While near term, Dr. Sherwood's group has shown temporal computing to lead to efficient implementations under traditional technologies, their most-recent work has revealed even more opportunities for realizing temporal-coded computations in superconducting logic. The latter extension is joint work between UC Santa Barbara (CS and ECE), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and National Institute of Standards and Technology.
About the speaker: Dr. Timothy Sherwood (BS, 1998, UC Davis, MS & PhD, 2003, UCSD, all in computer sci. & eng.) is a Professor of Computer Science, an affiliate of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a member of UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency. He specializes in the development of processors exploiting novel technologies or provable properties. In 2013 he co-founded Tortuga Logic to bring rich security analysis to the hardware and embedded system design processes. He is a recipient of UCSB Academic Senate's Teaching and Mentoring Awards, winner of ACM SIGARCH's Maurice Wilkes Award, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, an IEEE Fellow, and co-recipient of 17 different "best paper" or "top pick" article awards.
2022/03/15 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] A prelude to Nowruz (see the next item below). [Top right] Review of Tower of Lies (see the last item below). [Bottom left] A math oddity (top) and a math problem to find the maximum of a + b + c subject to a + 11/b + c/4 = 20. [Bottom center] The southeastern city of Mariupol in Ukraine has been destroyed by Russia (Video). [Bottom right] Math humor: Given 1/∞ = 0, prove 0 = ∞.
(2) Happy Chaharshanbeh Soori (fire-jumping festival, a prelude to Nowruz): Tonight, the eve of the Persian calendar year's final Wednesday, is when Iranians jump over bonfires, while telling the flames, "My yellow be yours, your red be mine." With this "purification rite," one wishes that the fire would take away sickness (yellow face) and other problems and in return provide warmth and redness of face (a sign of health). This year, celebrations will be more widespread, given curtailed activities over the past couple of years. Anticipating broad public participation, the joyless Iranian regime has desperately indicated that revelers will be arrested for "noise pollution," if they sing aloud or use fireworks. [Persian music: 3-minute song; 1-minute dance]
(3) Georgetown U. Persian Studies Program panel discussion on Nowruz: Entitled "Celebration and Ceremony: Zoroastrianism and Nowruz, Easter, and Passover," the Friday, March 18, 11:00 AM PDT, panel brings together perspectives on religious traditions coinciding with the arrival of spring. [Register]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Daylight Saving Time to become permanent in the US: Senate approves unanimously; House will vote next.
- Russian drone that flew into Poland, a NATO member country, is shut down over Ukraine.
- Russia drops bombs on Kyiv, as European leaders plan to visit Ukraine's capital city. [Chicago Tribune]
- Math puzzle: Find all prime numbers that are of the form n^4 – 24 n^2 + 36.
(5) Women in engineering: Interim Dean Tresa Pollock, the first woman to lead UCSB's College of Engineering, helps observe Women's History Month via a Web page that showcases the College's women faculty members and a number of pioneering women in various engineering disciplines.
(6) Book review: Res, Barbara A., Tower of Lies: What My 18 Years of Working with Donald Trump Reveals about him, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by Erin Bennett, Graymalkin Media, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Barbara Res worked for Trump for nearly two decades, from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, as construction manager for many of his well-known buildings. Trump often held her up as an example of opportunities he provided to women, but the nasty treatment she got from her boss comes across loud and clear in this book. A natural question, then, is the reason Res tolerated him for so long. She was making good money working for Trump, so her portrayal of him as a cheap, nasty man loses some of its credibility.
Yet, books describing Donald Trump, the person, the businessman, the boss, the president, are remarkably consistent. Res was closer to Trump than all the journalists and politicians who have written about him, closer even that his niece Mary, so her portrayal is much more personal.
The following paragraph is an apt representation of what Res thinks of Trump, some 25 years after she quit working for him, so I use it to end my review.
"I will always have mixed emotions about Donald. Even when he was at his worst in the early days, he was human and even sometimes humane. That version of him has been so thoroughly subsumed—by his yes-men, his ignorance and arrogance, his focus on appearances, his lies and cheating, his desire for credit and avoidance of blame, his disdain for (and manipulation of) the working people of this country, his denigration of anyone who isn't a white Christian male, and his incessant need to attack. It is impossible even to glimpse any of the positive attributes of that earlier Donald."
2022/03/14 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy pi (3/14) day! The image shows how to fit an arbitrarily large number of the digits of pi in a small space, and this Facebook memory from March 14, 2019, lists some of the ways for computing a large number of digits of pi. [Top center] Speaking of pi, here are my English-muffin pizzas, with mushroom and black-olive toppings. [Top right] Math puzzle: Find the measure of the pink angle in this diagram with a square and an equilateral triangle. [Bottom left] Iranian family's transportation: Safety? Seat belts? What are those? [Bottom center] It has been 80 days since the disappearance of Ebrahim Babaei: His daughter, @ShimaBabaei, is waging a campaign to find this former political prisoner (#EbrahimBabaei). [Bottom right] Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography (see the last item below).
(2) Inflation and pandemic-related poverty have led to a significant rise in thefts of manhole covers, light poles, and copper wires in Tehran.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UN report decries the criminalization of Baha'is in Iran and other Middle-Eastern & North-African countries.
- Black boys were victims of racist assaults at two Santa Barbara junior high schools.
- UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will hold its 66th session, March 14-25, 2022.
- What do you get when you cross a guard dog with a computer? Something whose megabyte megahertz!
(4) Book review: Marshall, Tim, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything about the World, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Scott Brick, Novel Audio, 2016.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Geography determines a country's access to natural resources, energy, and trade routes, and it also dictates vulnerability to military attacks. These factors determine how countries develop, how/why they enter into armed conflicts, and how they establish regional and international ties. Whereas many countries are prisoners of their geography, a few lucky ones, notably the United States, have almost no geographic weaknesses that can be exploited by other countries.
Focusing on ten regions of the world, Marshall outlines how geography has played a key role in historical events and success or failure in trade and cooperation. Like any book focusing on a narrow subject, Prisoners of Geography contains some exaggerations about the impact of geography. For example, technology can help, and has helped, mitigate geographical vulnerabilities or barriers. Marshall argues that in armed conflicts, geography is a determining factor. But this is the case only when war is waged with the aim of invading and occupying a country. Acts of war or espionage to inflict damage are less constrained by geographical barriers, such as rivers or mountains. And this is even more true in the age of cyber-warfare.
In the following, I will summarize Marshall's observations about three of the ten areas covered. I also found the book's coverage of Latin America (the South American continent split lengthwise by the Andes, which make trade difficult), Africa (fairly broken up internally and isolated from the rest of the world), and the Middle East (illogically divided into countries, where people on the opposite sides of a border share much in common) quite interesting.
*Russia: The flatness of European territory leading into Russia has tempted many invaders. However, Russia's vast area and harsh climate has made is impossible for the invaders to control it. Russia's military ports in the Black Sea have very limited access to open waters, and for this access, ships have to go through the Bosporus Strait and a narrow part of the Mediterranean, the entire path surrounded and controlled by NATO countries. One reason Ukraine has been in the news lately is its strategic importance to blocking NATO's influence in areas close to the Russian border.
*China: The vastness of China is a bit misleading. It has huge deserts and a large majority of its population lives near the east coastal region. Yet China's sparsely-populated western and northern parts are important to its security and, more recently, to the establishment of the New Silk Road, connecting China to the rest of the world. China relies on the South China Sea for fishing, energy resources, and trade routes. Unfortunately for China, those routes often go through narrow passageways controlled by other countries. Building artificial islands is one of China's strategies for establishing a military presence in the area and to claim control over sea lanes that comes from owning land.
*Western Europe: The modern world is rooted in Europe, which gave birth to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Other than its relatively temperate climate, with good soil and ample rainfall, a key geographic advantage of Western Europe is the presence of many navigable rivers that lead to open waters with natural harbors. As a result, European rivers have led to routes and centers for commerce. Among countries in Europe, the southern ones have less arable land, such as coastal plains (Greece is a good example), a feature that has meant the development of fewer major cities, which attract educated workers to help advance the economy and technology.
2022/03/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Atrocities: Russia is systematically destroying Ukraine's infrastructure and residential buildings. [Top center & right] Screening of documentary film about Simin Behbahani (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Europe's new refugee crisis: Can it handle the strain caused by the Ukraine invasion? [Bottom center] History in pictures: Iran's first restaurant menu from the year 1841. [Bottom right] Ready to play foosball against a robotic opponent? IEEE Spectrum magazine's March 2022 issue helps you prepare!
(2) Humorous Persian poetry: Young boy recites a poem about why Iranians go to Heaven after death (because they had been confined to Hell while alive)! [3-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kremlin & Iran's state-controlled platforms try to sell Putin's war to Arabic- & Spanish-speaking audiences.
- Blatant lie: Russian Ambassador to Iran claims broad support among Iranians for Putin's war in Ukraine.
- Iranians fear that a sanctioned Russia is obstructing a return to Iran's nuclear agreement with the West.
- Riddle: Why do you think aliens haven't visited our solar system? Could be because of the reviews; one star!
(4) Iran's Ali Khamenei talks at length about Ukraine war, without once mentioning Putin/Russia: He blames "US adventurism" for the conflict, and Friday-Prayers Imams throughout the country repeat the same line.
(5) Screening of "Love at Eighty" and a panel discussion on the film: The wonderful 56-minute documentary is a retrospective of Simin Behbahani's life and poetry. Largely in her own words, using family and period photos, interviews with noted poets and critics, this portrait of "Iran's Lady of Ghazal" traces her poetic development from her family roots, modern poetry movement, and reinventing Ghazal to explore the social, political, cultural, and moral issues of an oppressive and corrupt Iranian society. The film was screened as part of UCLA' Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran, coordinated by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge).
Behbahani's claim to fame is the use of classical poetic frameworks, while adapting them to modern language and concepts. In the film, Behbahani (1927-2014) speaks of poets who influenced her work and hints at an intense professional competition with another feminist poet, the beloved Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967). One influence on Behbahani was Parvin E'tesami (1907-1941), the woman poet who brought the discussion of social problems and women's issues to Persian poetry, and Nima Yooshij (aka Ali Esfandiari, 1897-1960), who transformed Persian poetry by popularizing the free-form "she'r-e now" ("new poetry").
The first panelist, Dr. Houra Yavari (Columbia U.), praised the film's director, Hassan Fayyad, for accurately capturing the life and extensive contributions of Simim Behbahani, who composed some 700 ghazals in 200 different styles, some of them completely new. There is no doubt that Behbahani isn't just a trailblazing woman poet, but an important poet, period!
The second panelist, Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (U. Maryland; UCLA), opined that the relatively short film, with its "testimonials" style, though quite enlightening, cannot be considered the final word on Bebahani. A cinematic treatment, by nature, isn't a scholarly study of the full impact of Behbahani. In particular, it does not provide the broad context within which Behbahani's poetry flourished and the many players who helped shape her success.
The third panelist, Dr. Roja Chamankar (poet), described the film as a faithful depiction, within a conventional documentary format (no cinematic tricks or embellishments), of Behbahani's life. The film's narrative is structured like a research paper, a structure that is highly suitable for painting an hour-long picture of 60 years of poetic innovations and impact.
The kinds of subtle disagreements evident from the introductory comments summarized above continued during the Q&A period. One major point of contention was whether there is, or should be, a feminine voice in poetry, which begs the question, "What is a feminine voice?" At one extreme is the matter of showing strong emotions and discussing sexual desires from a woman's viewpoint. At the other extreme is tinting the usual poetic words and forms with feminine perspectives and vocabulary.
2022/03/12 (Saturday): Today's blog post is devoted to the memory of my youngest uncle, Farrokh.
Farrokh Parhami [1939-2022], known to his many nieces and nephews as uncle Farrokh: I won't be able to attend tomorrow's family gathering commemorating my youngest uncle's life, so I have recited my poem and talked about a couple of memories of him in an 8-minute video recording (in Persian).
Born in the small town of Saqqez, Iran, on May 6, 1939 (15 Ordibehesht 1318), uncle Farrokh led a difficult life. As the youngest of my grandparents' 12 children who survived to adulthood, it is fair to say that he did not receive the same attention as his older siblings, perhaps due to the exhaustion of my grandparents' financial resources and energy. Yet he managed to finish college and become a successful high-school teacher. He loved books, and late in life, when he had retired, he tried to make a living in the world of books. He always had a book to recommend to me and the rest of the family. After the Islamic Revolution, he once tried to flea Iran through the border with Pakistan, but got unlucky, was caught, and was put in jail. This experience was quite hard on him and took a toll on his physical and emotional well-being. Eventually, he emigrated to the United States, but life in diaspora wasn't kind to him either. For much of his life, he was physically fit, with his slim and tall figure projecting an image of perfect health. In his final years, however, life's worries and other challenges took a toll, and his health began to deteriorate. His youngest son Payam was his companion and selfless caretaker, until he passed away on March 6, 2022 (15 Esfand 1400), at age 82.
Let me also share two memories from uncle Farrokh that have remained with me, even though I did not see him often over the past four decades or so.
The first memory is from us teaming up and applying to participate in Iran TV's "20 Questions" game show. Upon being selected, we went to the Iran TV studio atop a hill off Pahlavi Ave. at the appointed time. In those days, Iran had just one TV channel. We had not practiced much, but we were confident that with our general knowledge, his specialized knowledge in the natural sciences, and my expertise in math, science, and technology, we would win. I don't remember what prize we were competing for, but our secret object was the bougainvillea flower ("gol-e kaaghazi," in Persian). We went through the standard early questions and, rather quickly, narrowed the choice down to flowers. However, we were unable to name the flower, despite trying hard. Needless to say, we were disappointed. Uncle Farrokh believed that the host had misled us a bit in answering some of our yes-no questions. [Note: According to one of my sisters, the "20 questions" answer was actually The Flower Clock of Shiraz and not as I remember it.]
The second memory is from an outing with my college buddies, with uncle Farrokh also going along. We hiked in the Darband/Pas-Ghal'eh area, stopping to rest and eat in the Twin Falls area after two hours. I spread a blanket on the ground of rocks and dirt, with uncle Farrokh, who was more tired than the rest of us, immediately resting on his back. Moments later, we heard him scream and jump up. Upon inquiring, we found out that his back had been stung by a bee. We helped him take off his shirt and put some ointment on the sting area to ease his pain. I used to kid him constantly after this incident by asking him why he chose the particular spot with the only bee in sight to take a rest!
I have other memories of uncle Farrokh. No doubt other family members also have fond memories of him, which they will share. Uncle Farrokh used to visit us often when my family lived in Vanak, a neighborhood in north Tehran. He and I, sometimes accompanied by one or two of my sisters, would walk to a nearby spring, with beautiful natural surroundings, talking about various topics along the way, while also getting some fresh air and exercise.
The first letters of my poem's six half-verses spell the Persian for uncle Farrokh ("amoo Farrokh") in his memory. May his soul rest in peace! [Persian version of the text above]
2022/03/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iran capitulates to Russia: Even some cronies of Iran's Islamic regime are complaining about the preferential treatment Russia gets, going as far as suggesting that Russia has infiltrated high places and that historical facts unfavorable to Russia are erased from textbooks. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Putin suspecting that he is all alone! [Right] Persian calligraphy as part of graphic-art pieces, with the theme of love ("eshgh") and women.
(2) War & science: I've received a request to boycott a journal special issue, because one of the guest-editors is Russian. There are also pleas for calm and separating politics from science. I expect to see more discussions of this nature, as well as longer-term impacts from our world's increasing tendency to politicize everything.
(3) #UkraineTakeShelter is a website created by Harvard Student Avi Schiffmann to help Ukrainian refugees find places to stay in neighboring countries. [Story]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- About 9000 Iranians, including ~1500 students, live in Ukraine, and, so far, there is no evacuation plan.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Putin upset to find Ukrainians less obedient than Trump.
- Jailed Iranian human rights activist Sepideh Gholian is gravely ill: UN is urged to intervene to save her life.
- Children growing up in Iran's Qarchak Women's Prison are vulnerable to physical harm and sexual abuse.
- Iranian female futsal players summoned to a disciplinary committee for displaying her "Stop War" T-shirt.
- Companies tweeted for Women's Day: But @PayGapApp exposed their biases, despite lip service to equity.
- UNC Chapel Hill's VC of Research caught plagiarizing his application for a cancer-research federal grant.
- Persian music: Violinist/composer Bijan Mortazavi's "Lullaby for Refugees" [5-minute video]
(5) New life breathed into content-addressable memories (CAMs): Having appeared on the scene alongside the earliest digital computers, CAMs, sometimes called associative memories or AMs, constituted the first instantiation of parallel-processing hardware, as early as the 1950s.
SRAM-based CAM cells use 10 transistors per bit of storage, 6 transistors for the SRAM storage cell and 4 for the comparison logic. Ternary or 3-valued CAM (TCAM) cells need 16 transistors per cell, because they use two SRAM storage cells to hold a 3-valued digit, or trit. Thus, the overhead seems to be high compared with regular DRAM storage cells, which need a single transistor per bit (2 transistors for a trit).
In return for the added complexity, CAMs perform certain simple processing functions within the memory, thus helping to alleviate the von Neumann bottleneck, aka the memory wall. In- or near-memory processing is one of the currently hot research areas in computing for this very reason. CAM applications include facilitation of routing decisions in high-throughput Internet routers and implementation of small, fully-associative caches, including translation lookaside buffers and branch-prediction tables.
Recent work has shown the feasibility of two-transistor TCAM cells based on resistor storage technology. Such TCAM cells provide advantages of lower complexity, lower operating power, and zero standby power due to their non-volatility. There is also the possibility of extending the designs to accommodate more than 3 values, thus further increasing compactness and energy-frugality.
Further reading:
Wikipedia entry;
Survey/tutorial paper;
New RRAM-based TCAM cells
2022/03/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (see the next item below). [Top center] UCSB on the Ukraine conflict: Our campus has issued a statement regarding the invasion of Ukraine and has set up support mechanisms for students who have been impacted, particulary international students from Ukraine and Russia. [Top right] Young women faculty shine at UCSB CS Summit (see item 3 below). [Bottom left] When did Albertsons and Vons grocery stores merge? I don't recall hearing the news. [Bottom center] Survey: Southern California Edison wants to know how satisfied I was with a 2.5-hour power outage "experience"! How should I respond? [Bottom right] I was surprised to see Halle Berry on the s over of AARP Magazine: She is in her 50s.
(2) Throwback Thursday: (1) My parents (left, with sunglasses, and next to me, in light dress), along with two uncles & their wives, and the wife of a third uncle (center), in a photo from the mid-1970s. (2): "Yours Truly: Johnny Dollar" was the name of a weekly radio program in the 1960s/early-1970s Iran. This 4-minute video contains a semi-serious song about the super-popular program. (3) Facebook memory from Mar. 10, 2018: University of Tehran graduation awards ceremony, 1968. [Photo]
(3) Multidisciplinary research talks by young women faculty at yesterday's UCSB Computer Science Summit.
- Katie Byl (ECE), "Connections Between Reinforcement Learning Alg's & Classical Dynamics Theory ..."
- Jennifer Jacobs (MATP), "Expressive Computation: Integrating Programming and Physical Making"
- Nina Miolane (ECE), "Geometric Learning for Biomedical Shape Analysis"
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Half tank of gas (~9 gallons) today in Santa Barbara: $51
- Apple's pricey new monitor comes with a 1-meter cable. A 1.8-meter (6-foot) cable will cost you $129.
- UCSB Technology Management Program changes name & status to Department of Technology Management.
- Math challenge: Does the equality (–1)^1 = (–1)^2.2 make sense?
(5) Putin's pronouncements resemble those of Islamic Republic of Iran's Supreme Leader: He declared in 2007, 2011, and 2017 that Russia will become one of the world's five largest economies by 2017, 2021, and 2024, respectively! In 2020, Moscow Times reported that becoming one of the world's five largest economies by 2024 is no longer the Russian government's goal.
(6) UCSB takes a stance on bodies external to the faculty trying to dictate what can and cannot be taught: I learned in today's meeting of the Faculty Legislature that Texas is considering a law that would deny tenure to, or retract tenure from, faculty who teach certain "divisive" topics. It isn't clear who would decide that something is divisive. Other states may follow suit.
(7) Selected verses from a 1939 poem by W. H. Auden [1907-1973]:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
(8) Math problem: The digital root of a number is obtained by adding its digits, then adding the digits of the resulting number, and so on, until a single-digit number is obtained. For example, the digital root of 3456 is 9, which is obtained thus: 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 18; 1 + 8 = 9. The digital roots of powers of 2 are 1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 5, ... , with the 5-digit pattern repeating. Find the digital roots of negative powers of 2, that is, 0.5, 0. 25, 0.125, 0.0625, ... , and explain the result.
2022/03/09 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Computer Science Summit at Corwin Pavilion (see the next item below). [Bottom left & right] Today's nerdy talk about Wordle (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Wearing one of my two Ukraine support T-shirts, as I walked home at the end of very busy day on the UCSB campus.
(2) UCSB CS Summit: Between class, an office hour, and a faculty meeting, I attended today's CS Summit, where student capstone projects were on display and research by three interdisciplinary faculty members, all women, was highlighted. I did ABET assessments for two projects ("Smart Grid" sponsored by AgMonitor; "Save Vision", sponsored by Alcon). Free "Let There Be Code" T-shirts were given out. Between program segments, I took a couple of breaks at UCSB University Center in a dining area overlooking the lagoon.
(3) A woman who was way ahead of her time: Iranian feminist poet Tahirih Qurratu'l-Ayn [1817-1852] said in 1852 that she might be killed, but nothing can stop the emancipation of women. [Facebook post]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ukraine's Mariupol civilian casualties surpass 1200 in 9-day Russian siege.
- US inflation rate rose to ~8% in February, and that was before the latest round of war-related price hikes.
- Back to the drawing board: Man who got a genetically-modified pig heart dies after 2 months.
- Cartoon of the day: Make music, not war. [Image]
(5) The puzzling number 195,955,200,000,000: Recently discovered to be the product of 60 and 70^7, the inordinately large number appears on a Sumerian ~650 BCE clay tablet coming from the city of Nineveh.
(6) "Wordle for Nerdles": This was the title of tonight's fun talk by Karl Geiger (kgeiger@ieee.org) in an event sponsored by IEEE Buenaventura Computer Chapter.
Wordle is a single, daily word puzzle by Josh Wardle. Solving it is the classic CS problem of finding a needle in a haystack (of 5-letter words). The number of 5-letter srtings in the English alphabet is 26^5 = 11,881,376, but because Wordle answers are actual English words, the search space has the much smaller size of 12,972. When NYT bought Wordle, it removed some offensive and a few other words, reducing the word list to 12,946.
To solve the puzzle, one suggests a 5-letter string and gets three types of feedback, identifying the letters that are correct and in the correct position (green), letters that exist in the word but are not in the correct position (yellow), and letters that do not appear in the answer word (gray). With each feedback, the player suggests another 5-letter string, until s/he guesses the correct word (five green responses). The game is very similar to the old game named "Mastermind."
In the English language, the most-frequently used letters are, in order, ETAOIN SHRDLU, so offering strings composed of these letters tends to maximize the number of correctly-guessed letters. Tables of frequencies of letters in the first, second, ... , positions are available, which help with constructing good guesses. Instead of using all English words to derive the frequencies, one can use letter frequencies in the answers to previous puzzles, which yields somewhat different results.
Wordle's code comes self-contained in a single Javascript file, which contains every possible answer. The daily answer is chosen serially from the answers list and doesn't repeat, at least until the list runs out. The only legit English word that was missed by the dictionary makers is "anons." During today's talk, Mr. Geiger presented ideas on using Unix/Linux string-handling tools to explore Wordle and derive winning strategies.
2022/03/08 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Happy International Women's Day (IWD): A single day of the year isn't enough for educational activities to topple the world's patriarchal order, but it might be a good starting point. Let us pledge to work toward full gender equality and human rights for everyone throughout the year, redoubling our efforts now that women's rights are again under assault in many backward and so-called advanced countries of the world.
- The Paris-based Bahar Choir offers a wonderful musical piece in celebration of IWD.
- My 2019 Persian poem honoring both Nowruz and IWD [Image & description] [Video recitation]
(2) Newsworthy tweets on the occasion of International Women's Day (March 8).
- Dr. Jill Biden: Message to our sisters in Ukraine and Russia. [Tweet]
- Amnesty International: Afghan women have come a long way. [Tweet]
- Reuters: Turkish riot police clashed with women marking IWD. [Tweet]
- NYT: Ukrainian refugees were greeted by volunteers on IWD. [Tweet]
- Nick Sotoudeh: To all brave women of Iran on #IWD2022. [Tweet]
- Maya Angelou: You may write me down in history ... But still, like dust, I rise.
[Tweet]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Women's rights movement in the United States: A brief history (by A. K. Shulman & H. Moore)
- Women's rights movement in the Iran: A brief history (by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi)
- On the origins of the word "woman." [FB memory from 2019]
- Setting of injustice or the dawn of freedom? [FB memory from 2018]
- How Trump inadvertently created more support for women's rights among men. [FB memory from 2017]
- On celebrating IWD's 111th year in 2022. [FB memory from 2015]
- Eight years ago, my ex-wife passed away one day before IWD. [FB memory from 2014]
- On us becoming more aware than ever of our built-in prejudices. [FB memory from 2013]
(4) Final thought for the day: "On the eve of International Women's Day, the Center for Human Rights in Iran celebrates women everywhere who are at the vanguard of the struggle for human rights despite crushing adversity. In Iran, courageous women, including lawyers, activists, journalists, and mothers of the victims of state violence, are demanding justice, freedom, equality, and basic civil liberties for all Iranians, despite facing systemic human rights abuses and discrimination." [Source]
2022/03/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Facebook memory from March 7, 2019: Lightning strikes in Santa Barbara. [Top center] Today's tech talk by Dr. Najme Ebrahimi (see the next item below). [Top right] Customer disservice (see the last item below). [Bottom left & right] Two math puzzles: Find the area of the center triangle in terms of A (credit: #mathiratti). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: A square is partitioned into four rectangles of equal area. Order the four rectangles by the lengths of their perimeters, from smallest to largest.
(2) "Next Generation Intelligent and Secured Wireless World: From IoT and Sensors to Wideband and Multi-bands Scalable Circuit & System": This was the title of a UCSB faculty recruitment talk by Dr. Najme Ebrahimi (U. Florida), who presented novel methods to overcome the challenges for future wideband scalable high data-rate MMW transceiver arrays, from silicon-device-centric circuits to radio-frequency integrated circuits and packaging. She also discussed future directions in the field and a variety of circuit designs for overcoming various challenges in extending the state of the art.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Eyewitnesses contradict Russia's claims that it bombs only military targets in Ukraine. [14-minute video]
- Death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, as we enter its third year: World ~ 6 million; US ~ 1 million
- Voices of Women for Change commemorated the International Women's Day with an awards ceremony.
- Cancel the war: A young girl sings, asking grown-ups about why children have to suffer in senseless wars.
- A persian poem by Hossein Monzavi: This 2-minute video also describes a folk tale that inspired it.
- Screening of Simin Behbahani's "Love at Eighty": Sunday, March 13, 2022, 11:30 AM PDT (Register).
(4) Cal State University's dirty laundry aired: Following an expose by USA Today, CSU's Board of Trustees revised a key policy and initiated an external review of Cal State Fresno's mishandling of sexual harassment complaints, including letting a senior administrator off the hook in a back-room deal.
(5) Customer disservice: I have had a terrible experience switching my family's cell phone provider from Verizon Wireless to Consumer Cellular. A couple of my neighbors recommended CC highly and praised their US-based customer service. I have already spent multiple hours waiting, during several calls, to accomplish the switchover (the on-line chat service didn't work or had similar wait times).
The problem started with trying to get SIM cards from the new provider's reps at a nearby store. They didn't have any in stock and were not expecting to get new supplies in the near future, blaming supply-chain problems. So, we tried ordering on-line and got our SIM cards a few days later.
The long phone wait times, both at the new provider and at the old one (which I contacted to resolve some residual problems) were blamed on "high demand," given the discontinuation of 3G service and many customers needing help in changing their phones. This reason seems legit on the surface, but why didn't the carriers anticipate the difficulties and either increase support staffing or delay service discontinuation until they had worked out the potential problems? Haven't they heard of planning?
The cherry on top was the mixing up of our phone numbers, because they had not labeled the SIM cards with the associated phone numbers upon shipping.
2022/03/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Last night's UCSB Middle East Ensemble concert (see the next item below). [Bottom row] Reviews of two books and an audio-course (see items 4-6 below).
(2) In celebration of Nowruz, spring, & the Persian New Year, two weeks ahead of time: Last night, I attended an enjoyable 3.5-hour concert by UCSB Middle East Ensemble, with several guest artists performing Persian songs, alongside spring-themed pieces in Arabic and Turkish. Brief samples of several musical pieces follow.
- Persian music: "Nowruz Aamad" ("New Year's Day Has Come") [1-minute video]
- Turkish/Azeri music: "Bayram Gelip" ("Here Comes the Eid") [2-minute video]
- Arabic song & dance [1-minute video]
- Persian music: "Nowruz Aamad" ("New Year's Day Has Come") [1-minute video]
- Dance from the Bukhara region of Uzbekistan [1-minute video]
- Persian music: "Aamad Nobahaar" ("The New Spring Has Come") [2-minute video]
- Persian music: "Emshab Shab-e Mahtaabeh" ("Tonight is a Moonlit Night") [2-minute video]
- The concert's finale: A Persian-Turkish song based on a Sa'adi poem [3-minute video]
- Some of the Persian songs performed by UCSB Middle East Ensemble and its guest artists [Lyrics]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The US won't be sending soldiers to confront Putin, but Microsoft is battling Russian hackers in Ukraine.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 5, 2015: A Persian verse by Mowlavi (Rumi).
- Facebook memory from Mar. 5, 2014: The French have just one egg for breakfast, because that's un oeuf.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 6, 2018: Photos of my remote Skype talk's audience at Razi U. of Kermanshah.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 6, 2013: How digital media have made lying significantly harder.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 6, 2011: Overrated films that won best-picture Oscars, versus better choices.
(4) Book review: Fitzpatrick, Kathleen, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, New York U. Press, 2011. [Written on March 5, 2012, and posted to GoodReads yesterday.]
(5) Audio-course review: Grim, Patrick (SUNY Stony Brook), "Questions of Value," 24 lectures on 12 CDs, The Teaching Company, 2005. [Written on March 5, 2014, and posted to Goodreads yesterday.]
(6) Book review: Gladwell, Malcolm, What the Dog Saw, and Other Adventures, unabridged audiobook on 10 CDs, read by the author, Hachette Audio, 2009. [Written on March 6, 2014, and posted to GoodReads today.]
(7) Discussion on the Ukraine invasion: Yesterday morning, as part of the Fanni'68 group of graduates of Tehran University's College of Engineering, Mr. Mohammad Amini led a timely discussion on the latest developments in Ukraine. The discussion was simultaneously covered on Clubhouse. I decided to participate, even though I have been saturated with Ukraine news over the past week!
One theme was that the new world order does not allow smaller countries to be politically and economically independent, being forced to choose powerful international allies. For example, Iran, having been alienated from its former close ally, the United States, and having tried, with little success, to remain unaligned, has recently placed itself in the orbits of China and Russia.
It appears that Ukraine is suffering the consequences of the perennial "warm war" between the US (NATO) and Russia, which harbors some of the same ambitions as those of USSR. Hints that Ukraine might join NATO and the prospects of Russia's border with NATO allies expanding, was a key reason for Putin deciding to act, although, as pointed out by a participant, Russia's adventures in Georgia and Syria cannot be blamed on the NATO threat.
Mr. Amini stated on a couple of occasions that the world order needs a serious revision, because the post-World-War-II order no longer applies to our transformed world. I commented that talk about devising a new world order is wishy washy. Which mechanism would help set up the new order? The UN has proven ineffective, as it is distrusted by both major world powers and smaller nations. Would major world powers give up their veto power in UN's Security Council?
A couple of "conspiracy theories" were also raised about Putin being prodded by the West into doing something crazy, in order to help consolidate NATO's power and scare European countries into joining or contributing more (or, alternatively, to shut Russia out of the world oil and gas markets). Another non-traditional view was the need to hold the Ukrainian leadership more accountable for ridiculing Putin & Russia and, later, not doing enough to prevent the invasion.
2022/03/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Colorful symmetry (left to right): Bolo Hauz mosque, Bukhara, Uzbekistan; Sheikh Lotf-Allah Mosque, Isfahan, Iran; A magnificent Persian carpet at the Carpet Museum of Tehran, Iran. [Bottom left & center] Well, of course Russia's invasion of Ukraine is on all the magazine covers this week! [Bottom right] Garry Kasparov's 2015 book (see the next item below).
(2) Garry Kasparov on Putin: In his prophetic 2015 book, Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, the former world chess champion maintained that the collapse of the Soviet Union changed very little and that USSR's ambition for world domination persists in Russia. He also predicted the invasion of Ukraine and urged the West to challenge Putin before he became too powerful to stop. Much of Kasparov's commentary is spot on, but his assertion that the West created Putin by its inaction lets the Russian people off the hook too easily. The book has been enjoying brisk sales over the past week.
(3) Proof that the earth can be both 3-dimensional and flat (Math humor): x^3 = x^2 + x^2 + ... + x^2 (x terms). Differentiate both sides to get 3x^2 = 2x + 2x + ... + 2x (x terms) = 2x^2. Therefore, 3 = 2.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- War crime: The Russian army attacks Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and sets it on fire.
- Ukrainian Holocaust survivors are filmed in a bomb-shelter, cursing Putin and demanding peace.
- Residents of Borodyanka, near Kyiv, repelled a Russian assault on their town, but at a very high cost.
- Anti-war protests intensify in Russia, as do arrests and police brutality.
- Russians believe their government's fake news, but doubt reports of sufferings coming from Ukraine.
- Ukraine invasion's strong impact on academic ties and on Russian & Ukrainian students in the US.
- Faster than the speed of light (humor): E = mC^2 and E = (1/2)mV^2 lead to V = sqrt(2)C ~ 1.41C.
- Thomas Jefferson: "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."
(5) New Russian law threatens journalists and others who contradict the government's official reports on the Ukraine invasion with 15-year jail term.
(6) "Recent Progress on Binary Deletion-Correcting Codes": This was the title of today's UCSB tech talk by Dr. Venkatesan Guruswami (UC Berkeley). Much of the throery of error codes deals with bit-reversal errors (substitution errors, for non-binary codes). Work has also been done on erasure errors, where bits or symbols are replaced with indeterminate values, denoted by question marks in writings about codes. The fact that locations of the "erased" bits/symbols are known facilitates the correction process. With deletion errors, bits/symbols are dropped, yielding a shorter received string than the one sent, with locations of the deletions unknown. It is also possible to include both insertion and deletion (insdel) errors, which can be used to deal with a substitution error as one insertion and one deletion.
Design of deletion-correcting codes is more challenging than erasure-correcting codes. Three categories of methods have been pursued, corresponding to a small, fixed number of errors (e.g., single or double deletion errors), a small fraction of errors (say, 1% or 2%; this category is of greater practical interest), and an arbitrarily large fraction of errors (say, 25% or 30%). In all cases, the length of the original (correct) string is known, so the number of deletion errors is also known. Thus, deletion error-detecting codes are senseless. After the introduction of single-deletion-correcting codes in the 1960s, many basic questions about such codes remained open. Over the past 6-7 years, significant progress has been made in all three categories cited above.
2022/03/03 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB College of Engineering showcases its women faculty members during Women's History Month. [Top center] Voices of Women for Change salutes the Int'l Women's Day: An awards ceremony will honor Iranian women's achievements in diaspora in music, art, literature, and women's rights, Sun., Mar. 6, 2022, 11:00 AM PST. [Top right] Throwback Thursday: UCSB West Campus faculty housing, under construction in 1986. I have lived in one of these units since Oct. 1988. [Bottom left] Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Math humor: The calculus of dairy products. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Order the three areas A (green), B (white), and C (blue) from smallest to largest.
(2) Book review: Feynman, Richard, Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by its Most Brilliant Teacher, Helix Books, 1994. I wrote this review on March 3, 2013, posting it to GoodReads on March 3, 2022.
[My 5-star review of the book on GoodReads]
(3) Here is a Persian translation of Yuval Noah Harari's opinion piece in The Guardian, asserting that Putin has already lost the Ukrainian war. [The original article, in English]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's advice to Putin (Borowitz Report, humor): All he needs to say is, 'Frankly, we did win this invasion.'
- Russia's casualties mount in Ukraine: Some 500 deaths and 1600 injuries are reported by Russia.
- Many Russian soldiers are surrendering to get food or avoid being killed/captured in Ukraine.
- Captured Russian soldier, one of the many teens in the invading force, is fed & allowed to video-call his mom.
- Shame on Russia for deliberately shelling residential blocks in several Ukrainian cities.
- Iranian artists dedicated this song to the Ukrainian people. [Credits at the start of this 4-minute video]
(5) Russian oligarchs are quickly selling their assets, before they are frozen or impounded: The most notable example of such assets is Roma Abramovich's Chelsea Soccer Club, which is now on the market.
(6) Global sports bodies and a number of countries are banning Russian athletes: I can't bring myself to support this politicization of sports, especially after repeatedly condemning Iran for punishing athletes and sports teams that compete against the Israelis.
(7) Iran walks on eggshells in covering the Ukraine war: Instead of "invasion," state-controlled Iranian media use Putin's preferred term, "special operations"! Because of Western sanctions, Iran has become highly dependent on Russia (and China), so it dare not criticize the toxically masculine guy with nukes.
(8) Vladimir Putin is following in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein: In 1980, Hussein invaded Iran under the guise of liberating the Arabic-speaking population of Khuzestan and helping them form the independent state of Arabistan. In 1990, he invaded Kuwait, which he claimed to be a province of Iraq taken away by the British, miscalculating that the West, wary of the legacy of Vietnam, would not intervene. Does a fate similar to Hussein's await Putin? [Opinion piece by Gilbert Achcar, in The New Arab]
(9) Final thought for the day: There are a couple of things wrong with this 3-minute video clip. First is the presence of the black-faced Haji Firooz, a symbol of Nowruz, but also a racist trope IMHO. Rather than repeat what I have written about this issue at length, I will just provide links to my previous posts (English, Persian). The second issue is that even the woman character is operated by a man. If women can dance in public as carnival puppets, then why not let a woman operate the puppet, instead of a bearded man?
2022/03/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A salute to women at the beginning of Women's History Month: March 8 is International Women's Day. [Top center] An apt beginning to Women's History Month: For the first time in history, two women flank the US President during the State of the Union Address. [Top right] Mary L. Trump's The Reckoning (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Olena Zelensky, the writer/architect wife of Ukraine's president, tweets about being a target of Putin. [Bottom center] Russian oligarchs love NYC's Central Park. [Bottom right] A tale of two presidents under fire: Ukraine's Zelensky and Afghanistan's Ghani.
(2) #EbrahimBabaei was kidnapped more than two months ago: He had been imprisoned, tortured, and flogged earlier for his political views and for supporting his dissident daughter.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trumpism has now transformed into Putinism among most Republicans!
- Thousands of Russian scientists sign an anti-war open letter.
- Biden bans Russian airplanes from US airspace and warns oligarchs about seizure of their assets. [AFP]
- Persian music: Played wonderfully on piano and tar. [1-minute video]
(4) Ukraine could become another Afghanistan for Russia: Even if Russia wins its battles and the current Ukrainian government falls, insurgencies, fueled by a deepening hatred of Russia, may haunt a Russian-backed puppet regime for years. In an opinion piece for The Guardian, best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari argues that Putin has already lost the war, regardless of the military outcome. Despite Putin's claims, Ukrainians do not yearn for Moscow's rule. Kyiv was already a major metropolis when Moscow wasn't even a village.
(5) Book review: Trump, Mary L., The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I read and reviewed Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump's previous book about her uncle Donald, in mid-2020.
My 4-star review on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3483101221
The just-mentioned first book, which sold more than one million copies in a week, can be summarized by the following paragraph from my review: "... Donald Trump has always gotten away with bullying, lying, cheating, and scamming. Neither at home nor, later, when he ran the Trump Organization, did anyone care or dare to challenge him. So, with his life and actions under close scrutiny by the media and his political opponents, he has been thrown off-balance, thus committing many unforced errors and having to double down on misguided opinions/statements even more often."
Her second book is less about Donald Trump and more of a memoir. It is better-written and more insightful. Mary Trump has a PhD in clinical psychology. The author's disdain for her uncle still comes across loud and clear, including an assertion that he grew up racist and anti-Semite, in a home where the N-word was commonly used, but rather than dwell on the Trump presidency, she stresses the fact that "we are heading toward an even darker period in our nation's history." Hence, the part of her subtitle "Finding a Way to Heal."
Mary Trump embraces "The 1619 project" (while leveling criticism at some of its claims), the idea of reparations to Black Americans, the need for policing reforms, and the urgency of investing to fix our run-down schools. While acknowledging that we have come a long way from where we stood less than a century ago, she maintains that it is still hard to grow up white in America and not be racist. The latter point may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but it isn't far off the mark.
2022/02/28 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Europe deserves peace, but so does the rest of the world: The war in Ukraine has activated alarm bells and sent everyone scrambling for peace. European suffering generates a level of empathy that war's devastations and dislocations in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America never did. [Top center & right] Putin becomes the butt of jokes, such as this one from Iran: I hope Putin does not find out that his last name means "boot" in Persian. He's in a bad mood right now, so no telling what trouble he will cause for us! [Bottom row] Today, at UCSB: Photos shot around the Library Plaza and Harold Frank Hall, aka Engineering 1 Building, mostly to showcase the deep blue skies.
(2) The vulnerability of the US electric grid: In 2013, the most-sophisticated attack against the US electric grid occurred south of San Jose, California. A frightening vulnerability is that the entire US grid can be brought down by taking out as few as 9 of its 55,000 substations. [13-minute CBS "60 Minutes" report]
(3) IEEE Central Coast Section talk: Dr. Tim Sherwood (UCSB) will speak under the title "Temporal Computing: From Machine Learning to Superconducting Logic," on Wed., March 16, 2022, 6:00 PM PDT.
[Register for free]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ukrainian couple marry under fire, then take up arms and join the defense forces to fight off Russians.
- Tribute to Ukraine: This week's SNL program began with a musical piece by NY's Ukrainian Chorus Dumka.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleads for fast-tracking of his country's membership in the EU.
- Ukrainian soldier blows himself up to destroy a bridge and slow down Russian tanks advancing from Crimea.
- Even if the current Ukrainian government falls, insurgencies may haunt a puppet regime for years.
- Russia-backed leader of Belarus warns of the danger of WW III, as he prepares troops for helping Putin.
- Belarus reverses its non-nuclear & neutral status, allowing Russia to place nuclear weapons on its territory.
- Tracking of private jets belonging to Russian oligarchs shows that they may be on the run.
- FIFA and UEFA suspend Russia's national teams & clubs from world soccer "until further notice."
- Ernest Hemingway: "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
(5) Forensic linguistics: People and languages have very specific signatures when you analyze the distribution of triples-of-letters in texts. You can use chunks of 2, 4, 5, or 6 letters as well, but use of 3-letter chunks has proven highly successful. Recently, this method was used to identify the language of a text (e.g., English or French) with near-certainty. Another success story in this area is the fingering of a South-African and an American as being behind QAnon posts.
(6) A call to action on computing ethics: Writing in the March 2022 issue of Communications of the ACM, Ronald M. Baecker cites excellent reasons why we should place greater focus on ethics in computing. "We depend upon software that nobody totally understands. We are vulnerable to cyberterrorism. Privacy is overrun by surveillance capitalism. Totalitarian control advances. Daily Internet news matching our beliefs makes it difficult to tell true from false. People are addicted to devices. Jobs disappear without social safety nets. Digital leviathans threaten to control all commerce. Our values are threatened."
(7) UCSB sociology professor writes on the January 6 insurrection: Published in International Marxist-Humanist Organization Journal, January 2022, Kevin B. Anderson's "The January 6 Insurrection: Historical and Global Contexts" draws parallels with the mob attack of 160 years ago (February 13, 1861) to disrupt the counting of the electoral certificates confirming Abraham Lincoln's election. The article ends thus: "All three of these developments [rise of neofascism, efforts at voter suppression, and vote-tally manipulation at the state level] are racialized, both directly and indirectly. This is what ties Trumpism to the 1861 pro-slavery mob that attempted to overturn Lincoln's election. ... Thus, we need to recognize, on the one hand, the deep racism of U.S. society over the centuries and its connection to rural areas, while at the same time viewing those areas ... as potential sites of resistance to Trumpism. A truly dialectical analysis requires nothing less."
2022/02/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The war in Ukraine (see the next item below). [Center] An example hypergraph (see item 3 below). [Right] Panel discussion on the plight of black Iranians (see the last item below).
(2) The horrors of war: Those who have never been in a war zone are unlikely to understand what it feels like to hear the roar of fighter jets flying overhead, to be shaken by sounds of explosion coming from all directions, and to witness people fleeing their homes with a handbag worth of belongings. My heart goes out to Ukrainians and to Russian soldiers sent on a mission they likely do not believe in.
(3) Graph problems can be hard, but hypergraph problems are often much harder: A graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of edges, each of which connects two vertices. In a hypergraph, an edge can connect an arbitrary set of vertices, not just two (see the example diagram, with 7 vertices, V1-V7, and 4 edges, e1-e4).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- David vs. Goliath: The Ukrainians are putting up a surprisingly strong defense against the Russian army.
- Verified charities working to help the Ukrainians suffering from the Russian invasion. [Link]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2018: The cast of Harry Potter film series, before the start of shooting.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2018: Variations of the word "love" in Persian calligraphy.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2017: My Persian poem for the 25th anniversary of my dad's passing.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2015: Polanyi Paradox, about our knowledge of what we know.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 27, 2015: A couple of wonderful verses from Mowlavi (Rumi).
(5) Mining free energy from the air for our electronic devices: Regardless of our location on Earth, we are surrounded by signals (Wi-Fi, cellular, RF). If we succeed in making our devices ultra-low-power so that they can communicate by reflecting the ambient signals present in the environment, instead of generating their own signals, batteries and a great deal of other cost and complexity factors will disappear.
(6) Thoughts on a good publishing strategy in the face of a multitude of choices and the effects of luck (randomness): In this CACM blog, some of my assertions in the paper "Low Acceptance Rate of Conference Papers Considered Harmful" (PDF) are confirmed within the context of a publication strategy for academics that balances exposure and impact.
(7) War is peace: Talking heads on TV insist that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the first time since WW II that a country has violated another one's borders. Really? Afghanistan & Iraq don't count? I realize that, in the case of Afghanistan, circumstances were different, but, still, pretending that Russia is the first violator is delusional!
(8) UCLA Bilingual Lectures on Iran: Today's installment of this lecture series, which is an outreach program of UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, was entitled "A Talk with the Collective for Black Iranians: On the Importance of Centering Erased Black and Afro Iranian Histories from Iran and the Diaspora." The Collective was founded out of the necessity to be seen, heard, and understood.
After the introduction of the program and participants by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge), the panelists, founding members of the Collective, Priscilla Kounkou-Hoveyda & Alex Eskandarkhah, resident artist Pegah Bahadori, and resident historian Beeta Baghoolizadeh, alternated in expressing their views in Persian & English. Coinciding with the final days of the Black History Month in the US, this was a welcome discussion to raise the awareness of Iranians of a hidden part of their culture and history.
Many Iranians are surprised to learn that there exist black fellow-Iranians. Iranians do discuss race and ethnicity, but blackness is completely foreign to them. Even some black Iranians didn't have an understanding of why their skin color was black. It is hard to believe that within learned and intellectual groups, the legacy of slavery in Iran isn't acknowledged. For example, we view and admire Qajar-era art, without ever mentioning the presence of slaves in the images.
One of the goals of the Collective, and its outreach efforts such as today's presentation, is to make information about black Iranians and blackness available in Persian. Participating panel members told stories of their personal experiences and also shared other stories in words, images, and video clips. These images and videos are available on the Collective's website. [Recording of the event]
2022/02/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The invasion of Ukraine from the viewpoint of a US-based Russian professional. [Center] Different crime scenes, same criminal. [Right] New Yorker cartoon: The bird that shops at Costco.
(2) Here's an interesting question for you: Double letters are used in many languages. English examples include "book" and "dinner." Does any language use triple letters in words?
(3) The 5-day US work week is on its way out: For knowledge-economy workers, the normal 9-to-5 days at the office won't be coming back. Employees are starting to like working from home and are getting better at it. Over the next decade, US workers are expected to spend 25% of their time working from home. This trend will have significant ramifications for businesses and cities. Demand for office space is falling, but not by much. Fewer hours at the office will not lead to the requirement for less space, if all workers must show up at the office on certain weekdays. The most-popular model of hybrid work has employees at the office Tuesday through Thursday and out of the office Friday through Monday. This creates flexibility for travel, while continuing to work. One complication is the envy of those who don't have the luxury of working from home. Many such workers have the option of working longer hours for 4 days per week.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Massive anti-war protests across Russia lead to hundreds of arrests.
- Poland starts taking in fleeing Ukrainian: The Russian invasion could produce 5 million refugees.
- The Russian dictator is fighting against Ukrainians and against anti-war Russians. [St. Petersburg protests]
- Harsh sanctions against Russia could jeopardize safe operation of the International Space Station.
- History-making black woman: Judge Ketanju Brown Jackson nominated to serve on the US Supreme Court.
- USSR in Iran, 1941: Flyers dropped from airplanes in northern Iran to justify the Red Army's invasion.
- Linguistic detectives find clues on who is behind QAnon: A South-African and an American are fingered.
- The engineering culture repels or marginalizes women and other underrepresented minorities.
- A computer-generated 1-minute tour through the Academy Awards.
- Persian-Azeri music: Alim Qasimov & Alireza Ghorbani perform a song based on a Mowlavi (Rumi) poem.
(5) Quote of the day: "The biggest problem that computing faces today is not that AI technology is unethical—though machine bias is a serious issue—but that AI technology is used by large and powerful corporations to support a business model that is, arguably, unethical." ~ Moshe Vardi, in his March 2022 CACM column
(6) "AI at the Edge: Nanotechnology-Inspired Artificial Intelligence Hardware": This was the title of today's UCSB ECE faculty-recruitment talk by PhD candidate Haitong Li (Stanford U.).
Ubiquitous AI promises to empower broad applications, from health-monitoring and augmented-reality wearables to autonomous robots. To fulfill the big promises, future electronics must deliver unprecedented energy efficiency with new functionalities, enabling real-time adaptation and lifelong learning at the edge. Work on nanotechnology-inspired AI hardware aims to expose and connect unique properties of emerging nanotechnologies at device & circuit levels all the way to diverse AI model characteristics.
The speaker presented two specific examples of his contributions. He began with SAPIENS, the first integrated chip that enables on-chip, one-shot learning with scarce and never-before-seen data, built with 65,536 RRAMs (resistive switching memories) and mixed-signal silicon CMOS. He then discussed the first experimental demonstration of 3D nanokernels for hyper-dimensional (HD) computing, seamlessly translating the intrinsic device physics and the native 3D connectivity of multi-layer 3D memories into HD compute kernels.
The speaker ended by outlining his vision for future nanotechnology-inspired AI hardware, bridging the worlds of nanoelectronics and AI, to bring forth energy-efficient, real-time machine intelligence at the edge.
2022/02/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Sepandarmazgan (see the next item below). [Center] James Comey's Saving Justice (see the last item below). [Right] The most beautiful building in the world: Dubai's Museum of the Future, which opened on Feb. 22, 2022, has no corners and no columns. The eye-shaped building has one floor devoted entirely to space exploration, one floor to near-term future technologies, and one floor to children's activities (5-minute video).
(2) Sepandarmazgan, the Iranian festival of love, women, friendship, and Earth: This annual celebration is dedicated to Spanta Armaiti, the feminine angelic spirit of the Earth. It was put in place on the 5th day of Esfand (Spandarmad) during the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenid, in celebration of mothers/wives, including Mother Earth. By some accounts, February 18 (Bahman 29 of the Iranian calendar) is the correct date of the festival, but February 24 (Esfand 5) is more frequently cited.
(3) "Randomized Algorithms for Efficient Machine Learning Systems": This was the title of today's UCSB ECE faculty-recruitment talk by Dr. Beidi Chen (Stanford U.). Machine learning (ML) algorithms are compute- and energy-intensive. In her research, Dr. Chen exploits model sparsity with randomized algorithms to accelerate large ML systems on current hardware. She presented two concrete examples of her contributions. First, she described SLIDE, an open-source system for efficient sparse neural network training on CPUs that has been deployed by major technology companies and academic labs. It trains industry-scale recommendation models on a 44 core CPU 3.5x faster than TensorFlow on V100 GPU. Second, she described Pixelated Butterfly, a simple yet efficient sparse training framework on GPUs. It uses a simple static block-sparse pattern based on butterfly and low-rank matrices, taking into account GPU block-oriented efficiency. Pixelated Butterfly trains up to 2.5x faster than the dense Vision Transformer and GPT-2 counterparts, with no drop in accuracy. She concluded by outlining research for further accelerating ML pipelines and making ML more accessible to the general public.
(4) Book review: Comey, James, Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency, and Trust, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The first Comey memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, which I read and reviewed in 2019, provided me with a good understanding of the workings of the US Justice Department, including how it interacts with the rest of the executive branch.
In his new book, we read about Comey's early career, more on his handling of Mafia cases, and accounts of a large number of other cases that came his way in the course of his career. He includes information about his stints as Deputy AG (2003-2005) and FBI Director (2013-2017). He also rehashes the key parts of A Higher Loyalty, which was perhaps a deeper book.
Comey writes at length about the need for the US Department of Justice and FBI to stay clear of politics, an advice he clearly did not heed in the final weeks of the 2016 US presidential campaign. The question of whether Comey was responsible for Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump, or that she lost due to her abrasive personality and defective campaign, will likely never be resolved. Despite the horrors we experienced over the four years of Trump's presidency, it was likely beneficial for pent-up anger and hatred to emerge when it did, rather than continue to become more malignant and explode with even greater intensity later.
Comey writes surprisingly well. That he is a literate man comes across clearly from his choice of quotations at the beginning of each chapter. I wrote in my review of Comey's previous book: "Autobiographies tend to be self-serving, and this book is no exception. Comey's description of why he treated the Clinton e-mails investigation the way he did appears artificial and reeks of after-the-fact justification. Still, he comes across as a rather ethical, compassionate, reflective, and capable leader; and that's in absolute terms and not just relative to his amoral nemesis who fired him from a job he loved and excelled at." The just-quoted paragraph applies to the new book as well.
2022/02/23 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the area of the regular pentagon is shaded? [Top center] Low-contrast vision is important when driving in poor-visibility conditions: See how many digits of this 7-digit number you can read. Most people recognize only the middle 3 digits. [Top right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the area of the square is shaded? [Bottom left & right] More signs of spring and colorful skies, captured today in Goleta. [Bottom center] Ben Mezrich's The Antisocial Network (see the last item below).
(2) Power without accountability: The charlatan who approved the 2015 nuclear deal and later claimed he had nothing to do with it, cancelled Iran's press reform law with a single message to the parliament, and ordered the slaughter of street protesters in 2019, is the same person who guided the passage of a draconian Internet censorship law under the guise of protecting on-line users. [Persian tweet]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Republicans support democracy in Ukraine as long as it does not spread to the US.
- Trump praises "genius" Putin and characterizes his invasion of Ukraine as a "very savvy" decision!
- Sixteen-year-old Indian boy defeats the world chess champion in an on-line tournament.
- Bye-bye 3G, hello 5G: AT&T becomes the first US carrier to shutter its 3G network. T-mobile is next.
(4) Fyodor Dostoevsky quote: "My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so."
(5) Book review: Mezrich, Ben, The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Fajer Al-Kaisi, Grand Central Publishing, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a very relatable story. The events described are fairly recent and we still remember learning about them from the nightly news or on-line. Much of it also happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, so, besides learning about the GameStop debacle, we come to understand how the lives of the story's protagonists were affected by social restrictions and the challenges of working from home: Impact on their lifestyles, family dynamics, financial needs, fears, and aspirations.
Before its recent notoriety, GameStop was an unremarkable company that sold computer games through its chain of retail stores, and it was viewed as a dinosaur ready to become extinct, a la Blockbuster Video. As usually happens for such companies that do not embrace modern trends and technologies, GameStop's stock was shorted by investors hoping to make some money when it finally went under. But a combination of two factors, a group of enthusiasts, that liked the idea of brick-and-mortar game stores, and amateur investors, who thought they could make big bucks if the company's stock defied expectations, led to GameStop's share price and thus its valuation shooting up beyond all logic.
Mezrich tells the detailed story of how giant Wall Street hedge funds lost big bucks to amateur investors, who made up for their lack of economic savvy with passion and enthusiasm. He also considers whether preying on about-to-fail companies, perhaps quickening their demise and then feasting on the result, is ethical and in line with the noble goals of capitalism. The market mechanism is supposed to allow investors to put their money in successful and fiscally-sound companies, making money by facilitating economic expansion and national prosperity. Getting rich by cheering for failure just doesn't seem right.
The key fight was between Melvin Capital, a $13 billion hedge fund and a disparate group of day-traders, video-game nuts, and Internet trolls, loosely organized around the WallStreetBets (WSB) subreddit and using RobinHood as their investment conduit. There are hints in the book that the fight was far from fair, because market authorities intervened to shield threatened hedge funds against losses, much in the same way that big banks were bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis. Yet steps taken to restrict WSB activities can be interpreted more charitably as having been required to protect the overall integrity of the system.
Elon Musk makes an appearance in the narrative as a champion of the little guy, himself having suffered the consequence of Tesla nearly going under due to hedge funds shorting its stock. The chapter on Musk is quite flattering and has been characterized by some as the author's love letter to him.
Mezrich's Bringing Down the House and The Accidental Billionaires were made into movies (the latter under the title "The Social Network"), and this one seems to be headed in the same direction, all three painting flattering portraits of some nerds.
2022/02/22 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Map of Ukraine and Russia's aggression: Crimea was annexed in 2014. Now Russia has invaded regions held by separatists. [Top right] IEEE Central Coast Section (serving Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo): We have put together a line-up of exciting and state-of-the-art technical talks for 2022. [Bottom left] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Two-hundred years from now, humans may not be around to freak out over the date 2-22-2222. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Calculate the area of the red quarter-circle. [Bottom right] Arguments for and against academic tenure (see the last item below).
(2) Words of wisdom, yes, but coming from Fyodor Dostoevsky, as often claimed, no: Intolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles. [Persian]
(3) You can laugh or weep, your choice! Nowruz is a festive occasion for cows and donkeys. The growth of grass gives them more to eat, making them happy. Islam does not recognize Nowruz as a festive occasion, according to this mullah! [1-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy "Twosday"! Today's date is palindromic in the "ddmmyyyy" notation: 22 02 2022
- Canadian government official explains the difference between free speech and what truckers are doing.
- UCSB student arrested for installing covert cameras in women's bathrooms: Police & UCSB are investigating.
- Math puzzle: Calculate x + y, if x^2 – y^2 = 9 and xy = 3.
- For my Persian-speaking readers: Prefixes & suffixes used in different languages to denote "son of."
- Facebook memory from Feb. 22, 2019: How we judge ourselves vs. how others do.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 22, 2017: Do you remember Trump's healthcare plan? Neither do I.
(5) The renewed assault on academic tenure: Abolishing tenure is an idea that comes to the forefront every few years. Tenure was established to foster academic freedom, that is, to guard academic research against political or social retaliation. A tenured professor, the thinking went, can feel free to tackle controversial or hot-button issues, without the fear of being fired for expressing views that challenge established scholars, university administrators, or state/national political leaders.
There are some good arguments against tenure, though, the most effective one being that it creates complacency by removing accountability and competition; academic productivity does taper off in the case of some tenured professors. It also creates inflexibility, both intellectually and fiscally, making adaptation to changing research priorities and budgetary droughts difficult.
There are also good arguments for keeping tenure. It allows research to go on in important areas with no immediate pay-off and on topics that aren't currently favored/stylish. It is a "perk" that helps with the recruitment of distinguished researchers to universities in the face of salaries that are way lower than those outside academia.
The latest assault on tenure comes from conservatives who don't like what is going on in academia, blaming it on "liberal" or "leftist" faculty. This assault complements their activism against teaching Critical Race Theory or any other revisionist view of our country's history that does not whitewash topics such as the genocide of Native Americans and the horrors of slavery.
By the way, arguments against tenure in academia are equally applicable to life-long judicial appointments, including at the US Supreme Court. But conservatives who foam at the mouth at the mention of tenure, have no problem with the latter, at least while they hold an advantage in terms of the number of judges.
2022/02/21 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy US Presidents' Day: Let's celebrate all the great ones and their wonderful deeds, from abolition of slavery, through leadership in trying social/economic times, to signing of the Civil Rights Act. [Top center] Tweets about forced confessions (see the next item below). [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Trump Presidential Papers at the National Archives Museum. [Bottom left] The Kola Pyramids in the extreme NW region of Russia: They are claimed to be twice as old as the pyramids in Egypt. Or are they mountains? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Solve the given system of two nonlinear equations for x and y. [Bottom right] This upside-down house in Colombia is a popular tourist attraction (3-minute video).
(2) The Taliban take a cue from Iran: They broadcast TV interviews with a number of women activists, "confessing" that they were influenced by foreigners in taking to the streets. Interestingly, the Taliban had previously denied arresting any women activists!
(3) The late Shah of Iran empowered the mullahs: He was a superstitious man who wrote in his books that his life was once saved by Abalfazl catching him when he was thrown off his horse and claimed that he had met Imam Zaman. In the words of the writer of this Persian essay on Facebook, his idea of modernity was importing wallpapers from France, not secularism or democracy.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Putin orders Russian troops into separatist-controlled regions of Ukraine under the guise of "peacekeeping."
- Who says perpetual motion (movement requiring no external energy) is impossible? [1-minute video]
- Recipe for Fibonacci's Soup: Two ingredients, "Yesterday's soup" and "The day before yesterday's soup."
- Grammar: I before E, unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.
(5) Nineteen Eighty-Four: "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." Twenty Twenty-Two: The former president who lied to or misled Americans 15 times per day is now running TRUTH Social!
(6) Soon-to-be-released "Mast-e Eshgh" ("Love Drunk") movie: The Iran-Turkey collaborative project tells the story of a singular friendship between Mowlavi (Rumi) and Shams-e Tabrizi, which transformed Mowlavi's vision and created ominous threats against Shams. [3-minute video]
(7) "Data Science: Hype and Reality": This is the title of an article in the February 2022 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. After characterizing the field as "one of the most sought-after career options and as an emerging discipline in almost every industry in the world," the authors proceed to discuss data science & its evolution, the evolution of the data scientist, data science education & careers, and the future of the field.
(8) National Engineers' Week (February 20-26, 2022): Established by National Society of Professional Engineers 71 years ago to call attention to contributions of engineering and engineers to society.
[Read more]
(9) Final thought for the day: Judea Pearl (UCLA) is widely honored for his contributions to AI foundations. I had a course with him on computer memory systems (not his main specialty) during the early 1970s. I learned from a tweet of his that 20 years ago, today, FBI agents knocked on his door to inform him of the death of his journalist son, Daniel, who had been beheaded by Islamic extremists in Pakistan. The pain is unimaginable!
2022/02/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
![Dr. Bahman Mehri [1936-]](images_folder/f22-220220-honoring-prof-bahman-mehri-04.jpg)
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Goleta, CA: Spring's in the air way ahead of Nowruz in my neck of the woods. [Top center] My Persian poem, commemorating my dad's 30th anniversary of passing and his 100th birthday. Our family gathered at Santa Barbara Cemetery to honor him and my ex-wife, who passed away 8 years ago. [Top right] Honoring Dr. Bahman Mehri, long-time professor at Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology (see the next item below). [Bottom row] Saturday's talk by Dr. Janet Afary (see the last item below).
(2) Honoring a pioneering math professor in Iran: In a Zoom ceremony today, ~350 family members, colleagues, and students of Professor Bahman Mehri [1936-] gathered to honor his productive life and contributions to mathematics education in Iran. This initiative to honor notable individuals while they are still alive, rather than in memoriam, is a welcome trend.
It is difficult to summarize the many testimonials offered during this session, which also included multiple slide shows and video clips. I will just share in the following paragraph the comment I made via the meeting's chat box and urge you to watch the recording of the meeting to learn about all the touching memories shared by Dr. Mehri's colleagues and students.
I have fond memories of Bahman as a colleague and friend. I lost contact with him when I left Iran in 1986, but continued to hear about his activities and contributions through colleagues and students (his and mine). Wishing a complete recovery and a long life for this truly kind, hardworking, and impactful man, who has taught thousands of students in the course of his long academic career.
[Some images] [Recording of the event] [#DrBahmanMehri]
(3) The language of dictatorship and the language of freedom: In this Persian essay, extracted from a longer document, Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani argues that a dictatorial regime's violations of human rights extend to the violation of the sanctity of words, as their meanings are manipulated to please those in power. Lavish praise of rulers by many Persian poets is a symptom of rampant exaggeration and considering words malleable to serve our dictatorial tendencies.
(4) "Molla Nasreddin of Tiflis and the Diasporic Milieu that Gave Birth to It": This was the title of Saturday's wonderful Zoom talk by Dr. Janet Afary, sponsored jointly by UCSB's Iranian Studies Initiative and Farhang Foundation. The event was a part of a lecture series on Iranian Art and Literary Exchange Between Iran, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Russia in the 20th Century. The talk was based on Dr. Afary's forthcoming book, Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906-1911. [Publisher's page]
In 1906 a group of Muslim Azerbaijani and Georgian artists and intellectuals of Tbilisi (modern Georgia) published the periodical Molla Nasreddin. Their journal reinterpreted the tales of the Middle Eastern trickster by the same name to construct a progressive anti-colonial discourse with a strong emphasis on social, political, gender, and religious reform. Using folklore, visual art, and satire, their eight-to twelve-page weekly, which had full-page lithographic cartoons in color, reached tens of thousands of people across the Muslim world, impacting the thinking of a generation.
Molla Naserdin is still quite relevant and is referenced widely. Several publications in the region, including Iran's satirical and political weekly Towfiq [1923-1971], which I enjoyed regularly during my youth, were influenced by it. The talk was richly illustrated with graphics from Molla Nasreddin, personalities involved in its publication, and the locales where it was created and thrived. I have captured some of the illustrations via screenshots, but you should listen to the recorded version of the talk to get the entire picture. [Talk's recording]
2022/02/18 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Lunar motorcycle: We may soon see astronauts move around the lunar surface on a motorbike. [Top center] Chess puzzle: Switch the places of white and black knights in the fewest possible legal knight moves. White & black moves do not need to alternate. [Top right] History in pictures: A Qajar-era medical diagnostic lab in Iran advertises its services, which include urine analysis, as instructed by physicians, and glucose & albumin tests (for 1 toman). [Bottom row] Cartoons of the day, from E&T magazine. [Bottom left] Is AI the new snake oil? [Bottom center] AI researchers replicate the thought processes of the human mind. [Bottom right] Transportation of choice for attending the 2050 Climate Change Conference.
(2) "Willful Crime" ("Jenayat-e Amdi"): Documentary film by Mohammad Rasoulof about the imprisonment and death of poet/writer/filmmaker Baktash Abtin [1974-2022]. [63-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Number of victims in Brazil flooding & mudslide surpasses 120, with the same number still missing.
- Russia's troop build-up around Ukraine approaches 200,000: There is also a complete naval blockade.
- For the first time ever, Mike Pence has greater support among Republicans than Donald Trump.
- Iran's reign of attacks, kidnappings, and assassinations around the world.
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
- Brief life story of Fakhri Golestan: Translator, film director, journalist, and writer. [9-minute video]
- Math puzzle: What is the minimun sum of 4 distinct natural numbers, if we have a^3 + b^3 + c^3 = d^3?
- Math puzzle: Evaluate sqrt(44 ... 488 ... 89), where there are 2002 digits of 4 and 2001 digits of 8.
- Iranian regional music: The versatile Rastak Ensemble performs. [4-minute video]
(4) Virtual Summit of the Mellichamp Mind & Machine Initiative at UCSB: Held over Feb. 16-17, 2022, the Summit was sponsored by Center for Responsible Machine Learning, Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, all three at UCSB.
[Event page]
[Detailed agenda]
(5) Habib Ladjevardi [1938-2021]: Life story of the idealist member of a prominent family of commerce and industry leaders, who brought modern management science to Iran by establishing the Iran Center for Management Studies and, later, founded Harvard's Iranian Oral History project. [12-minute video, in Persian]
2022/02/17 (Thursday): Today's book reviews cover science, a math-inspired novel, and a math genius.
(1) Book review: Zimmerman, Robert, The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It, Princeton U. Press, revised edition, 336 pp., 2010.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Now that the James Webb Space Telescope is in place, I decided to go back and take a look at the history of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), deployed more than three decades ago. My research led me to The Universe in a Mirror as the definitive account of Hubble's history.
Zimmerman, a science writer and historian of space exploration, puts the spotlight on heroic scientists and engineers, who worked tirelessly for decades to bring the Hubble Space Telescope project to fruition. Zimmerman mixes clear and readable descriptions of the project's technical challenges with personal stories of the participants into an engaging narrative, which also covers the herculean efforts needed to secure funding, overcome bureaucratic hurdles, and come back from brushes with extinction.
As might be expected of a book that deals with an advanced imaging project, the book contains many eye-catching and fascinating photos, the ones that shaped our understanding of deep-space, thanks to HST. There are also technical diagrams that explain the workings of HST, including the initial problem of a misshapen mirror and the actions taken to correct its optics.
As a technical reader, I would have liked to see a bit more on the technology in terms hardware elements, image resolution, and on-board data processing capabilities, including any coding and redundancy used for fault tolerance. This is a minor gripe, though, as I fully understand the need to strike a balance between describing the technology and human-interest aspects.
The narrative contains a long string of successes, missed opportunities, and ugly compromises. The mirror could have been bigger, producing better images, as it collected more light, and it could have incorporated broader capabilities, but budget fights nixed many such aspirations and almost killed the project on multiple occasions. The end product was, nevertheless, highly popular with the public, who eagerly anticipated the next image from Hubble.
(2) Book review: Stine, James D., L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and Mathematics in the City of Angels, Princeton U. Press, 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, by an emeritus math professor at Cal State University, Long Beach, contains a collection of 14 short stories, happening in Southern California, in which mathematics plays an important role. Freddy Carmichael is a freelance private investigator who moves to the West Coast following the breakdown of his marriage. He teams up with sidekick Pete Lennox, a sports-betting enthusiast, to solve crimes using his math and deduction skills.
The stories unfold in glamorous locales such as Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Malibu, and Santa Barbara. Math concepts used to solve the crime stories include mathematical logic ("A Change of Scene"), conditional probability ("The Winning Streak"), and rules of compound interest ("Message from a Corpse"). An appendix provides detailed explanations of the math concepts at the heart of each story.
(3) Book review: Roberts, Siobhan, Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway, Bloomsbury, 2015. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Born and raised in Liverpool, John Horton Conway [1937-2020] was a mathematician and explainer extraordinaire, who became known as the barefoot professor in Cambridge. He moved to Princeton in 1987 and died in New Brunswick, NJ, of COVID-19. Among the general public, he is best known for his Game of Life, which models how life unfolds among microorganisms and how extremely simple local rules can lead to complex global phenomena. His claims to fame among mathematicians include the invention of Conway groups, knot theory, and surreal numbers (so named by Donald Knuth).
Thanks to extended access, generously granted by Conway, Roberts lays bare personal and professional idiosyncrasies of the genius who loved to use props (cards, dice, ropes, and anything else he could muster) to share his mathematical obsessions with everyone around him. He used the memorable and provocative wording, "If experimenters have free will, then so do elementary particles," to explain "the free will theorem" (proved jointly with Simon B. Kochen), a startling version of the no-hidden-variables principle of quantum mechanics.
Conway corresponded and developed a friendship with Martin Gardner, who wrote a regular column on recreational mathematics for Scientific American. Gardner featured Conway's Game of Life in a 1970 column that became his most popular one. Conway himself came to hate talking about Game of Life, because he deemed it his least-important invention that overshadowed his true contributions to mathematics, including surreal numbers, which he considered his most important discovery.
After reading Genius at Play, I was delighted to discover this 63-minute Google talk, during which John Conway and Siobhan Roberts spar about the book and take questions from the audience. This talk is just as fascinating as the book!
2022/02/16 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Dr. Bing Wen Brunton, University of Washington (see the next item below). [Top center & right, and bottom row] Tonight's IEEE CCS technical meeting (see the last item below).
(2) "Neural Decoding in the Wild": This was the title of Tuesday's UCSB tech talk by Dr. Bing W. Brunton (U. Washington). Scientists, engineers, and sci-fi writers have long imagined direct, thought-driven interaction between humans and machines. Such human-machine interactions can assist individuals with physical & neurological disabilities (e.g., brain-controlled robotic arm), augment engineered systems integrating humans in the loop, and enhance our daily lives in an increasingly information-rich world.
One key challenge is how neural decoding may be approached 'in the wild,' where behavioral and recording variability are significantly larger than what we find in the lab. After discussing how intracranial electrophysiological recordings from human participants, gathered during thousands of spontaneous, unstructured arm movements, observed over up to a week for each participant, have revealed considerable individual variability in both movement behaviors and their neural correlations.
Dr. Brunton's team has made use of this multi-modal, large-scale dataset (now published in NWB format) to develop novel approaches to robust neural decoding, including learning self-supervised decoders without labels.
In answer to my question about whether feedback (e.g., a robotic arm asking the user a question to confirm the correctness of its decoding) would be a viable option for dealing with decoding uncertainties, Dr. Brunton thought this to be a wonderful idea, although she isn't equipped to go in that direction.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Devastating: Dozens of people dead in severe flooding and mudflow in Petropolis, Brazil.
- Western US is having its worst megadrought in 1200 years, a sure sign of the impact of climate change.
- UCLA's Judea Pearl Receives a major international award for foundational contributions to AI.
- Math puzzle: If 2^x + 3^y = 5 and 2^(x + 2) + 3^(y + 1) = 18, what is xy?
- Iran: "From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage," featuring Dr. Janet Afary. [59-minute podcast]
- Persian music: An oldie song performed by a wonderful-sounding all-female band. [3-minute video]
(4) War crimes complaint against Iran: Lawyers for Iran Human Rights Documentation Center have brought a case to the International Criminal Court alleging war crimes by the Iranian state in Syria.
(5) Donald Trump is getting close to the edge: His long-time accounting firm cut ties with the former president and his businesses, and retracted a decade of financial statements, as fraud investigations move on.
(6) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical event: UCSB Physics Circus (an outreach program of UCSB's Department of Physics) joined us at the Goleta Rusty's Pizza on Calle Real for a number of fun physics demos for the ~40 attendees. This was our second in-person event since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (the previous one being our holiday banquet on December 15, 2021). We had asked members and guests to bring their children along, and they did!
For decades the Physics Circus has been a wonderful opportunity for UCSB students to creatively express anything that animates them about physics. Members of Physics Circus, mentored by Professor Jean Carlson, share their joy of physics with school children and others who are curious about underlying principles of physical phenomena.
Physics graduate student George Hulsey led student volunteers (David Grabovsky, Sabrina Brickner, Brian Ly, Fernanda Vasquez Sanchez, David Jiang, Raymond Hughes) who presented demos in the areas of angular momentum, sound propagation, air pressure, alternating current, static electricity, magnetism, and cooling with liquid nitrogen.
There were lots of questions, including from the little ones, during the demos and at the end of the presentations. A few future scientists may have been fashioned tonight, thanks to enthusiastic and knowledgeable physics students from UCSB. [IEEE CCS Technical Talks Page]
2022/02/14 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Valentine's Day, the day of love and friendship (see the next item below). [Bottom left] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Valentine's gifts for couples! [Bottom center] Airplane cemetery: Where planes go to rust in peace! [Bottom right] After 200 years, the "HELP" message in the bottle has turned into the message of sea creatures trapped in a graveyard of bottles!
(2) Happy Valentine's Day! May my beloveds, family members and friends, stay healthy and recognize the vast power of love, especially in these days of anguish and uncertainly. I love you all!
Today's special math puzzle is determining the area of the blue heart.
And for a musical gift, consider "Heart and Soul," performed by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble.
(3) "UCSB Reads" Faculty Panel: I will participate in a faculty panel next Wed., 2/16, 12:00-1:00 PM, sharing my experience on including UCSB Reads selected books in course curricula over the past two years.
(4) Fast charging of electric vehicles: I have often wondered about the large sizes of EV charging devices in malls and other public areas. It seems that the high current they have to deliver, and associated safety concerns, contribute to their bulk. EV battery capacities range from 20 to 100 kW-hr. Taking 60 kW-hr as an average and assuming that we want it half-charged during the 30-60 minutes it takes to do shopping or have a quick meal, the required current at 400 V is in the range of 75-150 A.
(5) Fashionable Nonsense: This is the title of a book by Alan Sokal (of the Sokal parody-paper fame) and Jean Bricmont, a 5-star review of which I posted on GoodReads a tad over a month ago. I discuss quite a few ideas in my lengthy review, but, here, I want to share with you my views of the dangers lurking in certain kinds of interdisciplinary research. The rest of this post constitutes direct quotes from my review.
In science and engineering fields, the current Holy Grail is "interdisciplinary research," which draws upon knowledge and methods from two or more disciplines to create useful new ideas, understandings, processes, or products. Examples of interdisciplinary fields that have led to exciting new results include biomedical engineering, computational linguistics, and human-machine interaction. There is, however, a serious danger in any interdisciplinary field: that of abuse and deceit. It is very rare nowadays for anyone to be highly skilled and knowledgeable in two or more different disciplines. So, interdisciplinary researchers typically are people from one discipline who have picked up some information from the other discipline(s) through informal studies. For example, an engineer might pore over the biomedical literature, or pick the brains of biomed specialists, in order to understand problems in the latter field and then work on engineering solutions to those problems. Here comes the rub: it is very easy to impress medical people with engineering concepts and jargon, and vice versa, so one sees many half-baked ideas presented in the scientific/technical forums of these fields in which shallow knowledge in one or another field is imminently visible. So-called hot or trendy fields are particularly prone to abuse and deceit, given financial and status motives.
Fortunately, within the fields of science and engineering, there is a built-in safeguard against impostors lurking in the shadows between disciplines, while trying to impress specialists from each area with concepts and jargon from the other areas, without contributing anything useful. Scientific ideas are subject to experimental verification by other scientist, and processes or products can be simulated, prototyped, and assessed via testing and performance evaluation. So, charlatans do not last long in these fields, although by the time they are exposed, they may have achieved their immediate goals, be they academic promotion, award of large research grants, or fame. The same cannot be said about disciplines in humanities and the social sciences, which are the focus of the book under review. The authors thus set out "to draw attention to a relatively little-known aspect [of postmodernism in such fields], namely the repeated abuse of concepts and terminology coming from mathematics and physics ... exploiting the prestige of the natural sciences in order to give their own discourse a veneer of rigor" [pp. 4-5].
2022/02/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Nana Mouskouri performs "Malaguena": Years ago, I bought a 17-CD box-set of the Greek superstar's songs, which brought back fond memories of my youth. [Top center] Math puzzle: What fraction of the large circle's area is shaded blue? [Top right] Sharif Office Building in Tehran: Built by Hooba Design Group, the building affiliated with Sharif U. Technology features a smart light-sensor-equipped brick facade that adapts to different times of day. [Bottom left] Iran's newspaper poetry (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Dr. Ali Banuazizi's lecture on Iran (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Dinner and desserts, at Saturday's family gathering at my sister's.
(2) "Newspaper Poetry and Representative Politics in the Revolutions of 1905-1911": Dr. Sam Hodgkin (Yale U.) spoke Saturday morning about how Constitutional Iranian newspaper verse developed new repertories of poetic voice. This kind of poetry, which marks ground zero for the modern transformation of Persian poetic production, was decidedly materialistic, rather than philosophical or spiritual. Though primarily focused on Iran, Dr. Hodgkin also included in his discussion the Ottomans and the Romanov Empire. [Recording of the talk]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Watched tons of ads, with some football and music: LA Rams beat Cincinnati Bengals 23-20.
- Burning of the Israeli flag backfires in Iran! [Video]
- More than 100 professors worldwide sign letter against the politicized firing of their colleagues in Iran.
- Engineering in action: How giant wind turbines are built and installed. [12-minute video]
- Miracles of coordination: Cats walk through dense assemblies of objects, without disturbing them.
- Persian music: Musical collaboration at Saturday night's family gathering. [2-minute video]
(4) "Iranian Cultural Identity and the Politics of Religious Nationalism": This was the title of today's Zoom lecture by Dr. Ali Banuazizi (Boston College & MIT). An English version of the lecture will be presented on Monday, February 14, 2022, at 3:00 PM PST.
After introductory remarks Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (CSUN) about the UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series and today's speaker, the lecture began with a discussion of the various bases for Iranian cultural identity (Iraniyat).
The bases include a long pre-Islamic legacy, the Persian language, Shi'ism, and the bonds and affinities among a people who have inhabited roughly the same territory for nearly three millennia. The Persian language is perhaps the most important component of the Iranian cultural identity. Today, we easily understand the poetry of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, written a bit more than 1000 years ago. It's hard to imagine that the same holds for any other world language.
Dr. Banuazizi made a distinction between Iranian cultural and national identities, neither one of which is automatically political. To turn them into political tools in order to create collective action and mass movements, one has to sensitize the identities and use them against real or perceived others. Dr. Banuazizi examined how the latter view of Iranian national identity was transformed into nationalist political ideologies from the last decades of the 19th century to the end of the Pahlavi era.
Dr. Banuazizi concluded his talk with an analysis of the Islamic Republic's sacralization of state authority and concerted efforts to promote religious nationalism as its official ideology. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, attempts were made to incorporate Islam as the most-important element of the Iranian cultural and national identities. The initial attempts included erasure or downplaying of other elements of the Iranian cultural identity, but the regime eventually came to the conclusion that it can benefit from merging the Islamic and other cultural elements of the Iranian identity.
Thus came a move, beginning with Ahmadinejad's government, toward an Islamic-Iranian identity. This shift of focus was caused by the Islamic component losing favor, particularly among the younger generation, in part because the regime's religious identity cast any policy failure as a negative blow against religion.
The latter kind of combined religious-national identities is becoming more common. We see it in Turkey, Myanmar, Israel, and even India (where the killer of Gandhi is now hailed as a hero). Non-extremist nationalism, when combined with democracy, inclusion, and secularism, is not necessarily a bad thing; it has led to salvation in the case of some countries. [Recording of the talk: 97-minute video]
2022/02/12 (Saturday): Today's three book reviews cover feminism and aspects of conservative politics.
(1) Book review: Pinkola Estes, Clarissa, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths & Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, abridged 2-hour audiobook, read by the author, Sounds True, 2009.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Jungian analyst and cantadora (keeper of old tales) storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes (PhD) contends that in today's societies, women tend to go from one prison to another as they journey through life. They are thus alienated from their wild and natural selves, that is, from their inner wolves. She further asserts that women can restore their vitality and reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, and visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and other stories.
Pinkola Estes tells a number of such stories in this book. The book garners 4.7 stars on Amazon.com, based on 11,000+ ratings, and this remarkable approval comes despite some 1- and 2-star ratings from people who got bored or thought that the author used extraordinarily-long sentences, with too many unnecessary words. Besides the fact that spiritual writings work their magic precisely because of the lyrical words that may seem unnecessary to some, literate writing also demands sentences that provide nuances through twists and turns, or upshifts and downshifts (see my 5-star review of the course "Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft" on GoodReads).
I highly recommend this book because of its contents, but also for its magical prose and narration, which draw even a male reader/listener in, despite being clearly targeted at women.
(2) Book review: Murray, Douglas, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by Robert Davies, Audible Studios for Bloomsbury, 2017.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is one of those books with bimodal reviews, receiving 5 stars from readers who deem it insightful, honest, and historically accurate and 1-2 stars from those who characterize it as one-sided, xenophobic, and run-of-the-mill scaremongering. The bulk of the reviews, however, are positive, earning the book 4.7 stars on Amazon (based on 3000+ ratings) and 4.1 stars on GoodReads (based on ~10,000 ratings). Newspaper reviews of the book are likewise divided.
Murray contends that Europe is on a suicide path, fueled by an atmosphere of mass terrorism and a global refugee crisis. The laudable goal of promoting multiculturalism has backfired, producing instead uni-cultural ghettos of unassimilated migrants and a resentful majority of established Europeans, whose declining birth rates, combined with the increasing population of newly-arriving migrants (with their much higher birth rates), is sure to make the situation worse in the coming years.
In doing his research for this book, Murray traveled throughout Europe, to see the problems up close and to hear the stories of those arriving in Europe from the world's conflict zones. He hasn't lost all hope for returning from the suicidal path, that is, he does see light at the end of the tunnel. However, he does not spend much ink on formulating solutions.
I think people on both sides of the immigration issue in general, and the challenges of accommodating Muslim migrants in particular, would benefit from reading this book.
(3) Book review: Will, George F., The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering Thoughts, unabridged 2-hour audiobook, read by the author, Recorded Books, 1983.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I came to know George F. Will through his columns in Newsweek magazine. He was, and still is, a conservative commentator, so, as a progressive liberal, I disagreed with his views, but not as often as one might think. I viewed him as a literate conservative, with a mighty pen and a wonderful sense of humor. He fell out of favor with me for his insensitive comments on rape, lamenting that the sexual-assault culture has made "victimhood a coveted status that confer privileges."
This short book contains a collection of Will's columns from the 1970s. He introduces the collection by reflecting on what a column is and what a columnist does, that is, what he might tell his children about the nature of his job. The selected columns deal with a number of heads of state, politicians, and other outsize personalities, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Hubert Humphrey, and Elvis Presley. The US Supreme Court and the agony of being a Chicago Cubs fan are also among the topics discussed.
2022/02/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Farhang Foundation announces the winner of the 2022 Nowruz Banner Design Competition and return to UCLA's Dickson Court for its annual Nowruz celebration on March 20, 2022 (12:00-5:00 PM). [Top center] Sadegh Zibakalam (see the next item below). [Top right] Color e-paper: After two decades of research, Kindle and similar devices are becoming more colorful (source: IEEE Spectrum). [Bottom left] Cartoon: Mitch McConnell (see item 3 below). [Bottom center] History in pictures: Kudos to designers and engineers, who cared about facilitating the job of the mechanic! [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: The Gazpacho police pulls over Marjorie Taylor Greene!
(2) The mystery of Sadegh Zibakalam solved: I had often wondered how despite harsh criticisms of the regime, Dr. Zibakalam was walking free, instead of being in prison, along with those who have spoken much milder critical words. These pictures of him, with conspiracy theorist Hassan Abbasi (gray hair) and former IRGC Commander & perennial presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaee (dyed beard & hair), both die-hard regime supporters, explains why. He is likely a regime operative, acting as a safety valve.
(3) How absent-minded we have become: Moscow Mitch (McConnell), by his own admission, worked tirelessly for 8 years to make Barack Obama a failed president. Then, he was in bed with Donald Trump for 4 full years, following his boss's every whim. Now, suddenly, he makes one statement against RNC's idiotic action, and we praise him for his courage and candor! Give me a break!
(4) Plumbers take center stage again: They played a big role during the Watergate scandal. Now, White House plumbers, who tell us that toilets were clogged by flushed papers, become key witnesses against 45. Do you remember Trump once said that the new low-flow toilets must be flushed 10-15 times? Now we know why!
(5) Iranian woman of note: Fakhr-ol-dowleh (aka Princess Ashraf al-Muluk, the 9th offspring of Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar), was a capable, brave, and norms-shattering woman, who made numerous contributions to the Iranian economy and society. [4-minute video]
(6) It is difficult to find a system more corrupt than Iran's Islamic regime: The great petrochemical corruption scandals, involving regime insiders and fat-cats as perpetrators and facilitators, a tragedy in 9 acts.
[Act I] [Act II] [Act III] [Act IV] [Act V] [Act VI] [Act VII] [Act VIII] [Act IX]
(7) US hacker takes matters into his own hands: As a security researcher, he was hacked by North Korea. When the US government did nothing about it, he brought NK's Internet down single-handedly.
(8) More on "honor" killings in Iran: Shaken by the gruesome beheading in Ahwaz, a man apologizes to his sister for once roughing her up to gain access to her diary, because he suspected her of carrying on an affair.
(9) A film about "honor" killings: The 97-minute film "The Paternal House" is one of the few addressing the oppressive and violent behavior toward women under the guise of "honor." Like most Iranian films, the director stretches what could have been a 10-minute short into a feature-length film (the idea of cutting, jumping forward, and moving the story along seems to be foreign to Iranian filmmakers), but the story is compelling.
2022/02/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] On a summer-like Wed., at UCSB: Given the beautiful weather on 2022/02/09, I took a longer path in walking to/from the campus. I snapped these photos at the campus lagoon. [Top center] What's the world coming to? The health nuts won't even let us have our natural potatoes. They have to be plant-based! [Bottom left & center] Instead of spending money on schools, Iran builds golden mosques (see the next item below). [Bottom right] College degrees are for sale in Iran (see item 3 below).
(2) A rural school in Iran: This abomination (school children sitting on rocks and dirt) is happening in a country with vast oil and gas reserves, which it cannot extract or sell due to mismanagement and wrong-headed economic & foreign policies, yet it does manage to send billions of dollars in cash and arms to Iraq (shown are a golden dome and golden minarets in Iraq, financed by Iran), Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.
(3) Degree tourism: You have no doubt heard about health tourism. If you need to buy a college degree, then you should travel to Iran. This ad says that the degree is official and verifiable, meaning that it will show up in the issuing college's official databases. Of course, you should also include in the cost of the degree the ransom your family may have to pay if you are taken hostage while in Iran!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- U. Calif. pays $244M to settle a sexual-abuse lawsuit against UCLA gynecologist & oncologist James Heaps.
- Persecution of Christians in Iran: An IranWire forum, held on Tue., Feb. 8, 2022. [101-minute video]
- Bird attack this morning: Is Hitchcock filming in my neighborhood? [1-minute video]
- People on the street get a chance to conduct a symphony orchestra in Tehran. [6-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 10, 2017: Warnings we received about the dangers of a female president!
- Facebook memory from Feb. 10, 2015: A lovely Persian poem by Forough Farrokhzad.
(5) "Slavery, Healing Ritual, and the Indian Ocean Archive in Iranian Cinema": This was the title of a talk by Professor Parisa Vaziri (Cornell U.), who considered representations of the spirit healing ritual zar in Iranian ethnographic filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s. Zar, a constellation of belief and therapeutic response to spirit winds, has long been considered a ritual trace attesting to the movement of African slavery in the Indian Ocean world. Professor Vaziri's book, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery: Iran's Media Archive, is forthcoming from U. Minnesota Press. [Stanford page] [Nasser Taghvai's "Wind of Jinn": 34-minute film]
(6) "Computer Vision for Global-Scale Biodiversity Monitoring": This was the title of a talk by Sara Beary (Caltech), faculty candidate for our Computer Engineering Program. She discussed her lab's quest for a real-time, modular earth observation system that unites efforts across research groups in order to provide the vital information necessary for global-scale impact in sustainability and conservation in the face of climate change. Current ecological monitoring systems generate data far faster than researchers can analyze, making scaling up impossible without automation. Her future research agenda includes making effective use of all available modalities of data, incorporating expert knowledge systematically, and ensuring these systems are equitable and ethical; all fundamental and unresolved challenges for CV & ML.
[Images]
2022/02/09 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This portrait of Lincoln consists of one continuously-drawn snake-like line. [Top center] Math oddity: See if you can explain these equalities and why the pattern continues indefinitely. [Top right] An exotic magic square (see the next item below). [Bottom left & center] Today's EV charging stations (see item 3 below). [Bottom right] Mourning the beheading of Mona Heidari, the 17-year-old victim of the latest "honor" killing in Iran (see the last two items below).
(2) Magic squares of squares: A magic square is an array of distinct numbers whose rows, columns, and diagonals add to the same total. Magic squares have a long history, going back to 650 BCE. Medieval mathematicians in the Middle East and India studied magic squares of varying sizes.
Mathematician Leonhard Euler puzzled over a type of exotic magic square, one made entirely of squared numbers. In 1770 he introduced the first 4-by-4 example of a magic square of squares, along with a formula for producing others. Magic squares of squares of sizes 5-by-5, 6-by-6, and 7-by-7 have also been found, but the problem is still open for a 3-by-3 magic square of squares.
(3) These are today's electric-vehicle charging stations: Bulky devices, with even bigger infrastructure, shown in the background. Tesla's devices are a tad smaller, but the infrastructure (the brown enclosure behind them) seems to be bigger. Both photos were shot on Monday, February 7, 2022, at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace. In ten years, when these photos are brought to my attention on Facebook memories, we will see how much smaller they have become!
(4) Academy Awards nominations announced on Tuesday, February 8, 2022: The 94th annual Oscars ceremony will be on Sunday, March 27, 2022 (TV: ABC, 5:00 PM PDT). [Nominees on the official Oscars site]
(5) Patriarchy sucks: Iranian woman recounts physical abuse by her father, including an incident of being stabbed multiple times for speaking against his will. #LetUsTalk about patriarchy and backward Islamic laws that encourage and protect abusers.
(6) Why we don't want absolute morality: Richard Dawkins responds, as only he can, to a question about how atheists can decide between right and wrong, in the absence of absolute morality. [3-minute video]
(7) Dreamers' Circus: The young Danish trio, a new driving force in Nordic music and winner of five prestigious Danish Music Awards, performed at UCSB's Campbell Hall last night as part of their US tour. I had tickets for the performance, but was given the option to watch live on-line, which I did. Here is a brief video captured from the screen. And here is their 2020 album-release concert (109-minute video).
(8) Putting a face to an "honor" killing victim: Mona Heidari's megawatt smile was captured by her father, who ended up assisting Mona's husband in beheading her. [3-minute video]
(9) In the wake of the latest "honor" killing in Iran: Every chance I get, I point out that the Iranian culture must abandon the patriarchal notions of "namoos" and "gheirat," which have roots in the idea of men owning women. There are multiple campaigns on the Internet in which men proclaim that they are "namoos-less" or "gheirat-less," meaning that they don't believe in these outdated notions. One man who tweeted about these campaigns received dozens of hostile and expletive-ridden comments, mostly from anonymous commenters, questioning his "manhood" (another misguided term). We have found the enemy and it is us!
2022/02/08 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: Consider a triangle of side lengths a, b, c, with side a partitioned into segments of lengths m and n, as shown. Prove Stewart's Theorem: (b^2)m + (c^2)m = a(d^2 + mn). [Top center] Math puzzle: Find the height AL of the triangle ABC, if the angle A is 45 degrees. [Top right] Math puzzle: Consider a square of side length s and a quarter-circle within it. Write s^2 – x^2 as a function of a & b. [Bottom left] Computers were shrinking long before Moore's Law: In this 1962 photo, four computing staff at the Ballistics Research Lab posed with one digit of storage from each of the four computers installed there, beginning with ENIAC in 1947 (CACM, Feb. 2022). [Bottom center] Book talk: Of Sound Mind (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Former journalist Robert M. Smith's Suppressed (see the last item below).
(2) "Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World": This was the title of Monday afternoon's book talk by Dr. Nina Kraus (Professor, Northwestern University, neuroscientist, Director of the renowned Brainvolts Lab, and amateur musician), which was followed by a conversation with Mark J. Tramo (MD/PhD; UCLA Professor of Neurology and Adjunct Professor at Herb Alpert School of Music).
Dr. Kraus began her talk with an interesting audience experiment. She played a noisy sound clip and asked us if we could pick up the sentence buried in the noise. I couldn't. Then she told us what the sentence was and played the sound clip again. This time, the sentence stood out clearly!
In her groundbreaking new book, Dr. Kraus uses her experience of 30 years studying the interplay of the brain and sound to show that the processing of sound drives many of the brain's core functions. She leads us through a fascinating exploration of sound's surprisingly unrecognized role in both the healthy and hurting brain. She makes the case that the sounds of the world around us, and what sounds we're exposed to throughout our lives, impact the development of our brains, the abilities and weaknesses we develop, and who we are as human beings.
Sound affects much of what our brain does. Reading and written-language understanding, though seemingly unrelated to sound, actually go through the brain's sound-processing system. Those who sing or play music regularly develop an edge in all other aspects of brain activity as well. For example, trained musicians are able to pick up nuances (related to harmonics) in the sound of a baby crying. Because of the outsize influence of sound on the development of the brain, it is important to interact vocally with our children, instead of each of us burying ourselves in our devices.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A short introduction to the seven Iranian musical systems/styles. [9-minute video]
- A 10-minute introduction to Mithraism, the ancient Iranian religion that influenced Christianity.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 7, 2016: Kayaking with my daughter, before a Ziba Shirazi concert.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 7, 2011: My 4-star review of Ron Suskind's The Way of the World.
(4) Book review: Smith, Robert M., Suppressed: Confessions of a Former New York Times Washington Correspondent, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Rick Adamson, Tantor Audio, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Most of us haven't heard of Bob Smith, first because he ended his career in investigative journalism more than four decades ago and second because he was pretty much absent from the Internet before the publication of this book. A Google search for journalist Bob Smith or Robert M. Smith returns very few hits before 2021.
Smith's memoir offers an insightful look behind the curtain of journalism: The intense competition for getting scoops; Working for peanuts, under impossible deadlines; The role of editors in promoting or demoting stories; Powerful behind-the-scenes figures who kill stories or make them appear on Page 1.
The book's title alludes to the fact that news suppression is alive and well in US media. Suppression occurs by authoritarian editors and by powerful individuals, who maintain cozy relationships with the press. Smith also discusses how bias in reporting and "advocacy journalism," unfortunately quite common nowadays, inflict pain on an already-divided country. Also harmful is "celebrity journalism," which has made journalists subjects of the news, rather than its conveyers.
Smith became disillusioned with journalism, leaving The Times for Yale Law School. The day before he left the paper, he told his editor about the Watergate cover-up, based on info he had received from FBI's Acting Director. Inexplicably, the editor did not use the leaked info and did not pass it on to his reporters, before he left on a long vacation a week later. What turned out to be the story of the century was thus inadvertently left to young, relentless Washington Post reporters to pursue.
After law school, Smith returned to journalism for a while, commanding a much higher salary and getting better assignments. Eventually, though, he decided to leave journalism to practice law in Europe and teach at Oxford. Smith mixes with his journalistic and legal stories anecdotes about his personal life, including his boyhood as the son of Eastern-European immigrants in a tough Boston neighborhood and education at elite institutions.
Virtually all important social and political events of the 1960s and 1970s are covered in the book. Besides Watergate, the stories discussed include the Bay of Pigs incident, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and various leaks of government documents. For many decades, ordinary people, politicians, business leaders, and other influential people have wanted to know what The Times thinks. Even though the paper benefited financially from stepping into the ring with Donald Trump, it lost its reverence by reacting to Trump's every tantrum and illogical statement.
This book may change your mind about the trustworthiness of The New York Times and its status as a beacon of truth. Descriptions of behind-the-scenes power plays and cozy relationships with certain politicians cast some doubt on the slogan "All the news that's fit to print." Do read The Times, if you want, but keep your eyes open for signs of manipulation and distortion.
This interview of the author with the US National Archives is interesting.
2022/02/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] CACM cover (see the next item below). [Top center & right] Honoring the life of Dr. Fredun Hojabri (see the next to the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Documentary film screening and related discussion (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Honoring Prof. B. Mehri (see item 3 below).
(2) Cover feature of Communications of the ACM (Feb. 2022): After defeating the top GO player, Google's AlphaZero tackles chess. The "Zero" in the name "AlphaZero" signifies that the program starts with no knowledge, other than the rules of the game and its objective, learning and improving through many rounds of self-play. In particular, there is no database of expert matches, openings, or endgames.
(3) Honoring a pioneering math professor in Iran: In a Zoom ceremony on Sunday, February 20, 2022, 10:00 AM PST, family members, colleagues, and students of Professor Bahman Mehri will gather to honor his productive life and contributions to mathematics education in Iran. This initiative to honor notable individuals while they are still alive, rather than in memoriam, is a welcome trend. [Event page on Twitter]
(4) Dr. Fredun Hojabri [1936-2021]: The life of former Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology chemistry professor, Department Chair, Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Affairs, and Founder of SUTA was celebrated yesterday, in a Zoom session attended by 152 people spread across the globe. Those speaking during the 2.5-hour session included former/current university administrators, faculty members, staff, and students, as well as individuals who knew him in various capacities, including as SUTA volunteers.
I interacted with Fredun when he was Vice-Chancellor for Education & Student Affairs and asked me to head the student data-processing division, based at AMUT's Computer Center, which handled student databases (recording of grades and printing of transcripts). My tenure in that position was fairly short due to a number of disagreements, but I observed up-close his dedication to the university and its students.
Several video clips, slide shows, and musical performances by AMUT/SUT graduates appeared between biographical presentations and remembrance speeches. My condolences to Fredun's family and his many friends. May his soul Rest in Peace!
(5) "Who Is Woman" (2013 or 2015?): This afternoon, I attended a Zoom session devoted to the screening of a 50-minute documentary film about job-creation for women and discussion about it with Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge) and Mona Mohammadzadeh (the film's director, joining from Iran). This Persian-language program, presented by Cultural Society of Iranian-Americans of Sacramento, had ~30 participants.
The documentary consists mainly of interviews with working women in a garment-industry workshop. The stories are compelling, but the narrative is at times long-winded and simplistic. We hear how women are held back by patriarchal views and how they are abused and berated, even when they make it on their own, with no support from the men in their lives.
Dr. Tohidi pointed out that in the Iranian culture, women who live alone and support themselves are called "unsupervised women" as opposed to "independent women" or "heads of household." The question "what is woman?" has been asked by many, including philosophers, which is quite telling. No one has asked "what is man?" (except where "man" stands for "human"). So, attempts to understand women stems from the view that women are not quite human. The old-fashioned notion of gender as a binary attribute, and viewing women as child-bearers and nurturers, rather than as full-blown participants in societal affairs, is to blame. Women constitute 60% of university students in Iran, making headway even in scientific and technical fields, but some 2/3 of them fail to find meaningful employment after graduation.
Ms. Mohammadzadeh indicated that her aim wasn't to produce a film for screening in theaters or festivals. Rather, in her first film project, she was motivated to depict the lives of women (three generations in the same family) who have been forgotten or fallen through the cracks, so to speak. A result of this depiction was that in all three cases, men (father, husband, brother) were obstacles that the women had to overcome in order to achieve independence.
Unfortunately, I could not find any information on the film or its director on the Internet.
2022/02/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Vault corridors of the Blue Mosque Tabriz, Iran. [Top center] San Francisco's steep streets and the resulting illusions. [Top right] In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: For a quadrangle whose vertices are on a circle as shown, prove that ac + bd = ef. [Bottom center] Birthplace of Americans, by state (1850-2020): Dark blue, in state; Light blue, outside state; Orange, outside US. [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "I am getting tired of this helmet mandate."
(2) Patriarchy is oppressive, but its Iranian version is sickening: A husband beheads his wife and is shown triumphantly holding her head in one hand and a knife in the other. The wife had fled to Turkey, but was sent back to Iran. In a similar recent incident, a father who beheaded his daughter was sentenced to only 8 years in prison, and he will likely get out sooner. Meanwhile, women who remove their headscarves in protest get prison sentences of 20+ years.
(3) "Honor" killings continue in Iran: The latest one is most-gruesome, with the husband, who beheaded his 17-year-old wife (she was married at 12), holding her severed head and triumphantly exhibiting it in town. This interesting panel discussion considers the root causes of such abominations.
(4) These five Iranian women have been sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison for removing their headscarves to protest compulsory hijab laws. Meanwhile, male perpetrators of barbaric "honor" killings get much lighter prison terms!
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A major world problem resolved! Camilla to be known as Queen Camilla when Charles becomes King!
- RNC has characterized the events of January 6, 2021, as "legitimate political discourse."
- Quote: "Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance." ~ George Bernard Shaw
- Facebook memory from Feb. 6, 2016: The fate of our digital assets when we die.
(6) Book review: Baldwin, Davarian L., In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Wayne Carr, Bold Type Books, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Modern universities in America are big businesses and exert an outsize influence on the surrounding communities, which, in a way have become company towns. This is particularly true in urban areas, where the control exerted by major universities has turned them into de-facto city managers. Such universities tend to view areas beyond the campus boundaries as either prime real estate for expansion projects or as trouble spots to be curbed and cut off from the campus. The author uses the term "univer-cities" for cities thus affected.
In some cases, universities are viewed as saviors of cities where they are located (such as Yale saving New Haven, formerly a factory town). But, it's also possible to view the relationship as exploitative. Universities tend to gobble up properties surrounding them and turning the areas into upscale housing and businesses that are beyond the reach of original tenants. Smaller cities, as well as larger ones (Phoenix, Chicago, NYC's Harlem & South Side neighborhoods) have been negatively-impacted.
Most people view universities as employers of faculty and other instructional staff. In reality, the bulk of workers at a university are custodial and other low-wage service providers. Universities often grow to become the area's primary employer, changing the labor market and dictating wages.
Additionally, major universities maintain their own police forces, which influence, and on occasion directly intervene in, policing of the surrounding areas. Often, under the guise of traffic flow-control and safety, universities isolate themselves from the surrounding communities, which helps to create an adversarial relationship. Physical fences/walls and gates are less common at American universities than in other countries, but invisible walls, brought about by unfriendly architecture, perform the same functions as moats and drawbridges.
In short, the author believes that modern universities, with their swollen management ranks, external tech & business relationships, and sizable endowments, are no longer ubiquitous forces for good they once were. Their tax-exempt status can create unfair competition for other businesses. These factors necessitate a re-examination of tax policies and other federal and municipal regulations to turn university-community relationships more equitable.
2022/02/05 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Tehran's Azadi Tower, with projected Chinese flag (see the next item below). [Top center] History in pictures: Laying the foundations of the Eiffel Tower in 1887. [Top right] Tehran's Azadi Tower, shown with more than just lip service to freedom. [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: Those speaking up against oppressive compulsory hijab laws are fighting two battles. [Bottom center] These tiny openings show the extent of women's rights recognized by the patriarchal culture of Islamic extremists: And don't tell me that these women have chosen their clothing happily and freely! (#LetUsTalk) [Bottom right] Bonus cartoon of the day: Those who arrest and flog women for showing some hair from under their headscarves complain that Westerners don't respect women's freedom to choose their clothing!
(2) Tehran's Azadi (Freedom)Tower displays the Chinese flag to mark the lunar new year: Or is this done to celebrate the economic/military deal between the two countries? And why does the Iranian flag occupy such as small portion of the display? Is this an omen for China reaping the lion's share of the benefits from the deal, much like Russia gobbled up a good chunk of the Caspian Sea in a previous bilateral deal?
(3) "Abstractions, Their Algorithms, and Their Compilers": This is the title of Alfred Aho's and Jeffery Ulman's Turing Lecture, published in the February 2022 issue of Communications of the ACM. [Link] [Video lecture]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Right-wingers sought power to overturn votes: Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of Arizona's House, said no!
- Spring equinox (start of the Persian New Year 1401): Sun., Mar. 20, 2022, 8:33:26 AM PDT [7seen.com]
- The great cream-cheese shortage: Santa Barbara's supermarket shelves are bare in the cream cheese area!
- A funny story based on Mowlavi's (Rumi's) satire, as told by the late Iraj Pezeshkzad. [Poem] [Video]
(5) Historical reflections: "Looking at users has helped historians broaden the history of computing beyond the traditional focus on inventors." ~ Thomas Haig, writing in the February 2022 issue of CACM
(6) What is left of the Islamic and republican aspirations of Iran's Islamic Republic: Iranian revolutionaries have failed in both of the keywords, "Islamic" and "Republic," in the country's name. The current government is a far cry from the lip service they paid to the just rule of Islam and the empowerment of the meek. It definitely has nothing left of the claim of republicanism, some saying that democracy was never part of Khomeini's plans to begin with. In this lively round-table discussion, four panelists express diverse views on why Iran's Islamic Republic has failed so miserably. [54-minute BBC Persian video]
(7) The James Webb Space Telescope: Dr. Jamshid Farivar talked this morning as part of the Fanni'68 group of graduates of Tehran University's College of Engineering. This was a timely discussion, as the telescope, launched on December 25, 2021, has just detected its first photon.
Dr. Farivar discussed the design of the telescope and the ingenious schemes used to fold its components to fit inside the Ariene rocket compartment, while allowing it to unfold after deployment to its 6.5-meter size, roughly 3 times the diameter of Hubble Telescope's primary mirror. If the mirror were built of the same material as Hubble's mirror, it would be too heavy to launch. Therefore, it was decided to make the mirror panels from beryllium, which is both strong and light (each of the 18 hexagonal-shaped segments weighs ~20 kg). The telescope is protected from the Sun's heat by always being behind the Earth relative to the Sun and, besides, is protected by a multilayer heat-shield. [Screenshots: The speaker and one of his slides]
2022/02/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] I am in good company: IEEE Computer Society is marking its 75th anniversary this year and ACM celebrates the 75th birthday of ENIAC, the first digital computer, whose photo shows two of its six primary programmers: Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. [Top right] Afghanistan sinking further into despair: A mother holds up a sign indicating that her daughter is for sale. [Bottom left] Let's be the voice of Narges Mohammadi: She is serving an 8-year prison sentence in Iran (not her first imprisonment) for the "crimes" of defending human rights and opposing the death penalty (#FreeNarges). [Bottom center] A gorgeous Wednesday with deep blue skies on the UCSB campus, photographing the iconic Storke Tower. [Bottom right] This brave Iranian woman flaunts her beautiful, super-long hair on a street in Tehran, in defiance of the government's compulsory hijab law.
(2) Many Iranians fleeing the brutal Islamic regime are denied Canadian visas: Yet, Tehran's former police chief and Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Morteza Talaei seems to be enjoying his vacation in Canada.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Seventeen Historically-Black Colleges & Universities have received bomb threats, leading to class closures.
- US Special-Forces raid in northwestern Syria kills the Islamic State's leader.
- Dr. Abbas Milani's 14-minute summary of the popular 1979 revolution in Iran and its outsize consequences.
- Bringing ancient Egyptian statues to life with the magic of artificial intelligence. [4-minute video]
- Azeri dance: Little dancer puts on quite a show alongside her dance instructor! [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 3, 2016: On the need for precision in writing and other communications.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 3, 2015: Violence against women must be condemned unconditionally.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 4, 2012: Why conservatives also worry about the US income gap.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 4, 2011: The Fermi Paradox, and why it isn't really a paradox.
(4) The Iranian regime fears social uprisings, as prices soar and public services are cut: IRGC budget has been increased by 142% to bolster "internal security," a euphemism for reinforced police state.
(5) Math puzzle: For which values of the natural number n does the following expression yield an integer value? (1 + 1/2)(1 + 1/3)(1 + 1/4) ... (1 + 1/n)
(6) Finger-pointing in Iran: All-powerful Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has his hand in his country's every major economic and political decision and whose underlings don't even dare to drink water without his permission, blames previous cabinets for making "wrong decisions" that hurt the country's economy.
(7) Advice from the great Persian poet Ferdowsi: There are ten vices/devils that can bring the mightiest kings down. They are greed (aaz), neediness (niaz), wrath (khashm), envy (rashk), disgrace (nang), spite (kyn), gossip (bad-gooeiy), hypocrisy (do-rooeiy), impurity (naa-paaki), ingratitude (na-sepassi). There is much overlap between the above and "seven deadly sins" in Roman-Catholic theology. [Verses from Shahnameh]
(8) Final thought for the day: Instead of wasting your time and energy fighting Satan, spend them on loving fellow human-beings, as Satan would then die of ennui. [Based on a statement attributed to Hellen Keller]
2022/02/03 (Thursday): Today's three book reviews cover economic decay, activism, and environmentalism.
(1) Book review: Meyer, Philipp, American Rust: A Novel, unabridged 13-hour audiobook, read by Tom Stechschulte, Recorded Books, 2009. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a combined road/crime novel, whose story revolves around the decline of the American middle class, disappearance of well-paying manufacturing jobs, and a prevailing sense of economic and social malaise. The setting is a Pennsylvania steel town, with beautiful vistas that enchant visitors but offer little comfort to its residents. The protagonist, Isaac English, dreaming of an academic career in Berkeley, is the son of a widowed, handicapped man. Isaac's friend Billy Poe is a second main character.
Isaac steals money from his dad and sets out to pursue his dreams, moving westward by using freight trains and other means. From this point on, mistakes by the protagonist and other main characters (including Isaac's Yale-educated, Harvard-bound sister Lee, Billy's mom, and the town's police chief) pile up, as do the potential consequences. After much misadventure, Isaac turns around and heads home, where he might face punishment for his actions.
Meyer paints a dark but lucid picture of realities of life in economically-devastated small towns, where friendships and family loyalties are the only tools left for dealing with the present discontent and future uncertainties. American Rust gives us a front-row seat to observe how small towns falter from inattention by political leaders and how the result can be moral decline and blunders stemming from not having any good choices.
American Rust has been turned into a 2021 TV series, with David Alvarez and Alex Neustaedter cast as Isaac and Billy. Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, Bill Camp, and Julia Mayorga play the other main roles.
(2) Book review: Noxon, Christopher, Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook, unabridged 2-hour audiobook, read by the author, Abrams, 2019. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
When we think of the US Civil Rights Movement, we picture some beginning (Rosa Parks not giving up her bus seat), a few marches and sit-ins, a handful of names, and an end (the Civil Rights Act of 1964). In reality, the Movement has gone on much longer and is still continuing. Many more people have been involved in it than those named in history books. For example, on the same day that Rosa Parks performed her act of civil disobedience, two other women also refused to give up their bus seats.
The book's title is a tribute to Representative John Lewis, who famously said: "Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble." The author confides that as a White man, he was apprehensive about writing a book on Civil Rights. But then, civil rights, far from being of interest to Black & Brown people only, are relevant to the entire society and its progress. White people's activism should not be deemed condescending toward Blacks. It's not only what I, as a White person, can do for my Black & Brown fellow-citizens, but what I can do to enlighten other White folks, including White Supremacists.
Noxon also reminds us of the central role played by women and the church in the success of the Civil Rights Movement. We have come to associate religiosity with conservatives, but there is a fairly large population of religious liberals in America. Conservatives have latched on to a few divisive issues, such as abortion and gay rights, but devout liberals practice their religious beliefs according to the Christ's teachings on kindness, generosity, and tolerance. And we should not forget the outsize role of music as a solidarity-building tool and a coping mechanism in Black churches.
The entire proceeds from this wonderfully-written book is donated to a non-profit devoted to work on racial justice, healthcare, and poverty. The hard-copy book is beautifully illustrated by the author. At the end of the audiobook, there is an interview with the author, who describes his thought process in writing and illustrating the book.
(3) Book review: Szaky, Tom (with 15 industry experts, contributing chapters), The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Jeff Hoyt and Natalie Hoyt, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, only about 1/3 of the 240M metric tons of waste generated annually in the US gets recycled. We have gone from a natural, voluntary recycling economy (buying milk and juice in bottles, some 95% of which got reused) to the convenience and low cost of plastic containers and packaging (very little of which is recycled). And the waste problem does not arise from packaging only. Some 99% of everything produced becomes trash within a year of production.
Saying that something is "recyclable" is quite different from saying that it is "recycled." Nearly everything is technically recyclable, but items that are actually recycled are those that produce profits for material recycling facilities (MRF's). Additionally, some readily-recyclable materials are not recycled due to contamination and the impossibility of economically separating them from undesirable material. Thus, much of what we put in our recycling bins actually ends up in trash dumps. Producers would do well to ensure that their packaging materials are actually desired, rather than reluctantly accepted, by recycling companies.
Plastics have led to conveniences and cost-savings in our lives. Not all plastics are recycled, even though they are recyclable. It is estimated that, by weight, our oceans will soon contain more plastics than fish! A typical new car is 15% plastics by weight; a Boeing passenger jet is 50% plastics. The latter use of plastics is less problematic due to its long life-expectancy. A significant portion of plastics, ~1/4, is used for packaging, where the recycling percentage is quite low. Mixing different material in packaging for the sake of aesthetics or strength makes recycling more difficult.
An eye-opening revelation for me was the fact that we, as consumers, are aware only of post-consumer waste in packaging and other material. Over-packaging is common in e-commerce. We have all received a small item, such as a pen or watch, that arrived in a huge box, with a tiny box and much filler material inside. Over-packaging is also a method used by manufacturers of top-of-the-line consumer products to set their products apart or to prevent theft. Hidden from our view as consumers is the pre-consumer waste, which includes packaging for raw material sent to factories, discarding of defective products, and scraps of material such as cloth and metal, and extra layers of packaging to facilitate and prevent damage during shipping.
Much planning and effort will be needed to return to a circular economy, from the current predominantly-linear economy, where materials take a one-way trip from production to garbage dumps.
2022/02/02 (Wednesday): Today's three book reviews cover US politics and sociopolitical awareness.
(1) Book review: Woodward, Bob and Robert Costa, Peril, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by Robert Petkoff, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In many ways, this is a typical Bob Woodward book. It reads very much like Woodward's first two books in his trilogy on Trump, namely, Fear (2018) and Rage (2020), so the contribution or influence of Robert Costa is unclear.
Woodward tends to get much information out of the people in the know, but then bores you with minutia about who said what to whom. If Joe Manchin said the same thing about the American Rescue Act or voting rights legislation to different people during various encounters or meetings, then you would read the same wording multiple times in Woodward's retelling. He tends to build a log of events, rather than a big picture that connects and informs. To use a science analogy, he presents you with the raw data, rather than build and argue for a hypothesis based on the data.
Despite the just-cited weakness, I found the book enlightening and full of new information about the dysfunction in the White House, shortly before and immediately after the November 2020 US election. We learn about how people berated and discarded by Trump gravitate back toward him, because they see no future for themselves without the new Republican kingmaker. Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, is a case in point, as is one-time adviser Steve Bannon.
Besides Trump lapdogs and those who kiss his ring to find a place within his circle, we also learn about those who stood firm against him, notably General Mark Milley, who held his tongue in public but worked behind the scenes to de-escalate the rising tension with China and to ensure that transition and succession would work according to Constitutional provisions.
Woodward and Costa also dish much dirt on two-faced Republicans, such as Mitch McConnell appearing supportive in public and making a joke at Trump's expense in private. Another example is Kellyanne Conway, Trump adviser and 2016 campaign manager, whose public statements portrayed Trump as a God who makes no mistakes but in private gave her boss the unwelcome advice to ditch the grievances and "get back to basics," so as not to turn off part of his base.
I know that many of us have grown tired of the monthly publication of exposes and tell-all books on Trump, but I advise against skipping this one.
(2) Book review: Wehner, Peter, The Death of Politics: How to Heal or Frayed Republic after Trump, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Charles Constant, Harper Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Wehner, a senior adviser to George W. Bush, was perhaps the first prominent Republican to take a stand against Donald Trump and to declare publicly that he will not vote for the real-estate developer "under any circumstances." In this book, Wehner tells us that Trump's presidency was even worse than he feared, intimating that "when words are weaponized and used merely to paint all political opponents as inherently evil, stupid, and weak, then democracy's foundations are put in peril."
Wehner maintains that politics is the art of solving problems in the face of disagreements, a feat that requires civility and compromise, attributes that have all but vanished from today's political leaders. We need to go back to the drawing board to rediscover politics in an effort to chart a path toward a working democracy.
What Wehner says makes sense at an abstract level. However, one becomes suspicious of his sincerity and motives when he lays praise at the feet of GWB and other political leaders, who, in spite of being significantly better than what we've had in Washington since Obama's agenda faced overt hostility and obstructionism, were far from ideal politicians.
(3) Book review: Coleman, Robert E., The Master Plan of Evangelism, unabridged 3-hour audiobook, read by Scott Grunden, Christianaudio.com, 2009. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I was drawn to this book because I have been wanting for some time to understand the nature of evangelism and evangelicals. I found the book utterly disappointing in this regard. The book, deemed a classic, was first published in 1962 and has been reissued from time to time to attract new generations of readers.
Coleman claims to have thoroughly examined the gospel accounts to discover Christ's strategy for evangelism. The gist of Coleman's claims is that Christ came to prefer working closely and intensively with a small number of dedicated individuals (e.g., the disciples) over paying attention to the "multitude." Judging by how evangelicals are behaving these days, Christ's strategy, and Coleman's formulation of it, must have been ineffective!
The writing is extremely dry, with some sentences containing a Bible citation after every few words. The arguments aren't based on logical deduction but on faith: If Jesus did it, then it must have been the right way to do it! Even after rising from the dead, the number of believers in Christ was in the low hundreds, so someone who tries to justify his strategy has no viable option except to claim that he kept the number of his followers small on purpose.
On Amazon and GoodReads, the book garners average ratings of 4.1 and 4.7 stars, respectively, from thousands of evaluations. I believe that most of these ratings are also faith-based, rather than derived from the quality of ideas and writing.
2022/02/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Walking on a spring-like Sunday in Goleta, CA: UCSB North Campus Open Space and the beautiful Ellwood Bluffs. [Bottom left] Happy Chinese New Year, as we enter the year of the Tiger! And happy first day of the Black History Month! Not happy World Hijab Day, a misguided celebration of misogyny & oppression. [Bottom center] Compulsory hijab isn't just about a piece of cloth: It also brings with it a grim outlook, as the same philosophy that forces hijab on women also requires them to not smile or behave in a friendly manner (photos of Darya Safai, Belgian MP). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Determine the ratios of the shown areas in this diagram involving a square, a regular hexagon, a half-circle, and a circle.
(2) Persian music: Medley of a few super-popular old songs. Unfortunately, this 4-minute video, which I have received over WhatsApp, is cut right when the only female performer in the bunch is introduced.
(3) Anonymous advice of the day: Silence doesn't always mean 'Yes.' Sometimes it means, 'I'm tired of explaining to people who don't even make an effort to understand.'
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCLA would-be mass-shooter is apprehended in Colorado: In-person classes to resume tomorrow.
- Afghan woman sings the women's equality & solidarity anthem. [1-minute video]
- Moderna joins Pfizer as the second COVID-19 vaccine with full FDA approval.
- The Persecution of Christians in Iran: IranWire forum, Tuesday, February 8, 2022, 6:00 AM PST.
- Math puzzle: If a and b are real numbers, find x and y from the two equations x^2 – y^2 = a and 2xy = b.
- Persian music: An oldie song, with the backdrop of a Qajar-era house, turned into a museum.
(5) Lebanon's economic collapse: Having experienced the largest GDP shrinkage anywhere in the world and facing an inflation of ~150%, Lebanon's future looks bleak, a situation that is blamed on Iran and the country's elite, who are profiting from the collapse. Having given up hopes of being able to fix the economy, Lebanon's ex-PM Saad Hariri quits politics and won't run in the country's next election.
(6) Developments in digital storage and memory in the age of big data: IEEE Computer magazine, issue of January 2022, features a round-table discussion on the future of memory and storage, including trends in NVM Express storage, Compute Express Link, heterogeneous memory, and object storage. [Forbes report]
(7) The Iranian government devises a policy for choosing baby names: A document issued by the High Council for Cultural Revolution stresses the need to encourage and strengthen the use of Islamic and Iranian names (in that order) for newborns. Naming of children is among the most-personal affairs of families, so, why is the Iranian government walking in the footsteps of some of the most-reviled dictatorial regimes to restrict this practice? Use of Islamic names for newborns was quite common in Iran, even before the Islamic Revolution. Some 58% of babies born in Tehran in the late 1960s were given Islamic names (a tad more for boys, and a bit less for girls). The late Shah and all male members of his family had Islamic names. The percentage increased in the lead-up to and shortly after the Revolution, reaching the 65% high mark in 1979. And it went mostly downhill from there. The latest data from 2016 shows a 40% share of Islamic names, hence the regime's panic.
2022/01/31 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] February 1 is World Hijab Day: For opponents of compulsory hijab laws, it is #NoHijabDay (#FreeFromHijab). [Center] Cartoon of the day: Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi in the Court of Vladimir Putin. [Right] FIFA chooses money over women's rights (see the last item below).
(2) Teaching a donkey to speak like humans (humor): Here is an Iranian folk tale.
A clever man volunteers to teach the local ruler's donkey to speak like humans. He demands 100 gold coins up front, with another 100 coins payable when the donkey speaks, and indicates that he will finish the task in 10 years. The ruler protests that 10 years is too long, but the man convinces him that the task is quite difficult and needs much time. The man's friends tell him that he is sure to lose his head over this impossible feat, but he tells them not to worry: "In 10 years, the ruler will be dead, or I will be dead, or the donkey will be dead!"
This folk tale went viral on social media, when Iran's interior minister claimed that in 15 years, Iran will have the world's third largest economy!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Former UCLA Philosophy Department lecturer Matthew Harris threatens mass shooting on Tuesday 2/01.
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory appoints Dr. Laurie Leshin as its first female director.
- Facebook cannot be trusted to police itself: It open up its algorithms to both regulators & CS researchers.
- ACM will consider a candidate's ethical conduct, alongside technical achievements, in its awards program.
- Borowitz Report: Trump's claim that he won the presidency twice disqualifies him from running again.
- Math puzzle: If a/(1 – a) + b/(1 – b) + c/(1 – c) = 1, evaluate 1/(1 – a) + 1/(1 – b) + 1/(1 – c).
- Canada beats the US 2-0 in a World Cup qualifying match. [9-minute extended highlights]
(4) Trump falls in the "double-negative" trap, set up by the deep state: "Anybody that doesn't think there wasn't massive Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election is either very stupid, or very corrupt!"
(5) Quote of the day: "A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special." ~ Nelson Mandela
(6) Photo Ark: Noah supposedly put a pair of animals from every species on his ark to save them from becoming extinct by a biblical flood. Photo Ark is a 25-year project for digital preservation of information about current species, half of which will be threatened with extinction in the coming decades.
(7) FIFA's empty threats: For years now, FIFA has warned Iran that its national team will face sanctions if authorities continue to ban women from entering sports stadiums. The devious mullahs have finessed the problem by allowing a small, select group of women into stadiums for some, but not all, matches and have them sit is a separate section, overseen by security forces.
The number of tickets allotted to women is typically small and certain regime insiders often grab them, leaving other eager women out. The photos and cartoon are reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
The problem has returned to the forefront, now that Iran has qualified for the 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar. Soccer is a big-money sport, internationally and in Iran. Iranian soccer players are treated like rock stars in the West. They command huge salaries, but like other Iranians, they are not free to talk. One highly-skilled player was recently kicked out of the country's national team for taking the side of street protesters.
Soccer is used by the regime as a pacifier for the masses, but the country's pesky women will not let the mullahs sleep comfortably, until their rights as human beings are recognized.
Meanwhile, FIFA has demonstrated that it is not serious about its threats of sanctions, given that it has removed women from official publicity posters on Iran's team.
2022/01/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Professor Nima Arkani Hamed, Princeton Univ. (see the next item below). [Top center] Math puzzle: For this quadrangle, one of whose sides is divided into two equal segments, show that a^2 + b^2 = c^2. [Top right and bottom row] Celebrating my 75th birthday with the family, a few days ahead of schedule (see the last item below) (1-minute video).
(2) Why are people of Iranian origins so successful in the West? Do Iranians have a right to boast about the immense success of scientists like Nima Arkani Hamed, who was appointed to a Physics Chair at Princeton, originally held by Einstein?
In my humble opinion, Iran and Iranians have absolutely no bragging rights. Nima's parents, both distinguished physicists, along with the Canadian higher-education system are the sources of Nima's success, not his Iranian roots.
Nima's father, Jafar, was a professor at Tehran's Sharif University of Technology, when he was summoned to the Revolutionary Court, because he had taken a stance against the early-1980s closure of Iranian universities under the banner of Cultural Revolution. Fearing that he may be imprisoned and possibly executed for his dissent, he secretly fled Iran with his family, walking on foot to Turkey through the snow-covered mountains of western Iran.
Nima, a young boy then, nearly froze to death during the trip and his parents paid all the cash they had brought with them to have Nima treated in Turkey. Finally, they made it to the American Embassy, exhausted and penniless. But the story has a happy ending. The family soon settled in Canada and the rest, as they say, is history. What would have become of Nima had he and his family remained in Iran?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In a span of 9 days during late 1981 and early 1982, Iran's Islamic regime executed 14 Baha'is.
- Women expressing fear of Islamic Republic's and Taliban's misogynistic laws and deeds isn't Islamophobia.
- Five-minute trial, 8-years in prison & 70 lashes, for Iranian human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi.
- Hacking of Iran's TV channels: A "Death to Khamenei" message & photos of MEK leaders were broadcast.
- Iranian cuisine: Friday's herb stew (khoresh-e ghormeh sabzi) and rice. [Photos]
- This brave Iranian is in double danger, if spotted by the morality police (no hijab, dancing in public).
- You have seen the joyful dancing in the movie "Dancing in the Rain": Now see "Dancing on the Snow"!
- Sights and sounds of Iran's northeastern province of Khorasan. [3-minute video]
(4) On reaching another milestone: This weekend, my family helped me celebrate my 75th birthday, a few days ahead of schedule. It is said that age is just a number, but each new number makes us look back at a treasure-trove of memories and be grateful for coming this far, while still being healthy and active.
One of the pleasures of getting old is that you experience important milestones in your life. In my case, besides my age, several other milestones have been reached or are coming up soon.
- 50 years since graduation from Tehran University's College of Engineering: Celebrated in Armenia with some 2 dozen friends during July 2018.
- 50 years since earning my doctorate from UCLA: Coming up in March 2023.
- 50 years of working as a professor: Coming up in March 2023.
- 50 years of membership in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Computer Society, of which I am now a Life Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer, 2022 (total IEEE membership 53 years).
- 35 years of working at UCSB and living in Santa Barbara: Coming up in July 2023.
2022/01/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Colors of nature: Berry-themed fruit plate (including raspberry blood oranges) and a veggie tray ready to go into the broiler. [Top center] Mathematically-inclined warden and two prisoners (see the next item below). [Top right] My order of Sadaf products (Iranian stews, pickled veggies, and more) arrived today. I was impressed by the ordering process (user-friendliness of the Web site, notifications) and the immaculate packaging. [Bottom left & center] Unprecedented snowfall in Kermanshah Province, western Iran. [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: Western feminists, especially some European leader, who wear the hijab in front of Iranian mullahs and the Taliban, are complicit in the oppression of women in the Islamic world.
(2) Math puzzle: The precise description of this puzzle is rather long, so I refer you to this Web page, which also contains several solution strategies, for possible clarification.
A warden places a key to the prison in a hidden compartment under one square of a standard 8-by-8 chessboard. Each square of the chessboard has a coin placed on it, showing heads or tails. Two prisoners are allowed to plan ahead, before one of them is told about the location of the key. The prisoner who knows the location of the key flips one of the coins (from tails to heads or heads to tails) before the second prisoner comes in. How can the second prisoner find the location of the key by just looking at the board (in particular, not knowing which coin the first prisoner flipped). No information exchange is allowed between the prisoners.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Another reminder of our rotting infrastructure: Snow-covered bridge collapses in Pittsburgh, injuring 10.
- Math puzzle: If 2^x = 3^y and 2/x + 3/y = 1, what is 2^x + 3^y?
- Math puzzle: If x + 1/x = 1, find x^7 + 1/x^7.
- The life and musical genius of the Iranian composer Abolhasan Saba. [8-minute video]
(4) UC panel discussion on data privacy: Two weeks ago, the documentary film "The Social Dilemma" was screened by University of California. The film is also available on Netflix. [My FB post about the film]
In the documentary, a number of former employees of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other tech giants discuss how social media, that began as a force for good (reuniting families, locating old friends, raising money for noble causes, matching patients to organ donors) turned into spreaders of hate, disinformation, and fake news. Given the helpfulness of these negative attributes for generating clicks and thus revenue, tech platforms lack incentives to confront the problem.
Some say that we will adapt to the influence of social media. Afterall, we adapted to the printing press, newspaper, TV, and so on. But this time around it is fundamentally different. We are being manipulated and aren't even aware of it. The saying "if you don't pay for a service, then you aren't a customer, but the product being sold to whoever is paying" doesn't go far enough. Social-media companies don't just sell your data, but also try to modify your behavior so that you become a more valuable commodity.
Today's panelists discussing the film included Safya Noble (UCLA), Gillian Hayes (UC Irvine), Bryan Cunnigham (UC Irvine), Sean Peisert (LBNL), Pegah Parsi (UCSD), and Allison Henry (UC Berkeley). Jennifer Lofthus moderated the discussion.
Many important points were raised by the panelists, of which I will cite two examples. We are responsible for protecting not just our own data but also our students' data. There are many useful educational products that are free to use, if students provide a wealth of personal data. We have to be extremely careful in using such products. An important step to take is to improve data literacy across the UC system. We have to change the mindset that the more data we have, the better off we are. Even if we do not share the collected data outside our classrooms, labs, or other academic units, the mere accumulation of data exposes it to hacking and data theft. So, the mindset should be to minimize data collection to the bare minimum required.
2022/01/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area (between the half-circles) is shaded blue? [Top center] Math puzzle: The sides of an equilateral triangle are divided into segments of lengths 3 and 5, as shown. What is the area of the blue triangle? [Top right] Math puzzle: In the triangle within the square, what is the measure of the angle labled with a question mark? [Bottom left] World Space Week posters for 2020 & 2021 (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Iranian activist Atena Daemi (see item 3 below). [Bottom right] Throwback Thursday: A memorable trip to Armenia during July 2018 to reunite with some two dozen Tehran U. College of Engineering friends, 50 years after we graduated. One friend joined us, even though he broke a leg while hiking shortly before the trip. Moses also rose from the dead to be there with us!
(2) Irony of ironies: Iran's Space Agency participated in UN's 2020 World Space Week, which bore the theme "Satellites Improve Life." Iranian citizens highly appreciate this theme, but don't understand why regime authorities periodically raid their homes to remove or destroy their satellite dishes! The 2021 theme "Women in Space" was even less convenient for the Iranian authorities, as they didn't know whether the hijab should be worn under or over the space suit!
(3) Iranian activist Atena Daemi is home after being imprisoned for 7+ years: Many other women (and men) are still languishing in Iranian prisons for "crimes" such as advocating for human rights, opposing the death penalty, or demanding attention to the environment. [#FreePoliticalPrisoners]
(4) Ice-Cream-Gate: Fox News (all anchors and commentators) had a meltdown over President Biden going to an ice-cream shop to have a double-scoop cone! This is the same network that had no problem with 45 showing up at the Oval Office around noon and playing nearly 1/4 of his four years in office playing golf.
(5) "What Is Responsible AI?": This was the title of a talk in UCSB Library's Pacific Views Lecture Series. The talk was also tied to the theme of UCSB Reads 2022 Program, whose selected book, Exhalation, by Ted Chiang addresses issues in human-computer interaction and ethical dilemmas presented by AI. I could not attend the talk on Tuesday 2022/01/25, but was able to view its recording.
Professor Wang, who directs UCSB's Center for Responsible Machine Learning, described important recent advances in artificial intelligence and outlined emerging challenges in building human-centered AI technologies, focusing on issues of fairness, bias, transparency, and energy efficiency of AI algorithms.
(6) "Computing Using Time": This was the title of today's in-person/Zoom talk by George Tzimpragos (UCSB CS PhD Candidate). Some of the key ideas discussed came from a paper, by the speaker and 6 co-authors, entitled "Temporal Computing with Superconductors" (IEEE Micro, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 71-79, May-June 2021).
The end of CMOS transistor scaling has led to greater focus on new computing paradigms which would meet our ever-increasing data-handling needs. Using time (more specifically, signal delays) to represent information is one such paradigm. The method isn't suitable for applications that need high precision, but is quite feasible for levels of precision required for sensor-based systems and machine learning. Tzimpragos presented the foundations of temporal computing, demonstrated how this foundation allows unique ways of working with sensors and machine-learning systems, and described how temporal operators provide answers to several long-standing problems in computing with emerging devices. The talk ended with a preview of future work, with themes ranging from in-sensor online learning to hybrid quantum-classical computing and formally-verifiable hardware. [A few screenshots]
2022/01/26 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Newsweek magazine cover story: The forever virus and its evolutionary path. [Top center] Calligraphic rendering of part of a verse from Hafez. [Top right] Time magazine cover story: Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned dissident whom Putin fears. [Bottom left] History in pictures: Workers wave from the top of a tower built from confiscated barrels of alcohol, being prepared for burning during the Prohibition, 1929. [Bottom center] History in pictures: Colorized photo of Mary Wallace, the first female bus driver of Chicago Transit Authority, 1974. [Bottom right] Stick-wielding goons are nothing new in Iran: They patrolled the streets in pre-revolution Iran, intimidating and beating-up dissenters.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Imagining how huge structures, like the Giza Pyramids, were built in ancient times. [6-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 26, 2016: Iran's forgotten political prisoners.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 26, 2014: Three beautiful songs by Pink Martini.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 26, 2012: Capitalism is ailing because of the outsize power of corporations.
(3) Facebook memory from Jan. 26, 2020: I once explained why I endorse the efforts of Masih Alinejad. It's time to repeat that argument, as I am again being criticized by certain individuals regarding the said support.
(4) Apprehensions about resuming in-person instruction: Many universities are set to return to in-person classes on Monday, January 31, 2022. I am personally delighted to go back to class and interact with my students face-to-face, but not everyone is.
For example, UCSB Faculty Association has demanded that the data on which decisions are made be shared with faculty, staff, and students. They have asked whether the omicron trend data from South Africa and other countries have been used, versus deciding based on our local situation in California. They are also concerned about adequate availability of testing and personal protection equipment.
Additionally, there are reservations about increased faculty workload (especially when a class must be taught in two modes to accommodate both in-person and remote students) and pressures faced by students, who have to adjust to new academic and personal-living conditions midway through the quarter.
In the case of my course, problems are minimal, given pre-recorded lectures and optional class attendance, but I do sympathize with other faculty members and TAs, especially those involved with large classes.
2022/01/25 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This is the share of Iranian women from the country's nature and recreational resources: Watching with envy, as men enjoy them (#LetUsTalk). [Top center] Cultural contrast: Raising children with musical instruments or guns! [Top right] Taliban officials travel to Norway on a private jet, paid for by the Norwegian government. [Bottom left] Three Iranian physicians wrote influential books that were translated into Latin for educational use: Ali-ibn Abbas Majusi, Ibn-Sina, and Mohammad-ibn Zakariya Razi. [Bottom center] Restoration work on a landmark Egyptian temple has unearthed colossal pair of Sphinxes. [Bottom right] Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near (see the last item below).
(2) Humor from Iran: Dear God: In the Quran, you tell us Muslims to travel as much as we can. Couldn't you have commanded in the Bible that Christians not deny our visa applications?
(3) Please don't bring religious symbols to newsrooms: Over the past few days, PBS News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz has appeared with a poster that reads "Hussein" behind her. I consider this background inappropriate. Imagine the outrage that would have resulted from a news anchor using Jesus, the Ten Commandments, or some other religious symbol as background. [Screenshot]
(4) Book review: Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, unabridged 25-hour audiobook, read by George Wilson, Penguin Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is an important book, hence my 4-star rating, but gets annoying by unneeded elaborations and repetitions. Few people would dispute Kurzweil's assertions that AI is getting more complex, and thus "smarter," at an accelerating rate. Similarly, the prediction that biological capabilities of humans will soon be augmented with nano-computers and nano-robots rings true. What made me as a techie somewhat uncomfortable is the inclusion of claims such as "exponential growth, with the exponent also growing exponentially." This just doesn't make sense.
According to Kurzweil, human-beings are on the verge of achieving immortality, if not within a biological frame that defies aging, because it is constantly repaired from the inside by nano-robots moving through the bloodstream, then through the persistence of one's ideas and life experiences in a mechanically constructed "host" (avatar). Again, few would argue with this line of thought, except perhaps disagreeing with the speed of its realization.
Kurzweil uses "Singularity" to refer to a point in human history when the speed of change becomes so great as to make predictions impossible. We see a mind-boggling speed-up in new ideas and technologies entering our lives. Whereas acceptance of new technologies used to take decades, now many innovations find their way into our devices and gadgets within a couple of years, with further speed-up inevitable. Human evolution, too, is speeding up.
Kurzweil spends considerable time on the possibility of nano-robots and biomechanical beings we construct going haywire and bringing life on earth to an end. He argues that we can prevent such scenarios from happening, given our own increasing complexity and expanding computational power. In addition to these big questions, and in support of his assertions, Kurzweil reviews advances and potential developments in many areas, such as machines passing the Turing test, DNA computing, gene therapy, brain-cloud interfaces, and the universe as a colossal computer.
I end my review of this thought-provoking book with a listing of its nine chapters.
Chapter 1 sets the stage by describing civilization's "six epochs" leading to the Singularity.
Chapter 2 describes, in a bit too much detail, the exponential growth of hardware capabilities.
Chapter 3 deals with the workings and computational capabilities of the human brain.
Chapter 4 contains an account of scientists' efforts to reverse-engineer the human brain.
Chapter 5 covers revolutionary changes in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR).
Chapter 6 ponders impacts of the above on bodies, brains, aging, warfare, learning, work, etc.
Chapter 7 considers questions of consciousness, identity, and the Singularity as transcendence.
Chapter 8 elaborates on intertwined promises and perils of GNR, including possible defenses.
Chapter 9 tackles criticisms against, and possible roadblocks on the path to, the Singularity.
2022/01/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Clearest Images of Jupiter ever: These are some of the photos taken by NASA's Juno Space Probe. [Top center] Snow-covered mountains along the Haraz Road, connecting Tehran to eastern Caspian Coast. [Top right] Nature's art: Mah-Neshan hills in Iran's Zanjan Province. [Bottom left] Sweets at a family gathering: The cakes are by my daughter (the heart-shaped one) and my sister. [Bottom center & right] On the Isla Vista beach this evening (1-minute video).
(2) Atena Daemi, the brave Iranian woman who spent more than seven years in prison for her peaceful dissent on behalf of human rights and against the death penalty, finally returns home.
(3) Josh Hawley's lies exposed: CNN's Brianna Keilar rolls the tape on the hypocrite Senator in wanting to overturn the 2020 election, raising money off his claims, and then denying, with a straight face, that he did it. Hawley wasn't a bit-player, but actually led the effort to overturn the election result. [8-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran's Holocaust denial, from its official statement against UN's Holocaust Resolution.
- Opinion piece in Newsweek magazine reflects the will of Iranian women not to be silenced. [#LetUsTalk]
- Computer-generated visualization of dangers of space debris to the Int'l Space Station and its occupants.
- Turkish proverb: "When cattle enter a palace, they don't become royalty. The palace becomes a stable."
- Kurdish music: Performance by Kurdish girls of Khanaqin, Iraq. [6-minute video]
- Kurdish music: The song "Mastureh Mastan," performed by Nishtiman Group. [5-minute video]
- Kurdish music: Live concert by Nishtiman (Home or Homeland) Group. [74-minute video]
- Jewish Kurdish music: A lively dance song, with the distinctive sound of sorna. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 24, 2011: An essay on how Iranians manufacture and deal with lies.
(5) With these women's rights champions, who needs women's oppressors? Norway and Finland are among the top-5 best countries for women. Yet, women politicians of both countries don the hijab when they visit Iran, Norway paid for a private jet to bring a Taliban delegation to Oslo, and Finland approved of Iran joining the leadership of UN's Commission on the Status of Women! [Tweet]
(6) California's first major fire of 2022 is burning near Big Sur: More than 200 homes are endangered by a fire that shouldn't have happened after three months of record rainfall.
(7) An inept dictatorial government sees any criticism as part of a plot to overthrow it: So environmental activists Niloufar Bayani, Sepideh Kashani, Morad Tahbaz, Houman Jokar, Taher Ghadirian, Sam Rajabi, Amir Hossein Khaleghi, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, and Kavous Seyed-Emami have been detained by Iran's Islamic Revolutional Guard Corps since four years ago.
(8) Iran on Razor's Edge: This the title of a book by Mohammad Fazeli, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University, who was fired from his academic position for his critical writings. The main message of Fazeli's book is that Iran faces a perfect storm of crises, in its economy, environment, foreign relations, and trust, that have become malignant as a result of decades of inattention or sweeping the dirt under the rug. For example, Iran's water crisis was predicted in development plans, years before the Islamic Revolution, yet nothing has been done about it for nearly five decades. [85-minute discussion, in Persian]
2022/01/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Bahar Choir's "Voice of Peace, Voice of Solidarity" concerts: London, April 23, and Paris, April 29-30, 2022 (Tickets). [Top center] Analysis of current and future computer science needs via advertised faculty searches for 2022: In the chart, DataOrient represents the aggregation of AI/DM/ML, DataSci, and DB, accounting for ~1/3 of all hirings. [Top right] Oppressed vs. dressed: Speaking up against misogynistic laws isn't Islamophobia (#LetUsTalk). [Bottom left] Afghan women, not men, are standing against the Taliban! [Bottom center] Meme: Instead of "Protect your daughters," say "Educate your sons to respect women." [Bottom right] Horizontal flight to space will be coming to an airport near you, according to Radian.
(2) Campaign against "honor" killings: Mehrangiz Kar will speak in Persian, Sat. Jan. 29, 2022, 10:00 AM PST, under the title "How the Women's Movement Can Change Discriminatory Laws Against Women." [Zoom link]
(3) The lightbulb that never burns out: The carbon-filament bulb is kept in Livermore, California, and it has been in use continuously since 1901 (for 121 years). Rumor has it that a European inventor built a similar bulb, but he was killed by lightbulb manufacturers, who feared he may put them out of business.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nine poets whose works appeared in Iranian school textbooks in the 1980s. [6-minute video]
- Math puzzle: Find all positive-integer solutions of the equation 1^2 + 2^2 + 3^2 + ... + m^2 = n^2
- Quote of the day: "Running away from a problem only increases the distance to its solution." ~ Anonymous
- A feast for the eyes and ears: Scenery and music from Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film, "Gabbeh."
- English-Persian glossary (humor): Here's one example: "Accessible" = "Photo of mustache."
- Facebook memory from Jan. 22, 2019: Bahar Choir collaborates with musician/composer Majid Derakhshan.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 22, 2016: Yearning to return to America's Golden Age, but which one?
- Facebook memory from Jan. 23, 2020: Retort to "Whoever doesn't like the Islamic Republic should leave."
(5) Touching tribute: A group of boys, dressed as firefighters, pay tribute to those who perished in Tehran's Plasco Building fire, on the opening day of a new replacement building. No mention though of the developer of the original building having been executed by the Islamic regime! And where are the girls? They would have loved to join in for this tribute. [5-minute video]
(6) Realistic math word-problem: If Dr. Chan has a schoolteacher husband, a diabetic mother-in-law, twins in preschool, and a daughter who stays with her father across town on alternate weekends, and one twin and the daughter have colds, how many free rapid COVID tests are required to alleviate Dr. Chan's breaking-point levels of despair? (a) Fewer than four; (b) Four; (c) More than four
(7) Waste is all around us: We often worry about product packaging and go out of our way to recycle glass bottles, cans, and plastic containers. This is quite important, but we should not lose sight of the fact that packaging is just one facet of waste. Some 99% of everything produced in the world becomes trash within a year of production. [Mind-numbing fact I learned from The Future of Pakcaging: From Linear to Circular, a book which I will review in due course.]
(8) Final thought for the day: "If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history." ~ Hannah Arendt
2022/01/21 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] History in pictures: Edward Charles Pickering, Harvard Observatory Director, and the "computers" on his team (1913). [Top center] Redundant clock! [Top right] Rahman Golzar Shabestari, developer of Tehran's Ekbatan housing mega-complex, dead at 92: I had an 8th-floor condo in one of the first buildings completed in the complex in the mid-1970s. Construction quality was first-rate and views quite good, looking north. [Bottom row] Agenda for UCSB IEE's Technology Review 2022 (see the last two items below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Quote: "Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me." ~ Robert Frost
- Facebook memory from Jan. 21, 2019: In a society organized around lies, truth-telling becomes political.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 21, 2018: When "Girthers" asked for Donald Trump's girth certificate!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 21, 2017: The year when politicians' subtle lies changed into "lies with horns"!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 21, 2013: When our Black president's inauguration coincided with MLK Day.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 21, 2012: When people ignored executions and criticized an actress's actions.
(3) UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency Technology Review 2022, Day 1 of 2 (Energy Efficiency in Buildings in the Post-COVID-19 Era): Workshop participants included Mary Ann Piette (LBNL), Martin Fischer (Stanford U.), Tim Salsbury (Pacific Northwest Nat'l Lab), Zheng O'Neill (Texas A&M U.), Dan Nall (ASHRAE Fellow), and Mead Rusert (Automated Logic Corp.).
There are large gains in energy efficiency in buildings that have been achieved by a combination of more efficient equipment and AI-driven automation. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a keen emphasis on health aspects that the industry is tackling in order to provide a safe environment for building occupants. This workshop's focus was on the interplay between the two, specifically how the increased needs on the health side and the consequent increase in energy expenditure can be mitigated by further deployment of automation and artificial intelligence.
In dealing with buildings and energy, we should consider both operational energy and embodied energy. Building climate-control systems are increasingly adding data collection capabilities. There is a trade-off between occupant comfort and energy-efficiency in buildings. COVID-19, having led to the need for better ventilation, has added health to the side of comfort. As in the case of other national disasters, we may have over-reacted to COVID-19 by putting in place mitigation measures that provide only marginal benefits at exorbitantly high cost.
(4) UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency Technology Review 2022, Day 2 of 2 (Future Data Center Architectures and Increased Energy Efficiency): Today's virtual workshop, organized by Katharine Schmidtke (Meta) and John Bowers (UCSB), focused on architecture, communications, and systems issues driving energy efficiency in the cloud and the data center.
Participants included representatives from Meta (Katharine Schmidtke, Bharath Muthiah, Rob Stone, Ravi Agarwal), Intel (Thomas Liljeberg, filling in for Robert Blum), NVIDIA (Robert Ober), Broadcom (Manish Mehta, Surendra Anubolu), Google (Cliff Young), AMD (Frank Helms), Microsoft (Ram Huggahalli), Parallax Group (Chris Cole), and UCSB (John Bowers, Clint Schow, Yufei Ding, Lei Li).
On this second day, the workshop's morning session focused on AI/ML. There are two ways in which discussion of AI/ML is relevant to data centers. First, a good chunk of computational resources at today's data centers, such as those of Facebook, are used for running AI/ML applications. Second, AI/ML methods play major roles in improving the energy-efficiency of data centers. Before breaking for lunch, the presenters and a few others participated in a round-table discussion on cloud systems and related architectural considerations.
This afternoon's session focused on interconnect optimization in data centers. Optical interconnects took center stage in all presentations and in the panel discussion that ended the program. The discussion began with an overview of drivers and application spaces, continuing with a review of existing technologies, silicon-photonics integration, predictions for the coming decade, and proposed hardware capabilities and associated optimization technologies that will fundamentally transform data centers and their energy efficiency going forward.
2022/01/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Last night's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: After holding its December 2021 talk in person alongside a holiday banquet, IEEE CCS returned to Zoom format, given new developments in the COVID-19 pandemic. The speaker was yours truly, presenting one of my IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitors Program talks entitled "Interconnection Networks for Parallel Processors and Data Centers." My Web site includes a great deal of information about me, my research program, and list of technical publications.
The gist of my talk was that both parallel processors and data centers are composed of a collection of compute nodes (or servers) and a set of interconnects, the latter being just as important as, if not more important than, compute nodes. In fact, chip-multiprocessors and computer networks, such as the Internet, are also similar, in that they have nodes and links, but differ in their scales. Chip-multiprocessors, which are essentially small-scale parallel processors, have given rise to the area of networks-on-chip. The Internet is not as sensitive to delays as networks for parallel processors and data centers. If you type in a Google search query, response times on the order of a second are tolerable, whereas in one second, a top-of-the-line parallel processor executes on the order of 10^18 operations (exa-ops).
Interconnecting multiple processors in a parallel supercomputer or servers in a data center constitutes a challenging problem. There are so many ways to interconnect the computing nodes that the range of options has come to be known as "the sea of interconnection networks." In this talk, I began by outlining the theoretical underpinnings of interconnection network design in a way that exposed the challenges. In addition to the underlying, as-yet-unsolved mathematical problem known as the degree-diameter problem, practical considerations such as power-frugality, performance under realistic loads, packageability, quality of service, robustness, reliability, symmetry, scalability, and serviceability (which I refer to as the PQRS attributes) come into play. I then reviewed desirable network properties and related them to various network classes that have been used or proposed. Emphasis was placed on robustness attributes of networks, given that large networks with many thousands or perhaps millions of nodes are bound to experience malfunctions in nodes & links.
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks Page; Speaker's slides; Recording of the talk (67-minute video)]
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Volcanic disaster in Tonga: A thick layer of ash and damage from tsunami have devastated the islands.
- Battle between airlines and communications companies over possible dangers of 5G to air travel.
- Ex-Pope Benedict failed to act on four child-abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich.
- U. Michigan pays $490 million to settle a sexual-abuse case involving former football doctor.
- Freudian slip: Mitch McConnell says African-Americans vote just as much as Americans. [Tweet]
- COVID-19 aggravated disparities affecting professional advancement of early-career women scientists.
- The rise of artificial-intelligence fighter-pilots: Should we be worried, now that AI can fly warplanes?
- In upcoming auction, a 556-carat black diamond believed to be from space is expected to fetch ~$7M.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 19, 2019: Participating in Women's March Santa Barbara. [Photo]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 19, 2014: IRI TV covers birth of panda in China but not Iran's street protests!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 19, 2011: The trouble with college education in the US (still quite relevant).
- Facebook memory from Jan. 20, 2010: Goleta storm, as seen from my office window. [1-minute video]
(3) Humor (Ode to Microsoft Word): "From Windows 95 all the way to 365 Premium, Word has been my parent, my guide, and at times my lover on this journey we call life."
2022/01/18 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Single-wheel transportation, 1931. [Top center] RV for the age of through-the-roof gas prices! [Top right] A father and son ride bicycles outfitted to move on train tracks in Pelston, Michigan, circa 1910. [Bottom left] Monday was my food prep day: I made rice, pasta sauce, and taco meat for the next few days. [Bottom center] Rooster-brand gum (nostalgia): Like many other industrial and commercial entities, the largest chewing-gum factory in pre-revolutionary Iran was confiscated by the Islamic government, because it was owned by a Jew. [Bottom right] The unrealized promise of digital TV (see the next item below).
(2) Digital TV was supposed to improve image quality: True in theory, but not in practice. Those of us who get digital TV through cable companies, face frequent disruption of service on one or more stations, constant freezing of images, and image distortion, which are likely the results of offering too many TV channels under limited bandwidth. Using Zoom for interviews has made things worse. Virtual backgrounds in Zoom cause frequent distortion in the foreground image.
(3) A day late, but still timely: Dr. Martin Luther King's lecture on the occasion of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on Dec. 10, 1964. [12-minute video] [English text] [Persian translation, by Dr. Kazem Alamdari]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 18, 2018: A patriotic Persian song. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 18, 2016: A bilingual romantic proposition!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 18, 2014: Same person is described differently in various historical accounts.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 18, 2012: My daughter's first and last ballet pictures. [Photos]
(5) Iran talks about its economic resilience: But this resilience is a mirage, given rampant inflation (40%) and persistent unemployment (11% overall; much higher for the college-educated).
(6) Iran's former president, Hassan Rouhani, was reprimanded by the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guards in front of top generals and told to stop defaming them.
(7) Venezuela welcomes criminal Iranian general: Mohsen Rezaei, wanted internationally for his alleged role in a July 1994 bombing in Argentina, is welcome as a guest of honor by Nicaragua's dictator-president.
(8) The myth of Apple software being highly secure goes out the window: A 4-month-old flaw in Safari and iOS 15 expose user browsing activity in real time. The bug is easy to exploit, making it even scarier.
2022/01/17 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Martin Luther King Day! We celebrate MLK's legacy, not because he was a perfect human-being, but because he reminded us of the imperfections and blind spots that afflict us all. [Center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Kind pizzeria owner decides to continue selling one-dollar pizza slices. [Right] Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (see the last item below).
(2) Iran continues to take Westerners hostage as leverage: French-Iranian acadmic, Fariba Adelkhah, is sent from house-arrest back to prison, as the nuclear talks enter a sensitive stage.
(3) IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference: To be held in hybrid format in San Diego, June 6-7, 2022, the conference has issued a call for speakers (deadline: 2022/02/01).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- All four hostages escape unharmed, hostage-taker dies, in rescue effort at Texas synagogue.
- Details of Iranian hackers' digital-espionage and ransomware files released by the US to bolster defenses.
- Abdollah Shahbazi, Iran's chief hate-monger against Baha'is and Jews, may have emigrated to the US.
- If you don't plan on having a baby but keep being pressured by family and friends, this article is for you!
(5) Book review: Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, abridged 3-hour audiobook, read by Michael McConnohoi, Audio Renaissance, 1990.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I learned about The Tao of Physics from David Kaiser's wonderful book How the Hippies Saved Physics (My 5-star review of Kaiser's book on Goodreads).
Capra's thesis is that the new principles of physics, after the introduction of quantum mechanics, have a lot in common with Eastern spirituality, notably Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. After perusing the book, I emerged unconvinced! The book's physics parts are pretty accurate and well-described, but when it comes to the relationship between physics and Eastern spiritual traditions (religions, really), there is much hand-waving and little substance. While it is satisfying to think of the universe as an amalgam of interconnected systems, we cannot wish these interconnections into existence but must provide falsifiable hypotheses for their nature, in the scientific tradition.
The author apparently thought about the connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism when sitting on a beach and pondering the grand dance of the universe: His body, his mind, grains of sand, and the ocean are all in constant motion at the atomic level and thus can be likened to the cosmic dance of Shiva, the Hindu deity. This epiphany inspired Capra to shift his view of the world from mechanistic to holistic, incorporating biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions. In fact, he was later moved to change his research focus from physics (centered on inanimate objects) to biology (dealing with life).
The most-ironic part of Capra's grand claims is that he acknowledges the limitations of natural language in discussing scientific theories (limitations that have led to the need for mathematical and formal systems), yet he takes superficial linguistic similarities between notions of physics and those of Eastern mysticism as evidence that they are one and the same.
Capra has been criticized for ignoring new developments in physics that inconveniently clash with some of his ideas. Just as The Tao of Physics was coming out in December 1974, dramatic confirmations of the standard-model quantum field theory in November of that year were creating excitement in scientific circles. Yet, through multiple editions of his book, including new forewords and afterwords that he wrote for them, Capra has not acknowledged the almost complete debunking of the bootstrap theory. On the contrary, he has claimed: "It has been very gratifying for me that none of these recent developments has invalidated anything I wrote."
Capra has been teaching "The Capra Course" in Berkeley, based on his 2016 book, The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. The 12-lecture course is advertised as providing "conceptual tools to understand the nature of our systemic problems and to recognize the systemic solutions that are being developed by individuals and organizations around the world." Grandiose and vague promises, I would say!
[Conversation with Capra, October 2020; 71-minute video]
2022/01/16 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Art that makes you think! (Artist unknown) [Top center] As long as families and societies tell girls they cannot or should not do certain things, women will not achieve their full potential. [Top right] Father-and-son statue in Brazil: The son's body is made up entirely from pieces removed from the father's body. [Bottom left] Value-centered algorithm design (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, featuring a square, 2 rectangles, and 3 equal line segments, what is the angle alpha? [Bottom right] If you always wanted a piano but your space is tight, this corner piano may be right for you!
(2) Pig heart transplanted to human patient in Maryland: This is a huge deal. If successful, it may open the door to similar animal-to-human transplants that would save the lives of many who currently die waiting for organ donors. The pig's heart was genetically modified using CRISPR technology to make it less likely for it to be rejected by the human body and also to control its growth within the body. The patient is past the critical first few days and has already been taken off machinery that assist in heart and kidney functions. Regardless of whether the patient survives, a giant leap has occurred! On the periphery of this case, the fact that the patient has had a criminal record is raising some ethical concerns.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Yesterday's tsunami caused Soquel Creek in Santa Cruz to flow backwards! [Video]
- If people tell you they did their own research on COVID-19, ask them: "In which lab?"
- Anonymous: "Having empty pockets is no fun, but even worse is having an empty brain or an empty heart."
- "The Persians: A History of Iran": BBC Documentary, Episode 1. [51-minute video]
- The late Iraj Pezeshkzad talks in 2007 about his book "My Uncle Napoleon" and its TV-series adaptation.
- Andre Rieu's full concert in Maastricht, Netherlands. [136-minute video]
(4) The Siberian permafrost is melting: Russia's permafrost is filled with microbes, mammoths, and twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. Its melting can potentially have dire consequences on the Earth's climate.
(5) SUTA technical talk: This morning, Dr. Niloufar Salehi (UC Berkeley) spoke in Persian under the title "Value-Centered Algorithm Design." Dr. Salehi's focus was on an algorithm used, apparently unsuccessfully, to match students to public schools in San Francisco, based on preferences expressed by students/families and by schools. Matching algorithms, when supplied with reliable input data, do a remarkable job of producing optimal results. The problem is that the input is often messy and misses some relevant parameters that are either hard to measure or unquantifiable. In other words, the model used is a poor reflection of reality. The US scheme of school funding based on local property taxes is part of the problem, because it creates certain expectations for better quality in more affluent neighborhoods.
A lively Q&A period ensued. I asked about the process used to come up with the four values reflected on the accompanying screenshot, adding that once we include values in our designs, an immediate question is "whose values?" Professional societies sometime spend years crafting a code of ethics (values for member conduct), because the issues are subtle and there is so much disagreement about what to include or exclude. In the US, we can't even agree on community values (masking and vaccination for COVID-19) that appear to some of us to carry significant social benefits.
A recording of this talk will be made available on SUTA's YouTube channel.
2022/01/15 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Women ask that we hear them: Second-class citizens under Islamist regimes, women want to talk about their life experiences of oppression and exclusion. Under the hashtag #LetUsTalk, athletes and other Iranian & Afghan women post their photos with compulsory hijab and their natural selves. [Bottom left] Screening of the powerful documentary film "The Social Dilemma" (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: This one's a toughie! [Bottom right] Giants of the Alps: The Hugo Brothers, Baptiste (7' 7"; 231 cm) and his younger brother Antoine (7' 5'; 226 cm), shown with their family.
(2) Twitter suspends one of the accounts of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, for inciting violence: He still has many other accounts in multiple languages.
(3) There was a tsunami advisory this morning for the entire West Coast of the US from an underwater volcanic eruption near the Tonga Islands: The area at risk for us is downtown Santa Barbara, which is mostly at sea level. The rest of Santa Barbara and Goleta is considerably above sea level, unless you happen to be at the beach. Anyway, the warning interval is now behind us, with no incident!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The FBI is assisting Texas authorities with a hostage situation at a synagogue in Colleyville.
- Modern Azeri music: A beautiful song performed with piano and vocals. Enjoy! [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 15, 2016: My New-Year resolution, again coming a couple of weeks late!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 15, 2016: The pot (Javad Zarif) calling the kettle (the Saudis) black!
(5) "The Social Dilemma": This powerful documentary film (available on Netflix) was screened on Friday as part of UCSB's information campaign on data security and privacy. In the film, a number of former employees of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other tech giants discuss how social media, that began as a force for good (reuniting families, locating old friends, raising money for noble causes, matching patients to organ donors) turned into spreaders of hate, disinformation, and fake news. Given the helpfulness of these negative attributes for generating clicks and thus revenue, tech platforms lack incentives to confront the problem.
According to one of the participants, it's frightening to think that fifty or so 20- and 30-somethings at Google make decisions that affect the lives of 2 billion people. Because of this outsize influence, they carry a heavy burden of responsibility. With sufficient data, detailed models of people can be built that accurately predict their future actions, and this is worth a lot of money. When A is communicating with B on social media, there is C who pays for this communication and hopes to make money in return.
Another participant urges us to think of social-media strategy as a form of hacking: Exploiting vulnerabilities, not in software, but in human psychology. Saying that social media are just tools is misguided. Hammer is a tool. It sits there until you decide to use it. If you don't use it for a year, it won't complain. Social media don't sit there idly. They try to lure you into engaging: X tagged you in a photo. Y posted a new status. Today is your "friendversary" with Z.
Some say that we will adapt to the influence of social media. Afterall, we adapted to the printing press, newspaper, TV, and so on. But this time around it is fundamentally different. We are being manipulated and aren't even aware of it. The saying "if you don't pay for a service, then you aren't a customer, but the product being sold to whoever is paying" doesn't go far enough. Social-media companies don't just sell your data, but also try to modify your behavior so that you become a more valuable commodity.
In two weeks, on Friday, January 28, 2022, 12:00 noon, a panel discussion will be held to discuss this film. Panel members include Safya Noble (UCLA), Gillian Hayes (UC Irvine), Bryan Cunnigham (UC Irvine), Sean Peisert (LBNL), Pegah Parsi (UCSD), and Allison Henry (UC Berkeley).
2022/01/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Tonight's dinner: Karafs vegetarian stew from Sadaf, to which I added stew meat, plus rice, Shirazi salad, and a side of Indian coconut squash dal. [Top center] COVID-19 data: The dominant variant over time and projections on the peak of the omicron variant, according to four different models (source: UCSB COVID-19 response team). [Top right] Raspberry blood oranges: They really do taste like raspberries! [Bottom left] A nice view of the central part of the UCSB campus: Cheadle Hall is in front and SAASB behind it. [Bottom center] Metz Car Adventure: L. Wing drove his Metz Model 22 to the rim of the Grand Canyon in 1914. [Bottom right] Some geographic terms, nicely illustrated. (Correction: The word "STRAIGHT" near the center of the diagram should be "STRAIT.")
(2) More power to Iranian women: These brave women, who take their headscarves off to protest against mandatory hijab laws, are normal, decent citizens who are tired of being oppressed and treated like cattle. They are not paid "enemy" agents, as Iran's Supreme Leader callously asserted in a recent speech.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Prince Andrew's pedophilia finally catches up with him: What took the royals so long?
- Brief report on today's meeting of UCSB Faculty Legislature. [Facebook post]
- A promising swimmer, whose dreams were shattered by the misogynistic Islamic Republic. [Tweet]
- Persian music: Istgah Orchestra performs the oldie song "Porsoon Porsoon." [3-minute video]
(4) The pipeline bringing Islamic Republic officials to US universities: The number of US academics who had important positions within the Iranian government is steadily growing. Some of these are technocrats, who gave up on trying to reform the system, leaving the government and the country and becoming regime critics. I have no problem with this group, as long as they don't have blood on their hands.
Others were forced out of their positions for various reasons, such as being deemed insufficiently religious, trying to grab too much power, or swindling money. The real reason is often unknown, given the Islamic regime's proclivity for protecting its own reputation (Khamenei famously said that lengthy legal proceedings against corrupt officials hurts the regime). Among members of this group are those who filled their pockets as Islamic Republic officials, essentially retiring in the US and taking an academic job to hide the fact that they can lead comfortable lives without working.
The most troubling group for me are those who held key government positions, benefiting from the regime's largesse, and leaving their positions on amicable terms. Some of these have maintained their extreme Islamist views and are abusing the openness and tolerance of the American academic system to gain prestige. Some in the latter group don't even pretend to criticize the mullahs' regime and in fact travel back and forth between the US and Iran under academic pretenses.
With this long introduction, here is why I am posting about this group of former Islamic Republic of Iran officials. This article from AllIsraelNews (admittedly not an impartial source) names two such academics against whom Amnesty International has amassed and published documentation of being involved in the Iranian regime's criminal policies. They are Mohammad Jafar Mahallati (Oberlin College) and Seyed Hossein Mousavian (Princeton). As Iran's Ambassador to the UN, Mahallati played a role in justifying the 1988 mass-murder of prisoners under the co-leadership of Ebrahim Raisi. Mousavian was forced out by the German government from his ambassadorial position because of his involvement in political assassinations and plots.
2022/01/12 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian writer/satirist/diplomat Iraj Pezeshkzad dead at 93: He was best known for his 1973 Persian novel My Uncle Napoleon, a sociopolitical satire, turned into a successful 1976 TV series in pre-revolutionary Iran. [Center] Federal agent inspects a "lumber" truck in 1928 Los Angeles, during the prohibition era. [Right] Webinar on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Persian poetry: This poem, from Samet-e Borujerdi, is sometimes attributed incorrectly to Sa'eb-e Tabrizi. It contains some sound advice (a few of the half-verses have assumed the status of proverbs), as well as the standard misogynistic views of the time (see the next to the last verse).
(3) "Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial in Iran": This was the title of today's IranWire webinar, moderated by Maziar Bahari (Editor-in-Chief & Founder, IranWire) and featuring three panelists from the Iranian Jewish community outside Iran. After a brief introduction to the topic by Bahari, the panelists spoke in multiple rounds, answering various questions. In what follows, I have reported a number of key points made by each panelist. [Recording of the webinar: 66-minute video]
- Hamid Sabi (Lawyer & Human Rights Activist):
Anti-Semitism in Iran didn't start with the Islamic Republic. During Reza Shah's reign, the closeness of the Iranian government with Nazi Germany, along with the existence of many Iranians who were educated in Germany, created strong anti-Semitic tendencies. Most political parties at the time, even some of those that were characterized as socialist or leftist, harbored anti-Semitic ideas. Islamic religious groups, which have come to wield power after the 1979 Revolution, abhor Jews and anything that is connected to them, including Zionism and the state of Israel. Even some clerics who were against executing prominent Jews shortly after the Revolution thought so because they felt it would damage the Islamic Republic, not because they thought it was wrong. The Iranian government holds a Quds (Jerusalem) Day every year, forcing Jewish community leaders to attend the anti-Israel ceremonies, sitting next to IRGC generals bent on destroying Israel.
- Sharon Nazarian (Vice-President for International Affairs, Anti-Defamation League):
Iran's anti-Semitism is in many ways similar to those of other countries in the region. A major difference is that Iran is the top state-sponsor of anti-Semitism. It broadcasts, in many different languages, anti-Semitic ideas, opposition to the state of Israel, and Holocaust denial (such as holding an international Holocaust cartoon contest). The Iranian regime acts as an exporter of anti-Semitic ideas and is thus an existential threat to Jews worldwide. Anti-Semitism isn't a Jewish problem. It serves as a warning sign that a country's sociopolitical structure is ailing, something that will affect its entire population. Mistreatment of Jews often leads to other forms of intolerance against minorities and opposition groups. Countries that lose their minorities (brain drain) suffer in terms of their economy, although the loss has not been quantified. This loss is very obvious in the case of Iran, whose minorities and elites are doing very well and have been of great service in exile. School textbooks are full of anti-Jewish and, of course, anti-Israel propaganda, instilling in students' minds that Jews have always conspired against Islam.
- George Haroonian (Human Rights Activist):
Shiite ideology, as interpreted by many clerics, reserves a strong hatred for Jews, who must live under Muslims and pay special taxes. After the execution of several prominent Jews in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, Jews, particularly businessmen and community leaders, left Iran en masse, reducing Iran's Jewish population from ~85,000 to the current ~20,000. Most of the remaining Jews are younger ones born after the Revolution. Many Muslim Iranians do not regard Jews as proper Iranians, even though Jews have deeper roots in the country than Muslims (going back 2700 vs. 1400 years). Accusing Jews of having dual loyalties is a standard anti-Semitic trope. So, what is a Jew's life like under Iran's anti-Semitic society and government? Iranian Jews do live their lives, but, like many other Iranians, they would leave if they could. Iranian Jews have a natural love for Israel, where many have friends and family members. They often contribute to charity and social programs in Israel, contributions that the regime tends to interpret as contributions to the state of Isreal and, thus, as a form of spying for Israel.
2022/01/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Facebook memory from Jan. 10, 2018: View of the US 101, the day after the devastating Montecito mudflow, killing 23. [Top center] Motorcycle mail-carrier in Washington DC, May 1912. [Top right] One doesn't really get more conservative with age: I can testify to that! [Bottom left] My upcoming technical talk on 1/19 (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Poet Maya Angelou becomes the first black woman to be featured on a US quarter-dollar coin. [Bottom right] My 2021 in books: Here are my final book-review stats on GoodReads for 2021. A handful of the 104 reviews are ones I had written earlier, posting them in 2021. But I take pride in reading ~100 new books, raising my total to ~350. I have already posted two reviews for 2022, The Tao of Physics and The Death of Politics.
(2) My next IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitors Program talk: Speaking for IEEE Central Coast Section, I will discuss "Interconnection Networks for Parallel Processors and Data Centers," on Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 6:30 PM PST. [Register for Zoom link]
(3) One bad news after another about political prisoners in Iran: First, it was Baktash Abtin's death in prison from medical inattention. Now, Kurdish teacher Zahra Mohammadi has begun serving a 5-year prison term.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Give a man a program and you frustrate him for a day. Teach him to program and you frustrate him for life.
- This video should help with Abdolkarim Soroush's amnesia about the damage he did to Iran's universities.
- World's waterfalls: Switzerland's Rhinefall with its massive flow has amazed people for some 15,000 years.
- Math puzzle: If x + y = 1 and x^2 + y^2 = 2, what is x^8 + y^8?
- Mesmerizing combination: Painting, Persian calligraphy, & music, in an animated short. [4-minute video]
- Eric Hoffer: "Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness."
- Persian music: Talent-show contestant's wonderful performance of Bijan Mortazavi's "Fire Dance."
- Facebook memory from Jan. 10, 2018: My daughter's article on mirror neurons (Total Wellness magazine).
(5) A positive result of the January 6 Commission: A bunch of crazy Trump supporters, such as Rep. Jim Jordan and attorney Rudy Giuliani, have shut their mouths, to the delight of most Americans!
(6) Words from the late Baktash Abtin: The political prisoner, who died in prison from medical inattention a few days ago, had spoken these words about the corrupt, inept Islamic regime in Iran, which has sunk the country in poverty and taken all hope away from the younger generation. [3-minute video]
(7) Stolen lives: This is the theme of a number of IranWire feature articles about victims of the downing of Ukranian Airlines Flight PS752 by the Iranian government two years ago. Among the victims were promising scholars, newlyweds, and unborn babies. Here's one of the stories.
(8) Oral history of Iran: Harvard University's collection of interviews with Iranian politicians and intellectuals (audio & text) about their lives during the 6 decades leading to the Islamic Revolution (1920-1979).
(9) This study is of interest to women in computing and men allies for gender equity: "We find that subfield prestige correlates with gender inequality, such that faculty working in computing subfields with more women tend to hold positions at less prestigious institutions. In contrast, we find no significant evidence of racial or socioeconomic differences by subfield. Tracking representation over time, we find steady progress toward gender equality in all subfields, but more prestigious subfields tend to be roughly 25 years behind the less prestigious subfields in gender representation. These results illustrate how the choice of subfield in a faculty search can shape a department's gender diversity."
[N. LaBerge, K. H. Wapman, A. C. Morgan, S. Zhang, D. B. Larremore, and A. Clauset, "Subfield Prestige and Gender Inequality in Computing," Full text on arxiv.]
2022/01/09 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] We had a BBQ late lunch at my sister's on Saturday, before doing our belated Secret-Santa family gift exchange, in-person and over Zoom. [Top right] Secret-Santa's gift to me was a fruit-carving kit, that came with a recipe/instruction booklet. [Bottom left] Tosay's screening of Narges Mohammadi's documentary film (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Keshvarieh Bathhouse in Tehran: This historic bathhouse on Tehran's Sirous (Mostafa Khomeini) Street was built in 1947 by Soleiman Sanaee and named after his wife, Keshvar Khodadad, after she passed away unexpectedly. The bathhouse was intended for use by Jews, who were not welcome at other bathhouses (6-minute video). [Bottom right] Today's UCLA lecture on Iranians' awareness of the country's ancient history (see the last item below).
(2) Free Narges Mohammadi Campaign: Eight women's rights and human rights organizations joined Voices of Women for Change for today's screening of "White Torture," a documentary film by Narges Mohammadi. The film screening was followed by a panel discussion.
The documentary, and the book by the same title on which it is based, stress the fact that Iran uses solitary confinement as a form of torture to break the resistance of political prisoners and extract confessions from them that are then used to strike them with long prison terms or even death sentences. Isolated from other prisoners and kept in the dark about their own case and whether their families even know where they are, detainees become extremely vulnerable to pressure and manipulation, often making self-incriminating false statements in the hopes of ending their torturous isolation.
Tiny solitary-confinement cells and social isolation affect not just the detainees' mental well-being but also impair their physical health. Many detainees emerge from solitary confinement with various physical ailments, not to mention lifelong mental scars. In the case of women prisoners, a routine part of solitary confinement is sexual humiliation and abuse.
In the panel discussion, the following participants presented their views on the documentary film and its assertion that solitary confinement is tantamount to torture: Elise Auerbach (Amnesty International); Tara Sepehri Far (Human Rights Watch); Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge); Dr. Mansour Farhang (Campaign for Human Rights in Iran); Taghi Rahmani (Narges Mohammadi's spouse; journalist/writer).
[Recording of today's event: 73-minute video of the proceedings, minus the documentary film]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Today marked the fourth anniversary of the devastating mudflow near Santa Barbara that killed 23.
- Iranian Kurdish poet Baktash Abtin dies in detention: He is the second political prisoner to die in 2022.
- UCSB has extended the period of on-line instruction at the beginning of winter quarter from 2 to 4 weeks.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 9, 2020: Be grateful to have survived to your current age!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 9, 2017: Here's your key to happiness!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 9, 2014: Persian verse about a dervish's dilemma at a sultan's feast.
(4) Killing is killing, be it by shooting, hanging, or denial of medical services: Iranian Kurdish poet Baktash Abtin did not die in prison, he was killed! Iran's Islamic regime should be held accountable for this killing. He was a poet, not an armed fighter, yet he was chained to his bed as he languished in prison.
(5) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Today, sociologist Dr. Ahmad Ashraf (affiliated with Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia U.) spoke in Persian under the title "How Has Iranians' Awareness of the Medes, Achaemenids and Parthians Been Shaped." As the program's coordinator, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge) started today's session by providing a brief overview of upcoming events [Link 1] [Link 2] in UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series and introducing today's speaker.
Recognized as a major contributor to the social history and historical sociology of modern Iran, Dr. Ahmad Ashraf [1934-] is a senior editor of Encyclopedia Iranica and has contributed several articles to the project. Themes in his works include social hierarchy in Iran, tradition and modernity, national identity of Iranians, agricultural relations in Iran, and charismatic leadership and theocratic government in post-revolutionary Iran.
According to Dr. Ashraf, Iranian historians became aware of the Medes, Achaemenids, and Parthian dynasties just over a century ago. As a case in point, Ferdowsi's 10-centuries-old epic poem, Shahnameh, regarded as the first written account of the ancient history of Iran, bears no mention of the Medes, Achaemenids, or Seleucid kings. Ferdowsi's very brief treatment of the Parthian dynasty, which ruled Iran for nearly 5 centuries (just before the Sassanids, indicates that perhaps not much was known about Persia's fairly-recent past history, let alone earlier history, at the time.
Awareness of Persia's long pre-Islamic history among native historians came about from the works of Western scholars, beginning with translations and compilations by writer/politician Mohammad Ali Foroughi [1877-1942], eventual prime-minister to Reza Shah. Later, Persepolis & Pasargadae excavations by German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld [1879-1948] and the 3-volume History of Ancient Iran by Hassan Pirnia [1871-1935] solidified and expanded the Persian-speaking world's awareness of the Medes, Achaemenids, and Parthians. Due to the importance of contributions of Ernst Herzfeld, Encyclopedia Iranica devotes five articles to his life and contributions as an archaeologist and Iranologist.
Thousands of tablets, held in numerous Western museums, provide a window into what went on in ancient Iran. Particularly detailed are accounts of finances (taxes). So, even though we know much about the economic conditions at the time, almost no traditional history is recorded. According to Dr. Ashraf, this dearth of information stems from the fact that much of history was considered confidential or, perhaps, too sacrosanct to share with commoners and enemies. Essentially, we know what the kings wanted us to know!
In the absence of authoritative written histories, the tradition of oral retelling of history took hold. Throughout ages, Shahnameh reciters presented in tea-houses and other public places their own interpretation of historical events, entertaining questions and comments from those in attendance. In this way, common people, from farmers to merchants, got involved in exchanging information and presenting their takes on history.
Dr. Ali Mousavi (UCLA) also spoke briefly, given that he was asked explicitly by Dr. Ashraf to comment on some aspects of the talk. Dr. Mousavi's work on an on-line encyclopedia of Iranian archaeological sites can be accessed via this Web site.
2022/01/07 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sidney Poitier dead at 94: Among his many firsts as a black actor was winning best-actor Oscar in 1964. RIP! [Center] Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf turns 150: Built in 1872, Stearns Wharf changed the face of the then-isolated Santa Barbara, opening the City to large-scale commerce & trade. [Right] "A Hero": Director Asghar Farhadi's latest film, Iran's entry for the best-international-film Academy Award, is being shown at Santa Barbara's Riviera Theater, this weekend and next week.
(2) Khamenei shows that he fears women: Iran's Supreme Leader attacks those, including some regime insiders, who believe that compulsory hijab laws are oppressive & unjust, suggesting that women who take their headscarves off in protest are paid by the "enemy" to do so. #LetUsTalk
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kazakhstan follows in Iran's footsteps by having security forces shoot at peaceful protesters.
- Aggressive passenger is escorted off her flight for refusing to wear a mask, as other passengers cheer!
- Global Village, Dubai: A 3-minute tour of the shopping center's Iran Pavilion.
- Persian music: Oldie song, performed as part of a pre-Revolution TV variety show. [3-minute video]
(4) Iranian regional music from the Caspian-Sea province of Guilan: A wonderful performance to honor Beh-Azin, a prolific Iranian writer/translator, on his birthday. [6-minute video]
(5) PDF files of my 1969 paper entitled "The Computer: Man's New Brain": After posting about a paper I wrote in May 1969 as part of the requirements for graduating from an English-language school in Washington DC, many friends/readers on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn inquired whether they could access the paper's PDF copy. In those days, we typed papers using manual typewriters, so PDFs didn't exist!
I decided to honor these requests by photographing the document's pages, which are within a bound volume holding a set of my miscellaneous writings over the years. The PDF documents produced from the said photos aren't ideal, but they are legible.
As you read the documents, please bear in mind that the paper was intended to show my mastery of the English language and not my knowledge of computer science. In fact, at the time, I had not yet embarked on studying computer science.
[English (the original, as submitted); Persian (translated by my father Salem Parhami & published in 1973)]
(6) We need to rethink higher education in the US: We have long known about serious problems in American universities, among them swollen administrative ranks and dearth of campus maintenance budget and staff support for teachers and researchers. The pandemic revealed further weaknesses in the way we deliver educational content and interact with our students. Now, triggered by a news story that University of Nebraska is considering eliminating its philosophy major, I began thinking about whether the majors we offer and the number of students in each major truly serve our national interests. Elimination of majors can be a slippery slope, if done with a purely utilitarian view, but instituting checks and balances, that allow us to evaluate all majors every few years and come up with new priorities and budget allocations, is a good thing. (On paper, this is already being done, but I have not seen a major eliminated or substantially shrunk in size over my ~3.5 decades at UCSB). It's too easy to just close our eyes to inefficiencies and relics from years past, and decide to "let things be" in the face of new economic realities and national needs. Rocking the boat takes courage, but if our boat is sinking, getting rid of inessential cargo is the only option for safe continuation of our journey.
2022/01/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Today's book talk on 'good anxiety and how to reap its benefits' (see the next item below). [Right] Professor Bahman Mehri: An old-time math professor at Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology, Mehri (left) is shown here being visited by Professor Bijan Zohuri-Zangeneh.
(2) Harnessing the power of anxiety into unexpected gifts: This was the theme of today's book talk on Zoom by Neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki, based on her new book, Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion. After presenting an introduction to her book, Dr. Suzuki was joined by Dr. Catherine Mogil (UCLA Associate Professor) in a discussion. [Recording of the event: 57-minute video]
Dr. Suzuki wrote the first draft of her book before the pandemic. Even then, she saw the anxiety level among students increasing. From evolutionary standpoint, anxiety and the stress response it triggers were developed to protect us. Good anxiety is different from debilitating (clinical) anxiety, which requires professional treatment. However, the tools described in Dr. Suzuki's book can be used alongside an expert's care.
Anxiety is essentially anticipation of threats and the resulting fears. So, fear results from an immediate threat, whereas anxiety comes about from thinking of possible threats. The fight or flight response creates anxiety, but our nervous system has another mechanism that acts to de-stress. The best way to activate the de-stressing response is deep breathing. Another tool is to just get up and walk, ascend and descend the stairs, or do any other physical activity. If you are headed into a situation that you know will cause anxiety (such as going to the doctor), prepare yourself by doing deep-breathing, walking, or dancing beforehand.
Anxiety brings to us several gifts or superpowers. One is the gift of improved productivity. Anxiety sometimes strikes when a number of what-ifs parade through our mind as we try to go to sleep. To deal with such a stress-inducing list of what-ifs, try to convert it into a to-do list for the following day. Another is the gift of empathy. As a teacher, Dr. Suzuki identifies with her students being shy or fearful to interact with her, because she suffered from the same form of anxiety as a student.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Armenians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 6, which they regard as the date of Christ's birth: Merry Christmas!
- Rallies are planned across the US to remember January 6, 2021, and to act to protect American democracy.
- Philadelphia fire at a house converted to apartments kills 12, including 8 children.
- A record 4.5 million Americans left their jobs in November 2021.
- Canadian court orders Iran to pay millions to families of victims of flight PS752.
- In a high-profile Tehran rape trial, #MeToo is branded a 'Zionist movement.'
- Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial in Iran: IranWire panel on YouTube, Wed. Jan. 12, 2022, 6:00 AM PST.
- Old-time Iranian singer Pooran: Her rise to fame, marriages, and sad ending. [11-minute video]
(4) Remembering the victims of flight PS752: Imagine being a parent, photographing your children as you see them off at the airport, and hearing a bit later that their flight has been shot down by the Iranian government, because it was "mistaken" for a missile. [Tweet photo] [#IWillLightACandleToo]
(5) SUTA technical talk: Dr. Niloufar Salehi (UC Berkeley) will speak in Persian under the title "Value-Centered Algorithm Design," Sunday, 2022/01/16, 9:00 AM PST. [Register]
(6) Final thought for the day: One year after the Capitol insurrection, the Republicans' chickens are coming home to roost. One by one, they are being exposed as intimately involved in encouraging/coordinating the rioters or complicit in stepping aside to allow their rampage.
2022/01/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Ted Chiang's Exhalation: Stories (see the next item below). [Center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "I freeze all my leftovers until I feel less guilty about throwing them away." [Right] Cover image of IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of Janauray 2022, features "Top Tech 2022" (see the last item below).
(2) Let us all support #UCSBReads & @UCSBLibrary for providing a community reading experience: The #UCSBReads2022 pick Exhalation: Stories, by Ted Chiang, will be discussed in panels and other special events over winter & spring quarters, culminating in an author talk at Campbell Hall on Tue., May 10, 2022, 7:30 PM.
(3) Ketamine therapy is going mainstream: The mind-altering drug has been shown to help people suffering from anxiety and depression, but there isn't general agreement on who can benefit from it.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- France detects the new IHU variant of COVID-19 with 46 mutations, which is more infectious than omicron.
- Women's plea: #LetUsTalk about abusive Islamist laws. Asking for dignity & justice isn't Islamophobia.
- Donald Trump's aides talked him out of giving a speech on January 6, for fear of bad publicity.
- CA Deputy DA Kelly Ernby, 46, who spoke out against vaccine mandates, dies of COVID-19 complications.
- Optical illusion: Reflection of a seemingly random pattern on a cup produces surprising images.
- Spiritual music: Performed by a big orchestra & choir in Turkey, based on verses from Mowlavi/Rumi.
(5) Persian music: This instrumental, recorder-plus-tonbak, version of the oldie song "Moo-ye Sepid" ("White Hair") with lyrics in the subtitles is ideal for karaoke. [4-minute video]
(6) On anti-Semistism: Whereas anti-Israel sentiments do not always result from anti-Semitism, very often anti-Semitism hides itself behind anti-Israel rants, because the latter is deemed more acceptable socially.
(7) IEEE Spectrum magazine's technology-review issue, January 2022: Featured on the cover is Boston Dynamics' robot for the worst possible job in a warehouse, that of loading heavy boxes onto a truck. It does the job at the rate of 800 boxes per hour. A list of the 12 feature articles in the magazine issue follows.
- First Win for the Neurorights Campaign: Chile plans to regulate all neurotech and ban the sale of brain data
- Flying Pallets Without Pilots: A startup will test a radical new vision of long-range cargo transport in Europe
- Brakes that Slam Themselves: Automatic emergency braking will become standard in Europe
- The Exascale Era Is Upon Us: The Frontier supercomputer may be the first to reach 10^18 operations/s
- NASA's Space Launch System Will Lift off: But with many rival rockets, the ultimate value of SLS is murky
- AI Computing Comes to Memory Chips: Samsung will speed up neural nets with processing-in-memory
- Bitcoin Currency for the Masses: Square simplified credit-card transactions. Now it wants to build hardware
- China's Green Winter Olympics: A variety of climate-friendly strategies will be on show, with the athletes
- Planet-Cooling Tests to Start: A geoengineering plan aims to spray reflective particles into the stratosphere
- A Robot for the Worst Job in the Warehouse: Boston Dynamics' Stretch can move 800 heavy boxes/hr
- Quantum Dots + OLED = Your Next TV: Formerly rival technologies will come together in Samsung displays
- A Pinch of Fusion: Zap Energy's new Z-pinch reactor will demonstrate a simpler approach to an elusive goal
2022/01/04 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mathematical fact: A triangle on the Euclidean plane can have at most one right angle. On a sphere, however, a triangle can have up to three right angles. [Top center] These Afghan boys, playing with toy & real guns, will forever be trapped in a culture of violence because of their upbringing. [Top right] Iranian activist/lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh chosen as one of Time magazine's 100 most-influential people for 2021. [Bottom left] Persian poetry: Sa'adi had this to say about the difference between a preacher and a teacher. One barely manages to pull his own rug from the waves, the other strives to save those who are drowning. [Bottom center] #IWillLightACandleToo: For the second anniversary of the downing of Flight PS752 in cold blood by the Iranian government. [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "I keep writing 'Stone Age' instead of 'Bronze Age' on all my checks."
(2) Ames Window: This is a fascinating optical illusion. A trapezoid painted to look like a window is spun. Our brain is programmed to assume that the longer side is closer to us (perspective). So, even when the shorter side is closer, we assume otherwise, leading to some weird effects.
(3) Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, found guilty on 4 of 11 federal charges, potentially facing a 20-year sentence: The story of Theranos, and the greed and hubris that sank it, is told in the book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Read my 4-star review of the book for a summary.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Accidents create traffic nightmare on I-95: Many drivers were stuck on the road for more than 24 hours.
- Kevin McCarthy, with a straight face: "Democrats are using the Capitol riots to divide our country."
- Marjorie Taylor Greene has been permanently banned from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
- Tesla recalls ~0.5M vehicles: Failure-prone cable connecting to Model 3's rear camera is the culprit.
- The Taliban behead female mannequins: Is it permitted for men to touch these mannequins' bodies?
- Broiled veggies, which we had for dinner: Or, as my son put it, chelow-kabob without the kabob! [Photo]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 3, 2018: Iranian women on the front lines of the fight for freedom & justice.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 3, 2016: On karaoke music for Iranian songs.
(5) Math puzzle: There are several numbers on a board. For example: 6 2 –1 –5 2 –4
An action consists of replacing two of them by their mean, such as replacing –4 and 2 by –1 and –1. What is the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an action sequence leading to 0s everywhere?
(6) Poor service from AAA SoCal: My car's battery was drained, possibly due to insufficient use in these work-from-home times, so I had to contact AAA. I used their on-line request form, but when I heard nothing back after 50 minutes, I called. It took me 15 minutes to speak to a live operator, who wasn't sure why the request, which was in their system, had not been answered. So, he sent the request forward "manually."
By this point, it was 65 minutes since I had placed the request. Another 10 minutes passed before I got a call and another 10 minutes before a technician arrived. He did not have a tow truck, so if the battery problem could not be resolved by electrical means, I would have had to wait for another 30 minutes for a tow truck to arrive. I had the 5-year-old battery replaced, just to be on the safe side.
The moral of the story is to use your car regularly and request roadside service by phone, not on-line.
2022/01/02 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Today's presentation on "Prisoners of Geography" (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Fun geographic fact: Iran has 250 villages & town called Ali-Abad (credit: Dr. Sirous Yasseri). [Bottom center] Missing political prisoner: Daughter of Ebrahim Babaei asks for help in finding her missing father, apparently kidnapped by Iran's security forces. [Bottom right] Iranian student activist Leila Hosseinzadeh has been released from prison on a bail of 1.5 billion tomans, pending her trial. The Iranian regime is scared to death of political activists, women in particular!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ritchie Boys: Secret US unit, bolstered by German-born Jews, that helped defeat Hitler. [41-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Jan. 2, 2017: Santa discriminates between rich and poor kids!
- Facebook memory from Jan. 2, 2015: The great Persian poet Sa'adi, on the prison of freedom without love.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 2, 2013: False and misleading stories on Fox News aren't new.
(3) "Prisoners of Geography": This was the title of today's Zoom meeting of the Fanni Class of 1968, in which Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U.) drew upon Tim Marshal's book by the same title and other sources to discuss the impact of geography on nations' destinies. The presentation and Q&A were in Persian. The meeting had some 50 participants at its peak.
Geography determines a country's access to natural resources, energy, and trade routes, and it also dictates vulnerability to military attacks. Limiting the scope of the discussion to fit the 2-hour meeting, Dr. Yasseri chose to discuss Asia, further focusing on three countries: Russia, China, and Iran. Whereas many countries are prisoners of their geography, a few lucky ones, notably the United States, have almost no geographic weaknesses that can be exploited by other countries.
*Russia: The flatness of European territory leading into Russia has tempted many invaders. However, Russia's vast area and harsh climate has made is impossible for the invaders to control it. Russia's military ports in the Black Sea have very limited access to open waters, and for this access, ships have to go through the Bosporus Strait and a narrow part of the Mediterranean, the entire path surrounded and controlled by NATO countries. One reason Ukraine has been in the news lately is its strategic importance to blocking NATO's influence in areas close to the Russian border.
*China: The vastness of China is a bit misleading. It has huge deserts and more than 90% of its population lives near the east coastal region. Yet China's sparsely-populated western and northern parts are important to its security and, more recently, to the establishment of the New Silk Road, connecting China to the rest of the world. China relies on the South China Sea for fishing, energy resources, and trade routes. Unfortunately for China, those routes often go through narrow passageways controlled by other countries. Building artificial islands is one of China's strategies for establishing a military presence in the area and to claim control over sea lanes that comes from owning land.
*Iran: With its long borders separating it from many different countries, Iran faces serious strategic challenges. It is vulnerable in the flat area of Khuzestan (which Iraq exploited in its invasion), from the northwest (Turkey and several former Soviet Republics), and from northeast (Afghanistan and several former Soviet Republics). Historically, the greatest vulnerability has been from the west, as exemplified by the ancient wars with Ionia. Iran has always wanted access to the Mediterranean Sea, which it achieved through expansion in the days of the Persian Empire. It seems that the Islamic Republic is trying to resurrect that access through controlling Iraq and Syria.
Dr. Yasseri recommended three sources for further study, all three of which have been translated into Persian: Tim Marshal's Prisoners of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan's The Revenge of Geography, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel (Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens covers some of the same ground as GG&S).
The talk generated much interest and it is likely that one or more additional sessions will be devoted to covering geographic influences in other world regions.
During the Q&A period, I pointed out that the technologies of naval and air warfare have made geography less of a factor, at least where military action is used to inflict damage, rather than to occupy & rule.
Another point raised was that the title "Prisoners of Geography" is somewhat of an exaggeration. Geography does have its influence, alongside many other factors. Nations have risen and fallen over time in the same geographic region. One should note, however, that exaggeration in book titles is the norm. Each author wants to stress some key points, and an exaggerated title does help in spreading the word. "Impact of Geography" is much less likely to grab the attention of potential readers.
2022/01/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy new year: Wishing everyone a lovely & bright 2022! [Center] My foray into AI in 1969 (see the last item below). [Right] The 2022 World Cup is coming (see the next item below).
(2) Soccer World Cup 2022: This year, the world's most-popular sports tournament will be held in Qatar. FIFA keeps threatening Iran with sanctions and ouster if it doesn't let women into sports arenas, but its threats seem to be toothless. Iran, being one of Asia's powerhouses in soccer, brings much revenue to FIFA; hence, the reluctance to go ahead with sanctions. We should increase the pressure on FIFA to act on its threats. World Cup 2022 provides an excellent stage to expose Iran's oppression of women. #ExpelIranFIFA
(3) The 2022 puzzle: Each year, I try to use the digits of the year number, in the original order and without repetition, to form as many different numbers as possible by inserting arithmetic operators. Here are a few examples. I have found expressions for all the numbers 0-12, except for 7 and 10.
0 = 2 × 0 + 2 – 2 1 = 2 × 0 + 2 / 2 2 = 2 × 0 × 2 + 2 3 = 2 + 0 + 2 / 2
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Technical error leads to the "accidental" destruction of 77 TB of data at Kyoto University.
- Legacy BlackBerry devices are said to be dying (losing functionality), again: This time it's for real, or is it?
- Arash Fouladvand and The Bahar Choir invite you to join virtual classes for singing with a big orchestra.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 1, 2013: Kurdish women baking bread in an outdoor oven.
(5) Facebook memory from Jan. 1, 2017: "It is the men who are attacking the women—if there is a curfew, let the men stay at home." ~ PM Golda Meir, when asked to establish a curfew for women to end a series of rapes
(6) Math puzzle: We roll n fair and independent dice with k faces, bearing the numbers 1 through k. What is the expected value of the minimum number showing up?
(7) My next IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitors Program Lecture: Speaking for IEEE Central Coast Section, I will discuss "Interconnection Networks for Parallel Processors and Data Centers," on Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 6:30 PM PST. [Register for Zoom link]
(8) "The Computer: Man's New Brain": I am preparing a talk entitled "Let's Not Call Everything AI: A Realistic Assessment of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning." Working on this talk, reminded me of how I was introduced to computer science and fell in love with it. I was studying English at ELS Language Center in Washington DC during early 1969, in preparation for beginning my graduate studies in electrical engineering at Oregon State University. One graduation requirement of the Center's program was writing a paper. I frequented the DC public library and immersed myself in books. The books I chanced upon included Irving Adler's Thinking Machines (1961), W. Ross Ashby's Design for a Brain (1962), Edmund C. Berkeley's Giant Brains or Machines that Think (1949), and John von Neumann's The Computer and the Brain (1959). The topic fascinated me so much that instead of EE, I pursued CS in grad school. The rest, as they say, is history! Four years later, my father translated the paper into Persian and published it in Iran as a bilingual booklet, pricing it at $1.50, while I was working at UCLA after earning my PhD there. The cheesy cover art is mine!
Blog Entries for 2021
2021/12/31 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Auto wash bowl: In the early 1920s Chicago, drivers could drive around this bowl several times to clean their car's undercarriage, before pulling into a stall and getting a regular wash by an attendant. [Top center] Math humor: Pretty logical conclusion, I'd say! [Top right] Ayatollah Khomeini's proclamation of 1964: "Give us control over the country's culture. Appoint one of us Minister of Culture and if after 10-15 years, we don't do better than you, kick us out." Well, I'd say that 42 years is more than 15 years. Will your followers honor your words and not shoot us when we try to kick them out? [Bottom left] Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Betty White is interviewed by People magazine about her secrets to a happy life at 100. (P.S.: Unfortunately, she didn't make it to her 100th birthday in 2022, passing away today at 99. RIP!) [Bottom right] Goodbye 2021! (see the next item below)
(2) A year-end wish: As we count down the final hours of 2021 and look past the challenges of the past two years and gloom-and-doom predictions to 2022, may your transition to the new year be accomplished with peace and joy, and may the new year bring you much hope, health, happiness, & success! [3-minute video]
(3) To fundamental-Islamists in Iran, who say expats living abroad should return and help build the country: Well, we were building the country, when you forced us out! Now that you have had your own and your fellow gang members' pockets filled and turned the country into a sewage dump, you expect us to come clean up your mess. No, thanks. We won't abandon the new life that we built for our families and return to Iran, so as to face baseless accusations and prison terms! [In Persian]
(4) "Prisoners of Geography": This is the title of a Zoom meeting for Fanni Class of 1968, in which Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U.) will draw upon Tim Marshal's book by the same title and other sources to discuss the impact of geography on nations' destinies. In Persian, Sunday, January 2, 2022, 10:00 AM PST. [Contact me for link]
(5) Book review: Greene, Joshua, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them, unabridged 15-hour audiobook, read by Mel Foster, Brilliance Audio, 2013.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book describes the workings of our moral judgement system and seeks to offer solutions to the crisis in public morality. Joshua Green [1972-], Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is a Harvard-educated American experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher. His research is primarily in the domain of psychology and neurology of moral judgement and the complementary roles of emotional and reasoned responses to moral challenges.
Let me begin by presenting the book's table of contents (chapter numbers are given in parentheses).
Introduction: The Tragedy of Common-Sense Morality
I. Moral Problems (1-3): The Tragedy of the Commons; Moral Machinery; Strife on the New Pastures
II. Morality Fast and Slow (4-5): Trolleyology; Efficiency, Flexibility, and the Dual-Process Brain
III. Common Currency (6-8): A Splendid Idea; In Search of Common Currency; Common Currency Found
IV. Moral Convictions (9-10): Alarming Acts; Justice and Fairness
V. Moral Solutions (11-12): Deep Pragmatism; Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Six Rules for Modern Herders
Moral challenges arising from conflicts of interest between an individual and his/her group or tribe are referred to as me-versus-us problems. Our emotional response is capable of dealing with such problems, because it has evolved to do precisely that. Human societies share some principles of moral conduct and a larger number of notions on which they disagree. These points of disagreement create the category of us-versus-them problems. Our emotions are ill-equipped to deal with such problems. To make progress, we need to learn to negotiate, and negotiation requires compromise.
Consider an important example of the latter kind of moral challenges: The pro-choice vs. pro-life debate. If the two sides focus on "rights," that is, right-to-choose or right-to-life, they will never reach agreement. According to Greene, the proper way of conducting this debate is to take a utilitarian view and examine in detail the social consequences of abortions and forced-births.
The overlap between Greene's book and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is obvious (see the title of Part II).
[My 5-star review]
Less obvious is the book's overlap with another book I have recently read and reviewed, Survival of the Friendliest, by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods (friendliness, which requires sacrifice and understanding, gives us an evolutionary advantage).
[My 4-star review]
I recommend Moral Tribes highly, but also urge caution about accepting Greene's pronouncements wholesale. In particular, bear in mind that utilitarianism has its critics, most noteworthy among them being Aldous Huxley in his dystopian sci-fi novel, Brave New World.
[My 5-star review]
2021/12/29 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Calutron Girls: The women of the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge, TN, 1944. [Top center] This one-room school in Iran, with no door or windows, is given the grandiose name "Imam's Heritage." Imam's heritage, indeed! [Top right] Optical illusion: Most people see these two identical drawings as showing a young woman. Stare at them for a while and you may see them as an old woman. Now, try to see one as a young woman and the other as an old one. [Bottom left] Remembering two of the victims of the downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 by Iran's Revolutionary Guards: Mother & daughter Parisa & Reera Esmaeilion. [Bottom center] Inspired by Masih Alinejad's posting of photos of herself as a little girl with forced hijab and as a grown-up without hijab, other Iranian women are sharing similar stories. [Bottom right] Look at these two faces: Saba Kord Afshari, on the left, received a 24-year prison sentence in Iran for opposing compulsory hijab laws. The one on the right, Masoumeh Ebtekar, a leader of the hostage takers at US Embassy in Tehran, is a darling of international media as the face of moderates in the Islamic Republic! (Source)
(2) Justice served: A jury has found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty on five of six counts related to her role in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minor girls between 1994 and 2004. The monstrous Epstein got off too easy. He should have been humiliated in a trial.
(3) Book review: Ferguson, Niall, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, unabridged audiobook on 9 CDs, read by Simon Prebble, Tantor Audio, 2008. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Math humor: If pi = 3.14 and e = 2.72, then pie = 8.54.
- Math oddity: 1^7 + 4^7 + 4^7 + 5^7 + 9^7 +9^7 + 2^7 + 9^7 = 14459929
- Awkward note (humor): Please know that the "one-way" frosty glass in your bathroom is installed backwards!
- Facebook memory from Dec. 29, 2015: How I spent my Christmas holidays in France six years ago.
(5) Iran's exported fruits & vegetables are being returned to sender: They contain unsafe levels of pesticide residues. Other reports indicate that the government distributes the returned produce to the needy! Apparently, Russian, Iraqi, and other lives matter more than Iranian lives. [4-minute video]
(6) Making money off Imam's name: The organization that manages the tomb/shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini is involved in business/commercial activities that have nothing to do with its original function. [5-minute video]
(7) Major scientific accord: The management entity for Imamzadehs (tombs of Imams' children) Eynali and Zeynali sign an agreement with Iran's Medical Sciences University to expand the use of traditional medicine. Note the Imamzadehs' website address appearing on the screen behind the signers in this image.
(8) Forough Farrokhzad's name is everywhere on her birthday (December 29): She was a wonderful and brave poet and has left us a treasure-trove of poetry. However, there is a sense among some, including the writer of this essay (in Persian), that Iranians' dead-people-worship tendency has led to exaggerating her influence and contributions, particularly in the areas of politics and feminism. I think this view makes some sense. To honor someone, we don't need that person to be an angel or superhuman.
(9) Final thought for the day: You don't have a civil right to make other people sick. You do have the right to stay home and not fly on a plane if you strongly oppose getting vaccinated.
2021/12/28 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book: Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization (see the next item below). [Center] Global GDP 2021: Visualizing the $94 trillion world economy in one chart. Only 18 countries have greater than 1% share of the world's economy. [Right] Book: Fashionable Nonsense (see the last item below).
(2) Brief book review: Rifkin, Jeremy, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, Tarcher, 2010. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
(3) Fredun Hojabri, one of the founders of Sharif U. Technology Association (SUTA) has passed away: Here is a 79-minute conversation with him, recorded in 2018 as part of SUTA's oral-history project.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sudden deaths: Football player/coach/broadcaster John Madden, 85; Former Senate Leader Harry Reid, 82.
- COVID deaths per 100,000: Unvaccinated 6.1; Vaccinated 0.5; Boosted 0.1; Case closed, dear anti-vaxxers!
- Masih Alinejad's Washington Post opinion piece: "Why Twitter should ban Iran's Supreme Leader"
- Per-capita gross national income over Seven decades: South Korea (blue) vs. North Korea (red). [Chart]
(5) A crony of Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei tweets one of his old statements without attribution: He is accused by his compatriots of being a counter-revolutionary and an Israeli spy! This is what happens when there is no accountability and the dictator can say whatever is expedient at the time.
(6) Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, translated from the French original, Picador, 1998. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[I wrote this review on Dec. 28, 2010, and am posting it to GoodReads and elsewhere on Dec. 28th, 2021.]
This book (which I learned about through an e-mail message sent to me by someone I do not know, who thought I might find it interesting, given my book reviews and other writings) resonated with me, for reasons that I will outline first, before writing about the book itself.
In science and engineering fields, the current Holy Grail is "interdisciplinary research," which draws upon knowledge and methods from two or more disciplines to create useful new ideas, understandings, processes, or products. Examples of interdisciplinary fields that have led to exciting new results include biomedical engineering, computational linguistics, and human-machine interaction. There is, however, a serious danger in any interdisciplinary field: that of abuse and deceit. It is very rare nowadays for anyone to be highly skilled and knowledgeable in two or more different disciplines. So, interdisciplinary researchers typically are people from one discipline who have picked up some information from the other discipline(s) through informal studies. For example, an engineer might pore over the biomedical literature, or pick the brains of biomed specialists, in order to understand problems in the latter field and then work on engineering solutions to those problems. Here comes the rub: it is very easy to impress medical people with engineering concepts and jargon, and vice versa, so one sees many half-baked ideas presented in the scientific/technical forums of these fields in which shallow knowledge in one or another field is imminently visible. So-called hot or trendy fields are particularly prone to abuse and deceit, given financial and status motives. [Read more]
2021/12/27 (Monday): My bilingual English/Persian review of Fariba Sedighim's novel, I in Parentheses.
Book review: Sedighim, Fariba, I in Parentheses (a novel, in Persian), Aftab Publications, 2021, 252 pp. in PDF file (ISBN: 978-1-716-07255-0). [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
From the back-cover blurb: "How many centuries had we been living together? Twice we had upgraded our residence in accordance with Mani's income. Our house had changed, but we had remained the same. Objects change more than we do; a table is scratched, cloth is stained, iron rusts, but a person builds a mental story and will remain its prisoner for a lifetime. I built the story of me and him, and of our life together, in my mind, and after all these years, was still playing my role in that story." [From the bottom of p. 37 in the PDF copy]
Fariba Sedighim has written children's books and published poetry collections. Her recent books reflect not only the experience of writing in exile, but also the challenges faced by women and religious minorities in Iran and abroad. Writing fiction is a blessing for authors, Iranians in particular, because it allows them to tackle many subjects beyond their personal experiences, including those considered taboo, of which there are many examples, not only in Iran but within the Iranian diasporic community.
The author apparently uses "parentheses" in her title, I in Parentheses, as a restraining harness, which may crush whoever or whatever comes between its two arcs. In the English language, we use "in parentheses" to indicate that we are about to add something, perhaps a tangential detail, before returning to the main topic. So, one might surmise that the author wants to offer some comments about herself or the story's protagonist, Niloofar, before going back to the main story. But what is the main story?
The story, centered around the co-dependent, lustful relationship between Niloofar and Mani, unfolds in 18 segments (chapters), the first two focusing on the protagonist's parents, Narges & Nasser, and the last one, entitled "We Will Forget," shows Niloofar finally freed from an unhealthy relationship, having acquired an unspecified professional skill through education. Niloofar's mother emerges as a loving character, while her father is painted as stifling her spirit and creativity. She sometimes wanted her father dead, and felt guilty for wishing him harm.
The main part of the story is that of unhappy Niloofar, who follows her boyfriend, Mani, from Iran to Los Angeles, in part to flee her authoritarian and smothering father, while coping with the fact that she is no more than a plant in her boyfriend's life. Niloofar doesn't have a life of her own. No friends. No regular job. She is fully dependent on Mani and appears to have no choice but to endure his antics. There is no discussion of what Mani does for a living, but we do learn that Niloofar doesn't know his work phone number. As a love interest, Mani is sandwiched between uncle Esfandiar, the subject of Niloofar's teenage infatuation, and Borzoo, the father of a student she tutors, becoming a love interest when Mani begins seeing another woman and urges her to experiment as well.
The novel begins when the 13-year-old Niloofar loses her mom, an event that crushes her and sends her dad into depression. The dad eventually recovers and feels guilt for having neglected his daughter for a long time. Despite the attention of several family members, Niloofar is quite lonely, projecting various real and imaginary characters onto the ceiling, which serves as her best friend. This reliance on imagined and projected friends is part of the anti-social character of Niloofar, which leads to her making unwise choices and always worrying about whether she has damaged a relationship beyond repair.
The three love interests forming the story's canvas allow the author to paint other characters and concerns, including neglect, interpersonal mistrust, hard-to-leave toxic relationships, abortion, self-harm, alcohol/drug abuse, and sexual assault. In Niloofar's description of her life with Mani, there are multiple references to a spider in the bathtub, likely a stand-in for something scary in that home or relationship. She is hesitant to kill the spider. But one day, she gets rid of it as her life takes a new turn.
Niloofar is the main narrator of the story, but, occasionally, another character takes over and narrates a small part, providing the reader with a different perspective on Niloofar's relationship with that character. I sometimes have problems with stories that go back and forth in time. Describing events out of sequence can be intriguing, as it forces the reader to put the story together in his/her mind like a jigsaw puzzle. However, if not done right, flashbacks and flashforwards can be disorienting, given the human mind's proclivity for linear stories, with logical progression from one event to the next.
I have previously reviewed Sedighim's Persian-language novel, Liora, a 2016 book which has only recently become available in Iran. Lack of historical references and focusing exclusively on characters, free from the sociopolitical context, makes this new story a bit less compelling. The writing and editing, though improved, remain uneven, becoming more absorbing in segments where the author describes Niloofar's infatuation with Esfandiar and her early relationship with Mani, languishing a bit when she gets to her romantic involvement with Borzoo.
[Persian version of this review] [My reviews of Liora: English, on GoodReads; Persian, on Facebook]
2021/12/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Our small family gathering on Christmas Day, with dinner & dessert tables (we also celebrated Yalda Night, aka winter solstice, belatedly). [Bottom left] Charging an electric AMC Gremlin at a curbside charging station, 1 hour for $0.25 (Seattle, 1973). [Bottom center] #BanKhamenei: Iranians are asking Twitter to ban Supreme Leader Khamenei, who spews hateful messages and orders killings on social media while blocking access to 88 million Iranians. [Bottom right] There are quite a few pedal-powered personal transportation options, none more beautiful than this Nautilus Steampunk Velomobile.
(2) Book review: Dixon, Thomas, Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2008.
I wrote my review of this small (11 cm by 17 cm), thin (150 pp.) book on December 24, 2009 and posted it as a 4-star review to GoodReads 12 years later, on December 26, 2021.
(3) Will AI destroy education? This question is asked by Moshe Vardi, who, writing in the January 2022 issue of Communications of the ACM, describes AI as the new shiny hammer of the tech industry in search of nails. He concludes thus: "The educational system is one of the treasures of human civilization. Applying the attitude of 'disruptive innovation' to education risks causing tremendous damage. Technology can lead to improved education, but only if we move slow and do not break things."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Laureate who helped end apartheid in South Africa, dead at 90.
- Optical illusion: These boxes never actually move, despite strong visual cues to the contrary. [GIF image]
- What's the next Greek-alphabet letter after omicron? Here's your reference list for the next variants!
- I like how these guys enjoy their snake kabob with vodka, but I doubt I'd try it! [6-minute video]
- Azeri music: A beautiful song, played with accordion and tonbak. [1-minute video]
- Iranian street-food in Paris: offering Kabob-e Luli on Neauphle-le-Chateau Street. [3-minute video]
(5) Here is my simple rule for social-media platforms: Any leader who blocks his/her people from using a platform should be banned from that platform. [#BanKhamenei]
(6) Mathematical curiosity: The largest-known prime number whose decimal representation contains only two different numerals has 4157 digits. It begins and ends with 35353.
(7) Vostok Lake under the ice of Antarctica: Hidden under 4 km of ice, the 0.9-km deep lake, the largest of hundreds of such lakes under the Antarctic ice, harbors ancient life, isolated and evolved independently from the rest of life on Earth for 25 million years.
(8) Holy grail or fool's gold? After years of claims and doubts, nuclear fusion is making news again. Can we finally reverse global warming by tapping into the atomic-level process that powers the stars?
2021/12/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Wishing everyone a joyous Christmas, a peaceful week ahead, and a bright new year! [Top center] A sample from Washington Post's most-stunning photos of 2021. [Top right] Iranian MP: "If people don't respond voluntarily to our call for having more children to help increase Iran's population, we will make them bear more children." [Bottom left & center] Last digits of Fibonacci numbers, when written in decimal, are periodic, with a period of 60. They are also periodic, when numbers are written in other bases. [Bottom right] Persian calligraphic art offers endless variations, symmetries, and geometric designs.
(2) British women are demanding that men be banned from the streets at night, instead of advising women not to go on the streets, because a male serial-killer is on the loose. [Persian tweet]
(3) NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launched this morning: Lifting off atop an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, the world's most-powerful space observatory will start orbiting the sun in about a month, and will look deeper into space than we have ever been able to do. Among other activities, the telescope will take a closer look at some exoplanets to answer questions about their formation & evolution.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Wishing all essential and front-line workers a merry Christmas and a bright new year! [Image]
- Despite judicial and security crackdowns, Iranian teachers continue their peaceful protests in 100+ cities.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 24, 2020: "Jingle Bells," played Persian style! [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 24, 2015: Memorable Christmas Eve, when we visited my daughter in France.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 24, 2013: My review of David Sedaris's Naked, just uploaded to GoodReads.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 25, 2016: Christmas dining tradition for Jews! [Photo]
(5) Fifty years of P vs. NP and the possibility of the impossible: The P vs. NP problem turned 50 in 2021 and its resolution remains far out of reach. Advances in algorithms, machine learning, and hardware can help tackle many NP-hard problems once thought impossible. So, P vs. NP is now more a way to chart the future possibilities for our field, rather than an urgent question to be settled.
(6) Is the global computing community irrevocably divided? The technological, economic, and geopolitical rift between the US and China, world's two computing superpowers, is hurting information-sharing and academic research, writes Andrew A. Chien, CACM's Editor-in-Chief, in the magazine's January 2022 issue.
(7) Article of possible interest to my Iranian readers: Nile Green, "The Survival of Zoroastrianism in Yazd," Iran (J. British Institute of Persian Studies), Vol. 38, No. 1, 2000, pp. 115-122. [Link]
From the article's conclusion: "In the early days of the Islamic Republic, many Zoroastrians feared for their futures in the new Iran, and there were numerous emigrations as a consequence. Ironically, it is perhaps this that has proven to be the most damaging force for Zoroastrianism in Iran in decades. The main problems facing the Zoroastrians of Yazd during the 1990s appeared to be their shrinking numbers and the legislation requiring conversion to Islam on marrying any Muslim Iranian. ... The old Zoroastrian way of life, preserved for centuries in the isolation of the villages of the plains around Yazd, is regrettably close to extinction, but the decline of village life in Iran is not a uniquely Zoroastrian process. Yet there is great commitment on the part of the Zoroastrians to hand on their traditions to their children. Provided too many more of them do not either migrate to Tehran or emigrate completely, and so long as their parents manage to dissuade them from inter-marriage with Muslims, the Zoroastrians of Yazd seem assured of a prolonged future."
2021/12/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] David Kaiser's impressive science-history book, How the Hippies Saved Physics (see the last item below). [Center & Right] RIP, Joan Didion, 1934-2021 (see the next item below).
(2) Farewell to California writer Joan Didion [1934-2021]: In a course I took on writing great sentences, this sentence from Didion was included as a prominent example: "The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies off the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves."
Let me also share with you a review of her book Blue Nights, which I wrote on November 23, 2015.
(3) Gender inequity in academia: It's no secret that women face discrimination in academia, as in other work environments. Yet, it's jarring to learn that the percentage of women in the assistant-professor rank rises with age (peaking at 60% around age 60), while the female percentage declines at higher academic ranks (dipping below 33% for full professors, beginning at age 60). [Chart] [Source]
(4) These little school girls in Gorgan, Iran, are jubilant and they show it in no uncertain terms: Shame on grown men who view these bundles of joy as objects of sexual desire and make them cover their hairs and wear loose-fitting dresses. [Tweet, with video]
(5) Book review: Kaiser, David, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by Sean Runnette, Blackstone Audio, 2011.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In the 1970s, funding for physics went on a downward spiral. Large numbers of graduates had to compete for scarce employment opportunities, so students began shunning the field. Then, a quirky band of underemployed physicists in Berkeley, California, decided on a freewheeling approach to physics research, discussing ideas while sitting in hot tubs, high on drugs, or in secret locations, away from the eyes and ears of their skeptical, establishment mentors, mixing in doses of philosophy, psychic mind-reading, and Eastern mysticism.
Quantum physics is hailed as a towering achievement of humankind, yet the path to its monumental discoveries wasn't well-defined or smooth. Bell's Theorem (dispelling the belief that quantum physics is incomplete and thus requires consideration of physical properties outside the theory, the so-called "hidden variables," to make accurate predictions) is a case in point. It took years before John Stewart Bell's 1964 paper was even cited and many more years before skeptics could be brought to accept it.
Kaiser, an MIT physicist and historian of science, takes us on a tour of the development of quantum physics, from its inception in the 1920s to nearly a century later. Today, the exotic and endangered quantum physics of the 1970s is but a distant memory, having produced quantum information theory, hyped to be our ticket out of computationally-tough problems and a cure for the end of exponential hardware performance growth.
Particularly intriguing for me was Kaiser's discussion of how entanglement or "spooky action at a distance" predicted by Bell's Theorem was taken by some to mean that mind-reading and other notions of parapsychology made sense. The conclusion that human mind and consciousness were quantum-mechanical in nature followed. Similarly, attempts were made to describe the observer effect in terms of the involvement of human consciousness in any measurement.
The book is a masterful piece of science-history writing, weaving just the right amount of science, alongside human-interest stories that provided the context for scientific advances in quantum physics. In writing the book, Kaiser set out to untangle the counter-intuitive aspects of quantum physics and how the "shut up and compute" attitude of its early days has been replaced by a quest for impact and meaning, while also providing a window into the lives of physicists, as they worked on scientific problems in a turbulent world of culture clashes and Vietnam War.
Here is an interesting interview with the author as part of the "Voices of the Manhattan Project" series.
2021/12/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Distribution of US faculty by academic rank & age (see the next item below). [Top center] You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to respect: "The world should respect Afghan traditions, particularly in the area of girls' education." ~ Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan [Top right] Math puzzle: The blue square's area is one-half that of the outer square's. Find the measure of the unknown angle. [Bottom row] Throwback Thursday: Nearly four decades ago, I experimented with an old photo-digitization app that created files for character-printers. I used the app to digitize some of my portraits at different resolutions for use in documents and for submission to certain journals along with accepted papers. Recently, I found these images in a file, as I was looking for something else.
(2) The aging of tenure-track faculty in the US: Normally, one would expect the number of faculty members to decline in higher academic ranks. It makes sense that not all assistant professors make it to the associate rank and a number of those in the associate rank leave academia or fail to earn the next promotion. However, the aging of US professors has upended this logical distribution. Academic rank is correlated with age, as shown in the accompanying chart. Because the areas of various colors represent the total number of faculty at different ranks, it seems that the numbers do not decline as we go to higher ranks, indicating that faculty members are advancing in age. Another chart (Figure 4) in the source article shows the number of women in the assistant professor rank actually rising with age, while their numbers decline at associate and full-professor levels.
(3) The White House, to unvaccinated Americans: "You're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCSB will go back to remote instruction for the first few weeks of the winter 2022 quarter.
- Parts of Highway 101 in the San Luis Obispo area were flooded for a few hours, but the road is open now.
- Trump can deny it all he wants, but his anti-Semitism shows, again and again.
- Former Israeli officials are having second thoughts about their government opposing the Iran nuclear deal.
- Today's Iran is defined by two words, "corruption" & "brutality": Advice to those who want to travel to Iran.
- Robotic students: How one bot-sleuthing professor fought back fake community-college enrollees.
- Harnessing the power of anxiety into unexpected gifts: Book talk by Neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
- Lady Gaga's wonderful rendition of a medley of songs from "The Sound of Music." [5-minute video]
(5) Early warning: Seconds before a 6.2-magnitude quake struck the sparsely-populated Northern California coast on Dec. 20, the phones of 0.5M area residents began to buzz, giving them a bit of time to take cover.
(6) Why I didn't return to Iran, after my 1986-1987 sabbatical leave: I would like to share with you my letter of January 30, 1987 (Persian original; my just-completed English translation), two days before my 40th birthday, explaining the reasons for resigning from my faculty position at Sharif University of Technology in Iran, after 13 years of service, 5 years before and 8 years after the Islamic Revolution.
By not returning to Iran, I forfeited three years of salary that I had deposited in a special government account, all funds in my retirement & other university accounts, and a piece of land that I had acquired from a university cooperative to build a house. As a result, I had to start my life from near-zero at age 40 (I had a job, but almost no belongings). I don't regret that decision, though!
I received word from the university administration that I should retract my letter of resignation and submit a different version that wasn't antagonistic! I responded that the letter you see in this post wasn't a part of my official resignation letter, but an attempt to explain my decision to colleagues, to whom I felt an obligation.
2021/12/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Happy Iranian Yalda Festival: Essential supplies, from Costco, for our celebration and the Iranian regime's desparate attempt to discourage people from getting together to celebrate (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Our Dollar Tree store has become Dollar-and-a-Quarter Tree store! [Bottom center] Survival of the Friendliest (see the last item below). [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Of course you feel great. These things are loaded with antidepressants."
(2) This year's Yalda-Night/Chelleh/Winter-Solstice is on Tuesday, 12/21: The eve of the first day of winter is celebrated by Iranians, marking the night when forces of evil (darkness) have reached their maximum strength and the Sun begins its offensive, as the days grow longer. Yalda is celebrated with pomegranates, watermelon, persimmons, mixed dried-fruit & nuts, and various other Iranian sweets. [1-minute music video]
The Iranian regime promotes Islamic mourning rituals and shuns Iranian celebrations: It issued guidelines for mourning Fatemeh Zahra's martyrdom, but recommended that people not get together to celebrate Yalda Night, owing to COVID-19! The Iranian culture is filled with festivals and other happy occasions, while the Islamic culture imposed on the country by the mullahs observes mostly sad occasions.
[P.S.: As we celebrate the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is arriving down under.]
(3) Book review: Hare, Brian and Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Rene Ruiz, Random House Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Darwin's expression "survival of the fittest" has been interpreted and misunderstood in many different ways. The thesis of this book is that friendliness (sociability, cooperation) is the correct interpretation of fitness for survival. When animals are domesticated, they become friendly, first because they are selected from among the friendliest of their species (for example, friendly wolves that hung out around human encampments to benefit from discarded food were domesticated to become dogs) and second due to artificial selection once they are in the company of humans.
In this book, the husband-and-wife team Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods explore selection pressures and adaptations that help explain why we can be kind toward one group of strangers and cruel toward others. The explanation proceeds along the line of self-domestication theory that the first author helped develop. The self-domestication theory posits that around 200,000 years ago, less-aggressive individuals became preferred social partners, enabling the formation of larger social groups and, over millennia, leading to cities with many thousands or even millions of inhabitants.
The friendliness trait of modern humans helped us prevail over other human species that coexisted with us for long periods of time. These other species were also strong, smart, and inventive, but they did not have our remarkable ability to coordinate and communicate with others. Our ability to cooperate has allowed us to benefit from specialization, which is one of the driving forces of technological advancement.
As a species becomes domesticated, it loses brain mass, given its reduced need for decision-making due to being fed and cared for. It also undergoes many other transformations in physical and mental traits, including shortened reproductive cycles, changes in coat colors/patterns, altered tails, floppiness of ears, reduced body mass, and smaller teeth. Self-domestication of humans has brought about changes that are consistent with the general trends.
The dark side of friendliness toward some groups (family, clan, tribe) is protectiveness, which leads to cruelty toward outsiders. This cruelty is often justified by dehumanizing those outside our group. Such acts of dehumanization are seen among racists who might equate blacks with apes or consider them a link in the evolution of apes to humans. Bear in mind, however, that dehumanization does not occur only in racial contexts. Any social group can be dehumanized by focusing on certain traits or behaviors that are deemed disgusting by another group.
2021/12/20 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Dr. Ahmad Ashraf will speak in Persian under the title "How has Iranians' Awareness of the Medes, Achaemenids and Parthians Been Shaped," Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, 11:30 AM PST (Register). [Top center] My year in books, according to GoodReads: I think I'll make it to 100 books over the holidays! [Top right] Political prisoner Alieh Motalebzadeh faces violation of her human rights in Iran. [Bottom row] Sunday's walk in Santa Barbara's downtown and on Stearns Wharf.
(2) Carole King and James Taylor, together again: CNN will air a new documentary/concert by the storied duo on Sunday, January 2, 2022, 9:00 PM EST.
(3) Trump was unsuccessful in overturning the election result: However, Joe Manchin seems to have accomplished the feat, at least in the area of domestic policy. He acted as a 51st Republican Senator in helping defeat Joe Biden's most-important domestic policy proposal.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- According to Trump, evangelical Christians love Israel and care about it, while Jewish Americans don't.
- Kurdish political prisoner #HeidarQorbani secretly executed in Iran, even though appeals were still pending.
- News from Australia: Six children killed after wind lifted a bouncy castle at a school event.
- Iran's Imam Sadegh U.: Cash cow for an ayatollah's family and degree mill for the family & regime insiders.
- Math puzzle: The blue square inside the 1 × 1 outer square has an area of 1/2. What's the unknown angle?
- Got my COVID-19 booster today: Dealing with some mild side-effects. Will be back in full force tomorrow.
(5) Self-healing concrete: By adding bacterial spores to concrete, along with a food source for them, cracks in concrete can be filled automatically, thus preventing harmful substances from creeping in and causing performance degradation. [4-minute video]
(6) SpinLaunch: This company claims that it can send satellites into orbit by accelerating them through a spinning mechanism instead of by using rockets. The technology is hyped as being cheaper and environmentally friendlier. There are skeptics, of course, so we must wait before judging. [6-minute video]
(7) The Hill reports that White House incivility lost Joe Manchin: Sure, it seems that others also have trouble believing Manchin's verbal and written explanation, that the bill was bad for people of West Virginia.
2021/12/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Patriarchy in Iran (see the next item below). [Top right] I am going another year with minimalist holiday decorations. Happy holidays! [Bottom left & center] Food to share with family: English-muffin veggie mini-pizzas made by me and one of several batches of schnitzels made by my sister on an outdoor hot plate. [Bottom right] Ken Jennings' Because I Said So! (see the last item below).
(2) Patriarchy and the complicity of "modern" women: Believe it or not, Iranian families, even some educated ones, used to undress their male children for family photos, to show their pride in having a son! Recently, Iran's former Empress, a French-educated woman, indicated in an interview that she was jubilant when she gave birth to a son as her first child, adding that a daughter would have been okay too, given that she and her husband could try again! Around the same time, Senator Mehrangiz Manouchehrian was trying to reform Iran's stone-age family laws and went as far as to suggest that the successor to the Shah did not have to be a male child. The Shah tried to silence her, so as not to offend the Islamic clerics. She was later accused of being an infidel and a closet communist! [Adapted from a poignant Facebook essay, in Persian, by Mehrnoosh Mousawi]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tickets of $100+: "Trump's History Show" with Bill O'Reilly continues with many unsold seats.
- God told a Texas pastor to build a $7M mansion, so, he claims, he shouldn't be required to pay taxes on it.
- Math puzzle: If x + 1/x = 3, what is x^3 + 1/x^3?
- Persian music: Beautiful rhythmic piece, performed by Fariba Tavakkoloi & Mohammad-Ali Salmanpoor.
(4) Known as the Harvard of evangelical schools, Moody Bible Institute reprimanded women who complained about sexual abuse for tempting their male classmates.
(5) Book review: Jennings, Ken, Because I Said So! The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by the author, Tantor Audio, 2012.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Record-setting "Jeopardy!" (TV trivia game show) champion Ken Jennings decided to test the proposition that "parents know best." Spoiler alert: They don't! People with young kids better safeguard their copy of this book, as it could be quite damaging to your sense of self-importance if your kids get a hold of it!
Examples of the many dozens of myths busted by Jennings include:
- Swallowed chewing-gum can remain in your stomach for 7 years
- You'll cramp up if you swim within an hour after lunch
- Eating snow will make you sick
- If you cross your eyes, they'll get stuck like that
- Most of your body heat escapes through your head
- Don't swallow watermelon seeds; they'll sprout in your stomach
- Einstein sucked at math in school (used to motivate kids)
- We only use 10% of our brain cells
One of the most-interesting misguided pronouncements is "Don't talk to strangers," which confuses kids and makes them anxious and miserable. Child-safety advocates present examples of lost children hiding from strangers who were searching for them. The best advice to kids is that, in the event of getting lost, they should talk to a stranger, perhaps helping them choose the stranger judiciously, such as a mother with kids in tow.
Alongside many busted myths, identified with the label "false," Jennings also gives the conditional verdicts of "false—but" and "true—if," or, in a small number of cases, "true."
Here is Ken Jennings's 52-minute book talk at Google.
2021/12/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] America's deadliest accidental building collapse: Forty years before the collapse of the Surfside condo tower in Florida, the collapse of a Hyatt Hotel's skywalk in Kansas City, Missouri, killed 114 people. [Top center] Andrew Ervin's Bit by Bit (see the last item below). [Top right] Inga Guzyte's art of recycled skateboards takes off (from SB Independent, Dec. 16-23, 2021). [Bottom left] Boromean rings: Try to explain why the rings cannot be pulled apart, even though no two of them link. [Bottom center] Math Challenges: A weird equality and a trig expression to simplify. [Bottom right] The universe of numbers.
(2) List of "Research 1" universities expands by 6 members: Three universities were downgraded and moved into the next-lower designation (Brandeis, NJIT, Rensselaer Poly) while 9 universities were added (Baylor, Kent State, ND State, Old Dominion, Denver, Louisiana at Lafayette, Memphis, Texas-San Antonio, Utah State).
(3) #WhereIsLeila: Iranian student activist Leila Hosseinzadeh, who had been arrested and imprisoned repeatedly, has not been heard from over the past 10 days.
(4) Book review: Ervin, Andrew, Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Hachette Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Tracing the 6-decade development of electronic-games (video- & computer-games), beginning with the late 1950s, when "Tennis for Two" appeared on an oscilloscope, Ervin discusses hardware technology, programming, artistic aspects, and addictive nature of these games, now played by 2/3 of American households. Whereas early gamers were predominantly young men, today, the average player's age is 34 and 2 in 5 are women.
To write the book, novelist/critic/gamer Ervin visited labs and game-designers, as he tracked down original versions of old games. Early on, games were text-based or had rudimentary graphics, such as using a square to represent a game character. As hardware speed and memory capacity increased, game designers took advantage of the new capabilities to create more realistic characters and larger game-worlds. In fact, some advances in hardware capabilities were motivated by gaming applications.
As game realism and complexity increased, game-controllers also became bigger and were endowed with more buttons. Ervin maintains that at some point, controllers became too complex to operate, leading to some gamers losing interest. On the other hand, the artful design of some game-worlds, the variety of experiences they offered, their sophisticated narratives, and hidden elements/worlds to be discovered by die-hard players attracted great interest.
One of Ervin's interesting observations is that the theme music of electronic games have always been highly-developed and quite attractive, thus evolving less than the visual and story aspects over the years. Another observation is that the introduction of depth and 3D features proved tricky at first, causing some disorientation. Ervin considers well-designed electronic games as art, a position that is somewhat controversial. In support of Ervin's position, one may note that some museums of modern art now have electronic games on display.
As a non-gamer, I found the book interesting and absorbing. I was familiar with some of the games, particularly those that ran on the original Nintendo game-console and NES that I bought for my children. I can imagine that gamers will get more enjoyment out of Ervin's detailed descriptions of both popular and lesser-known games.
2021/12/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] One month after the arrest and imprisonment of Iranian human/women's-rights activist Narges Mohammadi, her whereabouts and condition are unknown. [Top center] Look into these four faces and tell me which one looks most trustworthy: One of the two highest-ranking male Iranian officials, Ali Khamenei or Ebrahim Raisi, or one of the two female human/women's-rights activists, Nasrin Sotoudeh or Narges Mohammadi? [Top right] Meme of the day: Getting rid of trash at Iran's parliament. The artist preferring to remain anonymous is hardly surprising! [Bottom left] UN General Assembly condemns Iran's violations of human rights. [Bottom right] Notes on inverted classes (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- How the scribblings of a young Austrian soldier in World War I trenches changed philosophy forever.
- Iranian environmentalists up in arms over the granting of hunting licenses to foreign tourists.
- Love, Iraqi/patriarchal style: Woman is disfigured in acid attack after turning down a marriage proposal.
- The lower-half of a mathematical expression spells love message. [Video]
- In largest deal of its kind, Bruce Springsteen sells the entirety of his music catalog to Sony for $550 million.
- The site onezoom.org allows you to explore the tree of life in its entirety, zooming on branches at will.
(3) My notes on flipped or inverted classes: Now that fall quarter is over, I take this opportunity to share my experience with using a flipped/inverted class. I taught the graduate course ECE 257A (fault-tolerant computing) with ~10 students, so my observations may not apply to undergrad courses. They certainly do not apply to lower-division courses with scores or hundreds of students.
According to an article in the October 2021 issue of Prism, the magazine of ASEE, the lockdown opened engineering educators' eyes to valuable teaching tools, new ways to connect with students, and a couple of worrisome trends. Among other innovations, flipped classrooms came out of their exotic status and became a lot more common. One reason that many instructors avoided inverting their classes is the amount of time it takes to create lecture videos, as well as components like discussion boards and quizzes. But now instructors have all the required components in place. Making videos is also a lot easier these days. Support systems for course management and grading (e.g., Gradescope) have also improved, taking less of an instructor's time. The worrisome trends include cheating (e.g., seeking homework or exam help from Chegg or Course Hero). A second worrisome trend in the effect of isolation on students' mental health.
Back to my personal observations. The flexibility provided by a small, graduate course allowed me to base my evaluation of student work on homework assignments, worth 40%, and a research paper, worth 60%. I had 16 pre-recorded lectures for the 10-week quarter, leaving three leftover flipped-class sessions of the 19 total (two 1-hour sessions per week over the 10-week quarter). I used one of these sessions for a guest lecture on ethical considerations in engineering in general & safety-critical systems in particular, one for a poster-presentation session, and the third one as time off for focusing on research.
The homework part of a flipped class is identical to a regular class. In both cases, homework assignments do not cover the entire course material. So, while homework does provide an incentive for students to actually watch the lecture videos, it is possible for them to watch selectively only the parts that relate to the assigned problems. My impression from discussions/comments in the flipped classes was that not all students had watched the assigned lecture in full.
The research component allows students to dig deeper into one or more aspects of the course material. The research process is actually facilitated by the flipped format, as students can also ask questions about their research during the flipped class or separate office hours. During fall 2021, I did not assign new lectures to watch for one week in the middle of the quarter (a week that contained a holiday) and one week at the end, to allow students to devote more time to advancing their research. This worked out quite well, judging by the quality of submitted papers and poster presentations.
I have already planned my winter 2022 course, ECE 254B (parallel processing), along the same lines, but will be looking to make changes in future based on the 2-quarter experience. The accompanying diagram shows other components that may be included in assessing students' work.
In a regular course, exams, with unpredictable coverage, provide additional incentive to study. Exams are much harder to manage in on-line courses, but with a hybrid format, exams may be re-introduced. In the past, I have tried a mixed format of allowing the students to choose a final exam or a research paper. This is a bit more work for the instructor but accommodates both students who thrive in an independent-study context and those who prefer to have a well-defined scope for their studies.
There are other options for motivating students to watch the lecture videos in full. One mechanism is to have short (10-minute?) quizzes at the start of some or all of the flipped classes. The quiz option will effectively make attendance mandatory, which goes against the spirit of a flipped class. The effect can be moderated by taking grades from the best-half of the quizzes as a performance indicator. With this provision, students need to attend only half the time, but, of course, more frequent attendance will give them a performance edge.
Another option is to use a participation grade based on student questions & comments in the flipped class. Such a component is likely much less objective than using quizzes. Taking attendance does not help in the flipped-class format.
Flipped-class attendance averaged ~75%, comparable to my in-person graduate classes. I actually expected a number lower than attendance for in-person classes, given that the flipped class was advertised as being for those who have questions/problems. One reason may have been the fact that the students craved personal interactions, after a long period of isolation.
2021/12/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: IEEE Central Coast Section holiday banquet and tech talk (see the last item below).
(2) One of the tragedies in Afghanistan: Mother tells the Iranian "reporter" in this video interview that she found no buyer for her child in the marketplace. The reporter says she is puzzled, given how cute the child is! This is the level of discourse by state-sanctioned "reporters" in Iran.
(3) Record-breaking tornado: The tornado that devastated six states and caused 70+ deaths (downgraded from 100+, after it was discovered that the number of deaths in a razed candle factory wasn't as large as first estimated) in Kentucky alone had a record-breaking path length of ~250 miles.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Big loss in the fight for gender equality: Belle Hooks, feminist, professor, and prolific author, dead at 69.
- Cornell University is hit hard by the new #Omicron variant of COVID-19.
[Tweet]
- Apparently, everything there is to know fits in two books! [Tweet]
- Wonderful street musician on the beach: Note how he builds up the rhythm at the beginning. [Video]
- Azeri music: Beautiful song, performed on piano and kamancheh. [3-minute video]
(5) Australia's Ambassador donned a chador, the most-restrictive form of hijab, in meeting with Iranian officials and while visiting religious sites: With feminists like this, who needs patriarchs to oppress women?
(6) Education in Iran and the US: Iranian teachers are on strike, and students support their demands for higher pay and better working conditions. In the US, school enrollments show worrisome decline. [Memes]
(7) Software vulnerability: University of California is responding to the critical Log4j vulnerability by urging staff to power down systems as they leave for the winter break. Attackers know that campuses are minimally staffed during the holidays and take advantage of the situation. Patches are being installed where needed.
(8) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section holiday banquet & tech talk: After appetizers, salad, and main course at Santa Barbara's Mulligan's Cafe and Section Education Chair's brief review of seven upcoming IEEE CCS tech talks in early 2022, Ms. Kristin Bell (Community Manager of Hub101, Cal Lutheran U.) spoke under the title "Bringing Entrepreneurial Ideas to Life to Build and Scale New Businesses." [Slides]
Ms. Bell shared with the audience of ~30 aspects of how Hub101 enables entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life and ultimately build and scale businesses. Hub101 serves startups, including collaboration through coworking, discovery through educational programs, growth through mentorship, and community-building through events. One of the incubator's newest initiatives is a 12-week, cohort-based program that takes entrepreneurs from an idea, through validation and development, to launch.
Ms. Bell also highlighted various startups that launched out of Hub101, including those that closed tens or hundreds of millions in fundraising, found their technical co-founders, received mentorship that changed their trajectories, secured substantial partnerships, and more.
Finally, Ms. Bell discussed the immense value mentors and advisors bring to an entrepreneur's journey and the various ways Hub101's network of mentors supports its programs with a "Give First" mindset—the most critical ingredient in a vibrant, resilient startup community.
The program closed with random drawings from among the attendees for holiday gifts.
[IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page (includes speaker's bio)]
[Hub101's home page]
[Recording of the speaker's earlier talk on the same topic for IEEE Buenaventura Section: YouTube video]
2021/12/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Lopsided gift exchange (see the next item below). [Top center & right] Time magazine's "Person of the Year" and his many companies (see the item 3 below). [Bottom left] Nationwide protests of Iranian teachers enter their third day: There are reports from Iran that Internet connections have slowed down and, in some cases, cut. This is usually a sign that security forces are getting ready to attack. [Bottom center] Software Engineering is the theme topic of the Dec. 2021 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. [Bottom right] Sign at Imam Zaman's shrine: Please submit your notes in Arabic, as Imam Zaman isn't fluent in Persian. Also, do not throw food in the well. This sign may be made up, but it is funny, given that people from all walks of life believe that Imam Zaman has been hiding/living in a well for more than 1100 years!
(2) Iran's Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf gifts a invaluable hand-woven carpet to Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan: In return, Erdogan signs a copy of his book and gifts it to Iran's envoy. This reminded some observers of a similar episode many decades ago, when Iranian diplomats gifted two highly-valuable carpets to Adolf Hitler. Hitler signed a photo of himself and gave it to the Iranians, commenting that unfortunately, the German leader isn't as rich as the Shah of Iran and, thus, cannot give an expensive gift.
(3) Elon Musk's pluses & minuses: Musk has been chosen as Time magazine's "Person of the Year," based on his wealth (top in the world) and influential businesses (Tesla & SpaceX). On the negative side, Musk is being hypocritical when he bashes the proposed spending on infrastructure. He says he is against subsidies, but his companies are beneficiaries of government subsidies and a couple of them were saved from going under by the government's largesse. Tesla is thriving because of electric-vehicle rebates and tax breaks. SpaceX survives because of NASA and military contracts. Musk's original source of wealth, PayPal, thrived because of major government investments on computer-networking and the Internet, the enabling technologies for e-commerce.
(4) A story from Iranian poet/humorist Obeid Zakani [1319-1370]: A teacher took his students to the desert to pray for rain. A passerby asks him why he is using the students for this prayer. The teacher responds that kids have pure hearts and immaculate spirits, so their prayers may be more effective. The passerby responds: "If students' prayers were effective, not one teacher or school would have been left on this Earth!"
(5) Britain names three Iranians involved in hostage-taking, according to IranWire.com: Interrogator-journalist Ali Rezvani, who plays a key role in forced confessions on TV; Judiciary's Evin Prison rep Ali Ghanaatkar, who detains the hostages; Sadistic prison chief Gholamreza Ziaei, who is known for personally beating detainees.
(6) The Nobel Peace Prize's challenge: The Nobel Peace Committee can select uncontroversial social figures, such as Malala or various feed-the-poor programs, who, valuable as they are, don't really create peace, or opt for politicians, who have taken steps toward creating peace, like Egypt's Anwar Sadat or US's Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately, politicians come with baggages of their past actions and can also turn from peaceniks into war-mongers a few years after the award is bestowed upon them. The Nobel Peace Committee has to walk a tightrope between honoring goodness and rewarding impact. [Adapted from a narrative by Fareed Zakaria]
P.S.: Speaking of the Nobel Peace Prize, here is journalist Maria Ressa's full 20-minute Nobel Lecture. She and dmitry muratov were co-recipients of the 2021 Peace Prize.
(7) Adios fall quarter 2021! Today, I finished evaluating my students' research papers for the graduate course ECE 257A (Fault-Tolerant Computing), tabulated the course grades, and reported the grades to the Registrar. I am ready to go into holiday mode for a few days, before starting to prepare for winter 2022, when I will be teaching another graduate course, ECE 254B (Parallel Processing). Spring 2022 will bring a long-awaited sabbatical leave, giving me six months of sustained research time, extending to the end of summer.
2021/12/12 (Sunday): Today's blog post is devoted entirely to an event on abuses of human rights in Iran.
"Striving for Human Rights in Iran": This was the title of today's webinar (in Persian), the 12th program in the annual series, streamed on YouTube and Facebook Live. You may find it interesting to read my report on the 2017 event: http://www.facebook.com/bparhami/posts/10155898863837579
Ms. Homa Sarshar (author, activist, journalist), acting as moderator, opened the program with introductory remarks, followed by the screening of segments from a 140-minute memorial ceremony for the departed artist/activist Parviz Kardan. Later, she introduced each speaker by reading his/her short biography.
Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge) was the first speaker. In 2001, the US government was on the verge of recognizing the Taliban, at the insistence of oil interests. The September 11 terrorist attacks halted that process and brought about an increased focus on human rights and, in particular, women's rights. Now the Taliban are back in power and there is some pressure for the world to recognize their rule over Afghanistan. Dr. Tohidi then enumerated the barriers on the path to realizing human rights, particularly in the Middle East and Islamic countries.
First, are those who consider human rights a tool of the West to dominate Third-World and Islamic countries.
Second, are groups that consider human rights to be Euro-centric, opposing them by appealing to cultural relativism. Double standards by world powers, such the the US, which close their eyes to blatant human-rights violations in countries such as Saudi Arabia because of commercial interests, feed this narrative in religious and secular dictatorships alike.
The truth is that, even though Western countries led the efforts to ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many non-Western and non-Christian countries were intimately involved in the discussions and the drafting process. Certain notions and elements of the declaration were adapted from the constitutions of Latin American countries. Such objections, coming from religious fundamentalists, Muslims in particular, is hypocritical. Their claim of women's rights being an imposition on Islamic countries loses legitimacy, when we note that they constantly impose their own views on other groups. They condemn restrictions on hijab in certain European countries, while arresting women for not wearing "proper" hijabs.
The third wave of opposition comes from leftists, which sometimes operate in unison with liberals in characterizing human-rights efforts as Islamophobic or colonialist in nature. These groups are suspicious of any effort in the direction of demanding human rights, accusing the activists of being foreign agitators.
Dr. Mohsen Kadivar (Duke U.) was the second speaker, who offered a pre-recorded talk. Human rights have never been a priority for the Iranian regime. He classified barriers to human rights in Iran into cultural, law-based, and religious.
Cultural elements are independent of the current regime or the dominant religion in Iran. Patriarchy can be viewed as the main culprit.
Barriers due to lawlessness are equally important. Even though Iran's Constitution does contain many elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the law isn't followed. He then read a large number of articles from Iran's Constitution that are completely ignored by the current regime.
Dr. Kadivar emphasized religious barriers, that can be divided into 4 categories.
1. Religious discrimination: In this domain, having an official religion or Islam are not at fault; 43 countries have official religions and 40 countries have preferred/dominant religions, but very few of them have as bad a record in the domain of human rights. Iran's Constitution recognizes religious minorities, but does limit their participation in many official positions. Khamenei is the main force behind discrimination against Baha'is. Ayatollah Montazeri was the first Shiite leader who recognized civic rights for everyone, including Baha'is, and paid a dear price for this.
2. Gender discrimination: Iran's Constitution does not recognize women's right, so the status of women is relegated to religious laws. Women cannot assume many important political and administrative positions.
3. Lack of freedom of expression and severe punishment for leaving Islam: Iran's laws, including the law governing the press, specify harsh punishments, including execution, for insulting Islam, the Supreme Leader, and other top religious authorities.
4. Torture and harsh/arbitrary punishments: The Islamic Penal Code is one of the most-serious obstacles to human rights.
In summary, obstacles to human rights in Iran are in part cultural, but mostly religious.
Ms. Parastoo Forouhar (political artist) was the third speaker. Ms. Forouhar is the daughter of political activists Parvaneh and Dariush Forouhar, who were assassinated in 1998 as part of Iran Ministry of Intelligence's "chain murders." She has played a major role in pursuing the murder cases and documenting the lives and contributions of her parents.
The system that committed those gruesome murders does not only remain unaccountable, but has become emboldened in repressing any type of dissent with violence. Ms. Forouhar travels to Iran every year to participate in ceremonies honoring the memory of her parents and others who have been killed for their activism on behalf of human rights. The chain murders awakened Iranians, whose rage overcame fear, forcing the regime to confess to the extrajudicial, politically-motivated murders.
The Islamic regime later retracted the confessions, accusing the perpetrators of the murders as being foreign agitators, including agents of Israel. The entire file disappeared for a while and discovered only after relentless follow-ups. Investigators of the case were arrested and imprisoned. When the file was eventually closed, it was a mishmash of documents, with many key parts missing. Confessions of perpetrators were obviously made up.
Some of the perpetrators have indicated that such political assassinations were commonplace and never led to problems before the chain murders. The file had clear statements to the effect that Minister of Information had directly ordered the killings. The judge in charge of the case did all in his power to pretend that the killings were ordinary crimes, with the perpetrators already pleaded guilty and punished, so there was nothing more for the judiciary to do.
Eventually, the survivors' opposition to the death penalty was interpreted by the justice system as forgiveness, leading to reductions in all of the punishments. Iran's Ministry of Information has filed a lawsuit against the victims' survivors and its agents have repeatedly raided the crime scene to steal documents and other artifacts.
Mr. Hadi Khorsandi (humorist, poet) was the fourth speaker, who recited his poem entitled "I Won't Give Away My Country."
[Full text of the poem]
Ms. Narges Mohammadi (human-rights activist and long-time political prisoner) was the fifth and final speaker. She is now serving jail time and her presentation was prerecorded before her latest emprisonment. She focused on the plight of Iranian Baha'is. Even though Iranian Baha'is have been oppressed for a long time, the oppression took a serious turn after the Islamic Revolution. Widespread execution of Baha'i leaders or long prison terms for them, including being kept in solitary confinement, are common.
Mistreatment of Baha'is is not confined to execution and imprisonment of their leaders. Ordinary Baha'i citizens are subjected to inhumane treatments, such as being expelled from universities and confiscation of their homes and businesses. Lately, under pressure from human-rights activists in Iran and abroad, the regime has started charging Baha'is with national-security and spying charges, to hide the fact that they are subject to religious persecution.
Despite the regime's attitude toward the Baha'i community, ordinary Iranians are quite sympathetic to their cause and view them as victims of religious zealots. The regime's propaganda against the Baha'is, including broadcasting "documentary" films on state-controlled media accusing them of various crimes, is no longer effective and, in fact, brings the masses closer to their Baha'i neighbors and fellow-countrymen.
There is a danger that the new Iranian government will pursue even greater oppression and discriminatory practices against the Baha'i
2021/12/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Last night's food prep results: A large batch of pasta with meat sauce for my own consumption and ingredients for tacos to share with the family today. [Center] Math puzzles: See if you can evaluate the formidable-looking expression and find the angle X in the diagram with three squares.
(2) A short documentary about National Iranian Radio & TV's chamber choir: Three years in the making, this 15-minute documentary reviews the highly-acclaimed chamber choir's history and brings some of its members from decades ago together to perform virtually a patriotic anthem with lyrics by Fereydoon Moshiri.
(3) Quote of the day: "If we are to answer the challenge of our times successfully, we must manage to combine the new economy and old morality." ~ British fiction writer E. M. Forster [1879-1970]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Scores killed in Kentucky, as tornadoes devastate central and southern US states.
- The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell has shed light on the fact that 38% of human traffickers are women.
- Dr. Abbas Milani's poignant speech of 2014, as part of the "Striving for Human Rights in Iran" event.
- Armenian women in Iran: Noteworthy individuals and their many contributions. [2-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 12, 2017: When we wore breathing masks against smoke from wildfires.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 12, 2013: Khwarizmi Awards ceremony of Informatics Society of Iran, 1985.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 12, 2010: Tired of homework, my daughter decided to do something else.
(5) Humor from Iran: Life is moving underground. We've had underground music and movies for some time. Recently, chains of underground restaurants have opened that don't follow the regime's dress code or its ban on dancing and alcoholic drinks. The way things are going, soon Iranians will be living underground, with mosques, mortuaries, and cemeteries being the only things remaining aboveground. That is, we'll live underground while alive and aboveground after death!
(6) Fifty funny classical-art memes: Here's an example for "The Last Supper." Jesus: "Table for 26, please." Waiter: "But there are only 13 of you." Jesus: "Yes, but we're all going to sit on the same side."
(7) Gohar Eshghi, the activist mother of Iranian political dissident Sattar Beheshti, who died under torture while in custody, has been beaten up for demanding justice.
(8) Thieves stole an entire railroad bridge in Russia in 2019: Now, there are reports of two bridges in Ahvaz, Iran, having been closed to traffic after they were deemed unsafe due to certain stolen metal fittings.
(9) The Iranian regime is surprised by brutal criticism from an unexpected source: On Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021, Iran's President Raisi visited Sharif University of Technology to observe the Day of College Students (16th of Azar). He must have been under the impression that SUT students will praise him, the way a state TV "reporter" did by throwing at him softball "questions" with answers built-in, so that he did not have to say much. Imagine Raisi's surprise, when the Secretary of SUT's Islamic Students Association blasted him by mentioning that he had become president in the least-competitive elections of the past few decades, that he had shaped his cabinet from cronies, embezzlers, and IRGC generals, and that attacking peaceful protesters will come back to bite the regime in the form of a revolution. His remarks were censored by state media, but students have made them go viral through social media and other news outlets. [10-minute video, in Persian]
2021/12/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iran's indirect talks with the US about reviving the nuclear deal encounters snags, as evident from these headlines. [Top center] Happy International Human Rights Day! In reality, every day should be Human Rights Day, but no harm results from putting an extra emphasis on human rights on the UN-designated date of December 10. [Top right] People magazine's special "Year in Pictures" issue features four strong women on its main and alternate covers. [Bottom left] Microprocessor at 50 (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, containing two concentric circles, a square, and a triangle, what fraction of the big circle's area is shaded blue? [Bottom right] Webinar on Ardeshir Zahedi (see item 3 below).
(2) The microprocessor reaches middle age: The Nov.-Dec. 2021 issue of IEEE Micro magazine (Vol. 41, No. 6) marks the microprocessor's 50th birthday. Today, in a Zoom ceremony, IEEE Computer Society President Forrest Schull presented a virtual copy of the Special Issue to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. Other industry leaders and authors of the special-issue articles also offered brief remarks.
(3) "Ardeshir Zahedi & the Zahedi Archives at Hoover": Whatever we think of Zahedi's role in the former Shah's dictatorial rule and subservience to the US, and as an apologist for Iran's Islamic regime in his later years, he has provided an important window into Iran's history via his multi-volume memoir and the massive collection of documents now housed at Hoover Institution. Today's 2.5-hour Hoover Institution webinar on Zahedi, who passed away on November 18, 2021, at age 93, featured a number of distinguished speakers and panelists.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least 54 dead, many injured, when a truck carrying migrants flips over in southern Mexico.
- Catastrophic floods in Canada's British Columbia have killed more than 640,000 farm animals.
- Iranian student activist Leila Hosseinzadeh arrested violently in a raid by 15 security agents in Shiraz.
- A man who lost the key to his $500 million cybercurrency stash is fighting to excavate the local landfill.
- Heated discussion on the greatest scientist of each century, 16th-20th. Too early to pick for the 21st!
- This 2-minute song is likely Turkish (judging by the reed instrument), but could be Armenian or Greek.
- Persian music: Shahram Nazeri performs a song, with lyrics from a poem by Hafez. [3-minute video]
- Kurdish music: Unfortunately, I have no info about the song or the artists. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 10, 2019: Diverse styles of Persian calligraphic art. [Images]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 10, 2018: A cloudy evening on the UCSB campus. [Photos]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 10, 2012: How come no student is ever addicted to studying? [FB post]
(5) A black couple "erased" themselves from their home to see if its appraised value would go up: It did, by $0.5 million! The couple is suing the appraiser for racially-biased selection of comparable sales.
(6) Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student, who planned a mass shooting, arrested on tips from friends: He had a collapsible semi-automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his backpack as he left home to shoot up the campus on the final day at the school before winter break.
(7) California Coastal Trail: The 1200-mile route will finally get its 0.8-mile missing link in the SB area, alongside Highway 101, between Sand Point Road and Santa Clause Lane.
(8) Final thought for the Day: "Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." ~ Aristotle
2021/12/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cartoon of the day, by Mana Neyestani: Iran's tough position in nuclear talks! [Center] Striving for Human Rights in Iran: Roundtable discussion, Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021, 5:00 PM PST, on YouTube and Facebook Live. [Right] James Veitch's Dot.Con (see the last item below).
(2) Friday prayers for rain in Isfahan, Iran: Two weeks after beating up and shooting at crowds of farmers protesting water mismanagement, leading to Zayandeh-Rood River drying up, authorities in Isfahan will be devoting tomorrow's Friday prayers to asking Allah for rain. According to the event's chief organizer, the only way of solving the drought problem is repenting for our sins. In case you think this backwardness is unique to Iran, please note Governor Spencer Cox's June 2021 invitation for Utahns to pray for rain.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In an unreported 2016 secret deal, Apple signed a $275 billion 5-year cooperation agreement with China.
- Author Margaret Atwood, on utopias, dystopias, and what makes her happy. [18-minute interview]
- Santa Barbaran Jack Johnson will perform at Santa Barbara Bowl on October 4-5, 2022 (Tue.-Wed.).
- Pioneering women in Iran's music scene: BBC report by Faraj Balafkan. [7-minute video]
- Math puzzle: If x + y = 1, what is the maximum of (x^3 + 1)(y^3 + 1)?
- Remember the good old days when Sarah Palin was the scariest thing the Republicans could throw at us?
- Yanni performs at Taj Mahal: "Love Is All," featuring duduk, an ancient Armenian double-reed instrument.
- Yanni & his orchestra play "Waltz in 7/8": The piece features the South-American charango, a small guitar.
(4) Facebook memory from Dec. 9, 2019: What happened to Melania Trump? We haven't seen her for a while. Is she no longer interested in anti-bullying work? [Cartoon]
(5) Book review: Veitch, James, Dot.Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer, unabridged 2-hour audiobook, read by the author and Naomi Petersen, Hachette Books, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[This is much more than a simple book review. It concludes with a serious warning about on-line scams.]
Comedian Veitch, who lists among his credits appearances on TED, Conan, and The Tonight Show, describes his encounters with e-mail scammers, including the ever-despondent Nigerian prince, a lovelorn woman who needs money for her plane ticket to visit him in London, a man on his death bed wishing to give his money away, and a stranded friend needing cash to return home, all of whom want the money sent via Western Union.
I too engaged with a scammer once, sending some one dozen e-mails to him (they are usually male, even when they pretend to be attractive women), before withdrawing from the exchanges. I was hoping to discover something about these scammers, but their canned responses do not reveal anything about their identities or even geographic locations. Veitch engaged with the scammers to collect material for his comedy shows.
The issue ceases to be funny, when we realize that people have lost their fortunes and even lives as a result of falling for these scams. The 44-minute documentary film "The Invisible Man" investigates on-line romance scams, run by organized crime rings. Such scammers target lonely, insecure women, using photos of handsome men, often US military personnel, whose identities they have stolen. One US military man had his images and information used on some 3000 fake profiles.
2021/12/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Introducing Professor Charlie Kurzman, a member of UNC Chapel Hill Persian Studies Program's Advisory Committee (video). [Top center] The first genome-wide genetic characterization of Iran's population is completed by U. Cologne (Germany) and USWR/Tehran. [Top right] The smartly-dressed spacecraft: Electronic fabrics sensitive to vibration and charge could revolutionize space vehicles/structures. [Bottom left] A few dozen insiders occupy key government positions in Iran on a rotating basis: The latest rearrangement has the Tennis Federation chief, with a degree in nursing, installed as the Legal Affairs Deputy of the Ministry of Economics. [Bottom center] Exotic-fruit plate: See if you can identify the two fruits, besides pomegranate. [Bottom right] Privilege, by Shamus Khan (see the last item below)
(2) Sharif U. Technology's student rep blasts Iran's new President during his visit to the university, demanding action to repair the country's economy and restore fundamental rights to citizens. [String of tweets]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Facebook tiptoes toward cryptocurrency: The rollout of its Novi wallet hints at financial-sector ambitions.
- The Hyperloop is hyper old: Elon Musk merely renamed a 200-year-old dream. [Source: IEEE Spectrum]
- Iranian rights activist Sepideh Qolian speaks of threats to her safety from judicial & extra-judicial forces.
- Mehdi Shahbazi seeks justice for his sister #Ameneh_Shahbazi, killed during the November 2019 protests.
- Children and other relatives of Death-to-America-chanting Islamic Republic of Iran officials live in the US.
- Farhang Foundation celebrates Shab-e Yalda (winter solstice) virtually on Tue. Dec. 21, 2021, 6:00 PM PST.
- Math puzzle: Given that 2^n and 3^n are integers, does n have to be an integer?
- Boogie Woogie duet: Magical performance by Ladyva and Dr. K. [9-minute video]
- Persian music: Azerbaijani singer Fargana Qasimova performs "Ghogha-ye Setaregan." [5-minute audio]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 8, 2019: Want kids born? You should also want them fed, educated, housed.
(4) Book review: Khan, Shamus R., Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Neil Shah, Tantor Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Born to well-to-do immigrant parents, a surgeon and a nurse, sociologist Shamus Khan attended the elite St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, graduating Magna cum laude, with distinction in several subjects. He later returned to his alma mater as part of his work, writing on the sociology of elites, inequality, gender/sexuality, and American culture.
St. Paul's has educated generations of wealthy, establishment families. As a student, Khan didn't quite fit among those with backgrounds vastly different from his. Whereas newcomers were allowed in, they weren't truly integrated with the elite, who maintained their advantage by subtle modes of segregation in socializing and even seating in concerts and other events.
St. Paul's graduates went on to attend elite colleges, not on the strength of their records, impressive as they were, but primarily because their counselors had close working relationships with recruiters at Ivy League schools and other prestigious institutions. The counselors worked relentlessly to get favorable placements for their charges. So, these students enjoyed the triple advantages of excellent education, well-rounded extracurricular activities, and short-cut paths into elite universities.
Khan finds that today's students at St. Paul's continue to learn how to embody privilege, as they always have, but they are taught to succeed in the face of changing social norms. He shows that the new elite navigate the opening up of society, while preserving the advantages that allow them to rule in a more diverse, yet still unequal, society.
2021/12/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Map of the Internet in 1971 (it was called Arpanet then) and part of the global backbone network in 2021. [Top center] Anscombe's quartet: Statistician Francis Anscombe constructed four vastly-different data sets that appear identical when viewed through simple summary statistics such as mean, variance, correlation, and linear regression line. [Top right] Tech-sector salaries rise everywhere, with a few exceptions, amid a wave of resignations (source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of December 2021). [Bottom left] Cover image of IEEE Spectrum magazine's December 2021 issue (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Cover image of Tom Nichols's The Death of Expertise (see the last item below). [Bottom right] From refugee to Micron VP: The inspiring story of Thy Tran.
(2) Copenhagen Suborbitals: This is the name of the world's only amateur crewed-spaceflight program, which is featured on the cover of IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of December 2021. A DIY rocket is under construction by the group's 50 volunteers in a Copenhagen warehouse. The issue contains other interesting articles, which I will write about separately.
(3) Book review: Nichols, Tom, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Sean Pratt, Tantor Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The theme of this book can be described as the triumph of self over competent other. It's not that expertise is actually dying. Quite the opposite: There are now more and deeper specializations than ever before. But the communication channel between experts and lay people is broken. Lay people have lost confidence in experts, feeling that experts are manipulating them. Specialists, on the other side communicate less and less with lay people, preferring instead to talk to their peers in conferences and via journal articles. Public intellectuals, who used to connect experts with lay people through simplified explanations, placed in everyday context, are failing miserably, in part owing to fatigue.
Increased complexity and lack of transparency is one factor fueling this mistrust, but there are three other reasons for the broken connection: Expansion of higher education (those learning advanced concepts in one domain feel empowered to opine in other domains), mass media, and the Internet. Given that most of us view these three developments positively, it is quite counterintuitive that they have led to greater mistrust between experts and lay people.
Anti-science attitudes are strongest among the middle and upper classes. Anti-vax movement and the preference for unpasteurized milk are two examples of misguided anti-science trends. Citing past mistakes by scientists (such as flip-flopping on avoidance of eggs in your diet), anti-sciencers declare science to be untrustworthy. This is a dire mistake. Yes, scientists, like all other humans, make mistakes, but the probability of them being wrong in their domains of specialization is orders of magnitude less than a lay person committing an error in the same area.
The problems we are experiencing is a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which indicates that one's level of certainty in one domain of expertise actually declines with the level of knowledge, rising only when knowledge reaches a fairly high level. This effect, combined with confirmation bias, tribal beliefs, and superstitions, worsens the distrust and further hampers effective communication.
[P.S.: I learned of this book through its Persian summary on BPlus podcast.]
2021/12/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian poetry: A couple of verses on aging, from Azeri poet Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar (calligraphic rendering by Javad Yousefi). [Center] Apparently, ancient Romans didn't care much about privacy when going to the bathroom: The rich had their private bathrooms, of course, and they built these public units for the masses, not out of caring, but because they did not want to walk knee-deep in human poop! [Right] Family photo posted by a US congressman: Nothing says Christmas cheer more than assault rifles!
(2) Quote of the day: "It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. ... Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations." ~ Aldous Huxley, British author (1894-1963)
(3) I have to report this, although I am somewhat skeptical about its significance: Living robots, built from the stem cells of African clawed frog can reproduce, taking us a step closer to self-replicating robots.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Iran: A review of state narratives since 1979.
- Rape is never the victim's fault, regardless of what she was wearing or how many drinks she had. [GIF]
- Mrs. Bowers, America's best Christian, explains Franklin Graham & other Bible-and-Jesus-free evangelicals.
- On aging: A man has reached middle age when he is warned to slow down by his doctor, instead of the police.
- A wonderful street performance of the hugely-successful Irish song "You Raise Me Up." [5-minute video]
- Persian music: Rumi Academy members perform "Ey Aasheghaan", based on a poem by Mowlavi/Rumi.
- Persian music: A diverse group of people, inside and outside Iran, lip-sync to a humorous song.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 6, 2015: Iranian Women Writing Transnationally (UCLA roundtable).
- Facebook memory from Dec. 6, 2012: Aldous Huxley, on feeling direct intuition of beauty and significance.
- Facebook memory from Dec. 6, 2010: Instructing women that it is a sin to smell good outside their home.
(5) Ceremony honoring Pari Zangeneh: Women singers have been sidelined and are still banned by the Iranian regime, so what good comes from such ceremonies? [4-minute video]
(6) Tears of joy for Iran's women handball team: In their first world-championship appearance, with no funding or other support from Iranian authorities and no coverage on Iran's state TV, Iranian women lost big-time (9-41) to world and Olympics champion Norway, but their goalie was chosen as Player of the Match.
(7) When Christmas became electrified: The holiday season is synonymous with bright, colorful lights. The tradition of electric Christmas lights was started when the Edison Electric Light Co. strung 80 bulbs on a New York City tree on Dec. 22, 1882.
(8) Broadcom's Henry Samueli has been giving away billions: His donations have helped UCLA's engineering school and UC Irvine's health sciences college.
(9) "Ohm's Law + Kirchhoff's Current Law = Better AI": This is the title of an article in IEEE Spectrum magazine that envisages improvements in AI functionality through the use of nonvolatile memories performing analog functions. Analog multiplication uses Ohm's Law, while addition is based on Kirchhoff's Current Law.
2021/12/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] David Brooks' non-fiction book, The Social Animal (see the next item below). [Center & Right] Remembering Dr. Farhad Mavaddat (see the last item below).
(2) Book review: Brooks, David, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, unabridged audiobook on 13 CDs, read by Arthur Morey, Random House Audio, 2011.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I wrote this review on December 4, 2011, and posted it to GoodReads on December 4, 2021.
(3) Chris Cuomo fired by CNN: I have no problem with his ouster, but CNN has an obligation to provide an explanation at the start of the time slot formerly assigned to Cuomo's program. If it were a politician or business mogul who was ousted, we would hear endless analysis and commentary on the reasons for the ouster. CNN should apply the same standard to its own people.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Bob Dole, WW II veteran, long-time US Senator from Kansas and 1996 presidential candidate dead at 98.
- Math riddle: If one-quarter of 20 is 6, what is one-third of 10?
- Humor: Sympathy cards for scientists, to mark a failed experiment, rejected paper, or disproved theory!
- Persian music: An oldie song, performed by an all-women ensemble. [1-minute video]
- Persian music: Playing on the bed of Zayandeh-Rood, for the drought-stricken Isfahan. [2-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 4, 2011: Rakhshan Bani Etemad's response to attacks on Iranian cinema.
(5) In Remembrance of Dr. Farhad Mavaddat [1941-2021]: A warm and touching Zoom session was held today, 9:00-11:15 AM PST at Mr. Mehdi Fallahi's initiative, to celebrate the life of Dr. Farhad Mavaddat, who passed away on November 3, 2021, at age 80.
Farhad was a major force in establishing Iran's first computer science program and multiple computing labs at Arya-Mehr (later Sharif) University of Technology during his 1969-1979 affiliation, the last year of which was spent on a sabbatical leave at IBM Italy in Pisa. He later emigrated to Canada, serving University of Waterloo for 36 years, until his retirement in 2015.
The program opened with a slide show, contributed by Farhad's daughter, Mitra Nicole, followed by introductory remarks by the organizer, Mr. Fallahi. It was then my turn to pay tribute to my departed friend/colleague, speaking in Persian under the title:
"Dr. Farhad Mavaddat [1941-2021]: A Scientist with a Practical Bent, a Good Friend, a Model of Service and Humility, and a Notable Example of the Consequences of Chasing Brains Away"
[My PowerPoint slides, which include the full text of my remarks, in both English and Persian]
[My slides in PDF format (smaller file, but without the notes)]
Other speakers were Mitra Nicole Mavaddat, Ali Parsa, Dr. Farhad Arbab, Dr. Hamid Noori, Amir Teimoortagh, and Mehdi Fallahi, sharing their interactions with Farhad and describing how he influenced their lives. Following a second short slide show, several members of the audience spoke in praise of Farhad. The entire 142-minute program has been recorded. [Transcript of remarks by the speakers]
2021/12/03 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB Data Science Summit (see the last item below). [Top center] History in pictures: Five decades ago, April 1971, at Tehran's Evin Hotel, during the Second National Mathematics Conference (from left: Dr. Morteza Anvari, his wife Nancy, Dr. Lotfi Zadeh, and Dr. Asadollah Asaraei; Photo courtesy Dr. Bijan Zangeneh). [Top right] Downtown Los Angeles: Transformation over a century, 1901-2001. [Bottom left] Abdorrahman Boroumand Center research: Iran is implicated in 540 assassinations and kidnappings outside its borders, most of them in Iraq, but including at least a couple of dozens in Europe. [Bottom center] Tweet with an Iranian mom's message to her imprisoned son: Don't bow, just try to stay alive. The day of revenge is near. [Bottom right] UCSB Food Bank's innovative method of getting nutrition to needy students: A vending machine accessed with authorization code, instead of cash or credit card.
(2) Meme of the day: Republicans: Joe Biden promised he would shut down the coronavirus. He failed.
Also Republicans: NO Biden vaccine mandate!
So typical of Republicans: Block sensible action, then blame the outcome on others!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mathematical oddity: log(1 + 2 + 3) = log(1) + log(2) + log(3)
- UCSB Multicultural Center displaying its diverse programs on a huge wall poster.
- Posters presented on Dec. 1, 2021, by students in my ECE 257A grad course on fault-tolerant computing.
- Life is boogieful: Wonderful impromptu piano playing in Ascona. [2-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Dec. 3, 2019: On the greatness illusions of demagogues and despots. [Image]
(4) Top-10 countries in engineering degrees awarded: Russia produces nearly twice as many engineering graduates (~0.5 million annually) as both the US (second) and Iran (a close third), but the fraction of women engineering graduates (70%) is much higher in Iran than in both other countries. So, Iran ranks third in total engineering degrees awarded annually and first in women engineering graduates. This is impressive, as both Russia (144 M) and the US (330 M) are much more populous than Iran (84 M).
(5) UCSB Data Science Summit: In an all-day, in-person event, held at the Corwin Pavilion, representatives from many campus departments presented ideas about data science education and research. While it's nice to have in-person events again, the combination of facemasks, poor speaking/language skills, and imperfect audio systems makes it difficult to hear the speaker and those asking questions from the floor. I suggest that, in the interest of better communication, we stick with Zoom a while longer for large-scale gatherings.
Data science has opened up many interesting possibilities, but it has also generated a lot of buzz and hot air, as everyone tries to get on the bandwagon. All areas of science, including social sciences, have relied on data for centuries, so to claim that everything in this field is new is disingenuous at best, and opportunistic at worst.
I enjoyed the presentation by Dr. Jessica Santana, of UCSB's Technology Management Program, who, among other points, enumerated how ethics is different in data science. Big & always on, passive consent & collection, semi-anonymous but de-anonymizable, privatized & inaccessible, speed of tech outpacing regulation, nonrepresentativeness & incompleteness & bias, drifting demographics, algorithmically confounded & platform-dependent, noisy & bot-ty are among the characteristics of big-data that raise more-challenging ethical issues.
The two keynote addresses, though representative of the diversity of data-science significance and applications, didn't offer much in technical terms.
- "Humans, Data and Race: Whose Narrative Is It?" Dr. Sharon Tettegah (UCSB Black Studies)
- "Openscapes: Better Science for Future Us," Dr. Julia Lowndes (NCEAS, openscapes.org/media)
[Agenda and shared meeting notes] [UCSB Data Science Initiative] [Photos]
2021/12/01 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Victoria Falls Bridge: Located on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, the 198-meter-long engineering marvel, with a main arch span of 156 m, accommodates a roadway, a railway, and walkways. [Top center] An interesting article on health (see Item 3 below). [Top right] The foggy lagoon and ocean have their charms, but I awaited the Sun's coming out, as I walked on campus around noon today. [Bottom left] Remembering Dr. Farhad Mavaddat (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Two isosceles triangles are inscribed in an equilateral triangle as shown. Find the length identified by a question mark. [Bottom right] Baha'is are under continued pressure in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) In Remembrance of Dr. Farhad Mavaddat [1941-2021]: We will celebrate the life of my dear friend and former colleague on Sunday, December 5, 2021, 9:00-11:00 AM PST, via Zoom. I will speak in Persian under the title "Dr. Farhad Mavaddat: A Scientist with a Practical Bent, a Good Friend, a Model of Service and Humility, and a Notable Example of the Consequences of Chasing Brains Away." Also speaking will be Farhad's daughter, Mitra Nicole, Mr. Ali Parsa, Dr. Farhad Arbab, Dr. Hamid Noori, Mr. Amir Teimoortagh, and Mr. Mehdi Fallahi, some presenting in English. [Zoom meeting ID: 882 6890 3681; Passcode: Mavaddat]
(3) Beliefs & prejudices, and their health impacts: This article from the French magazine Que Choisir Sante, affiliated with a consumer-choice group, is quite enlightening. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original French article or an English translation on-line.
(4) Not surprisingly, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is already here in California: Be kind to yourself and your loved ones. Get vaccinated/boosted and wear a mask indoors.
(5) "The Essence of Software (or Why Systems Often Fail by Design, and How to Fix Them)": This was the title of today's ACM-sponsored webinar by Dr. Daniel Jackson (MIT). Dr. Jackson began by noting that to build a skyscraper, we don't go to an engineer first, but to an architect. Thus, software should not be designed by programmers, but by software design experts. He then discussed the importance of clearly-defined "concepts" as tools for designing clean, well-structured software.
Successful use of software requires the user model to match the designer's model. Since the user sees the software through the user interface, the latter assumes high importance in the success of a piece of software. To prevent the user from constructing a mythical or misguided model of the system, the designer must present a consistent and complete model.
Dr. Jackson then illustrated the problems that can arise from model mismatches through three examples.
- DropBox's inconsistent treatment of shared-file renamings and deletions led to disappearing files.
- Twitter's "like" was interpreted early on by some as a tool for saving a tweet for later perusal, not as an action that is advertised to the entire world!
- Google calendar had a bug that removing an item from one's calendar would generate notices of event cancellation to other participants.
Examples of concepts, aka nano-services, include "upvote," "reaction," and "recommendation." Concepts should have simple, descriptive names and be clearly defined. Dr. Jackson is working on a handbook of concepts to help in this direction. [Images] [Book cover]
(6) Iranian news outlets have become tools in the oppression of the Baha'i minority: The images above show the "conversion" of two Baha'i women to Islam and a Baha'i man denouncing his faith, both acts likely done under immense pressure, much like forced on-camera confessions of political prisoners under threats of harm to them and their families.
2021/11/30 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Back- & front-over images of Time magazine, issue of December 6-13, 2021: A special supplment on Alzheimer's, provided by Alzheimer's Association, and one of the most-significant whistleblowing events ever. [Top right] Reinebringen, Lofoten, Norway (credit: @ben_broady). [Bottom left] Yet another mind-boggling formula for π, due to Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the volume of the shaded part of this cylinder. [Bottom right] Final exam in Afghanistan under the Taliban: Can't imagine why the assault rifle is needed!
(2) It seems that our politicians are no longer bothering with sending thoughts and prayers, let alone acting on sensible gun-control legislation: Three killed, 8 injured in Michigan high school shooting.
(3) Book review: Kessler, Ronald, The Secrets of the FBI, unabridged audiobook, read by Michael Bybee, Random House Audio, 2011. [I wrote this review on Nov. 30, 2013, and posted it to GoodReads today.]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Punishment for heinous acts: ISIS member convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison.
- Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is reportedly talking with the January 6 Commission.
- CNN anchor Chris Cuomo suspended over his significant role in plotting his brother's defense strategy.
- Independent and Israeli-sponsored hackers escalate their cyber-attacks against Iran.
- International rights organizations condemn Internet shutdowns in several Iranian cities.
- UCLA's Daily Bruin publishes a story on the school's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran and its organizer.
- The Nov.-Dec. 2021 issue of IEEE Micro magazine (Vol. 41, No. 6) marks the microprocessor's 50th birthday.
- Persian poetry: Bahar Fakhraei bravely recites a politically-charged, anti-Iranian-regime poem.
- Math challenge, from Canadian Math Olympiad: Solve x^2 + (x^2)/(x + 1)^2 = 3
- Quote of the day: "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." ~ William James
(5) "Khanoom": This 5-minute documentary chronicles the life of a Kurdish woman who works as a "kulbar," transporting heavy loads over Iran's mountainous border between Iran and Iraq.
(6) "The Link": A useful Web site connecting science communication research with practice, sponsored by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. Example content follows.
Foundational Skills for Science Communication The Science of Science Communication
Aesthetic Communication in SciComm Theory and Best Practices in SciComm Training
(7) Microcontroller, microprocessor's less-glamorous cousin: A microcontroller is a simple processor with integrated I/O capabilities that provides single-chip control capability for various devices (a kind of system-on-chip that obviates the need for using additional support chips). Microcontrollers with 16- and 32-bit data paths have been built, but, by and large, they are perfectly capable of doing their jobs with 8-bit data. As the microprocessor turns 50, let us not forget its less-glamorous cousin, the far-more-prevalent microcontroller. According to Wikipedia, "A typical home in a developed country is likely to have only four general-purpose microprocessors but around three dozen microcontrollers."
2021/11/29 (Monday): Clearing my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews today.
(1) Book review: Moriarty, Philip, When the Uncertainty Principle Goes to 11: Or How to Explain Quantum Physics with Heavy Metal, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Tim G. Reynolds, Recorded Books, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The phrase "going to 11" is a pop-culture expression for "going to the extreme"; it is taken from the 1984 movie "This Is Spinal Tap," where a guitarist demonstrates an amplifier whose volume knobs are marked from zero to eleven, instead of the usual 0-10.
The author, a physicist with heavy-metal interests, complains about misuse of concepts of quantum physics, particularly the use of "quantum leap" to mean a major or big step, whereas quantum steps in space or time, though discrete, are really tiny.
The book's main message is that the uncertainty principle doesn't apply only to the nano-world, but also rears its head in our everyday experiences. A pure note, composed of a single frequency, goes on forever, whereas a damped note or, at the extreme, a sound spike, has limited or negligible time duration, with many different component frequencies. So, certainty in frequency comes with uncertainty in time, and vice versa.
(2) Book review: Thompson, Clive, Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, Penguin Press, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I have previously read and reviewed in great detail Thompson's Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing our Minds for the Better, giving it 5 stars.
Thompson opens Coders with the story of Ruchi Sanghvi, an early Facebook programmer, who, at age 23, helped change the world by writing the code for Facebook's "News Feed" in 2006. Creating the new software required Sanghvi and other coders on the team to grapple with tough questions, such as "What type of news about us would be of interest to our friends?" and "How does one assign weights to people's relationships?" Of course, users hated News Feed's power over what they did and didn't see (and, I suspect, many still do), but it provided a foundation for Facebook's monetization of our friendships.
Programmers are among the most-influential people of our time. Some of them lead massive tech companies that sprouted out of their codes. I am reminded of This Perfect Day, Ira Levin's novel describing a technocratic dystopia ruled by programmers through an omnipotent supercomputer.
[My review on GoodReads]
Back to Sanghvi's story, she agreed to allow her mom to arrange a marriage for her in India, because it was much more efficient, less time-consuming, than dating. To coders, it seems, "The Cult of Efficiency" (title of Chapter 5; p. 117) is everything! Facebook took a look at our lives and spotted inefficiencies in the exchange of information with our friends, and made fixing this problem its mission.
The book is full of stories on coders, men and women, who stumbled upon or were pushed into careers in computing. The video-game boom of the mid-1980s expanded the rank of coders, even though, because of the content of early games, these coders were mostly boys, whose ascendancy made "The ENIAC Girls Vanish" (title of Chapter 7; p. 185).
Coding work requires the devotion and focus of a monk, and it is filled with "Constant Frustration and Bursts of Joy" (title of Chapter 3; p. 59). In the end, the joyous moments and their resulting power trips more than make up for the long working hours, frustrating episodes, and challenges in personal relationships.
Before hacking came to carry mostly-negative connotations, coders proudly referred to themselves as "Hackers, Crackers, and Freedom Fighters" (title of Chapter 8; p. 229). Stealing and distributing copyrighted material was deemed noble. Then, laws began to catch up with such practices, turning the digital Robin Hoods into cybersecurity consultants.
What we do in our daily lives is influenced to a great extent by coders: If they make something easy for us, we do more of it; if they make it hard, we shun the activity. Our interactions with the world around us increasingly involve heavy reliance on code, giving coders unimaginable leverage, which in turn makes a basic understanding of software and those who create it indispensable.
Thompson does a great job of providing this crucial understanding, both for people like me, who are coding outsiders but otherwise live and breathe computers, and for those who nonchalantly declare themselves as being afflicted with computer-, math-, or science-phobia.
Coding jobs are on the rise, while factory and mining jobs continue to decline. That's why "Blue-Collar Coding" (title of the final Chapter 11; p. 343), that is, retraining of our workforce, has emerged as a priority. After telling some success stories in this domain, Thompson ends his book with this sentence (p. 375): "You think miners can't write JavaScript? Think again."
(3) Book review: Petroski, Henry, The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems, Vintage Books, 2010, 274 pp. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Petroski is one of my favorite authors, and I have used his ideas in both my own research and in teaching engineering courses. Some of his better-known books include: To Engineer Is Human (1985); The Pencil (1990); The Evolution of Useful Things (1992); Success Through Failure (2006); The Toothpick (2007); The Road Taken (2016). Petroski is also a prolific writer of articles, essays, and columns. Additionally, there are many videos about him on YouTube, including a 29-minute talk entitled "Bridges: Successes and Failures."
In the preface, after observing that "science" is sometimes used as a catchall term that includes medicine, engineering, and high tech, Petroski writes: "This book aims to illuminate the difference between science and engineering and thereby clarify their respective roles in the world of thought and action, of knowing and of doing." The main message of this book is that science and engineering are both distinct in their roots and functions, and significantly overlapping in our modern world. Scientists perform many engineering tasks and engineers hit upon and formulate scientific theories.
This blurring of boundaries is evident if one examines the types of faculty members inhabiting science and engineering departments at universities. From my own experience at UCSB, I see little difference between some members of our bioengineering program and a number of colleagues working in biological science, some physicists and EEs or material engineers, and, most notably, many computer scientists and computer engineers.
Petroski believes that to solve the major problems facing our civilization, we need not only cooperation between scientists and engineers, but also participation from other societal groups. Grand-challenge problems in climate change, energy, medicine, infrastructure improvement, and cybersecurity demand broad participation in formulating appropriate solutions.
I end this review with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the ideas presented by Petroski.
Chapter 1, "Ubiquitous Risk," deals with negative and positive effects of science & technology in creating risks to our well-being and mitigating their effects.
Chapter 2 ("Engineering is Rocket Science") asserts that while scientists may calculate the path of a space mission, building the spacecraft and the rocket that launches it is in the engineering domain.
Chapter 3 ("Doctors and Dilberts") elaborates on the public image of scientists, in white lab coats, and engineers, looking like the cartoon character Dilbert and wearing pocket-protectors.
Chapter 4 ("Which Comes First?") dispels the myth that scientific theories come first and engineers apply them in building systems; the truth is that inventions can and do precede the development of associated theories.
Chapter 5 ("Einstein the Inventor") suggests that the line between science and engineering have become blurred, as evidenced by Einstein working on and getting patents for several inventions, including a new refrigeration system.
Chapter 6 ("Speed Bumps") impresses the point that building bridges, skyscrapers, and even a lowly speed bump require inventive designs involving much forethought and analyses of consequences.
Chapter 7 ("Research and Development") presents R&D as combined science and engineering, which allows corporations to benefit from the latest advances in improving their products and services.
Chapter 8 ("Development and Research") informs us that D&R in industrial research centers grew by leaps and bounds, overtaking in quantity and sometimes in quality the work done in academic institutions.
Chapter 9 ("Alternative Energies") focuses on the roles played by science and engineering in the movement toward the use of renewable/alternative energy sources.
Chapter 10 ("Complex Systems") points out that many human-made systems, as well as natural systems such as the Earth's biosphere, are too complex for one person to understand consequences of one action or policy.
Chapter 11 ("Two Cultures") elaborates on the distinct cultures of scientific disciplines and the humanities (more recently, science and engineering), not interacting with each other, except in rare circumstances.
Chapter 12 ("Uncertain Science and Engineering") brings to our attention uncertainties in doing science and engineering, arising from lack of knowledge about the world around us, including forces of nature.
Chapter 13 ("Great Achievements and Grand Challenges") reviews some of the major advances in science and engineering, pointing out that there are still important unsolved problems ahead of us.
Chapter 14 ("Prizing Engineering") suggests that recognizing engineering achievements with major awards, a la Nobel Prizes, constitutes an important step in encouraging innovation.
2021/11/28 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Hanukkah! (See the next item below) [Top center] Iran held a conference on nuclear jurisprudence in 2014! [Top right] Today at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace: Holiday spirit, with David Tovar providing the soundtrack. [Bottom left & center] Repression in Iran: People protesting water shortage in the central city of Isfahan are being shot and beaten up by plainclothes security forces. [Bottom right] Some interesting abandoned sites of the former Soviet Union.
(2) One more family gathering, this time at my uncle Firooz's, before traveling family members return home: Tonight's gathering coincided with the first night of Hanukkah. Happy festival of light!
(3) Sensible gun laws save lives: Australia had a mass shooting in 1996, immediately implemented common-sense gun laws, banned all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic/pump-action shotguns, and has had no mass shootings since. There have been over 600 mass shootings in the US in 2021 alone.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sir Richard Attenborough's highly informative and effective speech at the Scotland Climate-Change Summit.
- Influential Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim dead at 91: Tributes are pouring in.
- Disinformation King, Michael Flynn, describes QAnon as a disinformation campaign created by the CIA!
- A crackdown on the Islamic Republic of Iran's presence in Sweden leads to the arrest of two brothers.
- The Iranian "dissident" in Belgium who was really a terrorist and an agent of the Islamic Republic.
- A chronology of Islamic Republic of Iran's kidnappings and killings abroad. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
- Unearthed 'Avenue of the Sphinxes' is revealed with a big celebration in Egypt.
- World's oldest form of jewelry: 150,000-year-old beads.
- Math humor circulating on the Internet. [Image] [Explanation for those who need it: (d/dx)e^x = e^x]
- Persian poetry: These verses have been attributed to Hadi Khorsandi (I was unable to confirm the claim).
(5) Iran-FIFA spat continues: FIFA has threatened Iran with a ban on its soccer team if it does not reverse its decision to not allow women into soccer stadiums. These threats have not turned into action thus far. IranWire describes Iran's dilemma as being stuck between FIFA and a Fatwa!
(6) A brief snapshot of the 50-year history of the microprocessor: Writing in IEEE Micro magazine, John Hennessy divides the 50 years since the introduction of the 4-bit Intel 4004 chip into 5 technology eras.
1971-1981: Expansion of word width (4, 8, 16, 32) and instruction sets, along with increased clock speed.
1981-1995: Emergence of RISC, cache memories, faster clocks, and pipelines that grew deeper over time.
1995-2005: Exploiting instruction-level parallelism via software and dynamic scheduling in hardware.
2005-2015: Multicore and multithreading led to performance improvements and introduced dark silicon.
2015-now: Heterogeneity, in the form of domain-specific units for ML and other tasks, became the norm.
(7) Your brain filters incoming information, so that you are not overwhelmed with the ~35 GB of information that you receive daily: That's great, right? It is indeed great, in some ways, but dangerous in others. It's good, because anything having to do with your safety or stuff you care about is let through quickly. However, among the criteria used by the reticular activating system (RAS) to exclude information is mismatch with your beliefs. This property leads to reinforcement of beliefs and biases. Fortunately, it is possible to train your RAS to pay attention to whatever else you want.
2021/11/26 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Thanksgiving Day celebration with my extended family (video 1) (video 2). [Bottom left] IEEE Central Coast Section's holiday tech-talk/banquet: Kristin Bell will speak under the title "Bringing Entrepreneurial Ideas to Life to Build and Scale New Businesses." [Bottom center] Ancient technology, involving molten metal, for connecting straight-cut stone blocks together, used in Persepolis and other sites. [Bottom right] Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist (see the last item below).
(2) Humor: a few one-liners from AARP Bulletin.
- Feeling good about yourself? Have a kid draw a picture of you.
- You know you are old when you clean to the music you used to drink to.
- Irony is when someone comments "Your an idiot."
(3) Black Friday: A day when Americans trample others to get to on-sale items, exactly one day after giving thanks for all the things they have.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran: anti-regime opposition forces are just as undemocratic as the current Iranian regime.
- IEEE Standard 754 for floating-point arithmetic: This news article highlights the latest (2019) updates.
- Hubert Humphrey: "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."
- Barack Obama: "The story of immigrants in America isn't a story of 'them', it's a story of 'us'."
- Mathematical joke (i & π having a fight): i to π: "Be rational!" π to i: "Get real!"
- Facebook memory for Nov. 26, 2016: My veggie/fruit turkey plate. [FB post]
- Facebook memory for Nov. 26, 2010: Thanksgiving feasts never change! [FB post]
(5) Book review: Gay, Roxane, Bad Feminist: Essays, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by Bahni Turpin, Harper Audio, 2014. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is a collection of short and long, humorous and serious, essays on diverse topics. They include commentaries on the current state of feminism, books, Hollywood and movies (including the Tyler Perry phenomenon), race relations (including racial profiling), violence against women, absurdly different treatment of white and colored terrorists, double standards (based on gender or race), and female friendships.
Gay calls herself a "bad feminist," because she fails to adhere to many feminist principles. For example, she confesses to listening to thuggish rap music, even though the lyrics are often degrading to women. She asks for tolerance in accepting different shades of feminism ("feminisms"), while we all strive to do better. In the final sentence of her book, Gay writes that she "would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all."
Among the book's important themes is the fact that privilege can be nuanced: You can have privilege in one area and be marginalized in others. Accepting that you are privileged does not imply that you should feel guilt or be apologetic. If, like me, you are in academia, you have quite a few privileges, regardless of your gender, ethnicity, age, religion, and immigration status. You likely have your own office, a private phone line, your own computer & printer, and a steady paycheck. Acknowledging these privileges does not erase any gripes you might have in other areas, such as gender inequity, biased evaluations, unfair workloads, and so on.
Gay's main message is that we are imperfect beings, living in an imperfect world. Imperfection isn't necessarily our enemy, if we notice the good deeds and good intentions. "It is unreasonable to expect Lena Dunham [of the HBO TV series 'Girls'] to somehow solve the race and representation problem on television while crafting her twenty-something witticisms ... ." In my view, Gay isn't a bad feminist but an imperfect one, like the rest of us.
2021/11/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Thanksgiving Day to all! Wishing you health, love, friendships, personal fulfilment, and many other gifts to enjoy and appreciate on this day & on every other day of the year. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: New seating arrangement for Thanksgiving dinner! [Top right] November 25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Iran announces a new master's degree program in the area of "Understanding Imam Khamenei's Thoughts." [Bottom center] Twitter keeps Khamenei, citing freedom of speech: The person who ordered the killing of 1500 protesters over 3 days in 2019 and 176 in the downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet enjoys freedom of speech, a right which he denies other Iranians. [Bottom right] Cover feature of CACM (see the next item below).
(2) December 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM: Sci/tech progress is imperfect. Intellectual traditions and, more importantly, the availability of tools can influence the ideas that are pursued. "The term hardware lottery describes a research idea that wins due to its compatibility with available software and hardware, not its superiority over alternative research directions."
(3) Nepotism taken to new heights in Iran: The 25-year-old son of a former parliament member held a dozen or so key management and board positions, and even taught at universities, while holding only a BS degree. [Persian-language investigative report in this 7-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran reopens universities for in-person classes, as fake vaccination certificates proliferate.
- Iranian TV's decency guidelines: Puppets banned from eating cucumbers, and many other silly restrictions.
- Roman parking-garage excavation uncovers Caligula's gardens. [14-minute video]
- Migration of red crabs, from forests to the Indian Ocean, closes some Australian roads. [3-minute video]
- Armando Anto, an Iranian-French comic, with an unusual brand of comedy. [Full 26-minute special]
- Quote: "My husband is very good in bed. He stays very still and he doesn't snore." ~ Comedian Rita Rudner
(5) Different forms of parallelism deployed for improved performance over the years: Bit-level; Instruction-level; Thread-level; Data-level; Accelerator-level. [Chart from an article by Mark D. Hill and Vijay Janapa Reddi in the December 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM]
(6) History's lesson: In 1939, more than 900 Jews fled Germany aboard a luxury cruise liner, the SS St Louis. They hoped to reach Cuba and then travel to the US, but were turned away in Havana and forced to return to Europe, where 250 were killed.
(7) Inside the Svalbard global seed vault: To preserve the world's food crops in the event of a major disaster, countries deposit their seed samples in this facility, designed to hold 1 billion samples. Recently, Syria made a withdrawal to restore crops that were destroyed by war. They will deposit more seeds, once the restoration work is done.
(8) International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women: As we express our gratitude for our blessings on this Thanksgiving Day, we should also remain aware of things that we don't have in this world. One example is violence-free home & work environments for many women. Violence against women comes in different forms, including sexual violence. Just today, I read that a New York judge has sentenced a young man who had pleaded guilty to four counts of rape to probation (no jail time, no fines, nothing)! Violence against women persists not only because of perpetrators, but also owing to enablers and those who watch in silence. #StopViolenceAgainstWomen
2021/11/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Afghan girls, by Iranian artist Nahid Zamani. [Center] The next event in UCLA's Bilingual Lectures (see the next item below). [Right] Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (see the last item below).
(2) UCLA Bilingual Lectures: A panel discussion in Dari/Persian on "Latest Developments in Afghanistan and Implications for Iran," Sunday, December 12, 2021, 11:30 AM PST, via Zoom. [Registration link]
- Ahmad Nader Nadery (Former Chair of Independent Civil Service Commission in Kabul, and Afghanistan Peace Negotiation Team Member): "The Taliban's Return to Power and Its Implications for Afghanistan and Iran"
- Homeira Qaderi (Afghan Writer and Women's Rights Activist, and Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University): "How Women in Afghanistan have Strived for Their Rights"
- Farah Karimi (Head of Dutch Parliamentary Delegation to the OSCE PA and Former UN Consultant for Capacity Building of the Afghan Parliament): "An Expert Reflection on Int'l Responses to the Crisis in Afghanistan"
(3) Plea to world leaders: Prime Minister Mia Mottley's eloquent speech on her tiny island nation of Barbados and several other countries facing death sentences if global warming is allowed to surpass 1.5 degrees.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A massive barrier protects Earth from deeper parts of the Milky Way galaxy.
- Scientists propose making Mars habitable by jump-starting its magnetic field.
- All-electric airplanes are moving along: A Rolls Royce model reaches top-speed of 387 MPH (623 km/hr).
- Medley of Disney tunes: Played by the amazing 40 Fingers guitar quartet. [6-minute video]
- Persian music: Wonderful song and accompanying dance. Enjoy! [4-minute video]
- Persian music: Exquisite rhythmic piece, performed on violin and tombak. [5-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Nov. 23, 2019: We repeated this experience at Rusty's Pizza on Nov. 23, 2021.
(5) Book review: Palahniuk, Chuck, Fight Club, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by James Colby, Recorded Books, 2008. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This best-known novel of Chuck Palahniuk has been made into a controversial 1999 movie, directed by David Fincher and starring Edward Norton (in the role of the narrator), Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. The film was commercially unsuccessful immediately after release but became a cult classic later on.
The book itself had a similar fate. It began as a 7-page short story, was published as a novel in 1996 (with the original short story used as Chapter 6), and became successful after the release of the film based on it. The novel was followed by two comic-book sequels, in 2015 and 2019.
The Narrator, a bored and sleepless automobile recall specialist meets a soap salesman on a flight home from a business trip. After a series of events, the two men form a secretive Fight Club in a bar, where violent fist-fights take place according to some made-up rules. Palahniuk has characterized Fight Club as a sort of literary social club for men, in the same way that The Joy Luck Club or How to Make an American Quilt catered to women. Elsewhere, Palahniuk has opined that "all [his] books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people."
In the novel, the notion of Fight Club spreads nationally, with devoted followers who recognize and respect the narrator, while also spawning Project Mayhem, which recruits people to carry out acts of sabotage against financial institutions. In time, the narrator regrets his actions and tries to stop both Fight Club and Project Mayhem. I won't write more about the storyline, for fear of spoiling the outcome for the reader.
I decided to peruse the novel after encountering this quote from it on-line: "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like." This anti-consumerism sentiment is what leads to the formation of Project Mayhem in the novel, in the same way that boredom with unfulfilling jobs leads to Fight Club. If, like me, you are no fan of explicit and detailed descriptions of violent fights, but are curious about the cult status of this novel, reading the Wikipedia entry for it is an adequate substitute.
2021/11/22 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] More vehicles on UCSB walkways, this time in front of the UCen, around noon on Monday 2021/11/15. [Top center] Chess prodigy: Alireza Firouzja, Iranian defector who now plays for France, climbs to #2 ranking in the world. [Top right] Holy Trinity Monastary, Greece: Suspended in the air, over a 400-meter-high cliff, it is one of the six (out of 24 meteoras built in the 14th & 15th centuries) that's active and open to visitors. [Bottom left] Iranians defy the mullahs in any way they can: As people of the central city of Isfahan protest the shortage of water and the drying-up of Zayandeh-Rood River, seen in the photo, this young couple displays another form of defiance.[Bottom center] Meme of the day (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Ira Levin's This Perfect Day (see the last item below).
(2) Extreme hypocisy: The spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry says that he has lived in Europe, where he witnessed refugees mistreated. The truth is that refugees have much better lives in Europe than Iranian dissidents do inside the country and they are orders-of-magnitude better off than Afghan refugees in Iran.
(3) Quote of the day: "But beyond the ivory tower, engineers and engineering were still mostly invisible. The popular media continued to credit—incorrectly—new inventions to scientists alone and novel skyscrapers to architects who made them pretty rather than to engineers who made them possible." ~ Henry Petroski, writing in the October 2021 issue of Prism, the magazine of the American Society for Engineering Education
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- SUV plows through pedestrians: Five killed, dozens injured, in a Wisconsin Christmas parade.
- Colombian Minister of Defense reveals assassination plots by Iran and Hezbollah in his country.
- A Nordstrom department store in Walnut Creek, CA, is the latest victim of robbery by a mob of people.
- The microprocessor at 50: How the Intel 4004 four-bit micoprocessor chip changed the world in 1971.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 22, 2013: Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei never holds press conferences.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 22, 2010: The funny Thanksgiving divorce story.
(5) Book review: Levin, Ira, This Perfect Day, Bantam, 1970.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[I read this book more than three decades ago, but posted this review on GoodReads on 2021/11/02.]
American scriptwriter & novelist Ira Levin [1929-2007] is best known for Rosemary's Baby (1967), but his other works, including A Kiss Before Dying (1953), The Stepford Wives (1972), and The Boys from Brazil (1976), were also well-received. He promoted libertarian ideas in much of his writings.
Set in the 22nd century, when several planets and their moons have been colonized, This Perfect Day describes a technocratic dystopia ruled by programmers through a supercomputer that is buried under the Alps, keeps everyone under observation, and dictates all important actions, such as getting married or having kids. The society worships the four philosophers Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei.
Levin uses a children's rhyme as a brilliant connecting tool throughout the novel: "Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei; Led us to this perfect day; Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ; All but Wei were sacrificed; Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx; Gave us lovely schools and parks; Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood; Made us humble, made us good." Bob Wood is a mysterious character who had a hand in devising a method of controlling people's lifespans, but not much more is revealed about him; Wei Li Chun remains alive, though this fact is not widely known, by having his head transplanted to successive youthful bodies.
Officially, the programmers are in charge, but all of them, except Wei, who has reserved the power to program the supercomputer for himself, do administrative work. As in all dystopian stories, there are rebel groups that live outside the society's unified mainstream. The novel's protagonist, Chip, is one of the "sick" members of the conforming society bent on destroying the supercomputer. He tries to convince his friends to do more for fighting the programmers and the machine.
The rest of the story is for the reader to discover in Levin's wonderfully-constructed suspense novel.
2021/11/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Extreme air pollution: Residents of Tehran, Iran, have been advised to stay indoors as much as possible, owing to poor air quality. [Center] A wonderful Persian verse from Hafez: "There's no appreciation among these people, oh God! Help me take my gem to another buyer!" He is, of course, not talking about a physical gem, but the gem of love/knowledge/wisdom. [Right] Iran's first banknote: The local currency was printed in the city of Tabriz, which was an important commercial hub during the Qajar era. Later, the country's first bank was also built there.
(2) Par for Washington: Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill have begun bragging to their constituents about the availability of funds for important local projects!
(3) Quote of the day: "[E]ngineering has fared better in America, but it has lost the glory it gained when astronauts reached the moon. Although NASA no longer dominates spaceflight and exploration, if recent achievements by the engineers at SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Dragon are any indication, engineering in both the United States and Britain may be poised to soar once again" ~ Henry Petroski, writing in the October 2021 issue of Prism, the magazine of the American Society for Engineering Education
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Moon has enough oxygen to sustain 16 billion people for 50,000 years.
- Isfahan isn't alone: In solidarity with people of a historic city suffering from extreme drought. [Video]
- Iranian newspapers and publishing houses face closure due to scarcity & inordinately high price of paper.
- The many faces of Golshifteh Farahani, the Iranian-French actress, in a 1-minute slide show.
- The produce & fish market in Iran's city of Rasht, near the Caspian Sea. [3-minute video]
- Playing a mean bass guitar, with a beautiful smile: "September" [3-minute video]
- Two brothers spent ~30 years to pull their dad out of music retirement: Here's the result.
(5) Sample "minimalist" conference poster: In a crunch, you can craft a poster from PowerPoint slides (in lieu of using a special poster printer). Limit the number of slides and, if possible, use larger font than usual and more diagrams/charts, in lieu of text. [Minimalist poster] [Fancy poster]
(6) A show trial in Tehran: Several low-level IRGC officers (instead of commanders or decision-makers who put defective procedures in place), are being tried in connection with the downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752. There is no transparency in terms of contents of the file, the identity of "experts," or the presence of those accused. A woman raises photos of the four loved ones she lost to protest the lack of transparency.
(7) Free book download (5G & Beyond for Dummies): I am not a fan of the "for dummies" book series, but am sharing this link anyway, given that the book is free!
(8) A new theory of systems that defies Newton's Third Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," says Newton's Third Law. This is reassuring, because it keeps us from falling through the floor, but it's not true for systems that are not in equilibrium! Such systems include life itself. "We're kept out of equilibrium by our metabolism, which converts matter into energy. A human body that settles into equilibrium is a dead body." Extra energy sources and nonreciprocal reactions lead to complex dynamical systems (such as social networks) whose analyses are beyond the reach of statistical mechanics, because they may contain exceptional points or singularities.
2021/11/20 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Amtrak Station's architecture, downtown Santa Barbara: Photos taken tonight. [Center] UCSB Middle East Ensemble's performance at Lotte Lehman Concert Hall (see the last item below). [Right] On science/technology headlines (see the next item below).
(2) Poor science writing: Increasingly, scientific publications are following regular news media in constructing brief "clever" headlines, using plays on words, that aren't informative. One of the rules of good science writing is brevity, but clarity and precision are just as important. In these four "science/tech news" pages of the October 2021 issue of Prism, the magazine of ASEE, most of the twelve headlines are unclear or imprecise.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US COVID-19 deaths worsen: 352,000 in 2020 vs. 353,000, so far, in 2021. [Wall Street Journal]
- Interstate 5 in SoCal is covered with loose cash, after bags of money fell out of an armored truck!
- Federal authorities charge two Iranians with interference in US 2020 election.
- My ECE Dept. colleague Dr. John Bowers is one of 9 UCSB researchers honored as highly-cited scientists.
- Armenian Girls' Education in Ninetheenth-Century Iran: A brief 7-minute account by Dr. Houri Barberian.
- Persian music: "Against Hijab" (protest song, asking why some men are so scared of women's hair)
- Persian music: A modern rendition of the oldie song "Elaahe-ye Naaz" [2-minute video]
(4) On the need to teach peer review: I have often complained about the sorry state of peer review in engineering. Natural sciences appear to be a lot better in this regard, and, judging by what I hear from friends in social sciences, they have it worse.
The October 2021 issue of Prism, the magazine of ASEE, contains an article entitled "Habits of Highly Effective Peer Reviewers" in which experts share strategies for crafting insightful rather then insulting critiques. Part of the problem in engineering is that established and experienced researchers avoid service as peer reviewers. This is unfair, as such researchers publish more than others, drawing on peer-review resources, without contributing to the process. It then falls upon young, inexperienced researchers to perform peer review, a task they have not studied or given serious thought to.
Here is some important advice to peer-reviewers from the article.
*Be specific *Identify strengths *Strive for speed *Check your tongue *Share your perspective *Send sensitive comments to the editor privately *Invest in training *Embrace reform *Do unto others
(5) Good to be at a live indoor concert after a long, long time: UCSB Middle East Ensemble performed at Lotte Lehman Concert Hall tonight, with a program that emphasized Armenian music. The Ensemble's next performance will be in March 2022, and, given the proximity of Nowruz, is likely to include some Iranian music.
- Upper-Egyptian music and basket dance, featuring the folk oboe called the mizmar. [1-minute video]
- The Azerbaijani song "Ayrilik," composed by Ali Salimi: Javid John Mosadeghi, vocalist. [1-minute video]
- A Latin-Arabic fusion song & dance, featuring skirt moves inspired by the Gitano Gypsies. [1-minute video]
- The beloved Armenian song "Erebuni Yerevan," composed by Edgar Hovhanessian. [2-minute video]
- An Armenian song, composed by Souren Baronian in 11/8 beat, with qanun solo. [1-minute video]
- Armenian dance, set to the highly-popular, desperate-plea song "Krunkner" ("Cranes"). [1-minute video]
- An Armenian folk song from Dikranagerd, a city in southwestern Turkey: "Hele Hele" [2-minute video]
- Dance finale, set to the Arabic pop song "Habibi Ya 'Ayni" ("My Darling, O My Eyes"). [2-minute video]
2021/11/19 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Conversation with Dr. Stephanie Cronin (see the last item below). [Top right] In loving memory of my cousin Shamsi (Esther), who passed away in Israel, yesterday. She was known by all who came in contact with her as a kind, selfless soul. She will be sorely missed. Wishing her peace and our extended family patience. [Bottom left] The underground metal scene in Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Believe it or not, all the lines in this image are perfectly straight! [Bottom right] This reader has effectively given a 5-star rating to the book How to Sleep Well!
(2) Women of Iran's underground metal scene: The combination "Iran" and "Metal" somehow doesn't roll off the tongue easily. Yet, Iran's metal rock scene thrives underground, and women play a big role in it. The "angry" metal genre allows Iranian youth to vent their frustrations.
(3) Book report: Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby. I wrote this "book review" on November 19, 2011, and posted it to GoodReads today, November 19, 2021. [The full report; 4-star rating]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted of all charges against him: The extreme-right is trying to turn him into a hero.
- Kamala Harris assumed presidential powers for 85 minutes, as Joe Biden went under anesthesia.
- AOC gives a passionate speech about Paul Gosar's depiction of her being murdered on social media.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 18, 2019: Internet shutdown in Iran.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 18, 2014: Sleeping positions for engineer, teacher, nurse, & programmer.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 19, 2014: Knowledge is power. Ignorance is bliss. Tough choice!
(5) Iran 1400 Project, in Conversation with Dr. Stephanie Cronin: In this morning's Zoom talk, Dr. Cronin, a prolific historian of modern Iran, discussed her book, Social Histories of Iran: Modernism and Marginality in the Middle East. The book began as a textbook, aiming to present a chronological look at Iran's modern history, that is, how Iran developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Later, Dr. Cronin decided to focus on several key aspects of the country's history in geographic and regional context, given that Iran's encounter with modernity wasn't a lot different from a number of countries in the region.
Interestingly, several other countries in the region, whose situations were similar to Iran, did not have revolutions. So, some things were different about the 1960s and 1970s Iran that produced the Islamic Revolution. The dissatisfied younger generation provided the foot-soldiers for the Revolution. Yet Iran was part of the global process of the radicalization of the youth, along the same lines as in Latin America. In the end, the Revolution ended up quite different from what the revolutionaries expected.
Dr. Cronin focused on the subaltern (social groups of lower status), the "dangerous" groups, so named because of the way the establishment viewed them, and women. She also included a chapter on slavery, which was abolished in the west but underwent a transformation in the Middle East. Rather than being erased by an abrupt abolitionist phase, Iranian slavery, which was domestic and to a great extent gendered in nature, withered and, eventually, died.
Iran imported black slaves, but also saw its own citizens enslaved by the Turkmens in the northwest, so the latter kind of slavery (resulting, in part, from the dire economic conditions of northwestern Iranians, forcing families to sell their daughters into slavery) was an important issue in Iran's Constitutional Revolution.
My question: Iranians being enslaved by the Turkmens was news to me. Can you elaborate on the nature of this enslavement? I have incorporated the answer in the report above. I also did a subsequent lookup in Wikipedia and found the following passage in the article on Turkmens: Turkmens were a warlike people, who conquered their neighbors and regularly captured ethnic Persians for sale as slaves in Khiva. It was their boast that not one Persian had crossed their frontier except with a rope round his neck. [More info: Jeff Eden's Slavery and Empire in Central Asia]
2021/11/18 (Thursday): Reports on three science/technology talks over the past three days.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Semel Institute Book conversation, this evening (see the next item below). [Top center] IEEE BuenaVentura Section tech talk by Dr. Roy Clark, Tuesday 11/16 evening (see item 3 below). [Top right & Bottom row] IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk by Dr. Megan Valentine (see the last item below).
(2) Book conversation: Dr. Sherry Turkle (Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir The Empathy Diaries) joined Marco Iacoboni, MD (Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and the author of Mirroring People—The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others) this afternoon at 5:00 PM PST to discuss her memoir and how it meshes with new findings in neuroscience.
Dr. Turkle has been sounding an alarm about our engagement with digital technology for a long time. In her new book, she gives us some honest and surprising lessons that meet our moment when empathy seems in short supply. We have entered a relationship with digital technology, without thinking about what this might do to our solitude and personal connections. Dr. Turkle shares insights on her most personal relationships (with family, spouses, friends, and with colleagues as diverse as Jacque Lacan and Steve Jobs) as object lessons in developing the empathy necessary to make and maintain deep connections.
In his book, Dr. Iacoboni explains the groundbreaking research into mirror neurons, the cells in our brain that allow us to understand others and interpret their emotions and intentions. From imitation to morality, from political affiliation to consumer choices, mirror neurons are the part of our brain that accounts for the remarkable ability to get inside another person's head, to know what they are thinking and feeling, the very heart of what it means to be human. Dr. Iacoboni asked questions about Dr. Turkle's motivation in writing her book and what she hoped she would accomplish by telling her very personal stories.
(3) "Ocean Oscillations, Blocking High Pressure Systems, and Downslope Winds: Explaining the California Drought/Fire Cycle": This was the title of Tuesday's talk by Dr. Roy Clark, sponsored by IEEE BuenaVentura section. Author of the book The Dynamic Greenhouse Effect, Dr. Clark's research interest in this domain is the determination of the surface temperature from first principles using the time dependent flux terms.
Climate cycles are driven by many forces, ranging from plate tectonics on the scale of many millions of years, through planetary and solar effects, on the scale of centuries to many millennia, down to El Nino Southern Oscillation, on the scale of a few years. The Earth has been cooling for at least 6000 years, a period that encompasses multiple warming cycles.
California weather conditions alternate between flood and drought. Most of the rainfall comes from winter storms that form in the Gulf of Alaska. Under the right conditions, so called "atmospheric rivers" form and substantial additional rainfall is produced, as a relatively narrow band of moist air flows in from the Pacific Ocean. Formation of natural ocean oscillations produce quasi-periodic changes in ocean temperature. The detailed ocean weather interactions are complex.
In addition, in SoCal, there is a natural transition between on-shore and off-shore flow. On-shore flow is associated with cooler ocean temperatures and higher humidity. Off-shore flow, associated with higher temperatures and lower humidity, produces the dry, hot, downslope winds known as Santa Ana or diablo winds. These conditions lead to rapid drying of the vegetation and a high fire risk.
There has been no significant change in SoCal rainfall levels over the last century. Tree ring analysis shows that California has seen both wetter and drier periods over the last 1200 years. So, California will continue to see floods, droughts, and fires. Short-term variations should not be used to predict long term trends.
[Recording of the talk: 92-minute video]
[PDF slides]
[PDF slides with notes]
(4) IEEE Central Coast Section Zoom technical talk for November 2021: Dr. Megan Valentine (Professor, UCSB Mechanical Engineering Dept.) spoke on Wednesday 11/17 evening at 6:30 PM PST, under the title "Exceptional Soft Materials, Inspired by Nature." Nature is replete with extraordinary materials. Noteworthy properties of these materials include lasting, growing, moving, adapting, aging, and healing.
In the first half of her talk, Dr. Valentine described her group's efforts to develop ultrastiff, ultratough materials inspired by the byssal materials of marine mussels. These adhesive contacts allow mussels to secure themselves to rocks, wood, metals and other surfaces in the harsh conditions of the intertidal zone. Mimicking these properties has led to the development of medical adhesives, to cite one example. A foundational understanding of the structure-mechanics relationships and processing of the natural system would allow us to design high-performance materials that are extremely strong, without compromising extensibility, as well as macroporous materials with tunable toughness and strength.
In the second half of her talk, Dr. Valentine discussed new efforts to exploit light as a means of remote control and power. Leveraging the phototransduction pathways of highly-absorbing, negatively photochromic molecules can help drive the motion of amorphous polymeric materials as well as liquid flows. Inspired by muscles, but implemented somewhat differently, the use of photo-responsive material for actuation has many potential applications. These innovations enable improvements in packaging, connective tissue repair, soft robotics, and optofluidics. [IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
[Speaker's home page]
2021/11/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Freedom cannot exist without tolerance: Yesterday 11/16 was International Day for Tolerance! [Center] CONCACAF soccer standings, midway through the World Cup 2022 qualifying round: The top 3 teams qualify automatically. [Right] A new Chinese restaurant in Isla Vista may or may not be related to Red Pepper in Old Town Goleta, our family's favorite, which closed some time ago.
(2) Khamenei's brutal crackdown continues: Iranian human- and women's-right activist Narges Mohammadi, who formerly served an 8-year prison term, was arrested violently during a memorial ceremony in Karaj for the slain victims of the November 2019 peaceful street protests. Her new charges carry a 2.5-year prison term and 80 lashes from the backward, inhumane Islamic regime.
(3) Escalating water wars and their consequences in the Middle East: Falling water levels on Iraq's Tigris & Euphrates rivers due to unsustainable dam-building in neighboring Turkey and Iran has exacerbated the effects of a prolonged drought, raising fears of social and political instability due to farmers relocating to urban areas.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biden & Xi meet, reach agreements, and try to de-escalate growing tensions over Taiwan & other issues.
- Heavy rains bring flooding and mudslides to the US Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada.
- Pete Buttigieg: Joe Biden's Secretary of Transportation is an unlikely champion of paid parental leave.
- Los Angeles's iconic Staples Center to become Crypto.com Arena.
- Scientists collect 290M-year-old skeleton of potential new species in Utah's Canyonland National Park.
- Animals and humans in perfect harmony. [3-minute video]
- Iran's capital city Tehran, and how its various neighborhoods got their names. [7-minute video]
- The seven styles of classical Persian music, briefly explained with examples. [3-minute video]
- Iranian regional music: "Kija & Rika," performed by Ava-ye Tabari Ensemble at Tehran's Vahdat Hall.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 16, 2016: Denver Guardian story on death of FBI agent investigating Clinton.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 17, 2011: Humorous quotes on television.
- Facebook memory from Nov. 17, 2019: Women are too emotional for important decisions. Yeah, right!
(5) Quote of the day: "Faith does not give you answers; it only stops you from asking questions." ~ Mohammad Zakaria-ye Razi, 9th-Century Persian philosopher & scientist
(6) Disturbing video: I am seeing quite a few videos on the second anniversary of Iran's peaceful street protests of November 2019, showing protesters shot in the head, neck, or chest. Hope security agents, and those who ordered them to shoot to kill, are punished someday for their cruel, cowardly acts.
(7) An asteroid with a tiny 160-meter moon: NASA plans to hit the moonlet Dimorphos to see if making a small change to its orbit around the asteroid Didymos is feasible.
2021/11/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mathematics is the language in which our amazing universe has been written. [Top center] Happy America Recycles Day: November 15 has been designated for raising awareness about recycling and supporting recycled products. [Top right] UCSB townhall on Munger Hall (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Afghan parliament members, today, and a few years ago. [Bottom center] Mathematical curiosity: An infinite powering stack that has a finite value. [Bottom right] What was promised by the landscapers at our housing complex (virtual-reality rendering) vs. what they delivered!
(2) Iran's Islamic regime on trial: Azar Mirzapour, one of the victims of Iranian security forces shooting at peaceful protesters in November 2019, was a nurse and single mom of 4 children.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The first major piece of legislation for the Biden administration (infrastructure bill) signed into law.
- Steve Mnuchin & Mike Pomepeo discussed a plan to oust Trump from office after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
- The path of the US men's national soccer team to the World Cup 2022 tournament in Qatar has been set.
- Trump's Defense Secretary says his goal was to stop his boss from using the military against Americans.
- What it means to be liberal: Liberalism is different from all other 'ism's.
[English]
[Persian]
- The cost of misogyny: Greater poverty and lower stability in societies.
[English]
[Persian]
(4) Today's UCSB townhall continued the intense debate over Munger Hall:
The monstrous 4500-bed dorm, slated to be the largest student residence in the world, will certainly contribute significantly to solving the housing shortage on campus. However, the dense layout, placing 512 students on each residential floor (8 houses with 8 suites, each housing 8 students) and the tiny windowless single bedrooms within the suites have raised some eyebrows on campus and have even made the news nationwide and around the world.
Besides the super-high density, lack of natural lighting and ventilation do not seem to make sense in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of campus administrators defended the project, pointing out, among other mitigating factors, the expectation that students will not be spending much time in the windowless bedrooms, given the shared space in each suite (which includes a small kitchen and 2 bathrooms) and generous community areas for meetings, exercise, entertainment, and shopping.
The dorm's layout has been suggested by Charlie Munger, who has pledged $200 million (perhaps more) to the $1.5 billion project. One of the discussants noted that students dislike the similar Munger Graduate Residences at U. Michigan. Mr. Munger has apparently responded to some criticisms of this project by accusing the critics of being billionaire-haters. Even though dormitories can be built with borrowed money, given that they are income-producing, it seems that the amount of debt required in this case is beyond UCSB's debt-service limit, without the $200+ million support from Mr. Munger.
It was mentioned that despite windowless bedrooms, the building is designed to adhere to strict environmental standards and it will meet the requirements for a "green" building. However, the impact of the super-high density on students' mental and physical health is being questioned in the absence of rigorous studies about such a living arrangement.
One final point is the sorry condition of state support for UC campuses. The legislators mandate enrollment increases, without thinking about the cost of providing housing for the expanding population of students. Hence the need to court donors, with the restrictions and conditions they attach to their donations.
2021/11/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Wealthy politicians, insulated from the poor and their many life challenges, are at the root of our country's political dysfunction. [Top center] Around the world: Mont-Saint-Michel, France. [Top right] A special section on computing developments in the China region is published in the November 2021 issue of CACM. [Bottom left] Math magic: We can divide a square of side length 9000 into five Pythagorean triangles (having integer side lengths). [Bottom center] Mathematical curiosities: Some interesting values to compute. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: The diagram shows two 20 × 38 rectangles, with B being the center of the green rectangle and D the center of the yellow rectangle. Find the length x of DE. (Credit: Nikpour)
(2) "Shaping Ethical Computing Cultures": The "techlash" resulting from revelations about how social-media platforms promote division and radicalization has made it necessary to re-examine ethics in computing and communications. This timely article, published in the November 2021 issue of CACM, helps in this direction.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Congress hopes to mandate car manufacturers to install drunk- and impaired-driving technology.
- The largest delegation to the just-concluded COP26 Climate Summit: 500+ fossil-fuel industry lobbyists!
- Michael Flynn believes that to have "one nation under God" we must have one religion!
- Alyssa Farah, former press secretary to Mike Pence, opines on January 6 and Steve Bannon's indictment.
- Caltech to strip the names of eugenicists from buildings & professorships, honoring other groups instead.
- Fairly strong, magnitude-6.3, quake strikes in Iran, near the Persian-Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.
- In case you wonder why Iran's economy is in tatters: Tehran mayor's office, at the start of a meeting!
- Iranian diplomat speaking in English: I guess this is their Foreign Ministry's best English-speaker!
- Seventeen equations that changed the world: Compiled by Ian Stewart. [Image]
- Chain reaction: Huge domino tiles are knocked down in a chain that starts with a small tile.
- Kurdish-Greek-Arabic fusion music: Wonderful! [6-minute video]
- "Sarzamin-e Man" ("My Homeland"): Aryana Sayeed sings about Afghanistan's challenges.
- Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think: Sage advice in a song from Doris Day. [3-minute video]
(4) Tonight's concert/interview by Adele: CBS provided a feast for our eyes (stunning backdrop of LA's Griffiths Park Observatory) and ears (Adele's familiar and new songs).
(5) Goleta Mosque (Islamic Center) took shape a couple of years ago after 20 years of planning: Located at the corner of the roundabout at Los Carneros and Calle Real, the mosque has a nontraditional design. It's good for the area's Muslims as a place for religious and social gatherings. However, as you see from the first photo in this SB Independent report, women are still put in a separate area in the back of the prayer hall. This treatment of women as second-class citizens is also prevalent in Jewish temples.
(6) Final thought for the day: Vice Chair of the Iranian Parliament's Judiciary Committee has boasted about personally killing a number of street protesters two years ago (a tribunal is being held in Europe to honor the victims and expose the killers). Only in a brutal dictatorial system would anyone, let alone an official charged with judicial responsibilities, dare to boast about extra-judicial killings! Mothers of some of those killed have challenged the killer to emerge from behind an army of bodyguards and face them unarmed!
[Images]
2021/11/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] So-called sidewalks in Isla Vista, adjacent to UCSB (see the next item below). [Center] Hazards of overhead electric wires in Isla Vista (see item 3 below). [Right] Zoom talk by Dr. Mohsen Ranani entitled "Why I Won't Emigrate" (see the last item below).
(2) "Sidewalks" in Isla Vista: For the 3+ decades that I have lived on the other side of Isla Vista from UCSB campus, I have used its streets to walk to work. Until recently, most of these streets lacked sidewalks, thus creating hazards for pedestrians. Now, sidewalks are being built (usually only one one side of a street), but it seems car owners in the community do not recognize pedestrians' right to safe walking!
(3) On the sorry state of our infrastructure: Much has been written about the state of disrepair of our dams, bridges, and other major structures. However, the infrastructural problems faced by the US go even deeper and hit much closer to home. As I walked to work through the community of Isla Vista, I snapped these photos showing how electricity is supplied to homes in this community of mostly student residences. Overhead power lines, with ad hoc connections along the wire may be suitable for rural areas, where miles of wire are needed to reach a few businesses or residences. In a dense community such as Isla Vista, this approach is not just ugly, but outright dangerous, especially during foul weather periods, overload-caused fires in the transformers mounted on poles, and other emergencies calling for rescue efforts through downed power lines.
(4) "Why I Won't Emigrate": In today's gathering of the Class of 1968, Tehran University College of Engineering (Fanni'68), Dr. Mohsen Ranani, a prominent economist in Iran, spoke about a topic that is on the minds of many young Iranians, that is, whether to remain in Iran and contribute to rebuilding its ruined economy or to leave the country for better career opportunities and quality of life. The talk was attended on Zoom, Aparat, and Clubhouse. [Recording of the session: 113-minute video]
Dr. Ranani began by stating that he does not view emigration as good or bad. People emigrate for a variety of reasons. He just wanted to tell the audience why he did not emigrate, despite pondering the question on multiple occasions. In economics, there are personal decisions that are fine and won't cause any damage, but if the same decision is made by everyone, serious harm can result. Thus, each individual emigration may be okay, but done en masse, the effect may be disastrous.
He noted that he considers himself as having four main attributes: Human; Believer; Iranian; Economist. After elaborating on the first two attributes, he noted that Iranianness implies adherence to certain cultural norms. These norms, and the familiarity they bring with them, make life manageable and easy to navigate. What Iranians lack in strict adherence to rules they make up for in terms of kindness, flexibility, and tolerance. Nothing is set in stone, unlike the "steely order" that prevails in many other countries.
In economics, one produces something only if the value of the product is more than the value of the parts used. Applied to life, your time on earth is so valuable that trading it for anything, except inner growth, is unwise. As we grow, we gain stability and balance, while our concerns are transformed. If our concerns remain physical, no matter how much bigger they become, they are of the same nature as a child's concerns. As we grow, our worries should go from things to ideas to self-awareness.
Humans live in three worlds/dimensions, moving through them sequentially: Survival (sustenance; requires logical intelligence); Society (prominence; requires social intelligence); Nature (virtuosity; requires self-awareness). We must move as quickly as possible through the first two domains, so as to preserve our energies for the final domain. Many people devote all their energies to living, amassing money and running out of time before getting to the last two stages. Others get stuck in the prominence stage, pursuing celebrity status or political positions till death.
Emigration takes many people backward in the process above, often having to move to the first stage of worrying about earning a living, after having advanced to the virtuosity stage in their homeland. Going from the safety and cultural familiarity of one's homeland to another culture is like taking a child from his/her mother and giving it to another person. Dr. Ranani then enumerated a number of other reasons often cited for emigration, dismissing each as being misguided.
One oft-cited reason for emigration is "for the children's sake." Many families remove their children from the safety and familiarity of their own culture, but don't let them establish healthy relationships with their new environment. This can lead to alienation and discomfort on both sides, such as children being embarrassed by their parents and parents being uncomfortable with their children's behavior and choices.
Freedom is another oft-cited reason for emigration. Psychology of scarcity tells us that when you lack something, you tend to over-value it. Lack of political and social freedoms makes us value these freedoms more and not notice many other kinds of freedom. He again referred to inflexible laws and social norms abroad, vs. the laissez-faire attitude of Iranians. We tend to under-appreciate these other kinds of freedom, given our starvation for political and certain social freedoms.
Dr. Ranani summarized his points thus: Emigration is a highly personal decision that depends on one's values and conditions. Each particular decision to emigrate cannot be criticized, but the aggregate effect of mass emigration deprives Iran of the resources and talents it needs for advancement. If asked for advice, he usually counsels against emigration, particularly given that, over time, emigration has become more difficult and costly, both financially and emotionally.
In the paragraphs above, I have tried to represent the speaker's views faithfully and accurately. Unfortunately, the 2+ hour talk did not leave any time for questions and comments. I could see from Zoom's chat box that there were quite a few opposing views (I had no access to Aparat or Clubhouse comments). Perhaps the topic can be taken up at another forum, so that criticisms and opposing views can be given due attention.
2021/11/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Creative design: Automobile resembling an antique Singer sewing machine. [Top center] This electric Detroit Model D, with a range of 100 miles and top speed of 25 MPH, was abandoned in 1910 in favor of gasoline cars: Imagine how much more advanced electric-car technology would be today if we had worked on it for over a century! [Top right] Married for 71 years: Edith Steiner, a Holocaust survivor, and John Mackay, the man who rescued her from Auschwitz (from a 2019 post). [Bottom left] Believe it or not: The Great Pyramid of Giza weight as much as 16 Empire State Buildings. [Bottom right] NYC's Empire State Building is located where this original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel stood before it was demolished in 1929.
(2) "Grace Hopper, Minicomputers, and Megabytes: It's a Fun Career": Ann Moffatt writing about her 6-decade career in computing, in the November 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM (Vol. 64, No. 11).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In an interview with Jonathan Karl, Trump characterized chants of "Hang Mike Pence" as common sense!
- The healthcare giant "Johnson & Johnson" is splitting into two companies, to be called "Johnson or Johnson"!
- Meme of the day: What doesn't kill you mutates and tries again. Get vaccinated!
- Neat physics experiments: Colored rice grains in free-fall.
- Three-dimensional optical illusion: This spinning arrow always points to the right!
- Mathematical curiosity: (1713 + 2377 + 1464)^3 = 171323771464
- Facebook memory from November 12, 2016: Why Donald Trump isn't my President. [FB post]
- Facebook memory from November 12, 2012: The on-line world is filled with caring people! [FB post]
- Facebook memory from November 12, 2011: Road trip with college buddies, ca. 1967. [FB post]
- Facebook memory from November 12, 2010: Humorous Persian poetry from Mr. Haloo. [FB post]
(4) Hairiness as a virtue: I had to do a Google search to learn that the Persian "kootaah kardan-e mahaasen" means "cutting head or facial hair," which is forbidden according to some Islamic clerics' fatwas! [Image]
(5) Quote of the day: "I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." ~ Physicist/Author Stephen Hawking
(6) "Immigrants Stories: Iranian-Americans of Silicon Valley": This is the title of a documentary film previously screened on Vimeo, courtesy of Stanford U. Iranian Studies Program. A conversation with the film's three co-directors (Nima Naimi, Alireza Sanayei, Julian Gigola) took place over Zoom on Friday morning.
The documentary project, characterized by Dr. Abbas Milani as a 3-year labor of love, chronicles the outsize role played by the Iranian-American diaspora in the success of numerous ventures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, with many of the participants recognized internationally for their contributions.
The film includes first-hand immigration experiences of Iranian-Americans, men and women, old and young, covering three generations and over a dozen personal stories. [Poster] [3-minute trailer]
2021/11/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Veterans' Day: On this day, we honor the service and sacrifice of those who defend our country and our freedoms during war and peace. [Top center] Throwback Thursday: My paternal grandmother, my youngest sister, and two cousins. [Top right] Sahar Toosi, who biked 2000 km from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf for fundraising, celebrates the opening of her first school in Kerman, Iran. [Bottom left] Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice (see the last item below). [Bottom center & right] Playing the victim: Faces of white privilege, when they are called out for their evil deeds.
(2) Beautification filtering: Zoom and various other forms of on-line interaction have made us more aware of, and sensitive to, how we look. Social-media influencers have teams of experts to help them look fabulous on-line. We mere mortals are left to experiment with free image-editing and filtering software.
(3) Full-page appeal on the back-cover of the New York Review of Books, August 19, 2021: We must act now! The lives of Iran's political prisoners hang in the balance.
[Image]
(4) Math puzzle: A Pythagorean triangle is right-angled and has integer side lengths. Are there Pythagorean triangles with the same area and perimeter? If so, how many? If not, why not?
(5) A series that yields the value of π: This one is due to Indian astronomer Madhava Sangamagrama [~1340 to ~1425]. π = 4/1 – 4/3 + 4/5 – 4/7 + 4/9 – 4/11 + 4/13 – 4/15 + ... [Pictorial representation]
(6) Iran beats Lebanon 2-1 to qualify for the 2022 Soccer World Cup in Qatar: Iran committed several defensive mistakes, scoring two lucky goals in stoppage time. [9-minute extended highlights]
(7) Imagine going to prison at age 22 and emerging a middle-aged woman: Saba Kord Afshari was sentenced to 24 years in prison for her activism against compulsory hijab laws. Men in their 70s and 80s running Iran are scared of this brave 20-something and her hair. Compulsory hijab isn't a minor inconvenience, as some claim. It's a weapon for oppressing women. [Facebook post, in Persian]
(8) Some apologists for the Iranian regime question the financing source for tribunals held to expose the massacre of peaceful protesters. They are seemingly fine with the massacre itself. [Persian tweet]
(9) The paradox of choice: When Soviet Jews were allowed to leave USSR and landed in Israel, one of their challenges was to decide which of the dozen or so varieties of canned peas to buy at supermarkets, having been accustomed to a single type back home. American psychologist Barry Schwartz studied this phenomenon in his 2014 book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
Today, we see this abundance of choice in conferences, lectures, and other events that we can attend free of charge or at minimal cost. This mind-boggling variety was brought to us, courtesy of COVID-19, but it is unlikely to go away when we overcome the pandemic. Conferences should be viewed as community-building events, not scholarly-publishing venues, and the current on-line mode does not serve the primary reason for having conferences. [Adapted from Moshe Vardi's November 2021 column in Communications of the ACM]
2021/11/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & Bottom left] Iranian yummy snacks, fruits, nuts, and sweets: You can earn a star by naming all 16! [Bottom center] Math puzzle: What is the ratio of the shaded area in the figure to the area of the ABCD square? [Bottom right] Facebook memories from November 10 of years past.
(2) "Megasupramolecules: From Disaster to Discovery": Prof. Julia A. Kornfield (Chemical Engineering, Caltech) talks about uses of polymers, including how they are used to make jet fuel safer by not allowing it to burn so hot. Work on making jet fuel safer was inspired by the 9/11 collapse of the Twin Towers.
(3) Today, I got two fortune cookies for one meal: The messages were "You will soon begin a new and fulfilling career" and "Today is your lucky day." Perhaps the server knew one of them does not make sense at my age!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Anyone losing so much would keep quiet & mind his own business: But Trump defies all norms of decency!
- ISS was forced to execute maneuvers to dodge space debris from a Chinese anti-satellite weapon.
- Lebanon is reportedly suspicious of Iranian soccer players arriving with inordinately large suitcases.
- Fun mathematical fact: There are exactly 10! (10 factorial) seconds in 6 weeks.
- On the benefits of walking: As an avid walker, I can vouch for the accuracy of this 6-minute video.
- Sample from today's Associated Students noon concert at UCSB's Storke Plaza. [2-minute video]
(5) Is UC losing its place as the crown-jewel of public universities? LA Times editors think so. Inability to enroll in overcrowded courses is one reason student satisfaction was on the decline, even before the pandemic.
(6) Baha'is continue to be persecuted in Iran: They are arrested first, and then charges are manufactured to punish them as the regime sees fit. We have to be their voice, whether or not we are part of a persecuted ethnic or religious minority. #Bahai
(7) A woman was summoned to court in Iran and reprimanded for this tweet: You say we should fight rising prices by not eating beef, chicken, or fruit. Well, headscarves, shawls, and manteaus are also very expensive!
(8) Novelist/essayist Chuck Palahniuk quotations from Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, and Diary.
- "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."
- "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like."
- "It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace."
(9) Caltech's Watson Lecture: Theoretical-physics Professor Xie Chen gave a talk this afternoon entitled "Quantum Matter: Why It Matters," that, among other topics, covered the manifestation of quantum effects in the macroscopic world. Quantum mechanics, which was formulated ~100 years ago, rests upon the two key notions of superposition and entanglement. As shown in David Kaiser's 2012 book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, several members of the counterculture of the 1970s Berkeley put the field on firm footing. At Caltech's IQIM, researchers take the rules of quantum mechanics and imagine what would happen if those rules are applied at the macroscopic level, that is, at the level of everyday objects and even objects as large as a black hole. Two entangled black holes form what we call a wormhole.
[The recorded lecture begins at the 15:00 mark of this 77-mintue video]
2021/11/09 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Aviation history: Los Angeles, up to 1915, and Zeppelin over Berlin, 1915. [Top center] Meme from Iran: It seems that the Ministry of Energy isn't on speaking terms with the Ministry of Roads & Transportation! [Top right] A suffragette in London: Lady Florence Norman going to her central-London office on a motorized scooter (1916). [Bottom left] Faces of rock: Composite AI-generated faces from members of various rock bands. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: If you think insulin is expensive, take a look at the cost of lobbying against making drugs affordable! [Bottom right] Iranian soldiers, who defend compulsory hijab in Iran, are fighting in Syria to protect a regime whose women's basketball team looks like this!
(2) The Landau-Ramanujan constant: If N(x) is the number of positive integers below x that are the sum of two squares, N(x) = bx/sqrt(ln x) for large x. The constant b is approximately 0.76422.
(3) The two on-line business models: Wikipedia does not show ads to users. It is supported by user donations. Hence, it is designed so that users can get the needed information quickly and leave. Facebook and Twitter are "free." They are designed to be sticky, that is, keep you engaged for as long as possible and tricking you into clicking on links. They definitely don't want to make it easy for you to get information and leave.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mahlagha Mallah, nicknamed "Mother of Iran's Environment," dead at 104.
- Women's-rights activist and Peace Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai ties the knot.
- Iranian paper Kelid is shut down after making an oblique reference to Khamenei's role in rampant poverty.
- Mediating Scripture: Judeo-Persian ToBit as Global Crossroads: Free symposium. [Details & registration]
- Mathematical curiosity: The right-angled triangle with side lengths 693, 1924, 2045 has an area of 666,666.
- Experience Van Gogh in this fully-interactive painting that allows you to look in different directions.
- Dance: Dozens of arms create beautiful geometric patterns. [1-minute video]
- Impressive charcoal drawing technique from Ghasemian_art. [1-minute video]
- Windows Waltz: Put together from the sounds made by MS Windows operating system. [2-minute video]
- I don't know what kind of music this video contains, but the little musician plays with passion and skill.
(5) Book conversation: Dr. Sherry Turkle (Professor, Social Studies of Science & Technology at MIT and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir The Empathy Diaries) will join Marco Iacoboni, MD (Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and the author of Mirroring People—The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others) on Thursday, November 18, 2021, 5:00 PM PST. [Registration]
(6) Angry white men: After centuries of living privilieged lives, straight white men now consider themselves marginalized & victimized. In this 43-minute podcast, sociologist Michael Kimmel explains that while their anger may be justified, it's been sorely misdirected towards ethnic minorities, women, & the LGBTQ community.
(7) Is UC losing its place as the crown-jewel of public universities? LA Times thinks so. Inability to enroll in overcrowded required courses is one reason student satisfaction was on the decline, even before the pandemic.
(8) Final thought for the day: "When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
2021/11/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] ABBA is back on stage after 40 years: Their concert tour "Voyage" will kick off in London on May 27, 2022. [Top right] Pro-government women in Iran declare war on women's-rights activists: They recreate a pose of the hijab-less Tehran U. graduates, but with chadors and red face-masks. [Middle left] The Iranian regime has called this woman, Masih Alinejad, a foreign agent, an ugly duckling, and much worse: She presses on in defense of women's rights. [Middle center] Zoom/Aparat talk (see the next item below). [Middle right & Bottom row] Talk by Dr. Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi (see the last item below).
(2) "Why I Won't Emigrate (from Iran)": This is the title of a talk, in Persian, by Dr. Mohsen Ranani (Professor of Economics, Isfahan U.) which addresses a dilemma faced by many young Iranians, that is, whether to go abroad in search of better career opportunities or to stay and help rebuild the country's ruined economy. The talk is co-sponsored by Tehran University's School of Engineering Class of 1968 (on Zoom) and Pooyesh-e Fekri Movement (on Aparat). The Aparat link is given in the image. If you prefer to join via Zoom, drop me line for the link. Saturday, November 13, 2021, 9:00 PM Iran time, 9:30 AM PST.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Part of the US plan to combat climate change is the use of nuclear power plants based on new technology.
- Big Bird gets the COVID-19 vaccine: Ted Cruz accuses the Sesame Street character of propaganda!
- Compulsory hijab claims a victim: Iranian woman worker dies when her headscarf gets caught in a loom.
- Iran seems to have opted for its own version of Nobel Prizes! [Image]
- Popular street-food in Tabriz: Iranian burrito, filled with egg, baked potato, butter, and other goodies. [Video]
(4) UCLA Iranian Studies Bilingual Lectures on Iran: After panel discussions on Sundays 10/24 and 10/31, the 2021-2022 edition of the lecture series continued yesterday with a lecture by Dr. Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi (urban sociologist & human geographer), under the title "Women, Public Spaces, and Social Participation in Iran." Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge), coordinator of the lecture series, introduced the speaker.
The Iranian women's movement is often associated with the opposition to compulsory hijab, but it is actually much broader than this one issue, important as it is. For a long time, women's hijab in Iran has been used as a political lever, first its forced removal by Reza Shah under the banner of modernity, and then forced imposition by the Islamic Republic, which equated women's hijab with chastity. The intermediate period, the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, can be characterized as more-tolerant, treating the society as a mix of traditional and modern, that co-existed in public spaces.
The Islamic Revolution brought changes to people's appearance, both men and women. During the first post-revolutionary decade, public spaces lost their use at entertainment centers. Theaters, cinemas, and other venues were either closed or converted for other uses. One aftermath of the Revolution was a blurring of public vs. private spaces. Many secular women were expelled from their professional positions and those who remained were demoted, feeling pressure to return to home life.
On the other hand, traditional, pro-regime women were given new opportunities, as universities and other public spaces were now deemed safe for their participation. A surge of women students at universities, achieving near-parity, was one result. Restrictions in employment remained, so women university graduates had few career options. Nevertheless, even if they worked in areas unrelated to their majors (in catering, e.g.), they gained self-confidence and experienced gender inequity first-hand.
After the end of Iran-Iraq war, about 30 years ago, public spaces underwent a sort of revival, encouraging citizens to leave their homes for social interactions, including in sporting facilities and cultural centers (farhang-saraas). Sports and cultural centers were opened up to traditional women in the lower social classes. Suddenly, these women were exposed to activities outside their previously-sanctioned roles as wives and mothers.
During Mohammad Khatami's presidency, 1997-2005, women made great leaps. They declared their presence through the use of modern technology (mobile phones, Internet), and this presence was increasingly felt at universities and, via new, creative fashions, on the streets. They started to organize around specific goals, but this kind of activism entailed a minority of women. The 50,000-strong women's street protest on March 8, 1979, in opposition to compulsory hijab, remains the largest women's protest, which, unfortunately, was unsuccessful.
Another broad protest movement, which was leaderless, aimed to inform women of misogynistic laws. The protest movement of the "Girls of Enghelab Street" (young women removing their headscarves and putting them atop sticks, which they held up, like banners), though short-lived, had a profound impact due to subsequent discussion and broad publicity on social media. Generally speaking, no event has a profound impact, unless it is followed-up by repeated dissemination and publicity.
So, even though none of the protest movements achieved its goals, the collective result of these actions has changed the political scene in Iran. Many of these movements are disapproved by the regime, but their growth in size and influence has made it difficult for security forces to suppress all of them. There is just too much going on for the regime to react in every case: Fitness exercises, dancing, bike-riding, and so on. People on the street are no longer shocked when they see hijab-less women, often taking a quick look and passing by with indifference.
The virtual public space, that is, the Internet (with 84-91% engagement), and satellite TV have had a profound impact on the lives of Iranians, women in particular. Weblog-writing has become an important tool for women to express their experiences and demands, particularly since they can do this anonymously. The emergence of similar stories in these weblogs has impressed upon women the injustice and misogyny prevalent in the society.
In summary, Iranian women, in both physical and virtual public spaces, have been able to attract attention to their causes.
A Q&A period was held at the end. I asked why the speaker made no mention of women activist/political prisoners, thus painting a somewhat rosier picture than the prevailing reality. She answered that her focus was on women in public spaces, and thus did not venture into political activism (although I don't think opposition to death penalty or demand for equal rights, e.g., is political). Having said this, I do understand that as a woman living in Iran, Dr. Amir-Ebrahim has to walk a tightrope and does not have the luxury of being completely open in the face of cyber-surveillance by the regime's agents.
2021/11/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Dr. Farhad Mavaddat, former Professor of Arya-Mahr/Sharif U. Technology and U. Waterloo, passes away at 80 (see the last item below). [Top center] Persian poetry: A couple of verses from a wonderful poem by Parvin E'tesami. [Top right] Doilies from my high-school days (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Gorgeous fall and winter colors appearing in one frame. [Bottom center] Hybrid rural transport! [Bottom right] Math magic: This four-coloring of the 17-by-17 square has the interesting property that none of its subrectangles holds the same color in all four corners.
(2) Relics from my high-school arts & crafts course: While cleaning and organizing a closet, I found two doilies woven using square pin-looms, on which yarn was placed in a grid pattern, with the rest of the process escaping my mind! The pin-loom images at the bottom are what I found on the Internet. We made a square wooden frame in the high-school's workshop and hammered in equally-spaced nails around the perimeter.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Crushed at a packed Houston music festival, 8 are dead and scores are injured, some critically.
- The infrastructure bill passed by Congress will improve roads, transit, and Internet access across the US.
- Advice for the upcoming US elections: Just as in driving, choose 'R' to go backward and 'D' to go forward!
- Math magic: Adding the numbers 1-10 yields 55; 1-100, 5050; 1-1000, 500500; 1-10000, 50005000; etc.
(4) Caltech's Watson Lectures: Theoretical physics Professor Xie Chen will give a talk entitled "Quantum Matter: Why It Matters" on November 10, 2021, 5:00 PM PST, that, among other topics, covers the manifestation of quantum effects in the macroscopic world. [Registration]
(5) Dr. Farhad Mavaddat [1941-2021]: A long-time friend and a former colleague of mine at Arya-Mehr (later Sharif) University of Technology passed away at age 80, on November 3, 2021, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He is survived by his son Mehrdad and his daughter Mitra. Sima Zand, Farhad's wife, was the love of his life, so when Sima lost her battle to cancer in 2011, he suddenly aged quite a bit and never had another good day, even before his own health began deteriorating a few years ago.
Farhad received his PhD from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, in 1968. He returned to Iran to work at Arya-Mehr University of Technology, where he remained until 1978. From 1979, until his retirement in 2015, he was affiliated with University of Waterloo, Canada, hosting me during my 1986-1987 sabbatical-leave year. Farhad loved Iran and served it with dedication and distinction. Unfortunately, as a member of the Baha'i religious minority, not all Iranians reciprocated his love and selfless service. Emigrating from Iran was painful to him, but since he lost family members to the religious zealots of the Islamic Republic, he saw no choice but to save his family from persecution.
When I returned to Iran in 1974 after my graduate studies in the US and was offered an academic position at AMUT/SUT, Farhad had already established a Master's program in computer science within the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and was working on improving the program's laboratory facilities. He was well-respected by students and colleagues alike. I found Farhad very welcoming and supportive, allowing me to integrate into the existing team (which also included our mutual friend, Engr. Armen Nahapetian) and hit the ground running, so to speak. He led the Computing Group and later served a term as Department Chair.
Before Farhad's departure from Iran, we worked on many projects together, including curriculum development, challenges of technology transfer, and culture/language-dependent aspects of computing, particularly adapting Western technology to the needs of Iran and of the Persian language. After his departure, we stayed in touch over the years and, when I also moved to the West, we had occasional mini-reunions with a couple of other AMUT/SUT colleagues.
When I last visited him in Canada in early August 2018, he was quite frail, leading a life of isolation and resignation. We had semi-regular phone contact over the past three years, but gradually, he had trouble remembering our interactions. I was desperate to pay him another visit, but my plans fizzled when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Unfortunately, he did not last long enough for us to visit one more time or to implement a long-planned event in our series of mini-reunions.
My sincere condolences to Farhad's children, Mehrdad & Mitra, to other family members, and to all those who knew this noble & distinguished man. May his soul rest in peace!
[Funeral notice & obituary] [Tribute wall]
2021/11/06 (Saturday): Today, I offer my reviews of three vastly different books about women and girls.
(1) Book review: Neuman, Johanna, And Yet They Persisted: How American Women Won the Right to Vote, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Tanya Eby, Tantor Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Hailed as the ideal text for courses in women's studies and American history, this detailed retelling of the women's suffrage movement doesn't focus only on the commonly-covered period from the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton publicly demanded the right to vote, until 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which had been passed a year earlier by the US Congress.
Neuman has a great deal to say about the earlier period, beginning with the Revolutionary War of the late 1770s, and the century since the ratification. We learn, for example, that the women's suffrage history is intimately tied to the abolition of slavery. In fact, many men who were favorably disposed to ending slavery did not support women's right to vote. Similarly, as slaves were freed and granted citizenship rights, the said men didn't know what to do with female slaves' rights.
That it took so long for women to gain the right to vote, the final confirmation coming 5.5 decades after the US ratified the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery, is astonishing. Misogynistic attitudes were not limited to the US, though, as not many countries allowed women to vote before the US. [Wikipedia]
One can only surmise that misogyny among the ruling class was stronger than racism. Even after given the right to vote by the 19th Amendment, women had to fight to actually gain access to the ballot box, let alone run for political office. African-American women had to battle anew for their rights in the mid 1960s.
History books are often dry, although there are some exceptions. This one is particularly bad in holding the reader's attention, given the presentation of long sequences of facts, names, and dates. Ordinary readers (non-scholars) may find it difficult to read more than a few pages of the book in one sitting.
(2) Book review: Nordberg, Jenny, The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Kirsten Potter, Random House Audio, 2014.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
During her stay in Afghanistan, Nordberg observed a practice known locally as "bacha posh" ("bacha," meaning "boy," is a variant of the Persian "bach'eh," or "child"; "posh" is from the Persian "poosh," meaning "wearing" or "clothed"), involving some girls dressing as boys, on their own volition or at the insistence of their families, as a way of overcoming restrictions and gaining protection against violence. This custom is followed by some families, usually those who have only female children, to claim the social status coming from having male children and to allow the cross-dressed girl to work for an added source of family income, attend school, play sports, and escort his/her sisters in public.
A case in point is provided by Azita, a bright and well-educated politician, who, having grown up as a "fake boy" herself, pretended that one of her twin girls (her third & fourth daughters) was a boy, so as to keep her standing as a politician and save face with the community. When the Taliban came to power, Azita's worried father married her off to an illiterate cousin, who was physically abusive and insisted that Azita live with another wife of his. Nordberg provides many other examples of girls dressing as boys, with reasons for their doing so being a bit different in each case.
Once they reach adolescence, "fake boys" often return to being girls, to get married and bear children, but a few refuse the reverse transformation, having experienced freedom and wielded power. The process of unlearning the male-like behavior is jarring, as are giving up paid jobs and the freedom of motion outside the home. By the way, the practice of dressing up girls as boys isn't unique to Afghanistan, but the consequences of this practice are alarming in one of the most-backward cultures of the world.
Through the lens of examining "fake boys," Nordberg also paints a picture of what life is like for Afghan girls and women. According to Nordberg, women aren't just an issue in Afghanistan, but "at the very core of conflict." We saw the central role of women in Afghanistan's social and political life, when the Taliban returned to power in mid-2021. Nordberg also makes keen observations on Afghanistan not only being "the graveyard of empires," but also "the playground of foreign aid experimentation," with meager results.
Nordberg is an award-winning journalist, foreign correspondent, columnist, and TV producer, so her observations on the Afghan society in the way boys, "fake boys," and girls are treated are useful and her data quite valuable. I recommend this fascinating and well-written book to everyone who cares about women's rights, particularly in societies marred by perpetual armed conflicts, as world powers fight over regional influence and access to resources.
(3) Book review: Carreyrou, John, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Will Damron, Random House Audio, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the story of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who has been charged with defrauding consumers and investors. That a start-up company was allowed to continue operating, and even raise additional funds, after a number of red flags were raised by employees and others, is mind-boggling. Checks and balances worked at the end, but not before irreparable harm to patients, whose inaccurate blood-test results may have led to unnecessary or missing treatments. Lawsuits in this domain are emerging and the full story can be told only after Holmes's trial and all lawsuits have run their courses. The trial of Elizabeth Holmes was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and, later, by her pregnancy, until it finally got underway in August 2021.
Carreyrou, an investigative Wall Street Journal reporter, does a thorough job of putting the story together up to 2018, a difficult task, given the secrecy with which the company and its two principals, Holmes and her boyfriend, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, operated, as well as nondisclosure agreements and the threats of lawsuits they dangled over their employees' heads.
[Theranos timeline]
Holmes, a 19-year-old Stanford University dropout, founded Theranos, whose name is derived from the two words "therapy" and "diagnosis," in 2003 and announced it to the public in 2013, with the company's valuation reaching $9 billion a year later. She had the ambition of becoming the second Steve Jobs. Over the years, she attracted notable investors and board members, including former Secretaries of State George Shultz & Henry Kissinger and Marine Corps General Jim Mattis.
Trouble for the company began in early 2016, when Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a damning report on the company's lab facilities and medical practices. A year later, Arizona's AG announced a $4.65 million settlement with Theranos, to be used to issue full refunds to Arizonans who purchased a Theranos test. Other settlements, including one with the Securities and Exchange Commission involving civil-securities fraud, followed. The company finally shuttered in September 2018, after it became clear that there were no interested buyers.
Despite its dry subject, encompassing medical test technology and financial accounts, the book is a page-turner. Silicon Valley has given us many success stories, but also quite a few failures, none more striking than the fib-filled saga of Theranos. Carreyrou supplies us with ample reasons to demand greater transparency from tech companies, particularly those with direct impact on our well-being, and to insist that company boards play bigger oversight roles (not just draw salaries, amass fortunes with stock rewards, and act as enablers of fraud by lending their reputations to companies that aren't technically or financially sound).
2021/11/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Immigrant Stories: Iranian-Americans of Silicon Valley": Documentary film screening by Stanford U. Iranian Studies Program, followed by a conversation with the film's three co-directors (Nima Naimi, Alireza Sanayei, Julian Gigola). Fri. Nov. 12, 2021, 10:00 AM PST (RSVP). [Center] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded? (@TaghiKhaje) [Right] My signature pita-bread veggie pizzas.
(2) The hypocrisy of Silicon-Valley techies leaning libertarian: It's fine for them to want the government out of their business, except that they have a business in high-tech mostly because of the government generously funding developments in chip-making, communications, Internet, supercomputing, robotics, and AI.
(3) Iranian Students of California present their 2nd episode of "The Tale of a Success," featuring Keyvan Mohajer, CEO & Co-Founder of Soundhound. Thur. Nov. 11, 2021, 11:00 AM PST.
[Registration]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The real story of Pixar: How a bad hardware company turned itself into a great movie studio.
- Book intro: Contreras, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA.
- Lady Gaga's Grammy tribute to Elton John: "Your Song" [5-minute video]
- Ready or not, Christmas music is here: A nice rendition of "Little Drummer Boy." [5-minute video]
- Dancing in the rain, Persian style! [3-minute video]
- Persian music: A nice rendition of the oldie protest song "Iran Kojast?" ("Where's Iran?"). [6-minute video]
(5) MS Windows upgrade: Microsoft Windows 11 was rolled out in October 2021: Many of us won't get it until 2022, and some older hardware many not be capable of running it.
(6) Escalating cyber-warfare between Iran & Israel: The two sides are carrying out increasingly dangerous attacks, although human casualties of this virtual war aren't as easy to assess as in conventional war. [Video]
(7) Colleges find it extremely difficult to punish tenured faculty for sexual misconduct: At best, separation agreements are reached that allow the professors to leave quietly, often moving on to a different institution that's unaware of their disciplinary history.
(8) The aging US leadership: An 81-year-old (Pelosi) is dueling a 79-year-old (McConnell) in congress, as a 78-year-old President (Biden) trades barbs with a 75-year-old former president (Trump). Meanwhile, an 88-year-old Senator (Grassley) plans to run for re-election in 2022. After a certain age, we have to undergo special tests to renew our driver's licenses, in order to ensure our own and other people's safety. Why is it that any old person can run for a position of power that has a far greater effect on our lives? Old people suffer cognitive decline and also tend to become out of touch. When was the last time Pelosi or Grassley shopped at a supermarket? [Data from: Time magazine]
(9) Final thought for the day: Those who use the Bible to justify their White-Supremacist views should be reminded that there are no White people in the Bible!
2021/11/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Civil disobedience in Iran: Risking arrest and mistreatment, a group of brave Tehran University graduates remove their headscarves to snap a photo in front of the campus main entrance. [Top center] Mach 2, Take 2: Two decades after the demise of Concorde, airplane manufacturers and airlines are ready to give supersonic passenger jets another try. [Top right] Walking along the trails of UCSB's North Campus Open Space on a foggy afternoon. [Bottom left] Musical art: Ceramic violin, made around 1710, on display at Lisbon's Museum of Ancient Art. [Bottom center] IEEE CCS talk, Nov. 17 (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Vivian Gornick's Women in Science: Then and Now (see the last item below).
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section Zoom technical talk for November 2021: Dr. Megan Valentine (Professor, UCSB Mechanical Engineering Dept.) will speak on Wed., Nov. 17, 2021, 6:30 PM PST, under the title "Exceptional Soft Materials, Inspired by Nature." [Free registration]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Studying in secret on-line: Afghan women and girls skirt Taliban restrictions by taking on-line classes.
- IEEE Central Coast Section Facebook group: Please check this page out and join if you find it of interest.
- Noon concert at UCSB: The local band Gretsch performed in Storke Plaza on Wednesday 11/03. [Video]
- UCSB administration reacts to widespread criticism of its new 4500-bed mega-dorm, Munger Hall.
- Persian music: Wonderful-sounding band of young musicians (uncredited) performs. [4-minute video]
- Persian music: Mowlavi's (Rumi's) wonderful poem is put to music by members of LA Rumi Academy.
(4) Book review: Gornick, Vivian, Women in Science: Then and Now, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Madelyn Buzzard, Tantor Audio, 2021. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Having been written by a self-avowed feminist and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY, this book rubs some men the wrong way. It is the 25th-anniversary 2009 edition of a classic. For the updated edition, Gornick, an acclaimed journalist, added interviews with younger women scientists and follow-up stories on some of the women whose scientific work and life stories were included in the original 1983 edition, subtitled "Portraits from a World in Transition."
Not much has changed in the science arena over the past few decades. Many men in positions of power still think that women are ill-suited to doing science and that they will never make great scientists, even if they achieve at some level, but the heightened expectation by women that they can and will succeed is beginning to make a difference.
The book is filled with stories of women who sacrificed, willingly or due to family expectations and societal pressure, their own careers to support their husbands'. Many women with PhDs accepted research associateships in lieu of pursuing tenure-track faculty positions, as they followed their husbands from one institution to another. Quite a few women stayed at what are viewed as temporary, stepping-stone positions for their entire careers.
Besides not being hired into positions for which they were obviously qualified, women were, and, to some extent, still are, constantly bombarded with opinions about their ill fit to doing science. Even when they contributed to scientific research, they seldom received proper credit and, even worse, saw their ideas appropriated by male bosses/colleagues. In Nobel Prizes as well as in lesser honors, women are utterly under-represented. Until 2020, only 58 of the 876 Nobel honorees were women, and the fraction of women was even smaller in the sciences (chart). The recently-announced 2021 Nobel Prizes, all but one-half of one going to men, did not improve the situation.
I consider this eye-opening book a great read for both women and men.
2021/11/03 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This is what human cells look like when infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (image source: Time magazine). [Top center] Math puzzle: Prove that for a quadrangle inscribed in a circle as shown, ac + bd = ef (solution in this 2-minute video). [Top right] Fake, PhotoShopped image purporting to depict the use of hundreds of drones flying in formation to celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico City (the background photo is in fact from Japan, somewhere near Mount Fuji, which can be seen on the top right). [Bottom left] Vanessa Nakate is featured on the cover of Time magazine's climate issue (Nov. 8-15, 2021). [Bottom center] The rudeness epidemic: Someday soon, the coronavirus pandemic will be over, but the rudeness epidemic that it helped bring about will be with us for a long time (image source: Time magazine). [Bottom right] Cover image of the Nov. 2021 issue of IEEE Computer magazine (see the next item below).
(2) Cybersecurity and Trust: Writing in the November 2021 issue of IEEE Computer magazine, Malcolm Shore (Deakin U.), Sherali Zeadally (U. Kentucky), and Astha Keshariya (IBM) review how the seven tenets of zero-trust, published in the 2nd draft of NIST's publication SP 800-207 (2020), can be used to develop secure, trustworthy systems. The zero-trust approach, first proposed in 2011, is now widely used in the industry.
(3) The storm will be over: "And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." ~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
(4) A cleaner way of making beef: Cultivated meat could have as much impact on the climate crisis as solar/wind energy, according to an article in the November 8-15, 2021, issue of Time magazine. However, the exact opposite view, that lab-grown meat can exacerbate climate change, is also advanced in some sources.
(5) Oops: Newly-designed Ohio license plates had to be recycled, because the Wright Brothers' airplane they pictured (in honor of the Ohio natives) was pushing rather than pulling a banner!
(6) Mysterious field of glass fragments, scattered across Chile's Atacama Desert: Stretching for 75 kilometers, the glass pieces are believed to have been formed from melting sand, after being hit by hot space rock from an exploding meteor.
(7) U. Florida faculty, banned by their school's administration from participating in a lawsuit challenging the state's ruling against masking mandates, will ignore the ban and testify.
(8) Iranians are masters of faking college degrees: Setareh Derakhshesh, recently rehired by Voice of America, presented a certificate of attendance at an educational program as a degree from the prestigious Sorbonne. Previously, Iranian cabinet ministers and other high-level officials had been exposed for faking academic degrees up to the doctorate level, apparently with no consequences.
(9) Final thought for the day: Climate change and other scientific matters aren't like baking bread. You can bake a decent loaf at home, using your own recipe or experimenting with variations in popular recipes. You can't do your own research on climate change or on the effectiveness of various vaccines.
2021/11/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Top-10 Iranian calligraphers: A list such as this one is subjective, but here are four samples from it anyway. Here's a comprehensive list of Iranian calligraphers. [Bottom left] Aghasht Castle in Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom center] On why we still need feminism. [Bottom right] Abandoned habitat from the medieval period, unearthed in Algeria: An example of what were known as kasrs, this fortified village was lost in the dunes of the Grand Erg Occidental just north of Timimoun.
(2) A private residence in Iran: The Hogwarts-like Aghasht Castle, in a village by the same name near Karaj, Iran, is a private residence, whose construction was recently completed (it's not a historic monument or a tourist site). The name "Aghasht" is a composite of "Aw" (water) and "ghasht" (soaked), coming from the region's plentiful rainfall. All I can say is that in a country struggling economically and more than half of its population living under the poverty line, such excesses are deplorable. [Video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Architectural consultant quits in protest over billionaire donor's favored design for UCSB mega-dorm.
- Connecticut offers free Google courses for training in data analytics and other info-tech topics.
- Playing with people's lives: Tales of deception, stolen sperms, and other unethical doings at fertility clinics.
- Viking settlement in Canada reveals that Europeans were in the Americas 470 years before Columbus.
(4) Math puzzle: If you have 2 lbs of potatoes that are 99% water by weight and you dehydrate them until they are 98% water, how much do they weigh now?
(5) "Recent Developments and Changes in Iran": After two panels on Sundays 10/24 and 10/31, the series continues with a Persian lecture by Dr. Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi, under the title "Women, Public Spaces, and Social Participation in Iran," on Sunday, November 7, 2021, 11:30 AM PST.
[Registration]
(6) COVID-19 hurt UCSB students in many ways: Their grades were helped, though, with a 17-point increase in the share of "A"s (from ~44% to ~61%) and reductions in all other grades. [Chart from: Daily Nexus]
(7) Murderous misogyny in Iran: Fatemeh Rasouli's husband tied her hands & feet and set her on fire, because she had given birth to five daughters and was pregnant with a sixth.
(8) Rothschild family conspiracies: I came across a propaganda film posted on a forum, claiming that the Rothschild family is the richest in the world and controls all economic activities across the globe, continuing that everyone kisses the Pope's hand when they meet him, whereas the Pope kisses the hands of the Rothschilds! Wondering whether he should respond with facts (including that the Rothschilds aren't even among the top-25 richest families), a friend asked me for advice. I told him to refrain from responding if he did not want the exchanges to escalate into conflict. Then, I reminded him of the following viral joke: A Jew was reading Arabic papers in a coffee shop, when his friend asked him why he didn't read Hebrew papers instead. He responded that the news stories were much rosier in Arabic papers: Jews own all the banks, they are millionaires, they control everything. Reading Hebrew papers is depressing: Jews suffer violence everywhere, they are killed by terrorists, their places of worship are defaced or set on fire. I ended by advising my friend to just enjoy the news in Arabic and not take the anti-Semitic propaganda too seriously.
2021/10/31 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] I have no idea why the Republicans did not previously mobilize against all these vaccines! [Top center] Our minimalist Halloween set-up this year (making it safe for unvaccinated children). [Top right] A math problem (given the two equalities at the top, evaluate the expression at the bottom) and a geometric proof (that the arithmetic mean of two numbers is always greater than their geometric mean). [Bottom row] Some slides from today's UCLA panel discussion (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Yuval Noah Harari's October 31, 2021, interview with CBS News "60 Minutes" program.
[13-minute video]
- Corporate tax rates in the developed world over the years: Chart showing downward trend worldwide.
- The writer in diaspora cannot remain the same person: Iranian author Fariba Sedighim on writing in exile.
- The Persian word for "companion" is "ham-dam": Its literal meaning is "the one who breathes with you."
(3) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran is back for 2021-2022: "Recent Developments and Changes in Iran" is the focus of a series of panels, the first of which, entitled "Health & Public Health Policy—Political & Social Changes," was held (in Persian) last Sunday [Report]. The second panel (also in Persian), entitled "Economic Challenges—The Politics of Water and Gender," was held today at 11:30 AM PDT. After an introduction by the coordinator of the lecture series, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge), the three panelists presented their views on the panel's topics [Recording: 127-minute video].
Dr. Reza Ghorashi (Professor of Economics, Stockton U.) spoke under the title "Economic Challenge of Ebrahim Raisi Era." He began by reviewing the sorry state of Iran's economy, including negative growth, citing not the opinions of the regime's detractors but of some of its sternest supporters. One fundamental problem with Iran's economy is that it is heavily controlled by the government, producing a society where economy is in the service of politics, rather than the other way around. Iran possesses high economic potential, but ineptitude and misguided policies have ruined the economy. Meanwhile, the regime blames all problems on economic sanctions, whereas even if the sanctions were lifted overnight, fundamental economic problems would persist. Iranian banks are bankrupt, because for decades they have served as piggy-banks for the regime insiders, so they are shunned by FATF, and this is the main reason for Iran's economic decline. Investors and job-creators will endeavor to help, only if they can count on a stable economy and lawful society, something that Iran's regime has not been able or willing to provide.
Dr. Amir AghaKouchak (Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Earth System Science, UC Irvine) spoke under the title "Status and Prospects of Water and Environmental Management in Iran." Iran has lost a significant portion of its underground water due to a combination of mismanagement and prolonged drought, a problem that afflicts even the historically water-rich regions of the country. In the worst areas, Iran draws 2-5 time as much water from the ground as is replenished by rain. If we take raw data about the extent of ground-water usage, Iran lands in the middle of the range of world countries. But if we normalize water (and energy) usage relative to the amount of food produced, we move closer to worst in the world. Iran is depleting its precious resources on producing a relatively small amount of food, and much of what is produced isn't essential. Deforestation in Golestan Province and elsewhere in the country compounds the problems of extreme weather, as forests tend to mitigate the effects of flooding by slowing down the movement of water. Water recycling is much less energy-intensive than both water transfer and sea-water desalination. Solving Iran's water and environmental problems is impossible without a free, prosperous, and non-ideological economy, a free press to ensure transparency, strong NGOs, and elimination of administrative corruption.
Dr. Roja Fazaeli (Associate Professor of Islamic Civilizations, Trinity College Dublin) spoke under the title "The Gender Dimensions of the Latest Changes in the Government." Dr. Fazaeli began with a brief historical review of Iran's women's movement. Two weeks after the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini voided the family protection law, which provided some rights and protections to women in their marital and family roles. Shortly thereafter, hijab became mandatory in government offices, and subsequently, in all public places. The Islamic regime promoted the role of women as mothers, sidelining them from political and social domains. Women, who participated alongside men in enabling the revolution, were reduced to wives and mothers. The Islamic regime continues to define the role of women in the context of family and child-bearing. The World Bank rated Iran 185th place (out of 187) in terms of economic equality for women. Violence against women is prevalent and on the rise. The coronavirus pandemic has made the situation worse, both for violence in general and for "honor" killings. The law to prevent violence against women has been languishing for a decade, changing its name and content, without getting closer to passage. According to lawyer/activist Mehrangiz Kar, even if passed, the law is advisory and does not have much teeth. About a decade ago, Khamenei declared that the policy of limiting births was a mistake and Iran should go in the direction of significant population growth. As a result, families with 3 or more children are now encouraged and rewarded. The single token woman member of Raisi's cabinet, Ansieh Khazali, is in charge of women's affairs. She does not even fully accept gender justice, let alone gender equality. The government is now promoting remote work for women, so that they can be with their children. Apparently, the Islamic regime does not even care about single or childless women!
An extended Q&A period followed the informative presentations by the panelists.
2021/10/30 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Lecture about Abolqasem Lahuti: A Persian Poet in Stalin's Russia (see the last item below). [Top center] AI and ML must explain themselves better to users (see the next item below). [Top right] On a couple of occasions, I realized that buying the Escher-inspired GPS wasn't such a good idea! [Bottom left] AI is exposing the mysteries of the Vatican secret archives. [Bottom center] An all-male band of mathematicians: If you are a math-history enthusiast, you should be able to identify at least half of them. [Bottom right] Phantom of the GOP: The madman who's pulling the strings behind the curtain.
(2) Explainability in AI and machine learning: This is the theme of the October 2021 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. In order to realize the importance of explainability of AI decisions, consider a medical diagnosis program that has a very good accuracy record, but that it provides no explanation to the user on how a particular decision was reached. Such a non-transparent system does not inspire confidence in doctors or patients. Black-box decision-making is undesirable in medical and other high-stakes applications.
(3) Humor, from Borowitz Report: After changing Facebook to Meta, Zuckerberg also changes his own name. "The name 'Mark Zuckerberg' did not accurately describe my function: to be a force for good, spreading love and kindness throughout the metaverse," said Mother Teresa.
(4) American Anthropological Assoc. Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Faye Hassison will speak on Nov. 17, 2021, 6:30 PM EST, under the title "Reckoning with Dread: Dilemmas of Democracy When All Lives Don't Matter."
(5) "A Persian Poet in Stalin's Russia: Abolqasem Lahuti in Tajikistan": This was the title of today's free Zoom lecture by Dr. Katerina Clark (Dept. Comparative Literature, Yale U.), sponsored by the Iranian Studies Initiative at UCSB and Farhang Foundation.
Abolqasem Lahuti [1887-1957], born in Kermanshah, Iran, fled to the Soviet Russia in 1922, after leading an ill-fated revolutionary uprising in Tabriz. He eventually settled in the Persian-speaking republic of Tajikistan. Caring deeply about the plight of the working class, Lahuti joined the Communist Party in 1924 and, by the early 1930s, rose to third-highest in the Soviet Writers Union and had become a darling at Stalin's court, only to fall out of favor by the late 1930s.
Dr. Clark's focus was less on Lahuti's career than on how his Soviet verse sought to meld the conventions of the Persianate literary tradition (and of Abolqasem Ferdowsi's Shahnameh in particular) with those of socialist realism. His poems were often singled out as exemplifying Stalin's dictum that the literature of the Soviet minorities be "[Ethno-]National in form and socialist in content." As opera was considered the highest art form in Stalin's Russia, Lahuti wrote an opera based on the story of Kaveh the Blacksmith in Shahnameh, describing the liberation of Persia from the rule of Zahhak, the Serpent King.
Lahuti's poetry continued to be viewed favorably by the Soviet system, until the "national" was redefined and he was blacklisted as "too Persian." Lahuti is considered Iran's foremost Marxist poet. As the speaker stated in response to a viewer's question, it is unclear whether he considered himself an Iranian who became trapped in Tajikistan (unable to return to, or even visit, Iran) or a soviet citizen with a Persian background. The Persian saying "az inja raandeh, az anja maandeh" ("driven from here, not admitted there"; sort of the opposite of "having your cake and eating it too") comes to mind in describing the dilemma of this great poet.
[One of the three images above shows Lahuti with his Russian wife, Cecilia Bentsianovna Bakaleishchik, later known as Cecilia Banu Lahuti.]
2021/10/29 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Iran Darroudi, prominent Iranian painter & professor, dead at 85. [Top right] Georgetown panel session, with Professors Mona Jarrahi & Pardis Sabeti (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Facebook users' dilemma (see the next item below). [Bottom center] The girl nicknamed "Mosul Mona Lisa": Now grown up & free, she was the face of the Kurds suffering under ISIS. [Bottom right] Maria Ressa (one of the two Nobel Peace Prize honorees for 2021) was Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2018.
(2) Facebook in hot water: As much as I like Facebook and appreciate friends I have made through it, I can't close my eyes to recent revelations that it put profits ahead of social responsibility and its well-being ahead of the safety of its users. Though not yet ready to abandon FB, I am keeping a close eye on new developments.
(3) Facebook AI continues to suck: Some time ago, I posted a news story about the Dollar Tree store chain introducing a special section in each store for selling items costing more than $1, implying that selling only $1 items is no longer a viable business model. Facebook's Marketplace Assistant interpreted this post as offering an item for sale and kept bugging me with questions about whether I had sold the nonexistent item. There were only "yes" and "no" options, so I kept responding "no," because I had not sold anything. Yesterday, I finally realized that I should answer "yes" to get the pesky AI off my back!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Robotic taxi-boats, built by Danish and MIT researchers, take to the water in Amsterdam.
- Generating electricity from the energy of ocean waves is becoming increasingly practical. [Video]
- The sounds of randomness: Replacing digits of pi with notes resulted in this musical piece.
- Remembering Viguen: An audio-visual journey through the life of one of the icons of Iranian pop music.
- Remembering Homayoun Khorram: An audio-vidual journey through the life of a prolific Iranian musician.
(5) Book introduction: Prime Numbers and the Riemann Hypothesis is a book by Barry Mazur and William Stein, describing what the hypothesis, worth $1 million to anyone who solves it, is about, "in as direct a manner as possible and with the least mathematical background required." [Cover image & TOC]
(6) "Pioneers: Iranian-Americans in Science Today": This was the title of today's Georgetown U. Zoom panel discussion, with Dr. Mona Jarrahi (Professor, Physical and Wave Electronics, UCLA; PhD & MS, Stanford U.; BS, Sharif U. Tech, Iran) and Dr. Pardis Sabeti (Professor, Harvard U. & Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health; MD, Harvard U.; MS & DPhil, Oxford U.; BS, MIT; lead singer & songwriter for the rock band Thousand Days).
Answering questions from Ramtin Arablouei (co-host and co-producer of NPR's Throughline podcast), the two young Iranian-American women discussed their lives and their paths to distinguished academic careers, touching upon pressures within well-to-do Iranian families for both boys and girls to achieve in school, which, ironically, leads to gender equity in a way that is unimaginable for the economically disadvantaged and for the Iranian society at large.
It's bittersweet to see successful Iranian women scientists in the West: Iran's oppression of women is a boon to Western universities and tech companies. We have several examples of this brain drain at UCSB.
My question for Dr. Sabeti: Do your scientific background and work affect your music in any way?
A: The two are really separate. Somewhat surprisingly, a lot of creativity is required in science and much rigor is needed in music.
2021/10/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row, from left] Vintage campers/RVs: Volkswagen's Snail Camper; RV/camper at a 1927 exhibition in London; Airstream Bambi on a 60s VW bus chassis. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded? [Bottom center] Two math puzzles: In the top part, find the area of the triangle ABC, given the areas of 4 of the 6 smaller triangles into which it is divided. For the bottom part, find the angle on the left side of the diagram, given that the large isosceles traingle is divided into four parts, using line segments equal in length to the base. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: A square is quartered and its upper right quadrant is quartered infinitely. What fraction of the square's area in the diagram is shaded? (Source)
(2) Open banking, an idea whose time has come: Much of the world is ahead of the US in adopting open-banking standards that enable third-party developers to build applications and services around the financial institution. Currently, US consumers are prisoners to banks, each one with its unique and incompatible user interface, which make it difficult to deal with financial assets in a unified way.
(3) So much similarity between the regimes in Iran and Saudi Arabia: MBS tried to have a former Saudi official kidnapped from Canada. And he wanted to lure his daughter to the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul (where journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and chopped to pieces).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo charged in a sexual misconduct complaint.
- German Public Health officials produce flyers on alcohol and its abuse, including a version in Persian.
- Imprisoned writer Ali Akbar Saeedi Sirjani died in 1999, after writing critical letters to Ayatollah Khamenei.
- Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency: Iran will soon become another North Korea.
- UN Special Rapporteur: Human rights abusers in Iran are rewarded, rather than held accountable.
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk for November: Dr. Megan Valentine will talk under the title "Exceptional Soft Materials, Inspired by Nature." Material engineering is undergoing an exciting transformation through the discovery of new methods for producing high-performance "designer materials," possessing desirable combinations of attributes for particular applications. Nature-inspired materials can be ultra-stiff and ultra-tough, yet extensible, and possess tunable properties. Join us for this fascinating talk from a world-renowned materials expert. Wednesday, November 17, 6:30 PM PST, on Zoom.
(6) "UCSB Reads 2022" program announces book selection: Ted Chiang's Exhalation (my 4-star review) is a collection of nine science-fiction short stories that address essential questions about human life, including free will, fate, bioethics, time travel, virtual reality, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence.
Chiang combines speculative fiction and philosophy to imagine morally complex worlds with characters and dilemmas that, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, will "linger in the memory the way riddles may linger—teasing, tormenting, illuminating, thrilling."
Chiang has won more than two dozen prizes, including 4 Hugo, 4 Nebula, and 4 Locus awards, and has been featured in The Best American Short Stories. The Oscar-nominated film "Arrival" was based on the Chiang novella Story of Your Life.
On May 10, "UCSB Reads 2022" will culminate with a free, in-person public lecture by Ted Chiang in Campbell Hall, presented in partnership with UCSB Arts & Lectures.
2021/10/27 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day (math puzzles edition): [Top left] In this diagram, AE and DE are equal to the square's side length. Find x (@TaghiKhaje). [Top center] What fraction of the square is shaded? [Top right] The orange line connects the center of the green square to a corner of the purple square. Find the angle α (@dare2solve). [Bottom left] What is the fraction of the large triangle area that is colored blue, assuming that a/b = 5/3 and c/d = 3/2? (@dare2solve). [Bottom center] A circle of radius 10 is drawn around each vertex of a regular heptagon having side length 10. What is the ratio of the pink area to the yellow area? [Bottom right] Place the numbers 1-9 in the squares, so that the numbers on a line add up to 14.
(2) Political humor: Trump's new social-media platform will be called "TRUTH Social." Hearing of this, Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei immediately launched "FREEDOM Social," Saudi Arabia's MBS opted for "JUSTICE Social," and ISIS is eyeing "CHOICE Social"! While Trump's platform will attack the US intelligence establishment, the other three will actually be run by intelligence brigades.
(3) Quote: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." ~ Stephen Jay Gould
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Vaccinated UCSB students will be subjected to randomized COVID-19 testing. [Daily Nexus story]
- Using information in a ruby, scientists prove that ancient life existed on Earth 2.5 billion years ago.
- An impressive collection of antique and one-of-a-kind autos in Iran. [3-minute video]
- Quote: "The thing about quotes on the Internet is you can't confirm their authenticity." ~ Buddha
- Today's noon concert at UCSB's Storke Plaza: Modern Genre performed.
[Video 1]
[Video 2]
- Facebook memory from October 26, 2019: My Persian translation of a Luri love poem. [FB post]
(5) Joke of the day: Woman to man: "How much do you love me?" Man: "Count the stars." Woman: "Does that mean infinity?" Man: "No, count the stars to fall asleep and stop talking so much!"
(6) The recent storm broke daily rainfall totals, but it didn't make a dent in increasing total seasonal percipitation (only 9% of normal) or improving the statewide drought conditions.
(7) "The Scientific Body of Knowledge—Whose Body Does It Serve?": This was the title of UCSB Library's Pacific Views Series talk by Dr. Emily G. Jacobs (Psychological and Brain Sciences, UCSB; collaborator on a Netflix series on women's health) Tuesday 10/26 afternoon. This first in-person event after a 1.5-year hiatus was also live-streamed on UCSB Library's Facebook page. For details, refer to my Facebook post or tweet.
2021/10/25 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] New York's Manhattan Island, before 1600 and in 2021. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: The sinking of the Titanic, 21st-century version! [Top right] Contributions of an Iranian scientist who lived ~1000 years ago (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the angle α in this diagram. [Bottom center] Amazing mathematical identities involving the golden ratio φ. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Three squares are embedded in an isosceles triangle, as shown. What is the area of the smallest square?
(2) Abu Rayhan Biruni [973-1048]: The Iranian scholar and polymath, who lived during the Islamic Golden Age, knew ~500 years before Galileo that the Earth was round, and he even calculated the Earth's radius with an error of 0.5-2.0% (accounts vary). He stated ~500 years before Copernicus that the Earth could be rotating around the Sun. He drew diagrams that showed the various positions of the Moon relative to the Sun.
(3) Hypocrisy of some Democrats: They expect Republicans to compromise in order to pass legislation, but when it comes to their own views, they won't compromise to move bills forward without GOP support.
(4) The seven reasons why AI can fail (source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of October 2021).
- Brittleness: AI trained to recognize a school bus may fail when the bus is on its side, as in an accident scene.
- Embedded bias: In critical decisions (who receives a loan or is paroled), AI's hidden bias can be problematic.
- Catastrophic forgetting: AI tends to forget (overwrite) its previous training upon learning new information.
- Explainability: AI's black-box mode of decision-making does not inspire trust in its conclusions or actions.
- Quantifying uncertainty: AI has trouble with uncertainty due to a lack of uncertainty quantification methods.
- Common sense: AI can't reach acceptable, logical conclusions based on a broad context of everyday facts.
- Math: The underlying computers do fast and precise calculations, but AI algorithms sometime fail miserably.
(5) COVID testing on breath samples: New breathalyzers under development can make 30-second testing at airports, concert venues, and even restaurants feasible. [Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, October 2021]
(6) #LockHerUp: Video evidence emerges of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Green attending a January-6 event planning session at the White House.
(7) Cyber-attack on digital billboards: In Isfahan, Iran, compromised billboards display anti-Khamenei messages, including "Khamenei! Where is our petrol?"
(8) Renegades: Two longtime friends, Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, share an intimate conversation about life, music, and their love of America. [Book cover image]
(9) The turbulent history of AI: Since its emergence in the 1950s, the field of artificial intelligence has gone through boom & bust cycles, brought about by great promises and less-than-impressive results. Is the boom of the past decade here to stay? [This source article includes photos of some of the AI pioneers.]
2021/10/24 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Topsy-turvy: Water canal passing over a major highway in the Netherlands. [Top center] NASA's Lucy probe begins its 12-year adventure (see the last item below). [Top right] Art inpires! [Bottom row] Aramaic-speaking Jews of Saqqez, Kurdistan, Iran: A Times of Israel story, entitled "Aramaic-Speaking Jews Mark Shmuel Bruchim's Legacy," includes a 1947 photo taken at their local yeshiva and a photo of my parents' 1946 wedding ceremony at the 2:00-minute mark of this video.
(2) Finding a job is like finding a mate: While there may exist many thousands of ideal soulmates for you, among the few thousands that you actually meet, there will be only a handful of matches, if you are lucky.
(3) "Technology Readiness Level Ladder": This is the title of a Sharif University of Technology webinar, given in Persian, by my good friend Dr. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U., London), on Wednesday, October 27, 2021, 6:00-8:00 PM Tehran time (7:30-9:30 AM PDT). [Flyer] [Webinar link]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- An adventurous woman: Iranian young woman rides her motorcycle across world continents.
- Britain converted India from an economic power to one of the world's poorest countries. [6-minute video]
- A big step toward curing blindness: Brain implant helps blind woman see simple shapes.
- Princeton U. President, whose institution has been top-ranked for 11 years, is no fan of college rankings.
- Persian music: The oldie song "Aavaaz-e Del" ("Heart's Serenade"), covered by Ghassem & Mitra Sajjadi.
- Persian music: A beautiful instrumental piece by artists unknown to me (one is Yanni's violinist).
(5) "A Persian Poet in Stalin's Russia: Abolqasem Lahuti in Tajikistan": Free Zoom lecture presented by the Iranian Studies Initiative at UCSB and Farhang Foundation. Sat. Oct. 30, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT. [Register]
(6) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran is back for 2021-2022: "Recent Developments and Changes in Iran" is the focus of a series of panels, the first of which (in Persian) was held today at 11:30 AM.
Panel 1: "Health & Public Health Policy—Political & Social Changes"
After an introduction by the coordinator of the lecture series, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge), the three panelists presented their views on the panel's topics.
Dr. Sahar Motallebi (Lund U.): "The Public Health Structure and the Management of the Corona Crisis in Iran"
Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi (Virginia Tech): "Assessing Iran's New President, Cabinet, and Parliament"
Dr. Mohammad Ali Kadivar (Boston College): "Contentious Politics in Iran: Recent Developments and Pattern"
More detail and charts can be found on my Facebook post of today.
Next Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021, 11:30 AM PDT. [Zoom registration]
Panel 2, "Economic Challenges—The PPanel 2, "Economic Challenges—The Politics of Water and Gender"
(7) A grand voyage has begun: On October 16, 2021, NASA's billion-dollar Lucy probe began its 12-year, 4-billion-mile quest to make close fly-bys of eight carbon-rich asteroids (located in two clusters ahead and behind Jupiter along its orbit around the sun), that may hold keys to the origins of life in the solar system. Named after the 3.2-million-year-old bones of a celebrated early human ancestor, the probe will travel along a trajectory that takes it through three velocity-boosting Earth fly-bys.
[P.S.: Success of a 12-year unmanned space mission, where repair is impossible, rests upon highly-reliable, long-life computing & guidance systems. I will be assigning a problem to my students in the graduate course on dependable computing to write a one-page report about methods used to ensure the survival of Lucy's on-board computers for the duration of the 12-year mission.]
2021/10/23 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Wednesday's Associated Students noon concert at UCSB's Storke Plaza: A young woman, whose name I don't know, performed her own songs and some covers (video 1) (video 2). [Top center] Thursday night's sunset at Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach. [Top right] UCSB's walkways are indistinguishable from campus roadways: I took these photos on Wednesday, October 20, 2021, on my way to class. I have often written about the need to enforce campus traffic laws more rigorously. Campus administration is partially at fault for erecting many new buildings with no adjacent roadways for their delivery and service needs. [Bottom left] There is a hexagon hidden in every cube: Furthermore, if you look at a cube from a certain angle, it appears like a hexagon. [Bottom center] The old idea of piping water from the Persian Gulf to Iran's central desert may become a reality: Intended as a solution to drought and water shortages, the project will feed a number of water-intensive industries. [Bottom right] Brilliant chess move: Sacrificing the queen to mate in at most 2 moves.
(2) Much-needed rain may end California's drought and fire season: A moisture-rich atmospheric river is forecast to hit California on Sunday & Monday.
(3) An orthopedic doctor and her sister perished during Iran's 1988 mass executions: Before being killed, she was subjected to 7 months of "coffin" torture (being confined to a tiny space) by a sadistic prison warden.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Prop gun on film set kills one person and injures another: Actor Alec Baldwin fired the gun.
- A book from 1955 containing a million random digits: It's not available in audio format, though! [Tweet]
- Western pop culture on display in Iran: Tehran's Museum of Modern Art runs an Andy Warhol exhibit.
- War of words in Iran: Dr. Sadegh Zibakalam'a apt response to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi. [Persian text]
- Facebook memory from Oct. 22, 2017: Why some women fear standing up to power.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 22, 2015: On mad-dog Republicans turning on "mainstream" party-mates.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 22, 2015: We had 2 other countries with no paid family leave; now just one!
- Facebook memory from Oct. 22, 2013: Prof lectured in German, but it was all Greek to students anyway!
(5) Professional Women's Association at UCSB announces its Amazon wish list to support students returning to in-person instruction at Isla Vista Elementary School in Goleta. Please help!
(6) Phone systems hacked worldwide: According to CrowdStrike, a China-linked hacking gang has infiltrated mobile telephone networks, gaining access to call and text records from telecommunication carriers.
(7) Alec Baldwin firing a movie-set prop gun and killing a cinematographer reminded me of this favorite quote of mine, which I have used in my book on dependable computing: "Once every decade an unloaded gun will fire; once every century a rake will fire." ~ Russian saying about rifles used on stage
(8) Quote of the day: "It took my formal education to get me out of the migrant worker life ... but it took an education of my heart to make me a social worker." ~ Rebecca R. Refuerzo, UCSB's newly-appointed Professional Development Officer for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
(9) Final thought for the day: Has anyone else wondered why the prince, who had danced and talked with Cinderella for hours, didn't recognize her without trying on the glass slipper? She wasn't wearing a burqa!
2021/10/22 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Islamic Republic fans and apologists in Dubai: Modern free women, who are overjoyed by meeting and taking photos with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a symbol of women's oppression and human-rights violation. [Top center] US history (1920s-1930s): A few panels from UCSB Library's interesting exhibit, "Postcards from Salinas," depicting the lives of Filipina/o immigrants who settled in California's Salinas Valley, pre-1941. [Top right] Clifford Pickover's The Math Book, favorably reviewed (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Anti-women protesters in Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom center] My new invented dish: Sabzi-polo (Persian herb-rice) with teriyaki chicken, put together from leftovers! [Bottom right] Iran's women ice-hockey team reaches the final match of a regional competition, where it will face Russia again, having beaten it earlier. Where do these women even practice?
(2) Feminism destroys families: This is the message seen on the protest sign in the photo. Another sign blamed leftist feminists for the society's woes. The patriarchy in Iran is bent on removing "mehrieh," the only protection available to women within a marriage (the requirement that the man pay an agreed-upon sum to terminate the marriage). One feminist responded that we will gladly abolish mehrieh, if you give us the rights to divorce, equal jobs & pay, children's custody, and choice (in abortion and clothing).
(3) Book review: Pickover, Clifford, The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics, Sterling, 2009. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a great book, with many strengths and a few weaknesses. As the author readily admits on p. 15: "This is not a comprehensive or scholarly dissertation, but rather it is intended as recreational reading for students of science and mathematics and interested laypeople." The "recreational-reading" objective explains the blending of some lightweight material with deep results. The book consists of self-contained articles, presented in chronological order, each consisting of one page of text and one page of graphics. In a majority of instances, however, the graphics are decorative, providing little in way of illustrating the concepts or making them easier to understand.
Having discussed the weaknesses, let me shift my focus to the book's strengths. Pickover, the prolific author of 40+ books, has a gift for describing mathematical concepts in accessible form. On p. 14, the author whets the reader's appetite by promising answers to a number of intriguing questions:
- Why was the first female mathematician murdered?
- Who was the "Number Pope"?
- Who was the earliest named individual in the history of mathematics?
The very first idea ("Ant Odometer," p. 15), dating back 150 million years, concerns the way ants have evolved to be able to return home along a straight line, after traveling along a winding path in search of food. They accomplish this feat using their sense of direction and their ability to count steps. If an ant's legs are artificially shortened or lengthened before its return trip, it either does not reach its nest or overshoots it.
The final entry in the book, "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis" (p. 516), describes the work of MIT Physics Professor Max Tegmark, who hypothesized in 2007 that our universe isn't just described by mathematics—it is mathematics! "[W]e don't invent mathematical structures—we discover them, and invent only the notation for describing them."
From among the other 248 entries, let me describe just one: "Andrica's Conjecture" (p. 482). If p(n) is the nth prime number and g(n) = p(n+1) – p(n) is the gap between p(n) and the next prime p(n+1), then g(n) < 2 sqrt(p(n)) + 1. Put another way, sqrt(p(n+1)) – sqrt(p(n)) < 1. This relationship remains an unproven conjecture, but it is believed to be true based on empirical evidence.
I was particularly intrigued by three entries describing ideas from Persian mathematicians/philosophers. On p. 84, we read about "Al-Khwarizmi's Algebra" (830 CE), the first book on the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. Then, on p. 94, "Omar Khayyam's Treatise" (1070 CE), having to do with solving third-degree and some higher-order equations, is discussed, as well as his writings on properties of non-Euclidean geometries, an area that did not flourish until the 1800s. Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid al-Kashi's "Law of Cosine" (ca. 1427 CE), which relates the side lengths of a triangle and the cosine of the angle opposite to the side of length c by the identity c^2 = a^2 + b^2 – 2ab cos(C). The latter identity includes the Pythagorean theorem c^2 = a^2 + b^2 as a special case corresponding to C = 90 degrees.
Pickover's fascinating book ends with 8 pages of notes, providing details and references for the 250 entries, a 2-page index, and one page of photo credits.
2021/10/21 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cartoon of the day: If life gives you lemons ... well, there is a limit on how much lemonade you can make! [Top center] A recent burst of attention to AI ethics: Using Google Scholar data, Jason Borenstein et al. have traced the history of papers published with AI/artificial-intelligance & ethics/ethical in their titles, in a paper published in the Oct. 2021 issue of IEEE Computing Edge. [Top right] Second cartoon of the day: Iran's morality police is bent on forcing women into heaven at any cost! [Bottom row] Sample slides from Wednesday night's technical talk by Dr. Tevfik Bultan (see the last item below).
(2) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series is back with October events: "Recent Developments and Changes in Iran" is the focus of a series of panels, the first two of which (in Persian) are listed below (registration links included).
Panel 1: Health & Public Health Policy—Political & Social Changes; Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021, 11:30 AM PDT.
Panel 2: Economic Challenges—The Politics of Water and Gender; Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021, 11:30 AM PDT.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Brief report on today's virtual meeting of the UCSB Faculty Legislature (first one for 2021-2022).
- Prop gun on film set kills one person and injures another: Actor Alec Baldwin fired the gun.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 20, 2016: Sage's snake vs. con-man's wiggly line. [FB post]
- Facebook memory from Oct. 20, 2015: Man = Woman, nothing more, nothing less! [FB post]
- Facebook memory from Oct. 21, 2018: When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 21, 2011: 'Earth' without 'art' is just 'Eh'!
(4) Wednesday night's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Tevfik Bultan (Professor and Chair of UCSB's Computer Science Department) talked at 6:30 PM PDT under the title "Software, Logic, and Security." The Zoom session had 18 participants.
What we tend to describe as "tech companies" are really computer companies and operate predominantly in the business of software. Currently, the world's top 5 companies in terms of market capitalization are computer companies, and all of them, except Apple, which does both hardware and software, are software-centered businesses. Software is increasing in complexity and is becoming more critical in everything we do, so ensuring its dependability is a major concern.
Software doesn't just drive the computer industry but many other R&D endeavors, such as NASA space missions, studying the human genome, and scientific discoveries in physics. Software engineering (SE), an area defined in 1968 to help find a solution to the "software crisis," continues to be front-and-center, as we deal with hackers, data leaks, and security breaches.
Dr. Bultan's research approaches the software dependability problem through 3 complementary approaches:
- Formal methods: Mathematical tools that support rigorous specs, design, development, & verification.
- Automation: Mechanization of SE tasks, such as bug/vulnerability detection, testing, & verification.
- Logic solvers: Automated tools that check satisfiability of logic formulas to automate SE tasks.
The connection between logic and computing goes back to the origins of the computing discipline. In recent years, automated logic solvers have become critical tools for detecting computer security vulnerabilities. By reducing the search for security vulnerabilities in computer systems to the search for satisfying solutions to logic formulas, automated logic solvers can be used as security-vulnerability detectors. As a concrete example, Dr. Bultan described the detection and elimination of access control vulnerabilities in cloud computing platforms using the computing-logic connection.
[IEEE CCS event page] [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page] [Speaker's home page]
2021/10/19 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & Bottom left] Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security assesses women's status across countries (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Try your math skills by finding the limit of the depicted expression as n tends to infinity and the area of the blue region as a function of a and b. [Bottom right] Halloween is around the corner, so here are a few ideas for scary masks and costumes!
(2) Facebook friendship: Over the past week alone, I have received friend requests on Facebook from three people who have locked their profiles and show nothing other than a profile pic. There is also, needless to say, a steady stream of friend requests from super-good-looking young women, who share very little about their interests (I suspect that many older men receive requests of the second kind)! As I have often said, friendship without common interests doesn't make sense, virtually or in the physical world.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Santa Barbara County hits 70% vaccination rate for eligible residents.
- As most colleges struggle financially, wealthy colleges see double-digit endowment returns.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 19, 2015: They look crooked but they are four perfectly round circles! [Image]
- Facebook memory from Oct. 19, 2014: Figure-skating to Indian folk music. [4-minute video]
(4) Eerie parallels in Iran and Afghanistan: A member of Iran's women national volleyball team was executed in 1988. A member of Afghanistan's women volleyball team was beheaded by the Taliban in 2021. [Tweet]
(5) "Pioneers: Iranian-Americans in Science Today": Georgetown U. Zoom panel discussion, with Dr. Mona Jarrahi (Professor, Physical and Wave Electronics, UCLA) and Dr. Pardis Sabeti (Professor, Harvard U. & Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health). Friday, October 29, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT. [Registration]
(6) Ads for hearing aids: I have been swamped in my on-line interations with hearing-aid ads. I don't have a hearing problem (I think), but receiving so many ads makes me think that maybe the machine-learning algorithms of the vendors and advertisers are on to something that I don't yet know! I used to receive cremation and funeral-home ads, but I guess they have given up on that account, having learned from my Facebook posts that I am an avid walker!
(7) Women, Peace and Security Index 2021/22: The third edition of this important resource, published by Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, was released early this morning via a Zoom session that featured a number of distinguished panelists. A key conclusion is that the global advance of women's status has slowed and disparities have widened across countries.
- In overall country performance, the best list is topped by Norway, Finland, and Iceland. The United States has dropped out of the top-20 countries, to 21st place. The worst list is topped by Afghanistan (earning a score 28% worse than in 2017), Syria, and Yemen.
- There is a strong correlation between WPS and GAIN indices, the latter quantifying countries' vulnerability to climate change and readiness to respond to its impacts. Therefore, countries where women's inclusion, justice, and security are promoted are also better placed to address the rising threats of climate change.
- The United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were selected for detailed regional analysis. The results confirm that national averages are poor indicators. In Afghanistan, e.g., the share of men who condoned wife-beating ranged from 97% in Paktia to 15% in Daykundi. In the US, the top-ranking Massachusetts scored more than four times better than the bottom-ranking Louisiana.
2021/10/18 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] History in pictures: Philadelphia Electric Company's streetlight maintenance vehicle, 1910. [Top center] At the beginning of the pandemic, we washed our hands ceaselessly: Now we know that masks and proper ventilation are more-effective prevention methods.
[Top right] Woman shown wiring a pre-computer-era IBM 405 giant accounting machine in 1934. [Bottom left] Who do you trust more on #ClimateChange: A know-nothing 75-year-old or a wise 18-year-old? [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Haters, liars, and misinformation spreaders hitching a ride on Facebook. [Bottom right] Games and Mathematics (see the last item below).
(2) Our new solar water-heater tank (photo): Last night, our solar water-heater tank began leaking. What saved our house from being flooded was the pan with drainage pipe we had installed under it and a moisture sensor inside the pan (totally worth the cost). The tank was drained this morning and replaced this afternoon.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Colin Powell dead at 84: The former secretary of state & Joint Chiefs chairman fell victim to COVID-19.
- UN report: Collapse of international tourism could cost the world $4 trillion for 2020 and 2021.
- NASA probe Lucy launched on a 12-year mission to explore 8 carbon-rich astroids.
- Autonomous trains seen as solution to truck-driver shortage & moving goods on our aging infrastructure.
- Math puzzle: Find all prime number pairs a & b so that a^b + b^a is also prime.
- Facebook memory from October 18, 2019: Unstable US president triggers war between two of our allies.
(4) Book review: Wells, David, Games and Mathematics: Subtle Connections, Cambridge U. Press, 2012, 246 pp. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book consists of two parts, "Mathematical Recreations and Abstract Games" (Chs. 1-5) and "Mathematics: Game-Like, Scientific and Perceptual" (Chs. 6-20). A listing of chapter titles provides a good indication of the book's scope and coverage: 1. Recreations from Euler to Lucas; 2. Four abstract games; 3. Mathematics and games: mysterious connections; 4. Why chess is not mathematics; 5. Proving versus checking; 6. Game-like mathematics; 7. Euclid and the rules of his geometrical game; 8. New concepts and new objects; 9. Convergent and divergent series; 10. Mathematics becomes game-like; 11. Maths as science; 12. Numbers and sequences; 13. Computers and mathematics; 14. Mathematics and the sciences; 15. Minimum paths from Heron to Feynmann; 16. The foundations: perception, imagination and insight; 17. Structure; 18. Hidden structure, common structure; 19. Mathematics and beauty; 20. Origins: Formality in the everyday world
One feature of abstract games and traditional puzzles is that, unlike language and literature, they are appreciated across different cultures. Most puzzles and games are quite old, re-emerging in different times and places with minor variations. For example, evidence of dice games has been found in excavations in southeastern Iran, at a site believed to date back to 3000 BCE.
Despite the existence of mathematical games and puzzles, a significant number of games do not arise from math. However, almost all games are eventually tied to and studied using mathematical tools. Insights gained from math can help in the development of games and may even render them trivial. Solving puzzles is a lot like proving theorems in mathematics, which involves finding the right transformations and the order in which they are applied.
Wells has chosen some well-known games & puzzles, and quite a few delightfully original ones, to make his philosophical points. Like other authors dealing with philosophical aspects of mathematics, Wells discusses the notion of mathematical beauty and what it means to be a mathematician. I take pleasure in highly recommending this enlightening book, which offers much more than a mere compilation of thought-provoking games & puzzles.
2021/10/17 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Saturday's birthday party for my niece. [Bottom left] Awesome math: Diameter formulas for an arbitrary trapezoid. Not surprisingly, interchanging c and d in the formula for p yields the formula for q. [Bottom center] A mathematical oddity (π^4 + π^5 ~ e^6). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: A square of side length 24 is divided into four identical pieces and the pieces are rearranged to form a larger square, with a 10 × 10 square hole in the middle. Find the lengths of all line segments in the figure.
(2) This poster board at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace provides info on the Alisal Fire: As of Friday, the fire was ~40% contained, from north and south, and was spreading east-west. It is now ~80% contained.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Proof of past life on Mars may be hidden in ancient lake/crater: Rover may find fossilized signs of alien life.
- US Navy introduces USS Santa Barbara, a fast, agile combat ship, designed to operate near shores.
- A couple of messages to men from Iranian women, for my Persian-speaking readers. [Tweet]
- Meme of the day: I want to stop philosophizing, but I Kant!
- Kurdish music: The beautiful oldie "Shirin Shirin" (9-minute video).
- Persian music: Mahmood Schricker plays the electric setar.
- Math puzzle: In how many different ways can 1225 be written as sum of 2 or more consecutive numbers?
- Amazing explanations of why the surface area of a sphere is 4 times the area of its great circle. [Video]
(4) The golden ratio φ: The number φ = (1 + √5)/2 has many interesting properties. One such property is that the (n+2)nd power of φ equals the sum of its (n+1)st and nth powers, that is, φ^(n+2) = φ^(n+1) + φ^n. In particular, the identity φ^2 = φ + 1 indicates that we can have a right triangle with side lengths 1, √φ and φ.
(5) NASA and climate change: After decades of focusing primarily on space, NASA turns its attention to our Earth and devotes a great deal of its technology and resources to dealing with climate change. Over the coming years, NASA will partner with agencies such as FEMA and, given its immense expertise in Earth observation and climate science, it will take a leading role in helping the US and the world prepare for the challenges ahead. Like the International Space Station, which has had a dedicated 24/365 mission-control center for 2.5+ decades, NASA's climate-change effort will have a non-stop coordinating command center.
(6) Book review: Thompson, Clive, Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better, Penguin, 2013. [This review was written on October 15, 2014, and was posted to GoodReads on October 15, 2021, in anticipation of my upcoming review of the book Coders by the same author.]
2021/10/15 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Zoom talk about the death of Gholamreza Takhti (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Voting rights focus of Times Square billboard in NYC: The group Republicans for Voting Rights (RVR) has launched a billboard campaign across the US in response to calls for sham audits of the 2020 election. [Bottom center] Music by dead people still sounds pretty good! [Bottom right] Multiple interlocked Penrose or impossible triangles (credit: Thomas T. Burgess)
(2) "Health & Public Health Policy, Political & Social Changes (in Iran)": This is the title of Panel 1 in "Recent Developments and Changes in Iran," an outreach series of UCLA's Iranian Studies Program. [RSVP]
The Sunday, October 24, 2021, 11:30 AM PDT Persian panel will include:
Sahar Motallebi (Lund U.): "The Public Health Structure and the Management of the Corona Crisis in Iran"
Mehrzad Boroujerdi (Virginia Tech): "Assessing Iran's New President, Cabinet, and Parliament"
Mohammad Ali Kadivar (Boston College): "Contentious Politics in Iran: Recent Developments and Patterns"
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- ISIS responsible for ~50 deaths in a coordinated suicide-bombing/shooting attack at an Afghan mosque.
- PEN America honors jailed Iranian writers: Baktash Abtin, Reza Khandan Mahabadi, and Keyvan Bajan.
- The 3rd ed. of "The Global Women, Peace and Security Index 2021/22" will be launched on October 19.
- World's richest people, 1988-2020: Early on, the Japanese dominate; near the end, it's mostly Americans.
- ACM's STOC 2022 "call for papers": Authors should randomize, not alphabetize, names to avoid biases.
(4) The following upcoming free technical events may be of interest to you:
- Dr. Tevfik Bultan's 10/20, 6:30 PM, Zoom talk, "Computing, Logic, and Security." [Free registration]
- International (Virtual) Conference on Computer Design, 10/24-27. [Free registration]
(5) As time goes by, we don't realize how much we have aged: Here is a story from Iran that is claimed to be factual, but it still holds a lesson, even if made up.
I went to see a dentist. In the waiting room, I looked at his degrees and certificates, and recognized the name as that of a high-school classmate. When I went in, I saw this withered, decrepit man, and became convinced that he could not have been my classmate. Still, after the end of the exam, I asked him if he went to Harat High School. He said that he did, and told me the year of his graduation, which matched mine. He apologized for not recognizing me and asked what subject I had taught at Harat!
(6) "Global 1968, the Death of Takhti, and the Birth of the Iranian Revolution": This was the title of a Stanford University Zoom presentation on Friday 10/15 by Drs. Naghmeh Sohrabi & Arash Davari, which focused on the 1968 death of Gholamreza Takhti, Iran's beloved world-champion wrestler. Rumors that the Shah's secret police, not suicide, had caused Takhti's death led to street demonstrations that can be viewed as triggering events for further social unrest. University students, coming together around this national mourning event got their first taste of political mobilization and power, organizing themselves in the ensuing decade and solidifying their power in the lead-up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Coincidentally, 1968 was the year in which student demonstrations in France and elsewhere materialized, a few months after the Takhti protests in Iran.
2021/10/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Members of the just-elected UN Human Rights Council: None of these countries is perfect, but charging Eritrea and UAE with safeguarding human rights? You gotta be kidding me! [Top center] Hard hat on top of turban: Just as Trump kept feeding material to US comedians, mullahs provide an endless source of humor in Iran. [Top right] Math puzzle: If w is defined by the top expression, what is the value of the bottom expression? [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Within a unit square, two half-circles, a quarter-circle, and an infinite series of blue circles are drawn as shown. Find the radii r1 and r2 of the largest and second-largest blue circles. All radii are rational numbers. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, three lengths and two angles have been specified. What is the area of the trapezoid ABCD? [Bottom right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the quarter-circle's area is shaded? (Credit: Diego Rattaggi)
(2) Women's place in the Islamic Republic of Iran: This is what the Iranian regime does to women who don't wear a headscarf or wear it in a way that is not sanctioned. [Video]
(3) The Iranian Taliban: Those who condemned the US and shed crocodile tears for George Floyd, pull a woman by her hair, shove her, and use a device made for trapping wild animals to arrest her for "improper" hijab. Even a murderer should not be subjected to this barbaric treatment! [Video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Change of procedures at SCOTUS to solve the problem of female justices being constantly interrupted.
- Republicans spreading the big lie do not question the validity of the elections in which they kept their seats!
- Sepideh Qolian: Opinion piece about the 26-year-old who exposed the abuse of women in Iranian prisons.
- Kurdish dancing at a primary school in Turkey. [3-minute video]
- Can't argue with this fortune-cookie message: You are the life of the party!
(5) Grand Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani, 96, has boasted that he feels and acts like he is 40: A Twitter user commented under a tweet about this claim that he is 32, but feels like he is 96 because of the mullahs' stupidity and devastating policies!
(6) Don't forget to compliment people (it won't cost you anything): A photographer snapped two photos of each subject, one without a prompt and another after telling him/her that s/he was beautiful. [Slide show]
(7) There are five computer scientists/technologist among the new members appointed to President Biden's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology: Eric Horvitz (Microsoft), William Dally (NVIDIA), William Press (U. Texas Austin), Phil Venables (Google Cloud), Andrea Goldsmith (Princeton U.).
(8) Women shot in Esfahan for riding bikes: The culprit was released from custody upon intervention by security forces. Esfahan is the same city where women were sprayed with acid a few years ago due to lacking "proper" hijab, and the culprits, incited by the city's Friday Prayers Leader, were never punished.
(9) Final thought for the day: "What me want to know is: What are the implications of supply-chain crisis for cookie?" ~ Cookie Monster, in New Yorker cartoon
2021/10/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Face masks for teachers: Finally, after a long delay, my order of face masks with clear mouth window arrived yesterday. [Top center] NYC's latest skyscraper (see the next item below). [Top right] If these painted teeth begin trending, marketers of tooth-whitening products will go bankrupt! [Bottom left] Nobel Prize gender gap: Over the 120-year period 1901-2020, a tiny fraction of Nobel Prizes (58 out of 876) went to women. The 2021 Prizes, all but half of one going to men, did little to narrow the gap. [Bottom center & right] The most-dangerous walkway on the UCSB campus: This walkway is shared by trucks, vans, and other vehicles, which are supposedly limited to the speed of 5 miles/hr, but they seldom observe the limit. The reason for this sharing is the Bioengineering Building being located where there are no roads to service its delivery and maintenance needs. A large building should never be sited where there are no roads.
(2) The skinny skyscraper at NYC's 111 West 57th St.: The fascinating story of a building that is 1428 feet tall (435 m, 82 stories) and only 60 feet wide, to fit on a small plot of land, with stunning views of Central Park. One complication was the new tower being surrounded by a century-old historic building with protected status. Excavation & laying down of the foundation of this engineering marvel took 2+ years. [55-minute video]
(3) Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for 2021: The Royal Swedish Academy has honored David Card (1/2; for his empirical contributions to labor economics) along with Joshua D. Angrist & Guido W. Imbens (1/4 each; for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships).
(4) Math help: YouTube channel with impressive math videos, often explaining concepts in an intuitive or enlightening way. Recently-added videos pertain to neural networks (19-minute video), essence of linear algebra (16 videos), and essence of calculus (12 videos).
(5) Persian music: The song "Yad-e Javani" ("Reminiscences of Youth"), based on a poem by the Azeri poet Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar, with the background of sights from pre-Revolution Iran. [8-minute video]
(6) Iran's architecture: This magnificent 110-room Qajar-era mansion, known as "Haj Agha Ali's House," is located near the city of Rafsanjan, in Kerman Province. [2-minute video]
(7) On treatment of women by Iran's morality police: The mullahs pay lip service to the special place of women in Islam, but in practice shove them into patrol cars & hit them as they are thrown in. And this is in plain sight. Imagine what happens behind walls in detainment centers!
Addendum: When I tweeted the video above, a reader posted these photos, claiming that Masih Alinejad is a CIA puppet, who doesn't show the "reality" of Iranian women. Here is how I replied.
"And exactly why are the faces of women in the group photo blurred, if this is normal? The truth is that Iranian women have wonderful accomplishments, DESPITE all the restrictions imposed on them by the regime (like the husband of an athlete not allowing her to travel abroad), not because of the regime's policies. It is typical of the Iranian regime and its apologists to label anyone exposing shortcomings or oppression as CIA or Mossad agent. If you want to find enemy agents, look no further than those who abuse and oppress women!"
2021/10/11 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Today, the National Indigenous Peoples' Day was celebrated according to a proclamation by President Biden. [Top center] Monday evening's sunset at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace. [Top right] One sticky source of disagreement between VP Kamala Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the radius of the inscribed circle in a triangle having side lengths 20, 21, 29. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Finding the value of one algebraic expression, given the value of another one. [Bottom right] A very challenging Sudoku puzzle (see the next item below).
(2) Sudoku puzzle with zero given digits at the beginning: See if you can solve this very challenging Sudoku puzzle, observing the following rules (besides those of normal Sudoku):
- The dashed dominoes have a common sum for their two entries.
- An orange dot separates entries that are either consecutive numbers or have a ratio of 2.
- Two squares separated by a chess knight's move can't contain the same number.
You can find a lot more of these tough puzzles on "Cracking the Cryptic" YouTube channel. [Solution]
(3) A US Navy engineer, who had access to restricted data about naval nuclear technology, was arrested with his wife for trying to sell the secrets to someone he thought was an agent for a foreign government.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Alisal Fire to the north of Santa Barbara grew to 3000 acres on Monday, leading to mandatory evacuations.
- Actress Geena Davis is passionate about gender & STEM, says Diversity in STEAM magazine's cover feature.
- The most-powerful economies in Europe (1960-2021): Real GDP and per-capita GDP, nicely visualized.
- An originally B&W video from Paris of 120 years ago, colorized by AI software. [1-minute video]
(5) Info I shared with my students in the graduate course ECE 257A, Fault-Tolerant (Dependable) Computing: Congressional testimony by Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen is a watershed moment in holding social-media accountable for the harm done by spreading disinformation and misinformation. Haugen also had a "60 Minutes" interview, during which her identity was revealed (she was anonymous prior to that). The Facebook case is an important development, because harm from computers (and advanced technology, more generally) comes not only from system defects/faults/errors/malfunctions, that we as engineers try to prevent or remedy, but also from greed, as well as intentional or unintentional abuse. A new book by Jessica M. Smith, Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021, open-access link), is an interesting and useful read in this regard.
2021/10/10 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Hong Kong in 1964 & now, nearly half a century later. [Top center] The route taken by a female falcon, as it flew 10,000 km, from South Africa to Finland, in 42 days. It flew along an approximately straight path, except where it avoided flying over bodies of water. [Top right] Artist's rendering of Curetes Street, as it looked like in ancient Greece. [Bottom left] Let's abolish the super-cruel death penalty (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: "So we lose a few critters—What's that to ME?" [Bottom right] Carol Leonnig's and Philip Rucker's book, I Alone Can Fix It (see the last item below).
(2) Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty: This medieval form of punishment has been abolished in nearly all advanced countries and in many developing countries. Arguments for death penalty come mostly from the scriptures, while those against it have scientific and legal bases. It has been established that the death penalty does not deter crime. Furthermore, the irreversible nature of executing someone and inevitable errors in the justice system provide compelling cases against it.
(3) Book review: Leonnig, Carol and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald Trump's Catastrophic Final Year, unabridged 19-hour audiobook, read by January LaVoy, Audible, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is Leonnig's and Rucker's second book on the Trump administration. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning authors have explained in media interviews that they did not anticipate writing a second book on the heels of their 2020 volume, A Very Stable Genius, because, their thinking went, that Trump had settled into the job, and, as disturbing as his behavior was, little new would emerge in 2020. However, as the last year of Trump's presidency unfolded, including his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his inciting the January 6 US Capitol riot, more than enough material emerged for another book. The titles of both books are quotes from Trump himself.
I Alone Can Fix It is a page turner: Very hard to put down, once you get started. And the audiobook's narration by January LaVoy is superb! The authors present a great deal of information on every aspect of Trump's last year in office, although they focus more on some individuals (notably, Alex Azar, Bill Barr, Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller), leaving out the details, and, as a result, going light on others, who were equally, if not more, at fault for all that went wrong (Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner). General Mark Milley is the only character emerging with his reputation intact.
We knew that Trump thrives on chaos and enjoys making his aides fight each other, so that no one is comfortable and in charge. He is, according to a senior administration official, a "guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless, [and then says] I will protect you ... [much like] what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933."
Trump's mishandling of the pandemic is clear as day, but this book fills many gaps in our knowledge about why and how his reactions were shaped. He viewed the pandemic, not as a deadly threat to Americans but as a danger to his re-election campaign. He knew, and the then Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu kept telling him, that how he dealt with the pandemic was the determining factor for his re-election chances. Still, his inability to feel and show compassion (such as visiting a hospital with COVID-19 patients to comfort them) drove him in the direction of minimizing the threat and pretending that all was under control.
Trump's actions resulted from his desire to maximize his re-election chances, leading to his favoring advice from his economic team, which warned him that restrictions and shut-down would put the economy in the dumps, with little chance of recovery by election time. He did, reluctantly, agree to lock-downs favored by his medical advisers, when he observed body-bags piling up in a hospital, but he continued to play down the danger and to assert that the problem would magically disappear.
The book's epilogue focuses on Trump's sustained assertion, months after the 2020 election, that he had actually prevailed, losing only because of fraud. He also continually attacks every Republican, including staunch allies Mike Pence, William Barr, and Mitch McConnell. He keeps insisting that the January 6 mob was "a loving crowd," consisting of 1 million supporters, an exaggeration by a factor of 10-20.
On Amazon, the book gets an average rating of 4.4 stars, but there are a surprisingly-large number of 1-star reviews, which means that 5-star reviews are dominant (n = 8000+). Like everything else in our national politics, we are hopelessly divided in assessing this book! On GoodReads, the reviews are much more consistent: Primarily 4 and 5 stars, for an average of 4.5 stars (n = 600+).
2021/10/09 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Today's family adventure in Solvang, California, where classic and antique cars were on display. [Video]
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Abolhassan Banisadr dead at 88: The first Iranian President dies in Paris after a long illness.
- An upcoming abortion case will serve as a lie-detector test for the US Supreme Court.
- Pew Research Center: Population of US adult singles grew from 29% to 38% over the past three decades.
- Linkage-mechanism for converting binary numbers to decimal numbers. [Credit: Keishiro Ueki] [Video]
- Country-rock music: Glen Campbell's touching rendition of "I'm Not Gonna Miss You." [Video]
- Multi-talented comedian: Hilarious stand-up routine by Taylor Mason.
- NYer cartoon: "Thank goodness Facebook is back. For a few hours I had no idea where to direct my rage."
- A few royals in their painted portraits (Facebook profile pics?) vs. in real life. [Video]
(3) "The Scientific Body of Knowledge—Whose Body Does It Serve? A Spotlight on Women's Brain Health": This is the title of UCSB Library's Pacific Views Series talk by Prof. Emily Goard Jacobs (UCSB Psych./Brain Sci.) on Tue. Oct. 26, 2021, 4:00 PM PDT. The event will also be live-streamed on UCSB Library's Facebook page.
(4) Your workout burns fewer calories than you think: The bottom line is that when you think you are burning 100 calories, you burn only 72 on average. According to a new study in Current Biology, our bodies compensate for the calories we burn during workouts by expending fewer calories throughout the rest of the day.
(5) Do we really need front windows on planes? NASA's new supersonic jet does away with them, using a camera-based vision system instead, to reduce noise resulting from sonic booms.
(6) Banisadr was no hero and long-dead (alternative opinion): Much has been and is being written about the passing of Iran's first president at age 88. After being impeached and forced to flee Iran in disguise, he turned into a critic of the regime he helped install (much like Trump supporters turning against him to clear their names or make a buck). He was a party to many of the Islamic regime's crimes and oppressive policies, particularly against women and religious/ethnic minorities. [Persian Facebook post]
(7) Iran seems to be a step ahead of the US in this one respect: The entity overseeing Iranian physicians (Sazeman-e Nezam Pezeshki) has summoned to its professional court Dr. Hossein Ravazadeh, for spreading disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and peddling unproven "natural" cures. [Letter, in Persian]
2021/10/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Jane Goodall graces the cover of Time magazine again: The woman who launched her career in 1960, when she traveled to Tanzania to study chimpanzees, is now an 87-year-old environmental activist and an ambassador of hope. [Top center] Magic hexagon: This specimen, containing the numbers 2-128 and having the magic sum 635 along rows in any of the three directions, was discovered by Arsen Zahray in 2006, using simulated annealing. [Top right] Book introduction: Smith, Jessica M., Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility, MIT Press, 2021 (on-line open-access link). [Bottom left] Some of the greatest books of all time are among the ones that are regularly banned by schools and libraries across the globe. [Bottom center] This woman is apparently a psychologist/relationship-counselor: Amazingly, she talks about how men can "get" girls! Which century is she from? [Bottom right] Meme of the day: If the people stand ... the game will be over.
(2) The Nobel Peace Prize for 2021: The Nobel Committee honors journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."
Maria Ressa applies freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence, and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines. In 2012, she co-founded, and still heads, Rappler, a digital media company for investigative journalism.
Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions. In 1993, he helped found the independent newspaper Novaja Gazeta. Since 1995 he has been the newspaper's editor-in-chief.
(3) Unfinished no more: A group of musicians have used AI to finish Beethoven's 10th symphony from fragmentary sketches left of its first movement. The work will have its world premiere in Germany on October 9, 2021, nearly two centuries after the composer's death in 1827 at age 56.
(4) "Media Workshop for Scholars: Beyond the Discipline": This was the title of Wednesday's 2-hour working-lunch session conducted by Nomi Morris (UCSB Writing Program), which aimed to train scholars to think like journalists, to promote and disseminate their research results. The workshop was held at the beautiful Mosher Alumni House on the UCSB campus. A summary of key points from the workshop follows.
- We should learn to think like journalists. We are all journalists now!
- Thinking about your material: angle, packaging, newsworthiness.
- Pitching and writing the material: accessibility, eliminating jargon.
Newsworthiness has many components: impact, timeliness, proximity, prominence (related to some big news story), novelty, conflict (drama), emotions (human interest), helpfulness, risks & threats (safety), trends.
To get some practice, each participant wrote a "budget line," a pitch consisting of 1 to 3 sentences, and a press release, bringing his/her research to the attention of the news media.
2021/10/07 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: In this diagram, with 6 equal squares and 3 colored lines, what is x? [Top center] My certificate of Fellowship in Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association. [Top right] Math puzzle: In this diagram containing a square, a semi-circle, and a line connecting a corner to the middle of one of the sides, what is the area of the blue region? [Bottom left] Math puzzle: The area of each of the two rectangles in this diagram is 10 units. What is the area of the red region? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the colored region in this diagram, which shows the equilateral triangle ABC, its three medians, and six circular arcs. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: What is the ratio of the red area to x^2 + y^2?
(2) The 2021 Nobel Prize in literature: Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, who moved to England at a young age, has been honored for his "uncompromising and passionate" portrayals of the effects of colonialism and focus on the refugee experience.
(3) The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were honored jointly "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch." The survival of our species is dependent on our ability to sense heat, cold, and touch. "David Julius utilized capsaicin, a pungent compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation, to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat. Ardem Patapoutian used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs."
(4) "No Time to Die": This is the title of the latest (25th) James Bond film and the last one with Daniel Craig, arguably the best James Bond ever, in the title role. The film was due in theaters last year, but its release was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It seems that the producers are making it more and more difficult to add to the films in this highly-successful franchise. James Bond is now long-retired and has been replaced by another 007 agent, but he is forced to return to action due to a bioterrorism threat. Usually, James Bond saves the world, but this time he is also saving the movie industry by helping it get back to blockbuster releases.
(5) A beautiful spot on the border between Iran & Iraq: Kurds from both countries as well as tourists frequent this border area, which has no wall or barbed wire, to mingle and drink tea at tiny cafes on either side.
(6) Here is a list of 102 "High Councils" in Iran, for everything from cultural revolution to humor: These are toothless entities that merely add to the crushing administrative bureaucracy, without doing anything to solve the country's many economic, social, and political problems.
(7) The death of the Concorde: Characterized by some as a marvel of engineering, the European supersonic passenger plane actually had multiple design flaws that led to a fatal crash in 2000 and its eventual retirement in 2003. [37-minute video]
(8) Diversionary narratives: A regime that has run Iran's economy into the ground and has marred the country's international standing blames external "enemies" and ancient kings for the misfortunes. [Meme]
2021/10/06 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meme of the day: Winter coats aren't needed and don't work. Very few people die of hypothermia, and many of those who do, perish despite wearing winter coats! [Top center] Pro-life is a joke in Iran: Abortions are banned but beheading or chopping up your daughter because she has a boyfriend is religiously sanctioned. [Top right] Making kabob in the age of beef shortages and sky-high prices in Iran! [Bottom left] Math puzzle: The yellow triangle has side lengths 3, 4, and 5. What are the radii of the circles? [Bottom center] Another remarkable mathematical expressions for the number pi, and a geometric figure with some known angles and with BC = CD, in which the value of X is sought. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a square of side length 10 and a semicircle, what is the length of the blue line?
(2) The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Awarded in equal shares to Benjamin List and David W. C. MacMillan, the Prize recognizes their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction that greatly impacts pharmaceutical research and helps make chemistry more environmentally friendly. [Images]
(3) Kudos to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen: Her command of the subject matter in yesterday's congressional testimony was impressive. The former FB data scientist outlined how Facebook knowingly exploited young children, girls in particular, on Instagram and how, by promoting hate-filled, misleading, and divisive content, it increased user engagement to maximize its profits. The hearing was reminiscent of hearings on the harms of cigarette-smoking and, true to form, Mark Zuckerberg took issue with her claims, just as tobacco executives vehemently denied their knowledge that smoking caused cancer.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A near-Earth asteroid is worth at least $11 trillion because of its precious metals.
- Presentation of the 2020 Breakthrough Prize to Alex Eskin and, posthumously, to Maryam Mirzakhani.
- Esfahan's rep in Iran's parliament: Solution to drought is resorting to Imams & reciting the rain prayer.
- Persian music: A jazzy rendition of the old song "Shaneh" ("Comb") by Pegah Sherkat and Dafan Band.
- Persian music: Zohreh Jooya's modern rendition of the old song "Simin Bari." [6-minute video]
(5) Iranian music: The late singer Mohammad Nouri explains the history of the popular Iranian song "Jom'eh Bazar" ("Friday Market"), first written in the regional Guilaki dialect and later translated to Persian.
(6) Technology transfer from Moon to Earth: Plans to connect humans on the surface of the Moon through WiFi may help us improve connectivity of ill-equipped regions of Earth.
(7) Angry White Men: This is the title of a 2013 book by Michael Kimmel, bearing the subtitle "American Masculinity at the End of an Era." The book was updated in 2017, when Donald Trump was elected president. The anger stems from women and non-whites gradually claiming the rights denied them for centuries, threatening the status of white males as the dominant group in shaping social norms. Looking at the two photos in this Facebook post, one can't help but wonder what labels would be attached to women or non-whites if they behaved in this way at a congressional hearing!
(8) Iran's new guidelines for producers of TV films: Men cannot be shown pouring tea for women and women should not eat pizza on screen. Getting weirder by the day!
(9) A final thought: Yesterday's meal prep results were six servings of pasta with meat sauce & mixed veggies, tacos (with leftovers), and mu daughter's Mexican roasted corn with cotija cheese (with leftovers).
[Photo]
2021/10/05 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Happy IEEE Day 2021! Observed on the first Tuesday in October, IEEE Day commemorates the first worldwide gathering of engineers and IEEE members in early October 1884. [Top right] Michael Wolff's Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency (see the last item below). [Bottom left] History in pictures: Customers waiting for their turn to use a shower stall, in an Iranian public bath-house of 5 decades ago. [Bottom center] Cafe for nerds. [Bottom right] Four brothers from a musical Iranian family: Left to right, Ardeshir, Anoushiravan, Shahrdad (Shardad), and Shahriar Rohani.
(2) The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics honors contributions to the understanding of complex systems: Half the Prize was awarded jointly to Syukuro Manabe & Klaus Hasselmann "for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming" and the other half to Giorgo Parisi "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Angela Merkel saved and strengthened Europe: She showed that compromise was necessary & possible.
- Major retail chains are battling organized shoplifting rings that steal in bulk and sell their loot on-line.
- Independent commission: Hundreds of thousands of children were abused by the Catholic clergy in France.
- Hurricanes are being studied by drones, both the flying and the sailing kinds.
- Oops! At Taipei's taekwondo medals ceremony, Iran's old royal anthem is played in lieu of the current one!
(4) Question: What's special about the prime number 73,939,133?
Answer: Remove digits one by one from the right end, and each resulting number is a prime.
(5) Book review: Wolff, Michael, Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Holter Graham, Audible, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is Michael Wolff's third book on Trump, following Fire and Fury (2018; my review) and Siege (2019).
Given how Trump was depicted in Wolff's previous two books and his threats of suing the author, it's mind-boggling that he still gave Wolff access and sat down for an on-the-record personal interview in the lobby of Mar-a-Lago. The result is a detailed and insightful look at Trump's wrath-filled and expletive-laden final weeks in power, particularly focusing on the post-2020-election events and Trump's first days at Mar-a-Lago, after grudgingly accepting defeat.
Nearly all loyalists had abandoned Trump after his election loss, particularly in the wake of the January 6, 2021, events. He was left with Rudy Giuliani, Mark Lindell ("the Pillow Guy"), and a few other "crazies," who listened to his conspiracy yarns, regarding voting fraud & stolen election, and reinforced his sense of victimhood. His key advisors avoided him like the plague, fearing his wrath and seeing little chance of influencing his behavior.
When Wolff asked Trump about specific former allies during the final interview, Trump lashed out at most of them and brought up many other names not related to the question, as he tried to settle scores with the "disloyal" bunch, Mitch McConnel being atop the list. He similarly lashed out against his VP Mike Pence, criticizing his lack of courage and inept handling of the pandemic. Superme Court Justices, particularly Brett Kavanaugh, didn't fare any better.
For a rapidly-produced book, Landslide is surprisingly thorough, deep, and well-written, weaving a seamless and absorbing narrative from chaotic and disparate accounts supplied by those aiming to blame Trump for everything, while portraying themselves as adults in the room. Many of these sources enjoyed their proximity to power and the good graces of a populist leader for years, jumping ship only when it became clear that it was sinking.
Having read a dozen or so books on Trump, I sometimes feel that I've had enough. Yet, as each new book comes out, I have a hard time avoiding it! So, now, I'm looking forward to reading two other 2021 titles, I Alone Can Fix It (by Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker) and Peril (by Bob Woodward & Robert Costa). Stay tuned for my reviews!
2021/10/04 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Creative painting of airplanes. [Top center] Many causation theories are simply illusions: Look at the super-heavy bird! [Bottom left & right] At UCSB, both the Arts & Lectures and Theater/Dance programs have returned to live performances. On Sunday afternoon, I attended a live outdoors performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" on UCSB's beautiful Commencement Green (1-minute video). [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Biden's challenging task of herding the Democrats!
(2) Toxic relationships must be terminated right away: This advice applies to men as well as women, but recent events confirm that women are in much greater danger of harm from such relationships.
(3) A few one-liner mathematical puzzles from various sources.
- What is the limit of 1/(n + 1) + 1/(n + 2) + 1/(n + 3) + ... + 1/(2n), as n tends to infinity?
- Compute the approximate value of 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + ... + 1/1024.
- What is the smallest power of 2 containing two consecutive zeroes in its decimal representation?
- Given that 0 < x, y < 1, find the maximum of xy(1 – x – y)/[(x + y)(1 – x)(1 – y)].
- Evaluate the expression tan^2(π/16) + tan^2(2π/16) + tan^2(3π/16) + ... + tan^2(7π/16).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Spilled oil from a Southern California off-shore platform comes ashore at Huntington Beach.
- The January 6 insurrection was worse than we knew: New York Times editorial.
- Kudos to Tunisia: The first country in the Arab world to have a woman leader. [NPR report]
- The EU-Japan space project BepiColombo to start orbiting Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, in 2025.
- New kind of glass: Inspired by sea shells, the "unbreakable" glass dents rather than shatter when hit.
- Farhang Foundation's celebration of Mehregan Iranian Festival, with Ava Choir. [4-minute video]
(5) "Language and Diaspora": This was the theme of an on-line discussion & book-reading with author Fariba Sedighim, whose books reflect not only the experience of writing in exile, but also the challenges faced by women and religious minorities in Iran and abroad. [Cover images of two books by Fariba Sedighim]
[Full recording of the 124-minute session: Video]
(6) Hate speech enriches social-media platforms: Facebook has known from its own internal research that angry, polarizing, divisive content is more likely to keep users engaged. [14-minute CBS News report]
(7) Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down today: Facebook's week, already in a bad state due to a whistleblower's revelations on CBS News last night, became worse by a worldwide disruption of service.
(8) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacuring Co.: If you haven't heard of TSMC, you should learn about this biggest player in world tech. The $550 billion company controls more than half the global market for made-to-order chips, with clients including Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, and Nvidia.
(9) Pandora papers: In what is being described as the biggest-ever leak of offshore financial secrets, a large number of powerful individuals, including King Abdullah of Jordan and Vladimir Putin of Russia, have been exposed for inappropriately channeling money abroad.
2021/10/02 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Today at Women's March Santa Barbara, rallying to safeguard reproductive rights (1-minute video). One sign said, half-jokingly, "If you cut off my reproductive rights, I'll cut off yours." [Bottom row] Performers and businesses on Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf, on a beautiful October afternoon.
(2) The n queens problem solved after 150+ years: It is possible to place 8 queens on a standard 8-by-8 chessboard so that they do not threaten each other. Furthermore, we can do this in 92 different ways, falling under 12 distinct patterns, considering symmetry and reflection. The number of solutions to the general problem of placing n queens on an n-by-n chessboard had remained a mystery for over 150 years, even though we knew that the problem has solutions for all n, with the exception of n = 2, 3. It has now been determined that the approximate number of different solutions for a very large n-by-n chess board is (0.143 n)^n.
(3) Joke of the day: When God created the chicken and gave it wings, the chicken asked the Creator whether it should fly. The response was: "Don't be silly! Your wings are intended as finger food, not for flight."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The number of American lives lost to COVID-19 surpasses 700,000.
- Facebook knew about, but hid, the mental health effects of Instagram on teens.
- It was bound to happen, sooner or later: Ransomware attack at hospital may have led to a baby's death.
- Amazing 3D drawings. [2-minute video]
- An interesting observation: up | turned upside-down | is | dn
- We all need to brush up on our social skills as we return to work and social gatherings. [Image]
(5) Facebook memory from October 2, 2018: This year's IEEE Day celebration is on Tuesday, October 5, but today is the 33rd anniversary of my arrival in California and at UCSB. [Facebook post]
(6) Former FM Javad Zarif has written a 6-volume book on Iran's nuclear deal: I for one have no interest in this two-faced creature's attempt to absolve himself of all the regime's crimes. I remember him emphatically denying the existence of any political prisoners in Iran and dismissing as rumors the denial of educational opportunities to Bahais. Now, part of his attempt at rehabilitation is the claim that he was essentially forced to lie due to heavy outside pressure and his unwillingness to cause the Islamic regime's downfall.
(7) My response to a Facebook friend complaining about the "dictatorial" mask and vaccine mandates: You are completely free not to obtain a driver's license, but then you won't be allowed to drive on the road, because doing so will endanger other people's safety. Masks and vaccines are of the same nature. If you stay at home and don't interact with others, no one will force you to wear a mask or get vaccinated.
(8) My response to another Facebook friend making fun of plexiglass shields in supermarkets, given that the cashier touches all the items scanned: It's not all about protecting you. That poor cashier, who is likely required by his/her employer to be vaccinated, comes in contact with hundreds of people during the day, many among them not vaccinated or even tested.
2021/10/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] CRML 2021 Summit talk on human-compatible AI (see the next item below). [Bottom left & right] Mini-pizzas (3 different kinds) and salad for last night's dinner. [Bottom center] A formula for π discovered by Giulio Fagnano in 1750 and an expression, formed from one occurrence of each of the digits 1-9, which is claimed to yield the first 18 trillion trillion digits of Euler's number e ~ 2.71828.
(2) "Human-Compatible AI": This was the opening talk of today's 2021 Summit of UCSB Center for Responsible Machine Learning. The thesis of Professor Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley; author of influential books on AI) was that we shouldn't have to do AI research while wearing an ethics armor. Instead, we should modify the definition of AI so that the benefits to humans are front and center.
My question: How does AI ethics interact with system reliability? If we don't design AI systems to be fault-tolerant, the occurrence of hardware or software faults may invalidate the assumptions under which the system was deemed to be beneficial.
Answer: This is valid point. Unfortunately, strong emphasis on reliability and correctness of computer-based systems is lacking in the US. Europeans spend much more effort in this area.
From the Internet: Westminster Abbey Institute Dialog—Have the Machines Taken Over? [70-minute video]
Event's recording: The Summit's YouTube streaming video (talks and a panel session).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi appointed as the Inaugural Director of UNC Chapel Hill's Persian Studies Program.
- A wake-up call: Google time-lapse videos show how much the Earth has changed since 1984.
- Bones of two new dinosaur species with crocodile-like heads unearthed in England's Isle of Wight.
- Misunderstanding: It looks like dancing, but it's something totally different!
[1-minute video]
- It's pomegranate season: Persian folk song celebrating the arrival of pomegranates! [2-minute video]
- Spanish/Persian music: A beautiful jazzy Spanish song, later covered in Iran with Guilaki and Persian lyrics.
- Iranian music: The all-women Mozhan Band performs a regional folk song. [3-minute video]
- Persian poetry: Afghan man Najibullah Alizadeh recites poems about being fond of the Persian culture.
(4) The Moon is leaving us: Don't worry too much, though, as it is moving away from us at a super-slow pace of 1.5 inches (~4 cm) per year. But this tiny change does add up over billions of years. When the Moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago, it was 10 times closer to Earth than it is today.
(5) "Dollar Tree Plus": This is the name of a section in some Dollar Tree stores featuring costlier items. With inflation showing its ugly head, in part due rising transportation costs, get ready for $1.25 or even $2 stores!
(6) Highly-decorated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami under fire: Kiarostami's film, "Zaloo" ("Parasite"; 2002, released in 2021), is about the director interrogating and shaming his own son about why he is failing at school. This 9-minute sample scene is quite difficult to watch, as it amounts to child abuse and psychological torture. I am very disappointed with Kiarostami and don't understand why he released this confessional film. The preview doesn't show any physical violence, but the son has bruises that may have resulted from slapping. Abusing women and children is sanctioned by Iran's Islamic regime, which may have given Kiarostami the license to publicly screen and boast about his child abuse.
2021/09/29 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The birthplace of the AC electrical grid: Long-distance transmission of alternating-current electricity was first accomplished in 1895 by the power-generation facility in Folsom, CA. Earlier, electricity distribution was a short-range business, driven by nearby direct-current (DC) generators. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Nothing scares the Taliban and other stone-age "conservatives" more than educated women. [Top right] Volkswagen Beatle limo models from the 1970s. [Bottom left] Meme of the day: The left is morally right; the extreme right is morally bankrupt. [Bottom center] Virginie Despentes's book, King Kong Theory (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Human detection of machine-manipulated media: Given the proliferation of fake images and other digital media, the cover feature of the October 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM is quite timely.
(2) Today's noon concert: Las Cafeteras played at UCSB's Storke Plaza.
[Video 1]
[Video 2] I had take-out lunch to eat at the concert. My fortune cookie said: "You see beauty where others only see ordinary."
(3) Book review: Despentes, Virginie (translated from the French original by Frank Wynne), King Kong Theory, FSG Originals, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Despentes was meant to write, even though she got to writing in a roundabout way. This autobiographical feminist manifesto, originally published in 2006, has received rave reviews. There is no preface or introduction: The author jumps right in with a chapter entitled "Bad Lieutenants," where we read on pp. 4-5:
"I wouldn't write what I write if I was beautiful, beautiful enough to turn the head of every man I met. ... When I was unemployed, I didn't feel shame at being excluded. All I felt was rage. It's the same when it comes to being a woman: I don't feel remotely ashamed at not being some superhot babe. What I do feel, on the other hand, is fucking furious that as a woman that men don't really find attractive, I'm constantly made to feel that I shouldn't even exist. ... As women go, I'm more King Kong than Kate Moss. I'm the sort of woman you don't marry. You don't have kids with; I speak as a woman who is always too much of everything she is: too aggressive, too loud, too fat, too brutish, too hairy, always too mannish, so they tell me. But it's precisely my masculine qualities that mean I'm more than just another social outcast."
This hard-hitting and open writing style continues throughout the book, with chapters separated by quotations from the likes of Virginia Woolf, Angela Davis, and Simone de Beauvoir. Despentes tell us about her encounter with rape, life as a sex worker, her opinion of porn (if you find porn disgusting, then go make better porn), being under constant attack as a public figure, and the societal expectation of women to remain silent, even when assaulted.
The author's manifesto is best summarized by Simon de Beauvoir, in a quotation appearing on p. 103: "[T]he 'true woman' is an artificial product that civilization makes, as formerly eunuchs were made. Her presumed 'instincts' for coquetry, docility, are indoctrinated, as is phallic pride in man. Man, as a matter of fact, does not always accept his virile vocation; and woman has good reasons for accepting with even less docility the one assigned to her."
At 160 pages, the book is light, but definitely not lightweight! It draws the reader in, so that I finished it in just two sittings. Overall, I consider the book a valuable addition to feminist writings. It's not an easy book to read, as the sarcastic and bickering tone can become demoralizing. So, pick it up if you feel you can handle graphic language and discussion of difficult subjects. Wynne's translation is wonderful, to the extent that one does not notice that the book was written in a different language.
I can't end my review without mentioning one of the book's flaws. It contains generalized statements (say, about men) that Despentes purportedly despises in other contexts. Whether this flaw comes from the original writing or is an artifact of the English translation is unknown to me.
2021/09/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today, on UCSB campus, near the University Center (see the next item below). [Center] Meme of the day: A smart person with an obese dad wouldn't have knocked another obese person! [Right] Douglas Hofstadter's magnum opus, Godel, Escher, Bach (see the last item below).
(2) My first in-person class after 1.5 years: The campus was buzzing with students today, when I had my first fall-quarter class session. My students were just as happy to see me as I was to be face-to-face with them. I am using the inverted-classroom model, with students watching recorded lectures ahead of time and bringing their questions to class. I also prepare thought-provoking topics for in-class discussion.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- VC of January-6 Commission Liz Chaney talks with CBS News "60 Minutes" program. [14-minute video]
- Iranian human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison & 80 lashes.
- Specialty developed & advertised in this digital age: Make-up tricks to throw off facial-recognition software!
- Former President Obama gives President Biden's domestic agenda a boost by asserting that we can affort it.
(4) Book review: Hofstadter, Douglas R., Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic Books, 1979.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, Godel, Escher, Bach (GEB) is one of those rare treats that come along once every few decades. I first read the book in the early 1980s and have gone back to it a couple of other times before. This time I decided to help introduce Hofstadter's magnum opus to a new generation of potential readers, particularly students of computer science and engineering, by writing a detailed review. The book's title seems to suggest that it is about relationships among mathematics, art, and music, but Hofstadter himself has clarified that its primary focus is on how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms.
After an introduction entitled "A Musico-Logical Offering," we encounter the interesting "MU Puzzle" early in Chapter 1. The puzzle contemplates strings formed from the three letters M, I, and U. You form a set of strings, beginning with the single string MI and adding more according to the following four rules, until you have the string MU in the set. In the following, the symbols x and y stand for arbitrary strings in the alphabet {M, I, U}.
Rule 1: If you have xI in your set, you can add xIU.
Rule 2: If you have Mx in the set, you can add Mxx.
Rule 3: If you have xIIIy in the set, you can add xUy.
Rule 4: If you have xUUy in the set, you can add xy.
The puzzle can be viewed as a formal system that has a single "axiom" MI and an infinite set of "theorems" that can be derived from the axiom by means of the four rewriting rules. The puzzle essentially asks you if MU is a theorem in this system.
From this auspicious beginning, Hofstadter never lets up. Stimulating ideas abound in this densely-packed tome, so, in what follows, I briefly discuss each of the three names appearing in the book's title.
Godel's incompleteness theorem, one of the deepest results in mathematics, is, of course, essential to the book's message. Using a formal language invented by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Kurt Godel proved in 1931 that any formal system leads to unresolvable contradictions. Take, for example, the statement "This sentence is false." If the sentence is true, then it is false, and if it is false, it is true. The contradiction here can be attributed to imprecisions inherent in natural languages, but Godel overcame this objection by building a similarly puzzling contradiction within a precisely-defined formal system. Godel's incompleteness result is a consequence of a self-referencing property, which, in the context of the highly-complex human mind, is not only unproblematic, but in fact leads to consciousness.
The book's early chapters are sprinkled with interesting drawings by M. C. Escher to make various points, such as the distinction between figure and (back)ground, a source of many optical illusions, and visualization of a strange loop, which climbs through several layers, but somehow ends up where it started. An example of the latter includes the image of two hands, each one drawing the other, leaving the viewer unable to decide which one is the primary layer. Similarly befuddling is Escher's image of water from the bottom of a waterfall going downhill to reach the top of the waterfall, or monks climbing a set of stairs around a quadrangle and, magically, returning to the first stair after climbing four staircases, as illustrated in this 1-minute video.
Strange loops also appear in sound, as evident in Bach's compositions. The illusion known as "Shepard tone" consists of notes that seem to get higher and higher in pitch, without ever going beyond audible frequencies, as illustrated in this video. In such a sound loop, frequencies are chosen to give an illusion of the pitch continually climbing. Bach seems to have hit upon the idea of using algorithms in his "The Musical Offering" to turn a simple theme into complex music. Bach's music thus provides not just an illustration of Hofstadter's strange-loop idea, but also an interesting link to algorithmic composition of music in a way that audiences cannot tell whether it is the work of a human composer or an AI composition system.
[MIT Open Courseware contains a series of six free lectures on GEB]
[GEB is available in PDF format for free download]
[Some useful links related to GEB can be found on this Web page]
2021/09/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This is how nations rise and fall: Dubai and Kabul airports, sixty years ago! [Top center] Cartoon of the day: How to lose nearly all of your weight! [Top right] It's "pie," not "pi": New mathematical discovery about the number pi! [Bottom left] Santa Barbara Planned Parenthood used-book sale: My daughter and I caught the last day of the week-long sale, when books were marked down by 50% and you could fill a large paper shopping bag for $10. Here are the contents of my bag. I am always amazed at how well these giant events are organized. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In a triangle, each of the sides is divided into four equal parts and lines drawn as shown in the diagram. What is the ratio of areas of triangles ABC and DEF? [Bottom right] History in pictures: The year is 1965. The place is near the intersection of Istanbul and Lalehzar streets in Tehran. The street vendor sells books by weight, at 100 rials per kg (~ $0.60 per lb).
(2) "Does This Show Make Me Look Fat?" A couple of days ago, I watched this informative Semel Institute program, in which comedian Kathy Ladman talked about her lifelong struggle with eating disorders. [Video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Amtrak train traveling from Chicago to Seattle derails in Montana, killing 3 and injuring several others.
- Santa Barbara hematologist/oncologist is seeking a religious exemption for COVID-19 vaccination.
- Quote: "I like Republican presidents who win re-election." ~ Liz Cheney, needling Trump for bashing Bush
- Distribution of assets comprising the net worth at different tiers, from $10,000 to $1 billion. [Chart]
- Some key physical concepts, with equations and illustrations. [Image]
- Iranian women's national soccer team qualifies for the Asian Cup tournament for the first time ever.
- Iranian man, advising a woman that she shouldn't sing in public, gets an earful from the crowd. [Video]
- My foray into healthy eating: Tray of vegetables, before going into the broiler. [Photo]
(4) Trustworthy AI: This is the title of an article in the October 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM, which offers the following three key insights:
- Traditional dependability attributes of reliability, security, privacy, and usability must be augmented with probabilistic accuracy under uncertainty, fairness, robustness, accountability, and explainability.
- Formal methods can help ensure the trustworthiness of AI systems.
- The probabilistic and data-based nature of AI systems raise the bar on formal methods.
(5) Mathematical curiosity: The number 376 is automorphic, meaning that its square ends in the same digits as the number itself. But it is much more!
376^2 = 141,376 376^3 = 53,157,376 376^4 = 19,987,173,376
(6) Another mathematical curiosity: Consider the infinite sum 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + ...
Here is one way to evaluate the sum: (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + ... = 0
Here is another way: 1 – (1 – 1) – (1 – 1) – (1 – 1) – ... = 1
A third way, using the identity 1 + x + x^2 + x^3 + ... = 1/(1 – x), with x = –1, leads to 1/2.
Which of the three results is correct?
(7) Finally, a point of agreement between Democrats and Donald Trump: Having Stacey Abrams as governor of Georgia would be 'better' than current GOP Governor Brian Kemp. Of course, Trump said this because he despises Kemp, but still, he should be applauded for speaking the truth once!
2021/09/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What is the area of the blue square within a regular hexagon of side length 2? [Top center] Two math puzzles: What is the side length of the equilateral triangle at the top? What is the ratio a/b of the lengths of the two green line segments in the image involving three equilateral triangles? [Top right] Math puzzle: What is the area of the blue region between the two circles, if the line shown is divided into three equal segments of length a? [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Two half-circles that are tangent to each other at point P are drawn within a larger circle, as shown, and the line tangent to both half-circles at P is drawn to intersect the outer circle. Show that Dd = 2mn (credit: @Math26039335). [Bottom center] Humor: A sobering mathematical identity! [Bottom right] Math puzzle: In this diagram, containing two squares and a number of connecting lines, the lengths of AM and GN are 4 and 9, respectively. What is the length of AG?
(2) Iran's Islamic regime continues its brutal treatment of women activists protesting torture and other human-rights violations: Sepideh Qoliyan, intermittently imprisoned in the past, is summoned to court for "propaganda against the regime." Why exactly is propaganda against a regime that deems itself democratic a crime?
(3) Kayleigh McEnany slams the sharp rise in US murder rate under Biden: Then, she realizes Biden wasn't president in 2020 and deletes her tweet; no correction, no apology!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nature's wrath: Fast-moving lava from La Palma volcano in Spain led to the evacuation of 6000+ people.
- Average surface temperature in the bodies of our Solar System. [NASA diagram]
- Stand-up comedian Kellen Erskine is pretty funny: He has the deadpan style of Steven Wright. [Video]
- K-Von's stand-up comedy routine: Pretty funny, especially near the end, where he kids his family. [Video]
- Feta cheese and fig jam, on Costco artisan bread: An unbeatable combination for breakfast. [Photo]
(5) "Bacha posh": "Bacha" (boy) is a variant of the Persian "bach'eh" (child). "Posh" is from the Persian "poosh" (wearing, clothed). The term "bacha posh" is used in Afghanistan to refer to a girl who is dressed up as a boy. This custom is followed by some families, usually those who have only female children, to claim the social status coming from having male children and to allow the cross-dressed girl to work to boost the family income. The full reasons, the logistics, and the impact of the practice on the girls so dressed, in one of the most-backward culutres of the world, are rather complicated. [Photo] [Info from Jenny Nordberg's 2014 book, The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan; my review is forthcoming.]
2021/09/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] The beauty of symmetrical designs and color schemes in Iranian architectural tilings. [Top center] The Iranian regime is impotent against brave Iranian women who are fearless in demanding their rights! [Bottom left] As I was walking around in Old Town Goleta this morning, waiting for my car to be serviced, I came across a garage with a few old/antique cars. [Bottom center] Clifford Pickover's wonderful book, A Passion for Mathematics (see the last item below). [Bottom right] How does the City of Goleta get away with this? Split-level sidewalk in Old Town Goleta, with levels abruptly ending or merging in places, and obstacles, such as this traffic-light pole, presenting hazards even for sighted pedestrians.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Very proud of UCSB students for their 98% vaccination rate. The latest figure for faculty & staff is ~85%.
- UCSB's Dr. Leah Stokes testifies as an expert witness at congressional hearing on building electrification.
- An ancient biblical city in the Jordan Valley (possibly Sodom) was destroyed by cosmic impact.
- Iran's top nuclear scientist was assassinated last November by a remotely-controlled killer robot.
- Sickening: Seven-year-old Iranian girls must cover their hair to protect grown men against being aroused!
- Persian music: "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur," by Kayhan Kalhor. [3-minute video]
- Where most UCSB students come from. [California map, from Daily Nexus, Sep. 23, 2021]
- Distribution of UCSB's ~4000 int'l students by country. [World map, from Daily Nexus, Sep. 23, 2021]
- Today's concert at UCSB's Stork Plaza, by the wonderful La Santa Cecilia. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
(3) Book review: Pickover, Clifford, A Passion for Mathematics: Numbers, Puzzles, Madness, Religion, and the Quest for Reality, Wiley, 2005. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[I read and reviewed this book a long time ago. I am posting this review in September 2021, having just finished reading another one of Pickover's many publications, The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics (Sterling, 2009); review forthcoming.]
Following an introductory chapter discussing mathematical marvels from beyond the edge, The Ramanujan code, blood dreams and God's mathematicians, the mathematical smorgasbord, explanation of symbols, and cultivating perpetual mystery, the material is organized into the following seven chapters:
Chapter 1. Numbers, History, Society, and People
Chapter 2. Cool Numbers
Chapter 3. Algebra, Percentages, Weird Puzzles, Marvelous Mathematical Manipulation
Chapter 4. Geometry, Games, and Beyond
Chapter 5. Probability: Take Your Chances
Chapter 6. Bing Numbers and Infinity
Chapter 7. Mathematics and Beauty
The book's pages are formatted like a magazine, with "stories," ranging in length from a few lines to about half a page, introducing various people/concepts. Some entries are questions, whose answers appear in the section "Answers and Further Exploring" at the end of the book.
Let me end my review with brief versions of five representative stories, as examples of form and content.
The Number Pope: Gerbert of Aurillac (ca. 946-1003), elected Pope Sylvester II in 999, was fascinated by math, replaced Roman numerals by Arabic numerals, and was viewed by his detractors as an evil magician.
Progress in Mathematics: "In most sciences, one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes. In mathematics alone, each generation adds a new story to the old structure." ~ Herman Hankel [1839-1873]
First Female Doctorate in Math: Who was the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics, and in what century did she receive it? [Answer: Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), who made valuable contributions to the theory of differential equations.]
The Special Number 7: In ancient days, the number 7 was thought of as just another way to signify "many." Even in recent times, there have been tribes that used no numbers higher than 7. In the 1880s, the German ethnologist Karl von Steinen described how certain South American Indian tribes had very few words for numbers. As a test, he repeatedly asked them to count ten grains of corn. They counted "slowly but correctly to six, but when it came to the seventh grain and the eighth, they grew tense and uneasy, at first yawning and complaining of a headache, then finally avoided the question altogether or simply walked off." Perhaps seven means "many" om such common phrases as "seven seas" and "seven deadly sins."
Anamnesis and the Number 216: During Pythagoras's time, most philosophers believed that only men could be happy. Pythagoras believed that plants, animals, and women could also be happy, and that he himself had been both a plant and an animal in past lives, with 216 = 6^3 years between his successive incarnations.
2021/09/22 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Time magazine's special issue on the world's 100 most-influential people is out. The list includes the expected politicians: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping, but also Joe Manchin and Iran's Ebrahim Raisi! Among "icons," I was pleased to see Nasrin Sotoudeh. In the arts, most of the selections were unknown to me. [Center] Well, all good things must come to an end: Summer is over and autumn is here, along with the new academic year. Hoping that readjustment to in-person (or, as some call it, 3D) teaching goes smoothly! [Right] For feta-cheese lovers in the US: Costco now offers Kirkland-brand organic Greek feta in 800-gram packages. The taste is pretty good, in my opinion, but then people tend to disagree on the best feta cheese! I placed the four slices within the package in small deli containers for freezing.
(2) British innovator Clive Sinclair dead at 81: He had a hand in many products and industries, including home computers and personal electric transports.
(3) Disinformation 101: Iranian state-controlled media launch a coordinated campaign to blame delayed vaccinations and the resulting deaths on the Rouhani government, rather than on Khamenei's explicit order against importing vaccines from the West.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump lawyer's full memo: A step-by-step plan to overturn the 2020 election with help from Mike Pence.
- California woman arrested for running a student-debt-relief scam and pocketing $6 million.
- Visualizing the air flow field around the front landing gear of a Bowing 777. [Video]
- Superstition in the 21st century: Some couples time pregnancies to avoid undesirable zodiac signs!
- "Governance Deadlock and Economic Crisis in Iran": Paper by Pooya Azadi (part of Iran 2040 Project).
- Staffers chase an inflatable moon that rolled away from a moon festival in Henan Province, China!
(5) Is there a "Moore's Law" for algorithms? MIT researchers reviewed 57 textbooks and over 1110 research papers to chart algorithms' historical evolution. They covered 113 algorithm families, sets of algorithms solving the same problem highlighted by textbooks as paramount; the team traced each family's history, tracking each time a new algorithm was proposed. Forty-three percent of algorithm families dealing with large computing problems saw year-on-year gains equal to or larger than Moore's-Law-dictated improvements, while in 14% of problems, algorithmic performance improvements overtook hardware-related speed-ups.
(6) FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden returns to the classroom at Northern Virginia Community College: Community college leaders are thrilled to have such a high-profile advocate for their institutions.
(7) Advances in reservoir computing: Reservoir computing is a generalization of earlier neural-networks that uses recursive connections to create complex dynamical systems suited to the solution of a variety of problems, including natural-language processing. Now, the method that was already much faster than conventional hardware-software systems has been improved to use fewer resources and offer an additional speed-up of between 33 and one million.
(8) "Quantum Computing Architectures": Interview (57-min podcast) with Dr. Fred Chong, Seymour Goodman Professor of CS at U. Chicago and Chief Scientist of SuperTech, a quantum software startup.
(9) Will we have laser ovens in our kitchens? Columbia engineers have been working on using lasers for cooking, and 3D-printing technology for assembling, foods, giving us digital personal chefs.
2021/09/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy International Peace Day: Not much to celebrate at the moment, but let's hope for better days ahead! [Top center] To upgrade or not to upgrade: Temptation in the Garden of E-Waste. [Top right] In honor of tonight's Harvest Moon, here are 10 years' worth of photos capturing the Moon's 48 different colors. [Bottom left] Afghan boy holds a sign that reads: I won't go to school without my sister. I support my sister. #WeAreAllEqual [Bottom center] Bagher Abad Castle (Yazd, Iran): Built around 245 years ago, the restored castle is now a tourist lodge, under the name Ariz Ecocastle. [Bottom right] Sean Carroll's From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time (see the last item below).
(2) Open-source app helps Iranians hide text messages within image files: The Nahoft (Persian word for "hidden") Android app can encrypt up to 1000 characters of Persian text into random word strings.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Okay, now it's the left's fault that Trump voters aren't taking the COVID-19 vaccine! [Breitbart News]
- Winning against China 3-1 & against all other opponents 3-0, Iran becomes Asia's volleyball champion.
- Humor: A couple of new sources of information on COVID-19 and other diseases. [Images]
- A couple at Woodstock Music Festival (1969) and the same couple 50 years later. [Photos]
- Musical prodigy: Eleven-year-old Taiwanese boy plays his own composition on the ukulele.
- Facebook memory from September 21, 2011: A beautiful Persian poem from Sheikh Baha'i.
(4) Book review: Carroll, Sean, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, unabridged 16-hour audiobook, read by Erik Synnestvedt, Tantor Audio, 2014.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I have previously read and reviewed two books by theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, giving each 5 stars.
- The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2016) [Review]
- A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You (2020) [Review]
I have also read and reviewed several other books dealing with the theories of time, although Carroll's From Eternity to Here is quite a bit more detailed and comprehensive.
- The Order of Time (by Carlo Rovelli, 2018) [Review]
- Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time (by Dean Buonomano, 2018) [Review]
- Time's Arrows: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time (by Richard Morris, 1986) [Review]
Understanding time is a centuries-old problem tackled by scientists and philosophers. A main question is whether time is an integral part of the universe or just a convenient tool for studying laws of nature. There has been some progress, but many of the arguments supporting this or that theory seem circular at best. Given the unresolved status of the nature of time, writing and reading even more books on the topic is warranted, with each author providing valuable insights and viewpoints that shed light on some aspect of this important and challenging problem.
Time is often described as the fourth dimension, but with the proviso that it is different from the other three dimensions. If we could move along the time dimension as we do along the other three dimensions, all points in spacetime (the name given to the four-dimensional space) would be accessible to us. We could travel forward or backward in time, just as easily as we can move along the positive or negative X, Y, or Z axes. The fact that certain natural processes are irreversible (or, at least, extremely difficult or unlikely to reverse), along with the notion of entropy, gives time a "direction," the so-called "arrow of time."
Another difference between time and the other three dimensions is that time is generally thought to have a beginning, named "The Big Bang," whereas x, y, and z extend to infinity in both directions (there are theories, though, in which time has no beginning). The universe moves from lower-entropy states toward higher-entropy ones. We have all heard about the second law of thermodynamics, which implies that the universe continually moves from order (low entropy) to disorder (high entropy). Carroll probes the notion of entropy by presenting its various (equivalent) definitions and discussing the question of whether there is a highest entropy that the universe can reach.
If one accepts determinism, the doctrine that the future state of the universe, including everything about us human beings, is completely determined by its present state and laws of physics, then time-travel presents no paradoxes or inconsistencies. Every time you go to a particular point in spacetime, the exact same events occur. You cannot disrupt the present by the proverbial killing of your grandfather while traveling to the past. Free will, on the other hand, appears to be in conflict with the possibility of time travel. There are many more layers of complexity to the question of time-travel.
As you read the book, you will probably nod in agreement with the various facets of time that it explains. But, at least for me, this agreement does not mean that I can explain the notions to others! In the words of Saint Augustine: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." If you have to read just one book about the nature of time, and how it interacts with physical theories, this book is it.
2021/09/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Visual proof of an infinite sum, said to have been known 2200+ years ago. Each of the three equal gray, black, and white areas within the 1 × 1 square represents the sum: 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/256 + 1/1024 + ... = 1/3 [Top center] Two interesting prime numbers. The first one's decimal representation begins & ends with 1, has 123456789 in the middle, and is filled with 0s elsewhere. The second one's decimal representation, when formatted into lines of 60 digits, spells INFINITY. [Top right] Four math puzzles involving angles between lines within a cube. [Bottom left] UCSB's move-in weekend, as seen during my walk at a dorm complex near where I live. [Bottom center] Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (see the last item below). [Bottom right] JQA 21st International Environmental Children's Drawing Contest: A few award-winning drawings submitted by Iranian children in 2021.
(2) Kurdistan's Jewish past: A US army vet, two Israeli engineers, and the head of a preservation group carried out an audacious plan to restore an ancient shrine of the biblical prophet Nahum of Elkosh in Iraq.
(3) Freedom & personal responsibility: Several GOP governors are opposed to vaccine & mask mandates, saying that citizens can be trusted to do the right thing on their own. So, the next time a natural disaster hits, we should avoid state-wide & federal disaster relief and hope that the citizens can rescue themselves!
(4) Book review: Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, abridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Rick Adamson, Random House Audio, 2001. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The growth of fast-food in the US is a direct result of our busy, always-on-the-go lifestyle. This lifestyle demands food that is quick to acquire and easy to eat, preferably with only one hand, perhaps while driving. Hamburgers and other sandwiches are a good match, but chicken wasn't, until the food industry put it in sandwiches or shaped it into nuggets! The amount of research that goes into making the resulting foods uniform (among franchises across the world) and great-tasting is mind-boggling! Making the perfect French fries (potato types, oil used, flavorings added) is a case in point.
This meticulously-researched and eye-opening book provides an expose on not only the American fast-food empires but also on the food industry more generally. For example, the impact of Schlosser's detailed description of unsanitary environments and inhumane working conditions in chicken farms and slaughterhouses go well beyond fast food. Use of unskilled labor, with virtually no pre-existing skills or even training is another valid criticism offered by Schlosser. Machines in a typical McDonald's franchise essentially self-operate and even help the unskilled attendant by sounding buzzers at various stages when human intervention is needed.
Fast-food has transformed not just our eating habits but much of our food industry. We now have gigantic frozen-fries factories that look much like other heavy industries, except that conveyor belts carry potatoes, rather than manufactured parts. Every step of the way is fully automated, from "exploding" the skins off potatoes, cutting them into perfectly-shaped pieces, frying them to perfection, and, finally, packaging and freezing them.
The most-worrisome aspect of this book is how little things have changed in the two decades since it was published. Our obesity problem has gotten worse. Yes, we now have food labels and calorie counts, but the food industry has learned to game these informational labels to its benefit. Children are still targeted by loads of sugar in their food, bells & whistles (such as games and toys), and even playgrounds. Marketing to schools is another tool of expanding the fast-food market.
Related to and complementing Fast Food Nation is Michael Moss's 2021 book, Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit our Addictions. Schlosser also discusses the addictive nature of fast-food, but Moss provides a lot more detail on this facet of the food indstry. Here is my 4-star review of the latter book.
2021/09/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: Find x, given AQ = BC. [Top center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the green region within the 20 × 20 square. [Top right] Math puzzle: A neat geometric problem involving only angles. [Bottom left] IET talk by Dan Hart on developments in space technology (see the last item below). [Bottom center & right] Selfies I took over the past few days (see the next item below).
(2) Facebook memory from September 18, 2020: My poetic tribute to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka "the notorious RBG" (I have several T-shirts bearing her likeness or words).
R >> Rising to the summit of the legal profession
U >> Uphill she trekked, from a humble beginning
T >> Trusted and bright, she toiled with obsession
H >> Harboring a passion for leading and winning
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Taliban announce reopening of boys' high schools in Afghanistan: No mention of girls' high schools!
- Today's 100-200 protesters at the US Capitol were vastly outnumbered by police and media reps.
- Physics puzzle: Can you explain how this device, known as Galton board, works to sort the balls by color?
- Film music: Street performance of the theme from "Mission Impossible" (by Lalo Schifrin, 1966).
(4) Mitch McConnell, a most despicable US politician, said:
(2017) There is no chance we won't raise the debt ceiling ... America's not going to default.
(2021) Republicans are united in opposition to raising the debt ceiling.
(5) Fistfight among Taliban leaders sidelines the "moderate" Mullah Baradar: The top leaders are unhurt, but several bodyguards were apparently killed or injured in a shootout within the palace!
(6) Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi is awarded an honorary doctorate in Tajikistan: Raisi's formal education in Iran is only to grade 6, although, like many Iranian politicians, he claims to have earned a doctorate degree. The legitimacy of his degrees is in doubt, given that he has occupied high-level positions since he was 19.
(7) "The New Era of Space Architecture": As part of the "IET at 150" global engineering talks series, Dan Hart, President & CEO of Virgin Orbit, spoke this morning (10:00 AM PDT) about the future of satellite launches, including the application of smartphone technology, minimizing environmental impacts, rapid development via additive manufacturing, and the possibility of space launches from airports.
We can now launch satellites from a Boeing 747 climbing to 35,000 feet (already 2/3 of the way to space), using much less energy and not needing a rocket-launch base. This makes space technologies accessible to many countries who would not be able to do it with the current launch technology. Many 747s are becoming available now. They can be modified to serve as satellite launch vehicles, a technology that is transportable to anywhere in the world.
As we open up space for participation by diverse industrial and international collaborations, we must be mindful of the space environment, just as we are of Earth's environment. Challenges such as space debris require ingenious engineering solutions. The space economy will grow from the current $400 billion to over $1 trillion in a couple of decades. New technologies are lowering the barriers to entry into space projects. Two decades ago, launching a satellite would have required $500 million in funding; now, it's two orders of magnitude smaller.
[The talk begins at the 11:20 mark of this YouTube video]
2021/09/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Family gathering at Sadaf Restaurant (Thousand Oaks) to celebrate the start of the academic year and my youngest niece moving in for in-person classes at UCLA. [Bottom left] Iran has carried out assassinations and kidnappings in over 20 countries: At least 540 Iranians have been killed or kidnapped. [Bottom center] My areas of interest in computer-engineering research (see the next item below). [Bottom right] When some conflict or disagreement stresses you out, just zoom out!
(2) Describing my research, in one slide: To introduce research interests of our faculty to incoming graduate students, we were asked to provide a summary in one PowerPoint slide and a few words. Here are mine.
B. Parhami works in three overlapping subfields within the broad area of computer architecture & design.
In computer arithmetic, he studies novel number representation systems, table-based & table-assisted computation, and arithmetic with emerging low-power nanotechnologies.
In parallel processing, he studies & designs interconnection networks, including their packaging & layout, and application-specific search & associative processors.
In dependable computing, he deals with fault avoidance & tolerance strategies at all system levels, voting algorithms & networks, and robust parallel/distributed systems.
These efforts are linked by the consideration of four key system attributes: Performance; Quality; Reliability; Scalability (PQRS). [See the bottom of the slide for what these attributes entail]
(3) Math puzzle: What is the maximum number of circles of diameter 5 cm one can pack in a circle of area 500 cm^2 using square packing, that is, with the circles aligned horizontally or vertically?
(4) UCSB students struggling with housing shortage now also face course shortages: Many are finding it hard to enroll in the 12 units needed for full-time status. Course shortages appear to be a nationwide problem.
(5) There is no such thing as a good mullah: Thinking that the Taliban have changed or that there are good & bad Taliban is a dire mistake. Iranians also thought that some mullahs were more enlightened than others.
(6) October strike for UC lecturers: University of California's 6800 lecturers, teaching 1/3 of undergraduate hours across the system, call for a general strike to demand salary increases, consistent evaluation & rehiring processes, and enforceable workload standards.
(7) Semel Institute comedy show: Comedian Kathy Ladman will perform "Does This Show Make Me Look Fat?" (Thursday, September 23, 2021, 5:00 PM PDT). [Free registeration]
2021/09/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Birds gathering at sunset: Simply magnificent! [Top center] Powering chips from underneath (see the next item below). [Top right] Life imitating art: Young girl emulates statue's pose. [Bottom left] Yet another surprising math identity, this one involving Pascal's Triangle. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: If Moses led the Jews out of Egypt today. [Bottom right] Jonathan Karl's book about the Trump presidency (see the last item below).
(2) Next-gen microchips may be powered from below: In today's chips, both signals and power reach the silicon from above. Putting power connections underneath, a side of the chip that has been ignored thus far, can save power and make more room available for signal routes. [Source: IEEE Spectrum on-line]
(3) Quote of the day: "I wanted the book to force you into the understanding that you don't have to like a rape victim for her to deserve justice." ~ Julia Dahl, on her new novel, The Missing Hours
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Emotional testimony: Simone Biles speaks at the US Senate hearing on Dr. Larry Nassar sexual abuse.
- Inspiration4 crew will spend 3 days in space: Four non-astronauts form the first civilian crew to orbit Earth.
- This year's prestigious Harold J. Plous Award goes to UCSB Ass't Prof. of Biology, virologist Carolina Arias.
- Be clever: What's your clever solution to this simple math problem? 1.5 / 1.25 [Credit: @pwharris]
- Classical music is alive and well in Iran: Wonderful performance of "Gramophone Waltz" (Eugen Doga).
- Iranian regional music: Rastak Ensemble performs the old Shirazi song "Aasemoon," wearing period attire.
(5) MooLoo: This is the name of a potty-training method for cows, discussed in a paper published in the journal Current Biology, which aims to reduce harmful emissions.
(6) Book review: Karl, Jonathan, Front Row at the Trump Show, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author, Penguin Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Veteran reporter Karl enjoyed significant insight and access in tackling the same subjects that many others have previously covered. All the key events (campaign flubs, staff firings, impeachment, and attacks on the press) are there, but there are also nuggets that I had not heard before. Accounts of Karl's direct, personal brushes with Trump, tabloid subject of many years ago and White House press briefer of late, are particularly telling.
Karl also paints detailed portraits of Trump's cabinet ministers and aides, with very few emerging unscathed. Sean Spicer was temperamental, slamming doors on the faces of people he disliked. Sarah Sanders was fond of "alternative facts," a la Trump and his other aide, Kellyanne Conway, including a complete fabrication about hearing from FBI rank & file that they detested James Comey.
At the end of his book, Karl ruminates on the lasting damage Trump may have done to American democracy. Making our society insensitive to lies, stoking hate, and attacking all the pillars of democracy, particularly the press, have caused serious wounds that may take decades to heal. Ironically, Trump would be nothing without the press. He lives for his moments in the spotlight, and, until recently, made good use of those moments. His lies have caught up with him, however, and the press nowadays only exposes his vile nature and his grandiose view of himself.
I hesitated grabbing this book when it became available at my local public library, wondering about the incremental gain from perusing yet another book on the dysfunctional Trump presidency. Well, I was pleasantly surprised! Karl literally sat on the front row at White House press briefings, aka Trump Show, and he had a long-term relationship with Trump, going back to the days when Karl was an inexperienced tabloid reporter trying to cover the flamboyant real-estate developer.
Given that the book was written before the COVID-19 pandemic's fatalities and economic impacts, another volume may be needed to finish the story of one of the darkest chapters in the US history. Karl's confrontations with Trump continued during the COVID-19 press briefings, mostly conducted by Trump himself, and Trump didn't exactly ride off into the sunset after January 20, 2021, so ABC's Chief White House Correspondent may have enough material for an encore.
2021/09/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Sepideh Qolian (Iranian political prisoner, on temporary leave from jail): "Women prisoners in Bushehr are subjected to the most-inhumane torture." [Top center] Women of Afghanistan post photos on social media with colorful Afghan dresses in defiance of the Taliban. [Top right] North Korea's atom-shaped science and technology center. [Middle left] Math puzzle: Given the top equality, evaluate the bottom expression. [Middle right] The failure of the recall effort in California is no cause for celebration: Yes, Governor Newsom prevailed by 64% to 36%, but the more than 1/3 of Californians who voted "yes" on the recall question essentially endorsed Larry Elder, a talk-show host with zero qualification for running the world's fifth-largest economy (they may have voted for other replacement candidates, but they knew that Elder would be the replacement in case of success). Here is my compilation of a few opinion gems from Elder (not quotes). [Bottom left] This evening's IEEE CCS technical talk on communicating with Mars (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Upcoming talks of interest to IEEE Central Coast Section members and the community at large.
(2) Guards at Iran's nuclear facilities sexually harassed female UN atomic energy inspectors: Male guards inappropriately touched the women's private parts during bodily searches.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California's recall-election results vs. COVID-19 situation: Eye-opening! [Credit: Dr. Eric Ball] [Maps]
- Scary thought for the day: One in 500 Americans have died of COVID-19!
- Republicans expressing their opinions about rape: Vote these blockheads out!
- Magic routine: Most of these acts are likely digital tricks, but they are still quite entertaining. [Video]
(5) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Jared Call, Eve J. Pereira, and Harvey Elliott (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) talked at 6:30 PM PDT under the title "Connecting with Mars: The Evolution of Relay Telecommunication Networks for Mars." The Zoom session had 21 participants.
In the 1960s, we were excited about efforts to land humans on the Moon. Now, six decades later, we can't stop talking about going to Mars. On route to landing humans on Mars, many shorter-term milestones must be met, including returning soil samples from Mars. The goal of humans setting foot on Mars in a decade or two entails many challenges, not the least of which is devising an appropriate communications infrastructure, given that radio signals take ~600 times as long to reach Earth from Mars compared with from Moon (13 ± 7 minutes vs. 1.3 seconds).
The Mars Relay Network is a major component of NASA's ongoing exploration of Mars that has evolved organically over the years to meet the needs of the various operations scenarios. This talk introduced the benefits and challenges of telecommunications at Mars, touching upon many interrelated topics such as space exploration, triumph, adversity, clashing superpowers, human-made crater formation, 400-MHz radio waves, planning tools, network topologies, international cooperation, tragedy, commensal symbionts, multi-mission operations, communication protocols & CCSDS space standards, Beagles, space cats, balloons, and surface penetrators!
The three speakers covered various aspects of the challenges of communicating at and with Mars. Jared Call (Applied Math degree from Cal Poly Pomona; Astronautics degree from USC; at JPL since 2002) provided an overview of the Mars telecommunications problems, the history, various players & projects, technical roadblocks, and future plans. Eve Pereira (Computer Science degree from Cal State LA; Executive MBA from Claremont Graduate U.; at JPL since 2001) discussed the enormous scheduling and coordination challenges, among different NASA teams and with international collaborators. Harvey Elliott (Planetary Science & Space Systems Engineering degrees from U. Michigan; at JPL since 2019, after a short stint at Planetary Resources in Seattle) focused on communications architectures, implementations, & protocols.
2021/09/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What are the areas of the two green squares in this diagram? [Top center] Math oddities: The sum at the top has a rather surprising result. The hairy expression at the bottom evaluates to a constant! [Top right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the outer square's area is green? [Bottom left & center] Iranian women of note: Former political prisoner Nargess Eskandari, PhD in psychology from U. Frankfurt, has been elected mayor of Frankfurt. Her daughter, Maryam Zaree, who was born in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, is an actress/filmmaker who has made the autobiographical documentary "Born in Evin." [Bottom right] Data Feminism, a book by Cahterine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein (see the last item below).
(2) California's recall effort fails: Governor Newsome prevails by a wide margin and will be allowed to serve out the rest of his term. Even though the race has been called, the final vote tally is not yet known.
(3) Trump's foiled plans to leave Biden with a disastrous situation in Afghanistan, while claiming credit for ending the war: Eight days after the 2020 election, Trump secretly signed a memo to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. [According to the new book Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa]
(4) Book review: D'Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism: A New Way of Thinking about Data Science and Data Ethics, Informed by the Ideas of Intersectional Feminism, MIT Press, 2020.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Data Feminism is an indispensable book for our time. D'Ignazio is an Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT; Klein is an Associate Professor in Departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University. Both are versed in data science and its ethical underpinnings. I attended a book talk by the second author on September 10, 2021. [Recording of the talk]
Data is power, and that power is wielded by the elite, consisting primarily of white men. This is where feminism comes in. The imbalance of power in data collection leads to missing data sets. Intersectional feminism, when applied to data science, can help that power be challenged and changed. The book's missing-data aspects overlap with Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, which I have previously discussed in my 5-star review.
Data feminism is based on seven principles, which are quite easy to agree with, although the term "feminism" turns some people off at the outset. The principles are: Examine power; Challenge power; Elevate emotion & embodiment; Rethink binaries & hierarchies; Embrace pluralism; Consider context; Make labor visible. These seven principles from the book are also elaborated upon in the article "Seven Intersectional Feminist Principles for Equitable and Actionable COVID-19 Data" (Big Data & Society, Vol. 7, No. 2, July 2020).
I recommend the book and the just-cited article highly. Given the central role of data in our modern world, perhaps no domain is more worthy of our attention than ensuring equitable participation of all stakeholders in data science and in entities dealing with the collection and interpretation of data.
[Open-access on-line copy of the book]
[Fairly-long book excerpt]
2021/09/13 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What angle is made by the two red diagonal lines drawn on the two sides of a cube? [Top center] Physics puzzle: Imagine heating a metal ring (a washer) enough so that it expands. Does the hole get bigger or smaller? [Top right] Math puzzle: Find the area of the white triangle at the top of the diagram. [Bottom left & center] Iran and Afghanistan: Tehran 1979 looked a lot like Kabul 2021! [Bottom right] Even if the US didn't disable the military equipment it left behind, the Taliban are doing the job!
(2) Ignorance about rape: In saying that he'll eliminate rape and take rapists off the streets, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appears oblivious to the fact that rape is primarily an exercise of power & control, not a means for sexual gratification. Abbott seems totally unaware that most rapes are not committed by street criminals but by men known to and trusted by the victims, including family members, exes, teachers, coaches, party attendees, and, yes, boyfriends & husbands. Rape and abortion bans are both about power & control.
(3) Humorous Persian poetry: This recited poem, from the book Playing Doctor, makes fun of Iranian officials' dubious claims of having earned doctorate degrees.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCSB is 5th among public colleges, behind UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, Virginia (US News & World Report).
- Why do white Christians vote Republican and black Christians vote Democrat? [15-minute video]
- A history tour of the modern Middle East: How the US stole the area and its oil. [22-minute video]
- Mathematical magic: Turning a bottle inside-out, over and over again! [Animation]
- A source of mathematical puzzles and pastimes: From time to time, I will share tweets from this account.
- Persian music: Bahar Choir's on-line group performs "Bia, Bia." [8-minute video]
(5) Special 20th-anniversary tribute to 9/11 heroes: CBS News "60 Minutes" program honors the efforts of FDNY and other heroic first-responders.
[Part 1, 14 minutes]
[Part 2, 16 minutes]
[Part 3, 10 minutes]
(6) Tech discovery allows robots to climb walls and crawl across ceilings: UCSD researchers have used a motor-driven flexible disk vibrating at 200 hertz to generate a thin layer of low-pressure air between itself and a surface it's vibrating against, thus creating a suction-like effect. [Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, Sep. 2021]
(7) Europe champions the right to repair: In July 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order urging the FTC to address "unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items." As important as this order is to consumers, it is even more critical for the US Defense Department, because soldiers have been unable to fix critical gear in the field, when a manufacturer insists that it be sent back to an authorized repair facility. Among other consequences of making repairs difficult and time-consuming is consumers being forced to buy new equipment to avoid the hassle. This "planned obsolescence" benefits only equipment manufacturers. Just as in the case of data privacy laws, Europe has taken the lead in addressing the problem by requiring manufacturers to display a "repairability score" prominently next to the price of a product. [Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, Sep. 2021]
2021/09/12 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Mathematical oddities: The plot of x^6 + y^3 = 3xy; An eerie coincidence; Equations for Pringles chips.
(2) "Avicenna, the History of Public Health in Iran, and Impacts on Modern Medicine": Panel moderated by Sheva Tabatabainejad and featuring Dr. Hakima Amri (Professor, Georgetown U.) & Dr. Willem Floor (Historian, Writer, & Iranologist). Friday, September 17, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT. [RSVP]
(3) The Kingdom's hypocrisy: Saudi Arabia, which fought tooth-and-nail to stop the release of information on its nationals who helped two of the 9/11 terrorists, and did not cooperate in court cases involving the said individuals, now says it welcomes the declassification of investigative documents by the Biden administration.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The book we have all been waiting for: Computer Engineering for Babies! [2-minute video]
- Hyperinflation: This is what 1,200,000 rials (120,000 tomans) buys you in today's Iran. [Tweet]
- Is this how QR codes are made? [25-second animation]
- Math reward: Beal conjecture and the outstanding $1 million prize to prove or disprove it.
- Stand-up comedy: Joe DeVito likens dating over 40 to thrift-store shopping.
- Persian music: Popular Iranian singer Shakila's first-ever performance at age 18. [5-minute video]
(5) Defeating cancer: Don Lubach of UCSB is featured in the fall 2021 cover story of OnCenter, the magazine of the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center and Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara. In describing his dealings with a throat-cancer diagnosis, Don says: "I knew through my whole adventure, Cindy was always there. Before this, I did not know that a nurse navigator career even existed or the value it would have for me."
(6) Advice from "James Bond" (Pierce Brosnan): "Our world doesn't need a lone hero ... who only chases adventure and glamour. We need people who have a passion and a sense of a mission. ... You are the architects and the engineers of a new tomorrow, and like no species before us, we have the power to shape the future. ... The world doesn't need a hero with a license to kill. We need people with the courage to create." [Video]
(7) Women's oppression in Iran: Trying to return to the US after visiting Iran with her husband and daughter, a doctoral student finds out at the airport's family-affairs booth that her husband has placed a block on her leaving the country. [Persian tweet]
(8) The real reason water is transparent: Most people think that the transparency of water results from its physical properties. The real reason, however, is that our eyes evolved under water, before we moved onto land. So, our eyes developed to sense electromagnetic waves that water lets through, what we now call the visible light spectrum.
(9) Extra-judicial arrests in Iran: The third brother of the executed wrestler #NavidAfkari, whose other two brothers are serving jail time in solitary confinement, has been arrested by plainclothes security men.
2021/09/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Twenty years after 9/11 (see the next item below). [Right] Zoom talk about the great Persian poet Sa'adi (see the last item below).
(2) The 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks: Twenty years ago today, our country changed dramatically by a shocking event. As is the case for any significant loss, we needed to go through the well-known stages of grief, except that the denial & isolation stage has already lasted 20 years. As noted on NPR a couple of days ago, for many years, Hollywood wouldn't touch the story, despite its significant dramatic potential. Not only did film producers not make movies about 9/11, they went back and erased the Twin Towers from films that had already been made. We thought that erasing the event (turning the proverbial moment of silence in honor of the victims into years of silence) would help us heal. It's going to be a long journey from here to the final stage of acceptance. Honoring the victims requires that we go back to the founding principles of our country (equality, tolerance, inclusion), work hard to excel (respect knowledge and expertise again), and consider sacrificing some personal privileges for the benefit of our society (the right way to hug the flag).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Taliban of Afghanistan (left in this photo) and their Iranian buddies: Destroying TV satellite dishes.
- A restaurant in Yerevan flaunts its celebrity guests with this sign: See if you can spot the odd man out!
- Picking a STEM major: A humorous guide.
- Neighborly folk: Italians joining together on a side street to have a community dinner!
(4) September 11 conspiracy theories: Conspiracy theories tend to spring up in the wake of major calamities: Assassinations; mass-shootings; plane crashes; even floods and earthquakes. There were a few theories about the 9/11 attacks being an inside job immediately after they happened, but conspiracy theories took off and gained widespread acceptance after the Bush Jr. administration was caught lying about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction. The latter lie further eroded our trust in the US government, giving new life to 9/11 conspiracy theories. The current abundance of conspiracy theories about everything is a direct result of Trump administration's lies to the people and its assertion that everyone else is lying. Conspiracy theories thrive in an atmosphere of dishonesty and distrust.
(5) "The Place of Sa'adi in Persian Literature": This was the title of today's Zoom lecture by Dr. Zahra Taheri (poet, author, and lecturer in Persian language & literature at Australian National U.), with ~50 attendees.
Sa'adi Shirazi [1210-1291(2?)] was born at the time of the Crusades, which made vast areas of the Muslim world unstable. He was 10 when the Mongols invaded Iran. So, his period was a turbulent one. Shiraz was one of the few places enjoying relative calm, instead of being destroyed by the Mongols, because the Atabaks who ruled the region surrendered and agreed to pay taxes to the Mongols.
Sa'adi was sent to the Nezamieh School in Baghdad, with the expectation of becoming a cleric like his father. Returning to Shiraz after extensive travels, Sa'adi found the environment ripe for literature and began writing his Golestan, using Shahnameh as his model. Golestan, and the subsequent Boustan, are viewed as practical guides to the philosophy of life.
There is disagreement among researchers about whether Sa'adi was a Sufi, speaking allegorically of the love for God, or a down-to-earth poet writing about life and physical love. Sa'adi's Ghazals are of a different nature than Mowlavi's. Muslims in Sa'adi's period were divided into two groups. Sa'adi was part of the majority Ash'aris, who believed in pre-determined fate (determinism). Montazeris, who were in the minority, believed in free will.
In the end, we have to let Sa'adi speak for himself through his poetry and other writings, rather than try to fit him within our pre-conceived frameworks. Dr. Taheri, who sprinkled her talk with verses from Sa'adi, ended her remarks by reciting a Sa'adi ghazal and screened a music video featuring one of Sa'adi's poems.
2021/09/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math magic: The golden ratio φ related to i. [Center] Afghanistan's Music School falls silent: These photos of alleged rampage by the Taliban are unconfirmed, but NPR reports that the school has fallen silent to avoid the ire of the extremists. [Right] Talk on data feminism (see the last item below).
(2) The Islamic regime's long list of taboo subjects: Members of some book clubs in Iran spend more time figuring out how to smuggle banned writings into Iran than to talk about literature per se.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Polls favor Governor Newsom: Get ready for years of whining about California's stolen recall election!
- Banking redefined: Afghanistan's new Central Bank Chief at his desk, holding a machine gun!
- Those who think COVID-19 isn't real should not be admitted to the hospital when they contract the disease.
- Why Iran delayed vaccinations: COVID-19 deaths remove Iran's social-security budget shortfall. [Meme]
- Robots cannot get a US patent (yet): Only an actual human-being can be listed as an inventor on patents.
- A joy for book lovers: Santa Barbara's Planned Parenthood annual book sale runs from 9/17 to 9/26.
(4) Ice cream: A friend of mine told me about kulfi Indian ice cream, which is nearly identical to traditional Iranian ice cream. So, my Iranian friends who are homesick can enjoy this ice cream the next time they visit an Indian restaurant. The eggless, no-churn dessert is flavored with saffron, cardamom, & rosewater.
(5) UCSB alert (real e-mail received): Hazardous material [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, etc.] released on campus. [Location/building] is being evacuated. Avoid [name general area of campus to avoid]. Update will be provided when more information is available.
(6) UCSB's new classroom building is making good progress: A great resource for the next academic year, the building is located south (to the right, in this photo) of the Davidson Library.
(7) "Data Feminism": This was the title of today's U. Virginia webinar by Dr. Lauren Klein (Assoc. Prof., Depts. of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods, Emory U.). Data is power, and that power is wielded by the elite, consisting primarily of white men. This is where feminism comes in. The imbalance of power in data collection leads to missing data sets. Intersectional feminism, when applied to data science, can help that power be challenged and changed.
Book citation: D'Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism: A New Way of Thinking about Data Science and Data Ethics, Informed by the Ideas of Intersectional Feminism, MIT Press, 2020.
[Open-access on-line copy of the book]
[Fairly-long book excerpt]
2021/09/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: My paternal grandmother, with two younger cousins. [Top center] Tonight's kitchen productions: A small batch of pasta with meat sauce, and attempt at salvaging some old hot-dog buns by turning them into pizzas. [Top right] Wonderful Persian calligraphic art by Reza Taghipour: Playing on the fact that the Persian/Arabic word "faghan" ("wail" or "alas") is part of "Afghanistan." [Bottom] Panel discussion on women's rights and strategies for effecting change (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Novavax begins early-stage trial for its combined flu/COVID-19 vaccine.
- Great advice: "Stop for a minute and realize you are just a 3-pound brain that's piloting a slab of meat"!
- World Cup qualifiers: Following a 1-0 win over Syria, Iran beat Iraq 3-0 to remain on top of its group.
- Beautiful song (Turkish? Azeri?), performed aboard a ferry boat, elicits smiles and dancing. [Video]
(3) "Iranian Women on the Frontlines: Strategies for Change": This was the title of today's on-line panel discussion for early-risers on the US West Coast; it began at 7:00 AM PDT! Hosted by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and moderated by Azadeh Pourzand (Co-Founder and Director, Siamak Pourzand Foundation), the panel featured the following speakers. [Event page] [95-minute recording]
- Nazanin Boniadi (women's-rights activist, actress, & former spokesperson for Amnesty International USA) set the stage for the discussions that followed by presenting an overview of challenges we face in the realm of women's rights, brought to the forefront by the plight of Afghan women under a reconstituted Taliban regime. Reviewing the case of Iran, Ms. Boniadi enumerated changes in the country's social norms and legal code, particularly laws governing marriage & divorce, travel restrictions, and the jobs women can hold.
- A short documentary was screened at this point that depicted the status of Iranian women before and immediately after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Near the end of the film, Ayatollah Khomeini was heard saying that women want freedom to do what they did under the Pahlavi regime, that is, exhibit themselves in front of the "impure" eyes of men. It has always been a puzzle to me why Iranian men aren't more offended by such characterizations of their intents and behavior.
- Masih Alinejad (journalist, author & women's-rights activist) outlined her record of political activism, beginning in her teens, when she distributed pamphlets against the government and was arrested for it. She then pointed out that what just happened to the women of Afghanistan has been happening in Iran for 42 years. The role of the UN is a joke, giving countries like Iran seats on bodies that monitor human and women's rights. Women activists do not want international recognition in the form of awards. What they want is countries like the Islamic Republic and Afghanistan delegitimized by withholding diplomatic recognition.
- Guity Pourfazel (human-rights lawyer and old-time activist) was imprisoned when she signed an open letter calling for Supreme Leader Khamenei to step down, owing to incompetence in dealing with Iran's challenges) spoke via a video, recorded during a temporary medical release from prison in Iran, after contracting COVID-19. She made the point that the two words "Islamic" and "Republic" are contradictory and cannot co-exist. Her legal license was revoked after the Islamic Revolution, but then she and other women were allowed to practice law in limited form, leading to subsequent conflicts and pressures. Iranian women must join and participate in international organizations that pursue women's rights to make their voices heard.
- Narges Mohammadi (Spokesperson, Defenders of Human Rights Center) began by pointing out that Iranian women have become aware of oppression and injustice over the past 42 years. This awareness is a necessary start, but it is not sufficient for reclaiming their rights. Women in different social strata assess the causes of their oppression differently. It is thus important to devise action plans that accommodate these different viewpoints by focusing on the commonalities. Aiming for incremental changes in discriminatory laws is one way of maintaining unity and making progress.
- Narges Mansouri (women's-rights activist & member of the Workers Syndicate of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company) believes in the intersectionality of women's and labor movements. She too was one of the signers of the open letter calling for Supreme Leader Khamenei to step down. She and several other signers were kidnapped (no arrest warrants) and subjected to harsh interrogation and solitary confinement. She presented a long list of women who were slain or sentenced to long prison terms by the violent Islamic government.
- Sheherazade Semsar de Boisseson (Member of the Board of Advisors, Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service; Former CEO of Politico Europe) pointed out that as our democracies become fragile, we see the plight of women in Iran and elsewhere being discussed not as humanitarian issues but as tools in the service of politicians' own agendas. True non-partisan support for these women is essential. It's not about Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Not about Russia or China. It's about the women and their requests and expectations of support.
- A question-and-answer period followed.
- Melanne Verveer (Executive Director, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security), who had opened the session, closed the panel discussion by praising the bravery of Iranian women, both inside and outside Iran, working to publicize the plight of women everywhere in order to claim their rights. More power to these brave and selfless women, who, despite significant risks to their livelihoods and their lives (even those outside Iran aren't safe) continue to lead and inspire!
2021/09/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] French press celebrates the life of Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933-2021), the popular new-wave actor who recently passed away at 88. [Top center] Wonders of nature: The "kissing" rocks in Switzerland. [Top right] Egypt's Giza pyramids, as seen from the air: Dryness all around, with the exception of the golf course on the lower right! [Bottom left] This Venn diagram explains it all: Intended for a chuckle, not deep analysis! [Bottom center] Fine example of an ambiguous drawing. [Bottom right] Eugenia Cheng's x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender (see the last item below).
(2) Negative probabilities: Probabilities of events must be positive. Yet, negative probabilities can be used and serve a useful purpose, much like square roots of negative numbers. Quasiprobability was first introduced in the 1942 paper "The Physical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" by Paul Dirac. Since then, quasiprobability has been used not just to explain concepts in quantum mechanics, but also in finance and engineering.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mexico's Supreme Court rules that abortion isn't a crime: Lucky for Texans that Trump's wall wasn't built!
- Men decline in US college enrollment: Women now form ~60% of college students, an all-time high.
- Iran's Energy Minister orders prayer recitation by everyone in his department for ending the drought.
- Timeline of Iranian women's movement, beginning with the Constitutional Revolution of 115 years ago.
- UCSB Arts & Lectures Program announces the opening of its 2021-2022 season. [Digital brochure]
- No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram: Summary of Sarah Frier's book, in Persian, B-Plus Podcast.
(5) Book review: Cheng, Eugenia, x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, unabridged audiobook, read by Moira Quirk, Hachette Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
On her Web site, the author self-identifies as "Mathematician + Pianist" and provides an impressive list of accomplishments since earning a PhD degree in pure mathematics from University of Cambridge in 2002. Cheng's 11-minute TEDx talk points to abstract math as a tool for understanding inequality.
Why do we put athletes, particularly younger ones, through so much pressure? Increasingly, they are cracking under the spotlight. And we have seen that people tend to close their eyes on abuses, sexual or otherwise, in the interest of winning more medals. Competitions and their tolls on athletes are really unnecessary. We are so wrapped up in awards and medals that we fail to see signs of trouble, which, in the case of world-champion American gymnast Simone Biles, were quite evident if anyone had been paying attention to her.
Cheng provides an example where short-listers in a particular competition decided to forego the final round and share the prize. Their wish was granted, to everyone's satisfaction. Why does there have to be a single best gymnast? Unlike when we try to fill a single position during the hiring process, there is no shortage here. We create artificial shortages (only one gold medal), because we have been conditioned by our ingressive world (rewarding individualism and single-track thinking), instead of behaving in a congressive way (bringing people/ideas together and thinking about broader communities).
Cheng suggests that her mathematical specialty, category theory, is just the right tool for thinking about and dealing with issues of gender inequality. For those who haven't heard of category theory, this diagram, charting subfields of mathematics, may be helpful.
Category theory is more interested "in describing things by the role they play in a context, rather than by their intrinsic characteristics." Cheng explains, "if we have two things that are not equal, we could make them equal by making the lesser one greater or by making the greater one less ... However, there is a completely different way we could do it, which is by evaluating the two things on a new dimension entirely."
From the latter angle, the solution to male domination in certain fields isn't to try to empower women who exhibit traits often associated with men, such as competitiveness. Putting competitive women in charge merely patches up symptoms and will do little to remove unjust relationships. In fact, inordinate emphasis on gender in discussing inequality is counterproductive. Cheng suggests that we focus on behavioral styles, not gender. Classifying people as congressive or ingressive is much more productive. STEMM disciplines (the last M stands for medicine) benefit from congressive behavior in conducting team projects or making peer reviews serve the purpose of constructive criticism, rather than gate-keeping.
Cheng's framework is useful for dealing with gender inequality issues but can also be applied to other aspects of the diversity challenge entailing ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and more.
2021/09/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Technical book intro: Machines We Trust: Perspectives on Dependable AI (see the next item below). [Top center] Undersea mining (see item 3 below). [Top right] Martin J. Blaser's Missing Microbes (see the last item below). [Bottom left] History in pictures: How Jeeps were shipped out during World War II. [Bottom center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Nutrition facts for junk food. [Bottom right] Wonders of nature: This photo contains no leaves, only parrots!
(2) Machines We Trust: Perspectives on Dependable AI: I will be teaching a graduate course on dependable computing beginning in 3 weeks. The discipline of dependable computing (aka fault-tolerant computing) traditionally deals with preventive and corrective methods of dealing with hardware faults and software bugs. Safety-critical systems have been around for decades in the form of flight/space control and patient monitoring systems and, more recently, automotive electronics. The latest subarea, now attracting a great deal of attention, is ensuring trustworthy AI, as machine-learning and other AI tools infiltrate our daily lives. I am working on formulating problems in this domain for my biweekly homework assignments.
(3) Metals under the ocean: The CCZ (Clarion-Clipperton Zone) is a vast, 4.5 million km^2 abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean, southeast of Hawaii, which contains a seafloor rich in polymetallic nodules. Multiple countries have obtained authorizations to explore the area for metals that are essential to modern battery technologies and other emerging applications.
(4) Book review: Blaser, Martin J., Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Patrick Lawlor, Tantor Audio, 2014.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Emergence of penicillin, the first true antibiotic, in 1929 is often viewed as a triumph of science over disease-causing microorganisms. The use of antibiotics, alongside vaccination, has no doubt eradicated many dangerous diseases, but these miracle-drugs have a down side that we are just beginning to understand.
Here's my take of the primary message of this book: The human body is like an ecosystem that is in a precarious balance. Microbes are everywhere, some in small numbers, others in billions, each playing a role in our well-being and survival. Our bodies are hosts to "good microbes," that are our allies in optimal functioning, and "bad microbes," that either hurt us now or remain dormant for long periods of time before striking. The microbes form a microbiome within which they can complement each other, with one organism supplying food for another, e.g., or may fight for resources. This microbiome of around 100 trillion bacterial cells coexists with some 10 trillion human cells. If we remove some microbe species, the balance is disturbed and the result may be catastrophic.
The effects of disturbing the microbiome's balance can be likened to the experience of removing the gray wolf from Yellowstone National Park, as part of the US government's predator control program in the lower 48 states. In the absence of wolves, populations of deer and elk increased, resulting in overgrazing and disappearance of vegetation important to protecting soil and riverbanks against erosion. The rivers widened and got warmer due to dearth of shade on the riverbanks. The beaver population was also affected by shortage of food and material to build dams, which are critical to regulating water flow in rivers. In short, the entire ecosystem suffered. When wolves were reintroduced to the area in 1995, a wonderous turnaround occurred.
Over the past few decades, overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics has been killing or reducing the populations of "good microbes," to the detriment of our immunity and metabolism. Blaser presents a large number of examples where the resulting imbalance is implicated in diseases and other health challenges, such as obesity. These microorganisms are transferred from mother to child, in large part as a baby passes through the birth canal. So, the prevalence of C-section births also disturbs the microbiome, as do inordinate use of antiseptics and sanitizers.
Antibiotics are also used in livestock because of their positive effect on growth. Some 70% of antibiotics sold in the US is used as growth agents, not to kill disease-causing bugs. Pharma companies like selling antibiotics by the ton to ranchers, rather than by the milligram to human users. The result is the transfer of antibiotics residues from animals to human beings. Another effect of antibiotics overuse is the emergence of antibiotic-resistant microbes, the so-called "superbugs," but Blaser does not dwell much on this aspect, except to cite the obvious effect of running out of treatment options for really sick patients.
In summary, antibiotics are wonderful and continue to save countless lives. But sometimes we can have too much of a good thing. We should exercise caution, taking antibiotics when they are genuinely needed, not "just in case." We should also ban their use to fatten animals. Better understanding of probiotics (beneficial microorganisms) and prebiotics (ingredients that promote the growth of beneficial microorganisms) and how they can help restore our missing microbes is another fruitful area for additional studies.
2021/09/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Happy US Labor Day: "Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand." ~ Khalil Gibran [Top right] Robert Lacey's Inside the Kingdom (see the last item below). [Middle] Happy Rosh Hashanah to all those who celebrate the Jewish New-Year festival: The new Hebrew calendar year 5782 will start tomorrow and, like all Jewish holidays, is celebrated beginning with the night before. Observance of Rosh Hashanah involves several fruits and vegetables. For example, apple dipped in honey represents sweetness and pomegranate signifies fruitfulness. [Bottom row] Celebrating Rosh Hashanah with my extended family: Blessing, dinner, desserts, and more.
(2) Book review: Lacey, Robert, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by the author, Tantor Audio, 2009.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book comes three decades after historian Robert Lacey's first book on Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud, which was banned in Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the country has grown into a mishmash of conflicting objectives resulting from irreconcilable differences between religious dogma and a desire to move toward modernity with help from the country's immense oil wealth. Ironically, as the country has grown richer and more connected to the world, its government has become more pious, retracting to its Wahhabi and Salafi ("the way of ancestors") roots! Despite banning his first book, Saudi Arabia invited Lacey into the country to assess its situation in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The royal family doesn't do anything without seeking permission from the ulema (religious leaders). Disagreements between the royal family and the ulema have produced a frozen status of mutual tolerance: The King and Princes need the ulema, who give them legitimacy, and the ulema need the largesse of the royal family for life's necessities and luxuries. As a result, mega-structures (towers, mosques, malls) are the only signs of modernity in the country. Women only recently were given permission to drive cars and they are still harassed on the streets by cane-wielding religious police. Even seemingly modern Princes, who spend much time at European resorts, treat their wives in accordance with Islamic edicts.
A striking example of how the ulama affect royal decision-making appeared during the first Gulf War. Saddam had amassed soldiers and equipment along the Saudi border in a threatening posture. The Saudis needed America's help, but religious dogma prevented them from inviting "infidels" into Islam's holy land. The ulama were against granting permission to US forces to enter the country in order to defend it against Iraq. King Fahd, desperate and threatened, continued to press the ulama for some sort of accommodation. They finally relented and produced the following justification: Muslims are forbidden from eating pork, but there are stories in the Hadith (religious texts) that if a Muslim is in danger of starving to death, eating pork and other forbidden food becomes acceptable. The implication was that if Muslims are in danger of being slaughtered by Saddam, then it's okay to temporarily tolerate the filthy infidels! This insulting attitude toward one's savior is deplorable!
Lacey presents detailed accounts of several other key events in the recent history of Saudi Arabia, including terrorists hijacking Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979, just two weeks after the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran by extremist students, the reaction and damage-control measures after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the royal family's relationship with the Bin Laden family and its most-famous member, Saudi support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and souring of relationships with several Arab countries who took the side of Saddam during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
While many of Lacey's assertions are unsourced and unverifiable, the overall tone of the book is that of an expert with vast amounts of personal experience and significant access to the royal family & other Saudi authorities. I suggest that the reader pair this historical account with the more-personal story of Carmen Bin Laden, who was married to, and later divorced, Yeslam Bin Laden (one of Osama's brothers) and who also had first-hand experiences in the Kingdom, as well as access to the royal family and other Saudi aristocrats. Here is my 4-star review of the latter book, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia.
2021/09/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Talk on adaptation challenges of the Persian language (see the next item below). [Center] Artistic river-map of Africa: Here is a Web page with river-maps of the US and other areas of the world. [Right] Book talk on science and culture in Islamic lands (see the last item below).
(2) "Challenges of the Persian Language': In Saturday's gathering of the Class of 1968, Tehran U. College of Engineering (Fanni'68), Dr. Dariush Ashoori, prominent Iranian thinker, author, translator, and researcher, discussed some of the challenges faced by the Persian language, as it tries to keep pace with modern ideas and technology, while at the same time dealing with the dual invasions of Western and Arab cultures, the former a direct result of globalization and the latter being pushed by Islamic clerics. Dr. Ashoori has proposed the notion of "open language" to embrace modernity and deal with the tsunami of impurities resulting from cultural invasion. This 73-minute YouTube video from 2013 contains many of the ideas discussed today.
(3) Math puzzle: Four different numbers are picked uniformly at random from {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10}. Given their sum is even, what is the probability their product is even?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- We so miss the notorious RBG and her courage & wisdom, as the US Supreme Court shows its new face.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Texas Republicans back statewide dress code for women.
- Don't try this at home: Impressive soccer tricks! [4-minute video]
- A talented musical family: Can't get enough of this song! [2-minute video]
- Persian music: An amazing solo tombak performance. [1-minute video]
- Arabic music: Rachid Taha performs the Algerian song "Ya Rayah." [4-minute official] [6-minute live]
(5) Persian music: Philharmonic Stars, led by Mahasti Kamdar, perform the oldie "Kieh Kieh Dar Mi-Zaneh" ("Who's Knocking"). Look for their other songs on YouTube, including "Shekar-e Ahoo" and "Simin Bari."
(6) The GOP's Texas-sized mistake on abortion: Charles Dent, CNN commentator and former Republican Congressman, believes that by pushing extreme abortion laws, such as the one just passed in Texas, the GOP is committing the same mistake they made in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005, when they passed a law that would prevent the family of a brain-dead patient in an irreversible vegetative state from removing her life support.
(7) Global Citizen Live Concert: Held on Sep. 25, 2021, the concert will be broadcast live from Lagos, Paris, NYC, London, Los Angeles, Rio, Seoul, and Sydney. Artists are still being added to an already-impressive list.
(8) "Baghdad and Isfahan: A Dialog of Two Cities in an Age of Science ca. 750-1750": This was the title of Saturday's Farhang Foundation book talk by Dr. Elaheh Kheirandish (historian of science, Harvard U.). The speaker was joined by Dr. Jan P. Hogendijk, U. Utrecht, and Ms. Maera Siddiqi, Harvard U, as panel members. According to Dr. Hogendijk's introduction, half of the book is on history of science and the other half presents the sociocultural context. In her book, Dr. Kheirandish has provided translations of poetry, being published for the first time.
Baghdad and Isfahan were great centres of learning at the heart of the Islamic civilization. Dr. Kheirandish's "tale of two cities" was inspired by a chance encounter with a medieval manuscript (Plate 1 in the images; low-res, because it was captured from the screen), which led her on a journey to uncover the voices of court astronomers, mathematicians, scientists, mystics, jurists, statesmen, and Arabic/Persian translators & scholars to document the lasting contribution of sciences from Islamic lands.
2021/09/04 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Puzzle involving a chessboard and domino tiles (see the next item below). [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Here's how to end all abortions! [Top right] The proposal to split California into two states is back: One will be "fun" California, with Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wine Country, the other one, well, see for yourself! Proposals for secession and splitting into more than two states are also floating around. [Bottom left] Institution of Engineering and Technology turns 150: The UK-based professional society publishes its flagship E&T magazine and several technical journals. [Bottom center] You have heard of the Vitruvian Man: Here is Cargo-Shorts Man! [Bottom right] Carmen Bin Laden's Inside the Kingdom (see the last item below).
(2) Logical-reasoning puzzle: Consider an 8 × 8 chessboard and 32 domino tiles, each of which can cover two adjacent squares on the board. Clearly, the entire board can be covered with the 32 domino tiles, in a variety of ways. If we cover one of the squares with a chess piece, the remaining 63 squares cannot be completely covered with domino tiles, because 63 is odd. What happens if we cover two squares with chess pieces? Is it the case that we can always cover the remaining 62 squares with 31 domino tiles?
(3) Part of the poem "Fear" by Khalil Gibran: The river needs to take the risk | of entering the ocean | because only then fear will disappear, | because that's where the river will know | it's not about disappearing into the ocean, | but of becoming the ocean
(4) Book review: Bin Laden, Carmen, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Shohreh Aghdashloo, Hachette Audio, 2004.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I listened to this audiobook and reviewed it many years ago. Recently, I came across another book by the same title, but a different subtitle, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia. Perusing the latter book prompted me to post this belated review.
Carmen Bin Laden is the half-Swiss, half-Persian ex-wife of Yeslam Bin Laden, one of the 26 brothers of Osama Bin Laden. Upon seeing this book, my first impression was that Carmen Bin Laden has written a gossipy, "I married the mob" book, to capitalize on her last name. Her divorce, which began with a separation in 1988 and official filing in 1994, was eventually finalized in 2006, with full custody of her three daughters, a couple of years after this book was published.
In fact, the book offers much more than what I expected. It is thoughtfully written and provides a window into Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi culture in which fundamentalism and associated intolerance and terrorist ideologies thrive, women are treated like dirt, and the rich & powerful literally get away with murder. The said rich, including members of the enormous royal family, shamelessly violate the religious laws that the Saudi state enforces on mere mortals, within the country and especially during regular pleasure trips abroad.
Surprisingly, most members of the large Bin Laden family weren't really connected to their notorious member. Writing that she met Osama Bin Laden only a couple of times, Carmen doesn't dwell on him in the book, although she does offer the obligatory passage on the 9/11 terror attacks and her state of mind when she learned about them. The book's focus is for the most part on her own sheltered life, and women's lives more generally, in Saudi Arabia. We learn that even wives of rich Saudi men, who are showered with expensive jewelry and couture (all dressed up and nowhere to go), suffer physically and emotionally.
Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo's reading, though less than perfect, lends an aura of authenticity to the story.
2021/09/03 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IEEE Computer magazine, issue of August 2021: The cover feature deals with the safety, security, and reliability of autonomous-vehicle software. [Top center] IEEE Distinguished-Lecturer Webinar Series: These webinars are free to everyone, not just to IEEE members. The last one listed is mine and I have given the talk on a couple of occasions before. [Top right] IEEE Spectrum magazine's latest cover (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Visual proof of the trig identities sin(2x) = 2 sin(x) cos(x) and cos(2x) = cos^2(x) – sin^2(x). [Bottom center] The electric motor turns 200: On September 3, 1821, Michael Faraday invented the electric motor, jotting in his notebook "Very satisfactory, but make more sensible apparatus." The model in the photo was created a year later. [Bottom right] Visual proof of Viviani Theorem: The sum of distances from a point inside an equilateral triangle to the three sides equals the triangle's altitude.
(2) IEEE Spectrum magazine, Sep. 2021: The 1963 HX-63, designed and built in only 12 copies by the Swiss company Crypto AG, was an electromechanical cypher system that operated on the same principles as the German Enigma of WWII fame, but was a great deal more secure. The article, linked below, contains a number of very interesting photos. It covers the machine's scandalous history involving the shady Rubicon spy case.
(3) Mikis Theodorakis, celebrated Greek composer, best-known for "Zorba the Greek" and "State of Siege" movie themes, dead at 96: Greece has announced a 3-day national mourning period.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Northeast "surprised" by remanents of Hurricane Ida, as it dumps massive amounts of rain on NY & NJ.
- California fraud: Over 65,000 fake student accounts uncovered in community college financial-aid scam.
- Does Susan Collins regret voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, claiming that he will protect Roe v. Wade?
- Meme of the day: There's no such thing as banning abortions. There's only banning safe and legal abortions.
- "In the Interrogation Room": A 49-minute documentary film (in Persian) about torture in Iranian prisons.
- AI makes photo-realistic edits on Elon Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's images.
- Iranian girl, 14, who was forced to marry a mullah, murdered by relatives due to suspicion of an affair.
- The Taliban start erasing women from public displays: Here, they paint over a beauty salon's entry sign.
- The Swedish pop group ABBA to release new music 40 years after they split.
- ISIS-like talk on Iran's state TV: According to this mullah, raping female war prisoners is permitted. [Video]
(5) Operation London Bridge: This is the code name for UK's just-leaked elaborate plans in the event of Queen Elizabeth II's death. They include social-media blackouts and a ban on retweets.
(6) Trump-like California recall-election candidate: Republican candidate Larry Elder had said in 2011 that a woman accusing him of sexual misconduct was too ugly for her claim of sexual harassment to be true.
(7) Final thought for the day: We have to engage in difficult conversations. Should people rebuild their houses in flood/fire zones, or should they relocate? When are we going to take climate change and its extreme-weather consequences seriously? Have we seen enough flooded subways and knocked-out power plants to conclude that our infrastructure is broken, or do we plan to continue bickering politically on the need to upgrade it?
2021/09/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Tuesday afternoon on Goleta Beach and Goleta Pier: Pretty clouds, birds, and the realization that there exist beach wheelchairs. [Bottom left] Depicting women's frustrations: Afghan graphic artist Shamsia Hassani often draws women with no mouths. [Bottom center] As we prepare for the new academic year, California's and Santa Barbara County's COVID-19 cases are moving in the right direction. [Bottom right] Telephone sheep, by Jean Luc Cornec: Excellent use for old recycled telephones and their cords.
(2) UCSB campus rules: Just added to my course syllabus an announcement about UCSB requiring everyone to be vaccinated and wearing a mask being mandatory for all indoor activities, until further notice.
(3) Farhang School in South Tehran: Built and run by Nader Mousavi, the school caters to Afghan children in Iran who are denied public education by the Islamic regime. A very worthy cause to support!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Afghan civil war likely: Panjshir, the last part of Afghanistan not under Taliban control, continues to resist.
- Tech history: How IBM's Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. [From IEEE Spectrum]
- It is a known fact that different species cannot interbreed: Scientists are zeroing on the genetic reasons.
- Classical-guitar concert: Ana Vidovic performs at the St. Mark's Church, San Francisco. [60-minute video]
- Twin-Cities Iranian Culture Festival: Month-long event, with the biggest day on Sunday, Sep. 19, 2021.
- Persian music: Nice performance of "Shab-e Entezar" ("The Expectant Night"), aka "Montazerat Boodam."
- Persian music: A beautiful old song, performed in a garden setting, with Shahpour Forte in the background.
- Persian music: A pleasant rendition of "Kieh Kieh Dar Mi-Zaneh?" ("Who's Knocking?") by Lay Lay.
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk, Wed. Sep. 15, 2021, 6:30 PM PDT: Join us for what promises to be an informative presentation, entitled "Connecting with Mars: The Evolution of Relay Telecommunication Networks for Mars," by Jared Call, Eve J. Pereira, Harvey Elliot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [Free registration]
(6) IET Eng Talk, "The New Era of Space Architecture": Dan Hart, President & CEO of Virgin Orbit, will talk on Sat., Sep. 18, 2021 (10:00 AM PDT), about the future of satellite launches, including the application of smartphone technology, minimizing environmental impacts, rapid development via additive manufacturing, and the possibility of space launches from airports. [Broadcast link]
(7) Iran Water Project: This is one of several humanitarian-aid initiatives (supporting Afghan refugees is another one) by Moms Against Poverty. "The water shortage crisis, hot weather, and coronavirus have put Iran's southeastern province of Sistan & Baluchestan in a critical state. Iran is in the middle of a climate crisis with no rain and the driest conditions seen in 53 years. Resources that supply water to towns and villages in this region are drying rapidly! Please take action now and help the people of Sistan & Baluchestan!" [Video]
(8) An upcoming US Capitol rally will include extremists: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other groups are planning to attend to demand "justice" for those arrested in connection with the January 6 insurrection.
(9) Man & woman wanted for financial fraud flee after cutting monitoring bracelets: Tarzana, California, couple Richard Ayvazyan, 43, & Marietta Terabelian, 37, were convicted in June of conspiring with family members and others to fraudulently secure at least $18 million in emergency relief money.
2021/08/31 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Conversation with playwright/director Bahram Bayzaie on his "Crossroads" play (see the next item below). [Center] Wendy Northcutt's book, The Darwin Awards Next Evolution (see the last item below). [Right] Part of my getting ready for the fall quarter: I spent much of Monday afternoon decluttering and organizing my work area at home. Over several years, many cables, adapters, and other connectors had accumulated that were no longer serving any purpose, the corresponding devices having become obsolete and replaced. It feels good to have no redundant wires/cables on or under my desk!
(2) Playwright/Director Bahram Bayzaie [1938-], in conversation with Dr. Abbas Milani: Part of Stanford University's celebration of the Iranian-born artist's 10-year affiliation with Stanford. The discussion was centered around "Crossroads," a play he wrote in Iran but staged after many years in the US. According to Martin Scorsese, "you can feel Bayzaei's background in Persian literature, theater and poetry. Bayzaie never received the support he deserved from the government of his home country."
I will post a link to the recorded version of this conversation when it becomes available.
(3) Fake news continues: Calling the scum that spread blatant lies "conservative" is giving them too much credit. Their latest coordinated fake-news story claims that President Biden did not show up at Dover to honor the fallen US troops, despite his presence being documented on live TV coverage.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Persian-style (or is it Turkish or Greek?) rendition of "Lambada." [3-minute video] [The original]
- Facebook memory from August 31, 2014: Persian piano music performed by my nephew Avi. [Video]
- Facebook memory from August 31, 2012: How good are you in geography? [Puzzle]
- Facebook memory from August 31, 2012: Great example of smart street art. [Photo]
- Facebook memory from August 31, 2011: "Washington is Hollywood with ugly faces." [Quote]
(5) Book review: Northcutt, Wendy, The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool (Darwin Awards #5), abridged 4-hour audiobook, read by Patrick Lawlor and Julie Schallar, Listen & Live Audio, 2008.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The tongue-in-cheek Darwin Awards are given to those who voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool by an idiotic act, thereby contributing to human evolutionary improvement. Northcutt got the idea for the "honor" and launched the Darwin Awards Web site in 1993.
There are five selection rules, as explained on the Award's Web site:
- Reproduction: Out of the gene pool, dead or sterile
- Excellence: Astounding misapplication of judgment
- Self-selection: Cause one's own demise (no bystanders hurt)
- Maturity: Capable of sound judgment
- Veracity: The event must have been verified
This fifth book and the other ones in the series describe a large number of events that have led to Darwin-Award "honors" over the years or have produced near-misses, skirting death by shear luck ("at-risk survivors"). You can sample the stories by asking for a random selection.
The three conservative talk-show hosts who recently died of COVID-19, after ranting endlessly against vaccination and other preventive measures, deserve to be added to the list of Darwin-Award recipients.
A delightful extra in this volume is a series of between-chapters "science interludes" that describe fascinating and little-known scientific developments. Here are their brief descriptions.
- The mosquito spit contains painkillers and vessel dilators, to make the bite easier on you and the mosquito.
- Flowering plants took over a world filled with giant carnivores and survived the herbivores emerging later.
- The charms of e-coli, and the tale of a company that evolved from a 2-man operation to become Genentech.
- Reducing the success rate of forced copulation explains the unusual shapes of genitalia in female ducks.
- One of the largest volcanic events in millions of years led to mass extinction and formed the Siberian traps.
- Hobbits may have actually lived on Indonesia's Flores Island and could constitute a different homo species.
2021/08/30 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Countries with the US as top business partner (blue) vs. those that do more business with China (orange). [Top center] Cover feature of the September 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM: As ubiquitous abstractions, graphs allow the development of reusable computing tools with broad applications. The need for graphs of increasingly larger sizes necessitates closer scrutiny of such tools to allow effective, scalable, and reproducible performance. [Top right] MOOC on Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Hurricane Ida as seen from the International Space Station: Arriving in Louisiana on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, Ida was one of the strongest storms ever to hit the US. New Orleans was well-prepared for it. [Bottom center] The last US military plane leaves Afghanistan ahead of the August 31 deadline. [Bottom right] David Whyte's Midlife and the Great Unknown (see the last item below).
(2) Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality: I have updated my FB post of Aug. 3, 2021, about Iran Academia's MOOC on Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality up to Week 7 (the final week, in progress now), featuring instructors Dr. Fatemeh Karimi (Director, Kurdistan Human Rights Network), Paria Rahimi (McMaster U.), Dr. Niloofar Hooman (McMaster U.), and Dr. Saeed Paivandi (U. Lorraine, Nancy).
The two slides in the image above are from the presentation by Dr. Saeed Paivandi, whose focus was on the representation of men & women in school textbooks of Iran & Afghanistan. The textbooks feature not only a lack of balance in quantity but also perpetuate stereotypes and are clearly dismissive of women's contributions to society. A striking example appears in a narrative about the key role played by Ali Akbar Dehkhoda's mother in his development, after his father died when he was 9, without even mentioning her by name! (I tried to find out his mother's name, but Wikipedia mentions only his father by name!)
(3) An enjoyable musical experience: Watch CRUSH Duo, composed of cellists Chenoa Orme-Stone and Katrina Agate, play as part of UCSB Music Department's Summer Music Festival. Ahna Lipchik, a leading dancer with State Street Ballet, accompanies the Duo on some pieces.
(4) Book review: Whyte, David, Midlife and the Great Unknown: Finding Courage and Clarity through Poetry, unabridged 3-hour audiobook, read by the author, Sounds True, 2008.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, targeting the 25% of people between the ages of 35 and 55 living in the United States, is an excerpt from the 2001 set "Clear Mind Wild Heart." I am not in the targeted demographic, but still decided to peruse the book, having heard praise for Whyte's success in bringing the poetic imagination, not only to people's private lives, but also to the corporate world.
While talking about the need to engage with the poetic imagination as a companion and guide for the challenging terrain of midlife, Whyte makes a remarkable observation: A swan is extremely awkward when it walks on land, barely able to maintain its balance, but it undergoes a magical transformation, as it steps from land into the water, suddenly becoming agile and majestic. We all need to find our elements, the setting in which we can be graceful and self-assured.
Elsewhere, Whyte opines that one of the saddest things to observe in this world is an old person who has become bitter and cynical. The outer bodily deterioration, combined with the mind's inner rot, is simply unbearable! As American writer Henry Miller opined about aging, "If you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked."
I suppose these two pieces of advice, as well as much of the book's other content, are just as useful to human-beings before reaching midlife and afterwards, so I recommend the book to everyone, young and old.
2021/08/29 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Statues of illiberty: Real Iranian and Afghan women, vs. how their governments want them to look. [Center] Statement by Code.org on ACM's Turing Award bestowed on Jeffrey Ullman (see the next item below). [Right] History in pictures: The Beatles with the Everly Brothers, Don & Phil.
(2) Jeffrey Ullman's Turing-Award honor questioned: The September issue of CACM has published a letter by Mohammad Mahmoody, who protests the prestigious honor being bestowed on Ullman, on the grounds that for over a decade, he had openly and unapologetically denigrated Iranian students, referring to them as "Islamic terrorists" and holding them accountable for the actions and words of Iran's ruling clerics.
Code.org has taken a stance on this issue by deleting its social-media posts congratulating Professor Ullman and urging ACM to revisit its criteria for granting the Turing Award. [Ullman's deleted Web page]
(3) New Yorker cartoon caption of the day (friends speaking in a bunker): "Aw, look at all these photos of us wearing masks, back when we were all able to live aboveground."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ida is on track to make landfall as a strong category-4 hurricane on the Louisiana coast today.
- Explosive-filled car hit by US drone in Kabul: Either a car-bomb or a car carrying multiple suicide bombers.
- Karzai to head Afghanistan's transitional government: The Taliban ask the US not to withdraw diplomats.
- Iranian-American Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, among US military personnel killed in Kabul Airport explosion.
- Ed Asner, famous for the role of boss in "Mary Tyler Moore Show" & winner of 7 Emmy Awards, dead at 91.
- An Iranian girl performing defiantly in front of an art school that banned women from majoring in theater.
- A farmer arranged his sheep to form a heart, as a tribute to an aunt, whose funeral he couldn't attend.
- Infinite series with unexpected sum: The sum of inverse factorials, that is, without the (n + 2) term, is e.
(5) More of the wonders of the number π:
π/2 = (4/3) × (16/15) × (36/35) × (64/63) × ... [Even squares > 0, divided by one less]
π/4 = (8/9) × (24/25) × (48/49) × (80/81) × ... [One less, divided by odd squares > 1]
(6) "Baghdad and Isfahan: A Dialog of Two Cities in an Age of Science ca. 750-1750": Book talk by Dr. Elaheh Kheirandish, Harvard U. (Saturday, September 4, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT)
(7) "An unexpected tool for understanding inequality: abstract math": An 11-minute TEDx talk by Eugenia Cheng, whose book x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender I will review in the near future.
(8) UCSB's Summer Music Festival: Duo Con Fuoco, composed of pianists Dr. Petra Persolja & Adam Gravelle, and North Indian Classical Music, with Scott Marcus on sitar & Shashank Aswathanarayana on tabla.
(9) Explaining category theory & why it's trendy: "It offers a birds-eye view of the structure of mathematical objects. It is a new universal language that allows us to speak about multiple areas of mathematics at the same time. It allows us to build many bridges between seemingly unrelated fields of study, and thus find many unexpected connections which has led to very fruitful research." [Diagram]
2021/08/27 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB researcher Chris Funk (Geography Dept.) has published a book, Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Catastrophes, to demystify the role of climate change in extreme weather and natural disasters. [Top center & right] Clifford Pickover's books on math and physics, featuring 250 milestones in each field. [Bottom left] As the UCSB campus prepares to return to normal, the student newspaper publishes its inaugural issue for the academic year 2021-2022. [Bottom center] Little free community libraries are sprouting everywhere: Now there is a free community fridge in Isla Vista for exchanging food in a similar manner. [Bottom right] UC hasn't been transparent on Accellion data breach that compromised massive amounts of information about its employees. [Bottom left] There's gotta be a law against this: Lao Wang restaurant in Isla Vista advertises a bribe for 5-star reviews. I have posted a negative review on Yelp, along with the photo. (P.S.: Yelp sent me a message that it has removed my photo and comment. They are upset with me for disclosing fraud rather than with the cheating restaurant!) [Bottom center] These five Taliban leaders were released from Guantanamo in 2015 and lived in Qatar, before returning to Afghanistan. [Bottom right] Lost in translation: Iran is quite proud of it "Cultural hirtage"!
(2) Book-summary podcast: Conrad, Peter, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders, Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2007. [BPlus Persian podcast #62]
(3) Mathematical paradox: You probably think that 1/2 of all positive integers are even. I will prove otherwise. Write the positive integers in the following order:
(1, 2, 3), (5, 4, 7), (9, 6, 11), ... , (4n – 3, 2n, 4n – 1), ...
In the sequence above, all odd integers and all even integers will eventually appear. Within each group of 3 integers, the middle one is even, so 1/3 of all positive integers are even!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Republicans fuming over abandoning Afghan allies were eerily quiet when Kurdish allies were left behind.
- Journalist Azmat Khan to Join Columbia's journalism faculty to lead new international-journalism center.
- We cannot have four points on the plane so that the distance between any two of them is an odd integer.
- The dots in this image are on 3.5-hour closed paths: They are not just jittering or sparkling.
(5) Housing crisis for UCSB students: As the 2021-2022 academic year is set to begin, UCSB students are having problems securing housing, and prices for what is available are going through the roof. Of course, it's not all the campus administration's fault, as this opinion piece suggests.
(6) "Data Feminism": This is the title of a free webinar by Dr. Lauren Klein (Assoc. Prof., Departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods, Emory U.). Friday, Sep. 10, 2021, 9:00 AM PDT. [Book info]
(7) Afghan commander asserts that they were betrayed by the US: In fact, they betrayed the US, not the other way around. They drew salaries and paraded their "might" in the relative safety that US presence provided. They were never prepared to fight for their people. Reminds me of Shah's generals, who surrendered without firing a shot. I am not saying that they should have fought, but they had pledged allegiance to the country's constitutional monarchy. They drew good salaries and benefits, and marched in parades with their medals during peace time, never intending to fight any enemies, within or without.
2021/08/26 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian story-reading with author Mehrnoosh Mazarei (see the last item below). [Center & Right] This afternoon at Santa Barbara's Shoreline Park: A bluff-top area just to the west of SB Harbor, with a wonderful walking path and beautiful views of the ocean.
(2) The Persian language & script: I had previously posted about factors contributing to the longevity of the Persian language, despite multiple foreign invasions of the land of Iran. Here's another account by BBC's Pargar program. And here's a Pargar program about ideas for reforming the Persian script.
(3) Tool that predicts the next block of sentences based on a few past blocks can help remove writer's block: It may even help creativity by inspiring something that the writer didn't think of before.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A dozen US soldiers killed, 15+ injured in two explosions at and just outside Kabul Airport.
- Kabul Airport explosions by ISIS suicide bombers also claim the lives of 60+ Afghans.
- Our supposed ally and recipient of much US aid: Pakistan, the real winner of the Afghanistan debacle.
- A female Professor in Kabul reports that she has been placed on leave without pay until further notice.
- Masih Alinejad talks about women's rights and how Iran's hijab laws insult not only women, but also men.
- "Iranian Women on the Frontlines: Strategies for Change": Panel discussion, Sep. 8, 2021, 7:00 AM PDT.
(5) Unfortunately, ordinary Afghans will suffer: Still, the upcoming fight between the Taliban and ISIS will help improve the world by getting rid of some extremist scum. As the Persian saying goes, "casualties on either side will benefit Islam"!
(6) An art school in Iran bans women from majoring in theater: The days when female characters in plays are either eliminated or played by male actors aren't far behind this decision! Shades of medieval Europe.
(7) The GOP knocks California for high taxes and praises Texas for low taxes: But for the bottom 60%, Californians actually pay less in taxes! Everything is assessed from the viewpoint of the rich.
(8) Math puzzle: Find a 6-digit number such that when it is multiplied by 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, the results consist of the same digits in the same order, if viewed circularly.
(9) "Literature and the Feminine Perspective: Story-Reading with Merhnoosh Mazarei": This was the title of yesterday's Zoom session, sponsored by Department of Asian Studies, U. British Columbia. I joined the 7:00-9:00 PM PDT session around 8:00 PM, thus hearing only passages from two stories ("The Pickup" & "A Stranger in My Room"), along with the subsequent discussion.
Unfortunately, a couple of discussants tried to convince others of the validity of their take on the stories, ascribing intentions to the author that may or may not be there. Ultimately, the effect of a fictional story on the reader is quite personal and must be allowed to develop freely, without overly strict philosophical or ideological interpretations.
The session has been recorded and I will attempt to watch its first half (which I missed) via this link.
2021/08/25 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Strength in diversity: UCSB, UCLA, and NMHU join forces to bring diversity to research on petroleum-based polymers. [Top center] Right-wingers are busy re-writing history: They are also re-defining dictionary terms, such as "liberal"! [Top right] Alan Turing: The Enigma (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find x, after filling out this 5×5 table with entries that form arithmetic progressions in every row and column. [Bottom center] One-dimensional or "Tape" chess (rules). [Bottom right] Interesting geometric fact: If you build squares on the sides of any parallelogram, the centers of the resulting squares are vertices of a square.
(2) Random thought for the day: I feel sorry for a future widow of a real Nigerian millionaire who wants to transfer funds out of her country with help from a kind stranger in the West. No one will believe her!
(3) How are fake news, misinformation, and disinformation different? [Source: "Data and Disinformation," IEEE Computer, Vol. 54, July 2021, pp. 105-110]
- Fake news: False, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting.
- Misinformation: The inadvertent sharing of false information.
- Disinformation: The deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false.
(4) Book review: Hodges, Andrew, Alan Turing: The Enigma, unabridged audiobook on 24 CDs, read by Gordon Griffin, Brilliance Audio, 2012. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I listened to the audio version of this book, which apparently served as the main inspiration for the 2014 biopic "The Imitation Game," several years ago. The "Enigma" of the title refers both to the name given to a Nazi Germany's secret-communication code, which was thought to be unbreakable, and to Turing's personality and life. Reading some other material on Alan Turing for a personal research project, I decided to share my thoughts on the book in this belated review.
Hodges has done a wonderful job of collecting in one place pertinent facts from Turing's life, his contributions as father of computer science, as well as theoretical & practical aspects of code-breaking. At ~800 pages in its print version (31 hours in audio format), the book is rather long for the average reader. In fact, despite my intense interest in the subject matter, I found completing the book a tough challenge.
Turing is known as the father of computer science for several important contributions, which include devising the Turing machine, formulating what later became known in the field of artificial intelligence as the Turing test, and putting the theory of computability on firm footing. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a leading organization for computing professionals, has named its most-prestigious award, given once a year and sometimes described informally as the Nobel Prize of computing, after Turing.
As a gay man, Turing suffered greatly, including being denied the security clearance that was necessary for his work. After he was tried for "gross indecency" in 1952, he agreed to undergo a form of chemical castration in order to avoid prison time. These injustices drove him to take his own life in 1954.
One of Turing's most-impactful contributions was leading a team of mathematicians charged with breaking Nazi Germany's secret-communication code, The Enigma. This work is thought to have saved an estimated 21 million lives by helping the Allies overcome Germany during World War II. I have studied the Enigma, the code and the machine used for its encoding & decoding, and still find it difficult to accept that such an ingenious scheme could be compromised by even more-ingenious methods.
In tackling the Enigma code, Turing made good use of Bayesian statistics for reasoning under uncertainty. Turing's strategy is described in great detail in the book The Theory that Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines & Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy (by Sharon B. McGrayne, Yale University Press, 2011). Turing used Bayes' rule to tame the combinatorial complexity of breaking highly sophisticated coding schemes: "As a measure of their belief, [code-breaking] team members assigned a Bayesian probability to each speculative code group according to how often it had occurred in already deciphered messages. The most probable blocks, as well as borderline or especially important cases, were studied further" [p. 83 of the just-cited book].
Here is a list of four other excellent books on Alan Turing, the first three of which are perhaps more-accessible than Alan Turing: The Enigma.
- Prof: Alan Turing Decoded (by Alan Turing's nephew, Durmot Turing, drawing material from the family)
- The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded (graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani, illustrated by Leland Purvis)
- Turing's Cathedral (by George Dyson; von Neumann brings the Turing machine from theory to practice)
- Turing's Vision: The Birth of Computer Science (by Chris Bernhardt; Highly technical)
An alternative to reading compiled biographies is to delve into Turing Digital Archive's original material.
2021/08/24 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] CCTV of Iran's notorious Evin Prison hacked: Mountains of prisoner-abuse evidence emerge on social media. [Top center] Book to be released on August 30, 2021: Human Rights Activists in Iran: History, Obstacles, Achievements. [Top right] Cartoons of the day: Airport security check in 2021, and the plight of Afghans. [Bottom left] Women in STEM: UC Berkeley's Professor Jennifer Tour Chayes, profiled by ACM. [Bottom center] Sholeh Wolpe spoke on defiance in Persian poetry (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Women in STEM: This year, the British Royal Society's highest honor, the Copley Medal, first awarded in 1731, goes to Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell. A member of the team that discovered pulsars in 1967, she was overlooked for a Nobel Prize in favor of her male collaborators.
(2) "I Am a Girl": I had shared the wonderful song "Dokhtar Astam" before, but let me re-dedicate it to the girls and women of Afghanistan, who must now redouble their efforts to overcome oppression by a newly-emboldened Taliban. The world is with you! [4-minute video]
(3) Rohani vs. Rouhani: Their last names are identical in Persian (though, they use different English spellings), but Anoushiravan Rohani created memorable music that delights Iranians and people around the world (such as his "Soltan-e Ghalbha," put to Arabic lyrics in this 5-minute video), whereas Hassan Rouhani gutted Iran's economy and destroyed the little international
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- How ironic that people who call others "sheep" for following science-based guidelines take livestock meds!
- Math puzzle: What is the value of i^i? [Video with the solution]
- Nikola Tesla's sculpture made of various electrical gadgets, on display in Prague's Art Museum. [Video]
- Women in Iranian cinema and theater: A BBC Persian round-table (with Aghdashloo, Taslimi, Tolouei).
(5) Fun with math: When you double the number 105263157894736842, the digit 2 at the number's right end moves to its left end. 105263157894736842 × 2 = 210526315789473684
(6) Possible scientific misconduct by guest editors of multiple special issues of Microprocessors and Microsystems: Journal publisher Elsevier is looking at the sub-par refereeing process for multiple special issues and will take appropriate actions, when done. According to Elsevier, "While it's not clear what exactly happened in this case, at least four journals have been scammed by rogue editors in the past two years."
(7) "How to Read Persian Classical and Modern Poetry as Poems of Defiance": This was the title of today's enjoyable Zoom talk by Sholeh Wolpe, sponsored by UC Riverside's History Department and moderated by UCR's Dr. Fariba Zarinebaf. (BTW, no question mark is needed at the end of the title!). Citing examples from Attar's "Conference of the Birds" and a few contemporary Persian poems, including her own work (all in English), Ms. Wolpe elaborated upon how poets have spoken against oppression and authority, either openly or allegorically. Among women poets, Forough Farrokhzad was unique in being forthright in putting her feelings & desires into words, and attacking the religious establishment & its patriarchal basis, thereby eliciting both adulation & vicious attacks, and paving the way for many women poets. [Sample poetry recitation]
2021/08/23 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Anti-Semitism goes high-tech: QR codes posted throughout Melbourne, Australia, link to a video that claims Jews were responsible for 9/11. [Top center] The Qajar-era Hariri House on Tabriz's Tarbiat Street is registered as one of Iran's national monuments. [Top right] Math in unexpected places: Chalk drawings of theorems, somewhere in Greece. [Bottom left] Samples of coins minted in honor of Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (1170-1250). [Bottom center & right] Zoom talk by Dr. Zohreh K. Ghahremani on the poetry of contemporary Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (see the last item below).
(2) Fun with math: Consider the number pairs (25, 5), (36, 6), (625, 25), (390625, 625), which are of the general form (x^2, x). What is special about these pairs is that the 2k-digit or (2k – 1)-digit x^2 ends in the same k digits as x. A more impressive example follows. Are there infinitely-many such pairs?
3317093849 18212890625 = 18212890625^2
(3) Books on the "UCSB Reads 2022" program's short-list have been rank-ordered: The final selection will be announced soon. Here are my reviews of the four books, in alphabetical order of the titles.
[Exhalation]
[The Friend]
[The Inequality Machine]
[The Undocumented Americans]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Who knew that replacing Taliban with Taliban would take 20 years, 4 US presidents, and thousands of lives?
- The Borowitz Report (humor): FDA withdraws approval from "whatever drug Rand Paul is on."
- Saw an ad for a T-shirt with this inscription: "Professor—Because freakin' awesome isn't an official job title"!
- Motivational message: If cauliflower can become pizza, you, my friend, can become anything you want!
- Persian poetry: A beautiful ghazal by Mowlavi (Rumi) espousing the virtues of and looking outside oneself.
(5) From a woman friend's Facebook post, in Persian: Tell us how to behave, how much distrust to harbor, and how scared to be, so that when we are assaulted, you don't blame us instead of the perpetrator.
respect my ancient motherland had left.
(6) Surveillance photos/videos leaked from Iran's notorious Evin Prison: Gross violation of prisoners and their privacy, especially in the case of women, who are more vulnerable with the mostly-male prison guards. Some of the released videos reveal prisoner abuse.
(7) Is China a surveillance state or a data-privacy champion? The Wall Street Journal reports that China has passed one of the world's strictest data-privacy laws, much like Europe's GDPR. I can't reconcile this with many previous reports about the Chinese government collecting massive data on its citizens, calculating a "social credit score" for each person, and using the score to dole out rights and benefits.
(8) "Poetry of Khorasan: Mehdi Akhavan-Sales": This was the title of Sunday's Zoom talk by Dr. Zohreh K. Ghahremani in which she presented a brief bio of contemporary poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales [1929-1990] and recited a few of his poems, including his famous "Zemestan Ast" ("It's Winter"). The session started by showing this music video from Farhang Foundation. A couple more videos were shown at the end of the session. An interesting aside offered by Dr. Ghahremani is the fact that Mashhad is the only Iranian city with a university named after a poet (Ferdowsi).
[Bios of Akhavan-Sales: Wikipedia; Iranica] [His poetry: Collection; A recitation]
2021/08/21 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] John Kerry on JCPOA ("Barjam"): In his 2018 memoir, John Kerry devoted Chapter 18 to the nuclear deal with Iran. I have a PDF file of Chapter 18 in the book's Persian version. Friends who introduced the Persian book to me indicate that the translation by Ali Mojtahedzadeh is well-done. [Right] The Quarrymen, later becoming The Beatles: In this 1957 photo, George was 14, John 16, and Paul 15.
(2) Today's Kabul feels like Tehran of 1979: People are burning or burying books, photos, documents, and other artifacts that may be construed as "un-Islamic," should their homes be searched by the Taliban.
(3) Quote of the day: "All I could see around me were the fearful and scared faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women." ~ An Afghan university student (quoted in The Guardian)
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Proof that the on-line future has arrived: People now spend more at Amazon than at Walmart. [NYT]
- In case you have forgotten, almost everyone had a vaccine passport all through school. Relax! [Image]
- Engineering failure: A cargo ship breaks into two parts off the coast of northern Japan.
- The iconic magnetic-strip on credit cards will be phased out over the next decade.
- History of alt-milk (humor): This New Yorker piece constructs a funny history of almond-milk and the like.
- Restaurant servers working from home: I bet you didn't think this was possible!
(5) Ten girls on Afghanistan's robotics team rescued: Exactly as it happened in Iran after 1979, the brightest Afghans will move abroad, helping Western economies prosper and making Afghanistan even poorer.
(6) Revealing quote of the day: "Women know less than men about political issues, economics, and current events. Good news for Democrats, bad news for Republicans. For the less one knows, the easier the manipulation." ~ Misogynistic writing of Larry Elder, leading Republican candidate in California's recall election
(7) The Postal Service is mentioned in the US Constitution: It is a power of Congress "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads." As an essential public service, it was never intended to make money, much like our military, our highway system, and FEMA.
(8) My talk about computer architecture: I will be giving one of my IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor Program talks for IEEE Denver Section via WebEx on November 11, 2021, 5:00 PM PST.
(9) "Coded Bias": Based on the book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, this important documentary, which is available on Netflix, deals with artificial-intelligence-based systems inheriting, and at times amplifying, the bias embedded in their designers and in data sets. [My 4-star review of Weapons of Math Destruction]
2021/08/20 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] UCSB North Campus Open Space: Effects of the prolonged California drought and the story of restoration efforts & outcomes. [Top center] Persian carpet: St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London. [Bottom left] Talk about a toxic culture! (see the last item below) [Bottom center] The new map of Afghanistan as a weeping woman. [Bottom right] Engineers rejoice: Islamic rules for buildings, architecture, and engineering have been published!
(2) Apt warning: Just because places are opening up doesn't mean that the COVID-19 danger is behind us. Most openings are economically motivated. Mask up, wash your hands, keep a safe distance, avoid crowds!
(3) One-hundred-year-old Iranian poet from Kermanshah: Shokrollah Davidian has lived in Israel for 75 years and still composes poems about Iran and holds poetry & music nights at his home in northern Israel. [Video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Secret IRS files show how billionaires successfully lobbied to shape Trump's 2017 tax cuts to their benefit.
- In this 14-minute TEDx talk from 5 years ago, Yalda Hakim describes the plight of Afghan women.
- Playing some mean basketball in full Islamic hijab: Sad and inspiring at the same time. [Video]
- Government study finds that Iranian schoolgirls are distancing themselves from "Islamic hijab."
- Kala pocket sundial: Though a bit pricy at $59, it makes a fine gift for the person who has everything!
- Cartoon of the day: Misinformation joins the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. [Image]
- Facebook memory from August 20, 2017: My day at the world-famous Powell Books in Portland, Oregon.
(5) Facebook memory from August 20, 2019: Compulsory hijab isn't a minor inconvenience, as some claim. It is a tool of oppression that helps Iran's brutal Islamic regime stay in power.
(6) A liar has poor memory: This Persian saying is aptly demonstrated in these clips from Iran's state TV, first praising the "Dear Leader" for his infinite wisdom in banning vaccine imports from the West (because MRNA vaccines interfere with your genes and promote cancer) and then, a few months later, bashing "hostile media" for spreading lies about vaccine import ban!
(7) Oxymoronic: It seems like the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will have a president. But "emirate" means "a political territory that is ruled by a dynastic Arabic or Islamic monarch-styled emir"!
(8) Afghanistan's machine-gun culture: Why is it that nearly all Taliban members hold machine-guns in photos and videos that we see these days, as if they would be naked without the weapons? Why is it that we don't see the Talibs talk to children, kindly and reassuringly? Why don't they interact with women without pointing a weapon at them? Do they ever smile? Talk about toxic masculinity!
(9) Afghanistan's machine-gun culture: Why is it that nearly all Taliban members hold machine-guns in photos and videos that we see these days, as if they would be naked without the weapons? Why is it that we don't see the Talibs talk to children, kindly and reassuringly? Why don't they interact with women without pointing a weapon at them? Do they ever smile? Talk about toxic masculinity!
2021/08/19 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] One-stop shopping in Tehran, Iran (undated photo): While you order pizza or a sandwich, you can also buy a thesis or half-dozen research papers for use in your next academic promotion! [Top center] Wonderful editorial illustrations by Eiko Ojala. [Top right] Wearing my π T-shirt to celebrate the derivation of 62.8 trillion digits of π (see the next item below). [Bottom left] A very Iranian initiative: Organizers of a garden event reminded "the ladies" that they will provide shoe-stoppers at check-in for those who need them! [Bottom center] IEEE CCS August 18 talk by Dr. Faramarz Davarian (see the last item below). [Bottom right] A Pythagorean triangle visits us from the Twilight Zone (credit: Cliff Pickover).
(2) How does one compute billions or even trillions of π's digits? Following my post about Swiss researchers having derived 62.8 trillion digits of π, a few friends inquired about methods used to do this. This Web page has a nice summary of methods. Most of these methods are based on various series expansions, along with a capability to represent large numbers. One can do the latter by using vectors of machine-words, such as using one-hundred 32-bit words to represent an unsigned number with up to 3200 bits (~963 decimal digits). Arithmetic operations such as addition and multiplication can then be programmed on numbers thus represented, but they take much longer than ordinary operations on machine-words, hence the need for supercomputers when trillions of digits and a similarly large number of operstions are involved.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ebrahim Raisi's cabinet in Iran: An assortment of internationally sanctioned and wanted individuals!
- Citing "freedom," several Republican governors are imposing their lethal opinions on their constituents.
- Director of Tehran's Coronavirus Taskforce admits that Iranian authorities lied to WHO about fatalities.
- The #StopHatePropaganda campaign in support of Baha'is in Iran gathers support ("Iran Without Hate").
(4) Last night's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Faramarz Davarian (Manager of Deep-Space Network Technology at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL) talked at 6:30 PM PDT under the title "Connecting with the Moon: Can We Provide Communications Connectivity for Human Presence on the Moon Similar to What We Have on Our Planet?" The Zoom session had 19 participants. [IEEE CCS event page]
Although humans have already visited the Moon, brought Lunar samples back to Earth, and made many Earth-based and space-based observations of the Moon, there is much about the Moon that remains unexplored. Furthermore, the Moon provides opportunities that are unique and attractive. For example, the far side of the Moon is shielded from radio emissions generated by human activity, hence, it provides a great opportunity to observe the universe with radio telescopes free from man-made noise and Earth's atmosphere.
Recent observations have indicated that there is water on the Moon, with the highest concentration at the poles, particularly the South Pole. The Moon is also rich in minerals and has a much lower gravity pull than the Earth. Therefore, the Moon has been suggested as a convenient station on the way to other destinations, such as Mars. Using the resources of the Moon, humans can develop rockets to take off in the low Lunar gravity rather than taking off from Earth.
Imagine a scenario where there are human colonies on the moon, and robots are performing tasks not suitable for humans. Moreover, the surface of the Moon is dotted with radio telescopes and other scientific instruments. Lunar dwellers, humans and robots, need to be connected to each other and to Earth. How do we provide connectivity for the above scenario? In this talk, we examine options for lunar communications and provide examples of networks that can provide connectivity for the Moon.
Topics discussed by Dr. Davarian with regard to communications requirements for lunar exploration included contacting the moon, relay satellites to allow indirect transmissions from/to Earth, challenges in selecting relay-satellite orbits (stable or "frozen" orbits), on-the-ground large antennas to receive signals from lunar relays, communication modes/delays/bandwidths, supporting an Internet-of-things on the Moon, and the structure of a wire-mesh radio-telescope to be built by robots over a lunar crater. [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2021/08/18 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Erasing history, a la "1984": Calling it "routine Web maintenance," the GOP removes a page praising Trump's "historic" peace deal with the Taliban! (Image from an archived version of the RNC page) [Top center] According to a Trump spokesperson, the inauguration crowd on August 13 (Trump's reinstatement date) was the largest ever! [Top right] New facts about the number π (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Engineering meets nature: Walter's Wiggles on the hike to Angels Landing in Zion National Park, Utah, United States. [Bottom center] Meme of the day: Those who accuse you of having irrational fears harbor a long list of irrational fears themselves! [Bottom right] Mini-pizzas: French baguette & sliced French loaf.
(2) The number π back in the news: Swiss researchers have set a new record for calculating the digits of π. Using 108+ days of a supercomputer's time, they have derived 62.8 trillion digits of π. Today, I encountered two amazing formulas for π. The first formula uses only the number 2. The second one is a rapidly-converging series, with its first term, corresponding to q = 0, yielding 1/π = 0.318,309,886 or π = 3.141,592,654.
(3) Dreams of Afghan women have been crushed: Not just by the Taliban, but by all Afghans, who would not take the opportunity provided by 20 years of US presence & support to reform their society from within.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Creator of Sudoku puzzle, Maki Kaji [1951-2021] dead of cancer at 69.
- The difference between Democrats and Republicans: "Tax and Spend" vs. "Borrow and Spend"!
- Iran's Khavaran Cultural Complex was erected on a bulldozed Baha'i cemetery.
[English]
[Persian]
- Facebook memory from August 18, 2019: Defeated 0-3 by Amazon/Google ads!
- Facebook memory from August 18, 2017: Solar eclipse and my trip to the US Pacific Northwest.
- Facebook memory from August 18, 2014: Several icons of contemporary Persian poetry in one frame.
- Facebook memory from August 18, 2010: Math puzzles, a simple one and something more challenging.
(5) Facebook memory from August 18, 2017: Masterful poem & advice from the great Persian poet Sa'adi, of particular relevance to those who say Afghanistan or Haiti isn't our problem!
(6) The Afghan military betrayed fellow Afghans by not firing a single shot: They also allowed vast amounts of US-supplied arms to fall into the Taliban's hands, ensuring their reign of terror for years to come.
(7) ACM Turing Award is now in its 55th year: Known informally as the Nobel Prize of Computing, the first Turing Award was given in 1966 to Alan J. Perlis, with the 2020 Award recently going to Jeffrey Ullman and Alfred Aho. ACM had a 50th-anniversary celebration for the award in 2017. You can read about that celebration and a number of associated special presentations on this ACM Web page.
(8) Sometimes, even well-meaning men can become complicit in the oppression of women: I use this Facebook memory from August 18, 2014, to amplify what I wrote earlier about all Afghan men, and not just the Taliban, sharing the blame for the oppression of women in that country. In Iran and, to my chagrin, in the US too, men, sometimes inadvertently, help advance a patriarchal view of women. For example, some right-wingers in the US are pointing their fingers at attempts to educate Afghan women about feminism and their rights for what is happening to them. So, they blame the victims and those who tried to help them, rather than blaming the Taliban or the men who chose inaction over the past two decades, when they could have used the opportunity provided by the US presence and support to help reform the Afghan society from within.
2021/08/16 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Inside a US Air Force transport plane taking off from Kabul Airport. And here's a video of the plane trying to take off amid a sea of Afghans, running next to the plane and hanging on to it. [Top center] Photo-op: Former US Secretary of State with a Taliban leader in Doha, Qatar. [Top right] Meme of the day: As Kabul falls, women are once again exposed to oppression and violence. [Bottom left] What are these people doing atop an airplane in Kabul? Maybe they took "Airbus" too literally! [Bottom right] Beef liver, baked in the oven: It does not compare with broiling over charcoal, the way we did in Iran, but it's still okay.
(2) The Taliban indicate that journalists' and women's rights will be respected within the confines of Islam: Ask any Iranian journalist or woman about the meaning of the last phrase!
(3) Magnitude-3.9 quake shook Tehran on Aug. 15, 2021: This particular moderate quake apparently caused no damage, but the possibility of major destruction from a quake along the North Tehran fault line has worried many in the metropolis. More than two million people in Tehran and one million in Alborz Province reside within the fault zone, an area that includes many residential towers along narrow streets with poor emergency access.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- End of terrorism in Afghanistan: Like Iran, terrorists in power use cops and courts to kill their opponents.
- August 16 vs. January 6, 2021: Similar, but seven months and thousands of miles apart. [Photos]
- Hormoz Farhat [1928-2021], Iranian ethnomusicologist living in Ireland, dead at 93. [2010 BBC intro].
- Bikers are bad for the economy! They don't buy cars or gas, and they don't pay for repairs or parking.
- Here are a couple of interesting maps of the subfields of mathematics and their relationships.
- For my Persian-speaking readers: BPlus podcasts bring you summaries of non-fiction books in Persian.
(5) My essay for IEEE Computer Society's 75th anniversary contest: I first shared this essay, entitled "Digital Slavery," on May 16, 2021. Having heard that it was not chosen as the winner, I decided to post this reminder, because it spans some very important topics.
(6) When a fact-checker fact-checks itself: Snopes retracts 60 articles written by its co-founder David Mikkelson, who owns half of the company, because of plagiarism revealed by a BuzzFeed investigation.
(7) Fake COVID-19 vaccines in Iran: A criminal band, which included a doctor, refilled used vaccine vials with a muscle-relaxant and sold them to patients for 6 million tomans ($250) per injection.
(8) A serious case of public-health malpractice: One of the first groups of COVID-exposed people on a cruise ship, arriving in the US on the same flight, were packed into a busy airport and later allowed to go on their ways, taking different flights and spreading the disease even further.
(9) The Trans-Iranian Railway becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site: The 1394-kilometer (865-mile) wonder of engineering, linking the Persian Gulf coast to the Caspian Sea, is one of 33 new sites chosen by UNESCO on July 25, 2021. Featuring 224 tunnels, 174 viaducts, and 186 smaller bridges, the railway climbs to two 2134-meter (7000-foot) summits.
2021/08/15 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Afghanistan, in two photos: Taliban leaders, their idols, and an illustration of their plans for women. [Top right] The mathematics of manhole covers (example from Wiesbaden, Germany). [Bottom left] I would not stand on that rock: Would you? [Bottom center] Meme of the day: Take state and local elections, including the upcoming recall election in California, seriously! [Bottom right] The book Mine! by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman (see the last item below).
(2) On Afghanistan: Many seem to think that the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was due to mistakes by Biden or the US. I have news for these people! I don't deny huge mistakes and big lies over 20 years, but the recent hand-over of Afghanistan to the Taliban was no mistake. It was negotiated by Trump and Biden administrations, negotiations during which the current government of Afghanistan had no part. The Afghan government is corrupt to the core and there was no hope for its reform. The Afghan President is now a fugitive and there are reports that military leaders are rounding up their ill-gotten gains and looking for refuge in Turkey (they will likely go to Western countries later on). In a barren, poor, backward country, all these leaders lived in mansions and palaces that put celebrity residences in the West to shame!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Taliban leadership enters Kabul's Presidential Palace and officially takes over control of Afghanistan.
- Hamid Karzai & 2 others form a coordination committee for peaceful transition of power in Afghanistan.
- My Persian-speaking readers might learn a lot about Afghanistan from this 114-minute discussion.
- GOP strategist and his 19-year-old associate arrested for underage sex trafficking.
- This 84-year-old woman had 11 of her family members executed by the Iranian regime during the 1980s.
- Massive landslide on August 10, 2021, along the Tehran-Chaloos Highway in Iran. [Video]
(4) Book review: Heller, Michael A. and James Salzman, Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Rene Ruiz, Random House Audio, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This wonderful book by Michael A. Heller (Columbia Law School) and James Salzman (UCLA School of Law & UCSB Bren School of the Environment) opens our eyes to the complexities hidden in the seemingly simple notion of ownership. Rules of ownership are indeed simple in some cases. If you own a cow, then its milk is yours, as are any calves it delivers. Most situations, however, aren't so clear-cut, and the resulting complexities keep armies of lawyers busy.
The book is full of interesting examples of apparent and hidden complexities in the notion of ownership. Purchasing an airline ticket gives you ownership of a plane seat for the duration of your flight. More precisely, you own the space between two armrests, between the back of your seat and the back of the seat in front of you, and between the floor to the overhead compartment. If the passenger in front of you reclines his seat, is he invading the space you own? He, too, understood the ownership of his seat as including the right to recline it. This conflict has resulted in many fights aboard planes, especially when a passenger brings along a gadget known as "knee defender" that prevents the seat in front of him from reclining.
Another interesting case arises when trees I have planted in my yard grow tall enough to block sun rays from reaching solar cells installed by a neighbor. Does the neighbor "own" the sun rays that my trees block? What happens if we can't resolve the conflict amicably? Possible court-ordered solutions include cutting down the trees (with or without compensation), moving the solar cells to a different location (with or without the expectation that I bear the cost), and a number of intermediate options.
Is it okay to claim ownership over a parking space by placing a chair on it? Other complicated situations arise in connection with inheritance, copyright, and designs of various kinds (clothing, furniture, gadgets, computer programs, user interfaces). Can delivery drones fly over your house, or are you allowed to shoot them down. We know that airplanes can and do fly over our properties. Does a drone's lower flying altitude make it different? Can we demand a micropayment for each over-flight?
One of the most challenging ownership questions, which affects our lives in the modern world, arises in connection with the collection and use of data. Digital possessions present thorny issues. Do you really own an e-book? There have been cases of e-books and other electronic files being removed by the company that sold them to you, because the fine-print in the terms-of-use agreement allowed them to do just that.
The concept of ownership isn't binary or static; rather, it's a story-telling exercise. There are but six stories that are used for this purpose: First-in-time; Possession; Labor (I made it!); Attachment (to something I own); Self-ownership (my body); Family. And, of course, there are always arguments about which story applies or, when the same story is used, who was first, whether something is really attached to something else (as in sun rays being attached to solar cells, in my previously-cited example), and who should own grandpa's rocking chair.
I found this book quite enlightening, with excellent examples, delightful writing, and scholarly treatment of the complexities of property law. You can get a good overview of the book from this 73-minute book talk.
2021/08/14 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] This has been a dark week for women in the Middle East: In Afghanistan, the Taliban are advancing, forcefully removing women from their families and taking them as slaves. In Iran, the vilest, most-misogynistic elements of the regime are being installed as cabinet members and in other official positions. Even darker weeks may be ahead. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Excellent strategy to get around vaccine distrust of Trump supporters. [Bottom left] Diplomatic hubris and insensitivity: Russian and British diplomats in Tehran recreate a famous photo from the Tehran "Big Three" conference of 1943. The diplomats sit in positions originally occupied by Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, with Franklin Roosevelt's seat pointedly empty. The photo has caused quite a stir in Iran! [Bottom center] Aerial view of a column of camels in the desert, as the sun is about to set. [Bottom right] Today's Zoom session was the second in a series on Tarikh-e Bayhaqi (see the last item below).
(2) Weeping for people of Afghanistan, particularly women: The Taliban forcefully remove women and girls from their homes for use as sex slaves (euphemistically, as "brides" for their warriors).
[Video]
(3) Iran's health system is said to be on the verge of collapse: This young woman curses Khamenei and other Islamic regime officials for causing the death of a loved one due to banning Western vaccines.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Afghan culture will survive a Taliban takeover, just as Iran's culture has survived a 2nd Arab invasion.
- First signs of atrocities in Afghanistan: People are shot on the street and cars & trucks are confiscated.
- Magnitude-7.2 earthquake causes 300+ deaths and massive damage in Haiti.
- Iranian Lur, who calls himself "uneducated," tells it like it is: The numbing effect of religious superstition.
- Iranian regional music: This 2-minute video clip is from a surprisingly well-made Iranian TV series.
- Pleased to share the news that I have been elected Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association.
(5) The GOP's war on science is also a war on working women: Schools and health facilities are staffed mostly by women, who are put in unneeded danger by resistance to masks and vaccination.
(6) SCOTUS rules on school vaccination mandates: In a first case of its kind to reach the US Supreme Court, objections to Indiana University's vaccination requirement were rejected.
(7) Britain's worst mass-shooting in a decade: The perpetrator, who killed 5 people and himself, loved Trump & guns and hated his looks & lack of success with women.
(8) The biggest wildfire in history: Raging in Siberia, there is virtually no hope of containing this fire by human means. The only hope for putting out the fire, which is larger than all other world fires combined, is getting some heavy rains soon.
(9) "The Charms of Tarikh-i Bayhaqi (Bayhaqi's History)": In today's gathering of the Class of 1968, Tehran University College of Engineering (Fanni'68), Mr. Abdollah Kowsari (prolific author & translator of 80+ books) offered a second take on an 11th-century book which not only constitutes an important historical record from Iran's Ghaznavid Empire but is also viewed as one of the literary treasures in the Persian language. Only 6 of an estimated 30 volumes of the original work have survived and these volumes cover the reign of Mas'ud I (for this reason, the book is sometimes referred to as Mas'udi History). Mr. Kowsari recapped his comments from the last session, which was marred by audio problems, added a few more thoughts, and read "The Story of Hasanak (the Vizier)," a passage from the book. It is likely that readings from Tarikh-i Bayhaqi will continue periordically in future sessions of this group. [Recording (link forthcomint)]
2021/08/13 (Friday): Today, I am offering three book reviews, the first two of which are from "UCSB Reads" program's short list for 2022. The final choice will be made in late August and announced shortly thereafter.
(1) Book review: Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo, The Undocumented Americans, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2020. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Undocumented Americans (illegal immigrants, to those who want to demonize them) constitute one of the hot-button issues in modern US politics. The two sides of the political divide are patently clear as one reads reviews of this book on-line: One side urging compassion, the other insisting on the rule of law. One side praising the author for her accomplishments, the other panning her for taking resources away from documented Americans.
Villavicencio, an undocumented American, daughter of undocumented parents, a Harvard graduate, and a Yale doctoral student, takes us through the lives of her cohorts, most of whom aren't as lucky as her. They are, by and large, holding low-wage jobs and living in neighborhoods devoid of cheer and resources. For most, getting a decent high-school education isn't in the cards, let alone attending a world-class university.
This book is a welcome addition to the literature on the immigrant experience, because those of us who were lucky to be born into privilege, or did experience immigration, but not with as much hardship and struggle as most undocumented immigrants, would not know about their stories if they're not told by people like Villavicencio. On the negative side, Villavicencio's focus on undocumented immigrants at NYC's WTC Ground Zero or in Flint, Michigan, reeks on sensationalism.
The book is classified as non-fiction, but the author characterizes it as "creative nonfiction, rooted in careful reporting, translated as poetry." While the stories are compelling, the writing is less than inspiring in my view. Still, I do recommend Undocumented Americans, as it is one of the few books that paints close-up portraits of those who risk everything in an increasingly-hostile society to build a future for themselves and their families.
(2) Book review: Nunez, Sigrid, The Friend, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Hillary Huber, Penguin Audio, 2018. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
A self-described loner, Nunez won over the literary world in her mid-sixties with her 2018 book, The Friend. She was admired by fellow-novelists before, but this book has endeared her to a broader audience.
The novel's opening lines place a group of writers at the funeral of a well-known professor/novelist who committed suicide. Those gathered seem to care more about gossiping and networking than paying respects or grieving. Nunez maintains her critical tone about writers and the literary scene throughout the novel.
The protagonist narrator maintained a relationship with her now-dead friend through his three marriages. From him, she inherited an old, deteriorating Great Dane, which serves as a link connecting her to his memories. The dead professor/novelist was a sexual predator, who pursued his female students, including the protagonist, with no regard for their well-being.
Even though I liked the writing style in this novel, the combination of the story revolving around writers and the craft of writing, and a sexual predator getting a pass from an admiring protege, turned me off. Regarding the first point, insider stories can sometimes be fun and informative (such as an engineer writing about his/her relationship with other engineers, rather than about technology). Regarding the second point, I realize that a novel is fictional and its subject matter may bear no relation to the author's beliefs. Yet, I find praise for a sexual predator disturbing nonetheless.
If you are an aspiring writer, then The Friend may serve as a cautionary tale for you. Otherwise, it is just a depressing insider-story about yet another group of struggling souls.
(3) Book review: Alda, Alan, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2017. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I became familiar with actor Alan Alda's passion for effective communication when I attended a 3-day "Science Communication" workshop he led in Santa Barbara in late June 2016. Sometimes described as "improv for scientists," the workshop aimed to implant a number of skills in the scientist/engineer attendees by means of improv exercises, which help in reading of audience reactions through visual cues. Many of the workshop's hands-on exercises aimed to break down inhibitions, allowing participants to communicate openly & honestly.
This book expands on the aforementioned workshop's approach to sharpening the skills of scientists, doctors, lawyers, and everyone else in reaching their audiences through distilling the message in a goal-oriented way and making personal/emotional connections by means of story-telling. Even though Alda focuses on a single idea, that we have to relate to each other in order to communicate effectively, the prose remains sharp and useful through many examples and variations discussed.
Alda uses his acting experience, alongside results from sociology, psychology, and neuroscience to stress the importance of empathy, active listening, use of helpful, reassuring words (instead of jargon or "lecturing"), and keeping the listeners' needs in mind. He advocates the use of improv's "yes, and" style, rather than the conversation-killing "but," to keep the communication channel open. Responsibility for effective communication lies with the person trying to make a point, but understanding is ultimately about receiving, not sending.
This is a book that must be read at least twice, a first reading to catch the overall message and a second, more-focused reading, perhaps while taking notes, to isolate and ingest the methods that are most-applicable to one's personal situation.
Watching this 58-minute video from 2017, in which Alda is interviewed by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, constitutes a good starting point for greater enjoyment in perusing the book. You can also find much useful information through the Web site of Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. (@AldaCenter)
2021/08/12 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] As President Xi becomes more confrontational, global CEOs are reassessing the risks of doing business in China. [Top center] Three-month trend of biweekly confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people: Iran vs. four European countries. [Top right] New "Jeopardy!" hosts: Sony Pictures has announced a main host (Mike Richards) and a secondary permanent host (Mayim Bialik, of "Big Bang Theory" fame) as replacements for the late Alex Trebek. [Bottom left] A wonderful fractal pattern: If this image had infinite resolution, you could zoom in on any of the squares and see the same overall pattern inside it. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: The origins of dinosaurs. [Bottom right] Persian idiom: "A flower has no front or back" is the poetic/polite response to someone apologizing for turning their back on you.
(2) Fooling the brain: How under the right conditions your brain thinks of a rubber hand, which isn't even connected to your real arms, as belonging to you, feeling cold, heat, and pain through it. [Video]
(3) Honestly, resisting masks isn't about freedom: Most schools enforce rules on make-up, skirt length, and exposure of shoulders, necklines, & midriffs. No parent screams at school-board meetings about them.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Canadian study: Inexpensive anti-depressant could help boost immunity against and treat COVID-19.
- Iran's new president is filling his cabinet with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and members.
- Who decided that COVID-19 vaccination cards should be 3"x4", rather than the size of a credit card?
- Don't bother to lock your door if this guy is in your neighborhood: No wall or fence can stop him! [Video]
- Outdoor summer movies in Isla Vista, California: Friday nights, Aug. 13 to Sep. 10, 2021, 8:30 PM PDT.
- Math puzzle: Find the loan amount of a 30-year, 4% fixed-rate mortgage, with monthly payment of $573.
- French fan of Persian literature and music: In this video, she speaks in Persian and sings a classical song.
- Iranian regional music: A beautiful song from the Guilan Province on the Caspian coast. [Video]
(5) Poor workmanship: I had my courtyard gate replaced this week, after a 6-month delay and multiple follow-ups. COVID-19 has become a convenient scapegoat for those who don't perform their jobs properly. Yes, contractors are in short supply, but replacing a door should not take 6 months! And the new gate has multiple problems, from the large gap underneath, that allows small animals to creep in, to unprofessional paint job that did not cover the pencil markings of the carpenter who cut the gate to size. [Photos]
(6) Logical puzzle: In a class of 123 students, the professor suggests a game to play. She would put a white or black hat on each student's head. A student cannot see the color of his/her own hat, but s/he can see the hats of all other students. Once the game starts, no form of communication is allowed among the students, but before the placement of hats, they can confer with each other to devise a winning strategy. With the hats on, the students are called upon one by one to guess the color of their own hats. Each correct guess earns one point. The aim is to maximize the score in the worst case. To make things more challenging, one student acts as an agent, with the aim of disrupting the other students' strategy. How should the students proceed?
(7) Why do religions have a problem with women: Traditional interpretations of the world's major faiths all delegate women to a secondary status, in theology and in society. It's hard to believe that some women take the side of such views. Here is a debate between two women on women & religion. [Debate summary]
2021/08/11 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Allyson Felix, US Olympic athlete (see the next item below). [Center] Cartoon of the day: The vaccinated master & his cronies should be tried for genocide due to delayed vaccine procurement (credit: IranWire.com). [Right] Symmetries in Persian-carpet designs intrigue mathematicians.
(2) Tokyo 2020 has been called the "moms' Olympics": This is a big change from previous tournaments. Allyson Felix was dropped by Nike after she got pregnant, on the assumption that she would never get back in shape to compete internationally. Well, less than a year after her C-section delivery, she was back at winning medals. Nike called, but she rejected their offer, starting her own sneaker brand instead. In Tokyo, she became the most-decorated US track-and-field athlete of all time, wearing her own brand in competitions.
(3) Detecting disinformation: If you see a claim on social media that Pfizer, Moderna, and other Western vaccines turn you into chimps, but the post is silent on the Sputnik vaccine, be suspicious!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Helpers of the delta variant: Thousands of unvaccinated, unmasked bikers travel across the country.
- Documents relating to Saudi Arabia's involvement in the 9/11 attacks one step closer to public release.
- US Capitol rioters are being fined at the rate of 1/3 of a cent for each $1 of damage they inflicted!
- Florida hospitals requested hundreds of ventilators from the federal government for COVID-19 surge.
- Magic tricks: There are many such routines that involve a screen, but this one is very special. [Video]
- Facebook memory from August 11, 2015: This 10-minute TED talk is beyond inspiring!
(5) A major victory for human-rights Hamid Nouri's trial for war crimes, resulting from his role in summary executions of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s Iran, opens in Stockholm.
(6) Quote of the day: "When you think of it, Al Gore lost the election by 537 votes. Hillary Clinton lost the election by 77,000 votes. But Trump lost the election by 7 million votes. I think they should show that every day on TV." ~ American singer/actor Barbra Streisand
(7) Math-inspired poetry: This clever Venn-diagram poem was posted on the occasion of John Venn's 187th birthday: There are actually two poems that share the middle part.
(8) "Poetry of Khorasan: Mehdi Akhavan Saales": This is the title of a Zoom talk by Zohreh Ghahremani, Sunday, August 22, 4:00 PM PDT (Meeting ID 874 1157 6093; Passcode 1100). [Image]
(9) CNN's Chris Cuomo under fire: As brother of disgraced NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, Chris has to navigate a fine line on his CNN show. In the past, he has not always kept a distance from his politician brother, going as far as interviewing the Governor on his program. I happen to like Chris Cuomo, but conflict of interest (even the appearance of it) is a no-no for a journalist. Chris is now on leave, as the news of his brother resigning NY's governorship dominate the airwaves, claiming that he is using a previously-scheduled vacation time. But his leave and his brother's woes appear to be related.
2021/08/10 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] In a couple of weeks, the "UCSB Reads 2022" book will be selected: If you want to help us with the task, you can express your opinion about the short-list candidates. [Center] Santa Barbara Public Library & UCSB partner to preserve history: Over 3,000 historic photos of SB County, 104 issues of SB's first newspaper, and SBPL's own archives are preserved at UCSB Library. [Right] US Mint's American Innovation dollar coin honors Ralph Baer: The "father of the video game" developed the Brown Box, which paved the way for modern home video game consoles including the PlayStation and Xbox.
(2) Pseudo-polynomial-time algorithms: Weakly NP-complete problems are those that can be solved in polynomial time in terms of the maximum input value. For example, the 0-1 knapsack problem with n items is NP-hard and needs exponential time in n, but with linear-programming, we can solve it in O(nW) time, where W is the knapsack's capacity. If W is bounded by a polynomial in n, then the running time is polynomial.
(3) Vaccine hesitancy is a worldwide problem: This Gallup chart shows the percentage of citizens of various countries, grouped by world regions, who believe vaccines are safe. The US and Iran are quite similar, at a tad over 70%. France, Switzerland, Japan, and South Korea on the low end, and India, Egypt, Rwanda, and Venezuela on the high end, are some of the surprises in the data.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dixie Fire, previously categorized as California's 2nd-largest, has expanded to become the largest ever.
- Black realtor, showing a house, and his two black clients arrested when neighbors reported a break-in.
- Cartoon of the day: The noble us vs. the ignoble them. [Image]
- Author Samineh Baghcheban (Pirnazar) at 96: She keeps active and uses poetry to maintain mental acuity.
- Never give up: But also never celebrate too early! [3-minute sports highlights]
- Math puzzle: Let F(k) be the kth Fibonacci number. What is gcd(F(35), F(84))? [A helpful theorem]
(5) Talk, on the occasion of the 115th anniversary of Iran's Constitutional Revolution: Dr. Janet Afari outlines the vital role of the South Caucasus diaspora community and the Tbilisi-based Molla Nasreddin newspaper.
(6) Iran's cyber-army keeps expanding in size and capability: The brutal Islamic regime is growing desperate, as it attacks every activist, regardless of the size of his/her following. It is criminal to leave the Iranian people without vaccines and other critical medical needs, spending time and money on feeding a huge cyber-army.
(7) Meme of the day: If you don't protest the use of vaccination passports, pretty soon the government will make you show an age passport to enter a bar and a driving passport to operate a tractor-trailer.
(8) Iran's Head of Judiciary has said that no Iranian is banned from returning to Iran: That's great, but no one is worried about not being allowed to return to Iran. It's not being able to leave that worries them!
(9) Final thought for the day: The #MeToo movement is alive and well! NY Governor Andrew Cuomo finally resigns after throwing everything at his sexual-abuse problem; "These allegations are false"; "What's alleged never happened"; "That's not who I am"; "I was misunderstood"; "it's a cultural-difference problem." These "explanations" no longer cut it. Neither does the hypocrisy of paying lip service to the need for respecting and supporting women victimized by sexual abusers, while simultaneously doing the exact opposite.
2021/08/09 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] With planes flying over the Eiffel Tower, Paris takes the baton from Tokyo. [Center] Dax-Devlon Ross' book Letters to My White Male Friends (see the last item below). [Right] Iran's 1988 death panel: Ebrahim Raisi, Islamic Republic's new president, was a member of a judicial panel appointed by Khomeini and charged with killing unrepentent political prisoners who had already been tried and were serving prison terms. Most of the estimated 8000 victims were buried in unmarked mass graves.
(2) Iranian driver runs over two women after admonishing them for "improper hijab": Yet another proof that compulsory hijab laws and violence against women are two sides of the same coin.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- College officials have a new problem to worry about: Fake vaccination cards for COVID-19.
- Fish & chips without chips is weird enough: But what is chips without chips? [Image of menu]
- Facebook memory from August 9, 2018: A wonderful song with Persian and Azeri lyrics.
- Facebook memory from August 9, 2011: Beautiful Persian verses from Hatef-e Esfahani.
(5) Facebook memory from August 9, 2011: This puzzle is based on a true story. Augustus De Morgan, a 19th-century mathematician, was once asked about his age. He replied: "I was x years old in the year x^2."
(4) Book review: Ross, Dax-Devlon, Letters to My White Male Friends, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is one of many call-to-action books about racism that have been published in recent years. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, many of the author's white male friends reached out to him to see if he was doing okay. So, he decided to formulate his thoughts on systemic racism and police brutality in a way that would allow his friends to be better allies. In his words, when it comes to racism, white men are "everyone's target but no one's focus." On the other hand, "when it comes to conversations about race, white men are typically coddled and appeased."
Ross breaks the common mold of discussing only how racism affects blacks and other people of color by focusing also on its effects on white folks, who are robbed of experiencing fullness and meaningful relationships. He observes that limited education and dialog on race, a result of the the perception that we have moved to a post-civil-rights world, has left many members of the society with "underdeveloped understandings of the ways in which race and racism operate."
Having been educated in an elite private school, later earning a juris doctorate from George Washington University, Ross himself was disconnected from topics of race and his lived experiences as a black child. Mingling in schools with children of powerful white people, who weren't inclined to discuss systemic racism, made him lose sight of the fact that he wasn't really one of them. So, he needed much unlearning and self-reflection to realize that most white people didn't treat him in the same way as his circle of friends did.
Ross believes that in view of white men wielding much social power, they must be engaged in conversations about race, because "[w]e cannot have a racial reckoning without it." There isn't much in this book that hasn't been said by many others. However, Ross's set of experiences and perspectives on the topic make this relatively short book (or long letter) a worthwhile read.
Here are two example books that make many of the same points as Ross.
DiAngelo, Robin, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism [4*]
Saad, Layla, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor [5*]
2021/08/08 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Too much emphasis on giving everyone Internet access, not enough on eliminating world hunger (see the next item below). [Right] The Tokyo Olympics is finally over: Despite the lack of spectators, organizing and running the 2020 Olympics was a massive undertaking. This 18-minute video explains the 7-year process. And here are some photos from the closing ceremony.
(2) Tech's focus should change: This morning, I watched a tech talk about how technology is changing, with exponential rise in capacity/capability & exponential drop in cost, and how within 3-4 years, each human being, including every child in Africa, will have full access to the world's store of knowledge via satellite Internet. This is wonderful, but I hope that the said child will be healthy and have enough food to eat as she surfs the net!
(3) China had an at-most-one-child policy for many years: Republicans seem to be headed toward imposing an at-least-one-child policy for women. Many conservatives now blame childless women for America's ills.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Taliban continue to advance toward population centers: Threatened Afghans are begging for support.
- Iran's new President ("The Hanging Judge") chooses the head of Iran's prison system as his Chief of Staff.
- The Web turns 30: Tim Berners-Lee published the first public web page on August 6, 1991.
- While My Carillon Gently Weeps: Sample from Wesley Arai's recital on UCSB Storke Tower's Carillon today.
- On the waterfront: Strolling along Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf on this Fiesta Sunday.
- Today's Fiesta (Old Spanish Days) edition of arts & crafts exhibits along Santa Barbara's Cabrillo Blvd.
(5) Math puzzle: The deca tree has 10 trunks. On each trunk, there are 10 branches. On each branch, there are 10 twigs. On each twig, there are 10 leaves. One day, a wood-cutter comes along and cuts down one trunk from the tree. Then he cuts off one branch from another trunk. He then cuts off one twig from another branch. Finally, he pulls one leaf from another twig. How many leaves are left on the tree?
(6) Grades for sale: Baltimore City Community College math professor who demanded $150, $250, and $500 for C, B, and A grades sentenced to one year in prison.
(7) California's massive Dixie Fire has grown to become the second-largest wildfire in state's history: The fire that completely destroyed the historic mountain town of Greenville is only 21% contained.
(8) Math puzzle: Let the function f(x, y), defined for positive integers x and y, have the properties f(x, x) = x, f(x, y) = f(y, x), and f(x, y) = f(x, x + y). What is f(66, 770)?
(9) Damage from an Iranian ballistic missile attack: This CBS "60 Minutes" report shows that the human and material toll of Iran's missile attack in retaliation for the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani was much greater than the US admitted officially. It's quite fortunate that a full-blown war was averted.
2021/08/07 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Zoom meeting on Bayhaqi's History (see the next item below). [Center] History in pictures: First group of women admitted to Tehran University, Iran (1940s). [Right] Webinar on the Shahyad Monument in Tehran (see the last item below).
(2) "The Charms of Tarikh-i Bayhaqi (Bayhaqi's History)": In today's gathering of the Class of 1968, Tehran University College of Engineering (Fanni'68), Mr. Abdollah Kowsari (prolific author & translator of 80+ books) spoke about an 11th-century book which not only constitutes an important historical record from Iran's Ghaznavid Empire but is also viewed as one of the literary treasures in the Persian language. Only 6 of an estimated 30 volumes of the original work have survived and these volumes cover the reign of Mas'ud I (for this reason, the book is sometimes referred to as Mas'udi History).
Mr. Kowsari began by presenting a brief biography of Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi and his place in the royal court of the day as "dabir" (literally, "transcriber," but actually more like a trusted adviser). He then read and interpreted selected parts of the book. He mentioned that various selections of Bayhaqi's History have been published, among which the one by Dr. Mohammad Dehghani (Nashr-e Ney) is recommended, because it contains a very useful introduction and a glossary to help the modern reader.
Unfortunately, Internet connectivity problems (apparently from the speaker's side in Iran) made it rather difficult to make sense of the presentation. The session was recorded and, if the recording is better than what we had in the live session, I will share the link.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- By one measure, creativity seems to peak around age 25: A tad earlier, and drops off faster, for men.
- Both the US men's & women's teams win Olympic gold in basketball, prevailing over France & Japan.
- Math puzzle: Let F(i) be the ith Fibonacci number. Prove that gcd(F(j), F(k)) = F(gcd(j, k)). [Proof]
- Facebook memory from August 7, 2016: My cartoon portrait, drawn at the Fiesta Arts & Crafts Festival.
(4) Iran's government banned this ice-cream commercial, because it arouses men: Banning the ad for the stated reason is mad! But I do have a problem with it from a women's-equality standpoint: It's wrong to exploit women to sell fridges, cars, or ice cream.
(5) "The Shahyad Monument: A Symbol of Iranian Civilization and Culture": The monument, renamed "Azadi Tower" after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has come to define Tehran, and, in many ways, Iran. In today's Farhang Foundation webinar, the monument/tower was discussed by its architect, Hossein Amanat.
Mr. Amanat began his presentation by recalling the 1966 competition for the monument's design, which he entered as a very young architect, not expecting to win against other, more-experienced, competitors. Even after his design was chosen, delays in the award of a contract to build it made Mr. Amanat nervous, thinking that perhaps the authorities were hesitant to trust such an important project to an inexperienced architect. The rest, as they say, is history!
A key architectural feature of the monument/tower is extensive use of geometry, borrowed from Iranian architecture over many centuries. During the talk, Mr. Amanat described his design's features and where the various ideas came from. When asked whether he was okay with the monument's new name, he said that "Azadi Tower" is a fine name and that he is more concerned with neglect and lack of proper maintenance, which have led to the crumbling of the stone facade and the tile dome. [Photos & architectural drawings]
2021/08/06 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Engineering marvels: Hisashimichi highway interchange near Tokyo, has been designed to cause minimal disruption to its surrounding environment. [Center] How to write good(ly): Valuable tips for aspiring writers! [Right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square area is colored orange?
(2) Morality police roughs up a woman on a street in Tehran, as they try to arrest her: Yet more evidence for those who claim that hijab is not a big problem in Iran, because compulsory hijab laws are rarely enforced.
(3) Sample ballot in California's recall election: The 46 candidates who want to replace Governor Newsom include entertainers, actors, teachers, pastors, realtors, and business owners. [Image]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Countries ranked by healthcare system cost (left in this image) and performance (right). [Bernie Sanders]
- Climate change may lead to the collapse of a critical system in the Atlantic Ocean.
- Math puzzle: What is the probability p that a randomly-chosen divisor of 10^8 is divisible by 10^6?
- Augmented reality: Making art come alive! [Video]
- John Williams conducts a medley of Oscar-winning movie theme songs. [5-minute video]
- Persian music: "Soltan-e Ghalbha" ("King of Hearts"), in an intimate private performance.
- Persian music: An instrumental piece on tar.
- Persian music: Soheila Golestani performs "Gheseh-ye Faramoush" ("Forgotten Tale").
(5) International collaborative music: old video is the result of a project by violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who invited a number of famous women singers (including Marzieh from Iran) to perform together.
(6) The pro-sports world is racing toward extinction: The reason Barcelona is letting Lionel Messi go is that the club lost $470M last season and can no longer afford his $84M salary.
(7) Sara Molaie, on discovering unexpected connections between Persian & Hebrew: Interestingly, both languages underwent revival movements in the 19th century. I have learned from Mr. Mohammad Amini that a highly-anticipated forthcoming book will discuss the rediscovery of a large number of Persian terms via a scholarly study of copies of an old bilingual Torah held in Britain and France.
(8) Gee, I'm having a hard time deciding who to believe: Dr. Anthony Fauci, who graduated first in his class at Cornell Medical School, served under six presidents, and received numerous awards & honors, or Jim Jordan, a former assistant wrestling coach during whose tenure many wrestlers suffered sexual abuse.
(9) Final thought for the day: For every power abuser and sexual predator in public office, there are dozens of enablers nearby. This was true of Donald Trump, and it is true of Andrew Cuomo.
2021/08/05 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Vaccinologist Barbie (see the next item below). [Center] Old Spanish Days (Santa Barbara Fiesta) all but cancelled: Previously, the food courts and parade had been eliminated. Now, other than the opening ceremony of last night in front of Santa Barbara Mission, which was closed to the public, everything else, including song-and-dance performances at SB Courthouse's Sunken Garden, has been removed from the program. [Right] Peacock dancers: Decorative set, offered for sale by Lezze Design.
(2) Vaccinologist Barbie: Mattel introduces a new doll resembling the co-creator of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, Prof. Sarah Gilbert. Other new Barbie dolls include US healthcare workers Amy O'Sullivan and Dr. Audrey Cruz, Canadian doctor & campaigner Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa, Brazilian biomedical researcher Dr. Jaqueline Goes de Jesus, and Australian co-creator of a reusable gown for frontline staff, Dr. Kirby White.
(3) Olympics soccer: The US women's team beat Australia 4-3 to win the bronze medal. Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe scored two goals each, and the defense held under late pressure, to seal the win. One of Rapinoe's goals came off a corner kick, with only the goalie touching the ball.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Enrique Mora's attendance at the inauguration of Iran's criminal new president, Ebrahim Raisi, condemned.
- The looming water crisis in Kermanshah, Iran: Khuzestan's drought protests are just the starting point.
- Iranian hospitals overwhelmed by delta variant and black market for beds: Deaths rise to 300 per day.
- How scientists & publishers are fighting against fake-paper factories: Industrial-scale cheating exposed.
- Mechanical "doping": Belgian pro-cyclist caught using a hidden motor on her bike. [Video report]
- Facebook memories from August 5, 2017: Fiesta confetti and my T-shirt. [Photos]
- And from 2019: After Sandy Hook, we said "never again." What do we say 2191 mass shootings later?
(5) Facebook memory from August 5, 2012: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with a straight face, talking to Barbara Walters: "No government kills its people, unless it's run by a crazy person." No kidding!
(6) Fighting on two fronts, against an opponent on the mat and against medieval rulers back home: Iranian Olympic athlete Sara Bahmanyar struggles to keep her head covering in place during a match.
(7) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, CEDAW, often described as an international bill of rights for women, has been endorsed in full or in part by 189 countries; only Iran, Somalia, and Sudan have rejected the Convention. Many Islamic countries have joined the Convention with "reservations" attached to some of its parts, such as Articles 2 & 16 (see below), citing incompatibility with religious edicts. Given that Articles 2 & 16 represent the essence of the Convention, such reservations are the same as not accepting it. So, it's fair to say that some two-dozen Islamic countries have not endorsed CEDAW.
Article 2 begins: "States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women ..."
Article 16 begins: "States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations ..."
CEDAW's home page (includes link to the Convention's full text).
[Credit: Lecture by Dr. Roja Fazaeli (Trinity College), Iran Academia's course on Feminism, Gender, & Sexuality]
2021/08/04 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The doomsday variant: As long as coronavirus continues to spread far & wide through unvaccinated people, chance mutations can lead to even deadlier variants. [Center] Persian poetry: A verse from Sa'adi. [Right] A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders (see the last item below).
(2) Cartoon caption of the day: "When pressed, the tailor, a material witness in the suit, came apart at the seams. His altered testimony completely unraveled. The tale he had woven proved a complete fabrication."
(3) President Biden to state officials banning mask mandates and other restrictions: If you're not going to help, at least get out of the way of people trying to do the right thing!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Daisy Veerasingham to become the first woman to lead the 175-year-old Associated Press news agency.
- Mexico will sue major US-based gun manufacturers over gun-trafficking across the US-Mexico border.
- Homes of Baha'i families destroyed in the northern Iranian village of Roshan Kuh, Mazandaran Province.
- Khamenei releases a 5-minute video to embarrass Rouhani, as he hands over Iran's presidency to Raisi.
- Farzaneh Fasihi is the first Iranian female sprinter to reach the Olympics in 57 years: She got no support.
(5) Pressure mounts on NY Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign: Report released today detailing the results of a thorough investigation into allegations by 11 women of sexual harassment, involving 179 witnesses, leaves no doubt that he behaved inappropriately on many occasions. Cuomo's explanation that these are all cases of misunderstanding and cultural differences does not hold water. Even if some of the alleged behavior is acceptable in Italy, say, which I seriously doubt, he is still responsible for the harm he caused these women.
(6) Book review: Saunders, George, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, unabridged 15-hour audiobook, read by George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, B. D. Wong, and Renee Elise Goldsberry, Random House Audio, 2021. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In some ways, it's harder to write a short story than a full-length novel. Word and space limitations require economy in introducing characters and events. Every element of the prose must help move the story along, making asides and detours harder to justify, although some short-story masters do introduce superfluous elements or passages to good effect.
The four Russians of the subtitle are Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, whose works Saunders has been using in a class on Russian short story at Syracuse University. He characterizes the stories as "seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like: How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?"
The book includes seven translated short stories in full, along with analyses and afterthoughts. Saunders begins with Chekhov's 11-page short story "In the Cart," stopping after each page and asking questions about what was and wasn't there, to allow us to develop awareness of the state of the story at that point and Chekhov's thought process in moving the story along. The lesson here is that a good (short) story is a constantly-evolving narrative, until its very last line.
Other themes explored by Saunders in the remaining six short stories, listed below, include plot, character, use of irrational elements, and the possibility of a clunkily-written story to project perfection.
Anton Chekhov: "The Darling"; "Gooseberries"
Iven Turgenev: "The Singers"
Leo Tolstoy: "Master and Man"; "Alyosha the Pot"
Nikolai Gogol: "The Nose"
Learn about the book from George Saunders himself (58-minute video).
2021/08/03 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sales of Apple's AirPods exceed revenues of quite a few top tech companies! [Center] Misogyny in action: The unusual physique of Simone Biles (likely the reason for her success in performing challenging gymnastics maneuvers) has been the subject of mockery on social media. Compare this with the not-much-discussed unusual physique of former swimmer Michael Phelps. [Right] American Amnesia, by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (see the last item below).
(2) UCSB Middle East Ensemble had a rehearsal at West Campus faculty housing today. [Video 1] [Video 2]
(3) Iran Academia's MOOC on Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality: Following are topics and instructors in this excellent on-line course, conducted in Persian, which is now in week 3 of 7.
Week 1 (History of Women's Movement): Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (CSUN), Fatemeh Shayesteh (U. Kansas)
Week 2 (Feminist Theories 1): Dr. Shahrzad Mojab (U. Toronto), Niloofar Hooman (McMaster U.), Somayeh Rostampour (U. Paris Descartes)
Week 3 (Feminist Theories 2): Dr. Roja Fazaeli (Trinity College, Dublin), Dr. Nadia Aghtaei (U. Bristol), Mojtaba Golmohammadi (Author/Researcher), Sama Khosravi Ooryad (U. Gothenburg)
Week 4 (Manhood): Dr. Fataneh Farahani (Stockholm U.), Sahar Fetrat (King's College, London), Dr. Atlas Torbati (U. London)
Week 5 (History of Sexuality): Dr. Mehran Rezaei, U. Sussex; Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, UNC Chapel Hill; Anahita Hosseini, U. Sussex)
Week 6 (Queer Movement and Theory): Zeinab Nobowati (U. Oregon); Romina Akhtari; Shahram Kiani; Sima Shakhsari (U. Minnesota)
Week 7 (Sexuality in Everyday Life): TBA
(4) Book review: Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson, American Amnesia: Business, Government, and the Forgotten Roots of Our Prosperity, unabridged 17-hour audiobook, read by Holter Graham, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Government in the US was once part of a smartly-configured mixed private/public economy and an engine for broad prosperity. Those who see the government as the root of all evil have forgotten how the mixed economy of the 20th century enabled vastly improved educational attainment, scientific progress, health, longevity, and economic security.
The balance struck between free-market capitalism and government-led programs for social good is now in danger of being discarded in favor of making everything market-driven. The point has been made by many authors that a long-term view of prosperity and attention to infrastructure is beyond the capacity of the free market and businesses driven by bottom-line and "share-holder value." Keeping the air and water clean may reduce short-term profits, but is necessary for longer-term economic and social progress. While businesses can successfully conduct product- or service-driven R&D projects, nurturing scientific breakthroughs requires broad-based collaboration that is ill-suited to corporate resources and goals.
The amnesia isn't accidental. It has been systematically promoted by big business and finance industry through spending unparalleled sums on lobbying and enabled by the revolving door that allows government employees to amass fortunes after they leave their posts. The new wealthy elite, enamored by misguided Ayn-Randian notions, and the Republican Party trying to win more power for itself by vilifying the government, instead of helping fix what's wrong, are chipping away at the roots of our heretofore successful system.
Changes in the corporate culture are big parts of the problem. The bosses of great American companies, such as Kodak and GM, used to be respected figures who worked with the government to help get things done. They are now by and large concerned with their own compensation, bonuses, and amassing enough money to retire early to their mansions and yachts. Powerful lobbies, such as Chamber of Commerce, and think tanks funded by the likes of Koch Brothers, are aiming to dismantle our mixed economy, at a time when our world status and environmental stewardship are under threat.
All hope is not lost, though. There are signs of broadening participation in the political process. Young voters supporting the policies of progressive politicians such as Bernie Sanders constitute a glimmer of light shining on an otherwise bleak landscape. Let's hope the younger generation takes over and pulls us back from the brink, before the destruction of our government institutions moves beyond the point of no return.
2021/08/02 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Saudi Arabia's first World Heritage Site: Medain Saleh, a pre-Islamic tomb, has been carved out of a single piece of rock. [Center] Abundance of elements in the universe (horizontal axis), in Earth's crust (vertical axis), and in human beings (circle size). [Right] Visualizing the severe drought in California: Lake Oroville's drying up in 3 years.
(2) Wow, what a big surprise! As he prepares to leave office in a matter of day, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani admits that his government has not always told the truth to the Iranian people.
(3) What is it with these entitled sons? Qaddafi's son wants to take Libya back. The Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, wants to take Iran back. Khamenei's son dreams of becoming Iran's Supreme Leader. Queen Elizabeth II's son is growing impatient with his mom's long reign.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Colonel Vindman's detailed account of Trump's phone call to Zelenski and the resulting political mess.
- History will judge Khamenei's ban on importing COVID-19 vaccines to Iran as an act of genocide.
- Roza Eftekhari [1961-2021], long time feminist and women's-rights activist dead at 60.
- Saudi Arabia & Iran are cut of the same cloth: MBS sent a hit team to Canada to assassinate Saad Aljabri.
- Newsweek "My Turn" essay by an Olympic gymnast: Women face "twistees," periods, and leotard fears.
- Math art: Unfolding exponential sums. [Tweet by Thien An]
- Abandoned Olympics venues of the past: Facilities that cost a fortune but are rotting from neglect.
(5) CONCACAF Gold Cup: The US men's national soccer team prevailed over Mexico 1-0 to win the championship late in extra time. Mexico was dominant in time-of-possession, scoring opportunities, and corner kicks, but the young, inexperienced US side held on for the narrow victory. [4-minute highlights]
(6) US women's soccer team eliminated by Canada 1-0 from the Olympics gold-medal competition: Canada, scoring on a questionable penalty kick, will play Sweden for the gold. The US will play Australia for bronze.
(7) NBC is ruining the Olympics for many of us: Whenever I read a non-NBC story about the Olympics, videos in the story are blacked out. NBC has exclusive broadcast rights for the Tokyo Olympics and has taken greed to the extreme is spoiling news coverage of the events.
(8) Puzzle: In the following sentence, fill in the blanks with numbers to make it true. [P.S.: I have found two solutions, but don't know whether they are the only possible ones.]
In this sentence, the number of occurrences of 0 is __, of 1 is __, of 2 is __, of 3 is __, of 4 is __, of 5 is __, of 6 is __, of 7 is __, of 8 is __, and of 9 is __.
(9) Iran's Parliament is discussing a law to limit Internet access: Pitched by the government as a plan to "protect users in cyberspace," Iranians are understandably skeptical. The prevalent view is that the government, which has blocked Internet access in the past during political unrests, would like to make the blockage permanent, offering instead a national Intranet to Iranians. Another view is that the government wants to make money off satellite Internet service, which it has already started to pitch at exorbitant prices.
2021/07/31 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Faramarz Davarian (JPL) will talk on August 18, under the title "Connecting with the Moon: Can We Provide Communications Connectivity for Human Presence on the Moon Similar to What We Have on Our Planet?" [Center] The tiny green blot is North America on Jupiter. [Right] Collatz's conjecture, or the 3x + 1 problem (see the next item below).
(2) The crazy 3x + 1 problem: Also known as Collatz's conjecture, this easy-looking tough problem has baffled mathematicians for decades. It can be formulated as a game. Start with any positive integer and develop a sequence of integers from it, using the following rule in each step: Halve your number if it's even; triple it and add 1 if it's odd. Lothar Collatz, who formulated this problem, conjectured that no matter what number you start with, you will always arrive at the tight loop 4 → 2 → 1 → 4 after a finite number of steps. This conjecture is believed to be true, but no one has been able to prove or disprove it.
(3) Lost and never found: Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are kept in digital wallets. If one loses the private key to a digital wallet, the money is lost. In their column, published in the July 2021 issue of IEEE Computer magazine, Jeffrey Voas and Nir Kshetri state that some 20% of all bitcoins, worth around $140 billion in January 2021, are in accounts which are no longer accessible.
(4) CONCACAF Gold Cup: US men's national soccer team squeezes by Qatar 1-0 on a late goal to advance to the tournament's final match against Mexico (Sunday, August 1, 2021, 5:30 PM PDT, on FS1).
(5) IEEE Computer magazine's cover feature for Juy 2021 contains the articles:
*Diverging Images of the Technoscapes in Developing Economies
*Reshaping the Landscape of the Future: Software-Defined Manufacturing
*Experiencing Hyperloops: The Transit of the Future
*Worlds Apart: Technology, Remote Work, and Equity
*Toward Embodied Intelligence: Smart Things on the Rise
*Isomorphic Internet of Things Architectures with Web Technologies
(6) Political humor from Iran: The Islamic regime has ruined Iran to such an extent that everyone wants to flee the country. Reza Pahlavi is apparently the only one who wants to return!
(7) Central Coast Community Energy: Beginning in October 2021, the electric energy provider in my area will switch from Southern California Edison to CCCE. Edison will continue to distribute the energy, maintain the infrastructure, and bill customers. CCCE isn't an investor-owned utility, but a nonprofit public agency with open board meetings, striving to obtain the best value for its customers. Hoping things work out as planned.
(8) Iran is dying of thirst: One reason is building too many dams on rivers whose flows cannot support the envisaged agricultural and industrial projects. Equally important is the digging of an inordinate number of wells to tap into the underground water, which has been sinking lower and lower due to overuse. Well stats follow.
Years ago (#Wells): Fifty (47,000); Forty (162,000); Thirty (225,000); Twenty (450,000); Ten (736,000)
(9) Final thought for the day: Stop saying you don't want to be part of the vaccination experiment. We are all part of the experiment, either as the group getting the life-saving med or as the control group.
2021/07/30 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranian athletes make people-to-people connections in Tokyo, despite their government's death-to-everyone slogans. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Kevin McCarthy plans to start a company to offer January-6-style tours of the US Capitol Building. [Top right] Cover image of IEEE Computer magazine, July 2021 (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the angle x in this diagram showing an equilateral triangle embedded in an isosceles triangle. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the length AE, assuming that the outer triangle is isosceles. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the length x, assuming that the line inside the triangle bisects the angle on the lower left.
(2) Six months ago, they told us to wear winter coats; now, they want us to wear shorts & put on sunscreen: Analogy to show the silliness of those who criticize changing guidelines, as the COVID-19 situation evolves.
(3) Trump calls the January 6 cops who spoke to Congress "pussies": He should be forced to meet the cops and tell his opinion of them in person. He will need quite a few bodyguards, though!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Five-billion-year-old space rock, uncovered in an English field, may help solve mysteries of our solar system.
- Blue lives matter, unless those hurting the cops wear red hats!
- Iranian mothers demanding justice for their kids killed during 2019 protests are beaten up & arrested.
- Baltimore aunt kept the decomposing bodies of her niece and nephew in her car trunk for months.
- British Computer Society offers a practical guide to increasing gender diversity and inclusion in tech.
(5) Olympics soccer: The US women's national team squeezes through to the semifinals after winning against Netherlands on PKs (the score was 2-2 at the end of 90 minutes and extra time). The US goalie was the star of the day, saving a penalty kick during the match and a couple more during the PK shootout. On Monday, August 02, the US will play Canada at 1:00 AM PDT and Australia will face Sweden at 4:00 AM.
(6) Metcalfe's Law: Computing is full of empirical laws, which are not really laws in the scientific sense of the term. Amdahl's Law, Moore's Law, and Denard Scaling are some of our better-known empirical laws.
While working with Ethernet, Robert Metcalfe suggested that the economic value of an n-node network (of computers, servers, phones, or users) is proportional to n^2, which is also the number of possible connections between pairs of nodes. If the law holds, a 10-fold network growth, say from 100 nodes to 1000 nodes, increases its economic value 100-fold. Many people believe in Metcalfe's Law and are willing to back up their confidence with money (i.e., investment in network-related ventures).
Metcalfe's Law has been criticized, citing imperfect network scalability, that is, because the Law is based on the implicit assumption that network cost grows linearly with size. However, like other large-scale systems, networks aren't infinitely scalable. For this reason, the slower-growing function n log n is sometimes suggested for the increase in network value with its size. The truth may lie somewhere between n log n and n^2.
2021/07/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Blame Ronald Reagan for MAGA: He started it; others took it to the extreme. [Top center] Persian poetry: A verse from Sa'adi on why love of one's motherland and living abroad are not necessarily in conflict. [Top right] Portrait of Iranian film director Bahram Beyzaie (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Migratory fish such as salmon swim upstream to lay eggs: So, fish ladders are provided next to dams to allow fish to get to the upper waters. [Bottom right] Unprecedented widening of the US wage gap: In the four decades between 1979 and 2019, the real income of people in the bottom-10 percentile of hourly wages has grown by 3%. Those in the middle earned 15% more. Those in the upper fifth have seen a 63% growth. (Source: Time magazine, double-issue of August 2 & 9, 2021)
(2) What ASEE's ECSJ (Equity, Culture, and Social Justice) Division is all about: Blog post by Stephen Secules, who as Chair of ECSJ's Constituent Committee led the efforts to form the new division.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Strongest quake in decades off Alaska's coast: The 8.2 shaker has had magnitude 6.2 & 5.6 aftershocks.
- Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has traveled less than half the way around the sun. [Image]
- The World's 100 Greatest Places: According to Time magazine's double-issue of August 2 & 9, 2021.
- Borowitz report (humor): Biden considers banning vaccine to persuade people to get it.
- Whatever it takes to win! [Video showing the shaking and slapping of an athlete]
- Math puzzle: Compute the sum 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – ... – (2n – 2) + 2n – 1.
- Scenes and narrative from my 7/28 morning walk in Goleta's Hollister-Patterson area. [7-minute video]
- Facebook memory from July 29, 2010: A Persian couplet from Abou-Saeid Abolkheir. [Image]
(4) Stanford conference in celebration of Iranian film director Bahram Beyzaie: Today's English-language panel (featuring Abbas Milani, Negar Mottahedeh, Saeed Talajooy) will be followed by a Persian-language panel (featuring Sahand Abidi, Hamid Amjad, Jaleh Amouzgar, Amir Siadat, Mandana Zandian) on Friday, July 30, 10:00 AM PDT. The panels, devoted to discussing the works of Beyzaie, were preceded by pre-recorded presentations on Stanford Iranian Studies YouTube channel.
The following links to films and lectures are from Stanford Iranian Studies Program e-mail of July 9, 2021.
"Bahram Beizaei: A Journey in Search of Identity" (28-minute video)
"Bahram Beizaei According to Amir Naderi" (Keynote; 22-minute video)
English-language panel:
"Beizaei's Singularity in the Labyrinth of Iranian Modernities" (Abbas Milani; 18-minute video)
"Elemental Beizaei" (Negar Motahhedeh; 24-minute video)
"Bashu, the Little Stranger: ... (A Ritual of Exorcism)" (Saeed Talajooy; 29-minute video)
Persian-language panel:
"The Approach Towards the Tradition and True Function of Criticism ..." (Sahand Abidi; 22-minute video)
"Beyzaie and the Origins of 'Modern Characters' in Iranian Drama" (Hamid Amjad; 26-minute video)
"Mythical Characters from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh in Beyzaie's Works" (Jaleh Amouzegar; 32-minute video)
"Patriarchy & Thanatos: Beyzaie's Works as a Celebration of Life ..." (Amirhossein Siadat; 19-minute video)
"Passing from Forgetfulness" (Mandana Zandian; 18-minute video)
2021/07/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Elahe Sharifpour-Hicks, and a cartoon about her (see the last item below). [Right] US gymnast Simone Biles cracks under extreme pressure (see the next item below).
(2) Pressures of competition: Why do we put athletes, particularly younger ones, through so much pressure? Increasingly, they are cracking under the spotlight. And we have seen that people tend to close their eyes on abuses, sexual or otherwise, in the interest of winning more medals. Competitions and their tolls on athletes are really unnecessary. We are so wrapped up in awards and medals that we fail to see signs of trouble, which, in the case of US gymnast Simone Biles, were quite evident if anyone had been paying attention to her (photo).
In the book x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, which I am reading now, Eugenia Cheng provides an example where short-listers in a particular competition decided to forego the final round and share the prize. Their wish was granted, to everyone's satisfaction. Why does there have to be a single best gymnast? Unlike in trying to fill a single position during the hiring process, there's no shortage here. We create artificial shortages (only one gold medal), because we have been conditioned by our ingressive world (rewarding individualism and single-track thinking), instead of behaving in a congressive way (bringing people/ideas together and thinking about broader communities). I will write a review of this wonderful book in due course.
(3) The puzzle of Elahe Sharifpour-Hicks: I didn't know Ms. Hicks until very recently, when I came across comments by her fans and detractors on social media. I was surprised by passionate debates about her role (devoted human-rights activist or apologist for Iran's Islamic regime), reeking with insults from both sides. Then, I saw Ms. Hick's homophobic rant against another reporter who disagreed with her:
*I have lost the quote; will supply it here when I locate it*
Yesterday, I watched her interview/debate on Iran International TV. The network is Saudi-owned, so it is far from being impartial, but Ms. Hicks apparently requested time on the network, so I assumed she had something important to say, in order to set the record straight. The focus of the interview/debate was Ms. Hicks's claim that armed MKO members, supported and trained by Israel, were among those protesting water shortages in Iran's Khuzestan Province. Here is her tweet:
"Unfortunately many of armed MKO members are among protestors in Kuzestan. The group has been supported, funded and trained by Israel."
Given the seriousness of these charges and their effect on how the Iranian regime might treat the protesters (Iran's state media and several officials have already quoted and used Ms. Hicks's tweet multiple times), I was anxious to hear her answer to the question of whether she had any evidence for this claim. Instead of answering the question, she went into a diatribe about her stellar human-rights record. Upon insistence by the program's host, she finally said that she was warning the protesters about the possibility of opportunists infiltrating their ranks to take advantage of the situation.
I read her tweet above not as a warning about possible infiltration, but a direct accusation that could put the protesters' lives in danger. She could have apologized and admitted an error, but she did not. Even if her tweet was just a warning (which it isn't), asking a group of downtrodden people fighting for their survival not to protest because "enemies" might take advantage of them is not something one would expect from a human-rights activist affiliated with the prestigious Human Rights Watch.
[P.S.: I tried to consult Ms. Hicks's Twitter feed to verify the quotes. I discovered that I am blocked!]
2021/07/27 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This is child abuse, plain & simple: Parents who force a toddler to wail for Imam Hussein should be arrested. [Center top] My academic readers would identify with this cartoon: "We'd now like to open the floor to shorter speeches disguised as questions." [Center bottom] Math & beauty: Structured knight's tour on a 64 × 104 chess board. [Right] ASEE's Annual Conference (see the last two items below).
(2) In-person work hesitancy: You have heard about vaccine hesitancy, but we now face another challenging result of the pandemic: People are not sure whether they want to go back to in-person work. Media reports indicate that some people have quit their jobs for various reasons, including employers not being responsive to their preference for working predominantly from home and for accommodations to bring their furry friends to work. Employers' fears are real. A UCSB e-mail about the process of returning to in-person work in fall 2021 took pains to remind faculty members that we have a commitment for having some minimum level of on-campus presence and availability to students!
(3) Hamid Nouri will be tried in Sweden for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s Iran: Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's president-elect, is another person who took part in the said executions.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Champion of disinformation: This Florida doctor has published 600+ articles that cast doubt on vaccines.
- Borowitz report (humor): GOP to punish Cheney and Kinzinger by forcing them to spend hour with Ted Cruz.
- You won't be storming the beaches at Normandy: You're asked merely to get vaccinated and wear a mask!
- Women in math: Dr. Julia B. Robinson [1919-1985] is best-known for solving Hilbert's 10th problem.
- A challenging problem for math aficionados. [Tweet by Thien An]
- A cubic equation ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + d = 0 with three real roots can be solved using trigonometry. [GIF]
- Glass coffins: Will these new coffins become popular? Remains to be seen!
- Classical guitarist Soren Madsen plays "Stairway to Heaven." [3-minute video]
(5) "Innovative, Engaging Pedagogies for Engineering Ethics Education": This was the title of another session at ASEE Annual Conference, which I attended today. I had no paper presentation in this session, but because the topic overlaps with an area I am studying at present, I decided to attend. The papers in this session were:
- "Let's Play! Gamifying Engineering Ethics Education Through the Development of Competitive and Collaborative Activities"
- "Piloting an Ethics Choose-Your-Own Adventure Activity in Early Engineering Education"
- "Using the Boeing Max Air Disaster as A Role-play Scenario for Teaching Ethical Thinking"
- "Examining Faculty Barriers and Challenges in Adopting Ethical Pedagogies in Online Environments"
I look forward to reading the papers in detail once the conference program has been concluded.
(6) "Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries": This morning, on the second day of ASEE's Annual Conference, I presented my paper comparing opportunities and obstacles faced by women in the US and in Iran, as they pursue STEM majors and careers. Papers 2-5 in my session were (link top session):
- "Featuring Silenced Perspectives in STEM: Supporting Multicultural and Diversity Leadership Through the STEM Foundry Heritage Fellows Program"
- "Seeing the Invisible: The Year This White Woman Spent Learning at an HSI"
- "Equity, Engineering, and Excellence: Pathways to Student Success"
- "Identifying Engineering Students' Beliefs About Seeking Help for Mental Health Concerns"
I learned quite a bit from the presentations above. I was particularly impressed with Dr. Lizabeth Thompson's "Seeing the Invisible," sharing her experiences during a sabbatical-leave from a predominantly-white selective state university (Cal Poly), working at a Hispanic-serving institution with vastly inferior resources (Cal State Los Angeles). She called on everyone to spend their sabbatical leaved at HBU or HSI institutions, where they can be of immense service. [My paper (PDF)] [Recording of my practice presentation]
2021/07/26 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Time magazine cover feature (issue of August 2 & 9, 2021): Family portraits of resilience in a year of violence against Asian-American elders. [Center] Jeremy Campbell's Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life (see the last item below). [Right] A marriage that will never be: This young man and woman were to be married later this year, but the man was killed during peaceful protests for water shortage in Ahawaz, Iran, by a government that sent soldiers, instead of aid.
(2) Elahe Hicks is asked to offer evidence for her claim that armed MKO members were among Khuzestan water protestors: She talks about her background and activities, rather than answer the specific question. It is patently clear that she has no evidence whatsoever. She now claims that she was warning against possible infiltration by extremist groups, rather than make allegations about a particular group.
(3) Iran's President Rouhani: "If it weren't for sanctions and COVID-19, US dollar would be at 5000 tomans." Iranian people: "If it weren't for you mullahs, it would be even cheaper!"
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- First successful transplant of a total artificial heart: A 39-year-old man received the French-made heart.
- Stop throwing your food away: The lie of "best by" dates and the resulting food waste.
- Clever transformation of landmarks into interesting designs, using paper cutouts.
[Pictorial]
- A Persian market was selling sour cherries for $10/lb. As much as I like sour cherries, I decided to wait!
(5) Iran beat Poland in Olympics men's volleyball: Before the match, Polish player Michal Joroslaw Kubiak had characterized Iran's national team as weak and thus not a worthy opponent!
(6) Book review: Campbell, Jeremy, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life, 319 pp., Simon & Schuster, 1982. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
It is clear that a 300-page book cannot cover the history of our universe, from the Big Bang to human evolution, human communication, and artificial intelligence, as Campbell tries to do here. Yet, an understanding of where we stand and where we are headed as a species requires an examination of the entirety of events leading to our emergence ("creation"). Campbell's thesis is that information is at the root of everything, not just the obvious domains of genetics, languages, and brain functions, but also nature as a whole.
The science of information was born during World War II, directly affecting communications and computing, but also stimulating ideas in biology, linguistics, probability theory, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and art, that is, nearly everything! Processes found in nature do have random elements, but they mostly resemble the orderly formation of sentences in a language, yielding boundless structures from a finite collection of "words." So, we don't just have a grammatical man, as the book's title suggests, but also a grammatical universe.
There's a good deal of overlap between this book and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (my review). Campbell's discussion of information theory also overlaps with the biopic A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (my review).
The book is composed of four parts, whose titles and chapters are listed below, plus an afterword entitled "Aristotle and DNA," which elaborates on how Aristotle's view of the world was biological/informational, rather than mechanical, which makes him the sole classical thinker to have seen a glimmer of information theory.
Part 1. Establishing the Theory of Information (6 chapters): The second law and the Yellow Peril; The noise of heat; The demon deposed; A nest of subtleties and traps; Not too dull, not too exciting; The struggle against randomness.
Part 2. Nature as an Information Process (4 chapters): Arrows in all directions; Chemical word and chemical deed; Jumping the complexity barrier; Something rather subtle.
Part 3. Coding Language, Coding Life (5 chapters): Algorithms and evolution; Partly green till the day we die; No need for ancient astronauts; The clear and the noisy messages of language; A mirror of the mind.
Part 4. How the Brain Puts It All Together (6 chapters): The brain as cat on a hot tin roof and other fallacies; The strategies of seeing; The bottom and top of memory; The information of dreams; The left and right of knowing; The second-theorem society.
2021/07/25 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] An epic battle at the Tokyo Olympics: Reminiscent of the battle of Rostam & Sohrab in Shahnameh, Kimia Alizadeh Zonoozi, a member of the team of refugees (state-less athletes) competing in taekwondo, faced her former teammate from Iran, Nahid Kiyani Chandeh, but in subsequent matches barely missed earning the refugee team's first medal. [Top right] Discussion of digital currencey continued (see the last item below). [Bottom left] NASA's dynamically-updated map shows fires raging in the US and Canada. [Bottom center] Last night's gathering of a few 1968 graduates of Tehran U. College of Engineering in Los Angeles. The sumptuous dinner included yummy smoked white-fish, herb-rice, and beef stroganoff. The dessert table shown included Persian ice-cream, a cake, various sweets, and fruit. [Bottom right] Wonders of nature: Painted grasshopper.
(2) Sheeple: Derived by combining "sheep" and "people," this word was added by Merriam-Webster in 2017, but it has been around since 1945. It refers to people who are easily-influenced by manipulators, fads, and other trends. A very useful word, indeed!
(3) Political humor from Iran: The government has ordered those running mourning ceremonies for Imam Hussein to not dwell too much on his being denied water by Yazid. They should make up some other reason for Imam Hussein's woes in Karbala desert!
(4) Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, on our reaction to technology:
- If it existed when you were born, it's normal and a natural part of the world.
- If it was invented between when you're 15 and 35, it's exciting and revolutionary.
- If it emerged after you turned 35, it's pointless and against the natural order of things.
(5) "Digital Currency: History, Technologies, and Social Impact" (special focus on bitcoin and blockchain): In the second gathering of the Class of 1968, Tehran University College of Engineering (Fanni'68) on this topic, beginning at 10:00 AM PDT on 7/24, Drs. Sirous Yasseri (Brunel U.) and Behrooz Parhami (UCSB) continued their presentation, with more detail on blockchain & bitcoin and some discussion of the environmental and ethical issues in bitcoin mining and use (in Persian).
SY began the presentation by talking about how bitcoin came about in 2009 and developed over the last 12 years. Over this period, Bitcoin's value has soared from a small fraction of a cent to ~$35K (at its peak in April 2021, bitcoin was worth $61K). Discussion of bitcoin's history was followed by more detail about the blockchain protocol, function of the main bitcoin network nodes, and the operation and incentives for bitcoin miners. The presentation included interactive demonstration of what happens during bitcoin mining, the workings of digital signatures, and how manipulation of data in already-closed blocks invalidates them.
BP continued by using back-of-the-envelope calculations to derive the computational requirements of bitcoin mining to be on the order ot 10^18 ops (exa-ops) per block. He continued with a review of the types of hardware used in computation-intensive applications (CPU, GPU, TPU, FPGA, custom-VLSI, supercomputer), deriving time and energy-consumption estimates in each case, to provide ballpark figures for energy costs. He ended by discussing environmental impacts of bitcoin mining and ethical implications of fully-distributed control (no one in charge) as well as untraceable financial transactions.
[Part 1 Recording (passcode k@cF2f!w)]
[Part 2 recording (passcode &3bv7bV1)]
[BP's slides]
2021/07/23 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mashregh News Service, quoting Elahe Hicks, claims that armed MKO members were among Khuzestan protesters: Now, Mashregh is a regime-approved news service, with access to government and other sources inside Iran. Why would it use a report from someone residing in the US to make such a claim? And why would it be calling a report coming from one of Iranian regime's apologists in the US a "confession" by the protesters? [Top center] Ahwaz, Abadan, Khuzestan: Air, water, blood (clever calligraphic art by Reza Taghipour). [Top right] When women stopped coding: Elaboration on reasons for the number of women in computer science plummeting since the mid-1980s, as also observed in my paper to be presented on July 27 at the 2021 ASEE Conf. [Bottom left] It's a shame that in Iran, a country sitting on vast reserves of oil and other resources, children must work under inhumane conditions to survive. [Bottom center] New York Times "Two Not Touch" puzzle: Put two stars in each row, each column, and each enclosed region, so that no two stars are adjacent horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. [Bottom right] The college-debt crisis: Large sums of money owed by many graduates hinders their careers and affects their parents' lives too.
(2) #IAmKhuzestani: In solidarity with the people of Khuzestan, who are thirsting for water, and, instead of receiving help from Iran's government, are sent Revolutionary-Guards brigades with orders to shoot.
(3) A new paper by Professor Claudia Yaghoobi: "Over Forty Years of Resisting Compulsory Veiling: Relating Literary Narratives to Text-Based Protests and Cyberactivism," J. Middle East Women's Studies, 2021. [Read]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Statement by 174 activists & scholars, condemning Iran's assassination and kidnapping of dissidents.
- Director Vahid Jalilvand expresses support for Iranians protesting water shortages and economic hardships.
- Amnesty International: At least 8 protesters/bystanders have been killed in Khuzestan's water-protests.
- Word puzzle: Write the name of a country in the blank space to complete a common word. IN TE
- Persian poetry: An Iranian woman recites a poem by an Afghan woman, sharply criticizing religious zealots.
- Persian music: Medley of several popular songs, performed as part of a Nowruz celebration program.
(5) How the magnificent Aral Sea, one of the largest lakes in Asia, nearly dried up when the Soviet Union mismanaged the natural resources of Uzbekistan. [5-minute video]
(6) Khamenei devotees in the US: Iranian agents, who plot to take over the White House and convert it to a Husseinieh (Islamic Center devoted to Imam Hussein), operate in the open and even post videos on social media about their plans. In parallel, many Iranian-Americans act as apologists for Iran's brutal Islamic regime.
(7) Hassan Abbasi, a key ideologue of the Islamic regime in Iran: An ally of Supreme Leader Khamenei and his son Mojtaba, he claims to be a doctor but he does not even have a bachelor's degree.
(8) Final thought for the day (on philosophy and perils of academic research):
- Sisyphus was doomed to push a boulder uphill, only to see it roll back down just before reaching the summit.
- Professor writing about Sisyphus was doomed to discover a major error each time he neared the conclusion.
2021/07/22 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Throwback Thursday: My dad, on the right, striking a pose with three brothers 7.5 decades ago, and Newspaper article from 1963 about a prototype wireless pocket phone. [Top right] Making pizzas with two different kinds of naan flatbread, from Ralphs and TJ's. [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: Gene pool. [Bottom center & right] The 2020 Turing Award Lecture (see the last item below).
(2) Quote of the day: "You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song that only you can hear." ~ Irish poet & playwright Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
(3) "The Shahyad Monument: A Symbol of Iranian Civilization and Culture": The monument, which has come to define Tehran, and, in many ways, Iran, is discussed by its architect, Hossein Amanat. [Sat., Aug. 7, 2021]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump must be very happy that Barrack is finally arrested! (He wouldn't know how 44's name is spelled.)
- A small step toward banning fossil fuels: Santa Barbara City Council bans gas hook-ups in new buildings.
- This mullah advises "human beings" against saying hello to "women." Note his choice of words!
- I hate it when I join a Zoom meeting at 9:03 & see the message "Please wait. The webinar will start at 9:00"!
(5) Tribute to Iranian singer Mohammad Nouri: I posted this video on Facebook nearly three years ago, but have just learned that UMG has released its copyright claim on my post. So, here it is again! [9-minute video]
(6) Real input data has noise, and with noise, worst-case algorithm performance is less likely to arise: This observation in a 20-year-old paper, explaining why some algorithms work better in practice than in theory, has won Shang-Hua Teng (USC) and Daniel A. Spielman (Yale U.) STOC's "Test of Time" Award.
(7) ACM 2020 Turing Lecture: In today's 9:00 AM PDT session moderated by John L. Hennessy (himself a Turing Award honoree), Professors Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman spoke under the title "Abstractions, Their Algorithms, and Their Compilers." The talk was structured around the theme that computer science, viewed as mechanization of abstractions, teaches us computational thinking, a skill that is useful for everyone, not just computer scientists. [Recorded lecture: Link forthcoming]
Ullman began by discussing data-structure and algorithm abstractions, providing examples of such abstractions that have led to major advances in computing. In the second part of his presentation, that followed the first part of Aho's talk, Ullman focused on abstractions pertaining to large data sets, which typically reside on secondary storage. Here, the running time is dominated by the number of disk accesses, not the number of computation steps. Some data structures and algorithms that do not do so well in the standard RAM model, become very efficient in the disk model. Aho also talked about the relational model of data and the role of the map-reduce abstraction in performing data-intensive computations easily and efficiently.
Aho began by discussing the use of abstractions in designing compilers. These abstractions helped transform compiler design from an art to a science, so much so that many parts of the process can be, and have been, automated. The Aho-Ullman series of "dragon books" played a key role in helping this transformation. In the second part of his talk, Aho presented abstractions in the domain of quantum computing, which are fundamentally different from previous abstractions in computer science. Quantum computing is still in its infancy and large-scale machines with the requisite reliability remain to be realized. Such machines won't be stand-alone systems but will likely be used as adjuncts to conventional computers.
2021/07/21 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Visualizing the drought in southwestern US: Hoover Dam's Lake Mead in 1985, 2000, 2010, and 2020, in satellite images. [Top center] One of our neighbors, who had left a door open, encountered this unexpected visitor inside. We live near a wilderness area. In recent weeks, animal traffic in the neighborhood has increased, perhaps because of drought-impacted wildlife going in search of scarce water. [Top right] Actor Clint Eastwood over the years, from James Dean look-alike to Jack Nicholson look-alike! [Bottom left] Talking about women in Persian (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Ancient architecture: The 1500-year-old Ark of Bukhara castle in Uzbekistan. [Bottom right] Why evangelicals love John Wayne and Donald Trump: A book that came out in 2020 with little fanfare has turned into a surprise best-seller.
(2) The loaded Persian word "baanovaan": In Persian, women are referred to by different words such as "zanaan," "baanovaan," and "khaanom-ha." The first one corresponds to the English word "women," while the latter two are often translated as "ladies." My preferred word is "zanaan," in part because "baanovaan," originally deemed a more polite and complimentary term, has been appropriated by the mullahs to subtly dismiss women. In many instances, they make it even worse by using the Arabic word "nesvaan," which carries the Islamic-Sharia connotation of helpless, subservient women. The terms "jonbesh-e zanaan" ("women's movement") and "hoghoogh-e zanaan" ("women's rights") so scare the mullahs that they would rather remove the word "zanaan" from their vocabulary. In English, too, "women's movement" and "women's rights" lose their edge if replaced by "ladies' movement" and "ladies' rights."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Remembering NASA's Space-Shuttle program, 10 years after Atlantis made the final Shuttle landing in FL.
- Oh, what a big surprise! The GOP threatens filibuster on the supposedly-bipartisan infrastructure bill.
- Hard-hit Dutch town left with $0.5 billion flood-damage bill.
- Women's soccer: Sweden stuns US women 3-0 in their Tokyo 2020 Olympics opening match.
- A new era of Olympics activism: Despite threats of punishment, many athletes take knee in Tokyo. [Photo]
- Milwaukee wins its first NBA championship in 50 years by beating Phoenix in Games 3-6 of the finals series.
(4) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Mr. Momin Quddus (MSEE, PE) talked at 6:00 PM PDT under the title "EV Technology and Its Implications on Climate Change," a talk arranged by our sister BuenaVentura Section and co-sponsored by IEEE CCS. At its peak, the session had ~30 participants.
California will phase out gasoline-powered cars by 2035, joining 15 countries that have built a roadmap to boost technical innovation toward a zero-emission transportation and develop regulations to accelerate the transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs). From a sustainable engineering perspective, an electric vehicle will emit less greenhouse gas at the car/truck level but the benefit on climate change involves a large array of additional factors.
In the first part of his talk, Mr. Quddus presented an overview of the EV technology, including types of battery and considerations of charging, range, and efficiency. He reviewed the power trains of the currently-used internal combustion engine (ICE) vs. existing and emerging EV options. Internal combustion engines are complicated and have many moving parts subject to inefficiencies, wear, and tear. The electric power train is much simpler and more efficient (Tesla claims an efficiency of 97%, vs. ICE's ~35%).
In the second part of his talk, Mr. Quddus discussed the future of EVs and their implication in slowing down global warming and climate change. EVs offer only marginal benefits if the electric energy they need is generated from coal and other fossil fuels. However, as we move toward greater use of renewable energy, the benefits of EVs will become more pronounced, constituting a main tool in our fight against climate change. He concluded by touching upon financial markets' interest in EVs.
[IEEE BVS Web site]
[IEEE BVS event page]
[IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2021/07/20 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Sexualization of women athletes: Look at the normal men's wear. Then, take a look at Norwegian women's beach-handball team wearing clothing which brought them threats of fines, for covering too much! Spectators for women's beach sports are predominantly men [Top center] Ted Chiang's Exhalation: Stories (see the last item below). [Top right] Gift coffee-mug: All the nurses I know are wonderful people; be nice to them! [Bottom row] Cartoons of the day: Vaccine hesitancy continues, despite the fact that some 99% of new COVID-19 hospitalizations & deaths involve unvaccinated people; Teacher complaining about someone having moved math books to the horror section; Horses playing humanshoe on the prairie.
(2) Iran has become the Middle East's Mexico: Fleeing the Taliban, large caravans of Afghans travel ~1500 km across Iran to seek asylum in Turkey. Other reports indicate that Turkey has deployed 20,000 soldiers to secure its 500-km border with Iran. [Video]
(3) Hubble Space Telescope's main computer failed after 31 years of flawless service: The orbiting lab has successfully switched to a back-up computer and is now being calibrated to resume normal observations.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Learning from the events of Jan. 6, Gen. Milley blockaded Washington to keep the Nazis out on Jan. 20.
- Iran's security forces fire live ammunition and tear-gas at those complaining about water shortages.
- Anyone discussing vaccines in public or on social media should disclose his/her own vaccination status.
- The Spring 2021 issue of UCSB College of Engineering's Convergence magazine focuses on DEI efforts.
(5) A critique of director Asghar Farhadi's realism: Farhadi is skillful in using cinematic techniques to paint images of individual fruit trees, including those on the verge of death due to lack of water or proper care, without giving us a glimpse of the orchard or the shortcomings of its keepers. [Facebook post, in Persian]
(6) Book review: Chiang, Ted, Exhalation: Stories, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, and Amy Landon, Random House Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Ted Chiang is a sci-fi short-story specialist who hasn't bothered to write a novel (yet). This second collection of short stories from Chiang contains two new and seven re-published tales, with notes on them. From the 1001-nights-style opening story to the existential crisis, resulting from knowing your own fate and that of the universe, pondered in the final story, Chiang impresses with his terse writing, scientific knowledge, and philosophical dexterity.
A list of the nine stories follows.
- "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate": Time-traveling Baghdadi fabric-seller considers his past mistakes.
- "Exhalation": The "great lung of the world," the source of all nourishment, and, thus, life, is gradually failing.
- "What's Expected of Us": Gadget flashing a light a second before you press a button undermines free will.
- "The Lifecycle of Software Objects": Novella-length scientist's log about the development of a robot species.
- "Darcy's Patent Automatic Nanny": Excerpts from a museum-exhibit machine that models ideal parenting.
- "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling": What happens when digital memory is inserted into human lifelog.
- "The Great Silence": Puerto Rican rainforest parrot, whose species is near-extinct, narrates a painful story.
- "Omphalos" (named after the omphalos hypothesis): The dilemma faced by a creationist archaeologist.
- "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom": Alternate universes make us re-examine ideas of choice and free will.
2021/07/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This grainy old photo shows Naser al-Din Shah Qajar on his first European trip, with Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati by his side. (PhotoShopping Ahmad Jannati into all sorts of images is Iran's equivalent to putting Bernie Sanders within various photos in the US.) [Top center] Gifts for writers: T-shirts, with interesting messages. [Top right] Persian poetry: Calligraphic rendering of verses from Mowlavi/Rumi. [Bottom left] American women at the Tokyo Olympics: There are high hopes for the gymnastics team. The "big three" of the women's soccer team (Megan Rapinoe, 36; Carli Lloyd, 39; Alex Morgan, 32) will try to add an Olympic gold medal to their team's World Cup honors, perhaps in what will be their last group appearance in the Olympics. [Bottom center] Lisa Randall's book, Knocking on Heaven's Door (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Do you remember Zoom meetings in the 1970s? Here's an image to refresh your memory!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Statement condemning Islamic Republic of Iran's 3 decades of assassination & kidnapping operations.
- Instead of sending badly-needed water to the city of Ahwaz, Iran's mullahs dispatched military units!
- Seattle leads the US in "brain gain": Adds tech jobs faster than any other big US market over 5 years.
- "History of Women's Movements": A free on-line course, now in its first week. [Info & registration]
- Facebook memory from July 19, 2013: Does the number pi hold all the secrets of our universe? Not really!
- Facebook memory from July 19, 2010: A couple of beautiful Persian couplets from Abou-Saeid Abolkheir.
(3) Book review: Randall, Lisa, Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by Carrington MacDuffie, Tantor Audio, 2011. [My 4-star review of this book on [GoodReads]
Lisa Randall, a most-cited and influential theoretical physicists, is Frank J. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, where she studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology, that is, a wide range from the tiniest to the largest objects in the universe. In this book, Randall provides an overview of new developments in our understanding of the world's makeup, and the fundamental forces that govern its operation, along with an impassioned argument for the importance of science.
A question of interest to both scientists and lay people is how we decide which problems to study, given our limited human and financial resources. Was building the largest machine in history, Europe's Large Hadron Collider, worth the effort and cost? Randall answers this question with an emphatic "yes," while lamenting the US Congress killing the even larger science project, the Superconducting Super Collider, of which only a huge vacant tunnel remains in Texas.
Factors such as risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth play important roles in science, as they do in other human endeavors. In conversations with Chef David Chang, forecaster Nate Silver, and screenwriter Scott Derickson, Randall explores overlaps between science and other domains of inventive and creative work.
I have read/heard other expositions of the matter, antimatter, and dark-matter before, without really developing an understanding of them. While Randall's treatment has been hailed as one of the best, I still have trouble with these notions, and with the arbitrary and inconsistent terminology used to describe them. Let me end my review by quoting from a Facebook post of mine, dated June 15, 2021:
"There's a joke about not trusting atoms, because they make up everything! Physicists are no better in this regard. To me, physics terminology is arbitrary and inconsistent."
"What is dark matter? It's matter we do not see, but which is necessary to balance our gravitational equations! If only 15 lbs of my mass consisted of dark matter, I'd look fabulous!"
"What's antimatter? It's something that interacts with matter, annihilating both participants and releasing energy. I don't understand this, but, in this case, nomenclature isn't the problem."
"We have proton and antiproton; neutron and antineutron. So, one would guess that antimatter counterpart to electron would be antielectron. It isn't: Physicists prefer positron, so named because it has a positive charge. But, then, why isn't electron called negatron? Don't ask me! Is there such a thing as antiphoton? No, photon's antiparticle is the photon itself!"
"Particle names (fermions, quarks, leptons, gluons, bosons, ...) and forces that act on them (weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, ...) aren't any better in terms of understanding what's going on!"
Clearly, I still have a lot of work to do in this domain!
2021/07/18 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Three accounts of Trump's last year in office: I Alone Can Fix It, by Carole Leonnig & Philip Rucker; Landslide, by Michael Wolff; Frankly We Did Win This Election, by Michael C. Bender. Published snippets from the books are extremely tantalizing! I am considering whether I should spend time reading one, two, or three more books on Trump (I have read a dozen or so already). [Bottom row] Clarification: The postage stamp design, featuring Professor Maryam Mirzakhani, which I shared on Wednesday 2021/07/14, is artwork and not a real stamp. It is most-definitely not an official stamp of Iran, given Professor Mirzakhani's uncovered hair in the image! These additional postage-stamp designs and a number of paper-currency designs are from Morteza Azarkheil's Instagram page.
(2) UC Regents have a plan for automatic tuition increases of 0.5-2.0%, plus inflation, for the next 4 years: There is a chance that the state will offer to buy out the proposed increases in an effort to keep tuition stable.
(3) Fiesta (Santa Barbara Old Spanish Days) returns to in-person events: I look forward to music/dance performances, food courts, and other festivities during August 4-8, 2021. [Web site, with schedule]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- General Mark Milley may have prevented a war with Iran during the final days of Trump's presidency.
- Multiple young men, protesting water shortage in southern Iran, are shot to death by security forces.
- Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's maneuvering to install Ebrahim Raisi as President is seen as his downfall.
- Trumpists murder people with impunity: One-fifth of US COVID-19 cases this week were in Florida.
- The European Central Bank starts work on creating a digital version of the euro.
- Religious extremism is in decline: And those holding power are running scared, in the US and in Iran.
- Drawing skills: Wonderful 3D effects, created by pencil/pen drawing.
- Fantastic music: This cartoonish classical-music performance requires lots of hard work and extreme skill!
- Math puzzle: If a + b = 1 and a^2 + b^2 = 2, compute a^4 + b^4. [Solution]
- Bounce-juggling: One of the most-skillful jugglers I have ever seen! [3-minute video]
- Artisans in Tabriz, Iran, weave a carpet celebrating the Tokyo Olympics, with free digital versions as apps.
(5) A slice of the people's history of Iran: Having inexplicably found in a trash can near his house a large number of identity documents, all belonging to young women born in 1942, Najaf Shokri initiated a project to collect the women's faces (stripped of all identifying information) into a photo album. Here is the result.
(6) The grand-challenge problem "P =? NP" turns 50: The celebrated Cook-Levin Theorem introduced the notion of P vs. NP in the third STOC meeting in 1971 and gave rise to rigorous study of complexity theory. In this STOC-2021 special session, Stephen A. Cook and Lenoid A. Levin give fascinating historical back stories to their transformative work, and Richard M. Karp talks about how he proved an initial set of 21 fundamental problems to be NP-complete. Fascinating! [100-minute video]
(7) Kudos to Asghar Farhadi for his film "A Hero" winning Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prize, jointly with Juho Kuosmanen's "Compartment No. 6." Shame on Asghar Farhadi for dodging questions about his relationship with the brutal Iranian regime and collaboration with people tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, claiming that he is not political. These two statements and associated debates are spreading on social media like wildfire!
2021/07/17 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Fitting design: Library bench in Alexandria, Egypt. [Top center] Snacks for a summer afternoon: Vegetables and fruits. [Top right] Political humor: Cheerful French tourists visit the Bastille in 1789. [Bottom left & center] "Currency and Digital Cash: History & New Trends" (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Assessing the #MeToo movement (see the next item below).
(2) Opposing opinions on the #MeToo movement: Arguing in Newsweek on-line, Kat Rosenfeld defends her thesis that #MeToo has gone too far in demonizing men, while Jill Filipovic focuses on the movement's positive effects on women. I endorse the second opinion, as I see nothing wrong with a little bit of demonization for a sex that has continuously demonized women for centuries.
(3) ACM 2020 Turing Lecture: Professors Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman will speak under the title "Abstractions, Their Algorithms, and Their Compilers." Thursday, July 22, 2021, 9:00 AM PDT. [Register]
(4) Leaked Kremlin documents: Putin and top aides agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow's strategic objectives, among them "social turmoil" in the US and a weakening of its negotiating position. Russia's three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump.
(5) Many people of Iranian origins, some prominent Iranian-Americans in particular, have failed to condemn Iran's Islamic regime for its plot to kidnap journalist Masih Alinejad and to take her back to Iran for a show-trial and, likely, execution (as it did to another journalist, Ruhollah Zam). They cite excuses such as being apolitical or disliking some aspect of Ms. Alinejad's activities or politics. To these people I say: Freedom of non-violent speech should be defended, regardless of the speaker's identity. [A related Facebook post, in Persian]
(6) "Currency and Digital Cash: History & New Trends" (special focus on bitcoin and blockchain): Today we held the first of two gatherings of the Class of 1968, Tehran University College of Engineering (Fanni'68), in which Drs. Sirous Yasseri and Behrooz Parhami present an overview and history of money as a social construct, from before ancient gold coins to emerging digital currencies (in Persian). Today's meeting was held in loving memory of our recently-departed classmate and friend, Hamid Khan-Afshar. The second meeting will be on Saturday, July 24, 2021, 10:00 AM PDT (9:30 PM Iran time). [Zoom link]
BP began today's presentation by reviewing the history of money from ~10,000 years ago, when cattle served as money, to today's common coin/paper money and the emerging digital or virtual currencies. He emphasized that money, one of the greatest human inventions that makes the world go around, is a completely made-up thing, now that the Gold Standard is no longer in effect. We trust a materially-worthless paper and assign value to it because we are assured that we can exchange it for goods of our choosing whenever we want. For digital currency, not issued by a government or central bank, that trust must be built in a way different from the authority or word of a trusted source.
SY continued the discussion by defining centralized and distributed ledgers and the implementation of the latter in bitcoin's blockchain protocol. Bitcoin's blockchain contains a record of all past transactions, with participants known as "bitcoin miners" helping maintain the distributed ledger and earning a reward, in the form of bitcoins, when they "win" the race to consolidate and certify a block of new transactions. Transactions carry no names but are recorded with participants' public crypto keys. Once a block has been certified and added to the blockchain, changing it is nearly impossible, because a majority of the 13,000 or so nodes currently part of the bitcoin network must agree to any changes.
Next week, SY will begin by reviewing a history of Bitcoin and why it was created, following up with more detail on blockchain and its applications. BP will cover computational and, thus, energy requirements of bitcoin mining and the types of hardware used, proceeding to environmental impacts of bitcoin mining and ethical implications of untraceable financial transactions.
2021/07/16 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cartoon: The Beatles' "Abby Road" album will be re-released as "Appy Road." [Top center] Meme of the day: Iran's new president has said that he will help facilitate the return of Iranians abroad to their homeland. He wanted to begin with journalist Masih Alinejad, but the US blocked his efforts! [Top right] Cartoon: Kevin McCarthy summoned by Trump over January 6 Commission. [Bottom left] Before and after photos showing flood devastation in Germany. [Bottom center] California drought is getting more serious by the day: Wish we could bring over some of the rain from western Europe, which is killing people there. [Bottom right] Zoom talk by Dr. Farangis Ghaderi on the poetry of Kurdish women (see the last item below).
(2) FBI inconsistencies: The Bureau did a remarkable job in defusing the covert plot by Iran to kidnap exiled journalist Masih Alinejad, yet, by mishandling the Larry Nassar case, it allowed the doctor who operated in plain sight to continue his sexual abuse of dozens more gymnasts.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Over 120 dead in western Europe after record rainfall. [CNN report]
- COVID-19 misinformation is killing people: When are we going to prosecute the culprits?
- We have already paid reparations: Yes, to white enslavers for their "loss of services."
- Angela Merkel is currently visiting the White House for the last time during her chancellorship term.
- Imagine going into a hospital for something else and getting a kidney transplant by mistake!
- U. California mandates COVID-19 vaccination for everyone on campus, unless an exemption is granted.
- Classical music: Kourosh Zolani arranged and plays santour on Isaac Albeniz's "Asturias." [5-minute video]
- My Facebook post from July 16, 2020, which is even more poignant today! [Image]
(4) "The Unsung Poetry of Kurdish Women": This was the title of today's U. Toronto Zoom lecture by Dr. Farangis Ghaderi (Associate Research Fellow in Kurdish Studies, U. Exeter), which had ~50 attendees.
Kurdish literary traditions can be lumped into three groups, based on the dialect of Kurdish used:
- Gorani, 15th-19th centuries, supported by the Persian Empire.
- Kurmanji, 16th-20th centuries, supported by the Ottoman Empire.
- Sorani, 18th century to present, supported by the Ottoman Empire.
Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Kurdish language became a stateless language, with its speakers divided among several existing and newly-formed countries. Iraq became the only country where Kurdish cultural activities were allowed (to some extent).
In studying Kurdish literature, we have a number of challenges related to the political situation in the region. In Turkey, for example, the government destroyed much Kurdish literature and Kurds themselves eradicated some sources, out of fear. Discovery of new sources over the past decade has brought Kurdish literature, particularly the works of women, to life.
Before the 19th century, much of women's literary works were oral. Since then, a number of literary figures have emerged. Some key names follow:
- Mah Seref Xanim Masture Erdalan [1805-1848], wrote mostly in Persian. An example in Gorani was shown.
- Zeynab Xan [1900-1963], focused on Kurdish nationalism & women's rights.
- Friste Koye (Xedice Mustefa Hewezi) [1926-2015].
- Mesxell (Samiye Sakir) [1941-]
Women poets, sometimes writing under pseudonyms, were routinely dismissed by the male-dominated literary scene. Since the 1990s, with the establishment of the Avesta publishing house in Turkey, Kurdish women's voices have been amplified.
My question: I gather from your presentation, that Kurdish women poets' influence has been more limited compared with, say, Iranian female poets. Even in Iran, we see that literary figures, calling themselves "intellectuals," dismiss women's contributions by claiming that Persian literature "is masculine," pointing to Sa'adi, Hafez, Mowlavi, ignoring the fact that there is no female Sa'adi, Hafez, or Mowlavi, precisely because they were not allowed to flourish by being part of the literary scene, benefiting from resources and mingling with other literati. Do you think there is any hope of getting out of this chicken-and-egg cycle?
Following are a few screenshots of the speaker's slides, with images of people and poems.
[Screenshots 1 & 2]
[Screenshots 3 & 4]
[Screenshots 5 & 6]
[Screenshots 7 & 8]
2021/07/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meme of the day: If you are buying smart water for $5 a bottle, it's not working! [Top center] Cover images and story in the latest issue of Time magazine: "It's O.K. to Not Be O.K." [Top right] Journalist Masih Alinejad, whose planned abduction by Iranian agents has made big news (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Jeffrey Epstein's address books contain 100s of names: The previous 2004 "little black book" has been augmented with a recently-discovered 1997 version. [Bottom center] Persian poetry: Verses from Ferdowsi that have assumed the status of a proverb. [Bottom right] UCSB GRIT talk by Dr. B. S. Manjunath on computer vision and deep learning (see the last item below).
(2) How a skinny female reporter makes hundreds of fat-cats shake with fear: Khamenei and Saudi Arabia's MBS both hate exposure of their crimes so much that they imprison and execute dissenters, going as far as kidnapping opposition reporters in other countries. More power to Masih Alinejad, a brave woman who fights the Iranian regime and its agents/apologists in the West!
[News update: Interesting new details about Masih Alinejad's planned abduction case have emerged. Four other people, three in Canada and one in the UK, were also targeted by the same group of four Iranian agents, which hired private detectives to follow the five victims. A California-based woman has also been charged for her role in financing the group's operations.]
(3) Iran wages sophisticated cyber attack: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hackers posed as UK-based academic, after taking over a real school Web site, communicating with American and British targets.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Taliban seize control of two border crossings between Afghanistan and Iran. [IranWire story]
- World-record data transmission speed: Japan achieves 319 Tb/s over 3001 km, with 4-core optical fiber.
- The pop-culture film "Legally Blonde," that empowered girls & shaped Reese Witherspoon's career, turns 20.
- "From Rabia to Simin: Women in Farsi Poetry": On-line event, in Persian, Mon. 2021/07/26, 7:00 PM PDT.
(5) "Computer Vision and Deep Learning: Facts and Myths": This was the title of yesterday's UCSB GRIT talk by Dr. B. S. Manjunath, Distinguished Professor and Chair of UCSB's ECE Department.
Images are everywhere and we benefit from and enjoy watching them. However, once we have seen an image, it is very difficult to find it again, because images and videos are either not annotated or poorly annotated. Dr. Manjunath began by outlining a number of applications, spanning earth, ocean-bed, and atmospheric features (such as methane gas emission). He then moved to brain imaging and lung X-rays (important for COVID-19 diagnosis and assessment) as examples of medical applications that have advanced greatly in recent years.
Application of deep-learning methods have increased analysis and prediction accuracies over human-based processing, which is limited and not scalable. The down side of using AI for classification is the vulnerability of deep-learning algorithms to adversarial manipulation, so that the image of an aircraft carrier, for example, may be classified as a dog. This is done by manipulating image features (based on inside information about how the algorithm works) in a way that the changes are not perceivable to humans but that they lead the AI algorithm to a judgement error.
2021/07/14 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Postage stamp design, by graphic designer Morteza Azarkheil, honoring Iranian-American Fields-Medal-winning mathematician, Professor Maryam Mirzakhani, 1977-2017, who passed away 4 years ago, today. [Top center] Miss Iran 1967 finalists on the cover of a magazine, more than a decade before the Islamic Revolution. [Top right] Another "Hello Fresh" meal, prepared by my daughter. [Bottom left] Cartoon: The king had a heated argument with the moat contractor. [Bottom center] Cartoon: At the Oxymoron Museum. [Bottom right] Cartoon: Librarian trying to make herself more-relevant to library patrons.
(2) Tourism in Iran: A couple of days ago, I watched a video post advocating the expansion of tourism in Iran, citing the example of UAE, which earns more money from Tourism than Iran does from oil. I commented that tourism in Iran is a theoretical discussion that does not match the realities of Islamic Iran. Very few tourists travel for their love of history and geography. Suppose an ordinary tourist visits Iran's historic sites and explores its natural beauty during the day. What would s/he do at night in terms of entertainment and cultural pursuits? If s/he visits one of Iran's beautiful seashores and craves a swim, what then? [Persian postt]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump's pro-terror words on Fox News are put on a video of actual January 6, 2021, events.
- Cal State U. campuses will supply incoming students with iPads in an effort to close the digital divide.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Neighbors see Trump waiting by mailbox for reinstatement notice.
- The account of Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) frozen by YouTube after posting Trump video.
- Huge spill in LA's largest sewage treatment plant closes miles of beaches in Southern California.
- Former President Barack Obama continues the tradition of sharing his summer reading list.
- Walking a dog in public is against the law in Iran: A man doing so is roughed up by Tehran's security forces.
- Mimicking nature: Modeling of a lightneing srike as finding the shortest path in a random maze.
- Creating beautiful art by drawing symmetric patterns.
- Persian music: A wonderful performance of the oldie song "Simin Bari." [3-minute video]
- Facebook memories from July 13 of years past: World Cup 2014, and me on a UCSB Beach in 2011.
(4) Misogyny among Iranian intellectuals: "I don't believe in women's intellect and have no hope for them. Women writers destroy the mind. ... Their bodies are more memorable than their reputes. ... Persian prose has always been masculine." ~ Yadollah Royaee, Iranian poet, in a 1993 interview
[I was unable to find this interview on-line, but commenters on this tweet seem to accept the quote as true.]
(5) "Islam is the religion of peace and compassion": Not this version of it, that sentences a woman to 40 lashes in a field "trial" because she talked to a man on the phone. Two Taliban men administer the punishment on the spot as the woman wails, while other men look on and film the savagery.
(6) Iranian kidnappers in the US: Four Iranians are charged with plotting to kidnap, and take back to Iran, exiled journalist Masih Alinejad, who has been critical of the Iranian regime's misogyny & human-rights abuses.
(7) Math paradox: The zeta function is defined as ζ(s) = Σ 1/(n^s). The divergent harmonic series is ζ(1). Given that 1/sqrt(1) + 1/sqrt(2) + 1/sqrt(3) + ... > 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + ... , why is ζ(1/2) = –1.46...?
(8) Math puzzle: We drill a hole of unknown radius through the center of a sphere of unknown radius. The length of the created cylindrical hole is 6 cm. What is the volume remaining of the sphere? [Image]
2021/07/13 (Tuesday): Clearing my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews today.
(1) Book review: Scruton, Roger, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged audiobook, read by Chris MacDonnell, Tantor Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I have read a dozen or so titles in Oxford's delightful "Very Short Introduction" series of books and have learned a great deal from them. True to form, this one did not disappoint. Its subject matter is more slippery than most, as evidenced by the existence of many philosophical treatises on the topic, beginning with Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). [Full text]
A key challenge is reconciling complementary or even contradictory notions of beauty. Beauty sometimes means fitting in nicely. It could also mean standing out. For certain objects, beauty is related to functionality. In art, the notion of function does not exist. In mathematics, a beautiful proof may have one or more of the properties of succinctness, delight, surprise, insight, and generalizability to other domains. When we judge the beauty of a potential mate, our assessment, programmed into us by evolution, is based on reproductive fitness.
Of course, a single book, let alone a very short introduction, cannot be expected to contain all there is to say about beauty. Scruton provides an excellent summary for those with a casual interest in the topic and a good starting point for those who want to dig deeper.
(2) Book review: Moss, Michael, Hooked—Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit our Addictions, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Scott Brick, Random House Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I learned about this wonderful book via a UCLA Semel Institute webinar, held on June 24, 2021, in which Moss, a former NYT investigative reporter, carried on a conversation with David Heber, MD, Director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition.
Webinar link (60-minute video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7-NY1g8ulk
Even though the food industry isn't quite in the same category of evilness as the tobacco industry that actively worked to take advantage of, and strengthen, the addictive feature of their products, they are still doing our society a disservice by exploiting our attraction to sugary foods to maximize their profits, thereby causing and intensifying the obesity epidemic.
The situation, which was alarming before the COVID-19 pandemic, has gotten much worse over the past year. Sales of junk food have skyrocketed, as we moved toward buying, and keeping handy, comfort foods. Some 2/3 of food items in a supermarket is estimated to contain added sugar, thus serving as trigger foods for over-eating. Unlike many other ingredients, there is no recommended daily allowance for sugar on food packages. Food labels are better than having nothing, but the food industry makes them so complicated and misleading (there are 60+ names for sugar) that they have lost much of their usefulness.
Alongside eating junk food, often rapidly and in isolation, we have lost the art of mindful eating: Cooking and eating food at home, with family and friends. Our preference for speed and convenience has allowed the food industry to bombard us with food that needs little or no prep time and that we can eat with one hand (such as while driving or working).
The trend toward sugary fast-foods began in early 20th century, but it accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s. To reverse these trends, we need to go back to our natural rhythm dictated by our biological clocks: Eat at normal times, snack less, get enough sleep, and generally lead a balanced life.
(3) Book review: Guelzo, Allen C., Reconstruction: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Bob Souer, Tantor Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the second book in Oxford's delightful "Very Short Introduction" series that I have perused in recent weeks (the other one was on beauty). Based on the experience of reading a dozen or so titles, I consider the series as providing excellent summaries for those with a casual interest in learning a new topic and a good starting point for those who want to dig deeper.
In the US, "Reconstruction" refers to a series of programs aimed at reuniting the nation politically, after the Civil War. This book covers aspects of the program spanning the period 1865-1877 in seven chapters, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue. The chapters are entitled "Vengeance" (1865), "Alienation" (1865-1867), "Arrogance" (1967-1968), "Resistance" (1868-1869), "Distraction" (1869-1872), "Law" (1866-1876), and "Dissention" (1872-1877).
Unfortunately, Reconstruction achieved just a few of its lofty goals, among them two amendments to the US Constitution (14th, citizenship and equal protection for former slaves; 15th, voting rights for African-Americans), the election of the first African-American to the US Congress, and avoidance of a new civil-war outbreak. What Reconstruction couldn't accomplish came to pass nearly a century later during the 1950s-1960s Civil Rights Movement.
2021/07/12 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Statue of Parvin E'tesami, in her house in Tabriz, Iran. [Top center] Talk on money, bitcoin, and blockchain (see Item 2 below). [Top right] "Liberated Woman" statue in Baku, Aerbaijan (see Item 3 below). [Bottom left] Facebook AI goofs again: My harmless comment on a friend's post about electricity shortages in Iran was deemed to go "against community standards" and removed, with the notification of removal sent to me more than a day later! [Bottom center] Math surprise: Did you know that 0^0 is greater than 0^1? [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: Summer reading selections for your pets.
(2) "Digital Currency: History, Technologies & Social Impact": In the next two gatherings of the Class of 1968, Tehran University College of Engineering (Fanni'68), Drs. Sirous Yasseri and Behrooz Parhami will present an overview and history of money as a social construct, from before ancient gold coins to emerging digital currencies (in Persian). Saturdays, July 17 & 24, 2021, 10:00 AM PDT (9:30 PM Iran time). [Zoom link]
(3) Iranian literary treasures are appreciated and honored in other countries: The latest example is Tahereh Qurrat al-Ayn, the poet, scholar, and women's-rights advocate who was executed in Iran in 1852, because her belief in Babism was deemed heretical. This beautiful statue of Tahereh by Fuad Abdurahmanov is entitled "Liberated Woman." It is on display at a metro station in Baku, Azerbaijan.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hyperinflation has caused an economic crisis in Lebanon: More than 75% of people can't afford food.
- Bashar Assad's war crimes documented: A disturbing 13-minute report by CBS News' "60 Minutes."
- How the ruling "fundamentalists" in Iran ignore corruption of the insiders. [5-minute video, in Persian]
- Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's maneuvering to install Ebrahim Raisi as President is seen as his downfall.
- Religious extremism is in decline: And those holding power are running scared, in the US and in Iran.
- Quote: "Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." ~ P. J. O'Rourke
- The music man, playing spaghetti-Western movie themes and Elvis. [3-minute video]
- Persian poetry recitation by Ms. Baran Nikrah: Unrealized dreams. [1-minute video]
- Persian music: A friend of hospitalized late film director Abbas Kiarostami plays music and sings for him.
(5) Iran's and North Korea's identical playbooks: When economic conditions become intolerable, as is currently the case in both countries, government officials are blamed and purged to protect the top guy.
(6) World's oldest work of art (believed to be by Neanderthals): The carved toe bone of a prehistoric deer, estimated to be 51,000 years old, was unearthed in a cave in the Harz Mountains of central Germany.
(7) The ugly side of Euro 2020: The three England players who missed PKs, leading to Italy prevailing 3-2 in the shootout at the end of the 1-1 tie match, were all black. The ensuing racist abuse of these players has been condemned by England's Football Association. And here are British soccer fans attacking Italian fans.
(8) This 60-minute film traces the history of Iran's reform movement: From its birth in 1980 under the oxymoronic slogan "religious democracy" to its recent demise resulting from losing all positions of power. Manoto TV is hardly an objective source, but, as far as I can tell, the film's descriptions of events are accurate.
(9) Final thought for the day: The mullahs threaten, jail, and kill their political opponents inside Iran, or force them into exile, where they are subjected to smearing and other forms of abuse by their external agents.
2021/07/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Calle Real Center in Goleta, California, consists of a half-mile stretch of retail stores and restaurants. The two hotels at the east end of the stretch have beautiful, drought-tolerant landscaping. [Top right] My daughter made two vegetarian "Hello Fresh" meals on Friday: I helped with chopping and mincing (two more photos). [Bottom row] Talk on the Persian revival (see the last item below).
(2) Persian music: "Delaviz-tarin" ("The Most Delightful"); music by Mohammad Sarir, poem by Fereidoon Moshiri, vocals by Mohammad Reza Sadeghi. [10-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mitch McConnell plays dumb: Says he's perplexed by COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy!
- Major blast in northern Tehran's Mellat Park: Cause and casualties are unknown at this time.
- Facebook memory from July 9, 2018: Family trip to Cambria, California. [Photos]
- Facebook memory from July 10, 2015: Tabrizi carpet pattern made of stones in Tabriz, Iran.
- Facebook memory from July 11, 2011: US women team's goalie, Hope Solo, saves a penalty kick. [Photos]
- Facebook memory from July 11, 2017: Looking back in time, in a single photo.
(4) Facebook memory from July 11, 2019: Let's not sugar-coat the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein. A 14-year-old girl isn't an "underage woman" or "woman on the younger side." She is a child. You can't have sex with a child. The proper expression is "raping a child."
(5) International soccer (Copa America): In the title match, Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 on a minute-22 goal by Di Maria resulting from Brazil's defensive mistake. [9-minute highlights]
(6) International soccer (Euro 2020; Italy over England on PKs): Fully one year later than originally scheduled, England and Italy met at London's Wembley Stadium. England took an early lead on a minute-2 goal by Luke Shaw. Italy had chances, but it could not penetrate England's packed defense before halftime. Italy kept knocking, until Leonardo Bonucci evened up the score during a skirmish in front of England's goal in minute 67. Italy continued to exert pressure with superb ball control, but England recovered and generated opportunities of its own, keeping the score at 1-1 after 90 minutes. England was dominant in the second 15-minute period of extra time, but the match ended 1-1. Going into penalty-kicks, the Italian goalie's superb record of goal-keeping seemed to favor Italy. This is exactly what happened. Italy won 3-2 due to a miss by England and 2 saves by its goalie. [screenshots] [10-minute video highlights]
(7) "The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture": This was the title of Saturday's Farhang Foundation book talk, featuring Dr. Talinn Grigor, Art History Professor and Program Chair at UC Davis. The book by the same title was released this week by Penn State University Press.
By showing a large collection of ancient and modern images, Dr. Grigor outlined how European imperialism and colonialist attitudes toward Iran created a backlash in the form of a revival of ancient forms and patterns in architecture. Some examples are depicted in edited/cropped screenshots above. This revival was also noticeable among the Parsis in India, who traveled to Iran to sketch historic sites for their buildings.
Dr. Grigor's book can be purchased through Farhang Foundation's Web site at 30% discount. I will post a link to the recorded version of this wonderful talk when it becomes available.
2021/07/09 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] I had never heard of this monument: The 9/11 Teardrop Memorial in New Jersey is 100 feet tall. [Top center] Per-capita electricity consumption in the world (2020): The US is near the top of the range, at 10-15 MWh. Iran is above average, at 4-8 MWh. On this interactive map, you can see consumption trends from 1985 to 2020 and more detail about each country. [Top right] "The Last Supper": Painted with realistic skin tones and hair for the Middle-Easterners it depicts. [Bottom left & center] ASEE's new ECSJ Division (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: Bravery of dogs on leash.
(2) ASEE's ECSJ Division will be up and running soon: The Equity, Culture, and Social Justice Division of American Society for Engineering Education is on the verge of being formed, with its officers elected in late July, during ASEE's Annual Conference. I was part this group as a member of Bylaws Committee, which worked tirelessly over the past several months to craft the Division's operating document. The Bylaws Committee is particularly proud of ECSJ's Statement on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusiveness (images above).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Four million have died from the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. The 1918 Spanish Flu killed 7.7 million.
- Teaching Excellence Hub: The new IEEE Web site offers resources that help with university-level teaching.
- Iranian officials brazenly deny that women are roughed up on the streets for their "disapproved" clothing.
- Math puzzle: The gold rose ratio is g = (1 + sqrt(13))/2. Show that (g^9 – 651)/(g^3 – 3) is an integer.
- A classic 1998 World-Cup qualification soccer match: Iran v. Australia in Melbourne. [20-minute video]
- Guitar music: "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits, performed by 40 Fingers Guitar Quartet. [5-minute video]
- Smoothies for me and the kids: Bananas, pineapple, nectarines, hemp seeds, and almond milk. [Photo]
(4) Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei is the new head of Iran's judiciary: It seems like every torturer, butcher, and executioner will eventually become Iran's Chief Justice!
(5) Nobel Laureate has a few regrets, but they are not too few to mention: Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work done decades earlier would have liked to become a stand-up comic.
(6) New FL law offers buy-one-get-one-free tuition for STEM majors: It states that "undergraduate students who are enrolled in one of eight programs selected by the Board of Governors and have completed 60 credit hours within two years will receive a tuition and fee waiver for every upper-division course they enroll in."
(7) The hostage-taking mullahs: The 52 diplomats taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran were released in January 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th US president. In the 40 years between that moment and the swearing-in of Joe Biden as the 46th US president, many foreign nationals have been imprisoned in Iran under fabricated charges of spying and acting against Iran's national security. The mullahs have developed the sophistication not to call them hostages any more, but they are hostages indeed, often swapped with Iranians imprisoned in the West or used as pawns in political negotiations.
(8) Final thought for the day: "The most-effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." ~ George Orwell
2021/07/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Who will replace Trump on social media as the new MAGA leader? Newsweek magazine has some predictions. [Top center] Math functions in the animal kingdom! [Top right] Book talk by Kai Bird (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Wonders of nature: Spiral and fractal patterns inside a purple cabbage. [Bottom center] Harvesting dates in southern Iran. [Bottom right] Roses from my four rose bushes.
(2) RIP: Dr. Ali-Mohammad Ranjbar, Sharif University of Technology's old-time & popular Professor of Electrical Engineering, former SUT President, and Iran's former Deputy-Minister of Energy, passes away in Tehran.
(3) Iran apologizes to Palestinians (humor): The billboard digital clock in Tehran that counts down the time remaining to the destruction of Israel has stopped due to a rotating power outage. We are sorry for the disruption delaying the destruction of the Zionist regime.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- An unholy alliance: "Iran's Revolutionary Guards have our backs on the border." ~ Taliban commander
- As US forces leave, armed Afghan women take to the streets in show of defiance against the Taliban.
- Ivanka Trump may be indicted next: She benefited from the same arrangements as CFO Allen Weisselberg.
- Iran is moving towards being ruled by a homogenous group of sanctioned individuals. [IranWire story]
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2014: Soccer anyone? [See more]
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2011: The beautiful poetry of Tahereh Ghor'ratol-eyn. [See more]
(5) "President Carter's Handling of the Iranian Revolution and Hostage Crisis": This was the title of today's book talk by Kai Bird (Director, Leon Levy Center for Biography, City University of New York), under the aegis of Stanford's Iranian Studies Program.
The hostage crisis was a turning point for both Iran and the US. Iran became increasingly isolated, and is still paying for its actions today, while the rise of Ronald Reagan, in part facilitated by his "toughness" being viewed as the reason for the hostages' release right after he was sworn in as President, may have put the US on its current path toward chaos and political dysfunction.
There is a general view, particularly among Iranians in diaspora, that Carter's handling of Iran and the Islamic Revolution was a failure. But things were indeed very complicated at the time and no easy solution was imminent. Up to a few weeks before Khomeini's return to Iran, Zbigniew Brzezinski was pushing for a coup (option C) to reinstate the Shah to power. He was delusional and acting based on bad intelligence. Ambassador Sullivan was blunt in dismissing this option.
No one in the Carter administration truly understood the Khomeini phenomenon or knew his vision for Iran. The thought was that after Khomeini came to power, nationalists would rule the country. After decades of iron-fisted rule by the Shah, the Iranian society at the time was running on gossip and conspiracy theories, so there was little the Shah could do to reassure Iranians that he would pay more attention to freedoms and human rights.
Regarding the treatment of the Shah himself, there were several players in the Carter administration who constantly argued that the US should grant asylum to the Shah, if only to send a message to US allies around the world. But Carter didn't buy the argument, in part because he worried that Iranians might react harshly, perhaps even take hostages. The hostage crisis could have been avoided by shutting down the Tehran Embassy, if the US had been more realistic and had better intelligence.
2021/07/06 (Tuesday): For today, I offer two timely memes and a book review.
Book review: Goldstein, Jacob, Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Hachette Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The discussion of money and its underpinnings is a lot deeper than most people realize. Goldstein reviews the history of this made-up thing that makes the world go around, from its earliest forms in human pre-history up to and including cryptocurrencies that are poised to dominate the 21st century.
In the beginning, humans bartered, exchanging a chicken for some wheat, say. The trouble with bartering is that the needs of the two parties engaged in it must coincide in time and space. Money is a collection of agreed-upon valuable tokens that everyone recognizes and honors. These tokens can be viewed as storing value for later use. Returning to the example above, I can exchange my chicken for tokens, which I can then use at a different time and place to acquire wheat.
A fundamental requirement for money to work is trust: Assurance that the gold/silver coins of yore were actually worth the advertised amount or that the physically worthless paper or digital money of today will actually buy you something when needed. Early on, this trust came from guarantees provided by a king or emperor. At times during the course of human history, people were forced to accept money under death threats. But, nowadays, trust is voluntarily offered in return for convenience.
Let me begin with the gold-coin example. Silver or any other valuable commodity, such as salt, works as well. A trusted authority (king, government, bank, ...) mints gold coins of a certain weight to represent a value. Such a coin isn't just a store of value that allows trade, but it also forms a unit of measurement for value. Item X has a value of m coins and item Y is valued at n coins. Among problems encountered during the use of gold coins was crooks shaving a miniscule, undetectable amount from a large number of coins and selling the resulting gold dust to make illicit gains. Another problem was that the worth of gold being different around the world led to people taking gold coins from England, say, and melting them for the gold somewhere else.
The convenience of paper money (voucher) as an economic tool was recognized by the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan in the 1200s. The paper money was a promissory note for a certain amount of gold. The holder of paper money was guaranteed that s/he could exchange it for the promised amount of gold when desired. Because gold is valuable everywhere, the notes form a kind of international currency. From early on, the possibility of abuse was recognized. Whenever the issuer of paper money experiences a resource shortage (such as equipment needed to conduct a war), it can print money, and there is no way to check.
The possibility of printing more money for the currency issuer's gain led to the establishment of "the Gold Standard," which allowed different countries to trust each other when exchanging paper money. If the United States, e.g., keeps enough gold on hand to be able to exchange every issued dollar with the equivalent amount of gold, then dollar becomes a trusted currency. To print more dollars, the US must acquire more gold. If the British government promises 4 times as much gold for its pound, then each British pound would be worth 4 US dollars.
The direct link between paper money and gold, or other valuable commodities, was soon broken. One reason was that the Gold Standard required more gold than existed in the entire world, if economies were to continue to expand. Another reason was that it was viewed as needlessly restrictive. The temptation to print more money to get out of tight economic spots is a key reason for international conflict. The euro, Europe's common currency, was intended to remove unhealthy competition, but, as evident from the events of the early 2010s, it created Europe's debt crisis and associated perilous problems.
Now, if paper money works, given trust in it, the trust can be created in many different ways. A well-known and financially healthy corporation, for example, can print its own money, and this is exactly what corporate bonds are. Bond buyers assume some risk, but they are more than rewarded by an appropriate compensation, known as interest.
One source of financial instability in the world is the mixing of the two functions of banks as stores of values and as lenders. You deposit your money with the bank and receive interest in return. The interest rate is normally positive, but it can be negative as well, if the service of keeping your money in a safe place is of sufficient value to you. Trouble arises when the bank turns around and lends your deposited money to earn some interest of its own. So, your money is no longer physically in the bank. If many customers simultaneously demand their deposits back, the bank may not be able to honor all the requests. When a bank fails, depositors rush to get their funds, which is known as a "bank run." Governments insure deposits to prevent a small number of failing banks to produce economic melt-down through bank runs everywhere.
In continuing my discussion with digital currency, I am skipping a lot of other details, such as mutual funds and asset-backed securities. In late 20th century, use of paper money was gradually replaced by electronic transactions through debit cards, credit cards, electronic fund transfers, and the like. So, you could own $100,000 without ever touching paper money. Of course, there was one group of individuals who still preferred paper money, particularly $100 bills: Criminals! This is why there are more $100 bills in circulation than there are $1 bills!
Digital currency does away with paper money altogether. The money you own is represented by digital codes stored on computers. As long as you trust the operators of the computers, you can sleep comfortably, knowing that your money is safe. But what if you can't trust anyone? This dilemma was solved by the inventor of Bitcoin and is being used by other so-called "cryptocurrencies." A record of who owns what is maintained collectively on a large number of computers, so that one or a small number of corrupt computer operators cannot affect your ownership claims. In fact, as long as a majority of the operators can be trusted, your money will be safe. If there are a million computers, say, then at least half-a-million machine operators must collude in order to disrupt the system, a near impossibility.
The mechanism used for storing the common record of values and transactions securely is known as "blockchain": A distributed ledger that is nearly impossible to manipulate by adversaries. This impossibility claim is, of course, based on our current knowledge and capabilities in the domain of cryptography. There is a chance that we are being too optimistic, given that stranger things have happened in the digital world!
I highly recommend this well-written and clearly-presented book. As in many other domains, today's world citizens cannot be passive users of money, digital or otherwise, without knowing at least a little bit about what's under the hood.
2021/07/05 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IEEE Spectrum magazine's cover for July 2021 (see the next item below). [Top center] Just to set the record straight! [Top right] Cover image for the book The Inequality Machine (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Traditional breakfast, Iranian style. [Bottom center] The Pyramids of Giza. [Bottom right] Iran's amazing architecture: Haj Shahbaz-Khan Mosque, in the western city of Kermanshah.
(2) IEEE Spectrum magazine's cover story for July 2021: It wasn't long ago that we got excited about the arrival of billion-transistor memory chips. Later, processor chips also crossed the billion-transistor barrier, mostly thanks to huge amounts of on-chip cache memory. Now, we have crossed the trillion-transistor barrier. Cerebras's wafer-size chip, containing 850K cores & 40 GB of on-chip memory, boasts 2.6 trillion transistors.
(3) Book review: Tough, Paul, The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us, unabridged 13-hour audiobook, read by the author, HMH Adult Audio, 2019. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
As is the case for many books of nonfiction about a social problem, there is too much repetition and too many examples. Each example, about how a young man or woman from an economically-disadvantaged group or with a troubled family background ultimately excelled because of mentoring and other interventions, is valuable and inspiring. But presenting too many such examples dilutes, and distracts the reader from, the book's main message, which I would summarize thus:
College education is supposed to be an equality and social-mobility machine, allowing first-generation students and other disadvantaged groups to move up socioeconomically. Elite private colleges and state institutions offer grants and loans to such students so that they can attend. However, admission does not equal success. High drop-out rates betray the achievement of this noble goal and leads to widening rather than narrowing of the economic gap. Period.
In many parts of the book, results from extensive studies are reported that clearly show the ill effects of how our system of higher education is structured and how it operates. The "admissions industrial complex" serves the interest of colleges, not students. Many colleges now have "admissions managers," whose goal is to steer the admissions process to meet the dual goals of increasing revenues (admit more rich kids who pay the full tuition) and improving prestige (earning higher rankings, which, among other things, requires admitting a diverse group of students). Along with admissions management, colleges resort to financial-aid optimization, often through the services of external quants. It turns out that offering small financial-aid packages to rich students has a major effect on their accepting the admission offer. So, rather than aid packages being awarded based on need or merit, they are used as tools to maximize the college's own well-being.
Standardized tests, which supposedly create opportunities for students stuck in low-quality educational systems of poor neighborhoods to get admission into elite colleges, actually do the opposite. Study after study has shown that standardized test results do not correlate well with academic performance. This is why colleges increasingly go the test-optional way.
Paul Tough does an excellent job in exposing the flaws in our college admissions and educational systems. Reading this book is a must for everyone who cares about the future of higher education in our country. University faculty, administrators, and even students will immensely benefit from this book.
2021/07/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy birthday, America (see the next item below). [Top center] Cartoon of the day: "Nothing is as it seems, my son." [Top right] The world has an average of 422 trees per person: Canada has by far the most. Other sources I consulted put Russia on par with Greenland. [Bottom left] Book introduction: Professor Laetitia Nanquette of Australia's UNSW, who is French and speaks Persian fluently, has published Iranian Literature after the Islamic Revolution: Production and Circulation in Iran and the World. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: What it the ratio w/v? [Bottom right] On Saturday, I had a wonderful lunch with the kids at Shalhoob's Funk Zone Patio, near Santa Barbara's waterfront. We set out to go to Lucky Penny, where Mezcal Martini was playing Latin-flavored jazz live, but the wait was too long, so we changed our plans.
(2) Happy 4th of July! On this day, we Americans celebrate the freedoms that our founders struggled to secure and other generations since then sacrificed to maintain. We do not celebrate our flag, but the ideals that are behind it. We do not celebrate our military might, except as it is used to safeguard our freedoms and help others protect theirs. There is a reason that Lady Liberty is holding a torch and not a gun! These photos, from July-4th postings of years past, convey the message that celebrating America requires celebrating immigrants.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Eleven members of the armed militia group "Rise of the Moors" arrested after armed stand-off near Boston.
- The grand finale of New York City's July 4th fireworks spectacular. [3-minute video]
- Tropical storm Elsa is headed to Florida (Tuesday) and South Carolina (Wednesday). [Map]
- One of my favorite songs: "Africa" by Toto, performed by 40 Fingers Guitar Quartet.
- A library in Iran has an exterior wall covered with bookcases, filled with realistic-looking wooden books.
- Facebook memory from July 4, 2010: My Persian poem advocating unity & equality.
(4) If you are looking for a turning point in US history that led to the current chaos and political dysfunction, look no further than the unfinished presidency of Jimmy Carter and the rise of Ronald Reagan: "President Carter's Handling of the Iranian Revolution and Hostage Crisis," book talk by Kai Bird (Director @Leon Levy Center for Biography, City University of New York), Thursday, July 8, 2021, 10:00 AM PDT. [Registration]
(5) How the mish-mash of 15 electrical plug-and-socket standards came about: IEEE Spectrum (July 2021) contains an interesting review of electrical history and the attendant plug-and-socket standards. [Image]
(6) Math puzzle (repost): A 100-seat passenger plane is fully booked, with the 100 passengers standing in line to board it. The first passenger loses his boarding pass, so he takes a random seat. Each subsequent passenger either sits in the assigned seat or (if the assigned seat is already occupied) takes a random seat from among those available. What is the probability that the last passenger will sit in his/her assigned seat?
(7) Bill Cosby's Trump-like behavior: Instead of showing humility and contrition after being released from prison on a technicality, he emerges swinging on this 4th of July, attacking Howard University over Phylicia Rashad reprimand and blaming "mainstream media" for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
2021/07/03 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Highest-resolution atomic image ever captured: This is a sample of praseodymium orthoscandate (PrScO3) crystal, captured at a magnification factor of 100 million by Cornell University researchers. [Top center] Weather forecast in Santa Barbara and Ventura areas, as we enter the July-4th (BBQ) weekend. [Top right] Topological materials: Discovery of topological insulators led to the award of the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics. Now, researchers are using topological materials in building ultralow-energy transistors, cancer-scanning lasers, and free-space communication beyond 5G. The figure shows tantalum, a topological material that generates tremendous current, shown as small arrows, upon illumination (source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of July 2021). [Bottom row] My departed friend Hamid Khan-Afshar, in 5-decades-old photos (see the next item below).
(2) Zoom meeting of the 1968 graduates of Tehran University's College of Engineering (Fanni'68) honoring our departed friend, Hamid Khan-Afshar [1945-2021; 1324-1400, in Persian calendar]:
Some 45 people attended and ~20 friends and family members spoke about Hamid's many virtues: Honesty; Kindness; Charity; Friendship; Steadfastness; Knowledge. Many of those who spoke also related personal memories and experiences with Hamid, bringing tears to our eyes and smiles to our lips. RIP!
[Five-minute video celebrating Hamid's life] [Recorded Zoom event; Passcode NHq9Pt^r]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Powerful landslide in Japan crushes buildings and carries the debris: At least 2 dead, 19 missing.
- JPL's backup plans: If needed, the Curiosity Mars Rover can rip its own threads off to stay mobile.
- Patriots skip fireworks in the middle of a severe draught, with a heat wave to boot.
- Four ways to secure blockchains: Three of them don't require the energy budget of Argentina! [Table]
- Recycling tip: Keeping cans uncrushed makes it easier for equipment that sort material by size/composition.
(4) A new data breach affecting University of California: Following the Accellion data breach of Dec. 2020, regarding which UC was extremely slow in informing those affected, another (unnamed) UC contractor was discovered to have stored personal information on UC employees, after the end of its contract period. UC Office of President reports this to us as if it bears no responsibility, given that the breaches were through outside contractors. However, UC is ultimately responsible for any harm to its employees and students as a result of its data storage and handling policies. The buck stops with UC administration!
(5) Tehran and Women: A conversation on Instagram, in Persian, between Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi (researcher, sociologist, and urban geography specialist) and Guiti Etemad (urban planner, university professor, and consulting engineer), Sunday, July 4, 2021, 7:00 PM Iran time (7:30 AM PDT).
2021/07/02 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This 15-minute video contains my practice run for a forthcoming talk at ASEE's Annual Conference (Session T359B, focused on "Special Topics: Conscious Considerations," held on Tuesday, July 27, beginning with my talk at 11:30 AM PDT). The talk and the paper are entitled "Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries." [Top center] Santa Barbara Republicans follow the GOP playbook: And they get the same result; no voter fraud! [Top right] Infinity coffee table: Brilliant design, by Logan Wilson. Not quite sure how it bears weight. [Bottom row] Cartoons for the digital age.
(2) History of Evangelicalism: A very informative 23-minute presentation by Phil Vischer. Evangelicalism began by honoring the Bible, while ditching the anti-modernism and anti-science attitudes of fundamentalism. It lost its way when politics and racism were mixed in.
(3) A new supercomputer enters the scene: The June 2021 edition of Top500 list of world's most-powerful supercomputers contains The Perlmutter, installed at US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Lab, debuting at #5, with a performance of ~65 petaflops. The Perlmutter also ranked #6 on the Green500 list of energy-efficient supercomputers, offering a computing power of more than 25 gigaflops/watt.
(4) "Deep Learning for AI": Article in the July 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM by the 2018 Turing Award honorees Yoshua Benigo, Yann Lecun, and Geoffrey Hinton, based on their Turing Lecture.
(5) "The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture": Farhang Foundation free event, featuring Dr. Talinn Grigor, Saturday, July 10, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT.
[Register]
(6) Conference in celebration of Iranian director Bahram Beyzaie: An English panel on Thursday, July 29, 2021, 10:00-11:30 AM PDT (Abbas Milani, Negar Mottahedeh, Saeed Talajooy) and a Persian panel on Friday, July 30 (Sahand Abidi, Hamid Amjad, Jalalaeh Amouzgar, Amir Siadat, Mandana Zandian) will be devoted to discussing the works of Beyzaie. Both panels with be from 10:00 to 11:30 AM PDT. The panels will be preceded by pre-recorded presentations on YouTube.
(7) "UCSB Reads 2022": Here is our short-list of five books (in alphabetical order). I'd be delighted to hear your opinions on the five titles. The selection committee will be voting on the top choice on August 23.
(8) Welcome to the city of pits: Tehran is the city of luxury residential towers, lining narrow streets in the affluent northern suburbs. However, there are also many pits, dug by greedy developers, who then ran out of money or encountered other problems. [Blog post in Persian]
(9) Logical puzzle: Consider a string formed from the letters A, B, and C. The string is called j-complete if it contains no repetitions of length-j substrings but that extending the string by any letter would lead to the repetition of a length-j substring. For example, the string AABBCCBACA is 2-complete, because it has no repeated length-2 substrings, but adding any letter to the end of the string would produce a repetition (if you add A, the substring AA will be repeated; adding B causes a repetition of AB; extending the string with C leads to the repetition of AC). Can you find a shorter 2-complete string formed from the letters A, B, and C?
2021/07/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: Photos I took during my 7/01 walk on State Street, in downtown Santa Barbara: Sculptures greeting shoppers at La Arcada Plaza, miscellaneous sights and signs, and a Montecito Bank & Trust branch, which reminded me of majestic bank buildings in the 1960s Tehran, near the city center.
(2) A setback for the #MeToo movement: Pennsylvania's Supreme Court rules that the prosecutor who charged Bill Cosby was bound by a predecessor's promise not to charge him, ordering his immediate release from prison. The ruling says nothing about Cosby's guilt or innocence, although Cosby was quick to claim vindication in a post-release interview.
(3) Phylicia Rashad, recently appointed as a dean at Howard University, reportedly celebrated Bill Cosby's release from prison: Now, a number of students and alumni want her gone.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump Organization and its CFO indicted on tax fraud charges by New York grand jury.
- First it was Jewish space-lasers starting wildfires. Now, it is blaming the Jews for the pandemic.
- Mike Pence aide exploded after she read his June 2020 WSJ op-ed praising Trump's COVID-19 response.
- House Minority Leader McCarthy threatens GOP members who agree to serve on the 1/06 Commission.
(5) The UNC Chapel Hills hiring case that made national headlines: Award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir ("UCSB Reads" selection for 2021) was denied a tenured appointment as Professor of Journalism. After a wave of objections to the questionable decision at the national level, the UNC Board of Trustees took up her appointment case and approved hiring her with tenure.
(6) "Disease, Society, and the Economy: The Long View": This was the title of UCSB GRIT talk of 6/30 by Dr. Javier A. Birchenall (Economics Department). The current pandemic teaches us five lessons from an economic history perspective. It is noteworthy that COVID-19 is not the first pandemic, or the first disease with profound economic effects.
Lesson 1: Good health is economically valuable.
Lesson 2: We expect a social and not just an individual response to disease. Disease gives rise to "social barriers" that reduce social and economic interaction.
Lesson 3: "Social barriers" take many forms, including caste stratification, legal quarantines, urban zoning, silent trade & peripheral markets, and high-altitude settlements.
Lesson 4: Social distance has long-term economic and social costs.
Lesson 5: Under uncertainty (e.g., asymptomatic transmission), society regulates disease using a "better safe than sorry" approach.
Details and mathematical models for the lessons above are found in Professor Birchenall's papers:
"A Theory of Disease and Development: Productivity, Exchange, and Social Segregation"
"Plague and Prejudice: Disease Beliefs and Social Exclusion"
2021/06/29 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Pictorial Pictorial Facebook memories from June 29 of years past: Fake magazine cover, my son's culinary creation, and a memorable trip to Taiwan. [Center] Heat wave: Temps in US NW and western Canada rise to 116 F. [Right] More on the Florida condo-tower collapse (see the last item below).
(2) The closest thing to a Persian restaurant in my area: Luna Grill advertises itself as offering Mediterranean, but does have chicken & koobideh kabobs on its menu. Tonight, I took out a family meal for four. I snapped the food photo after some of the food had been consumed, so the portion was indeed large enough for 4 people.
(3) Fake title: Iran's new President Ebrahim Raisi is addressed by the religious title "Ayatollah," but his path from junior cleric to "mojtahed" (independent religious thinker) is unclear, given that he has held government positions for decades, spending only brief time periods at religious schools and seminaries.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Pacific Northwest heat wave linked to dozens of deaths and a sharp rise in emergency-room visits.
- Iran's former Intelligence Minister: Israeli infiltration is so deep that all officials should fear for their lives.
- Facebook takes down fake-news pages sponsored by Iran, a major source of organized disinformation.
- Amid sanctions and general economic misery, Iran is experiencing a millionaire boom.
- Math problem: Prove that there exist irrational numbers x and y so that x^y is rational.
- Imaginative photography: Mixing nearby and distant objects to create the illusion of different scales.
- Dramatic archaeological discoveries in Egypt unearth burial grounds untouched since antiquity.
(5) Reactions to my post from yesterday: I had complained about the slow rescue pace at the Florida condo-tower collapse site. In 5.5 days, 11 bodies have been recovered, that is, 2 bodies per day. I had advocated more risk-taking, so as to save a few lives, even if that would mean losing a few lives in the process. The alternative would be to lose all 140 persons who are unaccounted for.
Dozens of comments on my tweet raised some interesting issues. One set of comments suggested that even though 11 bodies have been positively identified, numerous body parts were found, which are awaiting identification (via DNA or other methods).
Others suggested that through the use of sonar and scanning methods, rescue teams know everyone to be dead. However, because family members of the mostly-Jewish building occupants are adamant that bodies be recovered intact to allow proper Jewish burials, faster recovery is infeasible. In my humble opinion, rescue workers should be driven by their professional responsibility to save lives, rather than by religious preferences of the community.
Hoping for a quick closure to this tragedy and rigorous study of its causes, which could threaten other area structures, particularly if the assertion that sinking ground is responsible for the collapse proves correct.
2021/06/28 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Nightmare scenario: Trump's future cabinet members (see the next item below). [Center] A quick way to add pizzaz to leftovers: I had some adas-polo (lentil-rice) from my mom. I sliced one potato and fried the slices at the bottom of the pot before adding the rice, thus getting a yummy tag-dig. [Right] A few cartoons to bring a smile to your face, as you start a new week and its battles.
(2) Nightmare scenario: Scarier that the thought of Donald Trump being re-elected in 2024 is imagining who will run the country, as he tweets and peddles conspiracy theories. All his semi-qualified lackeys have put distance between themselves and 45 (Mike Pence, Bill Barr, the generals, even Jared & Ivanka). Imagine Mike Flynn as Secretary of Defense, Steve Bannon as Secretary of State, Steve Miller at Homeland Security, Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General, the Pillow Guy at Treasury, and Roger Stone as Chief of Staff!
(3) When a building turns into a pile of rubble and 150+ are missing, stating that the death toll stands at 9 is very dishonest: Reporters & officials are morally obligated to provide a realistic assessment of casualties, even if they have to guess. Looking at photos and videos of the site, my estimate is that at least 100 are dead.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- To those suffering an extreme heat wave in northwestern United States: Please stay safe. And hydrated!
- The US conducts airstrikes on Iran-backed militias near Iraq-Syria border in response to drone attacks.
- Highway 101 car rollover causes hours-long traffic delays on the Santa-Barbara-to-Ventura artery.
- Discovery of "Dragon Man" in China may push out Neanderthals as closest relatives of modern humans.
- Computer scientist Alan Turing appears on new 50-pounds bank notes in the UK.
- Persian music: Wonderful voice and a beautiful, though quite sad, song. [3-minute video]
- New scientific result: If E = mC^2 (Einstein) and A^2 + B^2 = C^2 (Pythagoras), then E = m(A^2 + B^2).
- GPS voice to life-raft occupant: "In 1500 miles, float left, and your destination will be on your right."
- Sunday's brunch with the kids at a Mexican restaurant with patio dining in Goleta's Magnolia Center.
(5) Photos from Sunday afternoon: Walking about a nearly-dry Devereux Slough, where magnificent birds that used to wade in shallow waters walk on a dry bed, and where people have to stay at least 6 feet apart from other people, but less than 6 feet away from their dogs!
(6) Oh, the irony: Child of privilege Tucker Carlson calls Gen. Mark Milley, who has served stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a number of other deployments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, "a pig" and "stupid."
(7) Mike Pence & Bill Barr have political ambitions that they know will be ill-served by supporting Trump's lies: So, please take their mild jabs at Trump with a grain of salt. Mike Pence says he is proud of what he and Trump accomplished over four years, with January 6 being the sole point of disagreement between them. Pence was just as dismissive of the seriousness of the pandemic and as anti-science as Trump. Bill Barr says Trump's election-fraud claims are "all bullsh*t," but he did launch inquiries into these and other matters to appease his boss. Previously, Barr had helped Trump escape Mueller Report's damning conclusions with minimal damage.
(8) Final thought for the day: As an engineer, I have a problem with the super-slow pace of rescue efforts in the South Florida condo-tower collapse. It is often repeated, and taken for granted, that the slow pace is necessary to avoid disturbing the rubble and thus causing a collapse of possible air pockets holding survivors. When there are 140 people missing and only 11 bodies have been recovered, this argument does not hold water, especially nearly a week after the collapse, when chances of having survivors is rapidly diminishing. One has to take risks in this context to increase the likelihood of saving some lives, even if there is also some chance of losing a few lives as a result. The alternative is losing all 140 people who are unaccounted for.
2021/06/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cover image of Simon Baron-Cohen's Pattern Seekers (see the last item below). [Center] Food for thought: Use of passive constructs such as "violence against women" hides the perpetrators, as if violence happens to women out of the blue; no one's doing it! [Right] Historic photo: UCLA in 1929.
(2) Graduation speech delivered to empty seats: A former NRA President was duped into believing that he was at a rehearsal for a graduation speech he was invited to deliver. But each of the 3000+ empty seats represented a school mass-shooting victim who will never graduate!
(3) Supreme Leader Khamenei is vaccinated: The official story says that he is getting the Iranian Barekat vaccine, but no one believes him. A pharmaceutical company run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards is selling the domestically-produced vaccine for 200,000 tomans a pop, and the Godfather needs to boost sales.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Many Former associates, including Ivanka & Jared, are distancing themselves from Donald Trump.
- Chess grandmaster Anna Muzychuk would rather lose two world titles than play in Saudi Arabia.
- How culture alienates us from nature, other people, work, and ourselves. [Video] [w/ Persian subtitles]
- First cartoon of the day: How to win a presidential election. [Image]
- Second cartoon of the day: How to win a presidential election. [Image]
- The Seekers, much older and wiser, perform the hit song "I'll Never Find Another You"
[1964 version]
(5) Iran's Supreme Leader got his vaccine in private from two attending physicians: Here's how ordinary old people are treated when they go to get their allotted vaccines. [Tweet, with video clip]
(6) Farzaneh Fasihi is the 2nd Iranian Olympian woman to ever compete in 100-meter dash: Her predecessor, Simin Safamehr, competed in 1964. This is a positive development, but look at her restrictive clothing!
(7) Book review: Baron-Cohen, Simon, The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Jonathan Cowley, Tantor Audio, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
It's difficult to take the brother of the comic-actor who plays "Borat" seriously, but Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University is a serious, indeed distinguished, psychologist. In this book, Baron-Cohen argues that autism has played a key role in human progress for many millennia, because the same genes that cause autism enable pattern-seeking that is a crucial element of invention and innovation.
Around 85,000 years ago, hominids developed the brain power to use if-and-then logic, which vastly increased their inventiveness. For example, agriculture took root when our ancestors noticed that if a seed falls in moist soil, and the sun shines on it, then the seed will sprout. Once something like basic agriculture was invented, a refinement mechanism took over and allowed even greater successes. For example, adding "and I water it when there is no rain" led to better results, as did "and I remove weeds."
On the positive side, this book instills in us greater appreciation for our autistic fellow human-beings and impresses the point that it is indeed in our self-interest to provide greater opportunities for them to contribute. On the negative side, there are too many examples and repetitions. Baron-Cohen jokes that his editor forced him to elaborate when he said that the book's main message can be summarized in three words: If-and-then! Still, there is a lot of space between 3 words and 60,000 words, which is my estimated word-count for a 6-hour audiobook!
I also have some apprehensions about the book's framework. Giving if-and-then logic prominence isn't technically defensible. What about if-or-then logic, as in: If it does not rain for a long time or strong winds blow, then there is a high danger of wildfires. In fact, various combinations of "and" & "or" may be used, a la propositional-logic. Using "and" limits us to a set of conditions that must all be present for something to happen. Using "or" allows us to specify possible substitution of one condition for another one. Certainly, observing that either of two conditions will cause something to happen isn't less important than recognizing that the conjunction of two conditions is required for some result.
Simon Baron-Cohen has book talk on YouTube.
2021/06/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Roundtable on the status of human/women's rights in Iran (see the last item below). [Center] The wars over teaching US history: It all boils down to whether we want to show our kids a sanitized version of America's past, emphasizing heroes who won our independence and abolished slavery, or talk also about those who owned and abused slaves, resisted the efforts to free them, and fed race-based phobias to curtail equal rights in practice, after they were forced to accept equality as the law of the land. [Right] Fanni classmates Zoom conversation (see the next item below).
(2) Fanni classmates meeting: Dr. Babak Amir Khosravi, Fanni graduate and former member of the Toudeh (communist) Party, talked with Mohammad Amini about his political memoir ("Zendeguinameh-ye Siasi," Nashr-e Baran, 2020), as part of the gatherings of Tehran U. College of Engineering's Class of 1968 (Fanni '68).
The focus of this second installment of the conversation was on the role played by the Toudeh Party in the overthrow of the popular Mossadeq government in the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that reinstated the Shah to power, and similar activities in the events leading to and immediately after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. As a puppet of the former Soviet Union, the Toudeh Party was viewed by most Iranians as traitorous and anti-democracy. In his book, Amir Khosravi criticizes Toudeh Party's and his own actions over the years, purporting to be a changed man. However, in today's conversation, he seemed defensive, rather than reflective or repentant. I had to leave the meeting at 11:00, before it ended.
(3) Voices of Women for Change observes International Day Against Torture: Today's roundtable on the Violations of Women's Rights in Iran, and on the Status of Imprisoned Women Activists, featured Narges Mohammadi, Dr. Mansour Farhang, Tara Sepehri Far, and Alice Dahle. The meeting was conducted in Persian and English, with running translations provided by the moderator, Ms. Taraneh Roosta of Voices of Women for Change. The meeting has been recorded. I will post a link to the recording when it is available.
By my rough count, ~2/3 of the 53 attendees were women (incomplete and ambiguous names make it impossible to say for sure). I hope that men start getting more involved in issues affecting women, which are inseparable from human/civil rights.
https://www.voicesofwomenforchange.org
- Narges Mohammadi, a prominent human/women's rights activist in Iran, began by giving a report on her own status and the statuses of other women political prisoners. She was released from her 23-year prison term early, but was sentenced again on new charges; she did not show up in court, which she considered illegitimate. Women political detainees are systematically subjected to various forms of violence in Iranian prisons, intended to humiliate them and break their resistance. The Islamic regime considers itself more vulnerable to women activists and thus has chosen to treat them more harshly than men. In Ms. Mohammadi's view, the best way to achieve our goals in the arena of human rights is to strengthen our civic structures with support from local and international organizations.
- Dr. Mansour Farhang (Bennington College) affirmed Ms. Mohammadi's assertion that the regime feels threatened by women activists. Their treatment of women is rooted in backward traditions and superstitions of the Arabian Peninsula from some 1400 years ago. Modern women's independence and freedom is at odds with their value system. Iranian women's movement is unprecedented in the history of the Islamic world, thus presenting Iran's Islamic rulers with difficult challenges. Interestingly, the notion of gender equality did not form a part of the demands for democracy and political freedoms before the Islamic Revolution. The current women's movement in Iran serves as inspiration and model for women's movements throughout the world. Even though the Iranian regime seems to have no shame, it does spend a lot of effort and money on publicity in the West to distort the truth and mislead the world on the nature of its human-rights violations. We should all contact our representatives and news outlets with specific information about rights violations. Many progressives in the US are fully aware of the Iranian regime's violations of human rights, but because they are against intervention and a possible war, they shy away from criticizing or acting in other ways.
- Tara Sepehri Far of Human Rights Watch was asked to address solution methods for current challenges, which we all know too well. She praised Narges Mohammadi for her courage of speaking out, even as she is facing prosecution in Iran. The Iranian regime seems to have developed some sort of immunity to criticism. Individual action against such a regime will have very limited impact. We need to organize efforts at the international level, within social and academic groups, in an effort to break down the regime's immunity. Setting up and supporting grass-root groups focused on civic and democratic processes in Iran should be given high proiority. While starting with small steps is useful, we should not lose sight of the complexity of the process of building an opposition infrastructure, without endangering the safety of the participants. Not everyone can be as brave and selfless as Narges Mohammadi. We should focus on one corner of the problem and do what we can to help, rather then feel powerless by the immensity of what the world faces in terms of misery and social injustice.
- Alice Dahle of Amnesty International outlined some of the organization's international efforts in support of human-rights activists, including a major campaign to provide needed medications for Ms. Mohammadi while she was in prison. Women's rights issues in Iran should be treated as human-rights rather then political problems. Unfortunately, US politicians view everything from a political lens, so it is difficult to move them into action, despite the fact that Amnesty International does have a presence in the US Congress. It is also hard to convince the American public that we should care about human rights in Iran or Afghanistan, say, because they are mostly concerned with sociopolitical problems at the local level.
2021/06/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] On food industry's deception & profiteering (see the last item below). [Right] Success rates for Santa Barbara School District's graduates in meeting UC/CSU eligibility requirements: Low-income, Black, and Hispanic success rates are comparable, indicating economic, not academic, challenges.
(2) Partial collapse of a condo tower near Miami: One person is confirmed dead and 99 are still missing. A high death toll is expected. Let's see if the developer faces any criminal charges.
[Update: Surveillance video shows the collapse of a 12-story condo building in Florida: The collapse occurred around 1:30 AM, when people were asleep, so most of the 99 missing persons are likely dead.]
(3) Moving to become a Third-World country: As if the collapse of high-rise condo building in Florida wasn't enough, we have news that life expectancy in the US dropped by 1.8 years, between 2018 to 2020. The drop for African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans was 3.3 and 3.9 years, respectively.
(4) Our military is in good hands: I remember being impressed by Gen. James Mattis's memoir, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead (My 4-star review), in which he opines that any leader, or any person for that matter, must learn from books: "If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate." When Gen. Mark Milley was chosen by Trump to lead the US military, I was skeptical. But his eloquent defense, during a Congressional testimony, of why military personnel must be exposed to different ideas reflecting the diversity of the nation they serve, I was awestruck! I need no further evidence that Milley is an honorable man than Tucker Carlson calling him "a pig" and "stupid"!
(5) "Hooked—Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit our Addictions": This was the title of a book interview, featuring former NYT investigative reporter Michael Moss, in conversation with David Heber, MD, Director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, as part of UCLA Semel Institute webinar series.
Even though the food industry isn't quite in the same category of evilness as the tobacco industry that actively worked to take advantage of, and extend, the addictive feature of their products, they are still doing our society a disservice by exploiting our attraction to sugary foods to maximize their profits, thereby causing and intensifying the obesity epidemic.
The situation, which was alarming before the pandemic, has gotten much worse over the past year. Sale of junk food has skyrocketed, as we moved toward buying, and keeping handy, comfort foods. Some 2/3 of food items in a supermarket is estimated to contain added sugar, thus serving as trigger foods for over-eating. Unlike many other ingredients, there is no recommended daily allowance for sugar on food packages. Food labels are better than having nothing, but the food industry makes them so complicated and deceiving (there are 60+ names for sugar) that they have lost much of their usefulness.
Alongside eating junk food, often rapidly and in isolation, we have lost the art of mindful eating: Cooking and eating food at home, with family and friends. Our preference for speed and convenience has allowed the food industry to bombard us with food that needs little or no prep time and that we can eat with one hand (such as while driving or working).
Even though the trend toward sugary fast-foods began in early 20th century, the trend accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s. To reverse these trends, we need to go back to our natural rhythm dictated by our biological clocks: Eat at normal times, snack less, get enough sleep, and generally lead a balanced life. [60-minute recording]
2021/06/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Geographic visualization: Iran is as big as 15 European countries combined. [Top center] On the healing effects of a long walk: I was writing a research paper at home on Wednesday 6/23 afternoon, when I noticed I wasn't making good progress. A walk to, and relaxation at, my favorite beach spot fixed the problem. It was quite windy near the beach, but very pleasant nonetheless. [Top right] Cover image of Maureen Dowd's The Year of Voting Dangerously (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: A previously unknown type of dinosaur, the Thesaurus! [Bottom center] J. R. R. Tolkien's "polite" letter to a potential German publisher of his work, after he was asked racist questions. [Bottom right] Message on a T-shirt used for marketing by American Association for the Advancement of Science: In-Cl-U-Si-O-N Is Elemental.
(2) The Republicans are working hard to return to power, which is natural for a sidelined party. However, they seem to want power for the sake of power. They are not offering any policy specifications, international or domestic, and no legislation that they intend to pass. This is unacceptable!
(3) Ebrahim Raisi's communication problem: Iran's new president is already the butt of jokes about the way he speaks in incomplete, nonsensical sentences and how he butchers the Persian language. His formal education is only to grade 6, having studied at the school for clerics in Qom after that. [18-minute video, in Persian]
(4) Where are Ivanka and Jared? Why aren't they on the scene to support Donald in his post-presidency political quest? During the past four years, they were both senior advisors to 45, which means they influenced his decisions. Jared, in particular, had a broad portfolio that ranged from economic initiatives and pandemic management to Middle East peace and other international responsibilities typically given to cabinet members. Hope they are not allowed to wash their hands off in the wake of a disastrous presidency and the damage it did to our political institutions, as if they had no role in it!
(5) Book review: Dowd, Maureen, The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by Elisabeth Rodgers, Hachette Audio, 2016.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The 2016 US presidential election was unique in that it featured two candidates with the highest recorded unfavorability ratings. Most voters ended up voting against Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, as opposed to voting for their choice. Hillary Clinton was perceived as not being transparent and as flip-flopping on issues out of expediency, although her problems with dodging sensitive issues paled in comparison with her opponent's overt dishonesty.
This book is assembled from New York Times columns of Maureen Dowd [1952-], each one preceded by its original publication date. The columns are well-written and absorbing, but they contain a great deal of redundancy, when read together. The writing style is incisive and wryly humorous, while packing much info.
The 2016 election and its candidates have been analyzed to death in numerous books. I have read more than my share of such books. Yet, Dowd brings a number of fresh viewpoints and scoops to the topic. Dowd's long history in Washington and her vast network of connections show in direct quotes of politicians about their friends and foes. She is equally tough on Trump and Clinton, citing the former's media manipulation for his victory and blaming the latter's sense of entitlement and cold demeanor for her loss. Dowd intersperses her critiques of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with barbs about other recent presidents, from Nixon to Bill Clinton and the Bushes.
Regarding Hillary Clinton, Dowd quotes an unnamed White House aide as saying, "Hillary, though a Methodist, thinks of herself like an Episcopal bishop who deserves to live at the level of her wealthy parishioners, in return for devoting her life to God and good works." Dowd also points out a number of her contradictions, such as running as a feminist while slinging mud at women who accused her husband of sexual misconduct and abuse of power. Other Clinton trouble spots are her shadiness and lack of judgement, as in using a private e-mail server to shield her e-mails from public scrutiny.
Dowd also dishes out much dirt on Donald Trump, despite the fact that she has known him for a long time, with their phone friendship going as far back as Trump's first-time toying with the idea of presidency in 1999, when Bush ran against Gore. Even a long-time friend finds it difficult to explain Trump's outrageous comments, his doubling-down on untenable positions, pretending that he did not really mean what he said, and admitting in the final stage that he indeed meant every word! Even a Republican cannot overlook Trump's thin skin, narcissism, misogyny, and nativist tendencies.
Dowd confirms previous accounts that the 2016 presidential campaign lacked substance, with discussions degenerating into looks and body parts, instead of focusing on economic and foreign policies; offensive nicknames in lieu of honoring other candidates' service. This is a most-informative and fun book, despite the fact that I do not consider her dissing both 2016 candidates, and all former presidents, "fair" treatment. For example, beating up on the Obama administration for its "fault" of preferring to be right than to win with the same intensity as the despicable behavior of Trump and his cronies is grossly unfair.
2021/06/23 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Simple math puzzle: What is the side length of the outer square, if e, f, g, and h are known to be integers? [Center] Facebook memories from June 23 of years past: Including the Taiwanese putting children and nature (instead of dead or living politicians) on one of their bills and an amazing tree on the NCKU campus. [Right] Cover image of Orhan Pamuk's A Strangeness in My Mind (see the last item below).
(2) Persian political humor: Presidential elections in Iran are likened to finding a husband for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's daughter every four years. He doesn't really want to marry his precious daughter off.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The first capitol rioter to be sentenced gets a slap on the wrist (probation): Her lawyers are celebrating.
- Three dozen news Web sites linked to Iran's disinformation effort taken down by the US.
- Four-day work week may boost productivity: But why not mandate vacation time instead?
- Fun fact: There are exactly 10! seconds in 6 weeks.
- I am writing my oughtobiography: It's a book about all the things I need to do before I die.
- Many examples of interesting 3D sidewalk art.
- She was asking for it (comedy): What happens if we interpret what people wear as what they're asking for!
(4) Book review: Pamuk, Orhan (translated by Ekin Oklap), A Strangeness in My Mind: A Novel, unabridged 22-hour audiobook, read by John Lee, Random House Audio, 2015.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, by a Nobel Laureate and best-selling author, is the life story of its protagonist, Mavlut Karatas, over more than four decades, beginning in 1969, told from different perspectives. To me, the story and its events sounded familiar, as if the coming-of-age of an Iranian village boy is being told: Same aspirations, same limitations, same heartbreaks.
Following in his father's footsteps as a young boy, Mavlut sells boza, a traditional, mildly alcoholic Turkish drink, and yogurt on the streets of Istanbul, while living on the desolate hills just outside the fast-developing megapolis. Boza is perhaps a metaphor for old traditions that are on their way out. Like other protagonists in Pamuk's books, Mevlut is caught between Turkish traditions and modern culture, befitting Pamuk's Nobel Prize in Literature citation, honoring a writer "Who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."
At one point, Mevlut, who is viewed as a simpleton with a heart of gold by people around him, spends three years writing love-letters, with passages copied from a how-to book, to a girl he had seen only once. He ends up eloping with the girl's less-attractive sister by mistake, but grows to love and cherish his wife. As he stumbles toward middle age, working at a series of dead-end jobs, he carries a strangeness in his mind that makes him feel different from everyone else.
I had always wanted to peruse a book by Orhan Pamuk to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I was greatly impressed with the rich character development and the many historical and cultural asides!
2021/06/22 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Remembering my departed friend, Hamid Khan-Afshar: Photos from our college days, 50th graduation anniversary celebration, my visits to his family in Palo Alto, CA, and his family's visits to Santa Barbara, CA. [Bottom left] Capturing the descent of a small plane, as it approaches the Santa Barbara Airport. [Bottom center] Quote of the day: "We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin." ~ Andre Berthiaume [Bottom right] Earth, without its oceans and atmposphere. Here is a video showing the Earth's oceans drained.
(2) Creative ways to encourage vaccinations until full vaccine approval: Rhodes College plans to charge $1500 Health & Safety Fee for unvaccinated students to cover the costs of mandatory COVID-19 testing.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Democracy on the brink: "Meet the Press" provides a timeline of Trump's efforts to overturn the election.
- Our thin-skinned former president wanted his Department of Justice to stop 'SNL' from making fun of him!
- The normal pattern of brutal post-election suppression of protests returns in Iran.
- How evolution made us thirsty: Humans are more dependent on water than most other mammals.
(4) Visibility isn't always a good thing for women in science: Being forced to parent a young child while on Zoom makes one particular UCSF professor feel exposed. Women scientiests' concerns about being judged on how they are seen, instead of what they have achieved, is not conducive to professional advancement.
(5) On-line art gallery: Dutch sculptor Anton Bakker, whose exhibition at NY's National Museum of Mathematics got cancelled, "installed" his mathematically-inspired works virtually at various famous world sites.
(6) Ebrahim Raisi: The pliant president of Iran, who will help anoint the son of Ali Khamenei, 82, as the next Supreme Leader of an Iranian Caliphate, or someone who harbors ambitions of replacing Khamenei?
(7) "Existence of Electromagnetic-Hydrodynamic Waves": Title of Hannes Alfven's half-page 1942 paper in the journal Nature, known as the shortest paper to directly lead to a Nobel Prize (1970, Physics).
(8) Narges Mohammadi, on a brutal executioner and violator of human rights becoming Iran's president: The government in Iran has announced Mr. Ebrahim Raisi as the elected President after engineering and derailing the election process from its natural course. As a human rights and peace advocate, who has lost everything in the past years, I don't accept Mr. Raisi's presidency because he has committed some of the most serious human rights violations in the past 42 years. Although the previous elections have not been free or fair either, the presidency of a person who must be first and foremost accountable for and responsive to the Iranian justice seekers is not acceptable. We seek justice for the victims of killings, executions, imprisonments, tortures, poverty and misery, about whom Mr. Raisi must be held responsible before being allowed to be a President. As a human rights activist, I want to know which countries, governments, or international organizations who speak of human rights can congratulate Mr. Raisi's Presidency. [In Persian]
2021/06/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Hamid Khan-Afshar and my Persian couplet dedicated to him & his loved ones (see the next item below). [Top center] Facebook memory from June 20, 2020: Are we sincere when we recite Sa'adi's poem about all humans being of one essence and soul? [Top right] Pictorial Facebook memories from June 20 of prior years: The amazing nature and memorial for the victims of the Isla Vista mass shooting. [Bottom row] Happy Fathers' Day to all fathers and father-like mentors! (See the last item below)
(2) RIP Hamid Khan-Afshar: An old-time friend, who was like a brother to me, has passed away after a long battle with cancer. May his soul rest in peace and may memories of his kindness of heart and generosity of spirit help his wife Farah, his daughters Shadi & Sanaz, and his many friends cope with this great loss.
(3) In 30 years, I've moved from being a moderate Democrat to an ultra-liberal socialist, without changing a single position. [Credit: Kelly Beld Hicklin]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In a major cyber-attack, hackers tried to poison California's water supply.
- UCSB summer 2021 GRIT talks: Ground-breaking Research Innovative Technology. [Schedule]
- Math puzzle: In this diagram, with 4 circles of equal size, find the length x.
- Kurdish music: Song & dance by the wonderful Rastak Ensemble, specializing in regional music of Iran.
- Facebook memory from June 20, 2013: A beautiful Persian poem from Shoorideh Shirazi.
- Facebook memory from June 20, 2010, for Fathers' Day: Persian poem by Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar.
(5) At the end of the 2021 Fathers' Day: I reiterate my warmest regards and congratulations to all caring fathers among you, as well as those mothers who have had to also act as fathers at times. I, for one, am grateful for celebrating another Fathers' Day with all three of my children by my side.
Sepehr is starting a Master's degree program in education, which will allow him to pursue teaching, one of his passions and strengths. Sepand is pretty much settled up in the SF Bay Area at Apple Computer, after earning a master's degree in computer engineering and stints at three tech positions. Sepideh is about to earn her Master's degree in computer science, which, together with her BS degree in neuroscience, will allow her to pursue research in health informatics. Feeling pride in my children's accomplishments!
2021/06/19 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ali Khamenei & Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's new president (see the last item below). [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Iranian voters, on the day they cast their vote and the day after the election! [Top right] Mountain sculpture: Abode of the Gods, Poroy (Peru's "Mount Rushmore"). [Bottom left] Even after it has been established, social justice, like democracy, needs to be nurtured and upheld, or it will perish. [Bottom center] Pictorial Facebook memories from June 19 of years past: Turing's Centenary was in 2012. [Bottom right] Some of the Taliban's atrocities (see the next item below).
(2) Negotiations are conducted to reach a middle ground with an adversary: What middle ground do we envisage with the Taliban, who execute/flog women in public, bomb/burn girls' schools, and think that a girl aspiring to get an education for herself and other girls deserves a bullet in the head?
(3) Observance of Int'l Day Against Torture, by Voices of Women for Change: Roundtable on the Violations of Women's Rights in Iran, and on the Status of Imprisoned Women Activists, featuring Narges Mohammadi, Alice Dahle, Tara Sepehri Far, and Mansour Farhang. Saturday, June 26, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Today's date, 19, in math: 4! – 3! + 2! – 1! For tomorrow, just add + 0! at the end.
- Iranian regime: Now that the election is over, stay at home for a while; don't make us shoot you! [Image]
- Borowitz Report (humor): Ted Cruz calls Obamacare a Democratic plot to keep people alive so they can vote.
- A jazzy classic, performed by David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer: "Lily Was Here"
- Another beautiful performance by Santana (featuring Mana): "Corazon Espinado"
- Facebook memory from June 19, 2013: We have been "negotiating" with the Taliban for at least 8 years.
(5) UCSB summer cinema under the stars is back: The free single/double-header events (Thursday evenings, beginning at 8:30 PM; gates open at 7:00) will be held at the West Wind Drive-in near Goleta Beach.
July 01: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
July 08: The Goonies / Stand by Me
July 15: Clueless
July 22: The Never-Ending Story
July 29: Men in Black / Galaxy Quest
August 05: Rush Hour
August 12: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure / Wayne's World
(6) Ebrahim Raisi, a Khamenei stooge, elected as Iran's president with 62% of the vote: The turnout was a record-low 49% and the votes cast included 13% invalid ballots, likely blank or protest votes. Raisi played a prominent role in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s, earning the "hanging judge" nickname and endearing himself to both the former and current Supreme Leaders. Bashar Assad and Hamas leadership welcomed Raisi's election, while Amnesty International described his victory as "a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran." Having a criminal president, who is sanctioned and under investigation for his crimes in multiple countries, is grim news for the people of Iran, but at least it removes the facade of "moderates" behind whom the Supreme Leader could hide. It is Khamenei's show now, having practically achieved the elimination of presidency in favor of a clerk-like "prime minister" figure that he has long favored.
2021/06/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today's family get-together for lunch at Santa Barbara Hilton (1-minute video). [Center] Recreating a group photo from May 2018: We took advantage of the entire extended family gathering in Santa Barbara to recreate a wedding photo to see how everyone has changed over the past three years. [Right] Miscellaneous photos from today's family gathering in Santa Barbara.
(2) The US House of Representatives designates June 19 ("Juneteenth") as a new federal holiday: There were only 14 opposers, all Republicans. The US Senate passes the bill unanimously.
(3) The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) survives a third challenge at the US Supreme Court: A case brought by the Trump administration and several Republican-led states is rejected. If only the Republicans spent as much time and effort on legislation to help their constituents as they do trying to take stuff away from the 99% and giving benefits to the 1%!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The GOP vowed to make Obama a one-term president: It now aims to make Biden a half-term president!
- Panoramic virtual-reality photo of Mars, with 1.2 billion pixels.
- This chicken crossed the road to show off her soccer skills! [Short video]
- It had been ages since I rode in the same car with my three kids: Today's photo in the car.
- Facebook memories from June 17 of years past: (1) Iran & Afghanistan; (2) Move-in & Fathers' Day.
(5) Easing of COVID-19 restrictions doesn't mean the pandemic is over. It just means they will have room for you in the ICU. Choose wisely, especially if you are not vaccinated!
(6) "Hooked—Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit our Addictions": In this UCLA Semel Institute webinar, Pulitzer-Prize-winning former NYT investigative reporter Michael Moss talks about his book by the same title. Thursday, June 24, 2021, 5:00 PM PDT. [Registration link]
(7) Final thought for the day: There's a joke about not trusting atoms, because they make up everything! Physicists are no better in this regard. To me, physics terminology is arbitrary and inconsistent.
What is dark matter? It's matter we do not see, but which is necessary to balance our gravitational equations! If only 15 lbs of my mass consisted of dark matter, I'd look fabulous!
What's antimatter? It's something that interacts with matter, annihilating both participants and releasing energy. I don't understand this, but, in this case, nomenclature isn't the problem.
We have proton and antiproton; neutron and antineutron. So, one would guess that antimatter counterpart to electron would be antielectron. It isn't: Physicists prefer positron, so named because it has a positive charge. But, then, why isn't electron called negatron? Don't ask me! Is there such a thing as antiphoton? No, photon's antiparticle is the photon itself!
Particle names (fermions, quarks, leptons, gluons, bosons, ...) and forces that act on them (weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, ...) aren't any better in terms of understanding what's going on!
2021/06/16 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Facebook memories from June 16 of years past: Celebrations, sightseeing, and Iranian vs. European diplomats. (To my children, who think I tell "dad jokes": Please note the fortune cookie's message!) [Center] Math puzzle: There are 3 squares in this diagram. If the area of the smallest square is 1, find the areas of the other two squares. [Right] IEEE CCS technical talk (see the last item below).
(2) A soccer star's economic power: Cristiano Ronaldo pushing away two bottles of Coke during an interview, grabbing a water bottle instead, reportedly wiped ~$4 billion off Coca-Cola's market value!
(3) UCSB's virtual commencement ceremony for 2020 & 2021: Chancellor Henry Yang's remarks begin at the 22:30 mark of this 47-minute video. Oprah Winfrey's keynote address begins at the 30:00 mark.
(5) The circus and its clowns: Iran's presidential election, which was already a contest between seven candidates hand-picked by the the Supreme Leader and his cronies, has taken an absurd turn. Two of the candidates, including the last remaining "reformist" option, have withdrawn at the last minute, all but ensuring the election of Khamanei's favorite candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, nicknamed "The Executioner of Tehran" for his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s.
(6) Generating video from a single image: U. Washington researchers have invented a method to generate a video loop from a single image by predicting the motion that was occurring when the image was captured.
(7) New alternative facts: Blaming the January 6 riot on Antifa and BLM didn't work, so now government agents are said to have helped organize it. You can't make this stuff up!
(8) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Mr. Momin Quddus (MSEE, PE) talked at 6:30 PM PDT under the title "Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, in Simple Terms," a talk he generously agreed to repeat for our section, having previously offered it to our sister BuenaVentura Section. We are bombarded daily with information about bitcoin, a special kind of cryptocurrency, and blockchain, hyped as a cure-all for everything that ails our society. So, it is particularly timely to become acquainted with these notions and be able to separate hype from facts.
Public opinion on cryptocurrency is divided. A small group of people with a deep understanding of the topic believe in this form of currency and are passionate about what it represents. Then there's the rest of us, who feel that it is a cryptic topic, true to the name (the skeptics and the curious). Mr. Quddus attempted to bridge the gap between these communities. He explained the origins of cryptocurrency and what it means to society in general in the near future. He also briefly discussed cryptocurrency investment opportunities of various kinds.
Even though businesses and even governments are getting involved with cryptocurrency, in the end, such currencies are not intended to replace normal world currencies such as dollar or euro. Ironically, cryptocurrency provides both transparency (in the sense that everyone can see the transactions and nothing is hidden from anyone) and anonymity (currency is tied to digital wallets, rather than personal identities). Digital wallets can be transferred between individuals, such as at the time of the owner's death. There have been instances when someone has lost a digital wallet, thus losing the assets in it. However, anonymity seems to be going away, as evidenced by the US government tracing ransomware payments and recovering the money paid.
[Recording of the lecture (72-minute video)] [IEEE CCS event page] [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2021/06/15 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: What is the shortest distance from A to B on the outside of the box? [Center] Street vendor of fresh eggs in Iran (undated photo). [Right] Repunit primes (see the last item below)
(2) Iran's election charade: These presidential candidates are having some post-debate fun, after being at each others' throats for the duration of the debate. Perhaps they are making fun of the gullible Iranian voters!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Americans lost to COVID-19 over 15 months: 600,000 (40,000/mo; ~1300/day; ~56/hour; ~1/minute)
- Al Qaeda isn't happy to have been demoted to a second-rank threat, behind domestic US terrorists!
- Heightened fire danger may lead to preventive electric-power shutoffs in the Santa Batbata area.
- Science is weird: To detect or measure the tiniest particles, we need the biggest instruments!
- If truth is beauty, as claimed by Keats, how do you explain ugly truths?
- I may have shared this surprising identity before: 21^2 + 22^2 + 23^2 + 24^2 = 25^2 + 26^2 + 27^2
- Pictorial Facebook memories from June 15 of years past: Fathers' Day gifts, my 1960s artwork, food.
(4) "UCSB Reads 2022" short-list selected: Even though both of my pitched books (Weapons of Math Destruction and The Pattern Seekers) have been eliminated, I am excited to start reading books 1 and 3-5.
- Exhalation: Stories, by Ted Chiang (2019)
- Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2020)
- The Friend: A Novel, by Sigrid Nunez (2018)
- The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us, by Paul Tough (2021) [Title & date of paperback edition]
- The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (2020)
(5) Repunit primes: Prime numbers provide endless puzzles and interesting discoveries. Let's begin with this question: Can a number whose decimal representation consists of repetitions of the same digit (a repdigit number) be a prime? In other words, is the number ddd...dd, where d is a decimal digit, ever a prime? Given that such a number is divisible by d, only for d = 1 can the number possibly be a prime. Numbers whose decimal representations consist exclusively of the digit 1 are repunit numbers. The (n + 1)-digit repunit number R(n) equals (10^(n + 1) – 1)/9. It's easy to see that R(n) can be a prime only if n + 1 is a prime; for n + 1 = jk, the number R(n) will be divisible by (10^k – 1)/9. The first repunit prime is 11, corresponding to n = 1. Then, we run out of luck, as: R(2) = 111 = 3 × 37; R(4) = 11,111 = 41 × 271; R(6) = 1,111,111 = 239 × 4649; ... We don't hit other primes, until we get to n = 18, 22, 316, 1030. Despite the fact that we know of only 5 examples, it is conjectured that there are infinitely many repunit primes. The diagram, which plots the first 5 repunit primes and two "probable primes," shows the intuition behind the conjecture. (Note: Please correct "verses" to "versus" in the diagram.)
Fun fact: So, we don't have any prime numbers with decimal reprsentations consisting of the digit 9 only. But the prime number 10^6400 – 10^6352 – 1, discovered by Harvey Dubner in 1991, comes close. Of its 6400 digits, 6399 are 9s and one is 8.
2021/06/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Mount Recyclemore: Located on Sandy Acres in Cornwall, UK, the sculpture made of e-waste is meant to send a message to G7 summit attendees meeting nearby. [Center] Statue of Alan Turing, a brilliant British mathematician (see the last item below). [Right] A few photos from Saturday's family gathering at my sister's, where my nephew, his wife, and his two sons were visiting.
(2) How Christians can read the same Bible, pray to the same God, but vote for different parties: An enlightening review of Democratic and Republican politics in the South. [15-minute video]
(3) Since when has bipartisanship become important to the Republicans and a couple of Democrats? Where were these people when massive tax-cut-for-the-1% was passed with no Democratic vote? Don't tell me bipartisanship becomes important only when bills to help the 99% are discussed!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Netanyahu is finally out: Like Trump, he question the election result and says he'll be back!
- Judge upholds Houston Methodist Hospital's mandate that all employees be vaccinated for COVID-19.
- One of the best musicals ever? Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights" movie comes out to rave reviews.
- COVID-19 led to children returning to live with their parents and celebrities re-uniting with their exes!
- Facebook memory from June 13, 2019: Children do not recognize racial differences. [Photos]
- Facebook memory from June 13, 2010: A dozen technical books by my late father, Salem Parhami. [Photo]
(5) "Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy": Why were so many of Broadway's hit musicals written by Jews? Were Jews particularly talented musically or did they gravitate to the one place where Jewish immigrants were welcome and could contribute? [83-minute video]
(6) To MAGA folk: You were so busy worrying about socialism taking away your freedom that you didn't notice crony capitalism stealing your pension, sending your job overseas, taking away your health care, shrinking your educational opportunities, and burdening you with debt!
(7) An AR-15 bullet does so much more damage to the body than a handgun bullet: This "60 Minutes" report explains the "inner explosion" caused by a tumbling bullet vs. a straight-through one. #BanAssaultWeapons
(8) Of interest to haters: Alan Turing, who helped found modern computer science and also saved an estimated 14-21 million lives by his work on breaking Germans' secret communications codes during World War II, was driven to suicide after he was forced to undergo chemical castration as a punishment for his homosexuality. The British government has since apologized for its actions and has done everything to honor the brilliant scientist. Association for Computing Machinery, a leading professional society in computer science, has named its most-prestigious technical award, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Computing, after Turing.
2021/06/12 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persepolis, as it stood 2500 years ago in central Iran, and its ruins today. [Center] For book lovers: Running out of places to keep books at home? Here are some steps you can take! [Right] Cover image of A Brief History of Neoliberalism (see the last item below).
(2) Trump's DoJ obtained phone & e-mail records of several Democratic congressional leaders and their families under the guise of probing leaks: The investigations revealed no wrong-doing, yet Apple was prevented by a gag order from informing those whose records were subpoenaed. This Executive Branch over-reach, about which more information is expected soon, makes Nixon's "enemies list" look like child play!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The case for prosecuting Trump: It may seem awkward, but it's necessary for preserving democracy.
- The real story of how Mossad agents stole thousands of documents about Iran's nuclear program.
- Oregon House of Representatives expels the republican who plotted Capitol incursion by the vote 59-1.
- Jeffrey Epstein maintained dossiers of damaging info on his victims to keep them quiet via blackmailing.
- Jeffrey Toobin's return to CNN is awkward: CNN should hold itself to the same standards it uses for others.
- The GOP kills the "The Paycheck Fairness Act," a bill targeting pay inequality between men and women.
(4) Book review: Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, unabridged audiobook, read by Clive Chafer, Oxford University Press, 2007. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at City University New York, presents brief, yet all-encompassing and highly-readable overview of the political-economy doctrine known as neoliberalism. Harvey isn't a dispassionate observer, but definitely takes sides in condemning neoliberalism as a source of what ails today's world.
Liberalism and conservatism are the two poles in today's American and world politics. Liberals promote individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, free enterprise, and respect for behavior or opinions different from one's own, while conservatives favor free enterprise, private ownership, and traditional values (including religious beliefs), often opposing change and innovation. Note that free enterprise is a hallmark of both liberalism and conservatism. "Neoliberalism is distinct from liberalism insofar as it does not advocate laissez-faire economic policy but instead is highly constructivist and advocates a strong state to bring about market-like reforms in every aspect of society" [Wikipedia]. We also have neoconservatism, which is a different beast!
Neoliberals maintain that a free market can provide a level of prosperity and progress that is unachievable by planning, so the government's role must be severely limited. Regulations, price controls, trade barriers, and collective bargaining are to be avoided at all cost. Everything, even public services, should be privatized. Neoliberalism doesn't consist only of economic imperatives, but includes a moral component, which is the primary source of its dangers.
Key terms for neoliberals are "individualism" and "personal responsibility." If you are unemployed, homeless, uninsured, or lack higher education, there must be something wrong with you. Structural unemployment does not exist. Housing, healthcare, and education are not rights, but privileges that must be earned. Once the tenets of neoliberalism were formulated by European liberal scholars in the 1930s, it found promoters and supporters among the wealthy.
Roots of neoliberalism in the US can be traced back to the late-1970s (the Carter administration), when deregulation trends began. It is somewhat ironic that the most-prominent icons of neoliberalism, that is, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Alan Greenspan, are also heroes of conservatism. Among Democratic politicians, Bill Clinton is said to have been a neoliberal, who negotiated NAFTA and pursued aggressive deregulation, although he ditched some aspects of the ideology, where it overlapped with neoconservatism.
Small government is one of the lures of neoliberalism, but it does not materialize in practice, given that the government always bails out rich, powerful institutions when they get in trouble. So personal responsibility is preached for individuals, whereas speculation and reckless corporate behavior is tolerated or even rewarded. It is for these reasons that some former cheerleaders of neoliberalism are now sounding the alarm on worsening economic conditions and deterioration of social justice.
2021/06/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The Boroumand sisters of Iran: All four are artists (Marzieh, Ehteram, Razieh, Tahereh). [Center] Math puzzle: What is tan(α) in the quarter-circle diagram shown? [Right]
(2) Each year, between 375 and 450 Iranian women are killed by their kin, based on family "honor" and other misguided notions: Here is the latest victim, a woman set on fire by her fiance in Saqqez, Kurdistan Province. COVID-related mental-health problems have played a role in Iran's rising femicide rate.
(3) "Human: The World Within": This is the title of a Netflix docuseries, whose six 52-minute episodes are entitled "React," "Pulse," "Fuel," "Defend," "Sense," and "Birth."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nigeria's government bans Twitter, after the social-media giant banned its president for violating rules.
- National Geographic adds a fifth ocean: The Southern Ocean is the body of water encircling Antarctica.
- Iranian film director, playwright, and comedian Parviz Kardan [1937-2021] passed away in Los Angeles.
- Zahid Quraishi, the first Muslim-American federal judge in US history, confirmed by the Senate.
- Facebook memory from June 11, 2016: My message on the occasion of my daughter's college graduation.
- Facebook memory from June 11, 2013: The puzzle of women supporting Iran's misogynistic regime.
- Facebook memory from June 11, 2011: On 1D, 2D, 4D, 8D numbers (real, complex, quaternion, octonion).
(5) Book review: Soni, Jimmy and Rob Goodman, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, Unabridged audiobook, read by Jonathan Yen, Tantor Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I read a 1938 Trans. AIEE paper based on Claude Shannon's MIT master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits," when I was writing my own MS thesis at Oregon State University in the spring of 1970. I remember being awed by its importance and brilliance, and feeling unsure about my own contributions! I went on to publish my thesis in IEEE Trans. Computers (Vol. 21, April 1972), motivated, in part, by Shannon's publication of his master's research.
Claude Shannon [1916-2001] began as a small-town Michigan boy and garnered recognition as the father of information theory, having started the field with A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The book chronicles the development of this seminal work, Shannon's most-important technical contribution, and describes the relationship of the oft-reclusive Shannon with his contemporary scientists/engineers such as Vannevar Bush, Albert Einstein, Kurt Godel, Irwin M. Jacobs, Thomas Kailath, Leonard Kleinrock, Lawrence Roberts, Alan Turing, and John von Neumann.
Shannon's talents and skills were honed in two of the world's most-prestigious institutions, MIT and the "idea factory" of Bell Labs. He wrote his seminal work on communication at the age of 32, gaining enough fame and prestige to become one of those scientists/engineers who can work on any problem they desire, setting their own agendas and not having to worry about what superiors wanted from or thought of them. Late in life, he became afflicted with Alzheimer's and was confined to a nursing home.
Much of the book's focus is on Shannon's personality quirks and playfulness, including his interests in tinkering, unicycling, juggling, chess, and roulette, for which he had built a wearable computer to help him improve his odds of winning. I highly recommend this well-researched and nicely-written book.
2021/06/09 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Politics and Iranian women (see the next item below). [Center & Right] Cover images of the books I pitched for the "UCSB Reads 2022" Program (see the last item below).
(2) "Women and Electoral Campaigns in Iran": This was the title of today's Zoom event with 33 attendees, featuring Professors Mona Tajali (Agnes Scott College) and Homa Hoodfar (Concordia U.). The two speakers outlined the history of women's participation in the political process, as voters and candidates, and described the ups and downs in this domain, as conservatives and reformists alternated in taking power. Unfortunately, both speakers painted an overly rosy picture of women's participation and political empowerment. Having 6% women among members of parliament (0% in both the Assembly of Experts and Council of Guardians) is hardly a cause for celebration. From time to time, an Iranian official or religious leader opines that women do not need their husband's permission to go outside the home, as if this is a major gift to women!
I continue this report with my own observations. Iranian women have more than the government/regime to worry about. Patriarchy is woven into the country's culture. This is why having a few token women in various official positions and in the Majlis actually harms women's rights, in my humble opinion. The token women allow the men in power to boast about giving positions to women who are capable. But these women aren't the most-capable or most-educated samples of Iranian women and they are, by and large, powerless in effecting change. When the regime's view of women is worse than that of the patriarchal society at large, tokenism turns into a weapon for the regime to further oppress non-conforming women.
(3) My book pitches for the "UCSB Reads 2022" Program: UCSB has kicked off its book selection process for campus and community reading in 2022. During today's meeting of the committee in charge of the selection process, I pitched two books. I learned after the meeting that my first pitch does not qualify, because one of the authors, a UCLA Professor, also has a UCSB Bren School affiliation. So, I added a third book, moving my second choice to #1.
Introducing myself: This is my second year on the "UCSB Reads" Committee. During 2020 and 2021, I tied the UCSB Reads selection to my engineering courses. This was easier for the climate-change book! I am a professor of electrical and computer engineering, specializing in computer hardware & architecture. That's my day job, about which I have written several books. Personally, I am an avid reader (mostly nonfiction), with 275 book reviews on GoodReads; I am also passionate about gender equality and racial justice, regarding which I post on Facebook & Twitter. I co-chair an allies group of UCSB faculty/staff, Men Advocating for Gender Equity (MAGE).
My first pitch: Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (2021, 336 pages), by Michael A. Heller (Professor of real-estate law at Columbia U., author of The Gridlock Economy, and James Salzman (Professor of environmental law at UCLA, author of Drinking Water: A History, both wonderful speakers.
Ownership is one of the central notions of human societies. A good chunk of court cases and international conflicts is triggered by what we own or think we own as individuals, societal groups, and countries. Walls, barbed wires, and locks are visible artifacts of ownership. Ironically, who owns what isn't as straightforward as we might think! And this book explains why.
This is a great time to re-examine age-old concepts of ownership. We now own fairly new things, such as ideas, passwords, and data. We have also started moving toward a shared-everything economy, abandoning some forms of ownership for convenience and social good (sharing scooters/bikes, renting textbooks).
Let me end my first pitch with two quotes about this book from prominent Pulitzer-Prize-winning reviewers:
"... guide[s] you through the confusing maze of ownership disputes that bedevil our daily lives."
"... one of those rare and treasured books that make you feel smarter and change the way you see the world."
My second pitch: Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (2016, 259 pages), by Cathy O'Neil. The buzzword "big data" is everywhere and it is often pitched as wonderful and empowering. We are also bombarded on a daily basis with how "AI: artificial intelligence" and "machine learning" will solve all of our problems. Increasingly, machines are used to make decisions (or help us make decisions) on whether someone is hired, gets a bank loan, is eligible for parole, and other life-altering events.
Weapons of Math Destruction, which ties together many contemporary issues about the dangers of data accumulation and surveillance, is a necessary book for all of us, as we deal with the marketing of our private data, whether stolen or obtained consensually via obscure user-agreements. We just had the UC data breach, and we read daily about hacking and ransomware.
The only reason I am pitching Weapons of Math Destruction second is that it's a few years old (2016). The author, Cathy O'Neil, runs the mathbabe.org blog and is a seasoned speaker. The 86-minute documentary film "Coded Bias" is based on this book. There are newer books warning us about the dangers of data concentration. For example, there's the 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which I like even more, but it is nearly 700 pages long. O'Neil's book is highly accessible and at 259 pages, not daunting to the casual reader.
My third pitch: The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention (2020, 270 pages). It's difficult to take the brother of the comic-actor who plays "Borat" seriously, but Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University is a genuine, indeed distinguished, psychologist. In this book, Baron-Cohen argues that autism has played a key role in human progress for many millennia, because the same genes that cause autism enable pattern-seeking, a crucial element of invention and innovation.
Around 85,000 years ago, hominids developed the brain power to use if-and-then logic, which vastly increased their inventiveness. As a case in point, agriculture took root when our ancestors noticed that if a seed falls in moist soil and the sun shines on it, then the seed will sprout. Once something like basic agriculture was invented, a refinement mechanism took over and allowed even greater achievements. For example, adding "and I water it when there is no rain" led to better results, as did "and I remove weeds."
This book instills in us greater appreciation for our autistic fellow human-beings and impresses the point that it is indeed in our self-interest to ensure expanded opportunities for them to contribute. [45-minute book talk]
2021/06/08 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Colors of nature: Tomato varieties from around the world and potato varieties that grow in Peru. [Top center] Iranian arts and crafts: Artist at work in Esfahan's copper market, built in the Safavid era, some 400 years ago. [Top right] How Persian has influenced Arabic: Much has been written about Arabic's impact on Persian. In reality, the impact goes both ways, as seen in this excerpt from a 1945 article by Saeed Nafisi (1895-1966). [Bottom left] Engineers have a habit of turning sci-fi ideas into reality: S. B. Divya, an engineer moonlighting as sci-fi writer, turns the flow in the other direction. [Bottom center] Inspirations for the QR code: According to its inventors, the QR (quick-response) code's design was inspired by skyscrapers and the game of Go. Invented in 1994, the code is finding widespread applications in our modern society, because it overcomes limitations of UPC (universal product code). (Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, June 2021 issue) [Bottom right] This nameless woman on Twitter claims she can "make all your dreams come true." No subtlety!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Death toll still rising: At least 62 have died in the head-on collision of two trains in Pakistan.
- Global organized-crime sting results in hundreds of arrests around the world.
- A team of US federal agents has successfully recovered part of the ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline.
- Police in London, Ontario, Canada: The truck attack that killed a Muslim family was planned.
- Massive network failure affects Amazon, Reddit, Twitter, and Twitch.
- When COVID-19 stay-at-home orders went into effect in various US states (March & April 2020). [Chart]
- In two days, four women have been murdered by their kin in the Iranian provinces of Ilam & Kermanshah.
- USA wins the Concacaf Nations Cup by beating Mexico 3-2 in a wild extra-time final match. [Highlights]
- Life imitates art: "Contagion" is a 2011 virus thriller predicting the COVID-19 pandemic. [5-minute video]
- A challenge for some: How do you convey to others that you're vaccinated and not a maskless jerk?
(3) Bipartisan US Senate report points to security & intelligence failures as leading to Jan. 6 insurrection: Actually, lies and incitement led to the event. The said failures allowed it to succeed, at least in part.
(4) "Women and Elections in Iran: Does it Matter?" Zoom event, featuring Profs. Homa Hoodfar (Concordia U.) and Mona Tajali (Agnes Scott College), Wednesday, June 9, 2021, 1:00 PM PDT. [Free Registration]
(5) How can Republicans simultaneously hold these two beliefs? (1) China intentionally created a dangerous, airborne virus that has killed 600,000 Americans. (2) I refuse to wear a mask.
(6) "Shannon Meets Coronavirus": Subtitle of the article "Infectious Disease Transmission via Aerosol Propagation from a Molecular Communication Perspective," in IEEE Communications magazine, June 2021.
2021/06/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Vaccines go electric: This is the theme of IEEE Spectrum magazine's cover story for June 2021, featuring Inovio's Senior VP of R&D Kate Broderick, who works on electroporation, a method to sneak a DNA vaccine into cells. [Top center] Kudos to Vogue for putting Malala, instead of the typical supermodel, on its cover! [Top right] Computing requirements for autonomy: autonomous systems require responsiveness under heavy computational load, low power consumption, and resilience. The cover feature of IEEE Computer magazine's May 2021 issue deals with notions that facilitate the attainment of the three key properties above. [Bottom left] Memories: Images from my June 7 Facebook posts of years past. The young woman is vocalist Elnaz Abedini. [Bottom center] Cartoon: Senator Joe Manchin preserves the filibuster. [Bottom right] My Sunday, June 6, walk in Goleta: As I passed through Girsh park, I was delighted to see that people have returned to the basketball courts, where I ran into my son, shooting hoops. Many planes taking off and landing also beckoned a gradual return to normal, after 15 months of near-total isolation.
(2) A federal judge declares California's ban on assault weapons unconstitutional: This case will likely open the floodgates of challenges to state gun laws, with most cases likely ending up at the US Supreme Court.
(3) On Iran's June 18 presidential election: Here is a report on the first televised debate among Iran's seven presidential candidates, five of whom are Khamenei stooges and two "moderates" with no realistic chance of being elected. They tear into each other and criticize Rouhani & his government, two weeks before voting.
(4) The next world region(s) for perpetual global conflicts: The Middle East has seen many hard & soft wars over oil. There is general agreement that within a few decades, water will replace oil as a precious world commodity, over which international and regional wars may be waged.
In the case of Iran, there are ongoing border disputes over water with several neighbors. Kaveh Madani, an environmental-policy and water-resources-management specialist, has predicted that Iran (which he characterizes at a water-bankrupt nation) will face internal strife among its provinces or even among neighboring townships and villages, over water rights.
So, where are water-rich areas in the world where Middle-East-like conflicts are likely to materialize? According to WorldAtlas, the top 15 countries in terms of renewable freshwater resources are (most to least): Brazil, Russia, USA, Canada, China, Colombia, EU (listed as a country), Indonesia, Peru, India, Congo, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nigeria. The amount of freshwater in these countries ranges from ~1 to ~8 km^3.
Consider first the three perennial powers: Russia, USA (which may be considered as a single block with Canada, much like the EU), China. Russia and USA are oil-rich and will keep their powerful positions when water replaces oil as the most-important commodity. China will rise, because it has more water than oil. Being close to, and able to influence, nearby water-rich countries is also a plus for China.
Setting aside India and EU, which will likely need their water resources internally, three world areas emerge as possible exporters of water and thus subject to foreign interference: Latin America (Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar), and Central Africa (Congo, Nigeria). Of these regions, Latin America has more entries near the top of the list and, hence, a most-likely trouble spot.
[P. H. Gleick, "Water and Conflict," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 79-112, 1993]
[Kaveh Madani's 17-minute TEDx talk, "Water: Think Again" (2015)]
2021/06/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Excavated Stadium of Magnesia in western Turkey: It was used for running, boxing, horse-racing, and gladiator competitions 2000+ years ago. [Top right] The tiny Iranian village of Garah Ban (population ~122) known for its high-quality rose-water, is a shrine to Ahl-e haqq ("People of Truth," a sect derived from Shi'i Islam) and an important tourist site of the western province of Kermanshah. [Bottom left & center] This Colosseum-like 1800-year-old stadium, unearthed in western Turkey, is relatively well-preserved. [Bottom right] Wonders of the world: Kalkata is an Italian village located on top of a volcanic cliff in North Lazio. Its history goes back more than 3000 years, starting with the Etruscan-Faliscan civilization. The village has multi-story residences both above and below the ground.
(2) Mass shooting at _______ in ______ leaves __ dead and __ injured: My template for reporting on mass shootings, to save on the amount of daily work. This morning, it's: "graduation party," "Florida," "3," "6"
(3) Senator Joe Manchin is set to vote against the Democrats' election-overhaul bill: Great! Let hypocrite Democrats be exposed just like the Republicans by having their votes become parts of their political legacies.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Days in 2021 so far: 157; Mass-shootings in 2021 so far: 250
- Donald Trump Jr.'s Instagram post is seen as a veiled death threat against Dr. Anthony Fauci.
- I Am Not Your Asian Stereotype: In this 10-minute TEDx talk, Canwen Xu discusses her dual itentity.
- Beethoven's life story, sung to his Fifth Symphony (with Persian subtitles). [1-minute video]
- Math challenge: Prove that sin(10 degrees) is irrational. [Hint: Use the rational root theorem]
- Replicas of Noah's ark: Several replicas exist around the world and they are being used as museums.
(5) Spooky: Magnitude-5.3 quake rattled much of Southern California on Saturday 6/05 morning. There have been ~600 shakers in the area over the past couple of days, with only a handful registering above 4.0.
(6) Notable women in STEM: IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal recipient Kristina Johnson has big plans as President of Ohio State University. Before her current position, she was the first female dean of engineering at Duke University, the first female provost at Johns Hopkins University, and the first woman to receive the John Fritz Medal from the American Association of Engineering Societies.
(7) An impossible deadline to meet: In a 3-page letter published in a tweet, Marjorie Taylor Greene has given President Biden until June 31, 2021, to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci's lies about the origins of coronavirus. I guess the extra day in June is meant to make up for the elimination of January 6 from GOP's memory!
(8) Is confidential cloud computing an oxymoron? It had better not be! We rely more and more on cloud resources, so achieving data privacy and confidentiality in the cloud is important to the future of computing. In "Toward Confidential Cloud Computing" (CACM, June 2021; reprinted from ACM Quueue), Mark Russinovich and others discuss some of the hardware and software requirements for achieving this goal.
2021/06/05 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Zoom gathering, with a talk about matching subjects and verbs in Persian (see the last item below). [Center] Math puzzle: What is the ratio of the area of the outer hexagon to the area of the inner hexagon? [Right] Do you know your donuts & cookies? A donut glossary & a historical chart for cookies.
(2) Mistreatment of people of Afghan origins in Iran: If you want to see apartheid in the Middle East, look no further than Iran, where the jobs you can hold are determined by your ethnicity, religion, and gender. The story of an Afghan young man, a student at Sharif University of Technology, who achieved first rank in Iran's Math Olympiad, but who is not allowed to hold a teaching job. [FB post in Persian]
(3) To former VP Mike Pence: You can't be proud both of what you did on January 6 and what your boss & you did in the lead-up to January 6! You have ruined your political career by your actions and inaction. [Cartoon]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Venus exploration on the horizon: NASA is planning two missions between 2028 and 2030 to study Venus.
- EU to facilitate post-pandemic life with a digital ID wallet: An app to hold credentials & personal records.
- UCSB's on-line commencement, Sat., June 12, 2021, 10:00 AM PDT. Oprah will be the keynote speaker.
- Explain this magic trick: Content of a smaller glass fills two bigger glasses, with some of it left over.
- The adjective for metal is metallic, but not for iron, . . . which is ironic.
- Cartoon caption of the day: Store clerk to buyer: "Two Math for Dummies at $16.99 each. That'll be $50."
- Joke: To help me decide whether I should become an athlete or a criminal, I made a list of pros and cons.
- Quotable: "When you betray someone, you also betray yourself." ~ Nobel Laureate Isaac B. Singer
- Quotable: "Much of pain that we deal with are really only thoughts." ~ Anonymous
- Facebook memory from June 5, 2012: My 4-star review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion.
(5) Arts & culture return to the White House: The Bidens will be hosting the 2021 Kennedy Center honorees (Dick Van Dyke, Joan Baez, Debbie Allen, Midori, and Garth Brooks) at the White House.
(6) "Matching of Subjects and Verbs in Persian": This was the title of today's talk by Kazem Kardavani, as part of the gatherings of Tehran University College of Engineering's Class of 1968 (Fanni '68).
According to Persian grammar, when a singular/plural subject is animate, the verb should match it ("daanesh-aamoozaan aamadand"; plural subject, plural verb), but for plural inanimate subjects, singular form of the verb should be used ("barnaameh-haa-ye mokhtalefi ejraa shod"; plural subject, singular verb). There are certain exceptions, however, which make the discussion complicated. For example, a writer may personify inanimate subjects for emphasis or literary effect ("mowj-haa ghorridand"; "the waves roared"). This is a long story, and there is much disagreement on proper usage. To make things even more complicated, poets and literary writers tend to break linguistic molds, earning praise instead of condemnation! [Images and Persian abstract]
2021/06/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Abarkuh Cypress, the oldest tree in Iran, is thought to be 4500 years old. The tree does not appear on the list of world's oldest trees with verified ages. It does appear, however, as the third entry among old trees of the world with estimated ages. [Center] The oil lobby killed the electric car more than a century ago (photo from 1917). The powerful lobby is still continuing to oppose efforts to phase out fossil fuels. [Right] Painting by my artist friend, Kamran Khavarani, cropped into square format.
(2) Senior capstone project presentations: Today, I spent much of my time watching year-end presentations in computer engineering (AM) and EE/ME (PM). Click on links for descriptions, team members, and demos.
(3) Supersonic passenger jets are coming back: Nearly two decades after Concorde's retirement, Boom Supersonic is receiving orders for its Overture aircraft flying twice as fast as current passenger planes.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Race is a relatively new notion: How the invention of "whiteness" in the 17th century reshaped our world.
- Movies are back: Looking forward to watching some new movies in theaters this summer!
- Comedian Trevor Noah's 20-minute compilation of Fox News hypocrisy.
- A documentary about Ebrahim Raisi, the front-runner in Iran's presidential election.
- Cartoon of the day: Republicans want to move past January 6, 2021, and onto November 3, 2020! [Image]
- Baby names becoming less popular over the past few years: Karen, Donald, Alexa. Easy to guess why!
- Sayeh Eghtesadinia, researcher, literary critic, and editor, featured as an "inspiring Iranian."
- Persian music: Shahkar Bineshpajooh's concert. [Part 1, 38 minutes] [Part 2, 56 minutes]
- Facebook memory from June 4, 2016: My 5-star review of Shaun Nichols's Free Will and Determinism.
- Facebook memory from June 4, 2011: My 5-star review of Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
(5) "The Clash of Ideologies on Persian Twitter": This is the title of a 22-page working paper by Pooya Azadi of Stanford U. and Mohsen B. Mesgaran of UC Davis, who aim to "provide a data-driven analysis of the Persian Twittersphere from a political perspective to demonstrate how the balance of power in the battle of ideas and ideologies has evolved over time, both in numeric terms and qualitatively."
(6) US housing market's death spiral: A normal housing market is driven by a large number of trade-ups (as incomes and family sizes grow) and trade-downs (empty-nesters, cash-out for supplementing income in retirement). When prices go up while incomes stagnate, people cannot afford to trade up, so they spend money on renovations and expansions. Dearth of trade-ups also makes trading down difficult. With supply dwindling, prices rise further due to competition among buyers, thus worsening the problem. [CA housing price chart]
(7) Final thought for the day: Now that I have been through an actual plague, I totally understand why Italian Renaissance paintings are full of naked fat people laying on couches.
2021/06/03 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Walking along Santa Barbara's Modoc Road on Wednesday 6/02: Before a dinner meeting at Meet Up Restaurant, I walked a couple of miles along Modoc Road, where I discovered a beautiful, almost-completed bike path. I was also impressed by the Emanuel Lutheran Church. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Understanding Computers for Dummies and Understanding Dummies for Computers! [Bottom left & right] Walking today on the side streets of Santa Barbara, between Mission Street and downtown. [Bottom center] Throwback Thursday: Two photos from ~70 years ago. Four uncles, an aunt, and a couple of cousins appear in the photos, alongside my parents and me. The chadors remain a mystery!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Justice served after 5 years: Notorious California child sex-abuser found guilty on 52 counts.
- Facebook memory from June 2, 2020: Main Kurdish dialects are Kurmanji, Sorani, & Pehlewani (Xwarig).
- Facebook memory from June 2, 2019: Graffiti on wall along Tehran's Vali-asr Street. [Photo]
- Facebook memory from June 2, 2017: "Behind the Veil: Women's Rights in Iran," a conversation at UCLA.
- Facebook memory from June 2, 2015: Women with & without the hijab coexisted peacefully in 1970s Iran.
- Facebook memory from June 2, 2011: My 5-star review of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea.
- Facebook memory from June 3, 2015: My 4-star review of David Sedaris's Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls.
- Facebook memory from June 3, 2015: My 4-star review of David Sedaris's Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.
- Facebook memory from June 3, 2014: My 3-star review of Steven Colbert's America Again.
- Facebook memory from June 3, 2011: My 5-star review of M. Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success.
(3) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Mr. Momin Quddus (MSEE, PE) will talk under the title "Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, in Simple Terms," on Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 6:30 PM. [Free registration]
(4) Force of nature: This 2020 landslide in Norway took eight houses into the sea. Watch, in particular, the journey of the big 2-storey white house, as it ends up in the water, pretty much intact. [2-minute video]
(5) Iran's largest warship, built by Britain in 1977, burns and sinks in Gulf of Oman: A day of firefighting efforts could not save the vessel. Twenty of the 400 sailors on board were injured. Cause of the fire is unknown.
(6) Bye-bye Bibi: It appears likely that the Israeli parliament will approve a proposed coalition government, thus ending Netanyahu's long reign after today's vote.
(7) COVID-19 vaccinations at UCSB: In today's meeting of the UCSB Faculty Legislature, it was revealed that 64% of our current students are fully vaccinated; another 8% have gotten the first dose.
(8) This morning, I received word that Facebook has removed the following post of mine, because "it goes against community standards": Seems like Facebook's AI cannot distinguish between anti-Semitic remarks and reporting on such remarks. To Facebook's credit, the post was reinstated minutes after I disputed the decision.
[My Facebook post of May 24, 2021] "Hitler was right": These words, or variations thereof, were tweeted 17,000 times during May 7-14, 2021. [Washington Post]
2021/06/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Cartoons of the day: [Left] Language instruction in ancient Egypt. "It's eye before flea, except after sea." [Center] Ikea water, and cat telling a mouse pointing a pistol at her: "Six rounds. Nine lives. You do the math." [Right] To mock a killing bird: "Oh sure—grab a defenseless fish while he isn't looking. Big tough guy!"
(2) Iran Darroudi is proud of her career as a world-renowned painter: Upon her birth, her dad asked her mom whether all the pain was worthwhile for such an ugly baby. This comment was ingrained in the family's psyche, making the vast success of this remarkable woman even sweeter. [Persian tweet, with video clip]
(3) Blame income & wealth gaps, not other poor people: Poor Americans are being persuaded to hate other poor people (undocumented immigrants, manual laborers in Asia) for causing their problems. The real cause is right here among documented Americans; the rich, many of whom don't even work for a living, and CEOs, who on average make 265 times as much as those working for them. The US has the highest CEO/worker wage ratio is the world. Politicians, who have basically ignored a 10-fold increase in CEO pay over the past four decades, ring alarm bells for measly increases in the minimum wage!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- America's Afghan allies are worried about their fates after US forces depart.
- Drone operation around UCSB campus: UCSB is adjacent to Santa Barbara Airport, so restrictions apply.
- Hoping that someday we'll care about known soldiers as much as we say we do about unknown ones.
- One more cartoon: Iran's Guardians Council starts the presidential race. [Image]
- Let p(x) be a polynomial with integer coefficients. If p(0) = 17 and p(n) = n^2 for some integer n, what is n?
- Facebook memory from June 1, 2011: Human beings are wired for optimism. [Facebook essay]
(5) Telling it like it is: Mostafa Tajzadeh, one of the disqualified candidates in Iran's presidential election, says that one cannot run a country by having a Supreme Leader who issues unrealistic guidelines for the government, without being accountable for the resulting failures. [5-minute video]
(6) State of UCSB's College of Engineering: During this morning's annual college-wide faculty meeting, Dean Rod Alferness and Associate Dean Glenn Beltz presented information about the state of the College and important events over the past two years (the annual meeting was cancelled last year). Despite challenges in the past 1.5 years, the College is healthy in terms of student recruitment, faculty hiring (including improved diversity in both domains), research funding & contributions, and student/faculty awards & honors. [Images]
(7) Today's political puzzle: Why did the Republicans who claimed Antifa and the radical left were behind the January 6 Capitol riot not want an independent commission to confirm their theory?
(8) Disappointment, without action to remove its cause, means nothing: Just as Republican Senator Susan Collins once went ahead and voted with her GOP peers, despite expressing "disappointment" with the process, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is also doing nothing after being "disappointed" with the GOP for its defeat of the proposal for an independent commission to investigate the roots of the 1/06 insurrection.
2021/05/31 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] On this US Memorial Day, we honor the memory of those who fell to protect our freedom: Behind each loss or injury is a person, with interests/aspirations; a loved one to many. Kissing and hugging the flag and wrapping our misguided policies in it are cheap. Doing something tangible for our veterans, including attending to their health-care needs & protecting them from predatory private colleges that mislead them and milk their educational benefits, would be priceless. [Right] Cover image of Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (see the last item below).
(2) Quote of the day: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." ~ Mark Twain
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Inverted democracy in the US (Senate vote on the 1/06 Commission): Yea 54. Nay 35. The nays have it!
- The Texas voting-restrictions bill fails, for now, as Democratic legislators stage a walk-out.
- Happy birthday to Nasrin Sotoudeh, a free-thinker & equality-seeker, who is again behind bars on her BD!
- The largest chalk-art project in Santa Barbara I Madonnari Festival's 35-year history is on KEYT's patio.
- Facebook memory from May 30, 2011: Persian poem commemorating the first Parhami Family Reunion.
- Facebook memory from May 30, 2010: On-line source for creating Persian texts in the Nastaliq script.
(4) Book review: Noah, Trevor, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, One World, 2016.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Trevor Noah is one of the smartest comedians around. His sociopolitical commentaries, though framed as comedy routines, contain many astute observations. So, I looked forward to reading this memoir, whose title alludes to Trevor's mixed-race parents (his dad, Robert, of Swiss-German ancestry; his mom, Patricia, a South-African Xhosa). And I wasn't disappointed.
This story of survival is as much about Trevor as Patricia. Some have characterized Trevor's book as a love letter to his mother, a courageous and resourceful woman, who defied social norms to secure an education and shape a career for herself. It is a nuanced account of growing up in South Africa in the apartheid era, where each person was assigned a race label that determined his/her rights and privileges. The writing is at once powerful, honest, and witty.
Trevor's mother, a religious woman, went to three different churches on Sundays. He and his mother once escaped Zulu men, intent on inflicting harm, by outrunning them. Noah's father was pretty much absent from his life, as he was growing up. But Noah remembers his interactions with his dad fondly, characterizing him as fun, kind, and a source of comfort. By contrast, his stepfather was an epitome of fear and abuse, who eventually shot his mother in the head.
When Trevor, his black mother, and his white dad ventured outside, Patricia would wear a maid's uniform to justify her presence, without getting in trouble. Despite his fond memories of his dad, Trevor was raised and influenced by women: Mom, grandmother, and aunts. Having grown up poor and always going hungry, Patricia had developed skills to keep her children well-fed. Trevor was a naughty boy who always got in trouble, so much so that he was given the nickname "Terror," which sounded like "Trevor." He once caused a house to burn down. When Trevor was 24, his mom told him to go look for his dad.
Romantically, Trevor, quite shy with girls, had at least two heartbreaks. His first girlfriend left him for another man. Later, Trevor hesitated to act with another girl he liked, before she moved away. In time, he learned that being rejected is better than regretting inaction later. Despite being colored, Trevor got opportunities to hang out with white kids, but to no avail, because, even though he was their intellectual peer, he couldn't keep up with them in terms of spending.
Trevor later tried music, DJ-ing in particular, to earn a living. He was also part of a dance group (formed to teach dance moves for the unusual music he played), which included a guy named "Hitler." When his group performed at a Jewish school, Noah realized that putting the spotlight on his friend and shouting "Go Hitler," with their hands pumping in the air, wasn't a smart idea.
Not surprisingly, Noah eventually ended up in jail, where he found out that just pretending to be tough wasn't enough. He tried to ask friends, rather than his mother, for help, but it was his mother who eventually bailed him out. She was the epitome of unconditional love.
Racism was everywhere in Trevor's life. He navigated this racist world by using his knowledge of languages and his education. He credits his mom for guiding him through his life and instilling in him a sense of humor that helped him rise from a hustler to a rich, successful TV performer in the US.
Five-star ratings are rare on Amazon.com, especially ones based on 34,000+ customer reviews, but this is just what Born a Crime has garnered. Well deserved, indeed!
2021/05/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Chained women: This photo is likely staged or manipulated. But in backward patriarchal societies, the chains are there, even if they don't take physical forms. [Top center] Expansion of air travel: Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) announces the addition of direct flights to Chicago. The number of flights has picked up markedly. During my Friday afternoon walk in the vicinity of SBA, I was surprised to see one landing every 2-3 minutes. [Top right] Persian translations of nine literary classics: About to be distributed, according to Maryam Raeesdana, who translated one of the volumes (Twain's The Prince and the Pauper). [Bottom left] Lunch today: Mini-pizzas, made on halved pita breads and barbari slices, with salad. Pizza toppings are green bell peppers and seasoned ground turkey. Your place was empty! [Bottom center] Brutal arrest of an 18-year-old rapper in Borazjan, Iran: Pushed to the ground with a knee on her neck, she kept saying she couldn't breathe. [Bottom right] History of coffee in the East (see the last item below).
(2) Don't tell me the Second Amendment was meant to enable this monstrosity: The San Jose mass-shooter had an arsenal of weapons, 22,000 rounds of ammunition, and multiple gasoline canisters at his home.
(3) President Rouhani was complicit in the regime's crimes. Had no post-nuclear-deal plans. Surrendered to the Revolutionary guards. Allowed Qasem Soleimani to run unchecked. Couldn't end the decade-long house arrests. No progress on citizens' rights. Only saved his own brother from going to jail. [Persian tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Cartoon caption of the day (General, chiding Alexa after nuclear launch): "No, Alexa ... I said order LUNCH!"
- Facebook memory from May 29, 2019: In condemning terrorism & murder, there should be no ifs or buts.
- Facebook memory from May 29, 2018: Appreciate those who rekindle your inner spirit.
- Facebook memory from May 29, 2016: Family reunion. One of the things we did before the pandemic!
(5) Math puzzle: All roots of the partially-specified 29th-degree polynomial x^29 – 29x^28 + ... + ax – 1 are real and positive. What is the value of the coefficient a?
(6) History of coffee: Before Starbucks coffee shops spread like wildfire in the West, coffee houses provided spaces for intellectual discourse and outlets for artists, craftsmen, poets, and performers in the East, as far back as the early-1600s. Before then, clerics had vilified coffee, equating its intoxicating properties with hashish and alcohol. Interestingly, the Yemeni port of Mocha was a focal point for the 15th-century coffee trade, receiving its supplies from the Ethiopian highlands. For details and image descriptions, see Neha Vermani's informative article "Spilling the Beans: The Islamic History of Coffee."
2021/05/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Bill Nye's 2015 book, Unstoppable (see the last item below). [Center] Only one former president of Iran is free to appear on state-controlled media: That's the Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei. Will Hassan Rouhani be murdered like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, join Abolhassan Banisadr as a fugitive, or sit quietly in a heavily-guarded house? Each of the seven candidates for the upcoming election hope to have better fates! [Right] Disqualified Iranian presidential candidate, Mostafa Tajzadeh: You can put me in solitary confinement again, carry out the sentences of my wife and daughter, and re-arrest my other daughter, but you can't take away our dreams! (Tajzadeh is a deputy to President Rouhani, whose administration's governing & human-rights records are quite grim. It seems that even mild criticism from an insider, loyal to the Islamic form of government, is not tolerated by the Supreme Leader and his cronies.)
(2) The Republicans block the establishment of an independent 1/06 Commission: They almost did the same with the 9/11 Commission, and would have succeeded, were it not for the efforts of victims' families.
(3) Joke of the day in Iran: America is so backward! A month after their election, they still didn't know who the next president was. We Iranians know our next president a month before the election!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Syrian President Bashar Assad has been re-elected with 95% of the vote: Let's see if Iran's Raisi can top this!
- Ranger stumbles upon major pre-historic fossil discovery, one of the largest in California history.
- Young female rapper brutally arrested in Borazjan, Iran: Shades of George Floyd, but with no protests!
- The Swan Project: Inspired by Yo Yo Ma, 24 cellists create this 5-minute international performance.
- Persian music: Solo tar performance of a patriotic song, with the ruins of Persepolis in the background.
(5) Dr. Leah Stokes on PBS: On the eve of three monumental developments involving the fossil fuel industry, my UCSB colleague is interviewed about the significance of the new legal verdicts and shareholder revolts.
- A Dutch court rules that Shell must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions at least 45% by 2030.
- An Australian court rules that the government must consider climate impacts in project approvals.
- Shareholders rebuke Exxon & Chevron, for dragging their feet on climate-change action.
(6) Book review: Nye, Bill, Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2015. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") is best known for his 1990s PBS children's science series and advocacy of STEM education. I was hesitant at first to peruse yet another book on climate change, but I ended up learning much from Nye's take on the crisis, which comes with a great deal of scientific information, peppered with his trademark humor. Before bringing his attention to climate change, Nye had written a book about evolution (Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation), another sphere of political bickering and science-bashing.
Nye was trained as an engineer, so his brand of science comes with a thirst for tinkering. Nye's own home is a kind of laboratory, where he experiments with various approaches to becoming "greener." Describing his efforts in this area as "keeping up with the Joneses," referring to one of his neighbors who is also a green-home freak, Nye tells us about renewable energy options and how to reduce our footprint on Earth, without forgoing the spoils of technology.
The "Unstoppable" of the title refers both to the irreversible nature of global warming (a term that has been superseded by the broader "climate change" that's harder to mock by bringing a snowball on the US Senate floor) and the endless talents of innovators, entrepreneurs, engineers, and hard-workers among us. We need not accept that half of our energy is consumed by transportation and that two-thirds of the energy we put in our cars goes to waste through tailpipes.
Writing in his usual upbeat style, Nye strikes hopeful notes, while acknowledging that the problems are serious and in part irreversible. He also does a wonderful job of debunking some of the most-persistent myths about climate change. The book's 35 chapters deal with various sources of renewable energy, energy-storage options, the future of transportation, opportunities for us to become a new "Greatest Generation," political battles, and dealing with climate-change deniers.
2021/05/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Tehran nostalgia: The 1400-seat Radio City Cinema, designed by modernist architect Heydar Ghiai-Chamlou, was built in 1958 on Pahlavi (later, Vali Asr) Avenue, between Takht-e Jamshid Street and Elizabeth II Blvd. It offered the ultimate luxury for its day, and was a prominent meeting place for youth and intellectuals. Because of large glass windows in front, one could see the waiting area and the spiral staircase leading to the balcony section from outside. [Center] Cover image of Dark Matter, a sci-fi novel by Blake Crouch (see the last item below). [Right] Photographing seabirds as they flew overhead during my afternoon stroll along the southern edge of UCSB (on Wednesday, May 26). I have quite a few photos of only the beautiful blue sky, having missed the fast-flying birds during many attempts.
(2) World Music Institute webinar: Las Cafeteras, a celebrated Chicano band out of East LA known for their blend of joyous, multi-faceted music and incisive social consciousness, were joined by Juan Dies, a fellow musician and educator from the ensemble Sones De Mexico, to talk about their music and social activism. I particularly like the band's renditions of "La Bamba" (almost mandatory for a Chicano band) and "Georgia."
(3) "Feminism and Islam" webinar: Brooklyn Institute for Social Research hosts a free on-line event on Tuesday, June 15, 2021, 3:30 PM PDT, which appears to be an introduction to a 4-week course costing $315.
(4) Book review: Crouch, Blake, Dark Matter: A Novel, unabridged audiobook, read by Jon Lindstrom, Random House Audio, 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This best-selling novel is based on parallel universes in which multiple versions of the same individual may exist. Normally, each version is unaware of the other versions, much like a fish in water being unaware of the sky, the hills, and the trees. As you might imagine, crazy things can happen if the multiple versions are allowed to interact. I have read and reviewed Crouch's later novel, Recursion (2019), a time-travel story in which intermixing of memories from multiple "timelines" (dubbed by the media as "False Memory Syndrome") drives people mad, as they experience memories of lives they have never lived.
Jason Desson, a former research scientist, who has settled into an unexceptional college-teaching job in Chicago, is abducted one night and injected with something; he wakes up in a world different from the one in which he was happily married to Daniela and adored their son, Charlie. The rest of the story is about Jason trying to get back to his family, a task made extremely difficult by adversaries and human limitations.
A complementary thread in the story is humans wondering about roads not taken and ramifications of decisions made at key junctures in their lives. For example, Daniela sets aside her ambitions as an artist to form a family with Jason and to take care of their son, Charlie. Jason himself is a brilliant scientist in the alternate world to which he is taken, raising doubts about his decision to abandon a promising research career in favor of a low-stakes teaching job.
Unfortunately, I can't say much more, without spoiling the plot and its many twists. Like any complex plot, designed to intrigue and captivate, this one has holes in it too. Sci-fi writers have a much more difficult task selling plot absurdities to me, a scientist/engineer, but I must say that I was engrossed. Regardless of the science veneer, the story is about a decent man who is wronged and tries valiantly to get his rights back. Dark Matter is a well-written, nail-biting, and cringe-inducing sci-fi story!
P.S.: Crouch is said to have started working on a screenplay to adapt Dark Matter into a feature film (or perhaps a TV series) for Sony Pictures. He talks about his book in this 9-minute video.
2021/05/26 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] "Visions of Equity": This is the title of Time magazine's cover feature in the issue of May 24/31, 2021. Long and short essays, spanning a total of 35 pages, examine various aspects of the equity challenge and paths to their solutions. [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Cows in Greece. [Top right] Grim humor: A father who killed his 'deviant' son, has confessed to murdering his daughter & son-in-law as well. Authorities plan to link the killing of a number of Iranian protesters and dissidents to this man! [Bottom left & center] Last night's gathering with three college buddies and their spouses. [Bottom right] Kabul, Afghanistan, 1972 vs. 2013: Hoping for the best, particularly for Afghan women, as the Taliban regain political power.
(2) Facebook memories from May 25: Mourning vs. celebration of life, 2020; Dedication to front-line workers for their love & caring, 2020; Talented Iranian actresses, Taraneh Alidoosti & Golshifteh Farahani, 2016.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least eight victims and the gunman are dead in mass shooting at San Jose rail yard.
- A man and a woman arrested in Sweden: The Iranian terror suspects are refugees with fake nationalities.
- Dr. Esmaeil Khoei, Iranian intellectual & poet who lived in exile for 30 years, dead at 82. [4-minute video]
- Taliban-like school officials in Florida: Yearbook photos of 80 girls deemed "immodest" were PhotoShopped.
- Cartoon caption: Broom to book: "Relax buddy ... They invented the vacuum cleaner, yet I'm still here."
- Test your math skills with Greek numerals: IV + MMXIX / DCLXXIII × VII
- A tough math puzzle: Is ((1987^2)!)/((1987!)^1988) an integer? [Credit: @SyberMath]
- Dancing around the world. [3-minute video]
- Nine minutes of pure joy: Anneleen Lenaerts plays "The Moldau" (by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana).
- Classical music: Jackie Evancho performs "Lovers" in concert. [5-minute video]
- Persian poetry: A verse by Mir Valehi Qomi that has been elevated to the status of a proverb. [Image]
- Persian music: Pejman Hadadi on tombak and Masoud Rezaei on setar, performing "Cold Autumn."
(4) [Humor] Iran news: To avoid waste of precious resources, the Guardians Council has chosen the next president and directed the Interior Ministry to donate the cost of running an actual election to charity.
(5) Air piracy: Belarus is being condemned and faces economic sanctions for forcing down a passenger plane, by using a fighter jet, in order to arrest an opposition journalist.
(6) Presidential election farce in Iran: The Islamic Republic's Guardians Council disqualifies most presidential candidates, approving a list of seven that excludes former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani, and allies of the outgoing President Hassan Rouhani.
(6) Santa Barbara's I Madonnari 2021 virtual street-painting festival: Artists will be at work as in Memorial Day weekends of years past, but instead of us being able to visit them at the old Santa Barbara Mission, we can tune in by watching feeds from the participants' driveways. [#imadonnari]
2021/05/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] St. Michael's/Mike's Church in the student town of Isla Vista, adjacent to UCSB, photographed on Friday, May 21, 2021. [Center] Meme of the day: Anything war can do peace can do better. [Right] Cover image of Abbas Amanat's Iran: A Modern History (see the last item below).
(2) Recorded deaths in Iran (2018-2020): There are gaps in the data, but the exponential growth due to COVID-19 is evident on the right. The November 2019 peak (coinciding with political unrest & street protests) begs an explanation from the authorities and investigation by international human-rights organizations.
(3) Bob Dylan turns 80 today: He boasts 10 Grammys, 1 Oscar, and a Nobel Prize for creating new poetic expressions in his songs. His songs have been recorded more than 6000 times, including "All Along the Watchtower" (Jimi Hendrix), "Mr. Tambourine Man" (The Byrds), and "Make You Feel My Love" (Adele).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Belarus sends a fighter jet to force a passenger plane to land, in order to arrest an opposition journalist.
- Sasha Johnson, UK Black-Lives-Matter activist, is in critical condition, after being shot in the head.
- The phrase "Hitler was right," or variations thereof, were tweeted 17,000 times in the week May 7-14.
- The sole survivor of a cable-car crash in Italy is a 5-year-old boy who lost his entire family in the crash.
- Johnny Cash's first wife was black: She was portrayed in the movie "Walk the Line" by a white actress.
(5) Book review: Amanat, Abbas, Iran: A Modern History, unabridged audiobook, read by Derek Perkins, Tantor Audio, 2018. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This isn't a history book in the usual sense of the term. Amanat augments historical facts and chronology with cultural and sociological observations to tell us the complex story of a nation that has survived for millennia, despite multiple invasions, occupations, revolutions, civil wars, coups, and inept rulers. The book covers the last 500 years of Iran's history, with emphasis on the 20th century, in four parts, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue.
Part 1. Early modern era, Safavid Empire to the end of the 18th century (1501-1797)
Part 2. Qajar Dynasty, encounters with the European powers, to the Constitutional Revolution (1797-1911)
Part 3. World War I to the end of the Pahlavi era (1914-1977)
Part 4. Shaping of the Islamic Revolution during its first phase (1977-1989)
In fact, the second half of the book perhaps contains too much in way of details of events that may be deemed less important from a historical perspective, even when literature, arts, and culture are blended in. This is an all-too-common occurrence in contemporary historical accounts, given that there are a lot more documents and testimonials describing recent events: Sort of like the drunk looking for his lost keys under a lamp-post, because the lighting is better there!
The book isn't for the faint-hearted. About 42 hours long in its audio version, it is roughly four times as long as the average 11-hour (100,000-word) audiobook. The narrator, Derek Perkins, is a seasoned, award-winning performer, but he fails in his attempts to pronounce names of Persian individuals and geographic locations. This is a minor nuisance, however. I recommend the (audio)book highly.
2021/05/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] To die for: Feta cheese, herbs, cucumbers, along with tea and fresh-baked bread. [Center] Book introduction: Dr. Arzoo Osanloo's book, Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims' Rights in Iran, is the winner of Law and Society Association's 2021 Herbert Jacob Book Prize for new, outstanding work in law and society scholarship. [Right] Iran's "pipe hotel" near the world's largest gas field: Located in Asalouyeh Village of Bushehr Province, southern Iran, Pasarland Hotel's rooms are built of large industrial plastic pipes.
(2) "Plurals in Persian: Mistakes, Disorder, and Consequences": This was the title of yesterday's talk by Kazem Kardavani, as part of the gatherings of Tehran University College of Engineering's Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). Mr. Kardavani began by making it clear that he is neither anti-Arab nor anti-Arabic, but he despises those who needlessly, and often improperly, Arabicize Persian. He presented many examples of both properly-used and improper Arabic plurals within Persian. In many cases, an accepted Arabic word can be pluralized with the Persian suffixes "ha" (inanimate nouns) and "an" (for animate nouns), although "ha" can be used for animate subjects as well. Note that English too has borrowed a large number of words from other languages, using its own rules for constructing plurals and other compound forms. Mr. Kardavani also referred to an important recent Persian language dictionary, the 8-volume Farhang-e Bozorg-e Sokhan (by Dr. Hassan Anvari).
[Recording of the talk (link forthcoming)] [Images and Persian abstract]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Cable-car plummets in northern Italy, landing in an inaccessible wooded area and killing at least 13.
- Hail, freezing rain, and gale-force winds kill 21 ultra-marathon runners in northwestern China.
- Facebook memory from May 23, 2019: Recent history of Iran played out on the cover of Time magazine.
- Bitcoin loses 50% of its value: Correction in the cryptocurrency's price may not be over.
(4) Ten days of mild, sunny weather ahead in Goleta: Other than continued absence of rain, air quality (52, moderate) is the only point of concern. There are no fires nearby, as far as I can tell. The poor air quality could be due to lingering smoke & ash from #LomaFire of a couple of days ago. [10-day forecast]
(5) The Persian heritage of Barbara Pravi, hailed as the new Edith Piaf: She participated in the Eurovision competition under the flag of France. [Story starts at the 6:30 mark of this 12-minute video]
(6) Roya Hakakian "nearly" thanks Donald Trump for his extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric that inspired her to write A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious in defense of immigration!
(7) Republicans and science: Is climate change a genuine threat to humanity? "I don't know, I'm not a scientist!" Do you agree that a fetus turns into a baby at 24 weeks? "Yeah, may be even at 6 weeks!"
(8) Tulsa race massacre's 100th anniversary: Dubbed "The Negro Wall Street," the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the richest black neighborhood in America, until a white mob burned it down in an act of hatred and jealousy on Memorial Day in 1921. Suspected mass graves in the area are being excavated for clearing up the story once and for all, perhaps even identifying the dead through genealogical/DNA matching. [CBS "60 Minutes" story, aired on Sunday, May 23, 2021; 13-minute video]
2021/05/21 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The four main kinds of bread used in Iran: Barbari, lavash, sangak, and taftoon. [Center] Math puzzle: Side lengths of a pentagon are given and one of the angles is 90 degrees. What is the radius of the circle? [Right] Today's Zoom talk by singer/visual-artist Azam Ali (see the last item below).
(2) IEEE Computer Society's Distinguished Lecturer webinars: I will be offering an international webinar under the title "Eight Key Ideas in Computer Architecture from Eight Decades of Innovation" on September 30, 2021, 11:00 AM EDT (8:00 AM PDT). Here is a complete list of all webinars scheduled thus far.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump Justice Department seized phone & e-mail records of three Washington Post and a CNN reporter.
- How to bring the GOP on board re January 6 comission: Name it "How Benghazi Led to the Capitol Riot."
- The fast-moving #LomaFire, now under control, burned Thursday night on TV Hill, overlooking SB Harbor.
- El Salvador horror story: Eight pits full of murdered women (40, so far) found in ex-cop's backyard.
- US Library of Congress offers free access to its on-line treasury of handwritten & other rare Persian books.
- Iranian women continue their brave acts of civil disobedience: A woman dances on a street in Tehran.
- Persian music: "Beyond the Quarantine," a musical collaboration of Tehran Philharmonic Orchestra.
(4) Consequences of incompetence: Jared Kushner's Middle East fantasy, which he grandiosely called "The Abraham Accords" as he congratulated himself in a Wall Street Journal piece two months ago, finally explodes. He viewed the bloody, decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine as a mere "real estate dispute."
(5) Persian comedy skit: Making fun of an Iranian mullah who said my wife is exclusively mine and should not speak more than five words on the phone to another man: (Hello) Yes ... (Is your husband home?) No ... (When will he back?) I don't know ... (hangs up).
(6) UCLA/Farhang-Foundation event: Entitled "Azam Ali: An Allegory of Belief, Truth, Power, and Resistance Art," today's talk consisted of a 50-minute presentation by singer/visual-artist Azam Ali and ~30 minutes of moderated Q&A. Music by Azam Ali and her band "Niyaz" is available on YouTube.
Ms. Ali spoke of the three phases of her life as an immigrant, which have shaped her identity. She was only 4 when she was taken from Iran to India, later moving to the US. The three phases are disconnection, assimilation, and reclamation. Her artistic path in the male-dominated, hyper-sexualized music industry was further complicated by her Middle-Eastern origins.
Ms. Ali showed one of the first music videos she made and an example of her recent work, which involved multiple projectors to create the background.
Recording of this interesting event will be made available at a later time.
2021/05/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Dr. Farinaz Koushanfar, yesterday's IEEE CCS speaker (see the next item below). [Center & Right] Today's Stanford U. webinar by Dr. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan (see the last item below).
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section Zoom technical talk: Dr. Farinaz Koushanfar (Professor of ECE and Henry Booker Faculty Scholar, UCSD) spoke last evening under the title "Machine Learning on Encrypted Data: Hardware to the Rescue." Dr. Koushanfar's research addresses aspects of efficient computing and embedded systems, with a focus on system and device security, safe AI, privacy-preserving computing, as well as real-time/energy-efficient AI under resource constraints, design automation, and reconfigurable computing. Professor Koushanfar has been widely honored for her research, mentorship, teaching, and outreach activities. [Read more]
(3) Anti-Israel sentiments diverted to anti-Semitism: Statement by Iranian-American Jewish Federation of Los Angeles about pro-Palestinian protesters attacking & injuring three Iranian-American Jews at a restaurant.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Israel-Hamas cease-fire: Hamas fired 4000 rockets at Israel, which in turn demolished buildings in Gaza.
- Capitol rioter's lawyer says other rioters fell for Trump's big lie owing to their limited mental capacity!
- Rusting oil-storage tanker off the coast of Yemen threatens a humanitarian and environmental disaster.
- Michelle Obama's Secret-Service agent says she felt helpless in protecting her from racist attacks.
- Humor: Bill introduced by the GOP to make January a 30-day month; Jan. 6 to be removed from all records.
- Puzzle: Two sides of a triangle are 181 & 180 and its area is 1710. What is the length of the third side?
- Throwback Thursday: Photo of me taken by my uncle Mashallah more than six decades ago (1950s).
(5) "The Economic Cost of the Islamic Revolution and War for Iran": This was the title of a Stanford University webinar by Dr. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan (Phillipps U. Marburg, Germany). Constructing a synthetic Iran as a weighted average of other MENA/OPEC countries not undergoing revolutions or wars, Dr. Fazanegan's study estimates that, as a result of the 1979 revolution and the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iran's per-capita GDP plunged by $3150 (constant 2010 US dollars), a 40% loss in relative terms. Country weights were chosen to best match Iran's economic parameters just before the Islamic Revolution. There are many other elements of loss, such as life expectancy, income equality, and satisfaction with life, that are not considered in this study. Use of alternate weights and sensitivity studies have confirmed the robustness of the study's conclusions.
The Q&A period brought many comments and questions about whether the model used in this study does, or can be used to, differentiate between the economic effects on regional, urban/rural, and gender grounds. How much of the drop is due to brain drain? What have been the impacts of corruption and economic sanctions?
My question (unanswered due to lack of time): I read many years ago (the source escapes me) that the Iranian economy was due for a collapse, even in the absence of the Islamic Revolution. Am I correct to deduce that your study contradicts this assessment? After submitting this question, I realized that Dr. Farzanegan's model actually confirms the assessment, at least in part. His synthetic-Iran GDP curve plunges by ~$2700 (from $10,000 to $7300) in the decade between 1977 and 1987. The Revolution and war weren't the sole source of the fateful plunge, but they more than doubled its extent.
[Dr. Farzanegan's 2020 paper in Defense and Peace Economics (Taylor & Francis), key source for this talk.]
2021/05/18 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ninety years later: Women physicists include a single man in their group photo to make a point. [Top center] Two mind-blowing math identities and a math puzzle asking for the sum of the angles alpha and beta, without using trigonometry. [Top right] Same guys, same car, fifty years later! [Bottom left] A historical monument in Sri Lanka: The Sigiriya fortress complex includes remnants of a ruined palace, surrounded by an extensive network of fortifications, gardens, ponds, canals, alleys, and fountains. [Bottom center] Persian calligraphy: This sample has been written with a ball-point pen, which is quite an accomplishment! [Bottom right] Cover image of Jane Goodall's Reasons for Hope (see the last item below).
(2) New York AG's office has informed the Trump Organization that their investigation is no longer purely civil but has moved into a criminal phase, in collaboration with the Manhattan DA's office.
(3) World Music Institute free concert: Las Cafeteras, a celebrated Chicano band out of East LA known for their blend of joyous, multi-faceted music and incisive social consciousness, will be joined by Juan Dies, a fellow musician and educator from the ensemble Sones De Mexico. Thursday, May 27, 2021, 3:00 PM PDT. [Register]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Bill Gates wanted a Nobel Prize badly: He allegedly viewed Jeffrey Epstein as his ticket to getting the Prize.
- Iran's presidential candidates promise to fix all: But they've been in various positions of power for decades!
- Persian music: Link to singer Sonbol Taefi's music on Spotify.
- Quote: "... ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have." ~ James Baldwin
(5) Book review: Goodall, Jane (with Phillip Berman), Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Hachette Audio, 1999. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is a combination of Goodall's autobiography and her philosophy of life/work. The autobiographical part is well-known and is covered in multiple books by Goodall and others. I have previously consulted Jane Goodall: Animal Scientist (by Katherine Krohn) and Jane Goodall: Finding Hope in the Wilds of Africa (by Diana Briscoe) to learn about her life, in connection with my review of Harvest for Hope. Highlights of her life include yearning to travel to Africa, training to become a secretary, going to visit a friend in Africa, getting to work for the famous anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey as an assistant, and studying chimpanzees in the wild.
What's new in this volume is Goodall laying out her reasons for hope that we will prevail, despite what appear to be insurmountable challenges, both within and without our human selves. Goodall presents four reasons for being hopeful about the future of our planet and of humanity.
- The endless energy & commitment of our youth
- The extraordinary human brain
- The amazing resilience of nature
- The indomitable human spirit
More recently, Goodall has added the global reach & power of social media as a fifth important reason for hope.
2021/05/17 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Twelve-year-old Diego Frazzo Turkato weeps at his music teacher's funeral, playing a favorite song of the teacher who saved him from poverty and despair. [Center] Calendar-Page Daily Puzzles for May 16 and 17. [Right] Hats off to women fighting misogyny and human-rights abuses worldwide: Nasrin Sotoudeh and Loujain Hathloul are prominent imprisoned human/women's rights activists in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saba Kord Afshari goes on hunger strike in prison to save her mother from imprisonment and other pressures typically exerted on family members of political prisoners in Iran.
(2) "Picture a Scientist": A feature-length documentary chronicling the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. A biologist, a chemist, and a geologist lead us on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, overcoming brutal harassment, institutional discrimination, and years of subtle slights to revolutionize the culture of science. From cramped laboratories to spectacular field stations, we also encounter scientific luminaries who provide new perspectives on how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all. [Directed by Ian Cheney and Sharon Shattuck; 97 minutes; 2020]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sightings of UFOs in the US airspace more or less confirmed. [14-minute segment on CBS "60 Minutes"]
- Bill Gates allegedly asked women out at Microsoft and his foundation while married to Melinda.
- The Capitol riot was an insurrection: It wasn't a "love-fest," where people kissed and hugged the police!
- Apparently, learning about slavery (racism education) is "un-American," whereas slavery itself wasn't!
- Sure-fire test to tell whether a mask-less person is vaccinated: Ask him/her who won the 2020 election!
- Combined cooking/language instruction: How to cook crack and clean a crab. Step 1: Use commas!
- A vast collection of music files and audiobooks from Iran's Center for Children & Youth is available for free.
- Persian dance: Melieka Fathi Dance Company, presented by Farhang Foundation. [x-minute video]
- Word puzzle: Arrange the letters of "BEST RATING" into two 5-letter words that are synonyms.
(4) 'Plurals in Persian: Mistakes, Disorder, and Consequences": This will be the title of a talk by Kazem Kardavani on Saturday, May 22, 2021, 10:00 AM PDT, as part of the meetings of Tehran U. College of Engineering's Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). Anyone interested in attending please message me for the Zoom link.
(5) Iran unveils a 0.5 petaflops supercomputer: Installed at Tehran's Amirkabir University, the Simorgh supercomputer will be upgraded to 1 petaflops in two months.
(6) I posted this comment on a Facebook statement (attributed to Noam Chomsky) which claimed Israel isn't defending itself but is committing murder, because the population it attacks with its sophisticated air force and navy does not have an air force or a navy: This statement is extremely misleading. ISIS did not have an air force or a navy. Neither did Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Hamas has provably fired missiles at Israel from schools, medical clinics, and other non-military sites, using mobile missile launchers. I am not trying to justify all actions of the Israeli military, but misleading statements do not help in this conflict. This story is from 2014.
2021/05/16 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Seasons of a tree: The same tree photographed in spring, summer, fall, and winter. [Top center] Fun summation identities (credit: Andrzej Kukla, @mathinity) and a geometric puzzle: Try your math skills by proving the identities. In the diagram with two squares and two triangles, find the area of the triangle at the top. [Bottom row] World maps, centered at or focused on North & South Poles: Change of perspective is often helpful. Here's a NASA site, with potentially hours of fun for map enthusiasts.
(2) A car that went over the cliffs yesterday, landing on the beach near our house: The driver was unhurt and reportedly ran away after the plunge. The car was hoisted with a crane and taken away this morning.
(3) Digital Slavery: To celebrate its 75th anniversary, IEEE Computer Society ran a Member Essay Contest with prizes of $1000, $500, and $250. Winning essays will be published. Submission deadline for short (500-650 words) essays that delve into the impacts of technology on society was 2021/05/14. You can read my entry, submitted on 2021/05/08, below. I will share with you the results, when known.
Digital Slavery: The Dark Side of Ubiquitous Connectivity and Big Data
For centuries, scientists, technologists, and other thinkers have worried about abuses of technology to inflict harm by fighting deadlier wars, crushing citizens' demands for civil liberties, and shutting people out of the democratic process. More recently, abusing data for political manipulation and illicit financial gain has been added to the old concerns, as aptly discussed in two recent books, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (my review on GoodReads) and Weapons of Math Destruction (my review on GoodReads).
Big data, and the abuses it engenders, are front-and-center in our social discourse. Major news outlets and tech magazines run regular features on cyber-security, or lack thereof, identity theft, bias in machine-learning algorithms, and other artifacts of our digital society. Even though there is a dearth of action plans, and political will, to address the resulting problems, we can take comfort in the fact that we at least know the challenges and, in time, will be able to devise strategies to deal with them.
This brings me to an even more-serious problem, which is, for the most part, invisible, even to us computer scientists and engineers. Let me call it "digital slavery." Just as owners of African slaves 150-400 years ago controlled the lives of their workers and strived to keep them dependent on their masters for food and shelter, so too "digital masters" try to make us dependent on services they offer. These services may not be as essential to us as food and shelter were to physical slaves, but, through a combination of advertising and coercion, we are led to believe that we can't live without them.
Let me cite an example. Big-data hoarders try to convince us that giving them access to our location information carries major benefits for us. They tell us that if we share our location with them, their apps can suggest nearby restaurants that we like, share points of interest, or direct us to the least-expensive gas station. They sell our data to businesses that happen to be nearby, while pretending that they are offering us a service we could not live without.
At a macro level, our location data over the course of a month or a year reveals much about where we work, shop, dine, bank, get haircuts, and so on. Besides merchants looking to make a buck by selling us what we might need, there are predatory businesses that plot to sell us things we might not need, but that earn them high profits. One example is payday loans, which are loans with short terms, perhaps just a few days, until the date of the borrower's next paycheck. The loans carry astronomical interest rates, as high as 500% annually. Many people taking out payday loans are not able to pay them back on time, so the short-term loan turns into long-term debt that keeps on growing exponentially.
Degree or certificate programs of for-profit colleges constitute another example. People who are jobless or who have fallen on hard times are easy targets for overblown promises of lucrative jobs once they enroll, aided by government grants and/or loans. Very often, graduates of such programs cannot find jobs that pay well, getting themselves into deeper holes after exhausting their resources and being burdened with new debt.
Of course, the same technologies that allow the targeting of vulnerable individuals can also help protect them against predators. Information abounds on-line about predatory businesses, but most victims of such businesses do not possess the know-how or time and other resources to avail themselves of such information. In an alarming case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, inequities continue to grow and the digital divide widens, as predators use their greater digital skills and resources to control their digital slaves.
Let's strive to abolish digital slavery by building broad and well-fortified bridges across the digital divide!
2021/05/15 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Kailasa temple in Maharashtra, India: Carved out of a single rock, this largest monolithic structure in the world was built in the 8th century during the reign of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I. [Top center] Mourning a loss for Afghanistan and the world: A classroom in the girls' school where 85 were killed by a car-bomb. [Top right] The narrowest city in the world: Built along the sheer cliffs of the Guanhe River Gorge in China's Hunnan Province, Zhaotong City is interconnected mostly by bicycle and scooter roads, with a single tiny pedestrian/bike bridge spanning the river. Not surprisingly, the river is the main mode of transportation for people and goods. [Bottom left] Church of San Giovanni Battista, Mogno, Switzerland (1996): Designed by architect Mario Botta, the durable, rocky building replaced the hamlet's 17th-century church, which was flattened by an avalanche in 1986. [Bottom center & right] My walk on the Ellwood Bluffs & Butterfly Grove: After a few days of shorter or no walks, due to a combination of paper submission/revision deadlines and less-than-perfect weather, today I decided to take a very long walk. Here are a couple of selfies and some of the wildflowers I encountered on the Bluffs and at the Grove on this beautiful, sunny day.
(2) ADL reports anti-Semitic incidents at anti-Israel events in Europe: It goes without saying that anti-Semitism is detestable, regardless of one's political views on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars: Makes history by becoming the second nation with a Mars rover.
- Campus by the Sea: UC Santa Barbara in the 1960s, a 19-minute historical tour.
- "The Unsung Poetry of Kurdish Women": Talk by Prof. Farangis Ghaderi, Fri. July 16, 2021, 1:00 PM PDT.
- Are you brave enough to try this ride in China? [3-minute video]
- Persian music: A nice rendition of Mohammad Nouri's signature song "Iran, Iran." [4-minute video]
- Persian music: A famous kids-TV-series theme, performed with humorous lyrics and voice impressions.
- Iranian regional music: A southeastern song played with bagpipes (different from the Scottish version).
(4) Our brain views well-designed, properly-used tools as body extensions, not regular objects: An article in Neuroscience confirms the theory that the human brain handles tools differently from other objects. If you grab a fork by the prongs, however, it becomes just an object, not a body extension. This difference in processing explains why/how proficient use of hand-held tools distinguishes us from our closest relatives among primates.
(5) Things are slowly getting back to normal: Before going on my walk this afternoon, I had lunch with the kids at Mesa Berger in Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace. All the restaurants in the area were jam-packed. After my return, I relaxed at a Starbucks coffee shop, doing some light work (making up for several super-busy days) and listening to the wonderful music of David Tovar. In this video, Tovar plays Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire."
2021/05/14 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iran's history: Arg-e Bam (Bam Citadel), located in the city of Bam, Kerman Province, Iran, dates back to at least the Achaemenide Empire (~2500 years ago). [Top center] Ardeshir Papakan Palace: Located in the old town of Firuzabad, Iran, the palace of King Ardashir I, the founder of the Sasanid Empire, was built opposite Ardashir Khureh, the city he had founded. [Top right] Turkey's history: The cave residences of Cappadocia, some of which have been turned into a cave hotel. [Bottom left] IranWire.com cartoon: The beheading of a gay Iranian young man by his family. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: The little drummer boy, with his Energizer batteries taken out! [Bottom right] Iranwire.com cartoon: Khamenei will be getting a new shield in Iran's June presidential election.
(2) Netanyahu and Trump enabled the current hate campaign in Israel and Palestine: By indulging religious zealots in Israel and crushing all Palestinian hopes for a two-state solution, the hate-mongering pals stoked the flames of violence that erupted a couple of weeks ago. Now, Netanyahu, who was on his way out, is using the violence as a pretext to staying in power and Trumpists are blaming Biden for his complacency. [Map]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Scientists predict a COVID-19 surge in winter, with possible lockdown and travel restrictions. [Newsweek]
- Talk about projection! Trump calls Liz Cheney a 'bitter, horrible human' after her ouster as a GOP leader.
- Facebook memory from May 14, 2010: A puzzle involving a hiker's ascent and his descent the next day.
- Facebook memory from May 14, 2012: Iran, the land of inverted words. [In English and Persian]
- Selected verses from Azeri poet Shahriar's ghazal #129 on ganjoor.net. [Tweet, with the two verses]
(4) Ferdowsi Day Celebration: Tonight's highly informative and enjoyable 2.5-hour event was attended by ~125 participants on Zoom, plus additional attendees through YouTube Live. [Recording] [Event page]
Dr. Afshin Sepehri served as moderator and provided helpful commentaries before and after each speaker.
Ms. Mahnaz Dinyari welcomed the attendees on behalf of the event's sponsor, California Zoroastrian Center, and closed the meeting at the end.
Panelists/speakers included Dr. Mohammad-Reza Chaichi (Cal Poly Pomona), Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (U. Maryland & UCLA), Gordafarid (epic-poetry reciter), and Dr. Khodadad Kaviani (Central Washington U., music composer). A number of film clips (including one about the design and construction of Ferdowsi's magnificent tomb) were shown and a music ensemble played several pieces, combined with poetry recitation.
A common theme stressed by multiple speakers is Shahnameh being more than stories of epic battles and historical intrigue; it is a book of wisdom, which advises us to be ethical and kind. Ferdowsi is often referred to by the title "hakim" ("polymath"), rather than poet. Some 130 Persian proverbs are derived from Shahnameh. Ferdowsi and his Shahnameh played key roles in preserving the Persian language and culture, leading Iranians to cultural victories amid repeated battleground defeats.
Shahnameh emphasizes "kherad" ("wisdom"). Unlike Mowlavi/Rumi, Ferdowsi did not write about religion, but he did borrow from Avesta and offered advice very similar to Mowlavi's. He also provided the inspiration for Sa'adi's famed "bani-adam a'zaa-ye yek peikarand" ("human beings are members of a whole") poem. Even amid descriptions of battle scenes, Ferdowsi dispenses advice on how to live and how to treat others.
One reason for the outsize influence of Shahnameh, even among people who are illiterate, is the role played by epic-poetry reciters ("nagh'als"). Gordafarid, one of the very few female epic-poetry reciters, read and interpreted the story of Tahmineh's love for Rostam, to introduce the audience to the lesser-known love stories in Shahnameh. Rostam encountered Tahmineh and made love to her, without the two being married. This interpretation is consistent with other passages in Shahnameh, where Sohrab does not know who his father is. There are versions of Shahnameh, however, where verses have been added to the effect of Rostam asking Tahmineh's father for his daughter's hand in mariage.
2021/05/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Iran's Kurdistan: Images of Dalahoo, a historically-signficant region near the western city of Kermanshah, and a song by that name, performed by Hossein Safamanesh (more photos). [Bottom left] Sea glass of many colors. [Bottom center] The May 2021 issue of IEEE Computing Edge reports on the article described in the next item below. [Bottom right] Paradise: Himalayan Valley of Flowers.
(2) Automatic kinship analysis: Algorithmic face recognition is already old news! Now, researchers are working on identifying people in photos who have kin relationships. Claimed applications include forensic investigations, family photo-album organization, social-media analysis, and missing-person cases.
S. Wang, Z. Ding, and Y. Fu, "Cross-Generation Kinship Verification with Sparse Discriminative Metric," IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 41, No. 11, pp. 2783-2790, 2019.
(3) Elon Musk and Tesla come to their senses: "Cryptocurrencey is a good idea ... but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment ... Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin ... We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use < 1% of Bitcoin's energy/transaction."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's Pentagon chief: The President told me to pull out all the stops to protect January 6 protesters.
- A former federal prosecutor says Donald Trump may be about to face some serious legal heat.
- Actress Phylicia Rashad named Dean of College of Fine Arts at Howard University.
- Math puzzle: If n is a positive integer, show that n + 3 and n^2 + 3 cannot both be perfect cubes.
(5) U. Chicago study of 10,000+ tech workers who went remote: Total hours worked increased by ~30%, including an 18% rise in working after business hours. Productivity fell by ~20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably. Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and one-on-one time with supervisors.
(6) Final thought for the day: If you want to condemn violence in Israel and Palestine, don't forget Iran as financial and military supporter of Hamas and other Islamic militants, by giving them tons of cash and replacing the stones they used to throw at Israelis with missiles. [Persian Facebook post by Mehrnoush Mousavi]
2021/05/12 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Monument in memory of Michelle Obama's ancestor, Melvinia Shields, who was born a slave five generations ago: Yes, we have come a long way in achieving racial equity, but we still have a lot further to go! [Top center] Persian love poetry: The top couplet is from Ghaa'aani; the bottom one is from Haatef Esfahaani. [Top right] Thanks to the efforts of some of my neighbors, we now have a neighborhood mini-library in our housing complex. [Bottom left] Conversation with Roya Hakakian about her memoir, Journey from the Land of No (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Today, I had 8 hours of non-stop office hours, meetings, and webinars: The signs made for me by my daughter came in handy! [Bottom right] Conversation with Patrisse Cullor about her memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist (see the next item below).
(2) "When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir": This was the title of a book conversation with Patrisse Cullors, culminating the "UCSB Reads 2021" program. The book had been chosen as a vehicle for campus and community discussion on issues of race and bias. Various panels and other meetings were held earlier this year and instructors were encouraged to incorporate the book into their syllabi, where appropriate. Deliberations for choosing a book for "UCSB Reads 2022" program are already underway.
I used the book in my ECE 254B course on parallel processing during winter 2021, where students were asked, in connection with their research papers dealing with the immense computational requirements of machine-learning, to provide commentaries on direct and indirect effects of ML/AI on humans: Fairness, bias, and security/reliability/safety. [My 5-star review of the book on GoodReads]
Ms. Cullors began with an opening statement, in which she acknowledged those who contributed to her passion for social justice. She then answered questions about particular events in the book. Among the topics discussed were challenges Ms. Cullor faced in school, her relationship with her brothers, who were very protective of her, her coming-out experience, police abuse of disabled blacks, and the future of the BLM movement.
(3) Happy International Nurses Day! Always important and worthy of celebration, the May 12 occasion, marking the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth, has gained greater significance since 2020, as nurses' selfless service has helped us deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Hats off to you all!
(4) "Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran": This was the title of today's Stanford University conversation with Roya Hakakian about her 2004 memoir (by the same title), which contains not only her own experiences in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran, but also those of her father.
Hakakian began by stating that her own brush with anti-Semitism pales in comparison with her father's, who was barred from attending school on rainy days, because the rain could spread the filth of a non-Muslim to Muslims. Despite horrific tales of anti-Semitism, there are also heartwarming stories of friendships between Jews and non-Jews. When older Jews received or observed unjust treatment, they would not speak up, advising others around them to keep quiet as well and let the incident pass. This hush-hush attitude was bothersome to younger Jews.
Hakakian attended a Jewish school for girls, which had always been run by Jewish administrators. One day, a veiled Muslim woman showed up as the new principal, instituting an hour-long daily session about morality and religion, during which she spoke with a monotone, boring voice. The new principal would ask students whether religion should be something that children inherit from their parents or a matter of their own choosing, hinting at the desirability of the girls accepting Islam.
When Hakakian and a group of friends were arrested for political activism, they were let go, rather than be jailed. In this instance the stereotypical image of Jews as being interested only in money and education was actually helpful to them! In the years after the Revolution, when the Iran-Iraq war broke out, people were so busy managing their daily lives (acquiring war-time food and fuel rations), that everything else, including relations between people of different faiths, took a back seat.
The word "no" in the book's title signifies the life of a girl in Iran. Hakakian mentioned that it was rare for her to hear "yes" regarding anything she wanted to do. Other women memoirists have also written about immediate responses like "girls can't do that" or "girls shouldn't do that" to whatever they aspired to do. I look forward to reading Hakakian's latest book, A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious.
My comment, which Hakakian let go with a chuckle: Jews' experiences in post-revolutionary Iran were shaped by their expectations. Older Jews were just happy they were allowed to live. Young Jews were more idealistic and couldn't stomach discrimination. This leaves middle-aged Jews like me, who were caught between the previous two groups!
2021/05/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] I am excited about the book I bought from Ikea! [Center] Cartoon of the day: The very first senior moment in recorded history occurred for a dinosaur couple who missed Noah's boat. [Right] Channeling M. C. Escher: Wonderful photo from 3cm's Facebook page.
(2) An explosive mix of gun culture and toxic masculinity: Six adults and the gunman die in mass-shooting by a boyfriend of one of the victims. Thoughts and prayers, with no meaningful action, once again!
(3) Techno-racism: Last night's episode of "United Shades of America" on CNN was about racism embedded in technology and lack of representation in STEM, or how "Jim Code" has replaced "Jim Crow."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Death toll in Afghanistan's car-bomb attack on a girls' school rises from 55 to 85.
- Another "Schrodinger's Cat" cartoon? That joke's been done to death. Or has it? [Credit: Bizarro.com]
- Ferdowsi Day Celebration: Live on Zoom and YouTube. Friday, May 14, 2021, beginning at 6:00 PM PDT.
- A beautiful Eastern melody: Lola Astanova plays Esin Engin's "Lovebird." [4-minute video]
- Persian music: A nice arrangement and rendition of the old song "Dokhtar-e Kowli" ("Gypsy Girl").
(5) Did some weeding this afternoon: Had to stop after much heavy-duty pulling of tree-size weeds, leaving the rest of the work for another day. I am pretty sure that if I try to plant trees, they won't grow to twice the height of my patio's enclosing wall, as some of the weeds did on their own! The flowers in these photos are from my rose bushes, which I trimmed. Not too long ago, I weeded both of my patios completely in one afternoon. Alas, my energy and flexibility have declined.
(6) Purging Liz Cheney is political suicide for the GOP: Republicans are already in the minority, so to win presidential elections, they need support from the entire party, plus a good chunk of independent voters. Cutting off the likes of Liz Cheney, and their supporters, is tantamount to political suicide at the national level, although they probably think it will help them in local, state-level politics.
(7) I condemn violence against the Palestinians: But, unlike those showing just this one side of the story, I'd like to share with you ADL's statement highlighting Israel's right to defend itself against missile attacks.
(8) Not all Trump supporters are crooks, but quite a few crooks support Trump: "Students for Trump" founder sentenced to jail for posing as a lawyer. At 25, he claimed to have 10+ years of experience working in law!
(9) Iran's continued mistreatment of women activists: Saba Kord Afshari and her mother, kept in separate prisons and not allowed to meet, threaten hunger strike in support of abused families of political prisoners.
2021/05/09 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Mothers' Day! Here are a couple of verses from Parvin E'tessami's beautiful poem entitled "The Story of Love," dedicated to all mothers, as we honor them on this special day. [Center] Book introduction: Elaheh Kheirandish's Baghdad and Isfahan: A Dialogue of Two Cities in an Age of Science, ca. 750-1750. [Right] Masih Alinejad's The Wind in My Hair (see the last item below).
(2) Surprise visit to my mom: I showed up unannounced, with Rusty's pepperoni pizza (my mom's favorite kind) to celebrate Mothers' Day with her. She didn't expect a visit, because we had had lunch yesterday, in a joint celebration of my daughter's birthday and Mothers' Day at Nikka Fish Market & Grill. [Photos]
(3) Quote of the day: "The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught." ~ Anonymous
(4) Book review: Alinejad, Masih (with Kambiz Forouhar), The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran, unabridged audiobook, read by Linda Henning, Hachette Audio, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads] Read 2021/05/01-07
From the tiny village of Qomi Kola (or Ghomikola) with a few hundreds of residents in Iran's Mazandaran Province to the bustle of the megapolis that is New York City, Alinejad's life has been lined with adventure, norm-breaking, and courage in the face of repressive authority. This book, Alinejad's fifth (after Tahasson, Taj-e Khar, I Am Free, and Gharar-e Sabz), is an autobiography which covers the whole gamut, from her humble beginnings as a village girl to one of the best-known Iranian journalists and women's-rights activists. She knew little English when she first moved to the West, but that didn't stop her from speaking and writing passionately about the plight of Iranian women.
Alinejad's youth in Qomi Kola, growing up in a religiously conservative family, held the beginnings of her rebellion. Faced with pronouncements such as "girls can't/shouldn't do that," she always found a way to do just what she wanted to do, and often got in trouble for it. She was arrested for being a member of a political group, got pregnant before her official wedding ceremony (although, she was legally married at the time), and never really accepted the hijab her family and society forced on her. She and her husband moved to Tehran, where he unceremoniously divorced her, because he was in love with another woman, and denied her custody of their son.
As a single woman, with limited visitation rights to her son, Alinejad worked at a variety of jobs, eventually landing a position with a reformist newspaper and became famous for her interviews with members of parliament and other regime officials, exposing hypocrisy and corruption. She gained a large number of enemies as a result, but also found allies who would feed her information they would not dare expose themselves. Alinejad was essentially playing with fire, and was told so by powerful men and Iran's security apparatus in no uncertain terms. Repeated court summons and interrogations ensued.
When, in the wake of Iran's contested 2009 presidential election, conflict between conservatives and reformists intensified, Alinejad found herself out of a job. Throughout her ordeals, her brother Ali was supportive, but her parents kept their distance because of her "shaming the family." Ali eventually paid a high price for his support (recently, after this book's publication, he was arrested and jailed). Meanwhile, Alinejad conducted a large set of interviews with families of those killed in the street protests that ensued after the fraudulent 2009 presidential election, meticulously archiving her material.
Alinejad ended up in the West, having traveled with a single suitcase, with no prospects of returning to Iran or seeing her family, including her son, she began using her sources to do on-line posts about the events in Iran. After her former husband remarried and didn't want anything to do with their son, she managed to arrange his transportation to England, where they were reunited. But things didn't get any easier. She would still be threatened by Iranian authorities, who leveled false accusations and published defamatory "exposes" against her. She was later affected by Trump's travel ban against Muslims, crushing her hopes of bringing her son from England to the US or even visiting him there, for fear of not being able to return to the US.
The book's title is a reference to Iranian women's yearning to walk freely, with the wind in their hairs, in the face of mandatory hijab laws that force them to wear inconvenient and restricting coverings, even in Iran's scorching summer heat. Faced with a brutal crackdown by the "morality police," who stop them and rough them up, women rebel in various small ways, such as defiantly leaving some of their hair out of the covering, removing their scarves when it is safe to do so (such as during hikes and other nature trips), and turning the restrictive clothing into fashion statements, with color and style. As New York Times put it in the title of its review of this book, Alinejad is "The Woman Whose Hair Frightens Iran."
Alinejad has made it clear on many occasions that she isn't against the hijab per se, only against it being compulsory. She wants to be able to walk freely with her mother, a veiled woman, in the West, without her mother enduring scornful looks, and walk together on the streets of Iran, without Alinejad herself being arrested. She has some very harsh words for Women politicians in Europe, who advertise themselves as feminists, yet meekly wear headscarves and baggy dresses to appease the mullahs during their visits to Iran. She doesn't buy their explanations that they do so to respect Iranian traditions (hijab isn't an Iranian tradition, but a religious imposition) and that they do not want to meddle in a country's internal affairs (when tourists and visiting politicians are forced to wear hijabs, the issue in no longer merely internal to Iran).
After remarrying and gaining two foster-kids, Alinejad continued her relentless campaign against misogynistic laws in Iran and discriminatory practices worldwide. She founded the Facebook page "My Stealthy Freedom," where women post hijab-less photos and share stories of abuse and discrimination in Iran. She also initiated a number of other campaigns, including "White Wednesdays," encouraging and supporting women who take their headscarves off, or wear white scarves (not condoned by the Iranian government, which wants women to wear only dark colors), in protest.
I met Alinejad in person when she attended a UCLA Q&A session on April 12, 2015, and had been following her work even before then.
2021/05/08 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Marvels of the world: Dar Al Hajar, Yemen. Beauty amid a humanitarian crisis! [Top center] World War I ambulance (circa 1917). [Top right] The amazing nature teaches us how to overcome the sternest obstacles. [Bottom left] Diverse, colorful tomatoes! [Bottom center] Figure defining h-index, from a paper of mine on research qualilty and impact (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Two figures from a forthcoming paper of mine on women in science and engineering (see the last item below).
(2) Gay Iranian young man murdered: His brother and cousins committed the murder under the guise of protecting the family "honor." Such killings are sanctioned by the government and the perpetrators often escape with a slap on the wrist.
(3) Car bombing near Afghan school kills 55, mostly girls, and injures scores of others: Yeah, let's negotiate peace with these cold-blooded murderers and leave Afghan girls and women to fend for themselves.
(4) On disinformation: The terms "misinformation" and "disinformation" have come to the forefront in this age of fake news on social media and elsewhere. In truth, the two terms have been around since the dawn of mass communication. Misinformation is the spreading of false information, regardless of motivation. Examples include false rumors, insults, and pranks.
Disinformation is a special category of misinformation that is deliberately deceptive, with examples including malicious hoaxes, spear-phishing (highly-targeted phishing schemes), and computational propaganda.
In the old days, propaganda was synonymous with public relations and was not viewed as a pejorative term. Adding "computational" to the already-negatively-perceived "propaganda" implies devious, data-driven manipulation for political and other unsavory purposes.
(5) "Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries": After much delay in the reviewing process due to COVID-19 and related complications, my paper named above (where the two countries of the title are the US and Iran) has been accepted for presentation at the 2021 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, July 26-29. And, no, the paper's introduction does not begin with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ..."!
Here is the final version of the paper. Any comments/suggestions will be warmly welcome. This version was prepared based on constructive comments in two reviewing rounds and will appear in the ASEE Conference Proceedings as is, except possibly for formatting changes. I am excited about presenting this paper and look forward to publishing it in journal form.
Abstract: Despite poor retention and advancement prospects, as well as female-unfriendly workplaces and corporate policies, women continue to flock to and excel in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. In this paper, using data and narratives from the United States and Iran as examples, I identify roadblocks to the engagement of women in STEM careers. Using the two countries with which I am most familiar as examples is instructive, because this side-by-side comparison shows that undesirable outcomes in the domain of women in STEM fields can and do occur for vastly different reasons, which I discuss.
Keywords: education; equal opportunity; gender equity; labor laws; misogyny; sexism; women's rights; workforce diversity
2021/05/07 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A few image reposts from prior years: Good & evil, teach & learn, me & you, optical illusion! [Top center] As Iran negotiates with the US in Europe, its state-TV broadcasts a video of a fake attack on the US Capitol. [Top right] Humorous Persian epic poetry: Zanboornameh (see the next item below). [Bottom left & center] Racism exemplified: Taking the Middle-Easterner, kind-to-outcasts Jesus (imagined in the left-hand image) and turning him into a white European, who condemns sinners. [Bottom right] Cover image of IEEE Spectrum for May 2021 (see the last item below).
(2) The situation in India is dire and is getting worse: I have decided to offer a second donation, this time through Direct Relief International, which has a superb record of relief work and has linked up with several local nonprofits to provide critical items, such as oxygen, to India. Please help if you can!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Liz Cheney persists: Women will defeat Trumpism, just as they will defeat extremist Islam in Iran!
- Wide gap remains between the US and Iran, as indirect nuclear-deal talks resume in Vienna.
- Iran's expanding censorship: A draft bill proposes a broad ban on Western media in Iran.
- Glimpses of the central part of UCSB campus under COVID: Details in the 3-minute video's narration.
(4) Math puzzle: Let letters of the alphabet stand for decimal digits, not necessarily distinct. Two brothers have ages ab and cd. After 11 years, their ages will be ef and gh, respectively. The four-digit numbers abcd and efgh are both perfect squares. How old are the two brothers?
(5) "Fair Recommendations with Biased Data": Speaking this afternoon as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series of UCSB's Center for Responsible Machine Learning, Cornell University Professor Thorsten Joachims discussed new machine-learning algorithms that directly address both endogenous and exogenous unfairness.
What a recommendation system does is to allocate exposure based on merit. But when merit scores are fairly close, a small difference, obtained by seemingly unbiased criteria, may be amplified by giving the lower-ranking item (artist, applicant, ...) almost no exposure. Consider the case of job applicants, for example. A slight preference of employers for male candidates (built into the ranking algorithm) may place all female applicants way down on the ranked list, thereby giving them almost no exposure, owing to users seldom looking beyond the few top-ranked items.
One possible solution is to not always put the highest-scoring entity at the top of the list but come up with a probabilistic scheme in which a lower-ranked item, which has a smaller probability of being relevant, still gets a chance to appear near the top in proportion to its relevance probability. The problem is quite challenging, as there is a trade-off between merit-based and fairness-based ranking strategies, often requiring compromises.
[Flyer and a few slides] [66-minute video recording]
(9) IEEE Spectrum magazine's May 2021 issue: Entitled "Building an AI that Feels," this month's cover feature is built on the premise that AI systems with emotional intelligence could learn faster and be more helpful. One of the questions asked is this: "If an AI agent was motivated by fear, curiosity, or delight, how would that change the technology and its capabilities?"
2021/05/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Throwback Thursday: Mid-1970s, around the time the Asian Games were held in Tehran, shortly after I had returned home from the US. [Bottom left & center] Throwback Thursday (continued): More photos from the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, with family members and college buddies. [Bottom right] Cover image of J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (see the last item below).
(2) The aftermath of Foreign Minister Javad Zarif's leaked interview: Iran's Revolutionary Guards intelligence agents raid President Rouhani's and FM Zarif's offices in search of evidence of wrongdoing.
(3) Criminals like Donald Trump survive and prosper because of people like William Barr: Every time Trump was about to go down, someone like Barr saved his behind, and was then discarded like a soiled toilet tissue. And others do not seem to learn from the process. There seems to be an endless supply of such power-hungry people, who would do anything to be in the spotlight for a brief time period. Sessions, Kelly, McMaster, even Pence, are all examples of stepping stones Trump has used on his path to political power.
(4) Book review: Vance, J. D., Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Audible.com, 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This best-selling memoir is written by a 31-year-old, who, by his own admission, has accomplished nothing extraordinary in life. He leads a happy, ordinary life. But this is quite extraordinary, given where and how he grew up. His family, with origins in the greater Appalachia, described itself as hillbillies. Fighting between his parents, and between his mom and various other husbands/boyfriends, was a common occurrence; scary at first, but observed with curiosity, as time went by. In fact, most couples in the neighborhood had violent fights that could be heard by neighbors. Stability and love were provided by Vance's grandparents, imperfect people themselves, but Vance credits his grandmother's tough love as a pillar of his success.
Vance's diagnosis, that his family and other hillbillies are responsible for their own misfortunes through the encouragement of social rot, did not sit well with many critics and social activists. He cites examples from personal experience, such as his observations as a grocery store cashier who could not afford to own a cell phone, while observing many welfare recipients talking on cell phones. He resented having to struggle, acting responsibly while holding a job, as others around him benefited from poor behavior. Of course, the other side of the story is that a few individuals pulling themselves up by their bootstraps aren't enough to change the region's economy for the better, especially when all such successful people move out and settle in other areas.
Vance maintains that stopping at skin color misses some fine distinctions arising from ethnicity, such as his identification with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degrees and view poverty as a family tradition that goes back many generations. Respecting the dead, to the point of standing at attention whenever a funeral motorcade passed by, was another tradition defining "the hill people," as was a large family composed of extended network of kin (grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins).
Vance studied at Ohio State University and later graduated from Yale Law School, admitting that, given the availability of scholarships and other types of financial aid, poor students can attend elite colleges at substantially lower out-of-pocket cost than what local or state schools would charge. He was also lucky to encounter caring mentors who helped him every step of the way through his studies and finding employment. It is unclear why Vance approves of this kind of assistance to a select few, but not of other kinds of investments in poor communities.
Netflix and director Ron Howard made Hillbilly Elegy into a 2020 film by the same title. The film's critical reviews were lukewarm, but Actress Glenn Close won a couple of awards for her performance, with actress Amy Adams's performance also deemed praiseworthy. Here is an NPR interview with author J. D. Vance.
2021/05/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The real Iran? Not really! This photo was posted by a Facebook user purporting to show "The Real Iran," as opposed to depictions by prejudiced Westerners. I commented: "This isn't the real Iran. Such a scene may be seen on a particular street, in the capital city of Tehran, for a short period of time needed to do a photo shoot, when the morality police ('gasht-e ershad') isn't nearby. This is as much of a misrepresentation as those of prejudiced Westerners." [Center] Iranian cuisine: My carpet map of Iran was a hit, so, let me present Iran's map of common foods and confectionary, listed by province. Someone should augment this map with images of the items named! As usual, please don't take the selections too seriously. For example, listing "fast food" for Tehran is likely meant to be humorous. Also, "baghali ghatogh" is missing for the Caspian coast (food photos and receipes). [Right] Anti-racism (see the next item below).
(2) What does it mean to be anti-racist? This was the topic of a DEI workshop I attended yesterday. The workshop, led by Senior DEI Trainer Rebecca Ritarita Refuerzo, began by reviewing the notions of implicit bias and White Privilege. The latter are subjects of separate workshops that some participants had attended prior to coming to this one.
Racism is a prejudice against someone or a group of people based on race. Race is a sociopolitical construct; it's not biological. We are socialized into dividing people by race and, hence, into racist behavior. In the US, "White" is a self-ascribed category to create "us" versus "them." Racism is more than racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Stated as an equation, Racism = Racial prejudice + Power. Also, racism is more than individual acts. It requires an established power structure to support it and also depends on the silence of those around the offender.
The aim of anti-racism is to rectify the current and historical imbalance that has only favored White immigrants. So, we can't talk about anti-racism without also talking about the rise of the modern White Supremacy movement. Anti-racism isn't about who you are. It's not passive. It's about what you do to dismantle systems/structures/institutions that are racist, have been maintained by White Supremacy, and have caused discrimination, injustice, and inequity. Anything that isn't anti-racist is racist.
In formulating a personal action plan, don't fall into the trap of "But I am only one person"! Start with your sphere of influence, such as your classroom. Be an accomplice or co-conspirator. As the late John Lewis was fond of saying, "Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble." Also, focus on a particular problem and develop an action plan for it. Saying that discrimination, hatred (and, in its extreme form, genocide), and exclusion have existed throughout human history and still exist worldwide, makes you feel incapacitated to act. Sometimes, the mention of the global scope of the problem may be a diversionary reaction. Take one piece of the problem, say, race-based discrimination in the US, or in California, or in Santa Barbara, and act upon it.
Reparations constitute one form of doing something to help reduce or eliminate discrimination. Affirmative action is another form. One objection raised against affirmative action programs is that they are tantamount to "reverse discrimination." There is a workshop dealing with this objection and how to confront it.
My own goal in attending this and similar workshops is to learn the main concepts and the terminology used to define and delineate problems, so as to enable understanding and participation. In the domain of social justice, my focus is on injustices and barriers erected against women in academia, particularly in STEM fields. I have chosen to focus on this area owing to the benefits of specialization. I can read extensively in this one area, become familiar with problems and solution methods, and have facts and figures at my fingertips, as I participate in programs and discussions within my time budget. So, I will likely not become as active in the domain of racism, but I do want to learn about systemic racism and what is being done about it.
Here is a dilemma I face, as I embark on the path of educating myself about racism and anti-racism. As a first-generation Iranian-American, I come from the land of Aryans: What can be "Whiter" than this? Yet, for all practical purposes, I am (and am viewed/treated as) a colored person in the US. This categorization as "other" intensified in the decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but it is still very much a problem. So, I am not sure whether my actions should be in the domain of using my "White Privilege," thus acting as an ally, or to participate as a victim of racism.
2021/05/04 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Language tip of the day: Proper punctuation saves lives: "Let's eat grandma" vs. "Let's eat, grandma"! [Top center] Meme of the day: Natural exercise and tanning, at no cost, for anyone willing to abandon his/her privileged position. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Lady Liberty emerges from hiding! [Bottom row] Types of paper (science humor): Open-access and paid-subscription versions.
(2) Math puzzle: Find four integers such that the sum of every two and the sum of all four are perfect squares. Of course, (0, 0, 0, 0) is an answer, as is (0, 0, 0, n^2) for any n. See if you can do it without repetition. [This is Puzzle #188 in Henry Ernest Dudeney's 536 Puzzles and Curious Problems, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967]
(3) Iran's FM Javad Zarif apologizes to the country's Supreme Leader: Khamenei lambasted him for speaking of internal rifts within the regime and for criticizing the late General Qassem Soleimani. Earlier, President Rouhani had put some distance between himself and Zarif, saying that he spoke for himself, not for the administration. Zarif's apology to the Supreme Leader was direct and extensive. Coming less than two weeks before the presidential elections, the incident has humiliated Zarif and his allies. Khamenei's henchmen and media goons, who were always suspicious of Zarif, at times calling him an American spy, are having a field day.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mexico City's subway overpass collapses, killing at least 23 and injuring scores more.
- The Amazon has flipped from helpful consumer to major producer of greenhouse gases.
- Serious comedy: Apple vs. Facebook in the domain of data privacy and tracking users' on-line behavior.
- May the fourth be with you! [Credit: Tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson]
- America has a forced-marriage epidemic: The new film "Knots" documents misogynistic coercion stories.
- Quote of the day: "Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble." ~ The late Congressman John Lewis
(5) "Fair Recommendations with Biased Data": Speaking as a Distinguished Lecturer for UCSB's Center for Responsible Machine Learning, Dr. Thorsten Joachims (Cornell U.) will discuss machine learning algorithms that directly address both endogenous and exogenous unfairness. Friday, May 7, 2021, 1:00 PM PDT. [Register]
(6) Technical talk of IEEE Central Coast Section (over Zoom): Dr. Farinaz Koushanfar (ECE Dept., UCSD) will talk on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, 5:30 PM PDT, under the title "Machine Learning on Encrypted Data: Hardware to the Rescue." [Link for free registration]
(7) Comedy to make you weep: A couple on Iranian TV say they married each other, sight unseen. The woman sees no need to meet a man before marrying him, because, actually, the uglier a man, the better. [Video]
(8) Morality police withdraw from Iran's streets: They will remain less visible until after the election, a couple of weeks hence. Internet restrictions will also be eased during this period. The pattern's clear: Iran's presidents alternate between hardliners and reformists. When a reformist is elected, citizens dance on the streets for the relative easing of restrictions & prospects of improving international relations. When a hardliner is elected, they go into defensive mode, hoping for his removal in 4 or 8 years. Iranians have very short memories!
[Photos]
2021/05/03 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Happy World Press Freedom Day! Freedom of the Press is synonymous with the contentment and achievement of a country's citizens. The map shows the extent of press freedom in world's countries, with darker colors representing less freedom. [Top right] Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Photos from my walk of Sunday 5/2 in Isla Vista.
(2) International Teachers' Day is on October 5: In Iran, teachers are celebrated on May 2 (Ordibehesht 12), coinciding with the anniversary of the passing of Ayatollah Morteza Mottahari (in 1979). I appreciate my former students sending me thank-you messages on May 2, but choosing religion-specific dates for such honors is against my beliefs. I observe secular, international occasions.
(3) Misogyny of the great Persian poets: Recently, I participated in an on-line discussion about whether Persian literature is misogynistic. The discussion was triggered by a woman speaker citing verses from Sa'adi Shirazi and Rahi Moayyeri in this 6-minute video clip. Read the rest of the discussion on my post of the video clip.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Humanitarian crisis: India's second wave of COVID-19 infections shows no signs of slowing down.
- One of wold's biggest child-sex Web sites, with more than 400,000 members, taken down in Germany.
- The Borowitz Report (Humor): Thousands of presidential fact-checkers laid off in Biden's first 100 days.
- Hey, single men & women! Bill & Melinda Gates will be on the market. They're splitting after 27 years.
(5) Book review: O'Neil, Cathy, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2016.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The main points of this book have already been made numerous times and by many authors: That big data, and its use in machine-learning algorithms, amplify existing societal biases and hide them under many layers of complexity, so that we can't even examine, much less eradicate, them.
O'Neil, a mathematician-turned-data-scientist, points to the fact that algorithms used to rate or score various things are for the most part unregulated and uncontestable. They work well for their users, businesses which aim to maximize their profits, but at a substantial cost to those who are unfairly given low scores on life-altering outcomes, such as employment offers, job performance reviews, securing a mortgage loan, admission to dream colleges, or parole eligibility on the basis of recidivism risks.
When accurate data is used for social or business decisions, such as setting insurance premiums (e.g., speeding tickets, drunk-driving records, accidents, and so on), one can't argue against the value and fairness of the decisions. However, often group or geographical-area characteristics, are used instead of, or in addition to, pertinent data, leading to reinforcement of biases that make the poor poorer and the rich richer.
People are categorized on the basis of highly-inaccurate data purchased from data peddlers, which are merged with massive, publicly-available databases to construct detailed profiles on individuals. A striking example is payday lenders or for-profit colleges targeting vulnerable individuals (on the basis of behavioral patterns, such as where they shop) to encourage them to take out loans with exorbitant interest rates or to present them with college options they have never had, paid for with government grants and loans. Another example is police departments' use of predictive policing, a self-reinforcing practice, given that patrolling poor neighborhoods is likely to result in a larger number of arrests per dollar spent.
As I wrote at the beginning of my review, alarm bells in this area have been sounded by many authors and researchers. I still recommend this book highly because of its accessibility and the many excellent examples it gathers in one place.
Here's a 67-minute recent book talk by author Cathy O'Neil. And here's a shorter version of O'Neil's pitch in a 13-minute TED talk, where she says "algorithms are opinions embedded in code."
Note added on August 21, 2021: The documentary "Coded Bias" (available on Netflix) is based on this book.
2021/05/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Today is International Workers' Day or May Day (see the next item below). [Top center] Math puzzle from the mathematics calendar page for May 1 (consider this a hint; solution due to Dr. Johar M. Ashfaque). [Top right] Entering the Asian-American and Pacific-Islander Heritage Month (see the last item below). [Bottom left] A dangerous winding road between Amol and Larijan, near Nandal Village, in Iran's Mazandaran province. [Bottom center] My workstation & Zoom background at home: I took these photos to submit for a survey of UCSB faculty members about their teaching experiences over the past year, conducted by the student publication The Bottom Line. [Bottom right] Beijing's Forbidden City, as seen from the air.
(2) Happy International Workers' Day! Today is "Labor Day" in most countries of the world (the US Labor Day is on the first Monday of September). Many people associate May Day with communism, but it has come to signify workers' rights in countries with many different political systems.
According to Wikipedia, "1 May was chosen to be International Workers' Day to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago ... [which, over multiple days] led to the deaths of 7 police officers and at least 38 civilians; 60 police officers were injured, as were 115 civilians. Hundreds of labour leaders and sympathizers were later rounded-up and 4 were executed by hanging. ... [Later] in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the state militia fired on a crowd of strikers killing 7, including a schoolboy and a man feeding chickens in his yard."
Let us celebrate the contributions of workers to our country's progress and prosperity. The stock market did not build this country, workers did!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Settling a lawsuit, Newsmax apologizes to Dominion Voting Systems for false election-fraud allegations.
- With the US running out of adults eager to be vaccinated, COVID-19 herd immunity may be out of reach.
- Many men who pay for sex as sugar daddies convince themselves that they are paying for other things.
- Family-values crusader Josh Duggar faces charges of child pornography.
- One hundred days of Biden scandals: How media conservatives have been freaking out! [3-minute video]
- Lost another member of the Fanni Class of 1968: Hamid Mishkanian. May he rest in peace! [Images]
(4) A popular post of mine from a week ago: The carpet map of Iran, which I posted on April 24, 2021, turned out to be extremely popular, to the extent that 273 people have shared it thus far. Many of those who shared the image apparently didn't like it much, as the number of "likes" is only 71.
(5) May is the Asian-American and Pacific-Islander Heritage Month: Given recent incidents of hate and violence inflicted on this group of our fellow-Americans, let's make it clear during the month of May, and always, that no one is more American than others. Having arrived in this land of opportunity from diverse backgrounds and at different times, we all own this unique melting-pot.
2021/04/30 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Costco dental floss. [Top center] A few of my drawings from the late 1960s: I have no idea why I drew cigarettes or a cocktail. I was never fond of either. I do remember that the calendar page was a real one I had on my desk. [Top right] Bonus cartoon of the day: "Mr. Schrodinger—I have good news and bad news." [Bottom row] A beautiful afternoon in Goleta, California: Thursday, at the Devereux Slough, which was nearly dry, and Coal Oil Point Beach, where surf was up.
(2) IEEE Computer Society Member Essay Contest: In honor of the society turning 75, members are challenged to submit a short (500-650 words) essay that delves into the impacts technology has had on society. Deadline: May 14, 2021. Prizes: $1000, $500, $250.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Stampede at a religious celebration in Israel kills at least 45, injuring dozens more.
- A dire humanitarian crisis calls out to us: Please help India's fight against COVID-19. [Donate via UNICEF]
- Joe Biden's first 100 days in office: 100 million fully-[[vaccinated Americans
- Political humor: "Rudy who? I don't know any such person. You should ask my attorney." ~ Donald Trump
- Carol Mann's blog entry: "What Are Iran and Pakistan Doing in UN's Commission on the Status Women?"
(4) On-line sources of Persian poetry with English translations: I first posted this information on April 30, 2015; reposting as a reminder of the wealth of information available in this regard. I have removed from the original list several sites that have since disappeared or turned into money-making enterprises (a couple of them with malicious content). Please drop me a line if you know of other useful sites.
There are numerous sites where one can find the works of Persian poets in Persian; ganjoor.net, my favorite, is both comprehensive and keyword-searchable. There are also sites specifically devoted to Hafez and Mowlavi/Rumi, among others.
I have also found many sources for translated poems, without the original Persian versions. In fact, in many cases, particularly with the works of Mowlavi/Rumi, it is extremely difficult to relate the purported translations to the original poems. I suspect (and others have pointed this out as well) that in many cases, English verses attributed to Rumi aren't actual translations of his poems, but verses written by others in his style or following his philosophy. Hence, my interest in combined Persian/English sources, where the authenticity of translations is readily verifiable by a Persian-speaker.
The gold standard of translated Persian poems is Edward FitzGerald's translation of Khayyam's Rubaiyat. Various PDF and on-line versions are available, the legality of which I don't know (unfortunately, most are without the Persian originals); Gutenberg Project's site offers a free and legal English-only version.
Here are some bilingual sources as starters.
[Hafez, "Divan"]
[Hafez on Love]
[Mowlavi/Rumi: Zara Houshmand's translations]
[Various: Modern Persian poetry]
[Various: "Persian Poetry in English" on FB]
2021/04/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Walking in SB downtown on Tuesday, April 27, 2021: A beautiful, warm, sunny day, with isolated cloud patches forming interesting patterns overhead. One of the photos shows the back side of the majestic Arlington Theater, not often seen in photographs. Another one shows the Trinity Episcopal Church at 1500 State Street. The SB Transit Center, where MTD bus lines originate & end, has resumed its operation, with some restrictions. [Bottom left] Anoushka Shankar's April 29, 2021, webinar (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Quotes of the day: Reposted from April 29, 2018. [Bottom right] The stock market continues to soar: I, for one, do not believe that a rising stock market is an indication of economic progress and national well-being. Many Americans continue to struggle, holding multiple jobs and living paycheck-to-paycheck, as the stock market continues to set new records. However, since Donald Trump had said that the election of Joe Biden would lead to a stock market crash, I am sharing this chart with you.
(2) Anoushka Shankar's Zoom webinar: Being watched by a sold-out audience from 28 countries, Shankar talked with her friend Priya Darshini about her music, collaborations, feminism, and a host of other topics. She was asked about, and elaborated upon, getting pushback for playing a classical Indian instrument, while wearing jeans and speaking with an American accent.
A couple of music videos from YouTube were played in between talk segments. A powerful musical piece, "Sister Susannah," highlighted a man's expectations of obedience and "knowing her place" from his wife. She will have her first live show in more than a year on May 30, 2021, in London.
My question, which went unanswered amid a sea of other questions: I know your dad collaborated with the Beatles. Have you had any musical interactions with members of the Beatles?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A page from the book Great Women in Mathematics: The late Professor Maryam Mirzakhani. [Image]
- A classic math puzzle: Which is larger, e^π or π^e?
- A curious mathematical fact: 6! × 7! = 10!
- A triangle with side lengths π (3.14), e (2.71), and the Golden Ratio (1.61) is almost a right triangle!
(4) Digital romance from the 1800s: Ventura College's Theater Arts Department live-streams its staged reading of "Ada and the Engine," by Lauren Gunderson, the story of Ada Byron Lovelace, world's first "programmer," and her relationship with Charles Babbage. Friday 4/30 & Saturday 5/1, 7:30 PM PDT.
(5) Key points from today's meeting of UCSB's Faculty Legislature, including budget and UCOP data breach: Academic Senate Awards (Faculty Research Lecturer—Richard Mayer, Psych & Brain Sciences) ... [Read more]
2021/04/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Math puzzles: [Left] In the square ABCD, the points E and F are chosen, with the lengths BE and DF as shown and with the two angles EAF and DAF equal. What is the length of AE? [Center] What equality is being graphically illustrated here? [Right] Find the area of the circle, assuming that the green triangle is equilateral.
(2) Another 10 days of gorgeous, late-spring weather on the way in my neck of the woods: It seems, however, that after April showers not happening, May flowers may be endangered too! [10-day weather forecast]
(3) Iran and Saudi Arabia can't see eye to eye on most issues: But when it comes to misogyny and abuses of human/women's rights, they are very much on the same page. [Poster]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Apple to invest more than $1 billion to build its first East-Coast campus in North Carolina.
- Rudy Giuliani in legal crosshairs: His residence & office were searched and an indictment appears eminent!
- IRGC commander confirms Iran's military presence in Yemen, to the chagrin of politicians denying it!
- My 2014 prediction of what happened with regard to rampant racism under Trump's presidency. [FB post]
- For x, y, z > 0, what is the minimum of the expression (x^2 + x + 1)(y^2 + y + 1)(z^2 + z + 1)/(xyz)?
- In the triangle ABC, the altitude AD splits BC into lengths of 2 & 7, and tan A = 18. Find the triangle's area.
(5) Most universities will require faculty, staff, and students to be vaccinated for fall in-person re-opening: They will be able to do this only if vaccine approvals move from "emergency-use authorization" to "FDA approval."
(6) MBC Persia offers a positive step in Persian comedy: In this stand-up routine, Sina Valiollah talks about Iranians' exaggerated sense of self-worth and some idiotic pronouncements from Iranian officials.
(7) Are we close to bridging classical and quantum computing? Researchers at China's Tsinghua U., UK's U. Southampton, and South Africa's U. Witswaterand, who have used mirrors to generate a light beam with multiple, classical entanglements, believe so.
(8) A worthy successor to "death panels," "taking your guns," and "Shari'a Law": As Americans overwhelmingly support action on climate change, the conservatives/Fox-News axis has pulled another rabbit out of their hat of lies to oppose Biden's plans. They claim that Biden will take away their beef and will impose a "burger ban"!
(9) Final thought for the day: Saying that student debt should not be forgiven because it would be unfair to those who have already paid off their debt is like saying we should not treat COVID-19 patients because it would be unfair to those who have already died.
2021/04/27 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Children today are shocked to learn that their grandmothers looked like this in the 1970s! [Center] Persian cuisine: Tah-chin (rice layered with chicken, flavored with yogurt and saffron), courtesy of my mom, plus salad. (Recipe) [Right] Full list of Academy Awards nominees and winners: The unconventional, but praiseworthy, 93rd Oscars crowned the first woman of color, Chloe Zhao, as Best Director and the refreshingly unglamorous Frances McDormand as Best Actress. The Best Motion Picture Oscar completed the hat-trick of top honors for "Nomadland."
(2) Former politician and CNN commentator Rick Santorum's White-Supremacist rant: "We birthed a nation from nothing ... There isn't much Native American culture in American culture."
(3) IEEE Student Chapter at UCSB presents a technical talk: Professor Li-C. Wang (ECE, UCSB) will talk about "Machine Learning in Test Data Analytics" (Monday, May 3, 2021, 6:30 PM PDT).
(4) Another step in Iran's #MeToo movement: A young woman accuses a prominent Iranian artist of asking for sexual favors in return for helping her break into the music business.
(5) Iran adds an extra year of prison term on new charges against UK-Iranian dual-citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: As the mullahs negotiate with the West on a new nuclear deal and lifting of economic sanctions, they didn't want a valuable hostage to go free prematurely! Shame on the UK for tolerating such a bullying move!
(6) The origin of the term "tree hugger": "The first tree huggers were 294 men and 69 women belonging to the Bishnois branch of Hinduism, who, in 1730, died while trying to protect the trees in their village from being turned into the raw material for building a palace." The tribe, which sacrificed lives to save their trees, now lives in a wooded oasis amid a desert landscape.
(7) A graduation ceremony in Afghanistan: Honorees sing about having Persian roots and boast about their affection for great Iranian poets. Iranian culture is being protected outside Iran's borders! [1-minute video]
(8) Director of Iran's Research Center on Women and Families: "If women accept male authority, they won't face violence." This new research finding will no doubt revolutionize social norms across the globe!
(9) Iran gains a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women: Voting was done in secret, but journalist Masih Alinejad has crunched the numbers, concluding that at least four Western democracies voted in favor of Iran. Which countries think that putting the fox in charge of the hen-house is a good idea? Shame on them!
2021/04/25 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) My walk of a few days ago in Goleta's Patterson area: I walked along Lassen Avenue and the surrounding neighborhood which has lush landscaping, with many colorful flowers, drought-tolerant plants, and fruit trees.
(2) Severe shortage of beef and chicken meat in Iran: Supreme Leader Khamenei has opined that people should consider seafood. Reminds me of Marie-Antoinette's rumored pronouncement, "Let them eat cake!"
(3) Archaeologists may have discovered the missing link to the origins of the alphabet: A 3500-year-old pottery fragment unearthed at Tel Lachish in Israel holds the oldest securely-dated alphabetic inscription.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Don't miss tomorrow night's Pink Moon (8:32 PM PDT), when the moon is closest to Earth.
- India's daily COVID-19 infections surpass 350k: Oxygen on black market; hospitals/morgues overwhelmed.
- Iran, which treats women as in this video, now has a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women!
- Humor: Delete your Facebook account and enjoy life to the fullest in person. 1-minute video]
- Persian music: "Esfahan-e Kohan" ("Ancient Esfahan"), a wonderful piece played on tar and tombak.
- Persian music: Farhang Foundation premiers Ava Choir's performance of a special spring medley.
(5) Law Professor Philippe Sands on "Fareed Zakaria GPS": The word "genocide" did not exist before 1944, so the mass-killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks should not be called genocide. Really, we need a word to exist, before we can call out an abhorrent behavior? What if the word "Holocaust' did not exist in Hitler's time?
(6) Iran's "Cultural Revolution" of four decades ago: The Islamic regime that assumed power after the 1979 Revolution hated communists and communism, but this hatred didn't stop it from emulating Mao's "Cultural Revolution," a misguided program that set the country back by years, if not decades, owing to the closure of Iranian universities for three full years, dismissal of some 40,000 students, and ousting of around 7000 faculty members. [The last two numbers have been cited from this Facebook post; I could not verify them independently. Both numbers were definitely in the thousands.]
(7) Repression of students and academics in Iran: A 118-page Amnesty Int'l report, entitled "Silenced, Expelled, Imprisoned" (2014), reviews the higher-education scene in Iran, discussing discrimination based on gender & religion, attacks on academic freedom, and the legal framework, ending with some recommendations.
(8) Iran's FM Javad Zarif grows a spine on his way out: After lying through his teeth and being a regime apologist for 8 years, he criticizes General Qasem Soleimani's preference for militarism over diplomacy.
2021/04/24 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Electric cars: Before the modern renaissance, the heyday of electric vehicles was more than a century ago. This 1916 photo shows four Beardsley electric cars with their all-women occupants in front of Hotel Virginia in Long Beach, California. The demise of EVs was aided in part by Cadillac's introduction of the electric starter in 1912, which quickly replaced the troublesome and dangerous hand-crank starters on gasoline-engine cars. [Center] Carpet map of Iran: Shown are typical carpet design patterns for different provinces. [Right] Math problem: Solve for x (try to solve on your own, before looking at the solution in red).
(2) Scientific misconduct: Scientist, whose research dismisses the evidence that COVID-19 is an airborne infection, is exposed in a conflict-of-interest case. He has links to co-founders of the 'herd immunity' Great Barrington Declaration and several members of the WHO committee that funded the research show up as co-authors of the published work.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biden is the first US President to recognize Ottoman Empire's massacre of Armenians as genocide.
- Indonesian navy submarine sinks, killing all 53 on board.
- With the new arrivals, there are now 11 humans aboard the International Space Station. [Video]
- Oprah Winfrey to deliver a keynote at UCSB's virtual commencement ceremonies on June 12.
- Woman demonstrates exquisite soccer skills. [2-minute video]
- Chess puzzle: How many moves are needed for a knight to visit every one of the other 63 squares?
- Quote: "It's an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
- UCSB's West Campus Beach: Cloudy and a tad windy, but an otherwise pleasant Saturday. [Video]
(4) Ridiculous and sad: Iran has been selected as a member of UN's Commission on the Status of Women. Saudi Arabia had a seat on the Commission before Iran. Once the Taliban take over in Afghanistan, after the US departs, Afghanistan will be added to the Commission! Sadly, only the third statement above is speculative.
(5) Economic sanctions are God-sent for some Iranians: Much of Iran's exports go through third countries, with the exporter, multiple middle persons (often other Iranians), and the receipient of goods all making fortunes. The same goes for imports. In particular, military and oil-industry spare parts are bought by certain dealers in Europe, sent to UAE or other countries in the region, and then sold to Iran at a final price that is at least 3 times what the original buyer paid for them. In each such purchase, there are officials within the Iranian government, who get their cuts to approve the deal. This is why there is serious pushback to Iran resuming talks with the West and the prospects of the sanctions being removed.
2021/04/23 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Thursday's technical talk on quantum computing (see the next item below). [Center] Persian poetry: The Canticle of the Birds panel, sponsored by Georgetown U. (see Item 3 below). [Right] Thurdsay's roundtable discussion on women in science (see the last item below).
(2) "Quantum Computing Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities": Speaking under the auspices of UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency on Thursday 4/22, Dr. Yufei Ding (CS, UCSB) discussed certain algorithmic and reliability aspects of quantum computing.
The second quantum revolution, the transition from quantum theory to quantum engineering, promises to make quantum computing practical. Dr. Ding reviewed the challenges and research opportunities in the state-of-the-art quantum computing engineering technology stacks, including quantum computing devices, peripheral control hardware architecture, compiler design/optimization, and programming language design.
Dr. Ding then introduced her recent work on efficient qubit mapping, superconducting quantum processor architecture design, and quantum program assertions in tackling some of these challenges.
(3) The Canticle of the Birds (Manteq-ol-Tayr): The venerated book of poetry by the 12th-century Persian poet Farid al-Din Attar (whose title is sometimes translated as Conference of the Birds) was the focus of today's Georgetown University Persian panel, led by Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (U. Maryland) and featuring distinguished panelists Dr. Leili Anvar (Institut National des Langues et Civilsations Orientales), Dr. Michael A. Barry (Princeton U.), and Ms. Wendy Jehlen (Artistic Director and Founder, ANIKAYA).
Dr. Anvar presented a summary and analysis of the book, noting that its entire structure is based on one verse in the Quran, "Of God we are and to Him we shall return." The birds plan to establish a kingdom, led by simurgh (believed to be the source/mother of all creation) as queen. The birds are metaphors for human souls and simurgh stands for God. The longest sub-story within the story is 500 verses long and describes the quest of Sheikh San'an, who goes from Mecca to Rome, falls in love with a Christian girl, but eventually returns to Mecca, an allusion to coming from God, exploring life and love through beauty, and returning to Him (which is essentially the plot of the entire story too).
Dr. Barry described imagery inspired by Attar's work and similar Sufi poetry. Persian poetry peaked during the 12th and 13th centuries. In later centuries, painting and other visualizations became the dominant art form, usually illustrating the works of poets who came before. Dr. Barry showed a large collection of visual art based on the poetry of Attar, Hafiz, Mowlavi/Rumi, and other great poets. This talk of Dr. Barry at the MET captures many of the images that he showed today.
Ms. Jehlen, who has choreographed dance performances based on Attar's work, showed clips from her dance routines, some of which I found on YouTube and Vimeo to share in this report.
(4) "CCS Lounge: Women in Science": This was the title of a roundtable discussion, sponsored by UCSB's College of Creative Studies, held at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Amber Kaplan ('06, CCS Biology), Chief Scientific Officer, Karma Biotechnologies. The panelists, listed below, discussed a wealth of experiences as women in STEM, including their paths to specializations & careers, life-work balance, roles as mentors/mentees, choosing role models, approach to communication, and navigating male-dominated fields in terms of actions and personal style.
- Dr. Alyssa Larson ('08, CCS Chemistry and Biochemistry) - Senior Associate, RA Capital Management
- Professor Kathy Foltz - UCSB Professor; Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; CCS faculty
- Dr. Milan Minsky ('99, PhD, UCSB College of Engineering, EE) - Co-Founder & VP Product, Leela AI
- Professor Susannah Scott - UCSB Professor of Sustainable Catalytic Processing; Chemistry & Biochemistry
- Lia Yeh ('20, CCS Physics/Computing) - PhD student; Computer Science, Oxford University
My question: Given that the number of women in any particular STEM discipline is rather small, campus- or profession-wide support groups might assume greater importance. Do such groups exist and are they effective?
2021/04/22 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Today we celebrate the 51st edition of Earth Day (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Aren't these beautiful green hills worth preserving? (Credit: Antonio Antoplano on Instagram) [Bottom center & right] Akram Pedramnia's webinar on translating Ulysses (see the last item below).
(2) Happy Earth Day: Ready to celebrate the 51st edition of Earth Day, an annual observation that was born in Santa Barbara in 1970 out of concerns for the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, gas-guzzling sedans with V8 engines that roamed the streets, and smoke and sludge from unregulated industries. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson led a bipartisan effort (unimaginable today) to create Earth Day, which led to the establishment of EPA and the passage of Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Earth Day, the Musical: Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and friends have fun discussing a non-existent musical.
- How many T-rex dinosaurs existed before being wiped out? Smithsonian Magazine's answer is 2.5 billion.
- Veteran translator Parnaz Azima shares her stories of censorship before & after Iran's Islamic Revolution.
- King of comedy: John Cleese talks to Bill Maher about age, political correctness, and religious fanaticism.
- Persian music: Ziba Shirazi sings "Bahar O Eid," accompanied by Hamed Poursaee & Vandad Massahzadeh.
- Throwback Thursday: Field trip to southern Iran, Tehran University's College of Engineering (1967).
[Photo]
(5) Lampshade technology: Iranian state-TV's use of lampshades to cover up "improperly-dressed" women, and other "innovative" censorship methods. (Persian comedy routine by Sina Valiollah)
(4) "Translating Ulysses Into Persian: A Century of Censorship": This was the title of a Stanford U. webinar by Iranian-Canadian author and translator Akram Pedramnia, among whose credits are publication of three novels in Persian and translations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (2009), Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (2013), and James Joyce's Ulysses (2019), with the last item receiving a Literature Ireland Translation Grant.
Translating a work that employs inventive literary techniques is an already arduous task. Negotiating with a system of imposed censorship makes the process significantly more challenging. Pedramnia began by presenting a large number of examples from English terms and idioms that are very difficult to capture in Persian. In some cases, equivalent terms don't exist; in others, the terms that do exist do not carry the same emotional and cultural significance.
Pedramnia then discussed the challenges of translating modernist works, like Lolita, Tender is the Night, and Ulysses, under a system of imposed censorship. Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance does not let descriptions of sexual acts, notions related to the LGBTQ community, or certain political statements appear in published work. Besides official censorship, there is social censorship (readers' biases and preferences), and censorship by conservative forces, who might confiscate books after they have been published or unleash negative reviews in government-controlled media.
Removing entire chapters to appease the censors isn't an option, if translation is to be authentic. Pedramnia briefly discussed the methods she employs to evade these problems.
[P.S.: The e-book of the first volume (episodes 1-6) is available for free download at Pedramnia's site]
2021/04/21 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section Zoom technical talk (see the last item below). [Right] Historical treasure: Tea glass holder, from 1890 (credit: Oana Loana).
(2) History of the US National Academy of Engineering: Lee Edson's The Making of NAE: The First 25 Years, a freely-available on-line book, reviews NAE's history, from its formation in 1964 to 1989.
(3) Math puzzle: Let f(x) be the sum of the squares of the digits of x. Let f^1(x) = f(x) and define f^n(x) = f(f^(n – 1)(x)). What is f^100000(2)? [f^n(x) is essentially n applications of the function f to x]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Amnesty Int'l: Top executioners in 2020: China 1000s; Iran 246+; Egypt 107+; Iraq 45+; Saudi Arabia 27.
- Ending illegal immigration nearly impossible: Some 49% of US farmworkers are undocumented.
- A musician who thinks #NoMeansNo does not apply to Iranians: Women are teaching him a lesson.
- Memories: Images from April 21 of prior years. Love turns thorns into flowers. So do sliced-bread pizzas!
(5) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section Zoom technical talk: Dr. Ramtin Pedarsani (Assistant Profesor of ECE, UCSB) spoke at 6:30 this evening under the title "Efficient Transportation in the Face of a Pandemic." Dr. Pedarsani has research interests in machine learning, optimization, coding & information theory, applied probability, and intelligent transportation systems. Before joining UCSB in 2016, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley, where he obtained his PhD in 2015. He received his MSc degree from EPFL in 2011 and his BSc degree from University of Tehran in 2009. He is the recipient of the Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award in 2020, the best paper award in from IEEE International Conference on Communications in 2014, and the NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative award in 2017. [Speaker's home page]
COVID-19 has led to many deaths, short- & long-term health challenges, economic disruption, and a host of other social ills. That's the half-empty-glass part of the picture. The half-full-glass part is that it has also challenged researchers and healthcare professionals to come up with ways of managing pandemics and their various impacts. Just at UCSB, many research programs have been initiated to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and to prepare for and tackle possible future pandemics. Tonight, Dr. Pedarsani focused on some challenges arising from people becoming more hesitant to use public transport post-COVID.
Dr. Pedarsani began by noting that while many countries are in a reopening stage, some effects of the pandemic on people's behavior are expected to last much longer, including in the choice between different modes of transportation. Experts predict delayed recovery of public transport options, as many try to avoid crowded places. In turn, significant increases in traffic congestion are expected, due to preference for private cars or taxis over riskier and more crowded options such as the railway. In his work, Dr. Pedarsani has proposed to use financial incentives to set the trade-off between risk of infection and congestion to achieve safe and efficient transportation networks. To render this framework useful in various cities and times of the day without much designer effort, the model also includes a data-driven approach to learning human preferences about transport options. [IEEE CCS event page] [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2021/04/20 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) My walk on a gorgeous Tuesday: I walked northward on Mission Street, from State Street to Laguna Street, proceeding to the Rose Garden at Santa Barbara Mission, and back. The Rose Garden contains 1500 rose plants of different varieties. Even though it has no picnic tables, the Rose Garden is a favorite picnic destination.
(2) The man who slapped a mullah's face in Iran was identified in less than 24 hours: But those who sprayed acid on women's faces are still walking free after many years.
(3) Misogyny, racism, and ignorance, all in a single package: Ali Motahari, a so-called reformist candidate for Iran's presidency, defends compulsory hijab laws by saying, "It is God's will for Iranian young men to get aroused by seeing a woman's arm. This is good. Western men not getting aroused by hijab-less women is a kind of sickness. That is why Western women increasingly seek African men."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US is by far the worst among wealthy countries in the number of civilians killed by the police. [Chart]
- Despite universal availability of vaccines in the US, a fifth of seniors remain unvaccinated. [Chart]
- Peace on Earth: Four-sided pole in front of a residence on Santa Barbara's Mission Street. [Photo]
- Four members of UCSB Engineering are honored with Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring awards.
- How they feed ~30,000 people each evening in Abu Dhabi's big mosque during the month of Ramadan.
- Logic puzzle: In a hand of n cards, 14 are red-suited, 11 aren't hearts, and 9 aren't diamonds. Find n.
(5) On-line IEEE talk: "Bitcoin, Blockchain & Cryptocurrency in Simple Terms," by Mr. Momin Quddus, Tuesday, May 4, 2021, 6:30 PM PDT. [Event flyer] [WebEx event: 130 975 5575, Password: Entrepreneurship, Link]
(6) European soccer is being Americanized: Some of the richest, most-powerful soccer clubs have agreed to join a breakaway European Super-League, being financed by the investment bank JP Morgan and the clubs' American owners. The clubs have been threatened with expulsion from domestic leagues and other penalties.
(7) Jane Fonda, on life's third act: Over the past century, some three decades have been added to our life expectancy, providing ample time for a third act, after youth (Act 1) and middle age (Act 2). We used to think of life as an arch. We improve during our youth, peak at middle age, and, then, it's downhill from there. While this may be true physically, in spiritual terms, life should be viewed as a staircase, with continual improvement all the way to the end.
[Fonda's 11-minute TEDxWomen talk]
(8) Today's heartwarming video: A home-bound family (due to being afflicted with COVID-19) gets a street-level birthday celebration for one of its members from friends and neighbors in the city of Rasht, Iran.
(9) Former police officer Derek Chauvin convicted on all three charges against him: Now, let's go back to our lives, instead of analyzing the verdict to death, as we did with the prosecution and defense statements!
2021/04/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Compulsory hijab: Forcing something on people is wrong and often unsuccessful. This young women shows the cover of an Iranian textbook on which she had appeared with a compulsory hijab. [Center] Persian poetry: Selected verses from a beautiful poem by Parvin E'tesami, in which she addresses a king, counting his misdeeds and telling him (in the final verse), "If you cause hardship to your subjects, you will suffer hardship, as the universe's justice system commits no wrong and makes no mistake." [Right] Panel discussion on "Middle Eastern and South Asian Diaspora Communities in the US" (see the last item below).
(2) Members of the Iranian women's swim team were all smiles in this pre-Islamic-Revolution photo: Now, women can't compete in swimming events and must be covered from head to toe when venturing outdoors.
(3) No means no, in every language: Confessions and a non-apology statement by Mohsen Namjoo, a singer accused of sexual misconduct, have reinvigorated women's efforts in Iran and Afghanistan to fight the notion that women are owned by men and that a woman's "no" really means "yes." #MeToo #NoMeansNo
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A Wright-Brothers moment on Mars: NASA Ingenuity drone proves the feasibility of extraterrestrial flight.
- As UC applications soar to record levels, California community colleges see drops in their fall enrollments.
- Good news for elephants: 3D-printed ivory-like material can replace real ivory for nearly all uses.
- Censoring female referee's legs led to more than 100 cuts in Iran's TV coverage of a British soccer match!
(5) "Middle Eastern and South Asian Diaspora Communities in the US": This was the title of today's Zoom panel discussion in English, sponsored by Cal State University Northridge. The alternate title "An Overview on the Middle Eastern Diaspora in the US: Challenges & Opportunities for Integration" appeared on the event's flyer. The 2-hour session, moderated by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi and Dr. Khanum Sheikh (both of Cal State U. Northridge), attracted 180 attendees. Brief summaries of the panelist's comments follow.
- Nahla Kayali (Founder and Executive Director, Access California Services): Speaking under the title "Preserving Dignity, Enriching Lives: The Arab American Communities," Ms. Kayali, who came to the US as a Palestinian refugee, began by relating some of her own experiences, which included going through a divorce with three children and needing advice and support from people who understood her background and culture. Arab-Americans speak one language, but they come from 22 different countries. So, the group is very diverse, but nearly all members belong to economically-disadvantaged groups. Services they need include finding affordable housing, securing employment, and advice on the college admissions process.
- Dr. Ali Akbar Mahdi (Sociology Lecturer, Cal State U. Northridge): Speaking under the title "Iranian Americans and the Experience of Discrimination," Dr. Mahdi began by defining discrimination and dividing the incidents into real (complaints filed, court cases pursued) and perceived. In addition to active racism, there is aversive racism, which is when, for example, someone does not shop at a particular business owing to racist tendencies: there is no conflict, grievance, or documented complaint, so this type of racism is difficult to quantify. One aspect of the challenge faced by Iranian-Americans is that they perceive themselves as "whites," and they are deemed to be white in the context of programs such as affirmative action, whereas they are viewed by a large segment of the American society as "colored." Additionally, as Muslims (predominantly) and "terrorists" (a characterization arising from the hostage crisis), they face added challenges.
- Bilal H. Kazmi (elder-care specialist): Speaking under the title "Civic, Healthcare, and Immigration Rights: South Asian American Experiences," Mr. Kazmi discussed various aspects of social integration, access to resources (such as healthcare), and food security for the diverse South-Asian-American communities, estimated to include 40+ million people, some 10% of whom live below the poverty line. The latter percentage is higher for certain groups, such as Pakistani-Americans. Discrimination against this group, particularly in the realm of immigration policies, is rampant. The group spans a broad range in terms of immigration status, which includes undocumented immigrants. The community experienced an increase in domestic violence under the Trump administration. The COVID-19 pandemic also disproportionally affected them.
- Dr. Ayca Altintig (Finance Assistant Professor, Claremont Graduate U.): Speaking under the title "Turkish-American Experiences in Civic Engagement," Dr. Altintig began by observing that the Turkish-American community is relatively young and, until recently, fairly homogeneous. Many of its members come to the US for studies and decide to stay. Turkish-Americans tend to be educated and well-off. Turkish women have been quite active ever since the battle for their country's independence after World War I. In the recent US elections, quite a few Turkish women ran for local offices. Some affluent Turkish-Americans help with donations, but getting the community at large involved in social programs is difficult, given internal fragmentation and lack of trust between various groups. They shy away from political activism due to their upbringing. Dr. Altintig is active in programs that help immigrants in their professional lives and also use story-telling to connect and develop a sense of community.
A lively Q&A period ensued. I asked the following two questions, which were tackled by multiple panelists:
- The brain drain problem for Iran and Turkey are quite similar (I suspect that other communities discussed here have similar problems). Is Turkey doing something to reverse the trend? I know that Iran pays lip service to re-absorbing the brains that fled, but there is little concrete action to accommodate them.
- It seems that both Iranian-Americans and Turkish-Americans shy away from political activism due to their upbringing and past experiences. Fragmentation into different political factions seems to be another commonality. Are Arab-Americans and South-Asian-Americans similarly divided and politics-shy?
2021/04/18 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The pandemic brought many changes to our lives: Education and healthcare are being transformed and the challenging climate-change problem may have gotten a little bit less daunting. [Top center] Friday, April 16, Zoom talk on Mowlavi/Rumi (see the next item below). [Top right] Nature's art: The "eyes" (lenticels) allow gas exchange between the tree and the atmosphere. [Bottom left & center] Book talk by Dr. Steven Strogatz (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Matzo tah-dig (crispy pot-bottom) for adas-polo, or rice with lentils: My mom's way of using leftover matzos after Passover!
(2) Mowlana Jalal al-Din Rumi [1207-1273]: Mowlavi/Rumi and his poetry were subjects of Friday afternoon's Persian Zoom talk by Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz (U. Maryland). After spending about 40 minutes on biographical information, description of his main works (Masnavi and Divan-e Shams, as his formal books, and Fihi Ma Fih, a collection of Mowlavi's spoken words in plain or colloquial language, compiled by others), and his significance in the history of literature, Dr. Keshavarz recited examples of Mowlavi's poems, elaborating on their meanings and philosophical/spiritual significance.
Mowlavi was a positive, joyful person. He saw love as the ultimate source of happiness and, having been exposed during his life to many different groups of people, faiths, and cultures, he believed in their commonalities and minimized their differences. In Mowlavi's view, each person embodies good and bad (Moses and Pharaoh, in his words) and one has to learn to live with the two.
My question: Many English statements (quotes and such) are attributed to Mowlavi. In most cases, when I try to identify the original poem by substituting possible Persian words for English words in the text and doing Google searches, I fail to find anything. It seems that we are fed many made-up statements attributed to Mowlavi, which aren't his. Do you have a sense about how to identify fakes? Dr. Keshavarz agreed that this is a challenge. She is involved in a project to improve Ganjoor (a comprehensive database of Persian poetry) in order to facilitate searches of this kind, but forgery will remain a problem.
(3) Yesterday in National Math Festival: Black children and excellence in mathematics. *Mathematics—It is in my DNA! *Tick Tock Banneker Clock *Counting on Katherine, Dorothy, Mary, and More! *Dr. Granville, Mathematician & Computer Scientist *Raye Montague: The Girl with a Mind for Math *Women Who Count
(4) Book talk at National Math Festival: Dr. Steven Strogatz, who believes calculus to be the greatest discovery of humankind, talked under the title "Infinite Powers: The Story of Calculus." None of the achievements of modern science and technology would have been possible without calculus. Calculus can also be daunting to many people. Hence, this book. How did an archaic branch of math that grew out of geometry help modernize the world? Strogatz provided some very interesting examples from his book and referred to Herman Wouk's The Language God Talks (using a statement about calculus by Richard Feynman, whom Wouk, a liberal-arts person, interviewed). Calculus isn't just about describing objects (curves and shapes). It also helps us deal with how things change, which is the domain of differential equations. Combined with probability and statistics, calculus has produced many of today's key R&D areas, such as machine learning.
2021/04/17 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IEEE Computer magazine, issue of April 2021: The cover feature deals with major breakthroughs in computing applications. [Top center] Dining on the shore of the Persian Gulf in Bushehr, southern Iran. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Spiderman in middle-age wants to be drawn the way he looked in his youth! [Bottom left] Generations: Lucky 15-year-old takes a photo with 4 generations of women before her. [Bottom center] Today's Zoom-based Distinguished Lecture by NSF CISE Director (see the next item below). [Bottom right] About Barbara Lipska's book, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind (see the last item below).
(2) Today's Distinguished Lecture by Margaret Martonosi: Speaking via Zoom to 46 UCSB faculty members and other researchers, Dr. Martonosi described NSF Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Division's programs and activities, elaborating on various initiatives and seeking input about future directions.
(3) Cyber-insecurity: Russian agents spent months with access to the most-sensitive US commercial and government computer systems through the SolarWinds hack.
(4) Book review: Lipska, Dr. Barbara K. (with Elaine McArdle), The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, unabridged audiobook, read by Emma Powell, HighBridge Audio, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book reminded me of My Stroke of Insight, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor's detailed description of what she learned about human brain from her own debilitating stroke. I reviewed the latter book in early October 2014 and uploaded my 4-star review to Goodreads on April 4, 2021.
The Polish-born Lipska worked on rats at the National Institute of Mental Health to develop the neonatal hippocampal lesion model of schizophrenia, aka the Lipska model. She was also in charge of NIMH's "brain bank," which collects and preserves brain-tissue samples from deceased persons, with and without a history of mental illnesses, as resources for researchers. Two bouts of cancer in middle age did not deter Lipska, a fitness enthusiast, from completing a number of Ironman races.
The following passage from the book has been quoted as her most-cogent reconstruction of what she went through: "My hypervigilance—my body constantly on high alert, and the sense I have that I'm participating in every event with my whole being—is possibly being triggered by stress or anxiety. That anxiety, in turn, gives rise to more stress and anxiety. Making it worse, I have the vague feeling that I'm not in control of myself or the world around me anymore. That loss of control makes me angry. My extreme reaction to sensory overload is common in people with brain trauma, autism, and many other brain conditions. Normally, the brain is able to sort through the sensory information that comes at it and prioritize what's important and what can be ignored. When this filter mechanism doesn't work, the brain can become overwhelmed by all the information it's trying to process, like a computer bombarded by data. The brain can no longer distinguish between what it's safe to ignore, like the sounds of distant traffic or the sensation of wind on your face as you walk along, versus what is important, like the honking of the car that's about to hit you."
Patients with brain cancer rarely survive. Lipska not only recovered from metastatic cancer in her frontal lobe, but was able to return to her research and athletic training. Studying the ordeal through her knowledge of neuroscience, allowed her to trace the ways in which her brain was damaged, triggering behavioral and cognitive changes, which were evident to those around her but not to Lipska herself. She also mapped changes in her brain during treatment.
I learned a lot from this book about both cancerous tumors in the brain and certain kinds of mental illness that have very similar symptoms. My only complaint about this otherwise-excellent book is that it contains too much repetition and belaboring of minor points. It could have been made much shorter and a lot easier on the reader/listener by removing repetitions and redundancies in prose.
Here's a short NPR interview with Lipska. [6-minute audio file]
2021/04/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] California 1944 and Iran 1957 relief maps: You can find many more vintage relief maps on Muir Way. [Top right] Another supercomputer-level microchip: "NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU: Performance and Innovation," IEEE Micro, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 29-35, March-April 2021. [Bottom left & right] Side streets of downtown Santa Barbara: If you deviate a bit from the main artery, State Street, you run into some interesting houses and other examples of wonderful architecture. I took these photos during a walk on Wednesday 2021/04/14. [Bottom center] Mixed feelings: Happy for having a full week of sunshine ahead, but worried about the prospects of drought with what is so far the driest year in decades.
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section Zoom technical talk: Dr. Ramtin Pedarsani will talk under the title "Efficient Transportation in the Face of a Pandemic" (Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 6:30 PM PDT). [Free registration]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- New US sanctions on Russia: Putin must be miserable over his failure to change the US election outcome!
- A sexually-harassed government worker hits her boss with a mop, leading to his firing. [#MeToo in China]
- Iran's tourist sites: A hotel in the city of Kashan, with old-style architecture and an underground section.
- Math problem (not really a puzzle): Solve for x. cuberoot(x) + cuberoot(x – 16) = cuberoot(x – 8)
- Persian music: Talented artists pay tribute to the late singer Viguen Derderian via a medley of his songs.
- Kurdish music: "I am a Kurdish girl," performed by Russian Kurd singer Zara. [4-minute video]
- Kurdish music: "Haal," composed and played on santur by Siavash Kamkar (other credits on the video).
- Farhad Fakhreddini's 6 decades of music: His themes for movies and TV serials are particularly well-known.
(4) At least 8 dead from mass-shooting in FedEx facility: The sad thing is that we sort of expect these mass-shooting events and move on quickly to the next news item. Shame on NRA stooges in Congress!
(5) What about this legislation to help bring the Republicans around on sensible gun laws? The Second Amendment isn't just for the rich. Every US citizen, who passes background and mental-health checks, is entitled to own a gun. If s/he can't afford to buy one, the government will subsidize the purchase.
(6) Math puzzle: We have a set S with an odd number of elements. Which is larger: The number of subsets of S with an odd number of elements or the number of subsets with an even number of elements?
(7) Still more hypocrisy: The folks who claim they want the government out of our private affairs are passing anti-transgender laws that would require genital inspection of athletes!
(8) Virtual forums, such as Clubhouse, are God-given gifts to Iran's powerful: Many of these fake champions of the people, such as Motahhari, Zarif, or Ranfsanjani's daughter, wouldn't dare speak at in-person forums.
2021/04/14 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Why we can't end our endless wars: Great contemplation, but many years too late! [Center] "Mom, Where Are the Girls?" is the title of an editorial by Ipek Ozkaya in the April 2021 issue of IEEE Computing Edge. Here is the first page of the 3-page editorial. I will add a link if I find the item on-line. [Right] Calculating the length of a year, the time for one revolution of planet Earth around the Sun.
(2) A brazen burglary in my neighborhood: Indo China Market was broken into overnight by five men, who smashed its glass windows, taking away a safe and cash from a register within a couple of minutes. Police is studying surveillance videos from the store and nearby businesses in the Target Shopping Plaza. It is unclear at this point whether the theft has racially motivated.
(3) DEI efforts assume urgency in light of new incidents of racial violence: UCSB, under the leadership of its newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Belinda Robnett, is putting in place comprehensive campus-wide initiatives such as diversity education programs and bystander intervention workshops. Activities in broad areas affecting faculty, staff, and students are planned.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Senator John Cornyn (R) asks whether Biden is "really in charge," given that he doesn't tweet a lot!
- Friend charged for the murder of Kristin Smart, a Cal Poly SLO student who went missing 25 years ago.
- Gretchen Carlson blasts Fox News for defending Tucker Carlson's White-Supremacist talking points.
- Bears repeating: COVID-19 pandemic --> Epidemic of loss of women in STEM [NYT report]
- Cops shouldn't kill innocent people: They aren't supposed to kill guilty people either!
- If pregnancy is God's will, as some conservatives assert, then ED must also be His will to prevent pregnancy.
(5) Political humor: There are always stealth "elements" in Iran who scheme to commit illegal acts (such as arrest/torture/murder of political opponents) to make regime officials look bad.
(6) Fourteen-centuries-old mentality: My heading may be an insult to many who lived 14 centuries ago. Iranian state-TV cuts off parts of a soccer match between Manchester United and Spurs more than 100 times, because of a woman assistant referee wearing shorts!
(7) UCSB offers free Identity Protection Workshops to faculty, staff, and students: Thanks a lot! After allowing wholesale theft of our data from UC's central databases, now the administration sort of implies that we are at fault and in need of becoming more knowledgeable about identity theft!
(8) Village alleys named after beloved books: The village of Rasoul Abad, in Iran's Hamedan Province, has chosen to name its alleys after literary masterpieces, rather than religious figures, warriors, or martyrs.
2021/04/13 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sign of the times: Photo taken in Sansum Clinic's parking lot, when I took my mom for an eye-doctor visit. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Teacher's educational innovation to make kids pay attention in class. [Right] Cover image for the book Death to the Dictator (see the last item below).
(2) The Canticle of the Birds ("Manteq-ol-Tayr"): Persian panel led by Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (U. Maryland) and featuring Dr. Leili Anvar (Inst. Nat'l Langues et Civilsations Orientales), Dr. Michael A. Barry (Princeton U.), and Ms. Wendy Jehlen (Artistic Dir. & Founder, ANIKAYA). Friday, April 23, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT. [Register]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- GOP Senator John Cornyn asks whether Biden is "really in charge," given that he doesn't tweet a lot!
- Iran says it will enrich uranium to the highest level, after alleged Israeli attack on Natanz nuclear facility.
- A new rendition of the oldie Persian song "Yaarom Bia" (while sounding weird at first, it grows on you).
- Humor: What Iran's schools might look like upon re-opening after COVID-19 is brought under control.
(4) Book review: Moqadam, Afsaneh, Death to the Dictator! A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran's 2009 Election and Pays a Devastating Price, unabridged audiobook, read by Johnny Heller, Tantor Audio, 2010.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
To vote or not to vote, that is the question faced by many Iranians ever since the Islamic form of government took hold in 1979. Many voters boycott the sham elections in which only candidates that pass the ideological and loyalty filters of Iran's Guardians Council are allowed to compete. So, the people's choice is always between bad and worse. Others argue that some level of choice is better than no choice at all, thus urging voters to go to the polls and elect "reformist" candidates promising to improve the system from within.
It is in this context that the fact-based story's protagonist, Mohsen Abbaspour (which is a pseudonym, as is the author's name, because of the danger of what s/he reveals), decides to cast a vote for the reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, running as part of the "Green Movement" against the incumbent Mahmoud Ahamadinejad in 2009. Amid accusations of widespread election fraud (a stolen or "engineered" election), Ahmadinejad declares himself the clear winner almost immediately after the polls close.
Mohsen and many other people take to the streets, chanting "Death to the Dictator!" and "Where Is My Vote?" Hooligans and plainclothes security forces, with help from rooftop sharpshooters, attack the crowd, chasing them on the streets, beating them, destroying their property, and marking their homes for retaliation. Many protesters die and an even larger number are arrested. Eventually, Ahmadinejad falls out of favor with Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei and others who committed fraud on his behalf to allow a calamitous presidency to continue for a second 4-year term.
Immediately after the protests, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, his wife, and Mehdi Karroubi (another "Green Movement" candidate), are placed under house arrests, without trials or even clearly-enunciated charges. These house arrests continue to this date, some 12 years later. Mohsen is caught up in a series of events that upend his life and those of his family. The book's writing is problematic, but the story it tells is compelling.
2021/04/12 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Music's in the air, and wildflowers everywhere: Photos I took during my afternoon walk atop the bluffs at UCSB's West Campus Beach. [Center] IBM Power10 processor architecture: Described in the March-April 2021 Issue of IEEE Micro magazine (Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 7-14), the 16-core chip has been significantly enhanced over its Power9 predecessor. The inclusion of an all-new matrix math-engine has led to 10x-20x performance gain for matrix-intensive computations.
(2) "Middle Eastern and South Asian Diaspora Communities in the US": Zoom panel discussion in English, sponsored by Cal State University Northridge, Monday, April 19, 2021, 2:00-4:00 PM PDT. [Register]
(3) Quote of the day: "Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing [in the Ten Commandments] about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide?" ~ Christopher Hitchens
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Explosion at Natanz nuclear enrichment facility may cloud Bidens diplomatic outreach to Iran.
- Business leaders discuss plans for reacting to GOP's voter-suppression laws.
- A most-important lesson from COVID-19: Health and politics do not mix!
- Some HS seniors lost more than time: Facing uncertainty, they were on track to college before COVID-19.
- Which one of these two is a child-sex-trafficker? State your choice and I will guess your party affiliation.
- Talk: Nezami's Khosrow & Shirin (Parinoush Saniee), Tue. 2021/04/13, 4:30 PM PDT (Zoom; PW=kanoon)
- Talk: Mowlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (Fatemeh Keshavarz), Fri. 2021/04/16, 4:30 PM PDT (Zoom; PW=kanoon)
(5) For the first time in history, Americans who indicate they belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque are in the minority (47%). [Source: Time magazine, reporting on the results of a Gallup survey]
(6) Advertising: New York Times really wants me as a subscriber! Over the past two months, I have received introductory subscription offers at $1 per week, with a particular deadline. Then, I receive reminders that the offer will expire in 3 days, in 2 days, 1 day. Within a day, the cycle repeats. A new offer, reminders, and so on!
(7) The Republican brand of political terrorism: When the country's affairs run smoothly, the party in power gets the credit and the minority party becomes invisible. To avoid this fate, and to continue to appear in news headlines, GOP members strap political bombs to their waists and threaten to blow things up.
(8) Another historic cabinet nomination by President Biden: Christine Wormuth as Secretary of the Army. She will be the first woman to serve in that position, if confirmed.
(9) Here we go again: Protests and violence erupt in Minneapolis after a young black man is "accidentally" killed by a police officer during a traffic stop, a few miles from where George Floyd was murdered.
2021/04/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Way to go, Mississippi! The state aspiring to be the "safest place in America for an unborn child" is the deadliest place for mothers and delivered children! [Top center] Anonymous suggestion of a new official logo for the Islamic Republic of Iran. [Top right] How a new virus variant might become dominant (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: A couple of explorers discover the Ottoman Empire. [Bottom center] Architect Cristina Ventura heads the team which is restoring and repairing Rio de Janeiro's Cristo Redentor, in preparation for the 125-foot-tall Christ statue's 90th birthday in October 2021. [Bottom right] The first emoji, face with tongue out (credit: Beeple on Twitter).
(2) Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago: For the first time ever, a vast majority of Democrats agree with Donald Trump, as he gives one of his trademark nicknames to Mitch McConnell.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Siblings' Day 2021: Lucky to have (left to right) Mahnaz, Farnaz, and Behnaz in my life! [Photos]
- If only the Brits had shown as much time/space to analyzing Brexit as to the death of a 99-year-old prince!
- Nationwide ground-turkey salmonella contamination alert. [USA Today tweet]
- Piano prodigy: Close your eyes and try to convince yourself that you're hearing a 6-year-old play Chopin.
- Cool stick-figures dance routine. [1-minute video]
- Math calendar-page puzzle for April 10: x + y + z = 30; x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = xy + yz + zx
(4) The old problem of inequity in funding UC campuses rears its ugly head again: Underfunded campuses educate a larger share of needy students, giving rise to allegations of inter-campus racism. "Troubled regents are calling for a closer look at the inequities. State Assemblyman Jose Medina (D-Riverside) has asked UC President Michael V. Drake to address the problems."
(5) Mathematical explanation of how a new virus variant might become dominant: The following shows the power of exponential growth. Consider a virus, with its infections doubling (x2) every month. Starting with a single infection, the number f(x) of infections after x months will be: f(x) = 2^x
Consider a new variant of the virus which is 4 times as contagious (x8 per month). If the new variant emerges 10 months after the original virus, the number g(x) of infections after x months will be: g(x) = 8^(x – 10)
The following calculation determines the number x of months leading to g(x) > f(x):
8^(x – 10) > 2^x; (x – 10) log 8 > x log 2; (x – 10)/x > 1/3; 3x – 30 > x; x > 15
So, the new variant that is four times as contagious will become dominant 5 months after it appears. If the number of infections from the original virus is no longer on exponential rise, the new variant will become dominant even more quickly.
2021/04/09 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The good old days: Not a phone in sight; everyone living in the moment (credit: Classical Art Memes). [Top center] Glazed donuts, anyone? [Top right] Cartoon of the day: "I'm working from home, but having an issue accessing the network." [Bottom left] The world's largest tree in terms of volume: General Sherman Tree, located in Giant Forest of California's Sequoia National Park, is 83 m (275 ft) tall, 11 m (36 ft) in diameter at the base, and ~2500 years old. [Bottom center] Silicon Valley's next big project: Hacking the process of aging (Newsweek magazine's cover story). [Bottom right] Singapore in the evening: In front are "Gardens by the Bay," consisting of "The Flower Dome" and "Cloud Forest." In the back, is the Marina Bay Sands resort/casino, aka "The Triple Tower," with its SkyPark.
(2) Republican hypocrisy: Are corporations like people? Yes, they can spend money to support political causes and candidates. No, they shouldn't make political statements, such as condemning voting restrictions.
(3) Female profs are falling behind in the pandemic, because they have less time for research: This article includes opinions from a post-doctoral fellow at UCSB and a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and author of Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Let the flippings begin: A Capitol-riot defendant will be cooperating with prosecutors against Proud Boys.
- Throwback Thursday: A 1947 wedding photo of QE II and Prince Philip, who just passed away at 99.
- A 3000-year-old "lost golden city" unearthed in Egypt: This "largest ancient city" is located near Luxor.
- Model train plays classical music: The length of the melody is a Guinness World Record for a model train.
(5) On channeling anti-regime sentiments in Iran: As old-time celebrities pass in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the state-TV barely mentions their passing because they are considered symbols of a decadent past, mourning their deaths becomes an act of defiance. In this Persian essay, Sayeh Eghtesadinia recalls the passing of the popular actor Fardin 21 years ago and how mourners remembered and honored him for days.
(6) Corwin Chair Series Lecture: JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (UCSB Media Arts & Technology Program) spoke under the title "Using the Creative Process as a Computational Framework for Unfolding Complex Systems." Kuchera-Morin's presentation was a tour of a 37-year career encompassing a broad spectrum of compositions and other music-related activities, including the creation of AlloSphere, a research facility in a theatre-like spherical pavilion, used to project computer-generated imagery and sounds. [A few images]
Kuchera-Morin noted that composing music shares many elements with building complex systems, which is what justifies her collaboration with physicists and nanoscientists, and for the AlloSphere facility being housed in UCSB's Nanosystems Institute building. As part of the presentation, Kuchera-Morin played a sample of her last totally-acoustic composition from 1984 and screened a number of other videos depicting her digital-art work since then. [TEDx talk, "Stunning Data Visualization in the AlloSphere"]
Some of Kuchera-Morin's work entails using a visual/audio/interactive computational language, AlloLib, created for the interactive representation of complex information in many fields of research and which allows scientists, engineers, and researchers in other fields to work with their information perceptually and intuitively, as well as technically, the way that artists do.
2021/04/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] UCSB Academic Senate Townhall on Fall 2021 Instruction (see the next item below). [Right] Mapping the Islamic World: This Stanford U. virtual exhibition explores maps of the Islamic World, focusing on the "Gunpowder Empires" of Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia, and Mughal India.
(2) UCSB Academic Senate Townhall on Fall Quarter Instruction: Held via Zoom, today's townhall, with ~220 participants, consisted of one hour of presentations by various campus officials and a second hour of Q&A, led by selected faculty panelists from different academic divisions. Panel members, in order of questioning, were: Greg Mitchell (Theater/Dance); Sathya Gurusw (Physics); Jean Beaman (Political Science); Sabine Fruhstuck (East Asian Studies); Behrooz Parhami (ECE). Besides the presenters below, Jeffrey Stopple (Office of Undergrad Education, L&S) and Renee Bahl (Facilities) helped answer questions.
- Welcome (Henry Yang, Chancellor): UC plans to return to primarily-in-person instruction in fall 2021. Despite the pandemic, we have an amazing incoming freshman class, in terms of both quality and diversity. The June 2021 commencement will be mostly virtual. Our custodial staff has done an amazing job in preparing restrooms and other common spaces for re-opening.
- Faculty Survey Results (Susannah Scott, Divisional Chair, Academic Senate): More than 3/4 of faculty have already been vaccinated. Faculty insist that they and people around them be vaccinated before holding in-person classes. Significant workload increases for instructors will not occur; no one will be required to teach on-line and in-person simultaneously.
- Campus Planning (David Marshall, Executive Vice Chancellor): Classrooms and their ventilation systems have been evaluated. The administration is studying the implications of limiting class size to 100 or class capacity to 50%. Planning is being done in the context of changing local and state conditions.
- Public Health Considerations (Scott Grafton, Campus COVID-19 Coordinator): Emerging real-world data indicates that vaccines are even more effective than the clinical-trial results suggested. There will likely be a spring surge (in cases, not hospitalizations or deaths, if we take data from Israel as basis for comparison). With nearly 400M people vaccinated worldwide, virtually no adverse effects have been observed. Vaccine approvals will soon move from "emergency use" to "permanent." UC is developing an infrastructure to track vaccinations. The pandemic will likely be defeated in 6-8 weeks.
- Modes of Teaching (Lisa Berry, Senior Instructional Consultant, Instructional Development): The default instruction mode will be "in-person" during fall 2021. On-line (synchronous, asynchronous) and mixed-mode instruction are possible, but they require Senate approval if less than 50% of instruction is in-person. Options include "alternating mode" (perhaps one in-person and one on-line lecture per week) and "simultaneous" (course consists of an in-person section and an on-line section, each with its capacity, which students can choose from).
- Faculty Welfare Concerns (Lisa Parks, Chair, Committee on Faculty Welfare, Academic Freedom, and Awards): Faculty have experienced burn-out due to the extra effort they have put in to adapt to on-line instruction. There are some suggestions for a universal one-quarter teaching release to allow faculty to catch up. Face-masks, if required will make teaching quite challenging. Ventilation and air-flow will be an important factor for returning to in-person instruction. We may have to rethink the way we work/live in the wake of the pandemic. Be reminded that there is a process of requesting "reasonable" accommodations.
- Graduate Student Concerns (Tammy Afifi, Chair, Graduate Council): Graduate students have been under enormous stress over the past year. Equity between professors and TAs in the way on-line and in-person instruction are handled is important.
Here are the three questions which I asked. These and other questions and their answers will be compiled into an FAQ section on the UCSB Academic Senate Web site, where a recording of the presentations and Q&As will also be available.
- Flipped classroom might work well (pre-recorded lectures, with optional, live in-class discussion): Do these count as "at least 50% in person" so that no individual authorization is needed?
- Working from home, along with our children and other family members, has led to Internet access problems. In areas where higher grades of service are available at additional cost, these problems can be solved with money. Will the campus help faculty members by reimbursing these costs or help directly by supplying Internet service (as in the case of faculty housing complexes)?
- Classroom availability was a challenge, even before COVID-19. Has the campus taken steps to provide additional classroom space, in the form of tents or temporary buildings, now that we may be having even less space (perhaps due to 50% occupancy)?
2021/04/07 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Systemic racism does exist and no amount of denial can erase the truth: This meme says it all! [Center] Optical illusion: Stare at the plus sign in the middle of the image to see a green dot going over all the pink dots. If you try to follow the green dot, it will disappear! [Right] Meme of the day: Explaining algorithm, heuristic, and machine learning.
[Bottom left] [Bottom center] [Bottom right]
(2) Another public trial in the media: Criminal trials are serious matters that should be left to the judge, jury, prosecutor, and defense attorney. There is absolutely no need for non-stop visual and print narratives about every detail and for second-guessing the prosecution or defense. This reeks of laziness in reporting. Journalists should focus on the underlying problems that led to this particular prosecution, not the trial itself.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump campaign tricked donors who wanted to make one-time contributions into auto/repeat donations.
- Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe calls for sedition charges (up to 10 years in jail) against Trump.
- Who is Q? An HBO docu-series points to Ron Watkins, an intelligence trainer, but he points to Steve Bannon.
- Asian-American students under stress: They fear for their own safety as well as the safety of their elders.
- SCOTUS rules for Google and against Oracle in copyright fight over the Java programming language.
- Utah passes law that obligates biological fathers to pay for half of out-of-pocket pregnancy & delivery costs.
- The torture and killing of a Baha'i doctor in Iran: Dr. Firouz Naeimi helped eradicate malaria in Hamedan.
- Arabian coins found in Rhode Island may help solve a piracy mystery dating back to the 1600s.
- IEEE CCS is sponsoring a video-essay contest for students in the California Central Coast region.
- For my Persian-speaking readers: Perfectly-good Persian equivalents for commonly-used Arabic words.
(4) Israel confirms its attack on an Iranian ship in the Red Sea: Claims that it was a covert Revolutionary Guards Corps "forward base," officially listed as a merchant ship.
(5) The story of the Iranian diplomat/terrorist in Vienna: Assisted by top-tier Iranian clerics and fake dissidents, he planned to bomb a conference of Iranian dissidents in Paris.
(6) Extreme hypocrisy: Why is requiring vaccine passports an infringement on personal liberties, whereas requiring driver's licenses and concealed-carry permits are okay?
(7) No peace without women's rights: A women's solidarity network demands that there should be no peace with the Taliban without ensuring that women's rights will be honored.
(8) The British/Americans did it: Iranian Revolutionary Guards fund a state-TV series that is a thinly-veiled attack on Javad Zarif and his "spy-infested" Foreign Ministry.
2021/04/06 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Today's walk on State Street: Movie theaters in downtown Santa Barbara are either open or eagerly anticipate reopening soon. Museums are slowly reopening and the city's International Film Festival will proceed at drive-ins and via digital streaming. [Right] Zoom meeting of Fanni'68 classmates; the lower panel in the image is from Wikipedia (see the last item below).
(2) Persian poetry: Translation of two verses on old age from Sa'adi. [The original Persian verses]
- Do not expect signs of youth from the old | Once gone by, flowing water will not return to the creek
- Old age and youth follow one another, as night follows day | Day and night passed me, and I did not awaken
(3) "Why We Still Speak Persian in Iran": This was the focus of an April 5, 2021, Persian Zoom session (with 45 participants) of University of Tehran's College of Engineering graduates, Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). The speaker was historian Mohammad Amini, who had previously spoken on contemporary history of Iran. Mr. Amini began working on this subject, en route to writing a magazine article. His notes, now over 700 pages, will soon be turned into a book. [Full recording of the meeting; Passcode i7TKO=3]
Several panelists had been invited to discuss the topic after the main presentation: Daryush Ashouri, Abdollah Kowsari, Jaleh Pirnazar (left the meeting before she could speak), Dr. Bahram Gerami, and Mostafa Jeihooni. My notes below reflect a composite of what was said.
During the Sassanid rule, multiple languages were used in Persia. Pahlavi was the official language. Avestan was used for religious matters. Throughout history, the language of the people was different from the "divani" (governmental or formal) language that one finds on tablets and other historical documents. After Islam, Arabic replaced Pahlavi as the divani language, but the people's versions of Persian persisted in various locations.
The Turkish-speaking Saljuks established a broad empire. Ironically, the Persian language flourished during the Saljuk's rule. Persian had many strengths as a divani language, which caused it to prevail over the languages of all conquering tribes. In fact, two important "books of kings" were written in Persian during the Mongol's rule. Historians have collected three volumes of royal edicts from the Ghaznavid period, in which only three edicts are in the Mongol language, all the rest being in Persian.
Interestingly, Islamic invaders successfully changed languages to Arabic in the westward drive (Syria, North Africa), whereas they were unsuccessful in imposing their language to the east (Persia, Afghanistan). One reason may be the affinity of languages in Syria and North Africa with Arabic due to being from the same root, whereas the Indo-European Persian had a different grammar and its speakers had more difficulty with Arabic constructs and sounds.
Another factor might have been the early translations of Quran and production of interpretive works in Persian, removing Arabic as the sole channel to Islam. Poetry was an important force for the survival of Persian. Older Iranians likely have relatives who could not read or write, but they could recite poetry in Persian.
This discussion, and the related topic of the Persian script, may be continued in future meetings.
My narrative and question: Even though script is only loosely related to language, in that there are many examples of changing the script without changing the language, script and language may be more intimately tied together in the case of Persian. Many Iranians, even those with a low level of literacy, use calligraphic renderings of Persian poetry to adorn their homes. So, I asked the following question: "The Persian language not only survived the Arab invasion but it flourished. The Persian script, however, was changed substantially. Centuries later, modern technology (first printing, then typewriting, and finally computers) and the difficulties caused by the Persian script in adopting these technologies led to a string of proposals over centuries to modernize the Persian script. Very few took these proposals seriously. Why?"
2021/04/05 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
![The quality of our infrastructure ranks 13th in the world, behind 12 countries, from Singapore to UAE. [Center] Persian calligraphic art by Masoud Ebrahimifar: The word](images_folder/f22-210405-meme-infrastructure-rank-us-13th.jpg){kind=icon}
(1) Images of the day: [Left] America's rotting infrastructure: The quality of our infrastructure ranks 13th in the world, behind 12 countries, from Singapore to UAE. [Center] Persian calligraphic art by Masoud Ebrahimifar: The word "Eshgh" ("Love"), twisted out of shape and deprived of its five dots. [Right] Tonight's "Hello Fresh" meal: Yogurt-marinated chicken with garlic sauce, plus pistachio couscous & chili-roasted carrots. My daughter prepared the meal and I supplied the salad.
(2) The US is top-notch in cyberwarfare, but we also live in the glassiest of houses, with our economy totally dependent on the Internet: Former cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs interviewed by Bill Maher.
(3) "I won't hesitate to shoot someone in the head for insulting the Imams": Journalist Masih Alinejad calls for Twitter to ban the Iranian state-TV host who made this DAESH-like statement.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sanctions hurt the status of US dollar as world's top currency more than they are hurting their targets.
- Putting it in TV parlance: Low ratings led to the cancellation of Seasons 5-8 of the Trump presidency!
- Borowitz Report (humor): Rand Paul claims Biden's infrastructure plan infringes on bridges' right to crumble.
- A wonderful ballet/gymnastics/juggling routine. [4-minute video]
- Notable quote: "If you don't know what dictatorship is, you are probably living under one." ~ Ifnazio Silone
(5) Jordan in turmoil, but not as part of the Arab spring: The escalating unrest, leading to scores of arrests, seems to be the result of infighting within Jordan's royal family, between the descendants of the late King Hussein, from two different wives.
(6) "How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments": This study by Center for Global Development unveils the terms and conditions of the world's largest creditor using data from 100 official contracts between China and 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania. This page contains a good summary of the findings and provides a button for downloading the full 85-page PDF document for those seeking more details.
(7) Trump's fans say that by pursuing the presidency in 2024, Mike Pence is betraying his old boss: This is definitely not as serious a betrayal as Trump supporters calling for Pence's hanging!
(8) "Waiting for Quantum Computing? Try Probabilistic Computing": This is the title of an introductory article by Dr. Kerem Camsari (my ECE UCSB colleague) and Dr. Supriyo Datta (Purdue U.) in the April 2021 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine. Dr. Camsari gave a talk on this same topic in February 2021 for IEEE Central Coast Section. The authors present much of their content in the form of a fictitious dialog between Salviati and Sagrado, two characters borrowed from Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," to represent a specialist arguing for their world view and an "intelligent layman," that is, the reader (the authors are kind to characterize us as "intelligent" rather than "dummies").
2021/04/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Brain-shaped jello, made by my daughter, our family's very own neuroscientist! [Center] Guns don't kill people, people kill people: I totally agree with this statement, but please hear me out! [Right] My mom's aash-e reshteh, a traditional staple for the end of Passover, packaged to go.
(2) DC car/knife attack: Even though the latest Washington DC cop killer is said to be mentally disturbed, his ties to Louis Farrakhan and Nation of Islam are troubling.
(3) Religious idiocy: An Iranian cleric defends another cleric, who had advised that masking and other COVID-19 provisions don't apply to religious shrines, calling those who say otherwise uninformed and illiterate!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Suez Canal closure: Fourteen ships were stranded in the Canal for 8 years of Egypt-Israel hostilities.
- Pleasure and happiness are polar opposites, in the sense that increasing one diminishes the other.
- Pacific Symphony's Nowruz program, featuring pianist/composer Shardad Rohani and other artists.
- Persian poetry: Houshang Ebtehaj (Sayeh) recites his poem entitled "Time's Playthings Are Human Hearts."
- Quote of the day: "A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there." ~ Anonymous
(5) Massive theft of personal data: A few days after University of California informed its employees of wholesale private data theft by malicious hackers, Health Net sent a similar notice to its members. The commonality in the two cases is that they used the services of Accellion, a data interchange service provider. Many other organizations have likely been affected as well. [Accellion data breach]
There are quite a few unanswered questions. The Health Net data breach occurred on January 25, 2021, so an immediate question is why it took them 2+ months to inform affected customers. Both UC and Health Net tried to downplay the severity of the incident in their notifications by asserting that no data abuse has occurred so far. Apparently, the two organizations do not realize that all it takes for abuse of data is a single leak anytime, anywhere. A person's date-of-birth, Social Security Number, and health records cannot be changed like a password, so the data thief can wait months or even years to begin abusing the stolen data. Providing a temporary service of credit tracking or suggesting that we request a freeze on credit-reporting is a band-aid solution that a sophisticated hacker can out-wait.
Many corporations are abusing our data for profit; others are playing fast-and-loose with our data due to incompetence or for cost-cutting in security services and provisions.
(6) Feeling betrayed: I spent a good chunk of yesterday protecting myself against the massive Accellion data breach affecting University of California and Health Net. I enrolled in a credit tracking service and placed security freezes on new credit with the three major credit-reporting agencies. Neither UC nor Health Net offered anything resembling an apology. Rather, they downplayed the severity of the incident and patted themselves on the back for how wonderfully they are dealing with the incident!
2021/04/03 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Humor: Get your top-secret Jewish space laser pin now, while supplies last! [Center] Digital keepsakes: We recently ended two days of decluttering to rid our garage of decades of accumulated stuff. Took a carload of paper, cardboard, and other items to the recycling center, set aside three boxes of school textbooks to look through for keeping, sharing, donating, or recycling, and photographed several of my daughter's school artwork. [Right] Book introduction: Ketab-e Anusi: Narratives of the Life of Iranian Jews in the Safavid Era (I grabbed the cover images from an on-line post, with no other information).
(2) It's election time in Iran again: To draw people to the polls, Minister of Communications has promised to remove filtering from Telegram and Twitter. Other reports tell of the promise of COVID-19 vaccination at the polls. Let's see if people of Iran fall for these tricks again!
(3) Auto-brewery syndrome: In 2019, a man was arrested for driving while drunk, but he insisted that he had not had even a single drink. It turned out that he was suffering from a rare condition that occurs when yeast in the gut produces excessive quantities of ethanol. People who have auto-brewery syndrome register abnormally high blood alcohol levels, even if they consume no alcohol.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Train accident in Taiwan: Nearly 50 dead as train derails inside a tunnel.
- Car rams into Washington DC barricade, killing one police officer: Driver also dead.
- NASA's Perseverance Rover discovers weird, as-yet-unidentified rock on Mars.
- Another Republican turns on his party: John Boehner has harsh words for the GOP in his memoir.
- The folk constantly whining about "cancel culture" are calling for a boycott of MLB for supporting voting rights!
- Asian soccer: Iran beats Syria 3-0 in a friendly match held in Tehran. [Highlights]
- Iranian women journalists: Sholeh Shams Shahbaz featured in this April 9, 4:30 PM PDT, Zoom meeting.
- Middle Eastern rock-n-roll: Iranians my age may remember the widely-popular song "Daddy Lolo." [Video]
- Kurdish music: The old Kermanshahi song "Asmar, Asmar," performed in Tehran's Rudaki Hall. [Video]
- Quote of the day: "A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there." ~ Anonymous
(5) Book introduction: Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology is a 1970 book by Nobel Laureate Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of evolution to show that life is only the result of natural processes by pure chance.
(6) Iran and stories from more than four decades of imprisonment, torture, and death: IranWire report about a virtual gathering on the 43rd anniversary of the formal establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
(7) Double standard: While in Mashhad, Iran, people were prevented from celebrating Sizdah-Beh-Dar in parks and fields owing to the pandemic, the Shrine of Imam Reza was packed with visitors. [Tweet]
(8) Final thought for the day (Balzac, on women): "It is as absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music."
2021/04/02 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Building a world that's safe for women will benefit us all! [Center] Three extraordinary Iranian architects and their creations (left to right): Kamran Diba (Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art); Hossein Amanat (Shahyad or Azadi Tower); Hooshang Seyhoon (Tomb of Omar Khayyam). [Right] Dariush Ashouri in his April 1 webinar (see the next item below).
(2) "Solving Some Enigmatic Terms in the Shahnameh": This was the title of an April 1 webinar by Dariush Ashouri, sponsored by Stanford University's Iranian Studies Program. Ashouri [1938-] is a prominent Paris-based Iranian thinker, author, translator, researcher, and public intellectual, who has made significant contributions to Iranian literary studies and the Persian language. [Ashouri's weblog]
In this talk, Ashouri promised to use a holistic approach, drawing on logical analysis, to explain some obscurities found in the old manuscripts of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. I was very disappointed, when he spent the first 45 minutes of his talk elaborating on the term "khaayeh-keshi" (castration) in animals and humans. The discussion was only minimally related to Shahnameh: Ferdowsi wrote about castrated horses, according to some, which may have been something entirely different.
Several references by Ashouri reeked of old-style patriarchy, which equated male virility with might and supremacy. This isn't the first time that I have been disappointed by what promised to be an enlightening talk turn into a marginal discussion. Ashouri seemed phycially unwell, and old age does take a toll on everyone.
(3) My musings on Iran and China: The just-signed 25-year treaty between Iran and China has caused quite a stir on traditional media outlets and social media. In what follows, I formulate some of my thoughts on what is going on. This is a still-developing process, and my views may change as more information is divulged about the treaty.
- Iran's FM Javad Zarif gave a series of interviews, in which he spoke candidly on what the treaty is about and indicated in no uncertain terms that Khamenei green-lighted the deal and installed his own point-person on the negotiating team.
- This seems to be a "regime deal" which may have been forced on Rouhani's government during its final months in office, so that anything that goes wrong can be blamed on his government, shielding the Supreme Leader from criticism.
- A primary reason for the deal is Iran's shortage of cash to fulfill its obligations in the wake of tight US sanctions. China has apparently provided a cash infusion into the Iranian economy.
- A secondary reason is Iran and China both sending a signal to the US that its interests in the Middle East region are under threat. Similar agreements between China and other countries in the Middle East and Africa reinforce this view.
- According to Zarif, China insists that the terms of the treaty remain secret. This is apparently how China operates, but it is also convenient for Iran, which uses China's demand to resist pressure for transparency from officials and citizens.
- Anti-Iranian-regime forces throughout the world are talking non-stop about this agreement and how it resembles the Torkamanchay Treaty, according to which Iran made major concessions of land and resources to Russia.
- I for one do not subscribe to the view that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. One can have many enemies who are at war with each other. Many of those who knock the agreement are no friends of the Iranian people. The other day, I found my mom in tears from what she had heard on LA-based TV stations about Iran's misery in the wake of the agreement!
- The late Shah also signed long-term agreements, primarily to purchase weapons and technology. Not to mention that early during his reign, he capitulated to British and American interests on oil.
- Iran's market is already filled with junk from many countries, including China, multiple European countries, and the US (via indirect paths, despite sanctiona). Just look at the number of iPhones in people's hands and BMWs in their garages. The new treaty won't affect this situation, especially since China has a lot of trade with the US.
- The treaty may be bad for Iran and it may have been signed from a position of weakness. On the other hand, any sovereign country is entitled to sign treaties with multiple other countries to safeguard its national interests and hedge its economic bets.
2021/04/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Today is lying day for those in the West (April Fool's Day); tomorrow is lying day for Iranians (Dorough-e Sizdah, a lie for the 13th day of the Persian New Year): Be super-careful. On April 1 and 2, believe nothing and trust no one, just like any other day! [Right] Cover image for the audiobook A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life and You (see the last item below).
(2) Farhang Foundation presents Pacific Symphony's Nowruz Celebration (free on-line event):
Shardad Rohani, Sohrab Pournazeri, and other top artists will be guest performers. Sat., April 3, 2021, 7:00 PM PDT.
(3) Farhang Foundation in partnership with the New West Symphony of Southern California presents the "Tour of Iran" virtual concert on Sunday, April 11, 2021. [Info & tickets]
(4) Book review: Carroll, Sean B., A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life and You, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Audible.com, 2020.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
From the publisher's description: "Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death."
Consider the following thought experiment: Draw a line into the past, listing all your female ancestors, going back, say, 10,000 years (your mother, maternal grandmother, and so on). That's a chain of about 400 generations. Any one of these 400 people could have died as a result of infant mortality, perished by contracting a disease, or been eaten by a wild animal, before she gave birth to the next person on the chain, or could have remained childless into old age. The fact that you exist is a consequence of many chance events all going in your favor. It's even more perilous than this. Go back a lot further, to your chimp or ape ancestors, or consider also male ancestors, whose genes have contributed to you being who you are. The odds against you existing in the present form are mind-boggling. This is the point of the book's title, a wordplay on Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events, published under the pen-name Lemony Snicket.
The aforementioned "series of fortunate events" is viewed by some as confirming "that everything happens for a reason." Yet it also gives support to the opposite view, that there is no rhyme or reason to what happens in our world; that we are all products of chance. Here's a compelling example of chance. The sequence KKKYMMKHL is part of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). A chance replacement of the first M with R created KKKYRMKHL, the corresponding part of the HIV virus, which triggered the AIDS pandemic.
Here's another example. How and why did the Antarctic Ocean become so cold? Tectonics (the Indian plate splitting from Madagascar, moving northward, and hitting & merging with Eurasia) did it. And what determined the shape and speed of movement for the plates on Earth's surface? Chance did.
Besides scientists, comedians tend to disbelieve that everything happens for a reason and give chance/randomness its due place. Carroll thinks that it would have been wonderful to bring famous comedians/humorists together to discuss their ideas in this domain. Given the busy schedules of such luminaries, not to mention the fact that some of them are dead, he decided to construct an imaginary discussion, using the spoken and written words of his chosen characters. Here's a sample quote.
Ricky Gervais: "It always comes back to us—why are we here? Well, we just happened to be here, we couldn't choose it. The chance of us being born—that sperm hitting that egg—is 400 trillion to 1. We're not special, we're just lucky; and this is a holiday. We didn't exist for 14 and a half billion years. Then we got 80 or 90 years if we're lucky, and then we'll never exist again. So, we should make the most of it."
I end my review with this summing-up statement from Carroll: "Chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death."
Here's a presentation by the author about this book (32-minute video).
[P.S.: I had previously reviewed Sean Carroll's The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2016), giving it 5 stars.]
2021/03/31 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Stand up for science: Earth is not flat; Vaccines work; ... [Center] Turing Award winners: Association for Computing Machinery names Alfred Vaino Aho and Jeffrey David Ullman recipients of the 2020 ACM A. M. Turing Award for fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation and for synthesizing these results and those of others in their highly influential books, affectionately referred to as the Green-Dragon and Red-Dragon Books. [Right] Women in STEM: Alyssa Carson, the 19-year-old astronaut who became the youngest person in history to pass all NASA aerospace tests and who is now preparing to be the first human to travel to Mars.
(2) The "Final Four" line-ups are set for NCAA basketball tournament. Men: Houston (#2 seed) vs. Baylor (#1); UCLA (#11) vs. Gonzaga (#1). Women: Stanford (#1 seed) vs. S. Carolina (#2); UConn (#1) vs. Arizona (#3).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mass shooting comes to our neighborhood: Four killed, two injured, in office-building shooting in Orange.
- The British royals' biggest scandal isn't related to Prince Harry but to Prince Andrew!
- National Math Festival (free on-line event): Fri. 4/16, 10:00 AM, to Sun. 4/18, 1:00 PM PDT. [Register]
- Kurdish music, with the backdrop of Kurdistan's majestic nature. [1-minute video]
- Medley of Persian ("Gol-e Sangam") and Italian ("Caruso") songs, performed by pianist/vocalist Kamyar.
(4) Persian poem from Forough Farrokhzad: The prophets brought with them / into our century their message of ruin / These continual explosions / These poisoned clouds / Are they the echoes of holy verses? / O friend, o brother, o relative / When you reach the moon / Write down the date the flowers were massacred [Persian]
(5) University of California cybersecurity breach: This afternoon, I received an e-mail notice about UC's central employees database at the Office of the President having been hacked. The hackers have contacted some UC employees and published on-line screenshots of personal information. The incident is still being investigated and employees are in the dark regarding exactly what information was stolen. Even though hacking of UC's central database reeks of incompetence at the administration level, employees are urged at the end of the e-mail message to avail themselves of the UC Cyber Security Awareness Fundamentals course, as if we have done something wrong to cause the breach!
(6) Where is the human society headed? In Iran, people routinely film incidents of violence against women by the "Morality" Police, rather than go to their defense. In NYC, a 65-year-old Asian woman was knocked to the ground and kicked in the head multiple times, without any of the men, shown by security cameras to be nearby, intervening or even going to the woman's aid after the assault. This behavior has to change! Even if bystanders are afraid of getting involved physically, they can start screaming and bringing attention to the incident. Most offenders would flee quickly if a large crowd assembles. These bullies are so weak that they pick the most-vulnerable victims who are unlikely to fight back.
2021/03/30 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cartoon: Digital cameras visit an undeveloped country! [Top center] Warning to Iran's FM Javad Zarif: Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi asserts that the secret 25-year deal with China violates Iran's constitutional provisions and is punishable by law. [Top right] Flowers I photographed on Monday during my walk along Pacific Oaks Road in Goleta. [Bottom left] Two legends, a basketball coach and his player, in the late 1960s and the late 2000s. [Bottom center] Today's Zoom gathering of Fanni'68 classmates (see the last item below). [Bottom right] We need to be more like New Zealand: Only 26 deaths from COVID-19 among 5M.
(2) So long, spring break: My brief break is over and UCSB's spring-quarter classes began yesterday. This first week of classes will be quite hectic, given intensive academic advising and organizational workload. I will settle into my usual routine by mid-April and will start the countdown to summer!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Rising COVID-19 cases in 30 states causes CDC head to fight tears, on the expectation of impending doom.
- Mike Pence, who escaped being hung by Trump supporters on January 6, returns to begin his 2024 run.
- Mafia fugitive caught, thanks to police being tipped off by his YouTube cooking show!
- Book intro and quote: Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
(4) "A Review of Literary Translation over the Past Century and Its Impact on Persian Literature and Language": This was the focus of today's Persian Zoom session (with 45 participants) of University of Tehran's College of Engineering graduates, Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). The speaker was prolific translator of some 85 books, Abdollah Kowsari. I had to leave the session before it ended, in order to attend a scheduled work-related meeting. [Recording of the talk; Passcode 8s5q8XJ&]
After a brief introduction by Ms. Shahrnush Parsipur, Mr. Kowsari began his discussion of contemporary translation into the Persian language, preceding his remarks with a brief history of translations over the past 10-12 centuries (post-Islam Persia). The literary movement in Iran, which includes a proliferation of translated works, began with Qa'em-Maqam Farahani (mid-Nasseri period, early 19th century). Mr. Kowsari then proceeded to name and review the works of some notable translators and how they added to the original sources for Persian readers.
In the 1940s, a new era of translations began. Iranians became more aware of and more knowledgeable about other countries, as foreign travel picked up. The number of people who knew foreign languages grew. During the Qajar period, the few translators were part of the elite/royal class. Members of the middle-class attending universities and the establishment of publication houses, such as Bongah-e Tarjomeh va Nashr-e Ketab, changed the scene.
A successful translator is one who is capable of "creating" in the target language, that is, s/he must be a good writer in Persian. The impact of translated books on Persian literature and language has been immense. They brought us new genres, such as novels, that did not exist in our own literature. Translations also contributed to simplicity and colloquialism in published books. Translators may have contributed more to the development of modern Persian than writers, enriching the language by coining terms upon encountering new concepts.
A couple of times during the talk, Mr. Kowsari recommended, or quoted recommendations by others, to read Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, the 11th-century work of Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi, which has both historical and literary significance. The work has also been published under a number of other names.
There is a Persian-language quarterly journal, Motarjem (Translator), to which Mr. Kowsari is a regular contributor. I have included the cover image for issue 60 of the journal, featuring an interview with Mr. Kowsari.
Questions that I would have asked, had I been able to stay for the discussion period, include the following:
- Impact of translation from other translations (for example, Greek works translated into Persian from French). In machine translation, it is well-known that if you double-translate, such as from English into Persian and back into English, you get funny results. Is there a similar effect for human translators?
- A translation is sometimes praised by saying that it is faithful to the original. Is this faithfulness really required, or can a translator add value through free translation and embellishments? Jorge Luis Borges famously praised a translation of one of his works by saying "the original is unfaithful to the translation"!
2021/03/28 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Math puzzles: Taken from the Mathematics 2021 calendar (#dailymaths). [Bottom left & center] Saturday night's Passover celebration with a small family gathering at my mom's. [Bottom right] Sunday's walk in the Patterson Avenue area of Goleta: The Maria Ygnacio Creek was completely dry, except for a handful of puddles. Returning home from the walk, I saw this little visitor in my patio.
(2) Math puzzle: Using all the digits 0 through 9, form two 5-digit numbers so that their product is the largest possible. For example, 98,765 x 43,210 = 4,267,635,650, but this isn't the answer.
Challenge question: If the two numbers can have any number of digits (say, 4 & 6 or 3 & 7), can we do better?
(3) Shopping malls must be re-architected: Big anchor stores, food courts, and many other elements no longer make sense and need reexamination. In my area (Santa Barbara, CA), multiple shopping centers have vacant anchor stores and chances of their revival are slim.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Santa Barbara County is now vaccinating those 50 or older: Everyone 16 or older will be eligible in ~2 weeks.
- The container-ship blocking the Suez Canal has been refloated, but reopening the waterway may take days.
- USC to pay $1.2 billion to 1000s of women treated by its campus gynecologist for decades of sex abuse.
- Persian poetry: Parvin E'tesami's poem for her own gravestone. [In her own handwriting]
(5) Comment on Bill Maher's comic rant, poking fun at on-line surveys and customer ratings: I understand the frustration of some individuals who want to buy a product or service and be done with it. This can be likened to citizens who don't want to bother learning about issues and candidates in a political election. We are all better off, however, because of those who care enough to participate, be it in products/services rating or political elections. Wikipedia, one of the most useful sources of information available to us, thrives because of those who put their selfish interests aside and participate in building it up. Political elections are also fraught with risks from those who follow some ideology blindly and don't bother to think. But no one suggests (I hope) that we do away with elections, because some participants are uninformed. With large number of participants, be it in rating systems or elections, the overall or average will prevail, which in most cases, is quite good. Studies have shown that people tend to widely over-estimate or under-estimate the number of jelly-beans in a jar, but if you ask a large number of people and take the average of their guesses, you often come very close to the actual count. This phenomenon is known as "the wisdom of crowds," which is also the title of a book by James Surowiecki. Of course, examples of spectacular failures of crowd intelligence also exist (consider cults or Internet thought-bubbles, for example), but, by and large, collective judgement tends to be spot on.
2021/03/27 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Moses was several millennia ahead of his time: He was the first person to download files from the cloud to his tablet! Happy Passover to all those who observe this Jewish festival! [Right] The goopy stuff in the food processor and bowl is halegh (a staple of Passover celebration), which I made at my mom's a couple of days ago from ingredients (roasted almonds, roasted walnuts, soaked dates) prepared by her, adding water as needed to get the right texture. Matzos are dipped in the super-sweet halegh and eaten during Passover, typically at breakfast.
(2) "Solving Some Enigmatic Terms in the Shahnameh": Daryoush Ashouri uses a holistic approach, drawing on logical analysis, to explain some obscurities found in the old manuscripts of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. Thursday, April 1, 2021, 10:00 AM PDT. [Information & registration]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Delusional Trump returns with one of his biggest lies: Capitol intruders were hugging & kissing the cops!
- Tragedy averted: Arrested man in Atlanta grocery had 6 guns and wore body armor.
- With a narrow post-election lead, Netanyahu's party has insufficient support to form a majority coalition.
- The country that drove Alan Turing to suicide for homosexuality is now honoring him with new currency.
- Top-5 highest-paid university execs: USC, U. Chicago, Thomas Jefferson U., Columbia U., Harvard U.
- To get a COVID-19 vaccination appointment, it helps to know a Python programmer.
- No need to be on-line to order food: KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut to start taking orders via texting.
- "Governments should be run like businesses" is misguided: Citizens aren't customers, they're the board!
- Lego Computer-Science Women: Celebrating 1000 (that's 1111101000, in binary) supporters! [Tweet]
- Kayhan Kalhor's "Lost in the Desert Sky" (from Kashan, Iran, in memory of M. R. Shajarian). [SoCal link]
(4) Math puzzles, taken from the Mathematics 2021 calendar (#dailymaths, @GWOMaths):
- Find the sum of the coefficients in the polynomial (x^4 + x^3 – x^2 + x + 1)^3.
- Find the sum of the digits of the number (1,000,003)^3.
(5) The crisis at the US-Mexico border: Yes, we have a serious problem, but the challenge of dealing with thousands of people at our southern border pales in comparison with 545,000 deaths from COVID-19, unemployment and food insecurity for millions of Americans, inadequate health care in the face of a pandemic that is far from being tamed, hate crimes, mass shootings, and voter suppression. Meanwhile, the Republicans have found an issue to whine about, to the detriment of gun control legislation, curing educational disruption at all levels, fixing our rotting infrastructure, controlling runaway healthcare/drug costs, and standing up to multiple countries testing our resolve on the world stage.
2021/03/26 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] University of Toronto's Nowruz celebration: Sholeh Wolpe, accompanied by Sahba Motallebi on tar, recited Persian poems from Hafiz, Mowlavi (Rumi), and others, with English translations. [Top center] A few motivational memes: If you figure out the meaning of "Open Structures Processing of Tehran Engineering Company" (logo), the name of the Iranian company that publicized these memes, do let me know! [Top right] Lasagnas from my 3/23 food prep night, when I also made tacos. [Bottom left] The Suez Canal is blocked by a container-ship stuck across it, sending many vessels around Africa: Some 10% of world trade is reportedly affected by the blockage. [Bottom center] Hatred based on race and other class designations is anti-American (#StopAsianHate). [Bottom right] Cover image of Feminist Fight Club (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump defends Capitol rioters: Says they posed zero threat and are being persecuted by law-enforcement.
- Cartoon of the day: Return to normal? Mass shootings and hate crimes, after a year of COVID-19. [Image]
- In an open letter, Iranian dissidents ask the UN Security Council to come to the aid of Iranian people.
- My older Persian-speaking readers might appreciate this humorous song about the perils of aging!
- CS peddles regression illuminated by statistics as machine learning and the society believes it's AI! [Image]
(3) Book review: Bennett, Jessica, Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace, Harper Wave, 336 pp., 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The cover of this very useful book declares, jokingly, that "Book is 21% more expensive for men." We read on the book's back cover: "In Feminist Fight Club, acclaimed journalist Jessica Bennett blends the personal stories of her real-life fight club with research, statistics, and no-bullsh*t advice for how to combat today's sexism (and come out the other side). Part manual, part manifesto, Bennett offers a new vocabulary for the sexist archtypes women encounter every day—such as the Manterrupter, who talks over female colleagues in meetings; or the Bropropriator, who appropriates their ideas—as well as the self-sabotaging behavior women sometimes exhibit themselves. With original illustrations and fascinating historical research as well as a straightforward assessment of the gender gap that continues to plague the American workforce, Feminist Fight Club offers practical strategies, stealthy hacks, and much-needed camaraderie for women battling their way through the modern workplace."
Feminist Fight Club is full of insights, not just for women, but for us men. Here is one example. Even though impostor syndrome wasn't coined as a term until the 1970s, women have always felt it. Here is another. Like modern sexism, which is often masked as subtle insults or dismissals, "today's sexism is insidious, casual, politically correct, even friendly." As a third example, consider this. Neither diversity-training nor our legal system can deal with the fact that Americans still prefer male leaders, or solve the problem of power-seeking women being perceived as pushy or unlikable.
I consider Bennett's book a must-read for everyone, be they women struggling to make sense of school or workplace sexism, men allies seeking to understand issues so that they can raise awareness and help, and parents of young girls, particularly fathers, who must become aware of sexist attitudes that, among other things, lead to self-sabotaging behavior in some women.
2021/03/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Web pages for my spring 2021 courses (see the last two items below). [Center] Greetings from Santa Barbara, California: As this first week of spring (UCSB's spring break) comes to an end, our high temperatures are in the low-60s, warming up to the low-to-mid-70s by Saturday.
(2) Quantum mischief: Quantum experiments that scramble the ordering of causes and their effects are leading physicists to abandon causality altogether. In this strange new world, events can occur in an indefinite causal order, where "A causes B" and "B causes A" can be true simultaneously.
(3) Despicable lies: Social media is flooded with false stories of people dying shortly after COVID-19 vaccine injection. Spreading these kinds of lies is just as murderous as picking up an AR-15 rifle and shooting people.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Unanswered questions remain after Iran's long-delayed report on Ukrainian Airline's Flight 752 crash.
- Khamenei's address signals upcoming Internet restrictions in Iran ahead of the presidential election.
- Instagram psychologist Dr. Honey Mahmoudi is sending gifts to Iran's Sistan & Baluchistan's children.
- For skyscrapers, sky's the limit: Evolution of world's tallest building (167 m in 1901; 1345 m in 2022).
- Persian music: Darya Dadvar's spirited rendition of the old song "Narguess-e Shiraz." [2-minute video]
- Persian music: Rana Mansour's wonderful rendition of the old song "Safar." [5-minute video]
- Iranian regional music: "Rashid Khan," a popular song from northeastern Iran. [4-minute video]
(5) Life story of entertainer Fereydoun Farrokhzad: For some reason, I was never a big fan of this Iranian mega-star. His period of greatest fame coincided with my graduate studies in the US, so I didn't get to see his lavishly-produced Iranian TV shows. I liked a few of his songs, but I didn't find him particularly talented. And his flamboyant style, along with frequent mingling with high-school-age girls, left me cringing. He turned into a pro-monarchy political activist late in life. His 1992 cold-hearted, bloody murder in Europe by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran turned him from a popular entertainer into some kind of folk hero. [69-minute video]
(6) Power squabble in Iran: Foreign Minister Javad Zarif confirms statements attributed to him about the downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 and indicates that he is "frustrated" with the Revolutionary Guards.
(7) My Web page for UCSB ECE 1B: I have set up the Web page for my spring 2021 freshman seminar course, "Ten Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering." The first lecture, a 65-minute video presentation entitled "Easy, Hard, Impossible," gives you a taste of what the course is about, if you are interested.
(8) My Web page for UCSB ECE 252B: I have set up the Web page for my spring 2021 graduate course, "Advanced Computer Architecture: Computer Arithmetic." An 11-minute introductory video presentation gives you a feel for the course and its requirements, if you are interested.
2021/03/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A master of 3D art: Dutch artist Leon Keer can transform any flat surface into a mind-bending illusion. [Center] Time to retire a racist Nowruz tradition (see the next item below). [Right] IEEE History Center webinar (see the last item below).
(2) Haji Firooz rears his ugly head again: Every Nowruz, Iranians and people of Iranian origins argue about the tradition of Haji Firooz, a black-faced man (yes, not a black man, but a white man with blackened face) who appears on the streets and at Nowruz celebration sites and tries to entertain people with his clownish song-and-dance acts. Some people go to great lengths to justify this racist tradition, which many enlightened and younger people seek to abandon. Justifications include framing this black-faced, red-wearing clown as representing ancient Zoroastrian fire-keepers (red = fire; black = soot), the mythical martyr Siavash (siah = black; vash = face), and a bunch of other nonsense requiring tons of glue to connect to Nowruz's noble traditions. None of these narratives explains where the honorific Haji comes from (Iranian slaves often arrived from Africa by way of an Arab country), why Haji Firooz addresses his audience as "my master," or why he acts clownishly. I have condemned this racist tradition every year, for as long as I can remember, and will continue to do so until this stain is erased from the Iranian "culture" and Nowruz "traditions"! [Persian version]
(3) Sophisticated, dangerous ransomware is the new normal: So declares Samuel Greengard, writing in the April 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM under the title "The Worsening State of Ransomware."
The best we can do at this point is to learn how to respond in order to minimize the damage. UCSB's Chief Information Security Officer recommends the following steps to deal with a ransomware attack:
- Remove computer from the network: Unplug cable, turn off Wi-Fi & Bluetooth, or enable airplane mode.
- Unplug any USB storage devices, including attached smartphones, removable disk drives, and thumb drives.
- Call the ETS Service Desk at 805-893-5000 (this is for UCSB; your organization likely has a help number).
(4) "The Telephone Ladies and Bell Systems Spirit of Service During World II": This was the title of today's fascinating webinar by Dr. Mary Ann C. Hellrigel (IEEE History Center Institutional Historian and Archivist). The webinar explored Bell System's responses to increased demand for telephone service during World War II and AT&T's decisions to expand its female labor force. Some background information about the communications scene in the US, beginning with World War I, was provided.
The telephone monopoly was determined to prioritize calls between US troops and their families, giving all else a secondary status. Women played a key role in implementing this service, but, like in all other domains of that period, women were expected to be pretty, pleasant-sounding, well-dressed, and traditional. They were housed in all-women accommodations, with strict rules, to reassure their families.
A recording of the talk will be available from IEEE Foundation soon. [A dozen screenshots from the slides].
2021/03/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Time magazine cover feature: COVID-19 and xenophobia bring about anti-Asian hate & violence in America. [Top center] New Yorker cartoon: "I miss indoor dining." [Top right] Chill out: If Biden's proposed 28% corporate tax rate is approved, we will still have one of the lowest rates in the US since the Truman administration. [Bottom left & center] Turning arid lands into oases: Transformation of the Loess Plateau in China (arid 2007 vs. lush 2019) has spurred plans for doing the same to the Sinai Desert. [Bottom right] If our troops can wear full tactical gear, including helmets and face-masks, in the desert heat, you can wear a face-mask at an air-conditioned Walmart for 15 minutes.
(2) Quote of the day: "A tree can be tempted out of its winter dormancy by a few hours of southerly sun—the readiness to believe in spring is stronger than sleep or sanity." ~ Amy Leach, Things That Are
(3) A cure for vaccine doubters: To convince Trump supporters to get COVID-19 shots, the syringe should be built to look like a gun, and "elimination of gayness" in current and future generations be listed among the side effects. [Idea credit: Comedian Trevor Noah] [Image]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ten, including a responding police officer, killed in a mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket.
- Worst Australian floods in 60 years cause evacuation of people from suburbs in Sydney's west.
- The pandemic's aftermath: Telehealth trends brought about by the pandemic are likely here to stay.
- Get ready for the return of 3:00 AM tweets: Or whatever they'll be called on the new Trump platform!
- Persian calligraphy for dentists! [3-minute video]
- Sharif University of Technology Association's Board-of-Directors election results: Women and youth prevail.
- Serious enforcement of masking mandate! [1-minute video]
- Drinking doesn't mix well with driving: But it apparently goes fabulously with painting! [1-minute video]
- Persian music: Street violinist and dancer in Tehran, Iran. [6-minute video]
- Persian fusion music: Bahar Sadeghi and Pentatonix with a wonderful a-cappella performance.
(5) The pandemic has been particularly tough for remote workers who live alone: Be they young single men & women or empty-nest divorced/widowed seniors.
(6) US corporation pay an average of 7.8% in taxes: The 2017 corporate tax cut to 21% was justified by the claim that the then 35% rate was too high. Many argued at the time that corporations don't actually pay at the 35% rate, but at a much lower effective rate. That effective rate has now been cut to less than half, as offshore tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, continue to be used to reduce the tax bills.
(7) "A Panoramic Survey of Natural Language Processing in the Arab World": This is the title of an article in the April 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM, which contains a special section on the Arab World. This article is of particular interest to me, given my own work on Persian-language processing and input/output.
2021/03/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Persian New Year: Today is the first day of the Persian calendar year 1400. Spring 2021 began yesterday, but because we just ended a Persian leap year, the month of Esfand had an extra 30th day, pushing Farvardin 1 to the second day of spring. Last night, Iranians partied like it was 1399! [Center] In the mood to celebrate: Multiple occasions, including the Persian New Year and four birthdays, on Saturday 3/20. The yummy cakes were chosen and brought by my niece from Urth Bakery in Beverly Hills. [Right] Nowruz message of the Chancellor of Sharif University of Technology, Iran (see the next item below).
(2) Turkey officially withdraws from the Istanbul convention on dealing with violence against women: In the US, Republicans would trash similar laws if they were in power. [DW Persian report]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- GOP think: Minority rights in the Senate? Sacred, don't mess with it! Minority rights in society? Whatever!
- Only 29 House Republicans (out of 211) supported the "Violence Against Women" Act.
- #AsianLivesMatter: Awareness of anti-Asian hate rises after the Atlanta shootings.
- The latest European COVID-19 surge brings out the fear of a new surge in the US. [Chart]
- American Avi Wigderson & Hungarian Laszlo Lovasz win the 2021 Abel Prize for work bridging math & CS.
- Sounds of nature: Where does hummingbird's characteristic buzz come from? [8-minute video]
- Nowruz celebration at the old bazaar of Dezful, a city in southern Iran. [3-minute video]
- Deep-fake video technology reaches Iran and is immediately put to good use! [1-minute video]
- Disco music: I've heard this song many times before, but don't remember its name. [Italian version]
- Acclaimed Kurdish musician Ali Akbar Moradi discusses the History of Nowruz. [32-minute video]
(4) Religious prejudice in academia: The Chancellor of Sharif University of Technology ends his Nowruz message to the faculty, students, and SUT's other associates thus: "Hoping to build together under the banner of Islam's teachings a country that is worthy of every Muslim Iranian." Thanks a lot. My hope is for the country to be worthy of, and welcoming to, every Iranian, regardless of religion!
(5) Iran's Y2K problem? A friend sent me this image that shows a computer system using the date 1399/13/01 (first day of the thirteenth month of the year) instead of 1400/01/01 (advancing the year).
(6) Tweet by @DeaconBlues0: "The Atlanta terrorist purchased his gun the same day he murdered 8 people. You cannot register and vote on the same day in Georgia."
(7) Nowruz greetings from exactly one century ago: Apparently, the year 1299 in the Persian calendar was as bad as the just-ended year 1399, and people were happy to say good-bye to it! [Tweet, with image]
(8) Course grading completed: Today, I finished the evaluation of research papers for my ECE 254B graduate course on parallel processing and the reporting of course grades. The papers dealt with parallel processing in machine learning, with various foci/strategies: Graph neural networks; Analog in-memory computing; Photonic acclerators; Neural networks; Neuromorphic chips; Biological methods.
2021/03/20 (Saturday): I am almost caught up with my backlog of book reviews. Here are a couple more.
(1) Book review: Morgan, George D. (with Ashley Stroupe) Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist, unabridged audiobook, read by Joe Barrett, Tantor Audio, 2021.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, along with Jane Goodall's Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, was among my local public library's suggested reading list for the 2021 Women's History Month. Having read at least two similar titles, Hidden Figures and Code Girls, I decided to peruse this title as well.
The book is written by Morgan's son, who spent countless hours uncovering his mother's forgotten contributions to America's early space program and the launching of its first satellite, a program shrouded in secrecy. Raised as a farm girl, Mary Sherman Morgan [1921-2004] attended high school in North Dakota, aspiring to become a chemist, at a time when girls rarely imagined science careers. Morgan ended up collaborating with Wernher von Braun, the father of America's space program, in troubleshooting failures of early rockets, which blew up on the launch pad; von Braun went on to become a high-profile scientist and a leader in NASA's manned-space-flight programs, while the farm-girl-turned-rocket-fuel-scientist fell into obscurity.
The story shares some of the elements of Hidden Figures and Code Girls. With many men gone off to fight in World War II, women were given opportunities they might not have had otherwise. Morgan was offered a job, designing explosives for the military, even before getting her chemistry degree. Later, at Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation, she was the only woman among 900 engineers, and she ended up leading the team when her company landed a contract to solve the great fuel challenge. She worked on developing new rocket fuels, including the mixture "Hydyne" (she wanted to name it "Bagel," to go with LOX, or liquid oxygen).
I am generally suspicious of biographies written by adoring relatives, even more than autobiographies. So, I checked a few other accounts of Morgan's life and multiple reviews of this book. Several sources agree that George Morgan has embellished the story, detracting from the believability of his narrative. George Morgan himself agrees to having produced a work of creative non-fiction, having had to fill gaps in his knowledge, both due to his mother's private nature and the secrecy of her work assignments. The events in the book are true, but some details have had to be imagined.
Books of this kind tell us that when given a chance, women tend to rise to the challenge and can become creative researchers, developers, and leaders. It is a shame that such chances were given only when there was a dearth of men to take the assignments. The recent awareness of the need for, and emerging programs focusing on, diversity, equity, and inclusion may remove the handicap afflicting women, but it will take time to overcome many centuries of bias.
(2) Book review: Goodall, Jane (with Gary McAvoy and Gail Hudson), Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, abridged audiobook, read by Tippi Hedren, Hachette Audio, 2005.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This relatively short audiobook, along with Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist, was among my local public library's suggested reading list for the 2021 Women's History Month. I simultaneously borrowed two available young-adult audiobooks, Jane Goodall: Animal Scientist (by Katherine Krohn) and Jane Goodall: Finding Hope in the Wilds of Africa (by Diana Briscoe), to get additional biographical information on Goodall [1934-], whose main claim to fame is through her work on chimpanzees in the wild, including communications with and among them.
Goodall grew up loving books about animals and Africa, particularly Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle and Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan series. She once sat for five hours in her family's chicken coop to find out exactly how chickens lay eggs, her absence worrying her parents, who contacted the police. She was trained as a secretary, because her mother convinced her that secretaries can find work anywhere, including in Africa, where Goodall yearned to travel.
At age 23, Goodall went to visit a friend in Kenya, where she was hired by the famous anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey as an assistant. When she was sent to work in Tanzania, her mother had to go along to avoid the impropriety of a woman traveling alone. Goodall eventually studied ethology and earned a PhD from Cambridge University, but a great deal of her important work was done with only a secretarial degree. She found it difficult at times to be taken seriously and be supported in her scientific work. Despite her seminal contributions, Goodall's life and work haven't been free of controversies.
Harvest for Hope is different from Goodall's other publications, which are about animals. Here, Goodall presents a compelling case for sustainable food production and consumption. Hers has a different focus than the typical alarmist book about agro-tech businesses and the damage they do to the environment. Goodall does warn us about the dangers of over-exploiting the land, GMOs, industrial pesticides, restraining and overfeeding cattle, cruelty to animals, and the like, but, the message, by and large, is that of hope: That individuals can make a difference by following simple strategies to effect change and to become healthier people as a result.
Here's one example cited by Goodall about the importance of consuming local foods. When you sit at a coffee shop in Honolulu, the sugar you put in your coffee may have been grown in a nearby farm, but it got into the packet in your hand by traveling to California for processing and then to New York for additional processing and packaging. The needless 10,000 miles of travel, wasting fuel and other precious resources, is justified in the name of efficiency of scale. Healthier and tastier foods are available from local farmers markets and agricultural co-ops, which must be supported to break the vicious cycle.
We all live hurried lives, making it difficult to follow advice about healthy eating. The key is to do what we can, rather then give up hope because we can't do it all. Once we get used to the better taste of fresh, locally-grown crops and meat, it will be difficult to go back to food that is optimized for supermarket operations, including unripe, and thus tasteless, fruits and vegetables. One unfortunate consequence of mass-marketing operations is that only apple and other fruit varieties that last well for weeks in transport and warehousing are readily available to us.
2021/03/19 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Cartoons of the day: [Left] Sisyphus works from home. [Center] Sometimes you have no choice but to be a dog person! [Right] Escher was befuddled, as he and another man took the stairs!
(2) #MeToo in Iran: A year after reports that a professor sexually assaulted a female student, a fellow-student pursuing the case faces punishment for insubordination, while the accused is due to return to teaching.
(3) Quote of the day: "Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems." ~ Scott Adams, creator of "Dilbert" comic strip
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Like black women in America, Asian-American women bear the double burden of sexism and racism.
- A remote desert cave in Israel yields two-dozen Dead Sea Scroll fragments and a 10,000-year-old basket.
- Roya Foundation celebrates Nowruz and the Persian New Year: Sunday, 2021/03/21, 11:00 AM PDT. [Link]
- Ziba Shirazi's musical love story about Nowruz/Norooz is available for free streaming on-line.
- Persian music: "Showgh-e Bahar" ("The Joy of Spring"), performed by Elnaz Abedini.
- Persian music: "Nowruz Waltz" (performed here by Hooniak Band) is a staple of Nowruz celebrations.
- Rastak Ensemble's medley of Persian & Iranian regional songs for Nowruz and spring.
- Kurdish music: A sad, but beautiful song, wonderfully performed with vocals and piano. [7-minute video]
(5) "The Telephone Ladies and Bell Systems Spirit of Service During World II": Dr. Mary Ann C. Hellrigel (IEEE History Center Institutional Historian and Archivist) will explore the Bell System's responses to increased demand for telephone service during World War II and AT&T's decisions to expand its female labor force. [March 24, 2021, 10:00-11:00 AM PDT] [Registeration link]
(6) Nowruz/Norooz prayer: For many years now, an Arabic prayer has been recited at the Spring Equinox to herald the arrival of spring, Nowruz, and the Persian New Year. This is ironic, given that Nowruz traditions pre-date Islam by many centuries. Iran's Islamic regime is of course delighted and promotes the use of the Arabic prayer, which translates to: Oh turner of hearts and visions; Oh instigator of day and night; Oh deliverer of situations and conditions; Transform our condition to the best of conditions. At least two alternative Persian prayers, in prose and verse, are available. [Arabic and Persian prayers]
(7) Please do not wait until your group is targeted directly: If you are a member of a minority group, speak up against violence and vitriol aimed at the Asian-American community. Much of the anti-Asian violence targets women. This can be due to a combination of racism and misogyny, or it can be racism combined with cowardice, with perpetrators thinking that women are less likely to fight back (although, a 76-year-old Asian woman in San Francisco did send her attacker to the hospital). Nothing is more anti-American than a belief that other races and cultures are inferior to ours.
(8) Final thought for the day: After numerous denials of official anti-Baha'is and anti-Dervishes policies in Iran, leaked government documents shed light on the extent of discrimination and persecution.
2021/03/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] A few slides from Tim Roughgarden's talk (see the last item below). [Center] Iranians have a habit of sending congratulations and good wishes many days ahead of a momentous occasion, calling it "tabrik-e peeshapeesh": This billboard, congratulating the arrival of the year 13,400 in the Iranian calendar, 12,000 years ahead of time, takes the practice to a whole new level!
(2) University of California reaches 4-year agreement with Elsevier: After losing access to Elsevier journals and other research resources, because of UC standing firm against unreasonable demands from Elsevier during negotiations, UC, which generates nearly 10% of all US research output, looks forward to full access to resources as well as open-access publishing by UC researchers in 2500+ Elsevier journals.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Grieving the Atlanta mass-shootings, Asian-Americans continue to be fearful for their safety. [Photos]
- White cop says that the white man who killed 6 Asian-American women and 2 others "had a bad day."
- Sounds of driving and working on Mars, recorded by NASA's Perseverance Rover.
- Objecting to a black high school named after a KKK Grand Wizard isn't "cancel culture," it's sanity!
- Female minister, 28, fights to dismantle the rigid and backward patriarchy in Afghanistan.
- Annual report of the commission to re-examine the Persian script. [Article, in Persian]
(4) "Foundations of Data Science" virtual talk: Tim Roughgarden, Professor of Computer Science and Member of Data Science Institute at Columbia University, gave an enlightening talk this morning under the title "Data-Driven Algorithm Design" (joint work with Rishi Gupta).
Asking an algorithms person about the best algorithm for a particular application is like asking a physician at a party about a cure for stomach-ache. Stomach-aches can have different causes, each demanding its own treatment and specialist. Similarly, there is no "best" algorithm for the traveling-salesperson problem, say, and the choice depends on the application context and the types of instances encountered in that context.
Roughgarden introduced Beyond the Worst-Case Analysis of Algorithms, a book with 30 chapters contributed by different authors, to stress the point that the traditional worst-case analysis of algorithms is not very helpful in choosing algorithms for particular applications. The best algorithm for a computational problem depends on the "relevant inputs" and often defies formal articulation. While there is a large literature on empirical approaches to selecting the best algorithm for a given application domain, there has been surprisingly little theoretical analysis of the problem.
Adopting concepts from statistical and on-line learning theory, Roughgarden discussed methodologies for application-specific algorithm selection and their theoretical underpinnings.
Consider, for example, the problem of finding an independent set in a weighted graph. One heuristic first orders the nodes by their weights and then greedily chooses nodes with larger weights first. Needless to say, the result can be far from optimal, the reason being that the selection of a node of large weight, which may have many neighbors, would rule out the selection of all those neighbors in future steps. Now, suppose the same algorithm is used after adjusting the weight of node x via dividing it by 1 + d(x), where d(x) is the degree of x or the number of its neighbors. So, the same greedy algorithm will now select a lower-weight node, provided it has very few neighbors.
The two algorithms above can be viewed as extreme cases of a more general algorithm that reduces the weight of node x via dividing it by (1 + d(x))^p, where p in [0, 1] is a tunable parameter. Selection of the best algorithm in this class for a particular application domain amounts to choosing the "best" value for p. Within the input space, different values of p may be best for different regions, like the situation for Example 1 (graph coloring), where color-coded regions represent the domain of effectiveness for different algorithms.
2021/03/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Yours truly (Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineeting, UCSB; IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor) spoke under the title "Eight Key Ideas in Computer Architecture from Eight Decades of Innovation."
We all like to read top-10 lists of universities, cities to live in, travel destinations, historical figures, movies (all-time, or of a particular decade), songs, novels, and so on. On occasion, we disagree with the picks or feel satisfaction that the list-compiler agrees with us on some of the items. When we try to make such lists on our own, the difficulty becomes apparent. This talk is an academic version of such list-making tendencies. I began my efforts with computer architecture, but I plan to compile similar lists for my other areas of research/technical expertise.
Computer architecture became an established discipline when the stored-program concept was incorporated into bare-bones computers of the 1940s. Since then, the field has seen multiple minor and major innovations in each decade. I presented my pick of the most-important innovation in each of the eight decades, from the 1940s to the 2010s, and showed how these ideas, when connected to each other and allowed to interact and cross-fertilize, produced the phenomenal growth of computer performance, now approaching exa-op/s (billion billion operations per second) level, as well as to ultra-low-energy and single-chip systems.
1940s: Stored-program converted calculating machines into powerful computational and inference engines.
1950s: Microprogramming systematized hardware design and showed that HW and SW aren't that different.
1960s: Parallelism allowed the upward scaling of computational capabilities, with no theoretical upper bound.
1970s: Cache memory allowed the realization of large, low-cost, and ultra-high-speed computer memories.
1980s: Pipelining allowed the attainment of high throughput with modest amounts of time-shared circuitry.
1990s: FPGAs offered the advantages of low cost due to mass production for building limited-volume systems.
2000s: GPUS, a first step in specialization, devoted hardware mostly to computation, not to control overhead.
2010s: Specialization reduced control and programmability overheads in frequently-used computations.
I ended my talk by discussing some of the ideas that are being developed for the 2020s and beyond. Come back in 2040, when the list will turn into a top-10 list!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Maurice Ravel's "Bolero": Quartet, with one instrument. [3-minute video]
- Music and dancing from Iran's Kurdistan region. [1-minute video]
- An interesting way to serve a pineapple: I haven't tried this myself. [2-minute video]
- Spring has arrived in Santa Barbara: Temperatures in the mid- to high-sixties as far as the eyes can see!
(3) I am beginning to feel shame for being an American: I know I will take flack for this statement, but people who call themselves Americans are committing violent acts against Asian-Americans, that is, against other Americans, because of a virus that came here from China! One American killing or hurting another American for a misguided notion of guilt is despicable! Not that killing or hurting non-citizens would be okay, but attacking a fellow-American?
(4) Final thought for the day: Why didn't anyone intervene? This age-old question raises its ugly head again. Dozens of people must have known about Governor Mario Cuomo's sexual misconduct which has recently come to light. Why did people around him close their eyes and stayed silent?
2021/03/16 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Wood Ranch BBQ: Spent this afternoon in Ventura, California, with two of my sisters and our mom. [Center] Fragrance of spring: Jasmines from a plant on my carport's trellis. [Right] Panel discussion on "Human Rights Violations in Iran" (see the last item below).
(2) Chahar-Shanbeh Soori: On the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian calendar year, Iranians celebrate by lighting bonfires, jumping over the flames, and enjoying fireworks. They also eat a mix of nuts and dried fruits known as "aajeel-e Chahar-Shanbeh Soori." [Persian-dance video]
(3) Abuse of SUTA's mailing list: Over the past few days, I have received some three-dozen e-mails regarding the ongoing election of a new aboard of Directors for Sharif University of Technology Association. Almost all of these e-mails come from candidates and SUTA members who endorse or support them. This is an unacceptable use of a mailing list which is aimed for official communications between SUTA and its members. I sent a complaint to SUTA's Election Board, receiving an explanation that did not satisfy me.
(4) The three strategic mistakes of the Islamic Republic of Iran: According to this speaker (6-minute video, in Persian), who apparently occupied a position of power in post-Islamic-Revolution Iran, three major mistakes put the country on a ruinous path, with consequences that persist today.
- Continuing the Iran-Iraq war after lands initially occupied by Iraq were reclaimed by Iran.
- Multi-year closure of Iranian universities under the "Cultural Revolution" banner.
- Hostage-taking at the US Embassy in Tehran, despite warnings from the regime's advisors.
I agree with these assessments and would include mandatory hijab laws as a fourth strategic mistake.
(5) "Human Rights Violations in Iran": This was the focus of today's Zoom session, in Persian, of University of Tehran's College of Engineering graduates, Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). Participants in the panel discussion were Ms. Mehrangiz Kar (attorney and long-time human/women's-rights activist, both inside Iran and abroad, who served a prison term in Iran), Dr. Ladan Boroumand (historian, specializing in the French and Iranian Revolutions, winner of the 2009 Lech Walesa Prize, and Board-of-Directors member of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center), and Ms. Taraneh Roosta (women's-rights activist based in California and founder of Voices of Women for Change).
The three panelists talked about their goals and activities, the numerous challenges they face, and the brutal reaction of the Iranian regime, which has caused fear and caution on the part of many activists inside Iran. During Khatami's presidency, Iran's political space opened up somewhat, leading to the formation of independent organizations in the domain of human and women's rights. Later, draconian restrictions were placed on political activists, with the regime and its judiciary accusing them of being agents of foreign governments, using any financial support they received from international human-rights organizations as evidence of acting as paid agents.
Until World War II, individuals weren't empowered at the world level, the primary actors having been nation-states. After the end of WW II, with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, individuals were empowered to act on the world stage. This change has had a significant impact on the advancement of women's rights. Unfortunately, international human-rights organizations have not paid enough attention to the plight of Iranian women and other aspects of human rights in Iran.
Whereas the killing of protesters in Myanmar has received widespread attention, the killing of even more Iranian protesters in 2019 barely registered in the West. We need an all-encompassing organization with significant monetary resources and lobbying power to bring Iran's human-rights violations into the open and advocate for widespread action. Human rights organizations have their hands full with their current agenda, including compilation of lists of those who are killed, executed (often on false drug-related charges), or imprisoned based on made-up accusations.
Here are a set of three questions that I asked of the panelista, as food for thought:
- Some women consider gender segregation (as in women-only parks or women-only taxis) a positive step in the direction of improving women's safety and prevention of sexual harassment. How do you view these provisions from the standpoint of women's rights?
- What is your assessment of the impact of political divisions among anti-Islamic-regime Iranians abroad on activism in the domain of women's rights? In other words, does the conflict/distrust between various opposition groups hamper work on women's rights, on which all such groups may actually agree?
- A former regime official, whose name I don't know, has said in a video recording that the Islamic regime committed three strategic mistakes in its early years: Prolonging the Iran-Iraq War; Closing of universities for three years under the banner of "Cultural Revolution"; Hostage-taking at the American Embassy in Tehran. He said nothing about hijab, which is natural for a patriarchal and Islamist (former?) regime official. I think compulsory hijab is probably a bigger mistake. Do you agree?
[The meeting was recorded; I will post a link to the video here when it becomes available.]
2021/03/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Two views of my haft-seen spread (close-up view of the painted eggs). [Center] Anticipating the arrival of Nowruz/Norooz, spring, and the Persian New Year (see the last item below).
(2) New Yorker cartoon caption of the day: "You wouldn't think that losing an hour would affect you after losing an entire year, yet here I am (still in bed)."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Oscars continue to have diversity woes: But, in a first, two women were nominated for best-director.
- Trump wanted to make America great again while in office: Instead, he made it great again by leaving!
- "This is a women-only park, not a whore house, so put your hijab on." ~ 'Morality patrol' in Iran [Tweet]
- One of many viral tweets about $1400 stimulus checks: "Me at the Dollar Store: Where are the $2 stuff?"
(4) "Nowruz: The Persian New Year from Myth to History": This was the title of today's Georgetown University lecture by Dr. Touraj Daryaee (UC Irvine). Nowruz is a seasonal celebration, initiated within a Zoroastrian society that was predominantly agricultural. It does not have a religious or national significance, although in post-Islamic Persia, some religious elements were merged with age-old traditions, such as placing a Quran on the haft-seen spread. Many Iranians use a book of poetry, however. [Screenshots] [71-minute recording]
Iranian Jews and Zoroastrians celebrate Nowruz as a secular tradition. Both the haft-seen spread and the observance of the 13th day of the New Year are fairly recent additions and do not have old historical roots. Ditto for the practice of eating sabzi-polo-mahi (herb-rice & fish). Rather than dying as a result of falling out of favor with the current regime in Iran, Nowruz and its wonderful traditions are spreading around the world and are being embraced by Many non-Iranians as well.
Here is an interesting question posed in the Q&A period: Recently, we have been talking about the Iranian New Year instead of the Persian New Year. This is understood to have been done for greater inclusivity of ethnic minorities. But then what about Persian-speaking communities outside Iran, who celebrate Nowruz and the Persian New Year, but do not belong to traditional ethnic minorities within the country?
[My observation: Even though Nowruz does not have a national or religious significance, it has been used in recent decades as a tool to oppose political and religious ideologies. This usage can strengthen the age-old tradition, but can also backfire due to it being seen as yet another ideology serving a political movement.]
(5) Welcoming Nowruz/Norooz, the spring, and the Iranian New Year: We have one week left to the first day of spring and the start of the Persian New Year. The change of year (spring equinox or saal-tahveel) actually occurs on Saturday, March 20, 2021, 2:37:28 AM PDT.
For many years now, I have composed a cheerful traditional Persian poem celebrating the arrival of spring and renewal of nature, as well as the Iranian New Year festival. Thw image above shows the 2021 (1400) edition. Initial letters of the poem's first and second half-verses spell its Persian title, "Saal-e No Mobarak," which translates to "Happy/Auspicious New Year." This 2-minute video contains my recitation of the poem.
This year, as in 2020, it was particularly difficult for me to get in the cheerful mood needed to compose the festive poem. I ended up going to my special retreats along the beach and in a nearby nature preserve to focus on beauty and serenity and forget about the pandemic and the nerve-wracking political scene in the US over the past 4-5 years. A rough English translation of the poem follows.
Welcome the greenery, and the luminous flowers The spring's arrival, and the buoyancy of lovers
With lips smiling, along hearts chaste and pure Heavenly voices and tunes, will delight us for sure
It's time for adventure, time to sing and dance Time for lasting peace, let's not give war a chance
The hyacinth's fragrance is in the spring breeze The gentle Nowruz rain washes the rocks and trees
May your day be sweet, may love fill your night May you be endowed, with merriment and delight
For many more of my Nowruz/Norooz poems, and a selction of other poetry, please see my poetry page.
2021/03/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Yesterday's images: A beautiful SoCal afternoon, walking in and around Goleta's Lake Los Carneros Park.
(2) "Extreme stress testing of online platforms has become its own science": Or how chaos engineering saved your Netflix. [Article in IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of March 2021]
(3) When does a new century begin? I engaged in a lengthy discussion with a few friends about whether the year 1400 in the Persian calendar, which is coming up on Sunday 3/21, heralds the arrival of the 15th century. I argued that it is not and that the Persian calendar's 15th century will begin with the year 1401, not next week. Taking the Gregorian calendar, which is more familiar to my non-Iranian readers, the first century consisted of the years 1-100, and the second century began on January 1, 101. We are now in the 21st century, which began in 2001, not in 2000, which was the last year of the 20th century. The confusion arises from the common mistake of equating, say, the 1800s (the years 1800-1899) with the 19th century (the years 1801-1900).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In a historic night for women, Beyonce and Taylor Swift broke records in winning Grammy awards.
- A crippling snowstorm closes roads in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci urges Donald Trump to push COVID-19 vaccine to his followers.
- Recreating photo poses from many years ago: Some adorable examples!
- Persian music: A song that includes all the "corners" ("goosheh-ha") of the Mahur classical style. [Video]
- Persian classical music: Azadeh Shams plays a piece in Bayat-e Turk on the violin. [Video]
(5) "The Computer Programs of Charles Babbage": This is the title of an article in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, January-March 2021 issue (Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 6-18). [Abstract: The mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage drafted 26 code fragments between 1836 and 1840 for his unfinished "Analytical Engine." The programs were embedded implicitly in tables representing execution traces. In this article, we explore the programming architecture of Babbage's mechanical computer, that is, its structure from the point of view of a programmer, based on those 26 coding examples preserved in the Babbage Papers Archive.]
2021/03/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Interesting charts that help us visualize the world (top left to bottom right): Lines of work; Languages; Economy; National debt; The ultra-rich; Brand values.
(2) The mysterious Malibu shooter: After a father was killed as he slept beside his children at a popular California campground, a pattern of unexplained attacks began to emerge.
(3) Comedian Bill Maher on the outdated terms "Royalty" and "Your Highness": If Harry and Meghan really mean what they say, they shouldn't just "step back" from "royal duties" (whatever that means); they should renounce the archaic and racist institution.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- World's most-despicable man: Comedian Steve Hofstetters's revealing 9-minute video about Ted Cruz.
- Comedian Trevor Noah's take on the despicable practice of trophy hunting. [7-minute video]
- On the news of a forthcoming space hotel: Here is a visualization of what the hotel might look like.
- Women are leading India's farmer protests. [Photos from Time magazine]
- Russian women unite to fight against domestic violence, which their government won't address.
- Five COVID-19 vaccines, made in China, India, Russia (2), and South Korea, have been approved in Iran.
- Refurbishing an antique watch: The sheer number of parts makes me nervous as I watch this video!
- A simple math puzzle: Change the location of one of the digits to make this equality satisfied. 34 – 79 = 2
(5) Persian music: This popular oldie song, "Aashegham Man" ("I'm in Love"), was composed by Majid Vafadar, with lyrics by Rahi Moayyeri. Poorandokht Vafadar sings, with Bardiya Sadrenoori on the piano.
(6) Women are taking the brunt of the pandemic: Cover feature and chart from Time magazine, issue of March 15 & 22, show that women's entry into the workforce regressed beginning in 2008 and took a major hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(7) "Increasing Diversity in Computing: Lessons Learned": This was the title of a distinguished lecture by Dr. Valerie Taylor, Director of the Mathematics & Computer Science Division at Argonne National Lab, within today's UCSB CS Summit 2021 program. Dr. Taylor began with presenting data about corporations performing better and earning more profits when they have diverse workforces. So, diversity isn't just a matter of feeling good about ourselves but has important social and economic consequences. She then proceeded to review four different programs (LEAP Alliance, Academic Careers Workshop, University Awards, and Tapia Conferences), which have been successful in increasing the diversity among CS students and faculty members, emphasizing that her title should really be "Lessons Learned So Far." [Images]
2021/03/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cartoon of the day: Bird selecting its spot in flight formation. [Center] Walking in downtown Santa Barbara: I had an hour or so to kill today, so I walked along State Street, from Mission Street to Paseo Nuevo Shopping Center, and back. The provisions for making State Street more pedestrian- and bike-friendly have become more permanent and restaurant have encroached on the roadway with outdoor seating even more than before, creating a nice atmosphere. Construction projects are continuing, despite the pandemic. [Right] On State Street in downtown Santa Barbara: The boundary between cloudy and sunny!
(2) Tony Bennett's illness: Compared with his contemporaries, the jovial Bennett was sometimes described as more-accessible than Sinatra and more-sober than Dean Martin! Now, after a lifetime of memorable performances, including recent duets with many top artists, Bennett reveals that he has Alzheimer's.
(3) Word puzzle: What do the following seven words have in common, other than all being verbs?
Bring; Buy; Catch; Fight; Seek; Teach; Think.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan has 75% (59%) support among Americans (Republicans).
- Trump attacks the GOP, asks for no fund-raising under his name, and directs donors to give to him directly.
- China & Russia sign a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a lunar research station.
- Tesla, jails, and have been exposed by hackers breaching thousands of security cameras.
- Seventy-five members of "Coding Black Females" join British Computer Society.
- Quote: "Other countries have social safety nets. The US has women." ~ Jessica Calarco, on the pandemic
- Persian music: A rather unusual, but wonderful, style of playing the tar. [4-minute video]
- Iranian music: Trilingual song in Azeri, Persian, and Kurdish. [4-minute video]
- Medley of famous Iranian regional songs, performed in jest. [2-minute video]
(5) "Data Center Energy Analysis: Past, Present, and Future": UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency Zoom talk by Dr. Eric Masanet (UCSB), Thursday, March 18, 2021, 4:00 PM PDT.
[Zoom link; Passcode 619630]
(6) Book introduction: A Series of Fortunate Events: Change and the Making of the Planet, Life and You, by Sean B. Carroll, is a small, entertaining book about some very big ideas. From the publisher's description: "Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death." I had previously reviewed Sean Carroll's The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2016), giving it 5 stars.
2021/03/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Interesting charts that help us visualize the world: Absolute & relative population. [Top center] The Kurdish strudel "kalaneh" from mom, sitting in my freezer: The versions I have seen on-line use thin flat-bread, which is loaded with veggies and then folded or rolled, before grilling. This version, uses ticker dough and is fried in oil. [Bottom row] Cartoons: Stairway to Heaven; Highway to Hell. A few minutes into the meeting, John realized that he had misread the sign. Honoring Iranian women on March 8.
(2) Women in STEM: According to a US National Academies of Sciences report, women faculty in STEM fields are facing additional challenges during the pandemic. [The full PDF report]
(3) On the ex-royals' interview: I don't see why the royal family was concerned about the baby's possibly dark skin tone. I would have thought they'd be praying for the baby to look more like Meghan than Harry!
(4) One-liners: Today's batch of one-liners shine the spotlight on Iran and its brutal theocratic regime.
- Iran's Revolutionary Guards run the country: Now, they want to make it official by seizing the presidency.
- Iran's Supreme Leader and his claim of leading the world's Muslims dealt a blow by the Pope's visit to Iraq.
- Iran's Defense Minister: "We're ready to raze Tel Aviv & Haifa upon the Supreme Leader's command."
- Paris-based Nooshabeh Amiri was uncomfortable and fearful when she interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini.
- No country for minorities: Iran's ethnic Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, and Azeris continue to face persecution.
- American porn actress Alexis Texas achieves fame in Iran, breaking viewing records with a music video.
(5) Cartoon caption of the day: "Along with 'Antimatter' and 'Dark Matter,' we've recently discovered 'Doesn't Matter,' which appears to have no effect on the universe whatsoever."
(6) Virtual talk on "Foundations of Data Science": Tim Roughgarden will speak about "Data-Driven Algorithm Design" (Thursday, March 18, 2021, 11:00 AM PDT). [Register]
(7) Death tourism: We have all heard about "health tourism," people traveling to countries where healthcare resources are plentiful and inexpensive. Optional plastic surgery is a prime example. Now, Switzerland, with its liberal assisted-suicide laws, has emerged as a destination for those suffering from terminal diseases and associated debilitating pain to seek what may not be readily available in their own countries. [NPR program]
(8) [Final thought for the day] Puzzling e-mail message from three SUTA election candidates: Writing under the title "SUTA Women for Future,' three women candidates, whose presence in the previously male-dominated Sharif University of Technology Association is much appreciated, write about working toward peace and transparency. I had heard about infighting within SUTA, so as a first step toward transparency, I would like to ask for a clear explanation of what the infighting, which is unusual in a professional organization, was about and what concrete actions are proposed to end it.
2021/03/09 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A day late: Several memorable International Women's Day memes from prior years (see the next item below). [Center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Good morning everyone! I brought donuts." [Right] Today's Zoom meeting on "Ecology and the Environment" (see the last item below).
(2) The first post-Trump-era International Women's Day was spirited and full of hope: Below, I share a few social-media posts by friends and others to honor the March 8, 2021, special occasion. [IWD history]
- All 10 finalists at UCSB's Grad Slam competition, entailing 3-minute research pitches, were women!
- UCSB Engineering celebrated its women faculty members on the 2021 International Women's Day.
- Introducing seven novels that explore the lives of women in the Middle East.
- This spirited women's anthem was dedicated to all imprisoned women's-rights activists in Iran.
- Journalist Roya Hakakian writes about compulsory hijab law in Iran and its consequences.
- Dr. Shokoufeh Taghi's article, "Women's Monthly Cycle: A Stigma, from Religious & Linguistic Viewpoints."
(3) Oprah's interview with Meghan & Harry: The royal family was concerned about how dark their baby's skin might be after birth. Also, no Prince/Princess title and no security protection for the newborn.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The European Space Agency is making oxygen out of lunar dust, to allow humans to settle on the Moon.
- "Nowruz: The Persian New Year from Myth to History": Free lecture by Dr. Touraj Daryaee, 2021/03/15.
- Sign of the times: Toy-maker Fisher-Price has introduced a "Work from Home Office" playset! [Image]
- Introducing Ramtin Ghazavi: La Scala's tenor of Iranian origins, performing here with his son, Davin.
(5) "Ecology and the Environment" (Part 2): This was the title of a Persian presentation in the Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68) by Dr. Jalal Idjadi, Professor at a number of Paris universities. Following last week's discussion of background concepts, underlying philosophies, existing & emerging problems, and solution strategies at the world level, during today's session, Dr. Idjadi focused on environmental challenges in Iran.
Important aspects of Iran's problems in the domain of environment are water management (erecting too many dams, where water resources are very limited, and growing lucrative crops that need a lot of water), building military/commercial roads that disrupt the movement of wildlife, deforestation, and other activities that lead to the extinction of wildlife and native plant species.
I see a number of parallels between the handling of environmental problems and women's-rights issues in Iran, and stated this view in a question, which, unfortunately, wasn't properly answered.
In her 2021/03/07 talk entitled "Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran," Dr. Nazanin Shahrokni maintained that women's-rights issues are not addressed by the government, unless they reach crisis level. When this happens, concerns that do not threaten the existence of the regime, such as exercise/recreation spaces for women, are demoted from national to local issues and are solved by building single-gender parks, which constitutes a band-aid solution to a fundamental malady. Other, more serious, issues, such as allowing women to attend sporting events, are elevated to national-security level, and demands by women are treated as attempts to de-stabilize and overthrow the regime.
In environmental demands, too, the seriousness of the problems has led to the regime to throw spying and regime-change charges, prosecuting, and in a number of cases executing, the activists. The regime has significant financial gains from erecting dams, cutting down forests, and other acts of environmental destruction, so, even though there are specialists within the establishment bureaucracy who are aware of the seriousness of the problems and may even have solutions for them, one cannot expect a regime which is struggling to meet its payroll and other obligations, to act on environmental issues.
At the end, Dr. Idjadi came to this same assessment that the only viable solution to Iran’s difficult environmental problems is regime change. Given the deep-rooted corruption and vested economic interests that go against environmental preservation, one cannot expect the current regime to be part of the solution, any more than it can be a force for granting women their due rights.
2021/03/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Happy International Women's Day! This year's celebration comes after a multi-year slowdown in progress towards achieving full gender-equality. I hope that 2021 proves to be the start of an accelerating phase in women's-rights gains in the US and around the world, particularly in Iran, where women have been fighting a four-decades-long war against a backward Islamic regime that continues to prosecute women's-rights activists with false national-security charges. To celebrate this day, I am reposting a Persian poem I wrote in 2019 for joint celebration of IWD and Nowruz. Here's my recitation of the poem. [Top right & Bottom row] UCLA Bilingual Lecture on Iran, March 7-8, 2021 (see the next item below).
(2) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Professor Nazanin Shahrokni (London School of Economics and Political Science) gave a virtual book talk, "Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran," based on her book by the same title (University of California Press, 2020). Yesterday's 11:30 AM talk was in Persian. It will be followed by the English version, today 3/08 at 2:00 PM.
The book covers gender-segregation policies from 1979, the onset of the Islamic Republic, to 2013, just before President Rouhani's first term. Throughout the past 40+ years, Iranian laws and regulations have been in a state of flux. Everything is "until further notice" ("taa ettelaa'e saanavi"). Something that is banned today, may be allowed tomorrow, and again banned the next day. Barriers between men and women, that is, railings in buses, beach walls, and so on, are constant reminders of the presence of the government in people's daily lives. Erecting barriers were even considered for university classrooms, but the plan was abandoned, because it was opposed by Khomeini himself and were later deemed impractical.
The term "government" is rather fuzzy in the case of Iran, as there are multiple centers of power, each with its own agenda and interests. The Iranian ruling class has alternately restricted or empowered women, according to its own interests. Some of the seemingly women-friendly policies are really male-interest changes in disguise. For example, facilitating women's participation and attendance at sporting events is driven, in part, by international sporting bodies threatening boycotts, which would disadvantage male athletes and tick-off male sports fans.
Lately, emphasis on punishment to maintain gender segregation has waned, being replaced by a rewards-based system (expanding opportunities for women to participate in single-gender spaces and activities). Many women who opposed gender segregation, now pursue the establishment of single-gender facilities to take care of their daily needs (exercise spaces, participation in sporting events). Some women who were active in their opposition to women not allowed into stadiums now thank the government for allocating small single-gender sections within stadiums to women and urge women attendees to "behave" for fear of this privilege being taken away. Single-gender taxis constitute another example. Dr. Shahrokni confided that she tries not to judge gender segregation as good or bad. There are negative consequences and some positive ones.
Dr. Shahrokni used the term "patriarchal accommodation," that is, maintaining gender domination, while giving women some freedoms. The pervailing view is the government coming in as a savior, a parent or guardian, to save women form dangers, such as sexual harassment. One should ask why the government does not use its resources to curtail sexual harassment, rather than confront it through gender segregation and use it to justify its segregation policies.
Elsewhere, the government's accommodations of women's exercise and development of "women's parks" are essentially band-aid solutions to problems of its own creation: Lack of exposure to sun (due to veiling) and dearth of space for physical activities (urban sprawl and pollution) giving rise to serious health problems. The relationships between Iran's government and world organizations (e.g., World Bank, WHO, FIFA) also affect the restrictions on women and easings thereof.
By and large, the government deals with women's issue [and perhaps with every issue] through crisis management: Only when a problem rises to the level of a crisis will it be dealt with. Occasionally, a local health/civics problem is elevated to a national-security or political status (e.g., women's attendance at sporting events). When they want to solve a problem, they may downgrade the problem, turning it from a national concern into a local health/civic issue.
As observed by the session's moderator, and organizer of UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, Iranian women are tired of a perpetual fight to claim their basic rights, taking steps forward and having to retreat by taking steps back in a prolonged conflict with the Islamic regime. The presence of many women activists in Iranian prisons, and numerous others who are now free, until their next arrest on made-up charges, is an indication of the spirited war being waged by women against the rigid, archaic, and anti-women policies advanced with the pretext of Islam and Islamic traditions. One prominent cleric in Iran has said that women are responsible for their being abused; if they were more obedient, they wouldn't be harassed! Another one sees women being offered university education as the cause of all social ills!
[Dr. Shahrokni's focus seemed to be on Tehrani women, who are much better off due to greater educational and professional attainment and being surrounded by a larger fraction of enlightened men. Even among the clerics and their appointed officials, those who "rule" in cities other than Tehran are more powerful and more willing to impose their archaic views on the local population. Remote rural areas are even worse in this respect.
During the Q&A period, I asked the following question: In your opinion, did opening of spaces for women after draconian restrictions come about according to a plan (the Persian saying "beh marg beguir keh be tab raazi besheh"; threaten them with death, so that they are satisfied with a fever) or forced upon the government because opposition was just too strong, that is, a partial surrender by conservatives? Dr. Shahrokni's answer was that nothing is according to plans. They just propose half-baked ideas and then manage the consequences when international and local opposition arises. For example, segregated buses created a lot of problems in the implementation stage, affecting both men and women, who had to reluctantly adjust to the restrictions as they navigated the resulting conflicts on a daily basis, and bus drivers, who were caught in between.
[This report on Facebook, with a Persian title and abstract]
[Note: I modified this report on March 9, 2021, as a result of feedback kindly provided by Dr. Shahrokni in her comments on my Facebook post. Other than minor clarifications and changes in wording, I have enclosed in square brackets commentaries, assessments, and examples that were not offered directly by Dr. Shahrokni but rather represent my attempt to clarify and elaborate. It is possible that Dr. Shahrokni disagrees, or only partially agrees, with some of my characterizations.]
2021/03/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Pope Francis meets with Ayatollah Sistani and various Iraqi officials, urging coexistence. [Top center] Oklahoma Trump campaign leader, Ralph Shortey, sentenced to 15 years in prison for child-sex trafficking, shown with his pal, Don Jr. [Top right] 'Voices of Women for Change' celebrates International Women's Day (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Walking on State St., between Highway 154 and Las Positas: Yesterday, I went to Uptown Santa Barbara to drop off some charity donations and decided to do my daily walk in that area. This area of State St. is lined with businesses on both sides. We used to shop there many years ago, but strolling allows you to see and discover much more. I photographed some of the lesser-known outfits, including motels/lodges that are far away from the touristy waterfront, smaller plazas, our town's last remaining major bookstore (Chaucer's Books), a cannabis dispensary, and a plant nursery.
(2) Twenty-four science myths that have proven impossible to shake off: They include sugar making kids hyperactive (myth #23) and the side of the moon not seen from Earth being dark (myth #7).
(3) The Science of Science (book introduction): Dashun Wang and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi review an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses big-data to unveil the reproducible patterns governing scientific careers and the workings of science. The presentation aims to be helpful to individuals who want to further their careers and to policy-makers who are charged with enhancing the role of science in society. [Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021]
(4) Pre-recorded video lectures are more effective than in-person instruction: A recent study published in Review of Educational Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, analyzed 105 past randomized trials (7776 students in total) that had looked at the effects of videos on learning compared to the effects of other teaching mediums, such as in-person lectures and assigned readings. Findings showed that using video instead of other teaching methods resulted in small improvements in student learning. Using video in addition to other teaching methods resulted in larger improvements.
(5) Planetary dances: The patterns are essentially discrete locations of the straight line connecting two planets, as they rotate around the sun at different angular speeds. Oval orbits have been converted to circular ones, so as to get more regular patterns.
[Earth & Mars]
[Earth & Saturn]
[Mars & Jupiter]
[Mars & Venus]
(6) International Women's Day Celebration: "Voices of Women for Change" sponsored a 3/06 Zoom meeting, with participants Narges Mohammadi (women's/human-rights activist), Mina Alali (songwriter/vocalist), and Hadi Khorsandi (social satirist). The program began with a 7-minute video dedicated to courageous women of Iran, presenting a vision of Iran in 2030 and honoring imprisoned activists. Narges Mohammadi was awesome; very lucid, spirited, and persuasive in her arguments against solitary confinement ("white torture"). Hadi Khorsandi was rambling/unfocused; rather disappointing. Mina Alali's performance was wonderful. A recording of this important program (in Persian) is available via the Facebook page of voicesofwomenforchange.org. During the discussion session, I recited my poem of two years ago, honoring Nowruz and International Women's Day, dedicating it to Narges Mohammadi, whose first name appears in the poem.
2021/03/06 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Persian cuisine: Inside-out eggplant tah-chin (11-minute cooking video). [Top center] My Qalam Academy vector sheets (see the next item below). [Top right] A book-lover's paradise: Zhongshuge Bookstore in Dujiangyan, China. [Bottom left] Lucky bride and groom: Getting married in the presence is three prior generations! [Bottom center] These seven Iranian writers/thinkers were clerics first: Then they saw the light and chose humanism. [Bottom right] George Orwell's 1984 (see the last item below).
(2) What a wonderful toy to play with! An ad for My Qalam Academy appeared on my Facebook Newsfeed a few days ago. It's about a product, a set of patterns, that allows you to create calligraphic writing in Thuluth, Diwani, Kufi, and Persian scripts, using popular vector-editing software, such as Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop. I can imagine myself spending hours adorning my poems and other writings with just the right appearance and proportions. I am holding off, though, until a self-contained product, containing both the fonts and the editing software, appears on the market.
(3) Book review: Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, unabridged audiobook, read by Simon Preggle, Blackstone Audio, 2006. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I had read Orwell's magnum opus twice before, but when an audiobook version of the title became available at my local library while I was waiting for a couple of holds to arrive, I decided to listen to it, write a review, and generally assess the book and its vision with new perspectives I have gained from Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution (and the ensuing dictatorship) as well as 21st-century dictatorial tendencies in the US and around the world.
In the minds of most people, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) go hand in hand. The two dystopian novels describe worlds that are opposites, yet very similar. Orwell's dystopia describes a future tyrannical system of government that rules by revising history, monitoring everyone's private thoughts, and punishing noncompliant behavior, rendering most humans into sheepish workers, who can't even enjoy a love affair without fearing its consequences. Huxley's dystopia entails a world with a caste system composed of intelligent humans and serf-like beings, with order maintained via government programs for hypnotism and producing test-tube babies. Everyone is content because of a system of drugging and forced promiscuity instilled into all beings from the moment of birth. [My 5-star review of Brave New World on GoodReads]
In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Neal Postman compares the two books thus: "Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us; Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance; Orwell feared we would become captive culture; but Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. ... in Nineteen Eighty-Four people are controlled by inflicting pain; in Brave New World people are controlled by inflicting pleasure."
There are so many interesting ideas and insights in Nineteen Eighty-Four that it would be hard to summarize them all. People are monitored in their homes, at their workplaces, and on streets using a vast network of "telescreens" and microphones. The language imposed by the Party on society is called "Newspeak" (as opposed to "Oldspeak," the language before the Revolution). Newspeak is a rare language that instead of expanding, actually shrinks, as concepts are amalgamated and useless nuances are removed to improve efficiency.
Society members are conditioned to be capable of "doublethink," holding two opposite beliefs at the same time. Nothing is as it seems. The Party runs four ministries. Ministry of Peace is in charge of running a perpetual war. Ministry of Truth fabricates lies and revises history. Starvation is the gift given to people by Ministry of Plenty. Terrorizing and torturing people is in the domain of Ministry of Love.
The re-writing of history, mentioned above, is a nontrivial endeavor requiring the labor of many Party members. If a particular historical event needs to be changed, workers in the Ministry of Truth must work on cross-referencing to ensure that no other event that contradicts the modified event remains on the books. Other memorable terms brought to us by the novel include "Big Brother," "Thought Police," and "thoughtcrime."
Nineteen Eighty-Four has been turned into a 51-minute film, originally broadcast in 1953 on CBS's Westinghouse Studio One program. There are other adaptations, including a 108-minute 1954 BBC TV movie.
2021/03/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Finding another Earth: Tiny wobbles of distant stars, measured by atomically-precise sensors, could help us detect another life-sustaining planet. (Cover feature of IEEE Spectrum magazine, March 2021) [Top center] Persian poetry: A beautiful poem by Houshang Ebtehaj, aka H. E. Sayeh. [Top right] Japan rising from the ashes of Fukushima: Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field, the world's largest hydrogen plant and green-energy center, opened in 2020 (photo credit: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of March 2021). [Bottom left] Belated throwback Thursday photos from 1967 & 2017 (see the next item below). [Bottom center] University of California's freshman applications rise, in spite of the pandemic, while Cal State applications drop by 5%. [Bottom right] This image has not been PhotoShopped: It's just upside-down!
(2) Belated throwback Thursday: I meant to post the top photo (from 1967) yesterday, but I forgot. It shows me, with a number of my University of Tehran engineering classmates, standing inside an empty pool in our Vanak, Tehran, residence. Among today's Facebook memories was the bottom photo from 2017. It was taken during a visit, with my daughter, to Santa Monica Pier, California. The two photos were taken 50 years apart.
(3) Celebrating Women's History Month: If you aren't familiar with the 140-year-old American Association of University Women, here's their Web site. And here's a report, "AAUW Playbook on Best Practices: Gender Equity in Tech." [Full 36-page PDF report]
[One-minute video teaser]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's State Department appointee arrested by FBI for assaulting police officers during the January 6 riot.
- Pope Francis visits Iraq and is greeted with a line-dance by Iraqi men and women.
- "What Is Mathematics?" is the title of Alec Wilkinson's wonderful New Yorker essay.
- Plato, quoting Socrates in The Republic: "Mathematicians are people who dream that they are awake."
- Neil deGrasse Tyson: "As the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance."
- Persian poetry: Fazel Nazari recites his poem entitled "Any Religion Besides Love Is a Load of Superstition."
(5) Space hotel is coming: Orbital Assembly, a space construction company, is on track to begin building its first space hotel by 2026. It could take only 1-2 years to assemble the commercial Voyager Station.
(6) Math puzzle: What integer will become 4 times as large if you append a digit 6 to its left compared with appending a digit 6 to its right?
(7) A fun calculus application: The article "How to Fairly Share a Watermelon" (Physic Education, Vol. 56, No. 1, Dec. 2020) uses the equation for an ellipsoid and introduces approximations that allow the sharing of a watermelon among n people, using only tools available in our kitchens, while incurring reasonably small errors.
(8) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Behrooz Parhami (ECE Dept., UCSB) will speak under the title "Eight Key Ideas in Computer Architecture from Eight Decades of Innovation" (Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 6:30 PM PDT). [Details and free registeration]
2021/03/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Landscaping diversity in and around UCSB's West Campus. [Center] Four different calligraphic renderings of the Persian word "eshgh" ("love").
(2) "The Magic of RNA: From CRISPR to Coronavirus Vaccines": Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series by Nobel Laureate Prof. Tom Cech, U. Colorado Boulder, on Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 6:00-7:30 PM PDT. [Register]
(3) Additions to my reading list: My local public library has compiled a list of suggested readings for March, Women's History Month. I just went through the list, borrowed the first of the following two titles and placed a hold on the second one (will become available in ~2 weeks). Will you be reading anything special this month?
- Krohn, Katherine, Jane Goodall: Animal Scientist
- Morgan, George D., Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hats off to Jane Fonda for her fabulous Golden Globes 2021 Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech.
- Publisher withdraws six "Dr. Seuss" titles because of racist content it characterizes as hurtful and wrong.
- Walking from State Street to Stearns Wharf in Downtown Santa Barbara, CA. [55-minute video]
- Can't complain about our weather forecast: Three sunny days, 2 cloudy days of, 3 days of rain; Repeat!
- Persian music: Loads of Free music can be found on Ziba Shirazi's YouTube Channel.
(5) Assad's financier, Ayatollah Khamenei: All dictators, without exception, like to appear taller than they are, so they avoid being photographed next to tall individuals, or else have the image PhotoShopped/rotated to remove the deficit. This excellent example is from two years ago.
(6) A symbol of the wealth gap in Iran: In the US, country clubs are symbolic establishments where only members of the top 1% are welcome and can afford to frequent. In Iran, luxury restaurants, like this one featuring a retractable roof for outdoor dining on nice sunny days, are springing up, as masses go hungry or have to wait in lines for buying subsidized meat and other food essentials. [6-minute video]
(7) AI software ready to earn college degrees: Tests of an AI software tool for writing passing college papers showed that the task is achievable in 20 minutes. A real human student needs 3 days for the same task. This is both admirable and worrisome, given a rise in securing college papers in exchange for money.
(8) Maybe I am a robot: Recently, I have run into problems trying to prove to Web sites that I am not a robot. They show me a set of images and ask me to identify all images that contain a bicycle, a boat, or some other type of objects. It usually takes me 2-3 tries to pass the test!
(9) Final thought for the day: A smart person will open your mind, a beautiful person will open your eyes, and a kind, loving person will open your heart. You're lucky if you have found someone who has opened all three!
2021/03/03 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left and center] Book Cafe meeting about Nizami Ganjavi (see the last item below). [Top right] A lesser-known female Iranian poet: Jaleh Esfahani, aka Mastaneh (see the next item below). [Bottom left] The Roman stadium underneath Piazza Navona in Rome, Italy: Built around 80 CE as a gift by Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus to the people of Rome, the stadium had 15,000 to 20,000 seats and was used mostly for athletic contests. [Bottom center] Iran's history in pictures: Kentucky Fried Chicken in Tehran, 1976. [Bottom right] Ceramic tile design based on verses describing a polo match in Shahnameh: The verses appear on the four edges in this 30-by-30 cm tile (credit: British Museum).
(2) A lesser-known female Iranian poet: Here's the story of Jaleh Esfahani (aka Mastaneh, 1921-2007), whose poetry mirrored her difficult life. She married a member of the Toudeh (Communist) Party, moved to the Soviet Union to reunite with her husband, returned to Iran, only to be imprisoned, and eventually immigrated to England.
[Official bio]
[Encyclopedia Iranica]
[Article by Dr. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak]
[Video story]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Antifa pretending to be Trump supporters? It's more like Trump supporters dressing up as Antifa!
- President Biden signs executive order to address the chip shortage: Tech industry welcomes the move.
- Strange bedfellows: Russia, China, and Iran are pushing the same kind of coronavirus disinformation.
- The latest banned activity for women in Esfahan, Iran: Rock-climbing on Sefid Kooh.
- A serious challenge for self-driving cars: Object detection in heavy rain.
(4) Nizami Ganjavi's magnum opus, Panj Ganj (Five Treasures): I chanced upon an event held by Book Cafe (part of IRANSA, the Iranian Student Association of UNSW, Sydney, Australia) dealing with the great Iranian poet Nizami Ganjavi, as the date (Esfand 22, March 12) devoted to honoring his legacy approaches.
Nizami [1141-1209] was as great a Persian poet as the "big four," that is, Sa'adi, Hafez, Mowlavi (Rumi), and Ferdowsi, yet he is not as revered in Iran. In Azerbaijan, though, he is a folk/national hero, and is celebrated by naming a national museum after him and with a magnificent mausoleum, which in its current form, was erected in 1991. The original tomb in the city of Ganja was destroyed as a result of regional wars between Iran and Russia.
Nizami wrote his poetry in Persian, and Ganja was part of the Persian Empire during Nizami's life. So, Iranians have a right to claim him as their own. Needless to say, there is a bitter war of words between Iran and Azerbaijan about which country deserves credit for Nizami, just like the parallel war between Iran and Turkey in the case of Mowlavi. It was explained during the session that, in those days, nation-states as we know them today did not exist, so people identified with tribes or cities (Nizami Ganjavi, or Nizami of Ganja; Jalal-ad-Din Balkhi, Jalal-ad-Din of Balkh, a city in today's Afghnistan). The positive side of these wars is that Azerbaijan and Turkey have done more to celebrate and promote Nizami and Mowlavi, respectively, than Iran's Islamic government has been willing to do. So, the Persian literary heritage stands to win as a result of Azerbaijan's and Turkey's claims and the attendant publicity efforts.
The meeting began with Yashar Shoraka presenting a historical perspective and biography of Nizami, as a context for the rest of the discussion. He characterized Nizami as the most-prominent Persian story-telling poet, best known for his historical epic "Khosrow o Shirin" and his Arabic-folk-tale-based "Leyli o Majnun" (a tragedy often likened or compared to "Romeo and Juliet"). These two stories are both parts of his most-famous book, Khamseh or Panj Ganj (Five Treasures). Nizami wasn't just a poet; he was a philosopher/scientist, who knew a great deal about plants and other mysteries of nature. Nizami was orphaned early and was raised by his maternal uncle, who provided him with an excellent education. He married three times, and suffered great loss when his first wife died (the other two also died prematurely). Some suggest that the physical beauty, mental acuity, and moral strength of Shirin in the "Khosrow o Shirin" epic are based on Nizami's first wife.
Next, Minoo Eslami provided a summary of "Khosrow o Shirin," the story of the fun-loving Sassanid prince Khosrow-Parviz, son of Hormizd IV, and his love for his Armenian princess Shirin. When Khosrow meets Shirin, he describes her beauty in several verses. Eventually, Shirin moves to Mada'in, located in present-day Iraq, hoping to become Khosrow's wife. The Iranian city of Ghasre-Shirin (meaning "Shirin's Palace") is where Khosrow built a palace for Shirin. Later, Farhad, an engineer who was contracted by Khosrow to work on a project, enters the scene and falls in love with Shirin. Khosrow is alarmed when he learns of Farhad's attention to Shirin, and he hatches a plan to tell Farhad that Shirin is dead. Farhad's love for Shirin is legendary and is often used in poetry and elsewhere as the model for selfless, unconditional love (although Shirin apparently had no feelings for Farhad). Khosrow was eventually killed by his own son and Shirin committed suicide at the scene of his death.
Nizami used metaphors to write about Khosrow's feelings for, and sexual attraction to, Shirin, often using fruits and plants in lieu of body parts. Actual censorship, or perhaps fear of censorship, may have been at play here. In the novel Censoring an Iranian Love Story (published in English and later translated into Persian), Shahriar Mandanipour alludes to censorship of "Khosrow o Shirin," as he constructs his own love story between Dara and Sara, writing and crossing out text that would lead to his book never seeing the light of day in the face of censorship.
When I was given a chance to speak, I noted that Persian poems are rich sources of sayings or proverbs. Single verses or half-verses of poems by some of our beloved poets are recited by many Iranians to enrich conversations or to support an argument. I then shared with the group my discovery many years ago (shared in a Facebook post at the time; see the image above) of a single Nizami poem that contains several often-used Persian proverbs, with many people being unaware of the source.
2021/03/02 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Zoom lecture on "Ecology and the Environment" (see the last item below). [Top center] Math puzzle: ABCD is a square of side length 1. What is the measure of the angle AEF? What is the perimeter of the triangle CEF? This problem was given to 9th graders in India, so try not to use trigonometry. [Top right] These plates are both broken and not broken, until you open the door! [Bottom left] Tah-dig from adas-polo (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Linguistic roots of "mother" in Indo-European family of languages. [Bottom right] Selfie taken during my walk on Sunday 2/28: No, I didn't rob a bank!
(2) How grandkids get spoiled: A few days ago, my daughter mentioned that she misses adas-polo (rice with lentils, often also including raisins and dates), which we have not had for a while. During Saturday's family get-together, I told my mom about this, given that she always asks for dish suggestions for our family gatherings. My expectation was that the next time we gather at her place, she would make the dish. On Sunday, she called to let me know that she had made a large pot of adas-polo for us and that I should go get it while it was hot! The photo shows just the tag-dig (crispy rice at the bottom of the pot).
(3) Trump in his CPAC speech: "Who knows? I may even decide to beat them for the third time!" Yes, you'll beat them for the third time, like you did the second time, that is, lose and send your goons to the Capitol!
(4) Vaccination good news: Merck has been recruited to help mass-produce the J&J single-dose vaccine: There will be enough vaccines for all US adults by the end of May, two months ahead of the previous target.
(5) Mass-casualty accident in Southern California: Head-on crash of a semitruck and an SUV, inexplicably loaded with 25 adults and children, results in at least 13 deaths.
(6) The FBI appears to be in good hands: I caught part of the Congressional testimony of FBI's Director, Christopher Wray, this morning. I was impressed by his thoughtful and direct answers.
(7) "Ecology and the Environment": This was the title of a Persian presentation in the Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68) by Dr. Jalal Idjadi, Professor at a number of Paris universities. Today, he discussed background concepts, underlying philosophies, existing & emerging problems, and solution strategies at the world level. Next week, he will focus on environmental challenges in Iran. Thirteen of these screenshots (#2-#14) are from his slides. The last one (#15), from a Facebook post of mine, shows the plastics crisis.
During the lively Q&A period, I suggested that poverty and wealth/income gap is a key factor to be dealt with before other considerations and mitigation measures. One reason for the meteoric rise of plastics consumption is that it allows for making cheap products, so that even low-income families can buy toys for their children and various household items for their homes. Clean-air laws in rich industrialized countries has led to profiteers shipping old gas-guzzling cars to poor countries, where they continue their polluting lives. Focus on recycling has caused some poor communities in Third-World countries making a living by extracting material from discarded items (e.g., electronics), which exposes them to hazardous materials. The plastic shopping bags, which we pooh-pooh, are useful tools for the homeless and those living in rural areas, as they can fix roof leaks and other problems using the bags. No mitigation measure will be successful as long as the wealth & income gaps continue to grow.
2021/03/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Women's empowerment: Women's History month (March) has begun and International Women's Day (March 8) is around the corner. There will be many special events about women's rights around the world, and about Iran's women's movement, in particular. I will post details of such events, as I learn about them. [Top center] Significant birthdays in binary: We tend to attach more importance to birthdays at ages that are multiples of 10. Writing in CACM, issue of March 2021, Joel C. Adams observes that birthday bit-boundaries (ages at which an additional bit becomes necessary) coincide nicely with stages of life. [Top right] Eggs for this year's Nowruz and Easter. [Bottom left & right] Two architectural creations by Zaha Hadid: Iraq's Central Bank and Beirut's Souks Department Store. [Bottom center] Zaha Hadid (1950-2016), architect extraordinaire: For consistently creating awe-inspiring structures in concrete, steel, and glass, Hadid received the highest honors from civic, academic, and professional institutions worldwide. Her practice remains one of the world's most-inventive architectural studios.
(2) Researchers have solved a decades-old problem on a D-Wave quantum computer 3 million times faster than on a classical computer, using a method known as quantum-annealing.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The global mass of human-made plastic is twice the mass of terrestrial and marine animals combined.
- Narges Mohammadi speaks (in Persian) about made-up charges and official violence against her in Iran.
- Voices of Women for Change presents Int'l Women's Day Celebration: Sat. March 6, 2021, 11:00 AM PST.
- Social media etiquette: Never post a graphical comment so large that it overshadows the original post!
- Iranian Aabgoosht (meat-and-veggies stew), prepared in a traditional way, in ceramic pots on open fire.
- Iranian regional music: From Tehran, the Istgah Orchestra performs "Dokhtar-e Boyer-Ahmadi."
(4) The fearlessness of Iranian women in fighting patriarchy and religious dogma: Azam Jangravi was part of an intense movement to defy Iran's compulsory hijab law and had to pay a high price by fleeing to Canada.
(5) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Professor Nazanin Shahrokhi of London School of Economics and Political Science will give a virtual book talk, "Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran," based on her book by the same title (University of California Press, 2020). Sunday, March 7, 2021, 11:30 AM PST (in Persian), register here. Monday, March 8, 2021, 2:00 PM PST (in English), register here.
(6) A final thought, on this first day of Women's History Month: "At a NASA Earth meeting 10 years ago, a white male post-doc interrupted me to tell me that I didn't understand human drivers of fire, that I def needed to read McCarty et al. Looked him in the eye, pulled my long hair back so he could read my name tag. 'I'm McCarty et al.' " ~ Dr. Jessica McCarty, on sexism and mansplaining
2021/02/28 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The programming language Pascal turns 50: Communications of the ACM, issue of March 2021, contains a feature article by Pascal's designer, computer scientist Niklaus Wirth, who reflects on its origin, spread, and future. [Top center] Cover feature of Communications of the ACM, March 2021 issue: In "The Decline of Computers as a General-Purpose Technology," authors Neil C. Thompson and Svenja Spanuth argue that "technological and economic forces are now pushing computing away from being general-purpose and toward specialization." [Top right] Edmund M. Clark (1945-2020) dead at 75 from complications of COVID-19: He won the 2008 ACM Turing Award for his work on model-checking, a discipline that has as its goal the formal verification that a system's behavior matches its specification and, thus, that it operates dependably. [Bottom row] Images from a fascinating and well-attended talk by Sholeh Wolpe (see the last item below).
(2) Massacre in Iran: Once again, the Iranian regime is killing protesters and cutting off Internet access to cover up its cruelty, this time in Sistan & Baluchistan, a most-oppressed region of the country, both politically and economically. And the world yawns! [Tweet in English] [Tweet in Persian]
(3) "Shame, Stigma and Sin: From Tahirih, to Forough, to Us": This was the title of Friday afternoon's presentation by Sholeh Wolpe (Writer-in-Residence, UC Irvine). I found the presentation enlightening and very well-organized. Unfortunately, I missed the Q&A period due to other commitments.
The first name in the title is Tahirih Qurrat al-'Ayn [1817-1852], who was an early follower of the Bab and influencer in the formation of the Baha'i faith. The second name is Forough Farrokhzad [1934-1967], who is viewed not just as a brilliant contemporary woman poet but a brilliant poet, period! The "Us" of the title represents Iranian women poets, in the homeland or in diaspora, who have flourished in recent decades, thanks in part to the trailblazers and norm-shatterers Tahirih and Forough. Wolpe urges us to discard the term "poetess," or "shae'reh" in Persian, because most women poets find it condescending and insulting.
Tahirih and Forough share a great deal in common, even though they lived more than a century apart. Tahirih was 36 (35?) when she was executed through suffocation for her beliefs and daring statements. Forough was also "suffocated" by attempts at silencing her. She died in an auto accident at age 32. Both women lost custody of their children because they were considered unfit mothers. Tahirih's unveiling in a public gathering was viewed, not as an act of liberation, but as an orgy; something a whore would do in front of men. Both Tahirih and Forough understood that in order to rebuild something, you have to destroy the old system and build up on its ashes.
When Reza Shah prohibited Iranian women from being veiled in public places, the patriarchal system replaced the veiling of the body by veiling of language and expression. This went on until Forough appeared on the scene. Forough's first poem was indeed published because a magazine publisher found it bold and "scandalous," and she faced immediate backlash for her work. Women had no business being sensual and writing about their feelings and desires. Today's Iranian women poets continue in that tradition and they are building something beautiful on the ashes of the old patriarchy.
Wolpe displayed English translations (many of them her own) of works by Tahirih, Forough, and selected other women poets. I captured some of these in these screenshots. I will include a link to the recorded version of the talk, if and when I get the information.
2021/02/27 (Saturday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering two reviews.
(1) Book review: Obama, Barack, A Promised Land, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2020. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Former President Obama began writing this book immediately after he left office, planning to finish it in a year. Things became complicated and the book grew to two volumes, the first one taking almost four years to finish. Prior to this one, Obama had published Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2004), The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise (2008), and Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters (a children's book, 2010).
The first one-third of A Promised Land deals with Obama's presidential campaign. The remaining two-thirds covers most of his first term in the White House. This well-written, thoughtful, poetic, and engaging book is a refreshing reminder of a time when presidential decisions were made after careful deliberation, rather than conceived in the wee hours of the morning, announced via tweets, many in all caps, and justified by aides in a scramble later during the day.
Obama tells us about the stress on his marriage, brought about by his political ambitions, beginning with when he floated the possibility of running for presidency: "God Barack ... when will it ever be enough?" Michelle eventually went along reluctantly and was even encouraging and complimentary when things went well.
Obama exhibits awareness of his tendency to provide too much detail in his explanations (being professorial), which bores most people to death. Rather than simply explaining what he did in a particular situation, he provides a historical background, factors that went into the decision, what each advisor suggested, and how the clashing views were reconciled. I happen to like this style, preferring to be bored with too much detail over being left in the dark!
The list of topics covered in the book is long: The elimination of Osama bin Laden, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, intervention in Libya, relations with European allies, the threat of North Korea, nuclear deal with Iran, the puzzle of China, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its cast of unsavory characters, the Arab Spring, and extensive discussion of the runaway financial system and recovery from the 2007-2008 financial meltdown.
On race relations and racial bias, Obama is highly reflective, demonstrating that he understands the deep fissure and why problems will persist for some time. Birtherism, racial insults against him and Michelle, and racism disguised as policy disagreements do bother him, but, in the final analysis, the hope generated by his presidency among blacks and other colored people, children in particular, seem to have made it all worthwhile.
Some topics receive less attention than they deserve: Serious escalation of drone strikes in Pakistan, increased deportations from the US, why his outreach to Republicans and other opponents did not bear fruit, and the tensions between youthful dynamism and experienced caution within his inner-circle of advisors.
Let me end my review with a poignant quote from this wonderful book of contemporary history, which has my highest recommendation: "I've often been asked about this personality trait—my ability to maintain composure in the middle of crisis. Sometimes I'll say that it's just a matter of temperament, or a consequence of being raised in Hawaii, since it's hard to get stressed when it's eighty degrees and sunny and you're five minutes from the beach. If I'm talking to a group of young people, I'll describe how over time I've trained myself to take the long view, about how important it is to stay focused on your goals rather than getting hung up on the daily ups and downs."
(2) Book review: Woodward, Bob, Rage, unabridged audiobook, read by Robert Petkoff, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Much of this book is based on information provided by Donald Trump himself during interviews with Woodward, with parts of the interview sessions recorded on tape. One wonders why Trump agreed to provide such unprecedented access to Woodward, given his record of writings about former presidents and about Trump himself (Fear: Trump in the White House, 2018; My 4-star review of Fear). He could have been following the advertising maxim that no publicity is bad publicity. Or, perhaps, it was a gamble, with possible gains deemed more significant than losses from a negative assessment that he could dismiss as "fake news," much like other negative media coverage.
As in his previous books, Woodward's meticulous research is evident in this book. In addition to Trump himself, Woodward talked extensively with other individuals, in and out of the White House. The writing style is a bit disjointed, with facts and statements strung together, without providing fillers that would smooth the transitions. The title "Rage" seems to have come about from Trump's admission (boast?) that he is good at bringing rage out, seeming to thrive equally on adulation by fans and loathing by opponents.
Woodward devotes much attention on the coronavirus and its impact on Trump's legacy. He tells Trump that his presidency will be judged by how he handles the pandemic, but Trump keeps shifting the focus to economy, particularly the stock market surge and favorable unemployment stats. Woodward's attempts to make Trump own the pandemic, and acknowledge that he was given early and repeated warnings that it would be his toughest national-security challenge, go nowhere.
In several passages, Woodward reminds Trump that they are both privileged individuals, having been raised by well-to-do families. Trump never acknowledges that he has enjoyed privilege, seeming to think that his wealth and stature result only from his genius and hard work. Likewise, he doesn't give anyone in his administration any credit, claiming that all the main ideas are his, and his alone. Economists, healthcare professionals, and pandemic specialists don't know what they are doing, soldiers killed in action are "suckers" and "losers," and the generals are all "pussies."
Woodward does not try to guide Trump toward incriminating statements. He just provides enough rope for Trump to hang himself, which he does with a barrage of thoughtless, heartless, and contradictory pronouncements. The only direct conclusion drawn by Woodward is reflected in his final statement that Trump is the wrong man for the job.
Woodward has included audio snippets of his interviews with Trump (always taped with his awareness and permission) at the end of the audiobook. Even though the information from these snippets is included in the book, hearing Trump's tone of voice, which at times indicates frustration and anger, provides valuable information about the former President's state of mind.
2021/02/26 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] My refreshing walk on a beautiful Southern-California afternoon: I walked north from UCSB West Campus along Ellwood Beach, returning via the Elwood bluffs and UCSB North Campus Open Space. [Bottom left] Secret message on Perseverance Rover's parachute revealed: A puzzle-lover among the designers placed in binary code the message "DARE MIGHTY THINGS" and the GPS coordinates of the mission's headquarters at JPL in Pasadena, California, on the parachute.[Bottom center] My beach photo made into a poster: I had been wanting to replace a faded poster in our living room for some time. My daughter suggested using one of my photos and did the research about the best poster supplier. A few days ago, the 28"-by-40" poster arrived and is now hanging above the sofa in the living room. [Bottom right] Pizza rolls: Having been reminded by Facebook this morning about pizza rolls I had made with lavash bread a few years ago, I decided to make some for dinner tonight. Recipe: Just put standard pizza ingredients on a sheet of lavash bread and roll it before baking. I also made three pita-bread pizzas.
(2) Shameless hypocrisy & sexism: The same Republicans who approved of Trump's mean tweets, or pretended they had not seen them, attacked a female Biden cabinet nominee because of her "mean tweets"!
(3) "Gender Trends in Computer Science Authorship": This is the title of an article by Lucy Lu Wang, Gabriel Stanovsky, Luca Weihs, and Oren Etzioni, published in the March 2021 issue of Communications of the ACM.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Saudi Prince MBS personally approved the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi: What a surprise!
- Imagine preying on those looking for debt relief: Talk of student-loan forgiveness has mobilized scammers.
- Animated video of the forthcoming UCSB classroom building, located to the south of Powell Library.
- It was inevitable: Tah-dig art by Varta Melon is an episode of the #FarhangFlavor series on Iranian cuisine.
- Persian-themed clothing designs based on traditional and ancient tile patterns.
(5) Former US gymnastics coach commits suicide after being charged with two dozen cases of sexual abuse and human trafficking: This sounds sexist, but young girl gymnasts should not be trusted to male coaches and doctors, until an infrastructure of supervision and accountability has been put in place.
(6) Economist Tom Friedman's excellent questions (paraphrased): Trump wants to come back? To do what? What does he want power for? To do healthcare? To do infrastructure? He could have done those over the past four years! What are his plans? What are the Republican Party's plans? Power for the sake of power?
(7) Women in STEM: Cecilia Metra (Professor, U. Bologna, specializing in dependable computing) is featured in this 11th installment of the interview series "Prominent Women in Computing."
(8) Women in IT: In the article "Educational Interventions and Female Enrollment in IT Degrees," authors Andreea Molnar, Therese Keane, and Rosemary Stockdale report on a comprehensive study of female students enrolled in Australia's information-technology degrees.
2021/02/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Today's images, left to right, pertain to three meeting reports appearing below.
(2) Roundtable discussion, "500 Years Later: Recontextualizing Tenochtitlan": Exactly 500 years ago, a smallpox epidemic raged in the Aztec Empire, as its capital city of Tenochtitlan was under siege by Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadores. A year-long lecture series, focusing on the period between the two pandemics and culminating in an art exhibition by artist Sandy Rodriguez, titled "Amid a Pandemic, After the War: 500 Years Later," is being sponsored by UCSB's Art, Design & Architecture Museum.
Today's roundtable discussion, featuring Maestra Celia Herrera Rodriguez from UCSB's Las Maestras Center, Professors Allison Caplan and Maria Lumbreras (UCSB History of Art & Architecture Dept.), and Felicia Rhapsody Lopez from UC-Merced, kicked off the aforementioned series of six lectures on our historical understanding of the Spanish invasion of the Americas, the resilience and resistance of Indigenous people despite the forces of colonialism, and the impact of these events on our contemporary society.
On August 13, 1521, after two years of massacres, a smallpox epidemic, political betrayal & manipulation, and a two-month siege, the capital city Tenochtitlan of the Aztec Empire surrendered to Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadores. The legacy of this invasion still reverberates throughout the Americas, 500 years later. Looking back at the developments of 500 years ago and the five centuries of subsequent events in the Americas can teach us a lot about our past heritage and future outlook.
(3) "Britain and the Abdication of Reza Shah": This was the title of today's webinar, in which Shaul Bakhash (Emeritus History Prof., George Mason U.) spoke under the auspices of Stanford U.'s Iranian Studies Program.
Before World War II, Iran was practically a colony of Britain, though not in the same way as other colonized countries in Africa and elsewhere. Monarchs, up to and including Reza Shah (reigned: 1925-1941), would not so much drink water without Britain's permission, but there was also nominally-functioning government which did not take direct orders from Britain.
Then, Germans started to gain a foothold in Iran, making Britain, and to some extent the Soviet Union, nervous. Britain worried about Germany's new-found status as Iran's largest trading partner and its information-gathering operations within Iran, along with possible sabotage in oil facilities as hostilities grew. USSR worried about the status of the Caucuses and other territories that neighbored a Germany-aligned country, given its long border with Iran.
Reza Shah followed the British instructions of reducing the number of Germans in Iran and closing the German embassy, along with those of a few other countries. However, they thought Reza Shah was slow/reluctant in carrying out the orders. Within Britain, the prevailing view was that Reza Shah should be forced out, not harmed personally. So, they started an intense anti-Shah information campaign, using BBC's Persian Service, broadcast from England and Delhi, taking advantage of the Shah's unpopularity due to poor economic conditions and tax burdens on all societal classes.
The idea of a military coup was entertained as plan B, in case Reza Shah did not abdicate voluntarily. They also toyed with the notion of supporting someone other than Crown Prince Mohammad Reza, perhaps Prince Hassan Qajar. Anglo-Soviet forces entered Iran in 1941, with the expectation that Reza Shah, along with all his other sons, would depart promptly, leaving the throne to his eldest son Mohammad Reza (reigned: 1941-1979). Among the imposed conditions were the return of property obtained by Reza Shah (through coercing owners to sell or by outright confiscation) to rightful owners.
Reza Shah was dissuaded from abdicating then, but within a month he did leave, so as not to jeopardize his son's chances of ruling. He died in Johannesburg, South Africa, two years later. According to Professor Bakhash, PM Mohammad Ali Foroughi played a key role in the transition and served both Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah faithfully. The Islamic clerics' role in this particular period of Iran's history was negligible.
(4) "Perpetual Computing: Technologies for Banishing Batteries": This was the title of today's Zoom talk by Dr. Joshua R. Smith, Milton & Delia Zeutschel Professor, Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle. The talk was sponsored by UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency.
Batteries are the last source of bulk and weight in electronic devices and the final barrier to building ant-size robots and grain-size cameras to explore the human body. A key idea is to move all energy-intensive tasks from the mobile end-point to a base-station where power is more plentiful. Many R&D projects are underway to do away with batteries altogether. The needed power to run ultra-low-power electronics can come from a variety of sources, a few of which were outlined by Dr. Smith.
- Backscatter: Instead of generating light or radio signals for communication, which consumes a lot of power, one can reflect existing light or radio waves by tilting a reflector, requiring much less energy. Dr. Smith showed an example of a battery-free camera based on backscatter. The camera can transmit fewer high-quality images (over time) or more-numerous low-quality ones, depending on need, with the same small power source.
- Wireless ambient radio power: A TV or cell tower near a university campus can provide 10s to 100s of microwatts of harvestable power around the campus. This amount of power is sufficient for running many low-power devices. Dr. Smith showed an example battery-free phone, which uses analog amplitude backscatter.
- Near-field wireless power transfer: Use of smaller batteries, that can be charged wirelessly, may be a viable alternative to battery-free operation when more power is required. Dr. Smith has founded WIBOTIC, a company that aims to build robots receiving their energy wirelessly (e.g., small Mars rovers that get charged by a larger base station having many solar cells).
2021/02/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Silky Sicilian Penne: Yesterday, I tried my hand at this vegetarian pasta dish from Hello Fresh. Fresh ingredients are delivered in pre-measured quantities, along with cooking instructions. I made three smaller meals out of a package intended for two. [Top center] UCSB's North Campus Open Space on a pleasant late-February afternoon. [Top right] Rakib-Khaneh Building, Isfahan, Iran: This is where Shah Abbas (Safavid Dynasty) kept the royal family's harness and riding equipment. After falling into disrepair, it was restored during the Qajar Dynasty and is currently a museum of fine arts. [Bottom left] Triple-decker bus: Berlin, Germany, 1926. (Update: I have learned that this is a fake photo, an edited version of the photo of a double-decker bus.) [Bottom center] Cartoon: "Escher! Get your ass up here." [Bottom right] Joking around with Mowlavi (Rumi): I wrote these verses in 1984, inspired by the Mowlavi poem that follows it.
(2) Debunking the myth that Apple software is practically hacker-proof: Sophisticated hackers have stealthily snuck sleeper malware into nearly 30,000 Macs. There is no such thing as hacker-proof software!
(3) One reason for disorder in Persian script: Sayeh Eghtesadinia views opposition to Iran's Language Academy (its perceived illegitimacy) a main reason for the ensuing chaos in Persian script.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least 80 people have died from Texas storm: The full toll many not become known for months.
- Senator Ron Johnson apparently had a fun day at the Capitol on January 6, with the mostly-jovial crowd!
- An interactive 360-degree view of Mars surface constructed from images sent by the Perseverance Rover.
- Iranian Students of California "Doornavazi" Music Festival: Sat. 2/27, 4:00 PM, to Sun. 2/28, 6:00 PM.
- Quote: "Love is like an hourglass with the heart filling up as the brain empties." ~ Jules Renard, French writer
- Carole King sings "So Far Away": BBC in Concert, February 10, 1971 (look for a very young James Taylor).
(5) "The Botany of Desire": This fascinating PBS feature documentary considers the relationships of humans with plants, using four common species (apples, tulips, marijuana, potatoes). [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]
(6) Logical puzzle: A teacher divides her students into k groups of various sizes to work on different projects on Monday and into k + 1 groups on Tuesday. Show that there are at least two students who belong to smaller groups on Tuesday than on Monday.
(7) Book review: Gabbay, Tom, The Tehran Conviction, William Morrow, 2009. I reviewed this third book in Gabbay's "Jack Teller" series (reminiscent of Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy's early spy thrillers) on February 22, 2013. I uploaded my 4-star review to GoodReads on February 22, 2021, for the record.
(8) Course review: McWhorter, Prof. John, The Story of Human Language, 2004. I reviewed this 6-DVD course (in The Teaching Company's "Great Courses" series) on August 2, 2015. I uploaded my review to GoodReads on February 22, 2021, for the record. The book is full of interesting and enlightening facts about the nature of languages. For example, here is a snippet from my summary for Lecture 36: "Words have peculiar histories and tracing their roots and variations tells us a lot about how languages develop, change, and intermix. Examples of word transformations include 'alone' (all one) and 'good-bye' (God be with you)."
2021/02/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left and center] Today is Sepandarmazgan, the Iranian day of love with Zoroastrian roots: According to Wikipedia, the deity Spandarmad protected the Earth and the "good, chaste and beneficent wife who loves her husband" (yes, Zoroastrians were patriarchal and misogynistic as well). The festival used to be dedicated to women, and men would make them "liberal presents." [Top Right] Astronomer Cecilia Payne (see the last item below). [Bottom left & right] Technical talk by Dr. Valerie E. Taylor of Argonne National Lab (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: A Republican Senator in Texas.
(2) "Energy-Efficiency Tradeoffs for Parallel Scientific Applications": This was the title of last night's talk by Dr. Valerie E. Taylor (Argonne Nat'l Lab), sponsored by IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section.
Dr. Taylor began by reviewing the energy consumption landscape among Top500 & Green500 supercomputers. We are now looking at tens of gigaFLOPS performance per watt of power. With application-level tuning, we can achieve up to 10% energy efficiency while sacrificing under 1% in speed and up to 14% energy savings with 5.5% slowdown. The tuning is aided by the use of some 39 hardware counters to instrument applications, in order to determine what needs to be done to reduce energy.
In answer to my question about whether loop unrolling, which is used to improve performance, also helps with energy efficiency, Dr. Taylor replied that it does. When significant reduction in computation time is achieved, even if it is accompanied by some increase in power consumption, the product of the the two, which represents energy, can and does go down significantly.
(3) Google fires a second AI-ethics researcher: Margaret Mitchell had become critical of Google executives, including AI division head Jeff Dean and CEO Sundar Pichai, and she had used an automated script to look through her emails in order to find evidence of discrimination against her coworker Timnit Gebru. Google accused her of downloading "confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees."
(4) Academic misconduct: David Cox, IBM Director of MIT-IBM-Watson AI Lab, found his name on two papers with which he had no connection. Whatever the authors' intentions, such as increasing the odds of the papers being accepted for publication, such a despicable action is a no-no in academia. Some journals and conferences have adopted the practice of contacting all the listed authors to ensure that they are aware of the submission and their co-authorship status. This practice must be adopted universally.
(5) The story of Cecilia Payne [1900-1979]: The brilliant scientist who discovered that the most-abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen, completed her studies at Cambridge, but was not awarded a degree because she was a woman. She attended Cambridge on a scholarship, given that her mother would not spend any money on her education.
Leaving Britain, she moved to the US, began working at Harvard, and eventually earned a doctorate from Radcliffe College, writing "the most-brilliant PhD thesis in astronomy" (per Otto Strauve). Another discovery of hers about the Sun's composition is credited to fellow-astronomer Henry Norris Russell, who told her not to publish her results four years earlier.
As the first woman to be promoted to full-professorship at Harvard, Payne broke the glass ceiling and served as a role model for many women scientists.
Imagine how many more women scientists we would have and how many women's names would be mentioned in science books alongside Newton, Darwin, and Einstein if women were not held back by short-sighted and insecure men!
2021/02/22 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei: "Hijab is a requirement even for animated characters." [Center] Persian poetry: I wrote this humorous poem on May 10, 1979, in the early days of the post-Islamic-Revolution Iran. Older Iranians might recognize the characters Ebrahim Yazdi, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Abolhassan Banisadr, Abbas Amir-Entezam, and Dariush Forouhar in the poem. All were killed, exiled, or sidelined soon after the Revolution. [Right] UCLA webinar "Jews and the American West" (see the last item below).
[Top left] [Top center] [Top right] [Bottom left] [Bottom center] [Bottom right]
(2) Hypocrisy: The same Republicans who claimed COVID-19 deaths were being overblown to hurt Donald Trump are now calling for Governor Andrew Cuomo's head for under-reporting the deaths!
(3) Did you say green energy is fragile, Mr. Tucker Carlson? Take a look at ISS. It has been in outer space, where the temperature is –270 C (–455 F), for 23 years, without experiencing a significant power outage!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- "QAnon's Corrosive Impact on the US": CBS News "60 Minutes" 14-minute story.
- A despicable new way to force female sports officials out in Iran: Threats to publish their private photos!
- Andre Hossein's "Sheherazade": Dedicated to front-line health workers by an all-women Iranian orchestra.
- Persian music: Elnaz Abedini's wonderful rendition of "Gol-e Goldun," with piano accompaniment by Arnika.
(5) Global weirding: An excellent explanation of global weirding (extreme weather events becoming more intense and more frequent), a direct result of unprecedented warming in the Arctic region. Texas has an unusual cold spell every decade or so, each time officials promising investigations and action!
(6) How many of the 0.5 million US deaths from COVID-19 were preventable? I hope Trump is asked this question repeatedly, by every reporter, once he emerges from hiding at Mar-a-Lago.
(7) Linux on Mars: NASA's Perseverance Rover and its Ingenuity drone helicopter use Linux and custom-built NASA software based on JPL's open-source F' framework, which facilitates rapid development of embedded applications. This is the first time open-source software has been used for all aspects of a space mission.
(8) "Jews and the American West": This webinar was part of a UCLA series exploring discrimination, bias, and race relations in Jewish studies. Panelists Sarah Imhoff (Indiana U.) and David S. Koffman (York U.) presented ideas from their books:
Imhoff: Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism [Link]
Koffman: No Better Home? Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging [Link]
Koffman: The Jews' Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism and Belonging in America [Link]
The discussion, moderated by Caroline Luce (UCLA), explored Jews' relationship to the physical and discursive landscapes of the American west. How did the American colonial project shape Jewish ideas about masculinity, morality, and violence? How has the figure of the Jewish frontiersman been used to advance ideologies of belonging, both in the US and around the world? Using historical materials drawn from their research, Imhoff and Koffman considered western Jewish subjectivity and the place of "the frontier" in American Jewish history.
One of the interesting phenomena discussed was American Jews paying lip service to "back to the land" ideology of those moving to the American West, viewed as the essence of Americanness, while being hesitant to practice what they preached. Movement to the American West and Zionism shared in common the notion of "muscular Jewishness." But while American Jews supported the formation of Israel, very few of them moved there to help develop the fledgling country. From my personal experience, this attitude is still prevalent: I know many Jews who praise Israel and the Israeli lifestyle, while lacking any personal interest to follow the "next year in Jerusalem" mantra of their religious prayers.
Another interesting fact I learned from this webinar is that "Office (now Bureau) of Indian Affairs" was part of the War Department from its inception in 1824 to 1849, when it was moved to the then newly-formed Department of the Interior.
A recording of this fascinating webinar will be uploaded to Alan D. Leve Center's YouTube page within a week.
2021/02/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The Metric System prefixes (see the next item below). [Right] The beautiful nature of Talesh region, Guilan Province, Iran.
(2) The Metric System prefixes, from yotta (10^–24) to yocto (10^24): Computer engineers are going through prefixes at the top of the scale, necessitating the use of a new one every decade or so. Shortly before 2010, we built petaFLOPS supercomputers, capable of executing 10^15 floating-point operations per second. Now, we are on the verge of achiving exascale, or 10^18 FLOPS, computing capability. Once exaFLOPS computing power is at hand, we will start working on zetascale, or 10^21 FLOPS, systems, and a decade later, we will have our eyes on yottaFLOPS, or 10^24 FLOPS, capability. At that point, we have to expand this table with additional prefixes! At the other extreme of the scale, we computer engineers have a bit more time. We are already done with microelectronics and are focusing on nanoelectronics. An atom's size in on the order of 10^–10 meters, so even picoelectronics would be a stretch, let alone femtoelectronics and beyond. Smaller numbers do exist in nature. For example, Planck length is a bit more than 10^–35 m and Planck time is around 10^–43 s.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Imagine looking out of an airplane window and seeing this: United Airlines jet loses engine parts in flight.
- Behnam Mahjoubi's wife, mother, & sister mourn his death under torture in Iran's notorious Evin Prison.
- NASA's Perseverance Rover continues to send back images from Mars. [Images]
- Iranians living abroad: Overall distribution, plus detailed stats for the Americas and Europe. [Charts]
- Shardad Rohani is featured in this wonderful performance of Persian music by Vancouver Opera Orchestra.
(4) Sara Khatun, an ancient Jewish holy place in Iran: Pir-e Bakran, a small city located 30 km southwest of Isfahan, is named after Muhammad ibn Bakra, a Sufi saint and mystic. A stone dating to 500 BC was discovered in Pir-e Bakran's Jewish cemetery in 1948, suggesting that Jews have lived in the area for at least 2500 years. The holiest shrine of the Jews is also located in this city. The 1400-years-old shrine is known as Astar Khatun, Sara Khatun, Setareh Khatun, or Sarah Bat-Asher. Both Jews and Muslims pray there, sometimes together and at other times, separately. [12-minute video]
(5) In Iran, husbands own their wives (part 2): A husband's permission is needed for a married woman to work outside the home, study, travel abroad, or undergo surgery. The husband also has the final word on housing, wealth-sharing, birth control, number of children, divorce, and custody of children. These provisions can be overwritten at the time of marriage, if both parties agree to it and put the terms in the marriage contract. Women often do not take advantage of these rights and find themselves trapped when issues arise after marriage (such as multiple women athletes not allowed by their husbands to travel abroad for international tournaments). Recently, Hoda Amid and her attorney Najmeh Vahedi were sentenced to a total of 15 years in prison, plus professional sanctions, for offering educational workshops that made women aware of their rights and taught them how to claim these rights at the time of marriage. They are accused of cooperating with the US against Iranian family and women's affairs. [In Persian, with photos]
2021/02/20 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The government can't do anything right: Except that it just landed the SUV-size Perseverance Rover (nick-named "Percy") on Mars, ~200 million km away from Earth, after it traveled for seven months through space, to look for signs of ancient life on the red planet. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: "Masks are still tyranny! (My face is just cold)." [Bottom row] Screenshots from the February 19 Zoom-based webinar, "Social Decision-Making: Insights from Decision Neuroscience" (see the last item below).
(2) One of the many unique features of NASA's Perseverance Rover: The Mars exploration vehicle has a drone helicopter (Ingenuity), which will be the first thing to fly outside our Earth.
(3) I had my second dose of COVID-19 vaccine early Friday afternoon: So far, all is well and normal, as evident from this photo. I will let you know if something bad happens!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump refuses to meet with Nikki Haley at Mar-a-Lago, after she criticized him for the January 6 DC riot.
- Ted Cruise: Carnival offering for leaving senior citizens in the snow and having fun on a luxury cruise ship.
- Shoshana Zuboff: Two-hour talk in Berlin, with Q&A, entitled "Surveillance Capitalism and Democracy."
- Farhang Foundation's 12th Annual Celebration of Nowruz (virtual event), Sat. 2021/03/20, 6:00 PM PDT.
(5) "Social Decision-Making: Insights from Decision Neuroscience": This was the title of a fascinating on-line lecture by Professor A. G. Sanfy (Radboud U. Nijmegen, the Netherlands) early Friday morning; more-reasonable time for most of the 200+ attendees in Europe and elsewhere!
Our lives consist of a constant stream of decisions and choices, from the mundane to the highly consequential. The standard approach to experimentally examining decision-making has been to examine choices with clearly-defined probabilities and outcomes (e.g., a 50-50 gamble vs. winning/losing half of the same amount of money for sure; risk aversion, loss aversion), however it is an open question as to whether decision models describing these situations can be extended to choices that must be made by assessing the intentions and preferences of both oneself and of another social partner.
The latter class of social decision-making offers a useful approach to examine more complex forms of decisions, which may in fact better approximate many real-life choices. In particular, these social interactive scenarios reveal motivations other than economic gain that appear to guide our decisions in a systematic fashion. Examples are drawn from studies that use economic games in conjunction with functional neuroimaging and computational modelling to observe how players decide in real, consequential, social contexts.
Social factors that affect our decision-making include notions of fairness, cooperation, competition, trust, reciprocity, revenge, and spite. The first of these factors was discussed in some detail through the famous experiment of giving a sum of money to one player and asking him/her to share part of the money with a second player. If the second player accepts the offer, both get to keep their shares. Otherwise, neither one gets any money. Rejecting an offer because we deem it unfair doesn't make economic sense. In fact, children (in an experiment that replaces money with candy) would happily accept even a small offer of candy. But, as we grow older, we become a lot more sensitive to unfairness.
2021/02/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Another windy, but otherwise pleasant, Wednesday afternoon at UCSB's North Campus Open Space: My heart goes out to fellow-Americans, suffering from inclement weather in the Midwest and on the East Coast.
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section Student Video Contest, "Adapting to the Hybrid Virtual World": Register for submitting 2-minute video essays by March 20, 2021, 10:00 PM PDT (submission deadline May 2). Cash prizes of $300, $200, and $100 for the top-3 selections, with possible $50 awards for honorable mentions.
(3) University of California updates its library search function: A replacement for the previous catalog search software system, Melvyl, will allow seamless searching and borrowing from all 10 campus libraries. The new system will go live on July 27, 2021.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- NASA's Perseverance Rover successfully landed on Mars.
- Our apologies to Mexico: When we send our vacationing Senators there, we don't send the best & brightest!
- The tree that bears 40 different kinds of fruit. [1-minute video]
- If science is a liberal conspiracy, then liberals sure make better conspiracy theories than conservatives!
(5) In Iran, husbands own their wives: Samira Zargari, head coach of women's alpine ski team could not accompany the team to a tournament in Italy, because her husband didn't give her permission to travel!
(6) Iranian mullahs are cutting to the chase: They no longer pretend to support democracy, not even its Islamic variety. One cleric has said that Iran doesn't need a president who has a plan or an agenda. "We need an executive who obeys and carries out the Leader's commands" (I saw a video of the said cleric, but I can no longer find it on-line; perhaps the regime has silenced him to keep appearances). Meanwhile, the regime wants to show broad participation, to boast about its popularity. So, token moderate candidates may be allowed to run, provided they have no chance of winning. The regime also plans to reduce the number of conservative candidates, to prevent vote-splitting. Yet another "engineered" election.
(7) How the heart became a symbol of love: "You can have a heart, and you can lose it. You can leave it in San Francisco. Or, you can suffer from heartache, and you might get a toothache from all the sentimental heart-shaped candies that emerge each February. That's an awful lot of emotion for an organ that is, essentially, a big muscle. Over the years, the heart has gone from being the body's nerve center, to the symbolic home of the soul, and to a biomechanical marvel. Its journey tells us a little about the way we view the world and our place in it." [Source: Discover magazine] [Read more]
(8) Final thought for the day: Maybe in lieu of a border wall, Texas should have been building a modern electrical grid and connecting it to neighboring states and, perhaps, to Mexico.
2021/02/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cover of the February 2021 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine: From today's controlling hands and fingers to tomorrow's restoring the sense of touch. [Top center] You can see, and perhaps recognize, the face in this image by squinting your eyes. [Top right] Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence: The SETI project is still going strong (image of the first page of an article in IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of February 2021). [Bottom left] Park-bench design for avid book readers. [Bottom center] Bring out the popcorn: The fight scene between the film's two scary and hated monsters is starting! [Bottom right] Hey, President Biden is carrying files and papers: I had forgotten that presidents do that!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Pope Francis is scheduled to meet with Iraq's Ayatollah Sistani in March. [Source: IranWire]
- Young boy's violin performance of the Hungarian "Chardash": Wonderful!
- Trump is in mourning: His rabid supporter Rush Limbaugh dies at 70. The world has a bit less hate today.
- I am surprised that no conspiracy theory has sprung up yet that the Clintons had Rush Limbaugh killed!
(3) Texas mayor, who called residents "lazy," "weak," and "socialist" when they complained about power outages and having no heat in their homes amid freezing cold, quits his post: He told his constituents, "the strong will survive and the weak will perish." He perished!
(4) US storms and cold spells have killed 20, left many without electricity (particularly in Texas), and delayed the distribution and administration of vaccines.
(5) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Kerem Camsari (ECE Dept., UCSB) spoke under the title "Understanding Quantum Computing Through Negative Probabilities." Eighteen Section members and guests attended this enlightening talk.
Dr. Camsari began by lowering expectations about the term "Understanding" in his title, quoting physicist Richard Feynman who famously said "nobody understands quantum mechanics." Despite this tongue-in-cheek statement, Feynman provided one of the clearest conceptual pictures of quantum behavior in terms of a path formulation of quantum mechanics.
Dr. Camsari's approach is to try to understand the quantum universe by starting from a probabilistic world. As Feynman observed some 40 years ago, the main difference between a probabilistic world and a quantum world can be traced to the idea that probabilities need to be generalized to involve negative (or even complex) values. An outcome with negative probability cancels a similar one with positive probability, unlike in the case of normal probabilities, which always add up. The latter property allows us to do approximate computations by ignoring outcomes with very low probabilities.
After presenting certain applications that can be handled by probabilistic computing, which is more-easily realizable than quantum computing, Dr. Camsari proceeded to show how the difference above can be related to the recent groundbreaking demonstration of quantum advantage in engineered quantum computers and discussed some recent developments of probabilistic computing that can help accelerate the solution of computationally-hard problems. [Some screenshots]
2021/02/16 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Images for the BBC Persian report on the Unicode Consortium (see the last item below). [Top center] Tweet responding to an Iranian cleric who declared that he is dying from women's bike-riding, which is an insult to God: Sister, please pedal a bit harder to finish this guy off! [Top right] Cartoon of the day: New seat design for Iranian women who ride bikes. [Bottom left] Circular Sudoku: Discover the rules and solve it. [Bottom center] Puzzle: Find the perimeter and area of the shaded region in the figure, assuming that the half-circle has diameter d. [Bottom right] Department of Corrections is in need of correction!
(2) Congressional Republicans are a special breed: GOP governors, mayors, and other local Republican officials increasingly support President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.
(3) Torture in Iranian prisons: Behnam Mahjoubi, a young Iranian dissident Sufi, who was tortured in prison, dies in a Tehran hospital while shackled to his bed. [In Persian: Tweet 1; Tweet 2]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci wins $1M prize from a private Israeli foundation for "courageously defending science."
- So many different kinds of kebob that even the chef needs labels on the skewers to introduce them all.
- Golnoush Khaleghi, Iranian musician and music researcher, dead at 80 in Washington DC.
- Persian music: Sample work by Golnoush Khaleghi, conducting an orchestra named in honor of her dad.
(5) The disappearing flu: Masking, social-distancing, and school/business closures have reduced the number of regular flu cases to ~1% of last year. While this reduction isn't sustainable, COVID-19 does carry lessons for dealing with the mighty flu.
(6) John Oliver warns us about the next vicious pandemic in this fact-filled 20-minute video: Rather than forget about COVID-19 once things go back to normal, we really must remember the way we feel now and invest in health initiatives accordingly.
(7) Is Persian script's fate in the hands of technocrats? Not really! This BBC Persian report sensationalizes the role of the Unicode Consortium, elevating it to the level of a language academy, whereas it is merely a technical body for setting standards on how to represent letters, digits, and other symbols in binary format in such a way that different computers have a consistent view and interpretation of each language. The rules of forming symbols, using punctuation marks, and other details of languages and associated scripts continue to be set by the users of each language and cultural academies, not by technocrats within the Unicode Consortium.
[Related article by D. Ashouri: "A Look at the History of the Persian Language and Script in Modern Times"]
2021/02/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Presidents' Day: On this day, we celebrate caring and competent individuals who have served in our country's highest office. (P.S.: I am listening to the audio version of Obama's latest book, A Promised Land, which I will review in due course.) [Top center] Unity without principles makes no sense: The Republicans, with their total disregard of the US Constitution and political decorum, just made it more difficult for President Biden to pursue his unity agenda. [Top right] Webinar: Book talk on the politics of history in Saudi Arabia (see the last item below). [Bottom left & right] My spring quarter 2021 courses: I have updated the Web pages for my graduate course on computer arithmetic (ECE 252B) and computer engineering freshman seminar (ECE 1B). [Bottom center] Dueling giants: Apple and Facebook.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Cold snap in the US: Oklahoma activates National Guard as low temperatures set 100-year record.
- Texas administers rolling blackouts after 30 GW of production capacity is knocked off-line by freezing cold.
- Social media app Parler re-launches using independent technology, wows not to facilitate crime.
- Wall Street Journal urges Republicans to ditch Trump: Asserts he won't win another national election.
- Melania Trump's Valentine's Day tweet is conspicuously missing any mention of her husband.
- "Social Motivations in Choice: Insights from Decision Neuroscience": Webinar, 2021/02/19, 7:10 AM PST.
(3) "Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia": This was the title of today's book talk by Professor Rosie Bsheer (History Department, Harvard U.), whose teaching and research interests center on Arab intellectual and social movements, petro-capitalism & state formation, and the production of historical knowledge & commemorative spaces. The event was sponsored by Northwestern University. Moderator Rebecca Johnson and two discussants, Safa Al-Saeedi and Hazal Ozdemir, posed a series of questions, amplifying and challenging the points made by the speaker.
Saudi Arabia is often viewed by Orientalists as a historyless country, which is a source of Islamist movements and is in turn threatened by those movements. The country's development plan required secularization of the post-Gulf-War Saudi state and the construction of a history in the form of a national archive, which isn't publicly accessible and is a source of endless conflicts between entities which want to house and control it. Reordering of urban spaces in Riyadh and Mecca, which transformed these two cities into world centers for commercial mega-projects and the global fashion industry, was part of this synthesized or imagined history in the service of state-building, which obliterated thousand-year-old topographies.
Controlling knowledge production in order to shape the historical record according to plans of the Saudi state is being confronted by researchers such as Professor Bsheer, who try to expose such efforts and document alternate histories that are being erased in favor of the official narrative. A striking example is the reshaping of the Ottoman history to fit the state narrative about the formation and subsequent development of the Saudi kingdom. Ironically, similar efforts are underway in Saudi Arabia's arch-enemy Iran, except that in Iran's case the task is rendered more difficult by the sheer amount of history to re-write!
My question (which went unanswered): You mentioned aggressive secularization and modernization in post-Gulf-War Saudi Arabia. Where are the external manifestations of these efforts? Buildings alone do not bring about modernity. Allowing women to drive only recently, public beheadings, and imprisonment of women activists are indicative of failure in moving toward secularization and continuing to have religion and religious authorities fully in charge.
2021/02/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Valentine's Day: May my beloveds, family members and friends, stay healthy and recognize the vast power of love, especially in these days of anguish and uncertainly. I love you all! [Top center] Valentine's Day special: My daughter's bouquet of chicken nuggets. [Top right] Hero vs. zero: The hero helped save the lives of US legislators and their staffers. The zero hid behind the US Constitution, which he trampled on numerous occasions during the Obama and Trump administrations.
[Bottom row] During today's invigorating walk on a windy, but otherwise pleasant, afternoon, I paid attention to the trees along my path in Isla Vista and UCSB West Campus, focusing on how each tree has its individual personality, much like a human.
(2) Sci-Tech Oscar: The 2021 award goes to three computer-science PhD graduates of Germany's Saarland U. (Sven Woop, Carsten Benthin, Ingo Wald) for co-developing or doing research on the Intel Embree Ray Tracing Library, used to maximize photorealism in virtual game environments and animated films.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's defense lawyers lied when they claimed he was immediately horrified by the Capitol attack.
- The pay gap between male and female scientists is widening in North America.
- Ancient beer factory, dating back ~5000 years, unearthed in Abydos, Egypt.
- Virtual guided tour of Jerusalem's Old City and Bethlehem: Monday, February 22, 2021, 12:00-3:00 PM PST.
- Persian music: A wonderful jazzy performance of the popular oldie song "Simin Bari." [4-minute video]
- Classical Persian music: Solmaz Badri performs in Female Voice of Iran concert. [36-minute video]
(4) Islamic justice: Fariborz Kalantari, the reporter who exposed deep corruption of an Iranian official, has been sentenced to 3 years in prison, while the corrupt official got 2 years!
(5) Solarwinds: How Russian spies carried out a sophisticated cyberattack against the US, as our President was preoccupied with contesting the election outcome and blaming China for the attack. [14-minute video]
(6) Germany-based Iranian artist Tina Amy performs a Persian song, "Ghazale 24," featuring a Sa'adi poem, and an English song, "Starlight," she wrote in Turkey, on her grueling immigration journey to Germany.
2021/02/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Things checked off my to-do list: Taking mom for her first vaccine shot. Valentine's Day flowers & balloon-heart. Haircut. I had decided to wait for the day after Valentine's Day to buy discounted chocolates, but this box, seen at Costco, was too tempting! [Bottom left & right] Commemorating my dad's 29th anniversary of passing: Under normal conditions, we would have visited the Santa Barbara Cemetery this weekend to honor the memory of my dad, who passed away in 1992 at age 70. The English and Persian poems are from last year, which I recited at today's small family gathering, with the numbers updated to 99 and 29 for this year. [Bottom center] Memories from February 13 of years past.
(2) Key observation of the day: The First Amendment protects citizens from government's over-reach. It does not protect government officials from consequences of their words and actions.
(3) The Black Renaissance: A special Time magazine feature (issue of February 15-22, 2021) characterizes An American Marriage by Tayari Jones as "an intimate, bruising account of a couple who fall out of love." I read the book in 2018, giving it 3 stars in my GoodReads review.
(4) Trump's legal problems are just beginning: His celebration of impeachment acquittal will be short-lived.
(5) Street view of 1940s New York: During 1939-1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of most buildings in NYC's 5 boroughs. In 2018, NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitization and tagging of these photos. This Web site places them on a map, where every clickable dot represents a building photo.
(6) How dreams protect our brains: Before the relatively recent electrification of the world, our ancestors spent half of their time in the dark. During this darkness period, the visual cortex could lose territory to other senses that aren't disadvantaged by lack of light. The "defensive activation theory" suggests that dream-sleep exists to keep neurons in the visual cortex active, to prevent a takeover by the neighboring senses. Fascinating!
(7) A new marketing scam: "The product is free. You just pay for shipping." The latter charge is the sum of the real shipping cost, the cost of the product, and a profit margin!
(8) Punish click-baiters: If the headline doesn't provide the most-important fact of the story, don't read the rest. Here is an example. "Bill Cosby's Net Worth Left His Family Stunned." The most-important fact here is Cosby's net worth. Is it too large to believe? Too small? It isn't uncommon for click-baiters to bury that most-important fact amidst many pages of text, if they even disclose it, forcing you to go through a lot of material and, of course, many ads!
2021/02/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year 4719: Please welcome the year of the ox! [Top center] "Taste to die for": This is the motto of Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona. Its Quadruple-Bypass Burger has 8000 calories, with four half-pound patties and buns fried in lard. Instead of a salad bar, the joint has a lard-fries bar. Needless to say that they don't put lettuce on their burgers and they don't serve Diet Coke! [Top right] The long-term cost of COVID-19 in dementia and other brain disorders is featured in Newsweek magazine. [Bottom row] Sample poems of Forough Farrokhzad (see the last item below).
(2) Roots of misogyny in Iran: This iconic 1979 photo by Abbas Attar shows that Iran's misogynistic laws were predictable by observing those who took to the streets in support of an Islamic form of government.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- White supremacy & misogyny: Nine far-right insurrectionists have a history of violence against women.
- For Valentine's Day, I'm going to do nothing. But the next day, I'll go shopping for discounted chocolates.
- Memory from February 12, 2014: "Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions." ~ Edgar Cayee
- The knowledge in your mind can be acquired by anyone, but the song in your heart is yours alone. [Goethe]
(4) "Forough Farrokhzad, Modernity and Madness": This was the title of a webinar held today, 54 years after Forough Farrokhzad's passing at age 32 in a car accident. Dr. Leila Rahimi Bahmany (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main; author of Mirrors of Entrapment and Emancipation: Forugh Farrokhzad and Sylvia Plath) spoke on the brilliant and troubled poet's body of work, entrapped in the crossroad of tradition and modernity, with conflicting cultural images of womanhood and motherhood. An audience of 250+ attended this webinar.
"Poetry inserts a fracture, a duality and insanity in the structure of Farrokhzad's subjectivity, and poetry is the very same space where she confronts her insanity. Farrokhzad textualizes her madness. She addresses it by its name. Through projecting her madness into her text, and thereby exteriorizing it, Farrokhzad ultimately manages to move beyond it through the very act of writing."
The main part of Dr. Rahimi Bahmani's talk concerned the following four categories of madness and their manifestations in the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad:
- Love-madness: Personified by Ophelia in "Hamlet" and Majnoon in classical Persian literature.
- Poetic madness: Madness & creativity seem linked, particularly in artists, musicians, writers.
- Mad double: Farrokhzad sometimes refers to herself in the second or third person, the double.
- Madness as a social stigma: Deeming women mad leads naturally to alleging lack of intellect.
I have attended multiple lectures/webinars on Forough Farrokhzad. It seems that every time I listen to or read research reports about Farrokhzad, I learn several new things about this extraordinary, trailblazing poet, who singlehandedly stood against patriarchy and misogyny prevalent in her time, when other women succumbed to social pressures.
The images are screenshots from the webinar, augmented with two photos from an Internet image search.
2021/02/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iran's architectural marvels: Feen Garden/Bath-house, Kashan (16th century). [Center] Today is the 2021 International Day of Women and Girls in Science: The United Nations designated this day in 2015 to celebrate the critical role women and girls have in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The day also serves to encourage women and girls to enter STEM-related fields. In a tweet, UN Women thanked in particular those working in the health and social sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. [Right] Today is the 42nd anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution (see the last item below).
(2) China is gaining influence in Latin America: Nearly all countries in the region have signed up to China's Belt and Road Initiative. China and Brazil, the region's largest economy, have $100 billion in bilateral trade.
(3) Quote of the day on spineless, immoral Republican Senators: "I love the fact that the entire moral fate of the country depends on finding just 17 honest Republicans. It's like some impossible task from a fairytale." ~ (((Jennifer Mendelsohn))), sharing a text she received from her brother
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Saudis try to rebrand for the Biden era by releasing from jail women's-rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul.
- How diverse groups, from businesses to labor, formed an ad-hoc coalition to safeguard the 2020 election.
- Pile-up on icy road: Massive crash on Texas interstate highway 35, involving 100 cars, kills at least 5.
- On philosophy: "To do is to be." ~ Nietzsche | "To be is to do." ~ Kant | "Do be do be do." ~ Sinatra
(5) Today's Google doodle: The image celebrates the talented and prolific Mexican composer Maria Grever, best known in the US for her oft-performed song "What a Difference a Day Makes."
(6) Fact-checking Islamic Republic of Iran's founder on this 42nd anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution: IranWire has published a series of reports, each one assessing the extent to which Khomeini and his successor have delivered on their pre-Revolution promises. Spoiler alert: They were all lies!
- We respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- No more poverty after the Revolution
- We will reverse Shah's stifling of economic growth
- No more torture after the Revolution
- Laws will protect the rights of women and minorities
Here are a couple more, not discussed by IranWire:
- Clerics will act as observers, not as government officials
- The Islamic economy will be free from corruption
2021/02/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: The birds of UCSB's North Campus Open Space, photographed early this afternoon.
(2) Theory vs. practice: In this video montage, Ayatollah Khamenei is shown talking about how "Islamic etiquette" is lacking on social media, where people curse and insult others. Then, he is shown cursing and using vile language in his own speeches!
(3) Cartoon version of a video I had posted before: Recitation of a humorous political poem in Perabic (Persianized Arabic). It would have been rather difficult to understand without the subtitles.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Georgia finds Trump's comment "I just want to find 11,780 votes" criminal and opens an investigation.
- Fossil fuel subsidies amount to 1/16 of the global GDP, or $5 trillion. [Source: E&T magazine, Nov. 2020]
- You want rib-eye steak? Natural or 3D-printed? Get ready for questions like this at the restaurant!
- Singaporean math professor lectures for 2 hours and is horrified to learn he was muted the whole time!
- This viral image is digital art, not "the clearest picture of the Sun by NASA," as many have claimed.
- Title song from "Phantom of the Opera": Sarah Brightman and Antonio Banderas (a surprise for me) sing.
(5) Dealing with sparse data faster and using less energy through in-memory computation: Washington State University researchers have used ReRAM (resistive random-access memory) to avoid memory accesses when multiplying by or adding 0s. In simulation experiments, the new chip design operated three times faster and with 11 times greater energy-efficiency than GPUs.
(6) TurboVax: Difficulties faced by many New Yorkers in securing COVID-19 vaccination appointments has led to do-it-yourself Web sites for aggregating availability data in one convenient place.
(7) A new robbery scheme in Iran (with lessons for us in the West): A group of thieves ring your doorbell, with only one of them appearing in front of the peep-hole or camera. That person calls you by name and indicates that s/he has found some of your documents on the street. If you are naive enough to open the door, the group forces its way in and robs you at gun- or knife-point. Where do they get your name? From lists sold on the black market by Snap (Iran's version of Uber) drivers or delivery companies.
[P.S.: To make things worse, doorbell security cameras are easily hacked.]
(8) Set up, setup, set-up: Errors such as "I want to setup my app" tick me off. "Setup" (noun) refers to an arrangement, not the act of preparing for something, which is "set up" (phrasal verb). The hyphenated form is sometimes used in lieu of the preferred single word. But there are instances where "set-up" is both clearer and more appropriate, as in "the set-up process." Other examples in this category include "pickup," "makeup," "getaway" ("I want to get away"), and "login" ("my login name" vs. "I have to log in").
2021/02/09 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] After four years of demagoguery: A country that prided itself of leadership in science & technology now leads the world in superstition & conspiracy theories! [Center] Zoom meeting of Fanni '68 classmates: Alternate-history tree (see the last item below). [Right] Persian Humor: Putin and Ghalibaf in a secret meeting. (This is a play on words. "Putin" means "boot"; "Ghalibaf" (name of Iran's parliament leader, who recently traveled to Russia and was reportedly snubbed by Putin) means "carpet weaver.")
(2) Will Iranian women be better off if they are allowed to run for presidency? In October 2020, Iran's Guardian Council reversed course and declared that women will be able to run for presidency in 2021. Some women's-rights advocates welcomed the change of heart, but is this really an advance?
The reversal gives the Iranian regime a pass with regards to gender equity, without changing anything for women. Iran's president has essentially devolved into a powerless clerk who must carry out the wishes of the Supreme Leader, and is relentlessly attacked by the country's government-controlled media for the slightest disagreement with the Leader, so it makes very little difference if the clerk is a man or a woman. The Supreme Leader, who wields the real power, will be a man for eternity.
Candidates for presidency and other elected offices are screened by the all-male Guardian Council, so any woman passing the screening process will certainly not be a champion of women's rights. There are quite a few "conservative" women in Iran's parliament and other political centers who endorse wholeheartedly the country's patriarchal system, and the misogynistic attitudes and laws that hold it up.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The 2nd impeachment trial of Donald Trump is underway, after clearing the constitutionality hurdle. [Video]
- Only one in twelve citizens of the world live in full-democracies, according to the 2020 Democracy Index.
- Taking a cue from Donald Trump: Kansas City won Super Bowl LV. #StopTheSteal
- Kansas City management to NFL score-keeper: I just want you to find us 23 points!
- Remote learning isn't new: In the 1937 polio epidemic, radio instruction was tried. [Story]
(4) View from Australia: Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News enabled the lying, corrupt Donald Trump and his loony extreme-right supporters in the US, is doing the same through the lie-spreading Sky News in Australia.
(5) "Mohammad Mosaddeq's Report Card": This is the title of a series of presentations by Mr. Mohammad Amini in the Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). Today's Zoom session had 46 participants.
In last week's Part 2 of the discussion, Mr. Amini covered Mosaddeq and the Iranian civil society (his respect for and insistence on the rule of law). This week's discussion focused on the events leading to Mosaddeq's ouster as a result of the CIA-backed coup of 1953. This coup is one of the most-extensively debated events in modern Iranian history, with its proponents and opponents engaging in passionate, and sometimes bitter/violent, debate.
Next Tuesday, February 16, the series will conclude with a free discussion on all the topics covered in Parts 1-3.
I asked the following question: Has anyone written fictional or analytical accounts of how Iran's history would have unfolded had Mosaddeq prevailed over the Shah in 1953 or the Shah had prevailed over Khomeini in 1979? The speaker dismissed this question, but Wikipedia has an article on "Alternate history" (althist), with intriguing examples.
Here is a paragraph from the article, focusing on alternate historical accounts written over the past century:
"A number of alternate history stories and novels appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see, for example, Charles Petrie's If: A Jacobite Fantasy [1926]). In 1931, British historian Sir John Squire collected a series of essays from some of the leading historians of the period for his anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise. In this work, scholars from major universities (as well as important non-academic authors) turned their attention to such questions as 'If the Moors in Spain Had Won' and 'If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness'. The essays range from serious scholarly efforts to Hendrik Willem van Loon's fanciful and satiric portrayal of an independent 20th century Dutch city state on the island of Manhattan. Among the authors included were Hilaire Belloc, Andre Maurois, and Winston Churchill."
2021/02/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] University of California loves technology! [Center] Perfect example of White Privilege: Cutting off water to a black inmate and providing organic food to a white prisoner arrested for the January 6 DC riot. [Right] Cover image of Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time (see the last item below).
(2) Persian music: Faramarz Aslani collaborates with a group of people young and old, including several celebrities, to perform his signature song "Ageh Yeh Rooz." [3-minute video]
(3) Himalayan glacier breaks, likely due to climate change: Eighteen confirmed dead and 200+ missing (many of them likely dead) due to the resulting avalanche in India.
(4) Book review: Rovelli, Carlo, The Order of Time, translated from the 2017 Italian original by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, Riverhead Books, 2018.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I am determined to find out what time is! So, after reading a number of books on the nature of time and our brain's perception of it, I picked up this book at my daughter's recommendation! Rovelli's popular-science writings include his wonderful Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, which garnered in my GoodReads review (rated 5 stars, posted in 2017). He does not disappoint in this concise book. Also, kudos to the translators for creating a highly-readable English edition.
A theoretical physicist known as one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, Rovelli also has deep interests in history and philosophy of science. His clear and scientifically-solid explanations have been likened to those of Stephen Hawking. Rovelli was born in Italy, lives in France, and is a US citizen.
Rovelli has indicated in an interview published in Physics World (2018) that his interest in time arises from the fact that "the basic equations of quantum gravity can be written without a time variable, and I wanted to fully understand what this means." He then goes on to state that: "Most mistakes about the nature of time, and much of the confusion, come from taking the full package of properties we attribute to time as forming a unique bundle that either is there or not. Now we understand that many properties we attribute to time come from approximations and simplifications." Rovelli believes that the mysteries of time will not be solved by physicists alone and that neuroscientists will have a part to play.
The book's title comes from the only surviving fragment of writing by Greek philosopher Anaximander who lived 26 centuries ago: "Things are transformed one into another according to necessity, and render justice to one another according to the order of time." Everything else we know about Anaximander comes from second-hand accounts of his ideas, including his belief that Earth floated in space. The order of time is what we denote by t in various physical equations, but what does t mean if time passes at different speeds, depending on our position and speed? From this genesis, the book unfolds in three parts.
The first part, entitled "The Crumbling of Time," covers the more-or-less familiar topics of time dilation, the arrow of time, relativity, synchronization, and Planck time, the smallest-possible length of time, 10^(–44) s. Through this first part, we see our notion of time crumble, like a snowflake that melts in your hand as you study it. We come to understand that "Physics does not describe how things evolve 'in time' but how things evolve in their own times, and how 'times' evolve relative to each other." We also learn that heat "traveling" in one direction, from warmer bodies to colder ones, is the only thing that distinguishes the past from the future. All other laws of physics are essentially reversible. In every instance when the past and the future are distinguishable, heat is involved. Clausius quantified this irreversible progress of heat in only one direction as entropy.
In the book's second part, Rovelli imagines a world without time, a notion entertained by those working on quantum gravity. To begin with, the world is made up of events, not things. Things, as we perceive them, are merely more-durable events. A stone, for example, is a long-lasting event, but it eventually turns into dust. We may ask about where the stone will be next week, but the question doesn't make sense for a short-lived kiss. A thing is nothing but a complex vibration of quantum fields, a temporary interaction of forces, a process that keeps its shape for a while. Thinking of the world as a collection of events "allows us to better grasp, comprehend, and describe it. It is the only way that is compatible with relativity."
In the highly-speculative third part, Rovelli wonders about human perception of time-flow in a timeless world, essentially undoing the crumbling act of the first part and suggesting that time is a human-made notion through which we make sense of our world; time does not exist independent of our life experiences. It is our memory that creates time and our time ends when we leave this world. "We see just a tiny window of the vast electromagnetic spectrum. We do not see the atomic structure of matter, nor do we see the curvature of space." Our vision of the world is blurred, but that's actually an advantage, not a handicap. We create tools, such as time, to help us survive in the face of uncertainty and incomplete knowledge.
2021/02/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & Bottom left] A few magazine-covers for this week. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: On concerts by 1960s rock-n-roll bands. [Bottom right] Snacks for Super Bowl LV!
(2) God's mood has improved substantially: No longer will he kick you out of heaven for eating an apple. Now you can gobble up billions and he won't mind. At worst, he will kick you out of Iran and into Canada!
(3) Perceptual-shift art: This art installation by Michael Murphy looks like a drawing from a distance, but it is actually composed of 2300 wooden balls of various sizes, hung in front of a blank canvas. Brilliant!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Avalanche kills 4 skiers in Utah's Salt Lake Valley: Four injured skiers were rescued by helicopter.
- More than $519 Cost to US taxpayers for Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the election result.
- A fraternity at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was vandalized with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti.
- Eleven-year-old piano prodigy Davin Ghazavi performes two pieces by Frederic Chopin.
- Memory from Feb. 7, 2018: A lively Irish tune, performed at UCSB Music Bowl during a noon mini-concert.
- Two-minute sample from Akira Kurosawa's 1990 film "Dreams," featuring paintings by Vincent van Gogh.
(5) The two Alis: Ali Khamenei and Ali Ansarian, one is Iran's Supreme Leader and benefits from the most-advanced health care in a fully-equipped private clinic within his residence and has likely already received two doses of a Western vaccine; the other was an ordinary citizen, a soccer star, who died of COVID-19 due to a ban on importing Western vaccines. Ordinary mortals are advised to use the healing powers of dead imams or superstitious alternative remedies such as violet oil or camel urine, while clerics and regime officials frequent clinics in Europe for the most basic care. [Facebook post, in Persian]
(6) A few black-cat analogies (from Wikipedia):
- Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.
- Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.
- Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and shouting "I found it!"
- Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight.
(7) "Jews and the American West: Violence, Race, and Masculinity": This webinar about American Jewish history (Monday, February 22, 2021, 12:00 PM) brings together David S. Koffman (York U.), author of The Jews' Indian, and Sarah Imhoff (Indiana U.), author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism.
(8) One hundred Kurdish activists have been arrested in Iran: Among them is the 17-year-old poet from Marivan, Arezoo Mostafaei. [Masih Alinejad's tweet, in Persian] [#Free100KurdishActivists]
(9) A first at the Super Bowl: The one-sided 31-9 victory of Tampa Bay over KC was watchable, but not fun. However, Amanda Gorman's poetry recitation in honor of front-line healthcare workers, 25,000 of whom were in the stands, thanks to NFL paying for their trips, was magnificent!
2021/02/06 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Food and drink: The international combo meal consists of pasta, salad, and Iranian-style barbari bread. The large green mug, shown for comparison alongside a venti Starbucks mug, is part of the birthday gifts I received from my children. Lifting it many times during the day to sip tea or coffee provides my daily exercise! [Top center] Cover image of Newsweek magazine. [Bottom left & center] Panel 2 on "Why Women Write" (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Iran's architecture: The Borujerdi House is a historic-house/museum in Kashan, Iran. It was built in 1857 by architect Ustad Ali Maryam for the bride of Borujerdi, a wealthy merchant. The bride came from the affluent Tabatabaei family, for whom the architect had built the nearby Tabatabaei House several years earlier.
(2) Quote of the day: "Thank you." ~ Two-word response from Screen Actors Guild to Donald Trump's letter of resignation ahead of a disciplinary hearing over his role in the January 6, 2021, DC riot
(3) "Why Women Write" (Panel 2): Hosted by PhD scholars Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U.) and Ozlem Has (U. Copenhagen), this second event in the series featured five participants. [Panel 1: Recording; My FB post]
As in the first panel, I was awestruck by the depth and passion with which the panelists expressed their thoughts and experiences. In my notes, I was able to capture only some of the poignant observations from each panelist, which I share with you in the following. Fortunately, the event has been recorded and the full 2-hour session is available on-line. [Panel 2: Recording; Event page; My FB post; My tweet]
Neeti Singh (mystic, poet, researcher, translator): Dr. N. Singh (PhD in English, classical vocalist) is an Associate Professor of English with The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat, India, according to her LinkedIn page. Dr. N. Singh was brought up in a culture where good women were quiet women, the quieter the better. Her latest books include a translation (The Punjabi, Sufi and Udhrite Semiotic of Baba Bulleh Shah's Verse) and a book about a woman sold into a brothel at a very young age, luckily escaping with help from a client (Peero: Maverick Bhakta and First Woman Poet of Punjab).
Katia D. Ulysse (fiction writer, educator): We learn from Ms. Ulysse's Web site that she didn't speak English when she left Haiti and came to the US. She loves Maya Angelou's quote, "There's no greater agony than bearing within you an untold story." Ms. Ulysse shared the results of her own inquiry from other women writers about why they write. She quoted from the many eloquent responses she received. One thread through the responses was survival and maintenance of the sisterhood.
Savita Singh (political theorist, feminist poet): Dr. S. Singh (PhD 1990, McGill U.) is a Professor at Delhi's School of Gender and Development, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi, according to her on-line resume. She lectured at UCSB in 2019. She maintains that women write, because we wonder about ourselves from an early age. Writing opens women up to others, in defiance to patriarchy, which wants to keep them hidden. Dr. S. Singh's writings are political. They are not meant to be personally liberating, but liberating for all women. Her first important poem was a feminist manifesto entitled "Whose Woman Am I?". In the course of her presentation, Dr. S. Singh read her poem entitled "Unattended Things."
Nasrin Parvaz (author in exile): According to Ms. Parvaz's Web site, her women's-rights activism in Iran led to her arrest and a death sentence in 1982 (later commuted to a 10-year prison term). She fled Iran in 1993 and sought asylum in England. In prison, Ms. Parvaz communicated with other women prisoners via secret letters, which if discovered, would have led to severe punishment in the form of additional torture. She tried to publish her memoir, but publishers dismissed it as "unrelatable" for Western readers. Women throughout the world take care of too many other people to attend to their own ambitions and needs. The publishing world is male-dominated and women have a hard time making headway. A current project of Ms. Parvaz is trying to save the lives of 16 young men sentenced to death for political activism in Iran.
Saghi Ghahraman (poet in exile): A graduate of University of Tabriz, Iran, Ms. Ghahraman is based in Toronto, Canada, according to her LinkedIn page. Her interview as a gay activist got the Iranian paper Shargh banned in 2007. She was raised to become a writer, her parents never mentioning any other calling. Women with non-traditional gender identities are condemned for skirting social roles and wifely duties. She has received many threats from the Iranian community throughout the world, which consider her identity and activism shameful. One of the screenshots included in this post is from a dance based on a poem by Ms. Ghahraman.
During the Q&A segment of the panel, each participant was asked to read selections from her poetry or writings. Here is a question of mine (typed as a comment on the Facebook Live page, which apparently went unnoticed): I am interested in knowing how being involved in formal education (as in university level) changes the experience and activities of a writer. In other words, does the responsibility of teaching the younger generation place constraints on what you can and cannot do as a poet/writer?
2021/02/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A child street-vendor in Iran trying to keep warm, as she awaits customers: An oil-rich Islamic Republic going on its 43rd year of existence, with its officials living in mansions and luxury condo-towers, has not been able to ensure that its children go to school, rather than be forced to peddle on the city streets to help their families survive. Eternal shame on Khamenei and his highly inept and corrupt cronies! [Top center] You have heard of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, his concept of the ideal human-body proportions: Here is the modern-day Insolventian Man! [Top right] Veresk railroad bridge in northern Iran: Designed and built in 1934-1935 by Italians, the masonry-arch bridge is part of the south-north trans-Iranian railway connecting the Persian-Gulf port Bandar-e Shahpour (now Bandar-e Emam Khomeini) to the Caspian-Sea port Bandar-e Shah (now Bandar-e Torkaman). [Bottom row] A few magazine covers this week.
(2) Attributed to Plato: If someone's love is in your heart, don't take it too seriously, as the heart's function is to love, like the eye's function is to see. If you ever love someone with your mind, you have found true love.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The most-damning Trump tweet about the DC riot of January 6, sent after the Capitol siege.
- President Biden recommends that former President Trump not receive classified briefings.
- Christopher Plummer, classically-trained actor who also did the musical "The Sound of Music," dead at 91.
- Student tries to contact his on-line instructor via e-mail, only to discover he has been dead since 2019.
- Neural Networks: A 19-minute intro to one of the most-popular tools/algorithms for machine learning.
- A 2000-year-old Buddhist religious/educational site discovered under a cattle-grazing plot in Pakistan.
(4) Robo-race-car crash blamed on NaN: In the IEEE Floating-Point Standard, NaN (short for "not a number") is used as a special code when a computation produces an unrepresentable result or as a stand-in for an unknown value. Floating-point computation errors have been known to lead to problems, including the explosion of an Ariane 5 rocket in 1996, but this appears to be the first such incident blamed on NaNs.
(5) Gender Gap in STEM: Much has been written about the STEM gender gap, its causes, and remedies. A just-published article based on a Spanish study focuses on young girls' self-perception and test-anxiety in math. Until families equip girls to be self-confident and free from belief in gender stereotypes, the substantial gap in STEM achievement and skills will remain a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ayuso, N., et al., "Gender Gap in STEM: A Cross-Sectional Study of Primary School Students' Self-Perception and Test Anxiety in Mathematics," IEEE Trans. Education, Vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 40-49, February 2021. [Image]
2021/02/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Last year, Franklin Graham, who worshipped a foul-mouthed, 'pussy-grabbing' President, was "offended" by Super Bowl's halftime show, performed by two talented & energetic middle-aged Latina moms. Nary a word, though, about scantily-clad, young, white cheerleaders who perform at virtually every football game! [Center] Little girl inspired: Photo posted on LinkedIn by Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, Ed.D., of her daughter joining Madam VP Kamala Harris during her swearing-in ceremony. [Right] Spring is already in the air: Wed. afternoon, February 3, in Goleta's "New Town" (Camino Real Commercial Center).
(2) Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering: The 2021 edition of the Prize has been awarded to UCSB's Shuji Nakamura and other scientists/engineers responsible for the development of LED lighting.
(3) Today Facebook turns 17: The social-media company has more than 9000 patents that helped create its targeted content and thus the fake-news and echo-chamber problems. Recent patents acquired by Facebook are aimed at rectifying these problems. [Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of February 2021]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- On its 17th birthday, Facebook has a lot to celebrate and much to worry about. [Newsweek chart]
- Smartmatic USA joins Dominion in suing Trump lawyers and cronies for baseless election-fraud claims.
- Conservatives are back at the drawing board, trying to figure out how they were taken for a ride by Trump.
- Health-care workers' parallel pandemic: As vaccinations ramp up, many on the frontlines burn out! [NYT]
- QOP or GOPQ: Fitting new names for the US Republican Party. [Credit: CNN's Don Lemon]
- What would you do if you found a crocodile swimming in your pool? [5-minute video]
- Persian music: Pop singer Viguen in his youth, when movies and lip-syncing were still in primitive forms.
(5) Persian warrior women: The new "Wonder Woman" films, one taking place in Europe during WWI and one 70 years later in Washington DC, have their roots in the Amazons of 2000 years ago, who maintained an idyllic all-female existence in the area now known as Turkey. Warrior women existed in many ancient cultures, including Greek, Egyptian, and Persian empires. The word "Amazon" is believed to have Persian roots.
(6) Film and TV awards are likely not front and center for most of us right now: But the Golden Globes are around the corner (February 28) and the Oscars aren't far behind (April 25).
(7) Women's Day in Iran: The Islamic Republic of Iran has ignored March 8 (Int'l Women's Day) and has instead promoted Fatima's birthday as an Islamic Women's/Mothers' Day. Fatima does not represent modern, liberated women. She is a symbol of the oppressed and of child marriage. [Facebook post, in Persian]
(8) Teen's tribute to loved ones killed by COVID-19: Sixteen-year-old Hannah Ernst drew a portrait of her grandfather, which went viral, generating requests for her to draw other people who were lost to the virus.
2021/02/02 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cartoon of the day: Life is so unfair ... [Center] Iranians' attitudes toward religion, death penalty, etc.: I found the data about religion surprising. About 1/3 of Iranians self-identify as Shi'ite Muslims. [Right] Zoom discussion on "Mohammad Mosaddeq's Report Card" (see the last item below).
(2) Math puzzles: I previously introduced a puzzle asking for the construction of the shortest network of walkways to connect four houses located at the vertices of a square. We need to be able to walk from any house to any other house, but the walking distance is unimportant. Repeat the puzzle with five houses located at the vertices of a regular pentagon. Then do it with six houses located at the vertices of a regular hexagon. [These and similar problems are discussed in an article by Puzzle-master Martin J. Gardner et al.]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Two FBI agents killed and three injured when serving a child-pornography warrant in South Florida.
- Good news for Iran: The journal Lancet reports that the Russian COVID-19 vaccine is 91.6% effective.
- Unusual discovery: Purple-colored wool fabric dating back to 1000 BCE unearthed in Israel.
- About time: Disney to remove colonialist depiction of indigenous Africans in its Jungle-Cruise ride.
- Old Persian poem by humorist Hadi Khorsandi, for the anniversary of Khomeini's return to Iran. [Image]
(4) "Mohammad Mosaddeq's Report Card": This is the title of a series of presentations by Mr. Mohammad Amini in the Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). Today's Zoom session had 47 participants.
In last week's Part 1 of the discussion, Mr. Amini covered the nationalization of Iran's oil Industry.
Recording of last week's session (Video, passcode = ?hq4Jy$S).
Last week's Facebook post, for details and sources.
This week's discussion focused on Mosaddeq and Iranian civil society, that is, his respect for and insistence on the rule of law. Laws in Iran have seldom been honored. This is quite evident in the case of the current regime, which doesn't even follow the laws of its own making! Even the Constitutional Revolution failed to make the king or his appointees respect laws. The 27-month term of Mosaddeq as PM was a rare exception. Not one newspaper was closed or censored by Mosaddeq's administration. The century-old civic entity in Iran, the Iranian Bar Association, assumed independence from the government under Mosaddeq.
Next Tuesday, February 9, the discussion will turn to events leading to the 1953 CIA coup, with the series concluding on 2/16 with a free discussion on all the topics covered in Parts 1-3.
Mr. Mohammad Amini teaches on-line classes about Iran's modern history on Sundays 1:00 PM PST. Much of what he teaches is available on-line via YouTube and Ketab Corporation's Web site.
2021/02/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Today's event in the UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: In a panel discussion on "Socio-Economic Development Strategies and Challenges in Iran," diverse views from an urban planner, an international studies expert, and a sociologist were brought to bear. The organizer of the lecture series, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, introduced the panelists briefly, before handing the control over to panelist/moderator Dr. Kevan Harris.
Dr. Azam Khatam (The City Institute, York U.) spoke about her experience on governing Tehran through speculative real-estate Market. She noted that more than 80% of residential units in Tehran have been built over the past 3.5 decades (since 1986). In the 50-year period 1966-2016, Tehran's population grew more than threefold, from 2.7M to 8.7M, while the built-up area increased fivefold, from 140 to 700 km^2, much of the new development coming in the northern and western parts of the city. Municipalities were required to self-rule fiscally, so laws and regulations were relaxed to allow income-generating development. The result was a predictably chaotic expansion.
Dr. Kaveh Ehsani (International Studies, DePaul U.) focused on large-scale projects that are typically imposed on localities by central planners, often with good intentions, but without integrating views from local stakeholders. An example of such disastrous plans was the Khuzestan sugar-cane agri-business, which was ill-suited to local resources and land-use patterns. Infrastructure projects can be quite transformative, but they often do not deliver what they promise. Put another way, the planning theories learned in the West by some of the Iranian regime's technocrats do not translate to viable development plans, with failure often blamed on ungrateful and "backward" critics.
Dr. Kevan Harris (Sociology, UCLA) began by citing results from a 2016 Iran social survey, which was administered through phone interviews in Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish languages, with the aim of accurate categorization of various ethnicities, going beyond naive clustering by language or other pre-conceived notions. Open-ended questions allowed self-identification with multiple ethnic groups. This kind of self-identification had been lacking in previous surveys across MENA and the Caucasus. Whereas more than 3/4 of the respondents specified an ethnic category in response to an open-ended question, the rest replied with "I don't know." Detailed reports and methods can be found at kevanharris.com/publications.
(2) The Republicans are divided: One group wants to accept Biden's election win, and work to make him a failed one-term President. A larger group wants to overturn the election results (as in Myanmar) and bring Trump back to the White House.
(3) Disputing an electoral victory: Aung San Suu Kyi detained as the military seizes control in Myanmar.
(4) How language and grammar get in the way of deep thinking: Languages are wonderful tools for informal communication among humans. But human languages were developed when we knew little about the universe and its laws. Take the words "past," "present," and "future," for instance. These three notions and their clear separations, came about before we knew about Einstein's idea that there is no objective universal present. Special relativity tells us that my present may be your past and someone else's future. Likewise, philosophical discussions are sometimes doomed by our inability to formulate precise ideas with fuzzy linguistic tools.
2021/01/31 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzles: Consider two cities near a straight-line river of constant width 50 meters. In Puzzle 1, the two cities are on the same side of the river and we want to build the shortest road between them that passes by the river. In Puzzle 2, the two cities are on opposite sides of the river and we want to build the shortest road between them that includes a 50-meter bridge over the river. [Center] Persian poetry: Selected verses from a beautiful Hafez ghazal. [Right] Persian poetry (literary puzzles): These are second halves of verses by Iranian poets that have assumed the status of maxims/proverbs. Can you supply the first half and identify the poet in each case?
(2) The politicization of CEOs: "For decades, American CEOs studiously avoided wading into controversial issues of the day. There was no possible upside, only risk. But the apolitical CEO is one of the many norms shattered by President Donald Trump. The 45th President has made it acceptable—and now necessary—for corporate leaders to be more outspoken." ~ Eben Shapiro, writing in Time magazine, issue of Feb. 1 & 8, 2021
(3) Where's Mike Pence? Trump insurrectionists wanted to hang him and put a bullet through Nancy Pelosi's head. Pence went to Trump and kissed up to him, before disappearing somewhere in Indiana.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's wife has made a movie about a greedy hedge-fund manager!
- Amassing biological data: BGI doing COVID-19 tests on DNA samples is sending genetic data to China.
- I really care, don't U? Dr. Jill Biden to play a role in reuniting separated immigrant kids with their parents.
- Sound advice: If you love to hear birds sing, do not put a cage inside your house, plant a tree outside.
(5) Short memory: All the Senators calling for bipartisanship now were unilaterally killing the proposals for COVID-19 relief, when they held the majority just two weeks ago!
(6) Trump's legal team disintegrates: In a serious case of disagreement over whether to use the defense that it is illegal to convict a President when he is no longer in office or hang on to the discredited election-fraud claims, nearly all attorneys who were to represent Trump in his second impeachment trial have left his legal team.
(7) Book introduction: Shahin of Shiraz: Jewish Sufi Poet of the Time of Hafiz describes the life and works of a contemporary of Hafiz and other great Persian poets of the early-to-mid-1300s. He wrote masnavis (a type of long, romantic/spiritual epic poetry) in Persian, but used the Hebrew script. [Front & back covers]
(8) Math puzzle: I previously posed a puzzle involving the construction of paths with minimal total length to connect four houses located on the vertices of a square. Now, do the puzzle for five houses at the vertices of a regular pentagon. Repeat for a hexagon and six houses. [Reference]
2021/01/30 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left and center] Newsweek and Time feature President Joe Biden and his agenda on their covers this week. [Top right] Many Iranians believe that all misfortunes are due to British conspiracies: It seems that mandatory hijab is one such conspiracy! [Bottom left] The US was negotiating with this kind of barbaric and misogynistic extremists in Afghanistan under Trump. [Bottom center] Robin Hood, to the poor who received money from him: "Look, I'm going to have to ask for the money back—the rich are really getting pissed off." [Bottom right] A small family gathering at my mom's, for an early birthday celebration.
(2) Iranian activists are roughed up and get old in prisons: Saba Kord Afshari, 20, who is serving a 24-year sentence, was recently beaten and transferred to a prison, where she is kept with violent criminals.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Former KGB agent claims that USSR/Russia cultivated Trump as an asset for 40 years.
- Major collapse closes CA Hwy 1 near Big Sur: This scenic stretch of road does not seem to be sustainable.
- Trevor Noah and his guest explain to ordinary folk what happened in the stock market with GameStop.
- Clever designs: A dining set that doesn't take up much space when not in use. [Photos]
(4) "Why Women Write": This was the title of a 2-hour panel discussion this morning, hosted by PhD scholars Ozlem Has (U. Copenhagen) and Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U.) and featuring five panelists with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
I watched the panel on Facebook Live for the most part and found the experience much more enjoyable than watching via Zoom. Near the end of the session, I went to Zoom for offering a comment and participating in the discussion. I was awestruck by the depth and passion with which the panelists expressed their thoughts and experiences. Much of what was shared was eye-opening for me, despite my background and longstanding interest in feminist causes. In my notes, I was able to capture only some of the poignant observations from each panelist, which I share with you in the following. Fortunately, the full 2-hour event has been recorded.
Anjali Purohit (artist, poet, writer, curator): For ages, Indian women were not educated, but this doesn't mean they did not write. They "wrote" through songs and story-telling. In the context of the Indian culture, many women are isolated at home, and "writing" constitutes a way for them to connect with the world in general, and with other women in particular. On her Web site, Ms. Purohit characterizes her work as "quiet and ruminative, ... about life, human character, circumstance and relationships that often pass beyond the well defined into intangible realms. Much of her work (both in her writing and her art) is obsessed with a longstanding but fatal love affair she has had with her city that often breaks her heart."
Jasmin Darznik (NYT best-selling author and literature teacher for 12 years): I write because I must. It's a matter of survival. I come from a family of "characters," so reading and, later, writing shaped and defined my life. Even now that their writings have taken the archival form, as opposed to songs and oral tales, women writers are still ignored and their works do not receive due respect. Dysfunctional narratives are those which are difficult to ignore, yet one cannot do an adequate job of describing them, so they are written about repeatedly. As someone coming from an Iranian background, I found our history filled with dysfunctional narratives that compel us to write. A good example is the tragic and mysterious death of the legendary poet Forough Farrokhzad, the subject of my book, Song of a Captive Bird: A Novel.
Nooshan Shekarabi (poet): I am a poet by accident; my background is in political science, the subject of much of my early writings and my current line of work. I began by journaling, because, as a young person, I lacked self-confidence and felt that no one would be interested in my thoughts. Writing is the best way of expressing love (for oneself or others), feelings, and anxieties, without being judged, at least in the first draft! Because I teach political science, over the past four years, I've had to hold my tongue a lot, so writing provides a space where I can express myself freely. Here is Ms. Shekarabi's Web page at Santiago Canyon College.
Usha Akela (author): Do women write for reasons different than men, and do they write differently from men? As a women poet, I know that it is important for me to name my experience (confessional, more than autobiographical) and share my stories. Writing is my way of breathing. Ms. Akela, author of three books of poetry (some samples), ended her presentation by reading a poem, "She is Speaking," she dedicated to Kamala Harris. Ms. Akela's next book will be a collection of poems about "Women's Role in Patriarchy." Ms. Akela's thoughts and works are featured on her Facebook page, with all of the posts being public.
Shokufeh Kavani (translator, visual artist): In the post-revolutionary Iran, one had to obtain many books through the black market, as quite a few books were prohibited. As a woman, I had to deal with compulsory hijab laws and with my opinions being dismissed by men in power. When I heard/read female voices, from noteworthy poets and writers, it shaped my perspective and work. I lived for a while as a student in southern Iran, where people are quite conservative, yet the area has a very high rate of incest! Despite strict censorship, sometimes things fall through the cracks and books like Shahrnush Parsipur's Women Without Men: A Novella, viewed as scandalous by the male guard, get published. Here is Ms. Kavani's Wikipedia page.
Q&A period: A question that was addressed at the end is whether it is appropriate to call a woman poet a "poetess." Most of the panelists who commented had no problem with the term, emphasizing that coming to terms with one's own identity and ideas is more important than the term used. I tend to think that using terms such as "poetess" and "actress" is harmful. Afterall, we don't speak of "technicianesses," "teacheresses," and "doctoresses," given that men and women technicians, teachers, and doctors perform the same work! Why make an exception for a few lines of work?
2021/01/29 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian cuisine: Having seen and been impressed by her brother's tah-dig (crispy rice) creation, my daughter decided to submit her own entry in the family tag-dig competition. [Center] Donald Knuth, on the need for a change on how computer science history is reported (see the next item below). [Right] Science: Because figuring things out is better than making stuff up.
(2) We need better historical accounts in computer science: In a now-classic 2014 lecture, leading computer scientist Donald Knuth complained that computer science historians do a disservice to the discipline by omitting technical details from their stories. He praised math historians for their dedication to including formulas and other technical matter in their writings. In its February 2021 issue, Communications of the ACM has reprinted a summary of that talk to re-open the discussion of this important topic.
(3) Conspiracy theories: Iranians see the hands of the British behind every misfortune. Now, right-wing Americans are trying to beat Iranians to become the kings of conspiracy theorists!
(4) Science and scientists will be leading the way again, not anti-science conspiracy theorists: "Science will always guide my administration." ~ Tweet by US President Joe Biden
(5) "Namaaz" or "Niaaz" (the story of a popular Persian song): The late Shah's secret police reportedly summoned those involved in producing the song "Namaaz" (daily prayers) and ordered them to change the lyrics, because likening the beloved to Islamic prayers had offended the clerics in Qom. Not everyone agreed with the mandated change of "Namaaz" to "Niaaz" (need, craving), but the change was made and the song began a second parallel path to fame.
(6) Math puzzle: Four cities are located at the corners of a square with side length of d miles. How should we connect the four cities with a network of roads, such that the total length of the roads, and thus construction cost, is minimized, while allowing us to go from any city to any other city (travel distance is unimportant).
(7) Automation in action: The new parking system at UCSB requires temporary-permit buyers to enter a license-plate number. The parking attendant then simply drives by parked cars, aiming a camera at them, instead of having to get out of his/her cart to inspect the displayed permits one vehicle at a time.
(8) Summary of a cybersecurity bulletin from University of California administration: In a momentous week in cybersecurity, international law enforcement officials took down two significant criminal enterprises: the Emotet botnet and the NetWalker ransomware ring. Emotet had more than a million PCs harnessed for malicious purposes, and Netwalker extorted more than $27 million from its victims, including the University of California.
Cyberspace is safer, but Netwalker represented only a small part of the active ransomware threat, and other botnets grow daily. Vigilance against phishing and regular backups are the best defenses against an increasingly sophisticated threat.
2021/01/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Engineering marvels in Iran: 5000 years of taming water, wind, earth, and fire (3-minute teaser, narrated in English; 28-minute low-quality videos, Part 1 and Part 2, narrated in Persian). [Center] New Yorker cartoon: Trump entertaining friends at Mar-a-Lago. [Right] Professor Ali M. Ansari's talk about his book, Iran, Islam, and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change (see the last item below).
(2) Institutionalized sexism in Hollywood: Actress Carey Mulligan is alarmed by a major publication's review of her new film, "Promising Young Woman," which questions whether she was attractive enough for the role.
(3) Welfare for ordinary people, bad; corporate welfare, good: To protect wealthy hedge funds from losing money on short positions targeting companies on the verge of failure, trading restrictions were put in place for the little guys, whose stock purchases had caused a sharp rise in stock prices. So, little investors trying to make money according to established rules of trading are being penalized to protect big money. Shameful!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- USA is catching up with the rest of the world, where networks of right-wing extremists have been growing.
- Republicans moved to post-Trump era for a week, before getting scared and rushing back to the Godfather.
- We got rid of the anti-education Betsy DeVos: Now, GOP gives the QAnon Rep. a seat on education panel!
- An organizer of the "Stop the Steal" rally with ties to Trump arrested for his role in the January 6 DC riot.
(5) Book talk: Professor Ali M. Ansari (U. St. Andrews) spoke this morning under the title "Iran, Islam, and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change" based on the 2019 third edition of his book bearing the same title. Professor Ansari maintains that the founder of the Islamic Republic was really Rafsanjani, not Khomeini. The Islamic Revolution changed much less in Iran than the Constitutional Revolution. Rafsanjani ensured that the mercantile class continued to amass capital and dominate the power structure. At first, the prime-minister position was eliminated to give the president more power. Later, power moved almost entirely to the Supreme Leader, with the president given even less authority than a PM. I tend to agree with the centrality of Rafsanjani, given that he was the main reason of Khamenei rising to the Supreme-Leader position. Ironically, Khamenei was quick in sidelining his former ally and, eventually, removing him from all positions of power.
I asked the following question: You mentioned that the position of president was first given more power, later becoming even less than a PM. What do you think of the recent calls for making the president still less influential: Some clerics are calling for a young revolutionary being put in that position to essentially serve as a clerk who carries out the Supreme Leader's directives.
The response to my question was only partial: One idea being floated by conservatives is to eliminate the position of the president altogether and establish a parliamentary system much like Britain's. The Parliament would then elect a PM who would act much like an executive officer.
2021/01/27 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day: Let's remember the atrocities and renew our "never again" pledge! This UN-designated day commemorates the genocide that led to the death of 6 million Jews, 1 million Gypsies, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. [Top center] Photos from my long walk yesterday, taking advantage of the last sunny day in Santa Barbara before 3-4 days of heavy rain. [Top right] Encountered this photo among my memories from the 2017 Women's March and decided to share it as an apt reminder. [Bottom left] Cover image of the February 2021 issue of CACM (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Consider 2 points on the perimeter of a circular disk and connect them together, thus forming 2 regions within the disk. Now take 3 points and connect them pairwise, to get 4 regions. With 4 points, we get 8 regions. With 5 points, 16 regions. How many regions will we get with 6 points? (Answer) [Bottom right] Fine example of Europe's historical architecture: Schwerin Castle in Germany, completed in 1857.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Let's recognize that hate never disappears. It changes form and may go into hiding for a while.
- Only in the US Senate can a trial take place with co-conspirators of the accused being part of the jury.
- Things are beginning to move on the climate front: The US Federal Reserve creates a climate committee.
- Second Capitol police officer commits suicide in the aftermath of the January 6 DC riot.
- One more Bernie meme, good for a smile: Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens ... Bernie in mittens
- Memory from January 27, 2016 [Video]: I miss UCSB's Wed. 12:00-1:00 PM musical mini-concerts!
(3) The changing nature of citations: Citations in current academic literature are like references to a point in space: A particular journal, article, section, page. The on-line version of such a reference is a URL. However, unlike print literature, on-line documents tend to change over time, sometimes disappearing altogether. Authors have developed the habit of mentioning the date on which the on-line document was accessed, so if the document contains a "last-modified" date within it, the reader can tell whether or not it's the same version that was cited. This is a coarse binary mechanism. In his February 2021 column in Communications of the ACM, Vint Cerf floats the idea of adding a time dimension to on-line references, suggesting that documents be organized and stored in a way that any of their past versions can be reconstructed by taking the current version along with a record of edits. This is an idea worth pursuing.
(4) Noteworthy content from Communications of the ACM, February 2021 issue:
- Let's not dumb down the history of computer science: Donald Knuth's suggestion that historians of computer science follow math historians and include a lot more technical detail in their writings. [Interview]
- AZERTY is a layout for French keyboards, which has only recently been standardized: Previous designs varied and did not include important symbols needed for writing in French. [4-minute video intro]
- A review of the semantic web field: Brief video introduction to the timely survey/tutorial article.
2021/01/26 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Persian-language books chosen for discussion with my old classmates (see the last item below). [Right] Iran's regional fashions: Woman and girl from Lahijan, Guilan Province.
(2) Book talk: Professor Abbas Amanat (Yale U.) will speak on Sat., March 13, 2021, 2:00 PM PST, under the title "Kings and Clerics in Modern Iranian Society" (Sponsored by USC's Iranian Studies Initiative). [Register]
(3) Book talk: Professor Ali Ansari (U. St. Andrews) will speak on Thursday, January 28, 2021, 10:00 AM PST, under the title "Iran, Islam, and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change." [Info]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- SCOTUS dismisses emoluments lawsuits against Trump: Another case of different laws for the powerful!
- Dominion Voting Systems sues Rudy Giuliani, seeking $1.3 billion over false election fraud claims.
- Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene supported the assassination of top Democrats on social media.
- Californians flee en-masse, as heavy rains threaten them with flash-floods and mudslides.
(5) Book interview: Author Lisa Selin Davis talked about her first non-fiction book, Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different, in a program sponsored by The Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior at UCLA. The book is a tour-de-force of gender roles, gender stereotyping, and difficulties faced by girls who don't quite fit the "model" most people have of girls and girly behavior. This "virtual book launch" provides much useful information about the book and the author.
(6) "Mohammad Mossadeq's Report Card": This is the title of a series of presentations by Mr. Mohammad Amini in the Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68). With 50 participants, today's meeting was the most popular among the ones I have attended.
Discussion on the brief 27-month term of Mosaddeq as Iran's prime-minister is based on the first book below, which is a response to the second book, purporting to analyze the reasons for PM Mohammad Mosaddeq's failure as a political leader. Items [3] and [4], distributed to meeting attendees a day before the event, contain additional pertinent information. The additional reference Khaab-e Ashofteh-ye Naft (Vol. 2, by Mohammad Ali Movahhed) was recommended by the speaker.
The discussion will be conducted in three parts:
Week 1. Nationalization of Iran's oil industry (today)
Week 2. Mosaddeq and Iran's civil society (Tuesday 2/02)
Week 3. Events leading to 1953 CIA coup (Tuesday 2/09)
A free-discussion session spanning all the topics above is planned for Tuesday 2/16.
[1] Amini, Mohammad, Sowdaagari baa Taarikh (Deception with History), Ketab Corp., 2012.
[2] Mirfetros, Ali, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq: Aasib-Shanasi-ye Yek Shekast (Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq: Pathology of a Failure), Ketab Corp., 2008. [Preface & contents]
[3] Amini, Mohammad, "Striving to Right Some Wrongs" (in Persian).
[4] Amini, Mohammad, "The 1953 Coup, According to Its Organizers" (in Persian).
2021/01/25 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] For hard-core Sudoku fans: Five overlapping puzzles. [Top center] Women were front and center at the Biden/Harris inauguration. [Top right] We just celebrated the life of baseball legend Hank Aaron: Let us remember that he paid a high price for his greatness, facing terror and hate, both when he broke Babe Ruth's career home run record and when he backed Obama. [Bottom left & right] Yesterday's walk on the beach: Rocks exposed during super-low tide on UCSB West Campus Beach. A couple of small caves under the bluffs on the Isla Vista Beach. Surfers enjoying the windy conditions. Seabirds feasting on creatures left on shore by the super-low tide. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Consider the Earth to be a perfect sphere. We put a band around the Equator, then remove the band, add 10 meters to its length and put it around the Earth again, ensuring that the band stays the same distance from the Earth's surface everywhere. What is that distance? Now, if we pull the elongated band in one direction, so that it touches the Earth's surface everywhere, except near the point A where it is being pulled, what is the distance of A from Earth?
(2) As Dr. Deborah Birx goes on her redemption tour, claiming that she constantly entertained the idea of resigning, let's not forget how she praised Trump's leadership and his ability to interpret/integrate data.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump will likely find that courts and creditors will be much harsher on him that his political opponents.
- COVID-19 cases surge among Capitol police officers and National Guard members on duty in DC.
- Trump campaign funded the DC rally that sparked the Capitol riot to the tune of $2.7 million.
- US military gets a black eye: Nearly 1 in 5 charged in the Capitol riot are current or former soldiers.
- Biden moving forward with plans, shelved by Trump, to place an image of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
- Memory from January 25, 2015: Good old days, before family gatherings became Zoom events. [Photo]
(4) Book, book talk, and book review: I previously posted about Dr. John Ghazvinian's talk on his new book, America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present (see my 1/21 blog entry). Publication of Dr. Abbas Milani's review of the book in New York Times prompted this trilingual Facebook post by a friend living in Mexico.
(5) Math puzzle: We have two large barrels, one containing wine and the other water. We take a cup of wine and put it in the barrel holding water. Next, we take a cup of the mixed liquid and put it back in the wine barrel. Which barrel contains more impurity (more of the other liquid)?
(6) Toward a Digital Bill of Rights: Professor Ramesh Srinivasan (UCLA) leads a discussion, sponsored by UCSB's Center for Information Technology and Society. The Zoom meeting was held on Jan. 7, 2021.
2021/01/24 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Book review: Gilbert, Elizabeth, City of Girls: A Novel, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Blair Brown, Penguin Audio, 2019. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I have previously read and reviewed two books by Elizabeth Gilbert:
The Signature of All Things (5 stars) and
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (4 stars). Gilbert's character development in City of Girls isn't as good as in Signature of All Things. The fictional story begins in the late-1930s New York City and proceeds to include the start and end of World War II and beyond. Intermixing real events with the fictional narrative constitutes part of the book's charm.
The narrative consists of 90-something, self-centered, entitled, Vassar-dropout Vivien Morris telling her life story to Angela, the daughter of one of her great loves, presumably to provide her with a picture of how her father lived, but including little about his life! Vivien is at the center of the narrative throughout the book!
The story begins in Vivien's late teens, when she moves to NYC and, without much delay, begins having sex with young and old men, while using her sewing skills to prepare or repair costumes for a run-down, low-budget theater company, specializing in stereotypical plays that feature dancers and showgirls, without significant storylines. The theater's owner is an aunt, who acts as Vivien's caretaker.
The first part of the book, describing Vivien in her 20s, is quite detailed in its description of theater life in, and other aspects of, NYC and, later, her sexual episodes with servicemen passing through. In a way, Vivien is ahead of her time, living the sexual liberation of the 1960s during 1940s. Vivien leaves NYC following a sexual scandal and later returns to run a bridal boutique.
Reviews of this novel on Amazon.com are mixed, with 1- and 2-star reviews deeming the novel poorly-written and a waste of time, alongside a larger number of 5-star reviews characterizing it as fun, delicious, and captivating. I find myself somewhere in between these two extremes, perhaps because I began listening to the audiobook with much-higher hopes.
(2) Book review: Rippon, Gina, Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds, unabridged audiobook, read by Hannah Curtis, Random House Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Men and women have male and female bodies, but the physical differences do not mean that they have different brains as well. For decades, scientists used the weight/size differences between male and female brains to argue about gender-related differences in mental abilities, extrapolating from the smaller brain sizes in other mammals relative to humans.
Rippon, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University, makes a compelling case that any gender-related brain differences result from social constructs and ingrained beliefs about gender roles, beginning with toy choices and continuing on to career paths, not due to a fixed biological blueprint.
A famous neuroscience experiment showed that the brains of London taxi drivers exhibited differences with other people's brains, because their job entailed memorizing massive amounts of information about roads and neighborhoods. Similar variations can be caused by years of gender-stereotypical activity and social-messaging about what men and women can or cannot do. It is hard to believe that such stereotypes persist, as women enter many different professions and win Nobel Prizes!
Decades ago, scientists believed that human brain is developed in childhood and becomes fixed for life before adulthood. Now, we know that brain continues to evolve and re-wire itself according to our experiences. With either theory, there is no surprise that female brain develops differently, both as a result of stereotyping in rearing & education (what Rippon calls "pinkification") and because of societal pressures on adhering to stereotypical gender roles later on.
When it comes to the brain, size matters much less than wiring. If physical size mattered, then, at 2/3 the size of men's, the pumping ability of women's hearts would have been woefully deficient. Yet we know that women actually live longer than men! In ages when societal leadership required physical strength, men naturally held an advantage, hence the emergence of patriarchy. Now, leadership requires brains, not muscles, so thinking of women as inferior in mental capacities is particularly dangerous. Even the belief, turned into conventional wisdom, that in early human societies, men hunted and women stayed in the caves, is being questioned by the discovery of skeletons of women hunters.
According to Rippon, "We find that from an early age babies are searching for social messages in the outside world. If these junior 'gender detectives' are exposed to messages that, for example, boys play with Lego and are good at science and systems, whereas girls want to be princesses and are good at caring and empathy, then this can divert their developing brains down different pathways, arriving at different educational, occupational and social destinations."
So, to recap, male and female brains are different, but almost all of the difference can be traced to social conditioning that takes our brains along different developmental paths, in the same way that the brains of London taxi drivers develop differently because of the kinds of information they have to store and process. Case closed, thanks to Professor Gina Rippon!
(3) Book review: Brown, Dan, Origin: A Novel, unabridged audiobook, read by Paul Michael, Random House Audio, 2017. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This novel is the fifth in Dan Brown's "Robert Langdon" Series, beginning with Angels & Demons, and continuing with Da Vinci Code (his most-famous), The Lost Symbol, and Inferno. Christianity and history are the main themes in these books. The sixth novel may appear soon, given the four-year spacing of the titles in the series since 2000!
Langdon, a professor of symbology at Harvard University, is good as solving puzzles and deciphering codes, an ability that features prominently in Brown's novels. Actor Tom Hanks, who played Langdon in three movies, is indelibly linked with the protagonist in Brown's novels. Somehow, a beautiful woman is always part of the plot, with events putting Langdon and the woman in a position to flee evil characters and solving the mystery at the last possible moment!
Origin links a scientist/futurist/atheist, Edmond Kirsch, with Spain's royal family, an aging monarch, his charismatic heir Julian (engaged to stunningly beautiful Ambra Vidal), and Bishop Antonio Valdespino. Kirsch starts to reveal a truth he has discovered about the origin and destiny of humans that would make world religions obsolete. Religious leaders are understandably not pleased, a fact that creates the tensions and conflicts forming the novel's plot.
I find Brown's writing in this novel quite absorbing and references to history and culture informative. The story unfolds mostly in Spain, so asides about Barcelona's architectural marvels, particularly the works of Antonio Gaudi (such as La Sagrada Familia temple and Casa Mila), are everywhere. Equally prevalent are high-tech themes: An AI assistant (Winston), virtual reality, quantum computing, and a Tesla self-driving car.
Reviews of Brown's latest novel are mostly positive, although some critics have characterized the writing and plot devices as tired and the story-telling as less than engaging. I for one enjoyed the book and recommend it to mystery fans.
2021/01/23 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Another Goleta restaurant bites the dust: Beachside Bar-Cafe, on the sand beach next to Goleta Pier, has closed permanently. Located within walking distance of campus, it was one of the most-scenic local restaurants and a favorite spot for us to entertain UCSB visitors. [Center] Coloring activity: The bull has left the China shop! [Right] Sharif Univ. of Technology Association's Zoom talk (see the last item below).
(2) The worst-ever President on trial: Trump may again escape punishment by the US Senate, with help from his cronies who find it hard to admit their own guilt, but the rioters he threw under the bus to save himself are pointing fingers at him in their criminal proceedings.
(3) We need more "losers" like Bernie Sanders: He puts his meme on $45 sweatshirts, which sell out quickly. He then donates the entire proceeds to Meals on Wheels. Hats off to you, Sir!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Twitter suspends Ayatollah Khamenei's account after he posted threats of assassination against Trump.
- UC as an engine of growth: Univ. of California generates $82 billion in economic output for California.
- Dr. Ahamad Karimi-Hakkak's Persian translation of Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb."
- These are a few of my favorite memes: "The Sound of Music" meets Bernie Sanders!
- A short history of frozen desserts: The famous Akbar Mashti ice cream, featuring rose-water and saffron.
- Iranian music and architecture: Entry gates to buildings, old and new. -minute video]
(5) Larry King is live no more: The famous interviewer, dead in Los Angeles at 87, talked to nearly every noteworthy celebrity. His own life was very colorful, having married eight times (to seven women), undergoing quintuple bypass surgery, being convicted of fraud, and admitting to never preparing for his interviews (including not reading books by authors he talked to).
(6) SUTA Zoom technical talk: Dr. Cumrun Vafa (string-theorist, Harvard U. Physics Department) presented an engaging talk under the title "Puzzles to Unravel the Universe," based on his 2020 book of the same title, which emerged from a puzzle-based course he has been teaching at Harvard. The book's Persian translation will soon be made available in Iran free of charge.
Dr. Vafa posed a sequence of very interesting puzzle-like problems that help us understand the universe and its physical laws. The problems illustrated symmetry and symmetry-breaking, conservation laws, the power of continuity, unreasonable power of simple mathematics, power of mathematical abstraction, and duality.
This 59-minute YouTube video contains the same ideas presented in today's lecture. I will pose some of the puzzles over the next few days, giving credit in each case to Dr. Vafa.
I end this report with a puzzle. True of false: Around any circle on Earth (such as the Equator), where the temperature varies, we can always find two diametrically opposite points with the same temperature.
2021/01/22 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Wednesday 1/20 afternoon, on the majestic Elwood bluffs in Santa Barbara. [Bottom left] Pretty faces get magazine covers, but in today's America, accomplished women can also get them. [Bottom center] Photo of a tea-house in the Iran of 1971: The sign on the wall reads: "Tomorrow at 5:00 AM, kalleh-pacheh (lamb head and hoof soup); 6:00 AM, boxing match between Muhammad Ali Clay and Joe Frazier; Free tea & hookah if Muhammad Ali wins." [Bottom right] Quote from imprisoned Iranian human-rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh: "In Iran we are always prisoners. You might think I'm exaggerating but when our main concern is the absence of justice in our socity, being imprisoned or not does not make any difference."
(2) The Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump is really a trial of the Republican Party: Trump himself is much less relevant today. The outcome of the trial will show whether Republicans still view their party as Trump's party, showing no remorse over their support of Trump's carnage.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In his final days as President, Trump and a Justice Department lawyer plotted to oust acting AG.
- "What Were We Thinking?": NPR podcast featuring Carlos Lozada discussin the legacy of the Trump era.
- Monuments and historical statues/paintings say goodbye and good riddance! [2-minute video]
- Ban Iran's Supreme Leader from Twitter: He tweets, while preventing 83 million Iranians from doing so!
- Environmental activist Greta Thunberg's parting shot, as Trump leaves the White House for the last time.
- Persian music: A spirited instrumental version of Naser Cheshmazar's "Hamzaboonam Bash." [Video]
(4) UCSB scientists detect J0313-1806, the furthest quasar discovered to date: A supermassive black hole, millions to billions of times the size of our Sun, is at the center of every galaxy. Some of these black holes are particularly active, whipping up stars, dust, and gas into glowing accretion disks emitting powerful radiation into the cosmos, as they gobble up matter around them. The sheer size of quasars makes them the most-distant observable objects. J0313-1808 was formed less than 700 million years after the Big Bang.
(5) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: "Socio-Economic Development Strategies and Challenges in Iran," a Zoom panel discussion, in English, featuring Azam Khatam (York U.), Kaveh Ehsani (DePaul U.), and Kevan Harris (UCLA), Monday, February 1, 2021, 3:00-5:00 PM PST. [Register]
(6) Book interview: Lisa Selin Davis will talk about her first non-fiction book, Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different. Tuesday, January 26, 2022, 5:00-6:15 PM PST. [Register]
(7) "Why Women Write": This is the title of a panel discussion, hosted by PhD scholars Ozlem Has (U. Copenhagen) and Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U) and featuring Anjali Purohit (artist, poet, writer, curator), Jasmin Darznik (NYT best-selling author), Nooshan Shekarabi (poet), Usha Akela (author), and Shokufeh Kavani (translator, visual artist). Saturday, January 30, 2021, 9:00-11:30 AM PST.
2021/01/21 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Angels, saving lives on a daily basis: Thank you. [Top center] A quick method to solve quadratic equations: Given the equation x^2 – 2bx + c, we need to find two numbers that add to 2b and whose product is c. Let's call the two numbers b – u and b + u. We must have (b + u)(b – u) = b^2 – u^2 = c, leading to u = sqrt(b^2 – c). [Top right] The living martyr: London based Iraj Zarei travels to Iran and finds out that he is commemorated as a martyr of the Iran-Iraq war on a billboard! [Bottom left] Gravity energy storage: Alternatives to batteries for energy storage are being tried by many start-ups. This 110-meter-high, six-armed crane in Switzerland is intended to demonstrate that renewable energy can be stored by raising heavy weights and dispatched by releasing them. (Credit: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of January 2021) [Bottom center] Today's Stanford University book talk (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Biden began work yesterday on his agenda of restoring Americans' and world's confidence in the US government.
(2) Iranian-born scholar Kaveh Afrasiabi arrested: He is accused of being an unregistered Iranian agent who was paid to lobby US lawmakers and write newspaper columns favorable to the Islamic regime.
(3) Book talk: "America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present" was the title of today's 10:00 AM PST talk by Dr. John Ghazvinian (U. Penn), based on his 2021 book of the same title. The talk was perhaps the most enlightening book talk I have ever attended.
We are so consumed by questions about what went wrong between Iran and the US (CIA's 1953 coup; Iranian extremists' 1979 hostage-taking), that we fail to ask the question of what went right in the first place, before the tensions over the past seven decades. If we go back to the 1720s, we note that there were many mentions of Persia in American newspapers. A sizable fraction of contents in the newspapers of the early 1700s was about Iran.
The US was overwhelmingly pro-Persia, as Persia faced regional conflicts. The conflict with Afghanistan was, mistakenly, viewed as the work of the Ottoman Empire, both countries being Sunni Muslim. At the time, the Ottoman Empire was threatening Europe. It was the classic case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" mindset. The US viewed the conflict not as one between two sects of Islam, but as Muslims vs. Persians. It helped that Persia was described in glowing terms in the Bible.
The very first Christian missionary to go to Iran described it as Edenic. Later, as Russia and Britain began interfering in Persia's affairs, it was natural for Iran to look to America for support. So, Persia viewed America as a better version of the imperialistic Europe and America viewed Iran as a better version of a threatening Islam!
When America looked at the Middle East in the 1970s, it saw Arab countries, inflicted with extremism, and the seemingly-insoluble Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and just beyond them, this peaceful paradise called Iran! Earlier, in trade/navigation negotiations of the 1850s, Iran demanded protection from the US (against Britain and Russia, that were increasingly cooperating against Persia) as a pre-condition.
The legitimacy of Iranian rulers after the Islamic Revolution rested in great part on their anti-Americanism. However, the revolutionary fervor was already weakening within a decade, but the US essentially shot itself in the foot by not taking advantage of rapprochement possibilities, pursuing idealistic policies instead.
Well, now that Arabs and Israelis are seemingly uniting against Iran, perhaps Iran might again be motivated to approach the US for protection. Don't hold your breath, though!
I asked two questions:
- It seems that the "idealistic" characterization of each side by the other is still prevalent between the people, though not between the governments. Do you agree? Dr. Ghazvinian answered yes-and-no. In each country, people who oppose their government's policies are very likely to have a positive view of the other country, and just the opposite for government cronies.
- Wasn't one the most-important incentives for the US to support Iran the Soviet plan to gain access to southern oceans via Iran or at least building an oil pipeline to the south? This question went unanswered due to time running out.
2021/01/20 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Turning the page at the end of a horror-filled chapter in US history: The Biden/Harris inauguration was non-traditional in many respects. In lieu of a huge crowd, the DC National Mall was filled with 200,000 US, state, and territory flags. On the eve of their inauguration, the Biden/Harris team commemorated the 400,000 US deaths from COVID-19 at Lincoln Memorial. Yet, Biden's and Harris's messages in their inaugural speeches represented a return to normalcy, respect for traditions, and governing as servants, not as masters. Amanda Gorman, the youngest poet-laureate ever, was very impressive, but there are some lingering questions. Did Mike Pence close his eyes during Lady Gaga's performance? Did Bernie Sanders make it to the post office?
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Twenty-two-year-old Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's stirring inauguration poem. [6-minute video]
- There is a new @WhiteHouse Twitter account: The previous administration's archived as @WhiteHouse45.
- We remember the 400,000 US deaths from COVID-19, at least half of which were preventable.
- Mexico is reportedly worried, because it has just a few hours to pay for the wall!
- We ordered Indian food last night in honor of the incoming Vice-President Kamala Harris! [Photo]
- Kurdish music: Kurds are fond of dancing and much of their music has a lively dance beat. [Video]
(3) This evening's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Misha Sra (John and Eileen Gerngross Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, UCSB) spoke under the title "Perceptual Engineering."
Perceptual (or perception) engineering encompasses:
- Technology development motivated by models of perception and cognition of biological systems.
- Technology development for analysis and understanding of human perception/cognition processes.
The web digitized information while social media digitized people and relationships. Technology and global events are now transforming not only the nature of work but also where it is done and when. We are likely to continue living in both our physical and digital worlds (even more so because of COVID-19) leading to the question: how can both worlds become more integrated to help shape our future hybrid lives? Dr. Sra presented work from her Perceptual Engineering lab that explores how we might design our hybrid lives with spatial computing technologies, sensor data, and AI algorithms.
Like any area of advanced technology, ethical challenges loom around every corner on Dr. Sra's work. For example, deep-fake videos enabled by research in perceptual engineering are seen as inherently evil, because we have seen them used maliciously. However, there are a large number of benevolent uses for the same technology, and perception manipulation more generally (say, in education), that Dr. Sra outlined in her talk. Ethical considerations of this line of research tie nicely into topics discussed in our December 2020 talk by Dr. Jessica Santana.
A lively Q&A period followed, during which issues such as requirements for experimenting with human subjects, the "arms race" between faking schemes and the corresponding detection algorithms, the Turing test, and living in the Matrix were raised.
[Images] [Speaker's home page] [IEEE CCS event page] [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
2021/01/18 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Happy MLK Day! Let us celebrate the fact that our difficult transition from darkness to light nearly coincides with the day we remember and honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who constantly preached love and non-violence. [Bottom left] Iran's architecture: View of Zayandeh-Rud River from the special Royal Arch of Esfahan's Khaju Bridge. [Bottom center] Brain diarrhea from the leader of 80 million Iranians: Ayatollah Khamenei's handwritten reply to a follower, advising him/her that Baha'is are filthy, devious, unscrupulous, and corrupt and that the devout should avoid any contact with them. [Bottom right] Cover image of Juhood academic journal, published by Duke University (see the last item below).
(2) Data scientist Rebekah Jones arrested: She's accused of illegally accessing private data. She claims she is targeted because she refused to falsify data to show that Florida is ready for lifting COVID-19 restrictions.
(3) Ari Melber's special report on Trump's many calls for violence, way before he was elected in 2016 and repeatedly since then: You can't forego justice for illegal acts, calling instead for unity.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- On his final two days, our President worries about issues that are important to you and me ... Not!
- Trump to fly to Florida on Air Force One after an 8:00 AM ceremony on Wednesday, January 20.
- Video footage from inside the US Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021: "Deplorables" is too mild a term!
- Political humor: Arrested January 6 rioters have been told that their legal fees will be paid by Mexico!
- Perfect use of coronavirus relief funds: Sizable loans totaling more than $850K to five anti-vaccine groups!
- Angelique Kidjo's song honoring Nasrin Sotoudeh will compete for an Oscar in the original-song category.
- The "Coup 53" documentary, which was shelved for 4 months due to legal challenges, is available again.
- Some say soccer (football) is for men: Celine Dept demonstrates why they are so very wrong!
(5) "Antifa led the Capitol insurrection" didn't stick, because of all the video evidence and confessions: Now, Trumpists allege that Democrats paid the rioters to make Trump look bad!
(6) An unfortunate name for an academic journal: Duke University's Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs is named "Juhood." The journal explains its name thus: Juhood is the namesake of an Arabic word meaning "make every conceivable effort; to do one's utmost." The word is from the same root as "jihad," which would have been a more appropriate name for the journal, but was perhaps skipped over, owing to its negative connotation in the West. Looking at the journal's cover was a jarring experience for me: The word "Juhood" is an offensive Persian term for "Jew," bearing the same connotation as the now-admonished "Nigger" in English. The composite form "Juhood-koshi" (literally "Jew-killing") is comparable to lynching. I hope the journal's founders consider changing its name, given that it is aimed at a region of the world that includes Iran and other Persian-speaking communities.
2021/01/17 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Comparing three Presidents with regard to fitness: The significant external differences between 45 and his predecessor & successor are far less than internal ones, in domains such as mental acuity, literacy, compassion, and respectability! (P.S.: I couldn't find a photo of Trump in water or biking, for better comparison.) [Bottom row] Book interview (see the last item below).
(2) People making millions a year are mad about the proposal to allow some folk earn ~ $31K/yr, if they take no time off whatsoever ($15/hour minimum wage x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year).
(3) Meme from Trumpists: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." ~ Jonathan Swift [Meme, in Persian]
Question: Can we use the same quote about Obama or Biden? Please advise!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A look at what happened during the siege of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. ["60 Minutes" report]
- Talk about impeachment, and the Far-Right points to the need for unity. Here's how they're unifying us!
- Quote: "Some people are like photographs: the more you blow them up the fuzzier they get." ~ Anonymous
- Millions of Evangelicals prayed for Trump's electoral victory: I guess God isn't very pleased with them!
(5) Until a few days ago, my hope was that the Biden/Harris team would unite the country: Now I see nothing among Trump supporters and most Republicans that I would want to unite with!
(6) Iranian regional music from the Caspian coast: Performance to honor prolific author/translator/activist Mahmoud Etemadzadeh [1915-2006], aka M. E. Beh-Azin, on his birthday. [7-minute video]
(7) Book interview: Adam Jentleson's Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy discusses, among other things, how the filibuster began as a tool of Southern Senators upholding slavery, later becoming a mechanism to block civil-rights legislation. Of course, the structure of the Senate, giving the same representation to smaller slave-holding states as populous northern states, held the beginnings of this undemocratic process.
Dr. Heather McGhee, herself an author (Sum of Us) and political commentator, interviewed Jentleson.
Most people don't know that fillibuster is a relatively recent development. For most of its life, the Senate has been governed by majority rule. Reforming the Senate by removing its current super-majority rule is a prerequisite to all other reforms.
[NPR podcast about the book]
2021/01/16 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cartoon from S. B. Independent. [Center] T-shirt for those who trust in science: F Au C I (Fluorine, Gold, Carbon, Iodine). [Right] Webinar on Iranian women's poetry (see the last item below).
(2) Zoom event on "Violence and Society": This morning's interesting panel, moderated by PhD scholars Ozlem Has and Nasim Basiri, featured Parthasarathi Muthukaruppan (Ass't Prof. of Cultural Studies, EFL), Fred Petrosian (journalist/researcher), and Junaid Ahmad (Director, Center for Islam and Decoloniality). [Report]
(3) Farhang Foundation Persian-poetry event: Bearing the title "Attar: The Unending Thirst," this morning's free live event featured Sholeh Wolpe (author of The Conference of the Birds), Fahad Siadat, and Andre Megerdichian. A recording of the event will become available on farhang.org/attar. [Report]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Colleges rescind honorary degrees they awarded to Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
- Military veterans are helping in the DC clean-up effort, after the January 6, 2021, riot.
- Bill Maher makes Kellyanne Conway uncomfortable by listing insults that Trump has hurled at him.
- Foreign companies are using preferential electricity rates in Iran to run bitcoin farms, causing blackouts.
(5) A History of Iranian Women's Poetry: Dr. Rohangiz (Ruhangiz) Karachi, Emerita Professor of Persian literature, presented an engrossing review of 1000 years of women contributing to Persian poetry, despite facing obstacles, being ignored, suffering insults, and enduring ridicule. Around 110 viewers participated in this webinar, sponsored by University of Toronto on Friday, January 15, 2021.
Dr. Karachi is a researcher of Persian literature and is also an influential poet. She has published one poetry collection, with the second volume expected soon. During the Q&A period, Dr. Karachi mentioned that she has not included poems for children or song lyrics in the scope of her historical work.
The written history of Iranian literature includes sparse mention of the best women poets, whereas mediocre male poets are routinely included. Over the centuries, women's poetry has gone through many phases, beginning with love poems and moving increasingly toward social and political issues of the day.
During Iran's constitutional revolution, issues of gender equity were raised and poems assumed social and cultural tones. However, equity remained at the level of talk, with discriminatory laws continued to be passed. Dr. Karachi maintains that Forough Farrokhzad is perhaps the best woman poet of all time.
One attendee objected to separate studies and discussion of women's poetry, asserting that poetry is poetry and should not be divided into men's and women's genres. In the Q&A period, I pointed out that this view is misguided, much like what we are facing in the US, where talking about the problems and rights of blacks and colored people raises the objection that we are all humans and there is no need to raise divisive issues; yes, we are all humans, but we can't erase the effects of 400 years of oppression and mistreatment by simply declaring that "all lives matter."
2021/01/15 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Tonight's sunset, shot from UCSB's North Campus Open Space: The combination of orange sky and its reflection in water is magical at sunset.
(2) This former Evangelical Christian has a point: Our problem is religious fanaticism, not political extremism. Without support from Evangelicals, who want to build a Christian version of Iran, Trump couldn't do much.
(3) Right-wing activists received large bitcoin payments from a foreign account a month before the capitol riot: Twenty-two virtual wallets received $0.5M worth of bitcoin transfers on December 8, 2020.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- On Trump being depicted by some Capitol rioters as Captain America. [Jake Tapper tweet]
- Please explain why during the DC riot, the President wasn't evacuated to a secure location but the VP was.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Major spray-tan corporations break ties with Trump.
- Is anyone really surprised that Donald Trump tried to force himself on America after she said no?
- Obituary of Sensei Steven Ken Ota [1948-2020] in Santa Barbara Independent. [Link]
- Having fun with music: Dancing violin maestros play "Salsa de la Luna."
- Persian poetry: Recitation of a poem by Mahdi Hakimi in praise of the city and people of Yazd, Iran.
(5) Stanford U. publishes a new constitution for transition to a democratic Iran, written by Mohammad Reza Shajarian and others. Many have criticized using the late maestro's popularity to sell a half-baked document that leaves a lot of things unspecified or puts lipstick on existing pigs. [24-page document, in Persian]
(6) Book talk: "America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present" is the title of a talk by Dr. John Ghazvinian (U. Penn), based on his 2021 book by the same title. Thursday, January 21, 2021, 10:00 AM PST.
(7) The need for men's participation in combatting violence against women: Panel discussion, in Persian, featuring Shahin Navaie, Elaheh Amani, Shahrzad Roshdi, and Behrang Zandi. [85-minute video]
(8) Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump wouldn't let the Secret Service use any one of their six bathrooms, so the Secret Service had to rent a nearby apartment at $3000/mo just for the bathrooms.
(9) Why we can't go back in time: Frenchman Lazare Carnot had a passion for the great Persian poet Sa'adi Shirazi. He named his son after the poet. Sadi Carnot wrote a misguided treatise on how steam engines worked, committing many basic errors, but getting the essential fact right that the source of energy is a drop in temperature (much like falling-water produces energy). The fact that heat "travels" in one direction, from warmer bodies to colder ones, is the only thing that distinguishes the past from the future. All other laws of physics are essentially reversible. In every instance when the past and the future are distinguishable, heat is involved. Clausius quantified this irreversible progress of heat in only one direction as entropy. [Ideas from Carlo Rovelli's wonderful book, The Order of Time, which I will review here shortly.]
2021/01/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] New Yorker cartoon: "This is not who we are." [Center] Talk by Amir Ahmadi Arian (see the last item below). [Right] For IEEE entities interested in having invited speakers, with their travel expenses paid by IEEE Computer Society: Here is my profile and list of lectures within IEEE Computer Society's Distinguished Visitors Program. Three lectures are listed for now, but I may add more later.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Right-wing activists received large bitcoin payments from a foreign account a month before the capitol riot.
- Trump takes his frustrations out on Rudi Giuliani and refuses to pay him for his legal work.
- Different lessons can be drawn from an experience: Be like a needy crippled fox or a generous mighty lion.
- Persian/Azeri song, fused with Arabic-style dancing. [3-minute video]
(3) Highlights from today's meeting of UCSB Faculty Legislature:
- Governor proposes a 3.9% increase to UC budget, with the expectation that resident tuition/fees remain flat.
- Campus COVID-19 free testing programs are in place and vaccination on healthcare workers has begun.
- UCSB's response team is being led by Stuart Feinstein (MCDB) and Laura Polito, MD.
- SB County has reduced the priority vaccination age from 75 to 65, but vaccine availability is a different story.
- UCSB has lost two staff members, but no faculty members that we know of, to COVID-19.
- UC and Cal State campuses expect to return to in-person instruction in fall 2021.
- Our WASC accreditation will run out in 2023, and preparations to have it renewed are beginning.
- Proposal for a bioengineering PhD program (with possible future formation of an academic unit) approved.
(4) Book talk: In today's Stanford University webinar, Amir Ahmadi Arian discussed the back-story of his first novel in English, Then the Fish Swallowed Him (HarperCollins, 2020). The critically-acclaimed author's novel is about a disturbing, yet interdependent, relationship between an apolitical bus driver, who suddenly becomes an activist, and his interrogator at the notorious Evin Prison. The story's idea was born in 2004, when Tehran bus drivers went on strike and the city came to a standstill. The protagonist, Yunus, is put in jail and the bulk of the story happens in the Evin Prison.
Examining "prison novels," Ahmadi Arian realized that there wasn't much about the experience of solitary confinement, perhaps because the isolated environment doesn't provide much to write about. So, he talked to a few friends who had been kept in solitary confinement and realized that the relationship of the prisoner with their interrogators is the only thing that happens and one can write about (besides self-reflection and self-blame). Many prisoners found it difficult to talk about their experiences, but about half-dozen did, giving the author a window into their experiences.
Prison stories that deal with an interrogator character tend to present him as pure evil, and the author wanted to transcend this good-evil dichotomy. So, he focused on the system of interrogation, which is a kind of bureaucracy, with a hierarchy of interrogators and many internal rules, so that if you remove one interrogator and replace him with another, very little changes.
The title's "the Fish Swallowed Him" results from comparing the protagonist to Yunus the Prophet, with the belly of the fish/whale being the prison system and solitary confinement.
2021/01/13 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Surf and sunset on Goleta's Coal Oil Point Sand Beach: Photographed on Monday, January 11, 2021. [Center] Bazaar spice shop in Tabriz, Iran.
(2) Citing the First Amendment, the Liar-in-Chief and his enablers cry foul over social-media bans: The US Constitution's First Amendment says nothing about your right to advance conspiracy theories and have them published or spread. Its full text follows. It only says that laws curtailing free speech should not be passed (it's about Congress and not citizens or private companies).
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." [Image]
(3) Trump has been impeached for the second time: After all their tough talk about law & order and being outraged by the mob attack on the US Capitol, only 10 Republicans voted for impeachment!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Congresswoman Sherrill reports colleagues to cops, because they led rioters on Jan. 5th Capitol tours.
- Nike and other companies pledge not to support US lawmakers who voted to decertify election results.
- Mike Pompeo cancels his final trip to Europe, after EU and Luxembourg officials refused to meet him.
- Governor Gavin Newsom rejects tuition increases for University of California and Cal State University.
- Women political prisoners in Iran: A Persian report on why there are so many and how they are treated.
(5) "Social Justice Advocacy and the Culture of Outrage": This was the title of today's Pacific Views Lecture, sponsored by the UCSB Library. Professor Tania Israel (Feminist Studies, UCSB) spoke. A key take-away from the data she presented is that the divide between various political factions (left vs. right) isn't as large as either side thinks. For example, only 1/3 of Trump supporters believe that the mob attacking the US Capitol represents their views, whereas some 3/4 of liberals think that the mob was representative of Trump voters.
Another observation is that you can't really change someone's views by presenting arguments that make sense to you. The primary method to engage in conversations about differences is to show readiness to listen: listen to understand & learn, not to respond. Social media, acting as echo chambers, are part of the problem. We have to mind the language we use on our social-media posts.
In addition to the divide between left and right, there is a divide between those heavily engaged in political & social causes and the majority of Americans who are disengaged from political activity. There is a bigger divide between activists and those who choose to remain silent than there is between left and right!
Professor Israel's Web site offers resources about strategies for effective engagement, both with those who are our polar opposites as well as those who are on our side, but disagree in details or favor different strategies for acting. Professor Israel's book, Beyond Your Bubble, and the flowchart seen in this image (one that will resolve all political conflict in our country!) are examples.
2021/01/12 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Unemployed liars, who may want to erase their association with Trump from their resumes. [Center] IEEE Women in Engineering affinity groups see significant worldwide growth in 2020. [Right] Turkey sandwiches from a couple of days ago, with preparation steps shown (see the last item below).
(2) "History of Bab and Baha'i movements": This was the title of a presentation by Mr. Ala Alizadeh in the Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68).
In 1844, Siyyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi [1819-1850], began a movement by claiming that he was the promised redeemer (Mahdi) of Islam and took the title "Bab" ("the gate" in Arabic). Followers of Bab were armed and were seen as threats by Iran's government, which executed him in 1850.
Thirteen years after Bab's execution, one of his followers, Bahaullah (Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri, 1817-1892), founded the Baha'i faith as fulfillment of Bab's prophecy. Followers of Bahaullah are known as Baha'is; little trace of Babism, as a separate faith, has remained in the world. Abdul-Baha [1844-1921], the son of Bahaullah, succeeded him as the faith's leader.
Even though the originators of the Baha'i faith were Muslims, the faith isn't considered a branch of Islam. Islamic leaders, who consider Muhammad to be God's last prophet, view the Baha'i faith as illegitimate and its teachings as blasphemous. This is why Baha'is are mistreated in today's Islamic Iran. Their treatment was much better during the Pahlavi dynasty, particularly during the reign of its second king, but even then, Islamic clerics were quite influential and applied pressure for the exclusion of Baha'is from holding public office or other positions where they could influence the society.
Bahaullah was expelled from Iran, first to Iraq, then to Turkey (Ottoman Empire), and, from there, to Israel, and was buried in Acre, Israel, in 1892. This is the main reason for the administrative center of the faith being located in Israel. The Iranian government often arrests Baha'is and, among the accusations it levels at them, cites spying for Israel.
Even though the Baha'i faith began in Iran, most followers of the faith live in other countries. Population figures from 2010 include: India 1.9M; USA 510K; Kenya 420K; Vietnam 390K; Congo 280K; Philippines $280K; Iran 250K. The figure for Baha'is in Iran must be taken with a grain of salt, given that openly admitting to being a Baha'i is quite dangerous. Many Baha'is left Iran after the Islamic Revolution, but, again, reliable figures for the number who departed Iran do not exist.
[Recording of the event: 154-minute video; start at the 00:23:00 mark; the passcode is: 0dE!G.+2]
A reliable info/news source on the Baha'is is bahai.org/, which also has a Persian site, bahai.org/fa/. Baha'is in the US also have a Web site, bahai.us/. A couple of YouTube videos summarize the origins and teachings of the Baha'i faith. [Part 1, Origins & The Bab (20 minutes); Part 2, Bahaullah & His Teachings (24 minutes)]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump claims he did nothing wrong. Pence indicates that he won't invoke the 25th Amendment.
- Mitch McConnell and several other Republicans reportedly approve of impeaching Trump.
- Anti-Nazis on-line: Amateur sleuths who work tirelessly to expose Nazis and other right-wing extremists.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Fauci says immunity from Trump requires two doses of impeachment!
(4) Final thought for the day: I posted a photo of a mortadella sandwich with Barbari bread a few days ago, which generated some excitement but also produced complaints about showing only the completed sandwich and not all of its ingredients. In the words of one friend, "I want some naked pictures"! So, tonight's sandwiches are presented in a reverse strip-tease format. The bread is Costco's artisan rolls (look like ciabatta bread, but the texture is a bit different). Other ingredients are thin turkey slices, savory cheddar cheese, broccoli sprouts, dill pickles, tomatoes, and mayo/mustard.
2021/01/11 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Just out: MAGA "Capitol Invasion" Lego-blocks set! [Center] Commemorating victims of Baha'is' persecution in Iran (see the last item below). [Right] A well-funded campaign to recall California's Governor Gavin Newsom: An Irvine company (a possible shell, to avoid disclosing the donors) has contributed $0.5M to the recall effort. I took this photo on Sunday 1/10 in Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace.
(2) For my Persian-speaking readers: A brave soul addresses Supreme Leader Khamenei, chiding him for not being accountable to people and endangering the lives of 80 million Iranians by his unilateral decision to ban the import of COVID-19 vaccines from the West. [13-minute video]
(3) Los Angeles hospitals are in dire straits: A niece of mine, who is a nurse, posted a frightening Facebook status on what she and her colleagues are facing at the Cedar Sinai Hospital. Here's a report from LA Times.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Info sought on 10 men captured in these images during the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
- As if six deaths weren't enough, the January 6 DC insurrection may turn into a super-spreader event.
- I'm not an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, but his message about the Jan. 6 DC riot in this video is spot-on.
- Time to re-examine some older conspiracy theories: The myth of the Rothschilds. [English] [Persian]
- Iranians can dance: And they do it with gusto! Unknown location and cast.
- Iranian cuisine: This restaurant tray of rice and meat dishes is prepared for a party of 6-8! [Video]
(5) Upcoming IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Professor Misha Sra (Department of Computer Science, UCSB) will speak on Zoom under the title "Perceptual Engineering" (Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 6:30 PM PST). You don't have to be an IEEE member to attend. Details and registration link.
(6) Zoom event on "Violence and Society": Moderated by PhD scholars Ozlem Has and Nasim Basiri and featuring panelists Parthasarathi Muthukaruppan (Ass't Prof. of Cultural Studies, EFL), Fred Petrosian (journalist & researcher), and Junaid Ahmad (Dir. Center for Islam and Decoloniality). Sat., Jan. 16, 2021, 9:00 AM PST.
(7) Final thought for the day (On the plight of Iranian Baha'is): A forthcoming Zoom presentation on the history of the Baha'i faith produced misgivings among a group of my friends, who feared that the discussion might deteriorate into a shouting match. I, for one, am eager to learn about the history of the Baha'i faith, given the shame I feel for not speaking up much sooner in defense of this persecuted religious minority by Iranian mullahs and their goons. Fear was one reason. My own unsteady status as a member of another religious minority in Iran was another. After leaving Iran, I became more aware of the intensity and all-encompassing nature of the persecution and the fear component was removed. Hence, my current activism to expose the Iranian regime's shameful treatment of the Baha'is. [In Persian]
2021/01/10 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & Bottom left] Architects turn drab apartment buildings into sights to behold. [Bottom center] Twitter parodies multiply, after Donald Trump, aka John Barron, is banned from the platform. [Bottom right] Cover image of Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (see the last item below).
(2) Persian poetry and music: Artists from several countries perform a song based on Sa'adi's famous poem.
Opening verse: Human beings are members of a whole | In creation of one essence and soul [In Persian]
(3) Trump supporters planned the Capitol siege on-line, in plain sight: Exchanging messages on public forums, they talked about what to bring, how to storm the building, and what to use to handcuff lawmakers. Researchers catalogued the chatter and knew pretty much what would transpire. Many of the participants said they were following Trump's orders. With all the advance information, why the Capitol police was unprepared remains a mystery. US intelligence agencies must be in disarray not to be able to connect these very obvious dots! Trump supporters are already planning the next event.
(4) Book review: Zuboff, Shoshana, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, MP3 audiobook, read by Nicol Zanzarella, Hachette Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Industrial capitalism is based on controlling labor and consumer goods to amass capital. In information capitalism, knowledge of behaviors and thoughts is exploited for profit. Data required for gaining such knowledge are obtained via surveillance, often without consent, hence the alternative term "surveillance capitalism." Zuboff, Professor Emerita of Harvard Business School, is highly qualified to survey this domain and set up a framework, including the required terminology, needed for defining the problems and thinking about solution methods.
Going from exploiting behavioral data to trying to control behaviors, for even greater financial gain under the guise of improving efficiency and productivity, is a rather small step, leading to political or technological dictatorships. In essence, today's focus on predicting human behavior, as done with recommender systems, will give way to more or less deterministic behavior that is even easier to exploit.
Zuboff takes us through the slow but steady process of tech companies like Google and Facebook exerting ever-greater control over our behavioral data, in part by obfuscating their data collection and sharing policies and partly by cozying up to politicians and social-media influencers to have us believe that massive data collection is in our best interests or that it is inevitable in today's information-based society.
Zuboff draws parallels between surveillance capitalism's instrumentarianism (means of collecting data) to ideas advanced by Hana Arendt in The Origin of Totalitarianism. Even though she points out the distinction between state-run totalitarianism and business-run instrumentarianism, in terms of both objectives and means, the distinction is quickly disappearing, as illustrated in the case of the Chinese government and its giant tech companies such as Huawei, or Iran's throttling access to the Internet and running social-media surveillance.
Unfortunately, in the US, overzealous deregulation led to tech companies being tasked with self-regulation. Examples of disastrous consequences abound, from Facebook running behavioral experiments involving human subjects, without the required checks and balances which are the norms for such experiments, Google using its StreetView program to gather extremely private information by raising its cameras to peer into people's homes, and certain models of Rumba robotic vacuum-cleaners generating and transmitting floorplan maps, as they crisscross the rooms of people's houses.
Facebook, Google, Apple, and others also set surveillance-friendly default privacy settings and make it as difficult as possible to change those settings. Privacy-policy disclosures have become so long and convoluted that barely anyone reads them before clicking on the "agree" button, and even if one reads the agreements, opting out is often not a practical alternative. One ally for tech companies' obfuscation strategies is the "division of knowledge" counterpart to yesterday's "division of labor," that is, ensuring that no-one has a full picture of exactly what goes on in a complex information system.
A major take-away from this book is that self-regulation doesn't work for such powerful tech companies. There are some whistle-blowers around, but they are few and far in between. The "division of knowledge" paradigm ensures that no one has the ability to connect the dots. Errors and biases exposed in facial recognition systems constitute the tip of the iceberg of potential abuse and unethical data-exploitation.
The threat of terrorism led to the installation of more surveillance cameras and to citizens coming to accept these cameras as necessary for safety. Other surveillance tools are often justified similarly or by resorting to the notions of efficiency and convenience. Whether this book mobilizes the masses to demand transparency or leads to tech companies digging in and improving their obfuscation strategies remains to be seen.
2021/01/09 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Fine sample of Persian love poetry, by M. Zavareh. [Top center] Remembering the devastating mud-flow in Montecito, just to the south of Santa Barbara: Photos from January 9, 2018. [Top right] My message to fellow Iranian-Americans. [Bottom left] Khamenei has banned Iran's purchase of American and British COVID-19 vaccines, after reportedly being vaccinated himself. [Bottom center] Donald J. Trump on the cover of Newsweek magazine: He is no longer just a joke; he is a serious threat! [Bottom right] Lady Liberty to Trump: "Enough is enough!"
(2) It's safe to say that DJT's dream of having his face added to Mount Rushmore has gone down the drain: Legislation is being proposed to prevent his name from ever appearing on a federal building or property.
(3) Police officers in front of the US Capitol were seen wrestling with the mob of Trump supporters: Where were their batons? Tasers? Rubber bullets?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Some pro-Trump insurrectionists talked about wanting to hang Mike Pence at the US Capitol. [Reuters]
- Rebuttal to those who say what happened on Jan. 6 did not represent America: It actually did! [NYT video]
- A giant step backward in gender equity: All 140,000 US jobs lost in December were women's.
- Masih Alinejad calls on Twitter to ban Khamanei's account until Iran restores Internet access to its citizens.
- Musical prodigy plays her new trumpet after losing hers when she fled political unrest in Venezuela.
(5) Iran's Conspiracy-Theorist-in-Chief: Khamenei issues order to ban the purchase of American and British COVID-19 vaccines. This order endangers the lives of Iranians, including front-line medical personnel, 3000 of whom have fled Iran in recent months. It is also a dog-whistle to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps smugglers to flood the black market with imported vaccines, selling them to the rich at many times the actual price.
[The photo in this Facebook post shows Kamenei's son, who recently visited Britain for medical treatment.]
(6) Tweet from actress Pin Young: My tenant who rents my guest house told his friends to break into my house. They broke a bunch of shit but thankfully weren't successful in occupying it, and I got out in time. His lease is up on January 20th anyway, so should I let him finish up his lease or kick him out now?
(7) A final thought: Cabinet secretaries opting to resign two weeks before Inauguration Day are likely doing it not out of disgust but to protect themselves against having to participate in invoking the 25th Amendment.
2021/01/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Today is the first anniversary of the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, as it took off from Tehran Airport: All 176 civilians on board, mostly Iranians living in or heading to Canada, were killed. So many promising lives lost to the cruelty and paranoia of a despised autocratic regime (cartoon of an IRGC general "honoring" his victims is from IranWire). [Top right] T-shirt for everyone who's flabbergasted by years of lies and stupid pronouncements. [Bottom left] Statue of beloved Persian poet/mystic Mowlavi (Rumi) in Buca, Izmir, Turkey. [Bottom center] Mark Zuckerberg explains why Facebook has blocked Trump from posting on its platform. [Bottom right] Statue of Achaemenid Emperor Cyrus the Great in Tajikistan's capital city, Doshanbeh.
(2) A history of the Internet, from the mouth of one of its pioneers and influencers: Dr. Vinton Cerf, an early networking innovator at UCLA and the current Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, is interviewed by Jessica Bell in this 33-minute ACM ByteCast.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- After Twitter's permanent ban, Trump tried and failed to tweet from other accounts under his control.
- Boeing to pay $2.5 billion in fines for criminal charges resulting from two crashes of its 737 MAX jetliner.
- Nasrin Sotoudeh is on a 3-day medical leave from prison, where she is serving a 33-year sentence.
- Persian music: Dissident Narges Mohammadi sings a protest song to commemorate Flight PS752 victims.
- Precision Kurdish dancing in Turkey. [1-minute video]
- Walking this afternoon on a most-scenic part of the UCSB campus. [3-minute narrated video]
- American College of Tehran [1929-1932]: History and memorial album of what later became Alborz HS.
(4) Glimpses of the command center for the January 6, 2021, DC riot: The commanders seem to be enjoying themselves, sheltered in the White House, while urging their followers to "fight."
(5) In case you're worried about a madman with nuclear codes: Fortunately, the President having "his fingers on the nuclear button" is a figure of speech. There are safeguards in place, and a few other people must go along for actual launch of nuclear weapons. The military is bound to obey the Commander-in-Chief, but they also take an oath to the US Constitution, so they can neutralize the madman by disobeying his command. The military is more likely to obey if enemy missiles approaching the US are detected. In other cases, with no imminent threat, they will take time to reflect and consult.
(6) Final thought for the day: We have a new example of "White Privilege": The ability to storm the US Capitol building, while carrying guns, without being called a terrorist.
2021/01/07 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Washington, DC, security, during the BLM protests and yesterday's MAGA mob assault. [Center] Here's a gift to Jewish supporters of our treasonous President: A "very fine" MAGA person, with his "Camp Auschwitz: Work Brings Freedom" sweatshirt at the US Capitol! [Right] Names of terrorists who stormed and took over the US Capitol are being released one by one: They are giving interviews and post social-media messages, indicating that they take pride in what they did. Not a single one of the identified terrorists is an Antifa member, as claimed by Trump supporters and right-wing media.
(2) Americans should stop subsidizing the posh lifestyles of super-spreading preachers: If Jesus can protect them and their flock against COVID-19, he can surely provide them with funding as well!
(3) The forgotten first wife of Albert Einstein: Mileva Maric was a brilliant physicist too, and there are indications that she influenced her husband's work. Yet, very little has been written about her.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Four dead in DC terrorist attack on the US Capitol: One from gunshot, three from medical emergencies.
- Twitter & Facebook locked Donald Trump's account and warned about a possible permanent suspension.
- New idea for a TV series: "Duck Dynasty Goes to Washington"
- A hopeful note: James Corden of "The Late Show" reflects on yesterday's events in Washington, DC.
- Persian music: A touching vocal-piano rendition of "Ashegh Shodam Man." [Video]
- Persian music: Young Iranians performing memorable songs from their parents' generation. [Video]
(5) Trump on the Charlottesville mob, 2017: "Very fine people on both sides." Trump to the Washington DC, mob, 2021: "We love you. You are very special." [Climbing walls: Tehran, 1979, vs. Washington DC, 2021]
(6) Here we go (as predicted by many): Some Trump supporters suggest that it was a leftist mob, bearing false flags, that attacked the US Capitol, causing 4 deaths and extensive property damage.
(7) Lindsey Graham on Trump: "He is a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot" (2015).
"I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office" (2016).
"What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy some kind of kook, not fit to be President" (2017).
"Trump and I have had a hell of a journey, but enough is enough" (2021).
What will shameless Lindsey Graham say in 2022, 2023, and beyond?
(8) Reaching out to my students in these difficult times: Here's a message I have sent to my students at UCSB.
We are all experiencing difficulties, as we work to fulfill our educational missions and goals, while facing a vicious pandemic. Our task may have gotten harder by political unrest unfolding in the United States, which may signal at least a few weeks of turmoil. You can reach me via e-mail or Zoom office hours, as always. Given the unprecedented challenges in front of us, I am providing you with my cell phone number. Please feel free to reach out to me with any academic or personal problems. Remember that we are in this together. Stay well!
2021/01/06 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Georgia takes another step in the direction of turning blue: In the US Senate runoff races, both Democratic challengers prevailed over Republican incumbents (Raphael Warnock's win over Kelly Loeffler has been declared, while Jon Ossof leads David Perdue by 0.4 point and is expected to pull off a victory). While these results give the Democrats theoretical control over the Senate, the 50-50 composition is highly fragile. However, even this shaky control makes a big difference, when bills are actually brought to the floor for discussion and positions of all Senators on various issues become known. Mitch McConnell shielded Republican Senators from embarrassment by disallowing certain sensitive issues to even be discussed.
[Addendum: A mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol; lawmakers were asked to shelter in place.]
(2) "Social Justice Advocacy and the Culture of Outrage": The next Pacific Views Lecture, sponsored by the UCSB Library, will feature Professor Tania Israel (Feminist Studies, UCSB): Wed., Jan. 13, 2021, 4:00 PM PST.
(3) "In Solidarity: Then the Fish Swallowed Him": Amir Ahmadi Arian will discuss his first novel in English, Then the Fish Swallowed Him, published by HarperCollins in 2020. The critically-acclaimed author's novel tells the story of a disturbing, yet interdependent, relationship between an apolitical bus driver, who suddenly becomes an activist, and his interrogator at Tehran's infamous Evin Prison. Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, 10:00 AM PST.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Does the thought of Trump running in 2024 scare you? How about Iran's Ahmadinejad making a comeback?
- Iran's parliament to discuss a bill that would mandate the elimination of Israel by 2041.
- MacArthur Fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates to speak for UCSB Arts & Lectures: Tue., Jan. 12, 2021, 5:00 PM PST.
- Beautiful voice: Indonesian young woman Ikka Zepthia's cover of "I Will Always Love You." [Video]
- Historic photo of musical collaborators in Iran. [Photo, with legend in Persian]
- Persian music: French singer Charlotte Bozzi and Arash Fouladvand perform "Aghrab-e Zolf-e Kajet."
(5) Spreading COVID-19 misinformation is apparently good business: Several fake-news and conspiracy-theory media outlets received pandemic-relief aid from the US government.
(6) Medical debate of the day: Save the second vaccine doses for those who have received their first doses or use them to vaccinate others? (Or, which is better: x vaccinations at ~95% effectiveness or 2x at ~85%?)
(7) Lawyers used to pride themselves on the number of cases they had won: Not any more! They are marching behind Trump, filing frivolous lawsuits with no chance of winning, just to please their King (or to avoid his ire)!
(8) "A History of Iranian Women's Poetry": A lecture by Dr. Ruhangiz Karachi, presented by University of Toronto, Friday, January 15, 2021, 1:00 PM PST.
(9) General Qasem Soleimani of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps was untouchable while alive: A year after being assassinated, his corrupt practices begin to emerge, implicating other Islamic Republic officials as well.
2021/01/05 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] GOP Senators who plan to object to Joe Biden's electoral victory on January 6. [Center] Memory from January 4, 2015: A love couplet by the beloved Azeri poet Mohammad-Hossein Shahriar. [Right] Round-table discussion on data abuse and tech divide (see the next-to-the-last item below).
(2) Women in STEM receive some overdue recognition during 2020: For example, NASA named an under-construction telescope after Vera Rubin and the successor to Hubble Space Telescope after Nancy Grace Roman.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump may be planning a trip to Scotland the day before Joe Biden's inauguration.
- Los Angeles County orders ambulance crews to conserve oxygen, as area hospitals face shortages.
- Russian hackers viewed some of Microsoft's source code.
- Proud Boys leader arrested in Washington, DC, for torching a Black-Lives-Matter banner.
- New-Year's-Day car collision in Fresno County, California, kills 9, including 7 children, ages 6-15.
- Memory from Jan. 4, 2018: "Having been bitten by a snake makes you fear a black-and-white twine."
(4) Round-table on "Data Abuse & Tech Divide: Ethical Considerations, Social Impacts, and Policies": In this morning's Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68), Professor Sirous Yasseri and I led a round-table discussion on certain ethical and social aspects of high tech.
Key subareas in the domain of data abuse include hazards of big data, surveillance economy, consumer protection (laws), ethics of tech (AI, ML), fake news/reviews, and digital slavery. Subareas in the domain of tech divide include fair access to info tech, tech haves & have-nots, public infrastructure, tech literacy (techeracy), digital natives/immigrants, and digital dark ages. Today's round-table was the fourth and final installment in this discussion, which took the form of lectures in the first three parts.
Here are a set of questions that will allow you to think about the challenging issues involved:
Q1. If Russia can hack the biggest tech companies and "secure" government sites, is any data really secure?
Q2. What is Section 230 (1996 law) and why many believe that its outdated provisions should be revised?
Q3. Is Julian Assange a hero or a villain? Tensions between personal freedoms/responsibilities & social order.
Q4. Banks routinely pay fines, but continue to misbehave. Will privacy violations really stop with fines?
Q5. Should access to the Internet & digital-literacy education be declared basic rights and thus subsidized?
Q6. How do we impress the fact that info tech isn't really neutral and comes with a vast potential for abuse?
Q7. Given info-tech's global reach, is it advisable to have different national laws or do we need a global law?
Q8. With expanding use of AI, do we need machine-abuse laws or can we apply existing laws to such cases?
(5) Today's discussion of abuses by powerful tech companies reminded me of my 20-year-old "letter to the editor" about how greed influences the computer industry (from IEEE Computer magazine, April 2000).
2021/01/03 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The first beautiful sunrise of 2021 in Goleta, California, as seen from my bedroom window early this morning. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Wildlife evolving with technology (barcode giving way to QR code). [Right] "End of an Error": Special T-shirts for January 20, 2021, are here!
(2) Extortion: Georgia's Secretary of State releases parts of his 1-hour phone conversation with Donald Trump in which he is threatened by Trump and asked to find enough votes for him to overturn the election result.
(3) Trump secretly wants the two incumbent Republican Georgia Senators to lose to their Democratic challengers: Their win would signal that there is something wrong with Trump, who lost in Georgia.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's threatening/bullying 62-minute call to Georgia's Secretary of State: Full recording.
- Long-time journalist Larry King, 87, has been hospitalized with COVID-19.
- Quote: "Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- Memory from January 3, 2016: Apt substitutes for Persian karaoke music.
- Beautiful Azeri love song: Duet by old-time singers Aref and Yaghoub Zoroofchi.
(5) Donald Trump will go down in history as the worst US President ever: Mike Pence will go along with him as the least-consequential VP; as some Trump supporters put it, a "glorified letter-opener."
(6) We are so Northern-Hemisphere-focused that we forget about people down-under, who don't dream of a white Christmas, but head to the beaches this time of year.
(7) Chicken nuggets, prepared without killing any chickens: Cultured meat, already approved for use in Singapore will revolutionize the food industry and help solve world-hunger and climate-change problems. Other than sparing animals' lives and eliminating animal cruelty in meat production facilities, production of cultured meat uses less energy and prevents diseases transmitted via animals.
(8) What is Section 230? A law enacted in 1996 has shaped the Internet, causing lies, libel, and bullying to go unpunished. The law essentially says that Internet platforms are not liable for what users post. People's lives have been ruined by this shortsighted law. Examples of those suffering as a result of Section 230 can be found in this 13-minute segment of CBS "60 Minutes" program. One woman was accused, in some 70 posted videos, as being a murderer responsible for spreading COVID-19. A father was unsuccessful in removing the video of his daughter's murder from YouTube.
(9) Final thought for the day: "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." ~ Samuel Adams
2021/01/02 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] IEEE Spectrum magazine's annual technology review issue, January 2021, strikes an optimistic chord. [Center] Cover image of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (see the last item below). [Right] The largest known prime number, discovered in 2018, is the Mersenne prime 2^82,589,933 – 1, possibly the 51st one, with 24,862,048 digits.
(2) Cultural backwardness: In Iran, a woman raising kids by herself isn't called "single mom" or "head of household"; She is deemed an unsupervised woman (zan-e bi sarparast)!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump to Kushner over increased COVID-19 testing: "I'm going to lose, and it's going to be your fault."
- Trump supporters call Mike Pence a "glorified envelope-opener" after he challenges their lawsuit.
- The Russian hack of US government agencies and big businesses is much more serious than thought.
- Mexicans are tired of a double-surge: COVID-19 cases and American tourists fleeing lockdowns.
- Alien technology visited Earth in 2017: Thus claims Harvard theoretical physicist Avi Loeb in his new book.
- Iranians don't let rain or snow stop them from broiling kebobs! [Tweet, with photo]
- Persian music: A wonderful piece played on tar and tombak, in honor of the late tar maestro Jalil Shahnaz.
(4) Book review: Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Random House, 2018. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I received this book as a gift in appreciation of a technical talk I gave to Sharif University of Technology Association's Seattle Chapter. Having previously read and reviewed Taleb's opus, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, I really looked forward to reading this new volume, and I wasn't disappointed.
Skin in the Game can be viewed as a continuation, or elaboration upon certain aspects, of Taleb's The Black Swan and Antifragile. My assessment of The Black Swan was very-positive for the most part, but I also leveled some criticism at Taleb's bashing of scientists and the scientific establishment.
[Facebook note, dated October 30, 2011] [My 5-star review on GoodReads]
I have not read Antifragile, subtitled Things that Gain from Disorder, in full, but have pursued excerpts of, information about, and discussions on it. The notion of antifragility is different from robustness, so there are three kinds of nations, societies, businesses, or even individuals: fragile, robust, and antifragile. Size creates efficiencies (in companies or countries) but also increases fragility. Risk must be visible. Failure, and learning from it, is crucial. I heard Taleb give a talk entitled "Lessons for Volatile Times" as part of UCSB's Arts & Lectures Program in October 2013, where he argued that the opposite of fragile isn't resilient or robust; the latter indicate the absence of fragility, not its opposite. What we deem resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better as it faces challenges or abuse. Certain natural and human-made systems thrive from adversity, variations, and uncertainty. Trying to impose order on these systems (such as attempts at controlling economic swings and cycles) is detrimental to their health.
In Skin in the Game, Taleb continues his attacks on various groups, essentially portraying everyone but himself as a know-nothing pretender. These criticisms, which are for the most part unjustified and/or too harsh, can be ignored by the reader, in favor of the book's main message, which is solid. Specifically, Taleb states that the book is about four topics:
- Uncertainty and the reliability of knowledge ("BS detection")
- Symmetry in human affairs (fairness, justice, responsibility, reciprocity)
- Information-sharing in transactions (for open and honest deals)
- Rationality in complex systems and in the real world
A primary example of desirable symmetry is an investor both benefitting from good decisions and suffering personal losses from bad ones. Investing with other people's money, raking bonuses when all goes well and suffering no consequences when disaster strikes, a norm in today's US financial industry, is clearly both asymmetric and unbecoming. So, it makes sense to demand that investors have skin in the game.
The poster child of this kind of asymmetry is former US Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, who earned $120 million from Citibank in the decade leading to the crash of 2008. Rubin got to keep all that money and paid no penalties, once Citibank nearly collapsed, before it was bailed out. The likes of Rubin boast about their competence when investment values soar and blame uncertainty when they collapse!
The same kind of asymmetry is seen today in politicians starting wars or making policy decisions with immediate benefits to their supporters, leaving the calamitous consequences for their successors to handle. Another example of asymmetry is seen in the observation that because of trade deals with the Middle East, New Zealand produces halal lamb almost exclusively (98%), even though it also exports meat to other regions of the world. Succumbing to the will of a minority and opting for one kind of meat, rather than two separate production lines, makes economic sense for the producers but leaves buyers paying a higher price. Selling a car which you know to be defective to an unsuspecting buyer is an example of informational asymmetry.
The preceding paragraphs convey the gist of Skin in the Game. As is fashionable in today's publishing scene, authors continue to beat a dead horse, presenting an unseemly number of instances and case studies. If you prefer to see a lot of examples and details, then, by all means, read this wonderful book. If you don't want to put so much skin in the game, listening to Taleb's 61-minute talk at Google is an excellent alternative.
2021/01/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] My New-Year 2021 puzzle: Every year, as a new year number emerges, I try to form the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... by putting math symbols (including parentheses) between its digits. In the case of 2021, I have been able to do this for numbers up to 27. The first few appear below as hints and the rest are left to you as puzzles! 0 = 2 + 0 – 2 * 1; 1 = 2 + 0 – 2 + 1; 2 = 2 * 0 + 2 * 1; 3 = 2 * 0 + 2 + 1. [Right] Eric H. Cline's course History of Ancient Israel (see the last item below).
(2) Gone are the days when we learned about the outcome of a US presidential election in early November and then relaxed until January 20: We now have to worry about every step of the way, including the ex-president actually moving out!
(3) COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID ... That's all they talk about. And, believe me, after November 4, there will be no mention of COVID: Well Trump sure isn't talking about it, but everyone else is!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Congress overrides Trump's veto of the defense authorization bill, a first during his presidency.
- Math lesson for Trump followers, who keep pointing out that their King got 74M votes: 81M > 74M
- Argentinian women celebrate the passage of a law that allows legal, safe, and free abortions.
- Vocal academy student Tori Matthieu does a fine job of performing Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." [Video]
(5) Course review: Cline, Professor Eric H. (George Washington University), A History of Ancient Israel: From the Patriarchs Through the Romans, MP3 audio-course in "The Modern Scholars" series, Recorded Books, 2008.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The relatively small piece of land constituting today's Israel gets more than its share of news coverage and heated discussion. This is in part due to the long-running conflict between Israelis on one side and Palestinians & their Arab/Iranian backers on the other, and partly due to the region's significance to followers of Abrahamic religions forming slightly more than half of the world's population.
This history course covers a tad over two millennia, from ~2000 BCE (the time of Abraham) to early days of Christianity. It is based on stories in the Hebrew Bible, which are corroborated, or at least not contradicted, by archaeological evidence. Where there is no direct historical evidence, consistency with existing records of movements, life-styles, and conflicts were sought.
An example of the rigor with which history is presented in this course is Cline's presentation of Exodus. According to the Hebrew Bible, Exodus occurred around 1450 BCE. Some scholars cite dates as late as 1250 BCE, given better match to written records and archaeological evidence. A compromise view is that Exodus wasn't a single mass-migration event, but a gradual flight that took place over the course of two centuries.
Similarly, the number "600,000 military-age males" cited in the Hebrew Bible for the size of Exodus (that is, around 3 million people in all) is deemed vastly off-base, perhaps by a factor of 100. Such a large group of people, marching 10-across would form a line of 200-300 km, which means crossing the red sea on foot would have taken weeks!
Historians generally discount the Hebrew Bible as a book describing actual people and events, but rather view it as a record of myths based on some facts and real people. Cline demonstrates that there is a good match between the Hebrew Bible and historical artifacts and writings, beginning with ~700 BCE. This history is still unfolding, as new evidence and counter-evidence is discovered on a regular basis. For example, the first extra-Biblical mentions of the House of David, within inscriptions uncovered in northern Israel in the 1990s, led to revisions to the history of Kings David and Solomon.
The land we now call Israel has seen many occupiers over its long history, including the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes, Islamists and others. Details about where the Lost Tribes ended up, how the two major rebellions of Israelites unfolded, and many other gaps in the region's history are subjects of heated disputes. This course provides a solid foundation upon which to build further knowledge and to follow various historical debates.
Blog Entries for 2020
2020/12/31 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] As we end of a very challenging year, may the coming weeks and months bring you the joys of normalcy, and the ability to untie the tough knots created by a dysfunctional, swamp-enabled presidency. [Top center] A Woman's Vital Signs (see the next item below). [Top right] My unusual sandwich for lunch: Italian beef mortadella, with Iranian barbari bread. Highly recommended, freshly-baked or at least toasted! [Bottom left & right] UCSB's North Campus Open Space, this evening, on my return path from an afternoon walk (video). [Bottom center] Holiday spirit at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace.
(2) Book review: Ronaghi, Mahnaz, Ladan Niknam, and Farzaneh Karampour, Alaa'em-e Hayaati-ye Yek Zan (In Persian), Ghoghnoos Publications, 2000. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Farzaneh Karampour [1954-] is a civil engineer by training, who started to write seriously beginning in 1996. I couldn't find much information on-line about the first two authors, other than a mention that Mahnaz Ronaghi is a university instructor and literary critic and that Ladan Niknam is a writer/poet.
The novel is in Persian, with the English translation of its title being A Woman's Vital Signs. The three authors coordinated with each other to write separate parts of the book, each part essentially telling the same story from the vantage point of a different protagonist.
Set in a hospital in Tehran, Iran, the novel depicts the lives of three dedicated nurses, as they go through their daily routines and interact with other staff at the hospital. Besides professional lives and relationships of the three nurse characters, we also learn about their personal lives, including emotional baggages they carry.
The three stories overlap substantially, giving the reader a chance to see each character from her own perspective as well as how she is seen/understood by the other two characters. The writing style and quality are uneven in the three parts, hence my 3-star rating is a generous average.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dr. Fauci is hopeful that vaccines will bring us normalcy by fall 2021, but warns of a dark winter ahead.
- Christmas music: Better late than never ... "Santa Baby" with Persian lyrics.
- Three minutes of mesmerizing music: "Libertango"
- "Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia": Free lecture, Mon. 2021/02/21, 10:00 AM PST.
(4) Final thought for the day, month, year, and decade: Happy New Year to my dear family and friends! Those who grew up in Iran view 20 as a sign of perfection (20 is the highest grade one can get in school, much like 100 in the West, and is also Persian slang for "perfect"). Unfortunately, the year 2020 was anything but doubly-perfect! Still, we learned a lot about what matters most from the horrible year we are putting behind. Hope that my motherland, Iran, and my adopted homeland, the United States of America, leave the chaos and bitterness of recent years behind and enter a gentler, less-hostile world. Let us remember that the source of our happiness is inside us and that we can make our world brighter by giving more and expecting less. Instead of going for big resolutions that are difficult to keep, I resolve to take small steps to improve myself and my surroundings. May you be empowered to take steps to reach your dreams in 2021! [Video]
2020/12/30 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Typical medical-clinic waiting room these days! [Top center] Stealing the Sun! [Top right] This T-shirt of mine celebrating women is already outdated: The text under the images, which reads "The Supremes," has faded and the recently-added fifth woman US Supreme-Court Justice is missing from it. [Bottom left] Goleta's Devereux Slough, which was nearly dry over the past weekend, looked wonderful on Tuesday, following Monday's heavy rainfall. [Bottom center] Tuesday afternoon's super-low tide brought many explorers and treasure-hunters to UCSB's West Campus Beach. [Bottom right] The surf was pretty good too!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's granting of pardons to war criminals violates international law, according to UN.
- What's the longest distance you can walk on dry land (no water crossings, except where there are bridges)?
- Boston Dynamics robots put on their dance moves! [3-minute video]
- Resting places of Iran's scientific and literary treasures outside Iran's borders. [14-minute video]
- Traveling Iran by train: DW documentary, narrated in English. [42-minute video]
- Iran demographics: Useful info, such as population, age structure, sex ratio, and life expectancy.
- Recitation of humorous Persian poetry, filled with political jabs: Unknown poet and venue. [5-minute video]
- Children sing in honor of the late maestro Mohammad Reza Shajarian. [2-minute video]
- Kurdish music and dancing: Uncredited performers at an unknown location. [1-minute video]
- Multi-lingual musical medley: An enjoyable 6-minute video, which includes a few Persian songs.
(3) Americans' most-admired persons: In the Gallup poll for 2020, Donald Trump overtakes Barack Obama as the most-admired man. Michelle Obama maintains her top position, followed by Kamala Harris.
(4) Mourning the loss of Iran's cultural sites: In its hay days, Tehran's Laleh Zaar Street was the home of numerous cinemas, playhouses, and night clubs. Very few of the sites, representing a mix of treasured and decadent culture, have survived.
(5) Medical encyclopedia in verse: This book was compiled, corrected, and published by the late Dr. Barat Zanjani (1924-2020) in 1987. It was written in 978 CE, more than 10 centuries ago, and is known in the West as Encyclopaedia Meysari. Here is an analysis and critique of the book.
2020/12/29 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Persian poetry: Remembering Forough Farrokhzad {1934-1967) on her birthday, 12/29, with a short love poem. [Top center] We are one with all living beings; indeed, with all of nature (see the last item below). [Top right] The Trumps play Monopoly: "Let's give everyone a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card before we begin—just in case" (The New Yorker). [Bottom left & center] My winter 2021 UCSB grad course on parallel processing (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Fall quarter 2020 is now in the history books: A few days ago, I finished the grading for my fall 2020 graduate course on fault-tolerant computing.
(2) Trumpists are throwing the GOP under the bus to save their King: The same GOP which enabled every single one of his vile actions, approved his judicial nominees, and saved him from being removed from office by conducting a sham Senate trial.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- From alt-right to witch-hunt: Alphabetical list of 32 words and phrases that characterized the Trump era.
- This single GIF image aptly summarizes the Trump presidency.
- Young woman talks about those imprisoned for studying or teaching at Baha'is underground university.
- Weight-gain saving time is ending: Remember to set your scale back 10 lbs. after the holidays!
- Memory from December 28, 2014: Iranian regional music from the Caspian-Sea coast. [Video]
- My attempt, four decades ago, at writing humorous Persian poetry. [Recitation video] [Text]
(4) Another international honor for Nasrin Sotoudeh: The brave attorney and human-rights activist has served significant jail time in Iran for speaking out against unjust laws and for defending other activists. In a Persian recorded message, Sotoudeh has thanked the American Bar Association for awarding her (along with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Billie Jean King) an Eleanor Roosevelt Prize for global human-rights advancement.
(5) Getting ready for winter 2021 quarter: I will be teaching a graduate course on parallel processing, with asynchronous, recorded lectures, assessed via homework assignments (40%) and a research paper (60%). Yesterday, I spent much of my time updating the course Web page with new research topics, bearing the theme "parallel processing for machine learning with emerging technologies."
Given demonstrated bias and unfairness in machine-learning algorithms, I will tie the research component of the course to the "UCSB Reads 2021" theme of racial justice. As part of their participation, students will get free copies of the UCSB Reads selection, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. [Review]
2020/12/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] People all around you may be hungry: They likely won't announce their hunger by holding up a sign, but data shows one in four Americans facing food insecurity today. Even before COVID-19, nearly 11% of Americans went hungry (source: NPR). Please donate generously to the charity of your choice! [Center] This beautiful triangular building in Ahvaz, Iran, has a very long history (see the next item below). [Right] An undated photo of my paternal grandmother, Sorahi (Serah in Hebrew; Older family members referred to her as Amneh Serah): She is shown doing exercises from an adult education textbook. Today is the anniversary of her passing.
(2) Beautiful architecture: This 1929 triangular building in Ahvaz, Iran, was designed by French architect Andre Godard (an avid fan of Middle-Eastern art, who also designed Hafiz's tomb in Shiraz) to house the central branch of National Bank in the city. It later housed the provincial government offices. When the allies occupied Ahvaz, the building constituted their command center. It changed occupants several other times, until it became the Medical College of Jondi Shapur University in 1958. Various sections of Jondi Shapur University occupied it until 1971, when College of Literature and Foreign Languages moved in. The building has been undergoing renovations since 2010, when the latter college moved out. A more complete history, in Persian, can be found on this tourism Web page.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's bluff on vetoing the stimulus & government spending bill was called: He signed the bill as is.
- The Nashville, Tennessee, explosion was likely a suicide attack aimed at destroying AT&T's Internet hub.
- A parked box-truck in Lebanon, near Nashville, is being investigated as possibly containing explosives.
- Avalanches on mountain range to the north of Tehran, Iran, a popular getaway for hikers and skiers, kill 12.
- Memories, from December 27, 2014. [Facebook post] [Tweet]
(4) The six misconceptions about heuristics: Gerd Gigerenzer has asserted that heuristics and their aims are different from what many people believe. We don't use heuristics merely for lack of better alternatives. They are integral parts of our lives and decision-making processes. Here are the six key misconceptions:
- People use heuristics only because they have limited cognitive capacities.
- Limited congnitive capacities are always bad.
- Heuristics lead to second-best outcomes whereas optimizing leads to best outcomes.
- Labels such as availability and representativeness "explain" behavior.
- Everything except optimization and logic is a heuristic.
- More information is always better.
Reference: Gigerenzer, Gerd, "Heuristics," Chapter 2 in Heuristics and the Law, G. Gigerenzer & C. Engel (eds.), MIT Press, 2006, pp. 17-44. [Link]
(5) Final thought for the day: "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." ~ Albert Einstein
2020/12/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Charles Kushner is one of the criminals pardoned by Trump: There are also four war criminals and a host of former partners in crime, who could potentially incriminate Trump, if they turned on him to seek leniency. [Right] Cover image for Algorithms to Live By (see the last item below).
(2) Example of Trump's priorities and worries amid a pandemic: He criticizes fashion magazines for not giving Melania any cover shoots during his presidency! [Well, I view this as yet another example of Trump ruining the lives of his family members and other people around him, as he promotes himself!]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Kwanzaa (Swahili for "first fruits of the harvest"), the holiday that celebrates the African diaspora!
- With 331,000 US deaths from COVID-19, one in 1000 of 330M Americans have died of the disease.
- Nashville terror attack was apparently intended to create chaos and fear, not human casualties.
- Nicole Wallace calls out Chris Christie for making a political calculation to get the Trump stink off him.
- Today is the third anniversary of Vida Movahed taking off her headscarf in public to spark a movement.
(4) Book review: Christian, Brian and Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Scinece of Human Decisions, Picador, 2016. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is about how computer science theories can help us in our daily decision-making. Brian Christian, who comes from a computer science background, is the author of The Most Human Human and has had writings published in several noteworthy venues. Tom Griffiths, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley, is a widely-honored author of 200+ scientific papers. The book has been praised not just for connecting computer science algorithms to decision-making in daily-life and management contexts but also as an accessible (non-mathematical) primer on algorithms and a philosophical treatise on computational and decision-making processes.
The book consists of 11 chapters, or main ideas, sandwiched between an insightful introduction and an enlightening conclusion, titled "Computational Kindness," which is followed by 52 pages of notes, 20 pages of references, and a 13-page index. I will list and briefly discuss the 11 chapters at the end of my review. Computational kindness means avoiding burdening yourself or others with unneeded computation, such as presenting or considering too many options.
Many of us have come to think of computers as cold, mechanical devices performing straightforward computations. We are thus rather surprised at the suggestion that computer science may hold life lessons for us. Modern computers are far from drudgery and answer-finding based on exhaustive calculations. They routinely use chance, latency-accuracy trade-offs, and approximations in rendering decisions. So, computers have moved in the direction of mimicking human brain's heuristic decision-making, the subject of behavioral economics and modern neuroscientific theories (see, e.g., my review of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow).
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2111105026
Uncertainty, time-constraints, incomplete information, and a rapidly-changing environment present us with the most-challenging instances of
problems studied by mathematicians and computer scientists. Rather than discard the hard-won insights from tackling such problems, we should use them as valuable tools for managing our lives. One key lesson is that considering ALL of our options may be debilitating. We should be prepared to accept a mess, not take along everything we might possibly need on trips, make random choices on occasion, relax, bide our time, backtrack, and forgive! This may sound like an oxymoron, but seeming irrational is one of the hallmarks of rational decision-making!
1. Optimal stopping: Consider a hiring process whereby you interview applicants one by one, making a yes/no decision for each. You can't go back to hire a person you previously rejected. How many people would you interview? You probably don't want to hire the first person. You don't want to hire the last person either. The first few interviews give you an idea of the strength of the pool of applicants, allowing you to make a hiring decision soon thereafter. Sure, your decision is likely non-optimal, but nothing in real life is! It turns out that rejecting the first 1/e = 37% of applicants is your best bet.
2. Explore/Exploit: We are often faced with a choice between exploring (say, going to a new restaurant) and exploiting (choosing a restaurant we already know and like). Each choice offers some benefits, making the decision difficult.
3. Sorting: Keeping things sorted makes life easier, but sorting has a non-trivial overhead, regardless of what algorithm you use.
4. Caching: Our memory capacity is quite limited, so we better keep only the very useful information there, which means making extensive use of notes and files. We also need strategies for evicting previously-stored information to make room for new, more useful, items.
5. Scheduling: Important questions in trying to make the best use of your time during the day include how to prevent a lower-priority task from blocking a higher-priority one and how to avoid thrashing (being left with scattered chunks of time that are unsuitable for doing important tasks).
6. Bayes's rule: We have prior probability information for various events. When a new event occurs, it may change our view of other events' probabilities. Three basic probability distributions (additive, Erlang; multiplicative, power-law; average, normal) are introduced and explained in elegant, non-mathematical terms.
7. Overfitting: Models should be kept as simple as possible (a simple model is more likely to be correct).
8. Relaxation: It's okay to set aside strict rules once in while in order to keep moving. Many real-life optimization problems are NP-hard, so insisting on finding optimal solutions would be debilitating.
9. Randomness: To create beauty and get out of tight spots in optimization schemes, randomness is essential. We have evolved, in part, as a result of chance and many difficult problems become easy with appropriate use of randomness.
10. Networking: Many ideas of networking, such as acknowledgments, handshaking, and congestion control find applications in our everyday life.
11. Game theory: This field is full of gems with important practical applications. Ideas such as "the prisoners' dilemma," Nash equilibria, dominant strategies, and "tragedy of the commons" are prominent examples.
The moral of the story is that there are deep parallels between problems that we encounter in our daily lives and problems that are studied by mathematicians and computer scientists. We tend to think of rational action as exhaustively evaluating our options and seeking an optimal solution. Real rational action many not consist of considering all options or finding exact, optimal solutions. We make concessions in the interest of solving problems in a timely manner.
If you are a computer scientist, this book gives you fresh ideas about how to use your CS knowledge to improve your life. If you are not, then this book will motivate you to study or take a course in algorithms.
2020/12/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] On Christmas Eve, my daughter went paddle-boarding on UCSB West Campus Beach near our house. I accompanied her, to walk a bit and snap some photos of her and the sunset. [Center] Prior Christmas Days at local Chinese eateries: This year, we had to settle for take-out!
(2) Home-organizing project: The kids and I have begun the long process of organizing, reducing, and simplifying our overflowing kitchen cupboards. We tackled the challenging spice/tea rack on 12/24, getting rid of old stuff, merging, and putting bagged items into labeled jars or other containers. [Photo]
(3) Life as a professor amid COVID-19: This is the title of an article in the December 2020 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. Professor Jay Liebowitz (Seton Hall U.) shares his experiences and some insights.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At $30 million, an 1830 edition of The Book of Mormon is deemed the most-expensive book in the world.
- Prominent Iranian-American journalist Homa Sarshar writes about her battle with COVID-19.
- Santa Barbara Piano Boys (Zeyn & Rhyan Schweyk @SBPianoBoys) play "Silent Night" with variations.
- Iranian regional music: "Ra'ana" from Guilan Province, set on the green mountains of the Caspian coast.
(5) The end of efficiency: Much of economics as a field of study, and of economic policies, is based on maximizing efficiency (read short-term profits/benefits). One thing we (re)learned from the COVID-19 experience is that resilience and sustainability (read long-term societal well-being) are more important than efficiency. I had previously posted about ideas of computer scientist Moshe Vardi in this area. Today, I came across an essay by Robert Skidelsky making the same point that efficiency is over-rated and that in future we must learn to focus on resilience and sustainability.
(6) Plagiarism detection presents a data-search challenge: This is the topic of an article in the December 2020 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. Easy access to billions of documents on the Internet has made plagiarism a snap and difficult to detect. Professor Preeti Chauhan (VP, Technical Activities, IEEE Reliability Society) describes plagiarism-detection tools, why the task is made difficult by poor paraphrasing and "rogeting" (copying text and replacing some words by synonyms), and plagiarism prevention via increased awareness.
(7) The ethics of stockpiling digital vulnerabilities for "benevolent" use: US National Security Agency discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, which it hid from everyone, including Microsoft. Information about the vulnerability and how to exploit it was stolen from NSA and offered for sale in the open market, finding its way to the North Korean government. It didn't take long for the WannaCry ransomware attack to be launched across Europe. Among organizations affected was Britain's National Health Service, which experienced blockage in doctors gaining access to patients' files. Is it ethical for NSA and similar organizations to stockpile vulnerabilities in the same way that militaries stockpile weapons? This is a complex question whose answer depends on our ethical standards and their underlying assumptions. [CACM article]
2020/12/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy holidays! May you have a merry, COVID-free Christmas and a joyous and bright New Year alongside your loved ones! [Center] This is Joel Osteen's mansion in Houston, Texas: He is the famed televangelist who doesn't pay taxes, received $4+ million in PPE aid, and bought a new private jet. Meanwhile, US Congress argued for months about whether $600 is too much for you. [Right] Twitter users are talking about where Trump should build his Presidential Library: Moscow and North Korea are two suggestions! There is also a fake Trump Library Web site. I don't know how long it will last, but it is well worth a visit.
(2) "UCSB Reads 2021" event: Sameer Pandya, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at U. California, Santa Barbara, will discuss his recent novel, Members Only, which engages with issues of racial politics and campus culture and considers the nature of brownness. Monday, January 25, 2021, 4:00 PM PST.
(3) Joke of the day: Older man to young woman at the bar: "Where have you been all my life?"
Woman to man: "For the first two-thirds, I wasn't born yet."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Navy vet gave CPR to a man who died of COVID-19 on United flight to LAX.
- Christmas music: "Jingle Bells," played Persian style! [Video]
- Christmas music: Lois Mahalia performs "It's Christmas Once Again in Santa Barbara." [Video]
- Persian poetry: Hila Sedighi recites her poem about being worried-sick for Iran.
(5) Nurses in overwhelmed Los Angeles ICUs experience fear and despair: Meanwhile, Trump is pardoning convicted criminals, going on vacation, and tweeting about everything but the plight of front-line workers & families losing loved ones.
(6) Iran-backed militias attack the US Embassy in Baghdad with rockets: As in prior "retaliations," the attacks seem to have been designed to avoid casualties. Trump warns of a military response if Americans are killed.
(7) Women in STEM: "The best piece of advice I would give to a young person just starting out in their career is that your career is a marathon, not a sprint. You will have big hills, flat plains and valleys. You will have jobs along the way that will be stepping stones to something bigger and better as well as those jobs that may feel like you are taking a step backwards." ~ Trish Damkroger, Intel's VP and GM of High-Performance Computing
(8) Memory from Dec. 24, 2013: "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?" ~ Pope Francis
(9) It feels like I am in a sci-fi horror movie: I seem to have escaped monster T (Trump losing the election), when monster M attacks me (Moscow Mitch refusing to provide sufficient pandemic relief). Suddenly, T emerges from its hiding place and attacks M. I watch with delight, as the two monsters fight. [Image]
2020/12/23 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This Wikipedia entry for Donald Trump is fake, but it isn't far off the mark. [Top center] Cover feature of CACM's January 2021 issue (see the last item below). [Top right] Many diets allow cheat days: Make sure you understand what it means! [Bottom left] Why robin eggs are blue-green: The color provides just the right amount of light absorption for optimal temperature. [Bottom center & right] Amazing world: A kingfisher dives into a hole in the ice at 100 km/hr and emerges with its catch (credit: Gisela Delpho).
(2) Iranian philanthropist speaks up: Philanthropy should fill gaps left by government services. It is incapable of undoing the effects of mismanaged programs and rampant corruption that have left citizens of our country (with 9% of world's resources & 1% of its population) in need of basic human needs. [Video in Persian]
(3) "When You Go Away": Song for Donald Trump, based on the beautiful oldie "If You Go Away," Rod McKuen's English adaptation of the 1959 Jacques Brel classic "Ne Me Quitte Pas."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Uncertainty and anxiety are feeding grounds for scammers: Please be mindful of COVID-19 vaccine scams!
- Afghan reporter challenges Iran's FM Javad Zarif and exposes his inconsistencies. [Interview in Persian]
- Sophisticated ant colonies: Uncovering a secret underground megalopolis of ants. [Video]
- Persian music: "Aahoo-ye Faraari" performed by Hooniak Band. [3-minute video]
(5) Pakistani rights activist Karima Baloch, 37, found dead in Toronto: Those who oppose dictatorial regimes or expose human-rights violations aren't safe anywhere. These regimes have operatives in the West to monitor dissidents and eliminate them when they become too pesky.
(6) Farhang Foundation Persian-poetry event: Bearing the title "Attar: The Unending Thirst," the free live event will feature Sholeh Wolpe, Fahad Siadat, and Andre Megerdichian
(7) Does Facebook use sensitive data for advertising purposes? You bet it does, although if you asked its management, they would respond with an emphatic "no"! Here is a short snippet from the January 2021 CACM article by Jose Gonzalez Cabanas, Angel Cuevas, Aritz Arrate, and Ruben Cuevas:
"Advertisers configure their ad campaigns through the FB Ads Manager. ... [It] offers advertisers a wide range of configuration parameters such as (but not limited to): location (country, region, and so on), demographic parameters (gender, age, among others), behaviors (mobile device, OS and/or Web browser used, and so on), and interests (sports, food). ... In parallel, FB assigns to each user a set of ad preferences, that is, a set of intrests, derived from the data and activity of the user on FB."
One of the article's authors found out that his interests profile, deduced by FB, included "homosexuality."
2020/12/22 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy first day of winter: My memories from December 21 of prior years, shared in a Facebook post yesterday). [Center] My holiday message to Georgians! [Right] Today's Zoom meeting with Fanni '68 classmates (see the last item below).
(2) One thing I did on Sunday, during our day-long power outage: The already-tough puzzle, with eight 15-letter entries, was rendered more challenging by the newsweekly somehow leaving out the last row!
(3) Last night's great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn wasn't as spectacular in my area as I had hoped: Just after sunset, in the southwestern sky, the larger Jupiter appeared, with Saturn just below it. The two planets pass each other every 20 years, but haven't been this close, as seen from earth, for 400 years (Galileo's time), and not visible in the night sky this close for 800 years. You can find lots of images and videos on-line. NASA provides some good background for the celestial event, which will last for a few days (although, the two planets were closest on 12/21).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A few of the day's headlines, presented as images.
- Iran's FM Javad Zarif uses the offensive Persian term "Johood" to refer to Jews in an interview.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Russian hackers disappointed to find US government already disabled.
- Planes landing more-or-less safely, after developing landing-gear and other problems. [Video]
(5) Discussion on "Data Abuse & Tech Divide: Ethical Considerations, Social Impacts, and Policies": In this morning's Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68), Professor Sirous Yasseri and I led a discussion on certain ethical and social aspects of high tech.
Key subareas in the domain of data abuse include hazards of big data, surveillance economy, consumer protection (laws), ethics of tech (AI, ML), fake news/reviews, and digital slavery. Subareas in the domain of tech divide include fair access to info tech, tech haves & have-nots, public infrastructure, tech literacy (techeracy), digital natives/immigrants, and digital dark ages.
Dr. Sirous Yasseri spoke about data abuse and extensive collection of both data and meta-data for commercial gain and government surveillance. It is amazing how much personal information can be gleaned from collecting meta-data, such as who called whom, without examining the contents of calls.
I covered a number of topics, primarily taken from the two books whose covers are seen in one of the images above. I briefly reviewed CCPA, California's Consumer Privacy Act, and cited the 1909 fantasy short story The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forester (which has been translated into Persian, under the title Machine Mi-Eestad) as an example of how a take-over by machines might unfold.
Next week, Dr. Yasseri will talk about GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, EU's version of consumer privacy law. A round-table two weeks from today will conclude this interesting discussion.
2020/12/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A day of pre-Internet existence: We had a scheduled power outage during much of today, owing to local repairs by Southern California Edison. I went to my office to work on evaluating student term-papers, shooting two videos from the east boundary of UCSB campus (video 1) (video 2). In the afternoon, the kids and I had a pizza lunch and went for a refreshing stroll around Santa Barbara Harbor, walking on the breakwater to get to a fairly isolated beach (photo) adjacent to SB Harbor's entrance channel. [Center & Right] "The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallence" (see the last item below).
(2) The story of an imprisoned murderer who taught himself advanced math: Now he has a paper on continued fractions published in an academic journal, which he co-authored with three number-theorists.
(3) A must-watch CNN report: Entitled "Pandemic: How a Virus Changed the World in 1918," the documentary film includes the shocking revelation that a political appointee allowing a huge war-related parade to go on, despite advice from medical professionals, contributed to the explosion in the number of cases and deaths.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mar-a-Lago neighbors don't want Donald Trump to move into their neighborhood, citing security concerns.
- Jared Kushner formed a shell company to funnel inauguration funds to Trump family members.
- The country least-worried about climate change? Russia! It stands to dominate a warming world.
- Man hacks Donald Trump's Twitter account by guessing his password: maga2020
(5) Across-party-lines political appointments in US administrations: It is common for US presidents to appoint people from the other party to a few key positions. Former President Obama had an impressively-large number of such appointees. Even Donald Trump has had half-dozen such appointees (three of them still serving), but, curiously, Ivanka Trump is one of them!
(6) America's unspoken caste system: Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkinson (The Warmth of Other Suns & The Origins of Our Discontents) examines the caste system that has shaped America, and how our lives continue to be defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. Tuesday, January 26, 2021, 5:00 PM PST. [Info]
(7) "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": The text and images above are adapted from several posts of mine in prior years, one of them showing pro-Trump propaganda on social media by Russia's Internet Research Agency. Trump won in 2016, thinking the victory signaled his infallibility, much like the wimpy character in the classic western film, who thought he had gunned down a notorious outlaw, whereas a sharpshooter killed Valance before he could draw his gun. If his reluctance to accept defeat isn't a deliberate scam to extract money from supporters, then it is certainly the case that he thinks he can shoot any outlaw, because he has done it before.
2020/12/19 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Yalda Festival (see the next item below). [Top center] Rock-balancing art by James Brunt. [Top right] The President is Missing: This novel by Bill Clinton & James Patterson has now become a reality. In the face of record number of deaths from COVID-19 and the most-serious-ever cyber-attack on US government agencies and private businesses by Russia, the President is nowhere to be seen or heard! [Bottom left] COVID-19 is not spread by mouths and noses, but, first and foremost, by assholes! [Bottom center] "Either Vladimir's behavior has improved dramatically, or the Naughty and Nice Database has been hacked" (from The New Yorker). [Bottom right] January 20, 2021, at the Oval Office.
(2) This year's Yalda-Night/Chelleh/Winter-Solstice is on Sunday, 12/20: The eve of the first day of winter is celebrated by Iranians as the night when forces of evil (darkness) have reached their maximum strength and the Sun begins its offensive, as the days get longer. Yalda night is celebrated with pomegranates, watermelon, persimmons, mixed dried-fruit and nuts, and various other Iranian sweets. [Music: Video 1; Video 2]
Persian-speaking poets have written about this festival, at times likening a loved one's dark hair or a long period of separation to Yalda. Here's the English translation of a verse from Sa'adi.
The sight of your face each morning is like Norooz | Any night away from you is the eve of Yalda.
(3) Philanthropic donation by world's 18th-richest person: The 1-year $6B charity contributions by MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon's Jeff Bezos, is considered one of the biggest-ever annual distributions.
(4) We feminists will likely be just as busy under Biden, as we were under Trump: With an articulate, opinionated First Lady (replacing a trophy wife, who has trouble reading even from a teleprompter) and several female cabinet members and other high-level appointees in the new administration, right-wing, misogynist attack dogs are already growling. Tucker Carlson of Fox "News" called Jill Biden "illiterate" (compared to whom, Donald and Melania?) and others have argued that she should drop the "doctor" title because she isn't a physician! We are ready for the fight. Bring it on!
(5) Challenges of getting enough people vaccinated against COVID-19: Two groups of people are hesitant to get vaccinated. First, we have the anti-vaxxers, who are suspicious of any vaccines that the government promotes. Second, the Black and Brown communities still remember the four-decades-long Tuskegee Experiment, 1932-1972, which infected African-Americans with syphilis, under the guise of providing them with free medical care. In the latter case, the experiment led to an effective cure for syphilis. But, to put salt on the wound, the cure was not administered to those purposely infected. I empathize with the second group and understand their reluctance. Both Surgeon General Jerome Adams and Anthony Fauci have been working to reassure the second group and encourage participation. The action of anti-science people, which endangers all Americans, is inexcusable. Trump has been missing in action and isn't doing anything to help.
2020/12/18 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam with his younger daughter, shortly before he was executed (video). [Center & Right] Cover image of Arion Golmakani's Solacers (see the last item below).
(2) The Russian cyber-attack on US government agencies and private companies was highly sophisticated much more extensive than initially thought. Removing the malware will be difficult and will talk a long time.
(3) Google will regret firing black researcher working on AI ethics: They wanted to have a black woman on their team as a show-off, but weren't ready to listen to what she had to say!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- It's that time of the year again, when fake charities spring up or go into overdrive. Be vigilant! [FB post]
- Wage gap and under-representation in higher academic ranks persists for women. [Article]
- Victoria and Albert Museum's immersive Iran show: 5000 years in 350 objects.
- Stanford Program in Iranian Studies: Web page containing listing and recordings of past talks.
(5) Let's not relax after Biden/Harris assume office: Republicans will continue their attacks on Biden, his wife, his administration, and the entire Democratic party. Their reaction to the loss in presidential election shows that they don't need any evidence to launch attacks. If we relax, they may use lies to take control of Congress in 2022, impeding any progress and perhaps even entertaining impeachment (again, they don't need any evidence to do so). I am not saying that we should anoint Biden king and consider him The Chosen One, as Trump supporters did. But, please, don't be harsher on Biden/Harris than you were on Trump/Pence! Idealism should take a back seat to pragmatism, if we are to repair the damage done by Trump.
(6) Book review: Golmakani, Arion, Solacers (Alireza, in Persian translation by Shadi Hamedi, RedCornPoopy Books, UK edition, 2014), unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Neil Shah, Tantor Audio, 2017.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
According to the author's introduction, this isn't a book about Iran, but about a boy who happened to grow up in Iran. The emotional and physical abuse he suffered could have happened anywhere on the planet Earth. It happened mostly in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran and neighboring locales, beginning in the 1960s. Near the end of the story, Alireza and a friend move to Abadan, the Americanized oil city in southwestern Iran, where they attend high school.
Alireza lives and is treated as an orphan, even though both of his parents are alive. His sadistically abusive father wanted nothing to do with him, even before divorcing his mom and remarrying. His mother, also remarried, was pressured by her new husband, who was initially kind to Alireza, to abandon her son, because he considered it unfair to be burdened with supporting his step-son. As a woman in a traditional (read backward) society, Alireza's mom didn't dare to do anything that went against her husband's desires, and her attempts at extracting child support from her ex were doomed.
Alireza ended up living, in temporary arrangements, with various relatives or acquaintances, pretty much ignored by everyone (save for one aunt) and going hungry most of the time. He scavenged for food, extracted small sums of money from various people, bought scant amounts of food on fraudulent credit, and generally survived to age 11, when he met the lovely Molouk, 10, the first person other than his mom to pay any attention to him. Molouk was one of the handful of solacers who helped Alireza keep going, when he saw no value in life.
By age 17, the self-made Alireza was on his way to realizing his dream of starting a new life in America and forming a family of his own. He adapted to life in the US quickly, especially since he felt no belonging to his harsh homeland. He married twice, fathering four children and adopting two. In an epilogue, Golmakani runs through his life in the United States, including his many successes, even though they did not translate to financial affluence.
This heartbreaking true story is told with painstaking details. The events and locales are rather familiar to older Iranians. Descriptions of public bath-houses, visitations to religious shrines, shopping at small neighborhood grocery stores, going to the movies, and traveling on inter-city buses are superb. Overall, this is a sincere, wonderfully-written, and inspiring book.
2020/12/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Beginning the last day of Hanukkah: Anticipating Shab-e Yalda (the Iranian Winter-Solstice festival) in three days and Christmas Eve in a week. Happy holidays to all! [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Noah has had it with the woodpecker! [Top right] This guy should update his T-shirt: His hoped-for Trump dynasty has fallen in disgrace! [Bottom row] People, trees, the sun, and the moon: Shot last evening from the Ellwood Bluffs and UCSB West Campus.
(2) Now we see why Moscow Mitch didn't have the guts to acknowledge Biden's victory, until the very last possible moment: He will now take fire from Trump for only five weeks!
(3) One reason, other than losing the election, for Donald Trump's distress and erratic behavior is that he wanted to fire & humiliate FBI Director Chris Wray, but was convinced to back off by White House lawyers.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump is eerily quiet on the biggest cyber-attack in US history: Russia's hacking of multiple US agencies.
- Khamenei supports negotiations with the Biden administration to revive the US-Iran nuclear deal.
- Any PhD student or fresh academic can identify with this young woman's experience! [Tweet]
- Happy family with the proverbial two children, but of virtual kind! [Tweet]
- Teenage Iranian Instagram star, who created images of celebrity-look-alike zombies, jailed for 10 years.
- Kids having fun at a public piano in London: Boogie-woogie-style performance of "Jingle Bells." [Video]
- Azeri music: A beautiful song, with Arabic and Persian subtitles. [4-minute video]
- Santa has been reading your posts all year: Most of you will be getting dictionaries or science textbooks!
- Last year's Christmas light display in Solvang, California, using an army of drones.
- Persian poetry: "Atoorpatgan" ("Azerbaijan"), a patriotic poem composed and recited by Homa Arzhangi.
- Persian music: Song, dance, and other rituals of a traditional Iranian wedding. [Video]
- Kurdish music: An upbeat rendition of "Asmar, Asmar" by the late singer Ramesh (with a touch of comedy).
(5) Atlantic City plans to demolish the former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino: The chance to push the detonation lever is being auctioned off, with proceeds going to charity.
(6) Attacks on Biden for not including this or that group in his cabinet are misguided: He has already nominated a diverse group of highly-qualified individuals, including a Native-American woman (Deb Haaland) as Interior Secretary and a Black environmentalist (Michael Regan) as Head of EPA. [Meme]
(7) Sharon Nazarian: The Senior VP of International Affairs at Anti-Defamation League, fled Iran with her family after 1979, fearing persecution as Jews. She now works to combat hatred and intolerance.
(8) Stanford University's Yalda-Night celebration (COVID-19 edition): Saturday, December 19, 2020, 6:00 PM PST. Dr. Abbas Milani will speak in Persian under the title "Saadi, Yalda, & Ancient Iran." [Registration link]
2020/12/16 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
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(1) Images of the day: [Left] My selection as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor for 2021-2023 (see the next item below). [Center] Transitioning to the new year in the age of toilet-paper shortages! [Right] This evening's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk by Dr. Jessica Santana (see the last item below).
(2) Proud to be selected as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor (2021-2023): During the 3-year period, IEEE CS chapters can invite me to give lectures, with IEEE paying for travel expenses. Any interested IEEE entity should message me to get the name and address of the IEEE person to contact for arrangements.
The Distinguished Visitors Program, established in 1971, serves IEEE Computer Society professionals and student members by identifying recognized authorities in their respective fields who can present engaging, state-of-the-art technical talks. The Distinguished-Visitor title is a lifetime honor, which can be used even after the three-year appointment term.
I have three talks in this program (talk abstracts are ready and will be provided upon request):
Talk 1: "Recursive Synthesis of Digital Circuits"
Talk 2: "Hybrid Digital-Analog Number Representation in Computing and in Nature"
Talk 3: "Linguistic Challenges in Computer Input and Output: The Case of Persian/Arabic"
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Norman Abramson, whose late-1960s ALOHAnet was a precursor to the modern Internet, dead at 88.
- Mayor Pete nominated for Transportation Secretary; Jennifer Granholm tapped for Department of Energy.
- China's second "Great Wall": A 1200-mile southern wall is being built between China and Myanmar.
- Misguided proposal: Several U. California chancellors call for tuition increases amid budget crisis.
- The tune "So Long, Farewell" from "The Sound of Music," adapted for January 20, 2021.
- Memory from Dec. 16, 2015: Hard to believe that Ben Carson was rated a bigger liar than Donald Trump!
(4) Memory from December 16, 2019: Former President Obama believes that women ruling nations could improve just about everything. "If you look at the world and look at the problems, it's usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way."
(5) This evening's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Jessica Santana (Assistant Professor, Technology Management Program, UCSB) spoke under the title "Using Natural Language Processing to Measure Ethical Convergence in Scientific Discourse." TMP was formally established within UCSB's College of Engineering in 2004, following several years of experimentation with mentoring students in the business and management aspects of technology, including how to produce business plans.
While the title represents Dr. Santana's recent research, she presented in the first half of her talk a general discussion of ethics in science and technology, beginning with the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and proceeding to a number of modern-day versions of the same type of unethical behavior. Examples include the recent dispute at Google over an employee's publication of an ethics paper that led to her firing and machine-caused discrimination in the criminal justice system.
In the second half of her talk, Dr. Santana outlined the relationship between ethics and innovation. Innovation requires a certain level of boldness, which manifests itself in working at the boundaries (gray areas). Dr. Santana then focused on how codes of ethics in various professions and industry segments emerge from scientific discourse over the boundary work and how natural-language processing can be used to detect contentious issues and the path to common standards.
A Q&A period followed, during which it was emphasized that paying attention to ethics is increasingly necessary, as high-tech implements and highly-complex AI algorithms embedded therein create the risk of ethical violations. Engineering programs are becoming aware of the importance of ethics as part of their curricula. Federal legislation in the US unfortunately lags the norms set by other countries (notably EU) and even some individual states.
[Speaker's home page]
[IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
[Slide samples]
2020/12/15 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] For my Persian-speaking readers: The origins of the Persian words "ghoori" (tea-pot) and "chai" (tea). [Center] Out of this world: Stunning road to Mount Fitz Roy, Patagonia. [Right] Our future First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, stands up for women and girls.
(2) Hats off to a dedicated and selfless teacher: This young woman, who lives in an Iranian village with no Internet access, climbs a snow-covered mountain to get a signal and connect with her on-line students.
(3) Islamic mob, and liquor: In his book, The English Job, retired UK politician Jack Straw relates that in the siege of UK Embassy in Tehran, everything was broken, except bottles of liquor, which were taken away!
(4) UCSB's remote-learning survey results (fall 2020): This afternoon, I attended an informative webinar, during which UCSB's Lisa Berry, Miles Ashlock, and Linda Adler-Kassner reviewed the results of a campus survey on students' remote-learning experience during fall 2020. Of the 2265 respondents (10%), one-third were navigating GauchoSpace (UCSB's instructional site) for the first time.
Students crave predictability (weekly pattern), clarity (purpose, expectations, connections), flexibility, and low-stake assessments (frequent, helpful feedback). They prefer real-time meetings for smaller classes, but pre-recorded lectures for larger ones. They are more or less satisfied with instructor and TA communications (but not with peer communications). The results show encouraging improvements over those of spring 2020 quarter.
A number of helpful tips emerged from the survey results:
- Encourage participation in pre-recorded lectures by asking students to pause the video on occasion.
- Choose sections of your lecture where students have to turn on their cameras (warn them in advance).
- Be human, listen and respond, engage students, be blatantly available.
- Don't hesitate to refer students if you sense that they are in distress.
- Be mindful of struggling first-generation and under-represented students.
- Communicate, preferably at the same time each week, about course status and what's ahead.
(5) Discussion on "Data Abuse & Tech Divide: Ethical Considerations, Social Impacts, and Policies": In this morning's Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68), Professor Sirous Yasseri and I led a discussion, in Persian, on certain ethical and social aspects of high tech.
Key subareas in the domain of data abuse include hazards of big data, surveillance economy, consumer protection (laws), ethics of tech (AI, ML), fake news/reviews, and digital slavery. Subareas in the domain of tech divide include fair access to info tech, tech haves & have-nots, public infrastructure, tech literacy (techeracy), digital natives/immigrants, and digital dark ages.
Due to a mishap in communicating the correct Zoom link to group members, attendance was a tad smaller than expected. The discussion will continue for at least two more sessions on coming Tuesdays. [Images]
2020/12/14 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] T-shirt for those who are thankful for science and scientists. [Center] "Science, Power, and Gender": Iran Academia on-line conference (in Persian), Sunday, December 13, 2020, beginning at 6:00 PM CET (Report: Facebook post, Tweet): Panelist were Azadeh Kian, Saeed Paivandi, Nayereh Tohidi, and Fatemeh Hosseinzadeh. [Right] Cover image for Man's Search for Meaning (see the last item below).
(2) Math puzzle: We have two containers with capacities a and b liters (a and b are positive integers). Each container can be filled to measure a or b liters of water (assume a < b), but it cannot measure smaller amounts. For example, a 3-liter container can be used to measure 3 liters, but it is not marked for measuring 1.5 or 2 liters. We want to measure a volume v of water (v is an integer), assuming we have an unlimited supply of water and a large container of capacity much greater than v that we can use for temporary storage. Present a general algorithm for the task.
[Challenge: For v < b, try to do the required measurement without using a third container.]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Electoral College cements Joe Biden's victory. Attorney General William Barr is fired.
- Trump, Pence, WH officials, SCOTUS, and Congress will get priority access to COVID-19 vaccine.
- US Treasury Department e-mails were monitored by hackers connected to the Russian government.
- Spy novelist John le Carre dead at 89: He wrote 25 novels, many of which were adapted for TV and film.
- The Coup Nazi to Donald Trump: No coup for you!
- Memories from December 14, 2014: Family outings from the good old days! [Photos]
(4) Frankl, Viktor E., Man's Search for Meaning, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Simon Vance, Blackstone Audio, 1995. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl [1905-1997] was an internationally renowned psychiatrist who endured years of unspeakable horror in Nazi death camps. During, and partly because of, his suffering, Frankl developed logotherapy (which literally means healing through meaning), a fresh approach to psychotherapy built around identifying a purpose in life and then immersively imagining that outcome. The book is considered by many as among the top-10 most-influential books in the US.
In the book's first part, Frankl describes his observations in concentration camps and the way pressure and uncertainty affected the prisoners' physical and mental health. Most of us have read multiple accounts of the Holocaust, but learning about the cruelty and slaughter through the eyes of a psychiatrist/neurologist is a different experience. Frankl saw both swine and saints among the prisoners and he saw both sadists and basically-decent men among the prison guards.
Drawing upon his years of first-hand experience as a prisoner and as a doctor, Frankl digs deep into human nature. He recalls little joys amid an ocean of pain, like when the camp's food server accidentally or intentionally sank the ladle a bit deeper into the pot, bringing up a piece of potato or a few peas with the otherwise watery soup. He describes the stages of grief/coping, from the initial shock of imprisonment, through adaptation, apathy, and hopelessness, to re-entering the world upon liberation, an experience that, like that of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber, can be deadly.
Of the Jews who were taken to concentration camps, many gave up hope in the face of morbid conditions, while others survived malnutrition, disease, grueling work, and freezing temperatures. What did the latter group have that the first didn't? Frankl's answer is that they had found meaning in their lives, taking the form of work they wanted to accomplish, people they loved, and those whose lives depended on them.
In the book's second part, Frankl provides a capsule summary of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy he developed based on his experiences in the death camps. Somewhat oversimplifying, Frankl describes the difference between logotherapy and psychotherapy thus: The latter tries to assign causes to a person's mental distress by visiting his/her past, while the former simply reveals a menu of options for the patient to choose from. Wikipedia has a nice article on logotherapy.
This important and must-read book was first published in 1946 and in various revised and expanded forms, and with different titles, in 1959, 1962, and 1984.
2020/12/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Jacob Hamblin Arch of Utah's Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. [Top center] Iranian art: Gorgeous samples of pottery from Soltanabad, Arak. [Top right] Topographic image of the Atlantic Ocean. [Middle row] Mid-day Friday, December 11, 2020, in and about an empty Santa Barbara downtown: Or is it ghost town? [Bottom left] Photos snapped on Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf on 12/11. [Bottom center] With my daughter at SB's Paseo Nuevo Shopping Center on 12/11. [Bottom right] Cover feature of this week's Santa Barbara Independent (see the last item below).
(2) #Texit: A Texas state lawmaker plans to propose a referendum on seceding from the US. While I don't like the idea of any state disliking the US election result seceding, I may in fact support Texas in such an effort. The GOP obviously does not like the idea of losing Texas's 38 electoral college votes, which would make it even more difficult for them to win elections. I just have one suggestion for Texas. Oil and cowboys aren't sufficient to make a happy, healthy, and prosperous country. Florida has the resorts and entertainment any country needs. In order to make Texas and Florida part of a contiguous land mass, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama should be added, to form a new 5-state country.
(3) Dr. Jill Biden ... Dr. Jill Biden ... Dr. Jill Biden ... This is to tick off those who consider the use of a "doctor" title out of bounds for a First Lady, but had no problem with a soft-porn model who faked a college degree.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California sues Sutter Health System for using monopoly to jack up prices beyond reason.
- Mitch McConnell has prioritized shielding businesses from litigation over protecting families from starvation!
- An interview with the former Shah of Iran, shortly after the Islamic Revolution (when he was in exile).
- Amazing billiards shots: These are so incredible that I suspect video manipulation. [3-minute video]
- Persian music: Darvish Kahn's wonderful "Reng-e Parichehr & Parizad" (other credits on the video).
(5) Top-10 auto companies by market value, 2000-2020: Tesla did not appear on the list until 2016, but it is now at the top by a wide margin. [3-minute video] (Note: The data for 2020 is already dated.)
(6) Spring 2021 Equinox, or beginning of the Persian New Year 1400 (saal tahvil): Saturday, Esfand 30, 1399, 1:07:27 PM Iran time (March 20, 2021, 2:37:27 AM PDT).
(7) How Saudi nationals mysteriously disappear from the US just before they are arrested for crimes: Do they run some kind of intelligence operation in the US? Here is an eye-opening CBS "60 Minutes" report.
(8) Santa Barbara Independent features Miye Ota: At 102, the former dance instructor, whose husband Sensei Ken died 5 years ago at 92 and whose son Sensei Steve recently lost his battle to cancer at 72, is a force of nature. This week's Independent features an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir covering events in the aftermath of the December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, particularly what Japanese-Americans experienced.
2020/12/12 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Time magazine's Person of the Year: Many expected front-line medical workers to be chosen (and, in fact, such a cover appeared on social media and I shared it yesterday). However, the formal choice is the team of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. [Top center] Los Angeles Times features UCSB Library's Cylinder Audio Archive, a collection of some of the earliest commercial sound recordings held in its Special Research Collections. [Top right] Meme of the day: Steps of the mission to dumb-down America! [Bottom left & right] The beauty of Boteh (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Birthday in Iran, 1973: Photo of this unidentified woman is featured among obscure historical photos on this Web site.
(2) "The Beauty of Boteh: A Textile Journey Across Village & Tribal Rugs": This was the title of today's fascinating webinar by Dr. Hadi Maktabi (Instagram @hadimaktabi), hosted by Textile Museum Associates of Southern California. Boteh is a comma-like motif, known in English as paisley, which has adorned Asian textiles for centuries. Today, Dr. Maktabi reviewed the motif's history, showing numerous examples and focusing on how it began appearing in Persian carpet designs. I captured a few screenshots from the webinar and added a couple of images from public domain. [Hadi Maktabi on Facebook]
(3) Understanding women: "When a woman says 'what?' it's not because she didn't hear you; it's her way of giving you a chance to rethink what you said." ~ Anonymous
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A Trump boast that'd be truthful, for a change: No president in over a century has executed more people!
- Future fairy-tale ending: "And from that day forward, not everything was about Donald J. Trump." (NYer)
- Borowitz Report (humor): White House offers curbside pick-up of pardons.
- Humor: English accents from around the world. [1-minute video]
- Iranian cuisine: Making beef-kabobs (kabob-e barg) in a large batch. [1-minte video]
(5) Quote of the day: "Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." ~ Aristotle
(6) Trumpism turns even a tenured economics professor into a cook: Appearing on Fox News, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany cited a tenured professor (Charles J. Cicchetti) that the odds of Biden winning in Wisconsin, after the early Trump lead, were 1 in 10^15. Because Biden won in four such states, the overall odds are 1 in 10^60. The numbers are impressive, but only for those who don't know much math, including the professor whose sworn affidavit was used by Texas in filing its lawsuit. The calculated odds take the distribution of Trump and Biden voters to be uniform across each state and across small rural and populous urban counties, the former reporting votes early and the latter needing much more time to count.
(7) post: "Science, Power, and Gender": Iran Academia on-line conference, Sunday, December 13, 2020, beginning at 6:00 PM CET (8:30 PM Iran time; 9:00 AM PST).
[On Facebook] [On YouTube]
2020/12/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Artist Becca Saladin reimagines history's most-powerful figures in today's hairstyles and clothing. [Top center] Looking west and east on the main bridge at UCSB North Campus Open Space, during my afternoon walk on Monday, 12/07. [Bottom left] My entry for this week's New Yorker cartoon caption contest: At the top of the giant beanstalk, Jack finds the bean counters. [Bottom center] Money-laundering for real: A bank in Ahvaz, Iran, after recent floods! [Bottom right] IranWire cartoon of the day: In Iran, multi-billion-dollar swindlers walk free, while petty theft is punished by cutting hands.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- People eating more cookies while trapped at home has led to supply-chain problems for cookie-makers. (NPR)
- Remember the good old days when Sarah Palin was the scariest thing the Republicans could throw at us?
- Mark Twain: "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do, you are misinformed."
- Grocery store "Jingle Bells": Cashiers in a German grocery store treat customers to an enchanting version.
- Remember this 1-minute video the next time you decide to call someone "bird-brain"!
- A natural wonder: Koohrang Spring at the base of Iran's Zardkooh Mountain is the source of Karoun River.
(3) Hypocrisy and literary theft: Iran's Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance tweets verses of a poem by Ahmad Shamloo to mourn the deaths of Qasem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The irony is that Shamloo is a stern critic of the Islamic regime, whose works are banned and whose admirers are harassed. Furthermore, he wrote the poem to mourn the passing of Forough Farrokhzad, a beloved poet who is considered a disgrace by the regime. To add insult to injury, the poem was used without citing Shamloo's name. And all these acts by someone who is supposedly in charge of the country's cultural advancement and publishing norms! [Tweet]
(4) On the image of my empty e-mail in-box, posted on 12/06: For those expressing disbelief and/or envy, let me share something I learned a long time ago (the source of the wisdom escapes me).
- A key to productivity is to read each e-mail message only once. When we keep an e-mail message in our in-box for months or even years, chances are that we read it multiple times, each time choosing to deal with it later. This used to be the case with pieces of paper that piled up on our desks. The first time you read an e-mail message, decide how to deal with it: Process/reply right away; Trash; Delete (I have a "Deleted" folder that is distinct from "Trash"; I examine this folder once in a while, as I do with my Spam folder, to see if there is anything that I would like to reconsider), or put it on a to-do list.
- A related wisdom is not to make your in-box your de-facto to-do list, because it's not structured for this use.
- A cluttered in-box turns into an obstacle, as we tend to become scared of looking at it. I find an in-box with fewer than two-dozen items, whose entries fit on a single screen, manageable.
(5) How a music-performance major became an influential computer scientist: To say that Jennifer Widom's path to computer science was unusual would be an understatement. In this 36-minute ACM ByteCast, she discusses her journey, leading from trumpet performance to Dean of Engineering at Stanford University.
2020/12/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Two occasions to celebrate (see the next item below). [Center] Time magazine's Person of the Year: Medical workers. [Right] RIP Amirali Sardar-Afkhami (1929-2020): The talented architect was best known for designing Tehran's City Theater and Iran's new parliament building.
(2) Happy Int'l Human Rights Day and Hanukkah: We used to worry about human rights in Third-World and other developing countries. Now, human rights form a global concern, including in several supposedly advanced industrial countries. Let's make every day Human Rights Day! It is an interesting coincidence for this year's Human Rights Day to coincide with the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which signifies light and hope.
(3) Watch and weep: Phoenix hospital sets up beds for COVID-19 patients in a sanitized parking garage. Trump tweets that the photos of patients in the parking garage are fake, unleashing Internet trolls on the hospital staff. What kind of animal brings such attacks on conscientious doctors and nurses who go without sleep to take care of their patients? [CNN video]
(4) This morning's headlines from Newsweek: I think the disinfected White House must also be deodorized to remove the stench of dishonesty, corruption, and nepotism.
- White House will be thoroughly disinfected in the hours after Trump's exit
- Newsmax beats Fox News for first time, as CEO says "We're here to stay"
- Donald Trump's 2024 campaign theme: "We wuz robbed and we won't be robbed again"
- Matt Gaetz among dozens of Republicans attending secret party despite COVID surge
(5) A piece of Goleta's history: "Coal Oil Point, Campbell Ranch, and Devereux School" is the title of a comprehensive article about the area that encompasses UCSB's West Campus Faculty Housing Complex (where I live) and its natural and man-made surroundings. The article contains quite a few photos and maps.
(6) Academic quote: "I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty." ~ Clark Kerr, UC Berkeley President, 1958-1967
(7) "The Life of a Data Byte": The article by Jessie Frazelle, in the December 2020 issue of Communications of the ACM, is summarized in the following timeline of key developments in storage technology.
1951 Uniservo tape drive for Univac 1
1952 IBM 726 tape unit
1956 First magnetic disk: IBM RAMAC, 3.75-MB
1963 DECtape: 3/4", inexpensive/reliable
1967 Work begins on IBM's floppy disk
1969 Appolo Guidance Computer's rope ROM
1977 Datasette: Cheap storage for Commodore PET
1978 LaserDisc for audio & video storage
1979 Seagate Technology founded: Tiny disks
1981 First 3.5" floppy drive: Sony
1984 Sony's CD-ROM: 550 MB
1991 SanDisk's prototype SSD unit for IBM
1994 Zip disk by Iomega: 3.5", 100 MB
1997 CD-RW (rewritable compact disk)
1999 IBM's Microdrive: 1", 170/340 MB
2000 USB flash drives
2005 Perpendicular-magnetic-recording disks
2007 First TB hard disk: Hitachi
2009 Industry working group for NVM formed
Last decade's developments too numerous to list!
2020/12/09 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Photos I took during and after yesterday's walk: Waves, clouds, sunset, and my Christmas lights. [Video]
(2) Building spherical reservoirs by the explosion method: Don't try this at home! First, a near-sphere is built, with a vent opening at the top. Then, the right amount of water is put in the reservoir and the right amount/kind of explosives are hung at the center of it. The explosion forcefully and evenly pushes the water to the sides, which shapes the metal into a sphere. [Video]
(3) A simple math puzzle: Use math symbols between the digits to make valid equalities.
2+2+2 = 6; 3 3 3 = 6; 4 4 4 = 6; 5 5 5 = 6; 6 6 6 = 6; 7 7 7 = 6; 8 8 8 = 6; 9 9 9 = 6
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The first SCOTUS test: The Supreme Court rejects GOP's challenge to voting outcome in Pennsylvania.
- A black market for COVID-19 vaccines is inevitable: This is an integral part of capitalism!
- The 'Fauci effect': Medical school applications are up 18% this year.
- A timely article by Cansu Canca, entitled "Computing Ethics: Operationalizing AI Ethics Principles" (CACM).
- "Women Leaving Islam": Documentary sneak preview, Thursday, December 10, 2020, 11:00 AM PST.
- Persian music: Ziba Shirazi performs "Ghesseh-ye Eshgh" ("Love Story").
- IEEE Computer Society webinar: "Next-Generation Wireless Overview & Outlook" (Mark Goldstein). [Report]
(5) Cartoon caption of the day: "We've moved a few things around: Travel books are in the Fantasy section, Politics in in Sci-Fi, and Epidemiology is in Self-Help, Good Luck."
(6) Installing cronies on his way out: Trump nominates former advisor Kellyanne Conway, along with some two-dozen other supporters, campaign donors, and billionaires to prestigious government positions.
(7) Stanford University's Iranian Studies Program pays tribute to Maestro Mohammad-Reza Shajarian [1940-2020]: The program will feature some of the foremost masters of classical Iranian music who collaborated with Shajarian or were his students. Thursday, December 10, 2020, 10:00 AM PST.
[YouTube]
[Facebook Live]
(8) Discussion on black holes (Part 2): We all have heard about black holes, but many of us are at a loss in explaining exactly what they are, how they are formed, and why they are important in the architecture of the cosmos. In yesterday's Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68), Professor Djamshid Farivar, speaking in Persian, presented Part 2 of his talk about black holes, a topic that has become more current by the award of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics to Roger Penrose (1/2), Reinhard Genzel (1/4), and Andrea Ghez (1/4) for their black-hole-related discoveries.
These images show a visualization of the Big Bang, curvature of spacetime, and a diagram relating to one of my questions. If light bends toward a massive object due to its gravitational pull, then we should see a distant star slightly to the right of its actual position, whereas in a diagram shown by the speaker, it appeared to be slightly to the left. I am awaiting an explanation. [My Facebook post on Part 1]
2020/12/08 (Tuesday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Gilbert, Jason O., The Mueller Report: The Leaked Investigation into President Donald Trump and His Inner Circle of Con Men, Circus Clowns, and Children He Named After Himself, unabridged audiobook, read by Michael Ian Black, James Adomian, and Laura Benanti, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2018.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This fake-news, hilarious version of the serious report, with hypothetical testimonies and news headlines, is structured around real events, but fills in the details of what was said and done based on imagined narratives for comic effect. It is much easier on the reader than the real thing! I tried to read the real published report (The Washington Post, 2019), but got bored pretty quickly, especially since I had heard much of the story on TV news, press reports, and on-line posts.
The book begins with a comical discussion of typefaces considered, expounding upon Making Helvetica Great Again and the Failing Times New Roman! The actual narrative begins with the mysterious Melania T., who speaks with a Slovenian accent, pretending to be the secret leaker. It then proceeds with hilarious interview transcripts, intercepted phone calls, incriminating e-mails and text exchanges, and typo-filled all-caps presidential tweets.
The book is fun to read. It is a sign of utter dysfunction and folly in our political system that the book's fictional narrative constructed for making the reader smile does not seem too far-fetched at all!
(2) Book review: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, We Should All Be Feminists, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2017. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This eloquently-argued essay is adapted from the Nigerian author's 29-minute TED talk bearing the same title. Early in the essay, Adichie relates that when she was 14, a male friend told her that she was a feminist, and he did not mean it as a compliment! Then, after a number of people informed her of the negative baggage that comes with the term, including its origins in foreign cultures and anti-men connotations, she decided to jokingly call herself "a happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes lip gloss and who wears high heels for herself and not for men"!
Adichie shines a light on outdated notions of gender and gender roles. At one point in human history, physical strength was a necessity for survival and, because men were stronger, they emerged as leaders. In today's world, leadership requires intelligence, creativity, and courage, attributes that have little to do with gender. Masculinity is a hard, small cage that we put our boys into. We then link masculinity with money and impress upon boys that they have to pay when they go out with a girl, which leads to boys being far more likely to steal money from their parents.
Gender divide and sexual politics harm both women and men. We should do better in educating our girls, and boys, to recognize blatant discrimination, which has marginalized women around the world and has given men fragile egos. Some would say that women being subordinate to men is part of our culture. But culture can change. If gender equality isn't part of our culture, then we must make it part of our culture. This is the sense in which Adichie believes that we should all be feminists.
(3) Book review: Bauerlein, Mark (editor), The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking, Penguin, 2011. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The term "digital divide" refers to two concepts of inequity in enjoying the benefits of modern information technology. One is inequity in access, which may result from lack of means to buy digital devices or lack of access to high-speed Internet service. Another is inequity in the knowledge to make use of digital resources, such as being aware of privacy laws or proper/safe ways of accessing and using the Internet. Both divides are intimately related to income and wealth gaps.
I picked up this book in order to learn more about the two kinds of divides outlined in the preceding paragraph. Unfortunately, the book does not offer much about the first divide and only a couple of chapters on the second divide. I particularly enjoyed the chapter by Marc Prensky entitled "Digital natives, digital immigrants," which describes the divide between older people who migrate to the digital world vs. younger people, who are born into the digital world.
Even though the book did not meet my expectations, I still found it quite informative and learned a great deal from it, as it nicely covers the attributes of the on-line world and how going digital is affecting our personal and professional lives. It tackles questions of how our culture is being shaped by everything becoming digital and whether we are becoming stupid as a result.
Following an introductory chapter, the book unfolds in three sections, each with 8-9 essays. Some of the essays are already dated, but the structure and list of topics is still of much value. The essays are excerpted or reprinted from various sources.
Let me end my review by listing the books table-of-contents, because the essay titles are quite descriptive of the book's scope.
Section One—The Brain, the Senses: Digital natives, digital immigrants / Marc Prensky; Do they really think differently? / Mark Prensky; The internet / Steven Johnson; Learning to think in a digital world / Maryanne Wolf; Learning theory, video games, and popular culture / James Gee; Usability of websites for teenagers / Jakob Nielsen; User skills improving, but only slightly / Jakob Nielsen; Is google making us stupid? / Nicholas Carr; Your brain is evolving right now / Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan
Section Two—Social Life, Personal Life, School: Identity crisis / Sherry Turkle; They call me cyberboy / Douglas Rushkoff; The people's net / Douglas Rushkoff; Social currency / Douglas Rushkoff; The eight net gen norms / Don Tapscott; Love online / Henry Jenkins; We can't ignore the influence of digital technologies / Cathy Davidson; Virtual friendship and the new narcissism / Christine Rosen; Activists / John Palfrey and Urs Gasser
Section Three—The Fate of Culture: Nomadicity / Todd Gitlin; What is web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software / Tim O'Reilly; Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on / Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle; Web 2.0: The second generation of the Internet has arrived and it's worse than you think / Andrew Keen; Wikipedia and beyond: Jimmy Wales's sprawling vision / Katherine Mangu-Ward; Judgment: Of Molly's gaze and Taylor's watch: Why more is less in a split-screen world / Maggie Jackson; A dream come true / Lee Siegel; The end of solitude / William Deresiewicz; Means / Clay Shirky
2020/12/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Hypersonics, the new arms race: The cover feature of IEEE Spectrum magazine's December 2020 issue is devoted to the quest by big military powers of the world to build missiles that can follow erratic paths at low altitude, while flying at five times the speed of sound, which would make detecting and intercepting them nearly impossible. [Top center] A selfie I took during a long walk around Goleta, including along the Calle Real commercial center. [Top right] Kid of the Year: Time magazine honors Gitanjali Rao, developer of a mobile device to detect lead in drining water. [Bottom left] Just to be sure you don't mix up these three things, as we approach the holidays: Santa, Satan, Santana! [Bottom center] If you are kept pre-occupied with basic needs, you forget about freedom, which can deliver your basic needs and more! [Bottom right] Tweet of the day: "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York ... And Georgia. And Wisconsin. And Michigan. And Pennsylvania. And Nevada. And Arizona. ..."
(2) Political humor: After holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping, Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani went to a nearby food court to present his legal case!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Way to go Georgia! Thank you for helping remove Trump. Now please do the same with Mitch McConnell!
- Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19.
- Governor Cuomo explains challenges in procuring, transporting, and administering COVID-19 vaccines.
- Unconfirmed reports: Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei hands power to son due to deteriorating health.
- War on attorneys intensifies: Iran's mullahs create a new office for monitoring lawyers' personal lives.
- Stories from Iran's 1981 mass executions: Baha'i doctor Masih Farhangi used to treat his prison guards.
- Iran's security forces arrest 15-year-old Amir Kaabi, from Khuzestan Province, on unknown charges.
- Memories of Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara, from December 7, 2017. [Photos]
- Indian proverb: "Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount."
- Bob Dylan sells his entire music catalog of 600+ song to Universal Music. The Beatles sold theirs in 1985.
(4) Former Iranian Vice President Shahindokht Molaverdi sentenced to 28 months in prison: Her charges include revealing classified information and documents with the aim of undermining national security, propaganda against the regime, promoting corruption & prostitution, and encouraging individuals to sexual deviancy. The last couple of charges are often leveled against those who promote women's rights.
(5) Narcissist in need of attention: Donald Trump is reportedly planning a campaign rally at the same time as Joe Biden's inauguration: I hope the media deny this attention-starved man-child any coverage.
(6) Holocaust education for a country with many deniers: IranWire has launched a series of articles about the Holocaust, antisemitism, and heroes fighting against hatred and prejudice.
(7) How Saudi nationals mysteriously disappear from the US just before they are arrested for crimes: Do they run some kind of intelligence operation in the US? Story on next week's CBS "60 Minutes."
2020/12/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Ziba Shirazi tells/sings the life story of Mariam Safinia in an enjoyable two-hour on-line concert. Safinia is Head of the School of Practical Philosophy in Pleasanton, CA, which "offers a journey of self-discovery that guides students towards understanding their own innate wisdom and an appreciation of the underlying unity connecting us all." [Center] It took me two days, but I have done it again! Last night, my e-mail in-box became empty once again, after deleting spam-like e-mails, responding to about a dozen, and creating to-do-list entries for the rest. [Right] The failed coup: The American democratic infrastructure, including our courts, seem to have held up against a would-be dictator and his clownish legal team.
(2) Ethical wranglings between Google and a fired employee: Timnit Gebru, a co-leader of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team at Google, says she was fired for sending an email related to the Company's request that she retract an AI-ethics conference paper she had co-written with six others, including four Google employees.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Countries move to ban sale of gasoline-powered cars & auto companies signal move to electric-only models.
- Columbia U. students threaten to withhold tuition payments next semester due to economic depression.
- Salafi cleric's comments about the Yarsani minority create tensions in Iran's Kermanshah Province.
- A melting ice patch in Norway has revealed dozens of arrows, some of which date back 6000 years.
- Footage of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's wedding to his first wife in Cairo (1939) and their return to Tehran.
- Come to think of it, adjusting to the old normal at the end of the new COVID-19 normal won't be easy!
(4) Producing oxygen on Mars: The Mars mission, launched in July 2020, carries MOXIE, a small box that produces oxygen from atmospheric CO2. The device can produce enough oxygen to support one human being. A much larger version is needed to make liquid-oxygen fuel for a rocket. Future plans include using a device that can split water in underground Martian brine into oxygen and hydrogen.
(5) UCSB Music Department undergraduate student recital: Mezzo-soprano Terra Giddens (a student of Dr. Isabel Bayrakdarian) accompanied by pianist Erik Lawrence presented works by Georges Bizet, Manuel de Falla, Kurt Weill, Hector Berlioz, Stefano Donaudy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Richard Strauss.
(6) Final thought for the day: Immigrants who spread falsehoods undermining our democracy should be deported: I have had it with fellow-Iranian-American immigrants spreading falsehood about the integrity of our 2020 elections. Yes, there were problems that need to be fixed, but just because your moronic candidate didn't win, you can't undermine our democracy. Every day, I receive multiple private messages and see Facebook posts that peddle conspiracy theories, essentially repeating, without thinking, debunked ideas from far-right, Neo-Nazi, and other discredited Web sites. Meanwhile, many of those who initiate these conspiracy theories, including Donald Trump, are filling their pockets with contributions and merchandise sales.
2020/12/05 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images related to the webinar "Women and Resistance Arts and Literature" (see the last item below).
(2) Rats abandoning Trump's sinking ship: Those interviewing for new jobs cite a need for employment and Trump's erratic behavior. And they just noticed the latter after a full 4-year term?
(3) Iranian women, who are not given the time of day by the Islamic regime, succeed in exile: Refugee Golriz Ghahraman is a member of parliament in New Zealand.
[Green Party]
[Facebook]
[Wikipedia]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris picks three women to senior staff positions.
- Former Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton volunteer to take coronavirus vaccine publicly to prove it's safe.
- Chang'e 5 Ascent Vehicle lifts off from Moon with lunar samples collected by the Chinese probe.
- The 57-year-old Arecibo Observatory's iconic radio-telescope, featured in a James Bond movie collapses.
(5) Extremist-Islamic hypocrisy: Masoumeh Ebtekar was one of the student hostage-takers in the US Embassy in Tehran. She is now a high-ranking Iranian official whose son resides in the US with his family. [MSF video]
(6) Free webinar of interest to those who want to learn about 5G/6G wireless technology:
Title: "Next-Generation Wireless Overview & Outlook"
Speaker: Mark Goldstein, President of International Research Center
Details: Wednesday, December 9, 2020, 6:00-8:00 PM PST, via WebEx [Registration link]
(7) "Women and Resistance Arts and Literature": This was the subject of today's webinar hosted by PhD scholars Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U.) and Ozlem Has (U. Copenhagen). [Recording of the webinar]
Azam Ali (Ramin Torkian; singer & visual artist) began by outlining her struggles in defining feminism. Becoming an artist was a challenge, because that simply isn't what nice Iranian girls do, if you ask parents! She has always been interested in breaking barriers and doing things that are outside the norm, which means going head-on against the male-dominated hierarchy in the arts world.
Speaking from India, where it was early Sunday morning, Nabina Das (poet) began by relating some of her family background. The history of India is marred by divisions, particularly after the British departed. She read a poem of hers that addressed these divisions, from a feminist perspective. After showing some of her amateur artwork, she read another poem entitled "My neighbour is a gau-rakshak."
A third speaker, Attasalina Theresa (singer/songwriter/artist), was added to the previously announced program. She talked a bit about being conflicted between her American identity and her roots. Praising the diversity of the participants, Theresa observed that such varying points of view are keys to making progress.
I submitted a couple of questions/comments, which were addressed by Ali and Das.
Q1: Azam Ali mentioned that she struggles with the definition of feminism. To me, feminism is simply described in four words: "Women are human beings." In her essay We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie jokes that she began calling herself "a happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes lip gloss and who wears high heels for herself and not for men" to counteract the cliches that feminists are angry, man-hating, Westernized women, who cannot find husbands!
Q2: Nabina Das spoke of political divisions, which have caused some people to go to sleep in one country and wake up in another. What about religious divisions, which have produced heightened conflicts lately? Do religious divisions place additional burdens on women (beyond their effects on the population in general)? There is also extreme misogyny in certain parts of India. Is there a relationship between religious dogma and the misogyny (particularly rape culture) prevalent in some regions?
2020/12/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Quote of the day: "I am a woman and entitled to breathe the same air that enters a man's lungs. It's painful that my freedom is taken away, so that he does not commit sins. It's offensive that he pays more attention to the shape of my body than the contents of my thoughts. It's regrettable that I have to adjust my clothing according to the weakness of his faith." ~ Simin Daneshvar [Top center] History in pictures: Pyramid structures of the world. [Top right] A special once-in-800-years holiday gift to us from the cosmos: On December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will align so closely in the night sky that they appear to collide from our vantage point on Earth. The two planets will create a radiant point of light, often referred to as the "Star of Bethlehem" or the "Christmas Star."
[Bottom row] Photos I took during my walk in Goleta, CA, in the late afternoon of Wednesday, 2020/12/02.
(2) There are signs that multiple legal cases will be brought against Trump, his family, and his administration after January 20, 2021: Once prosecutors are done, it will be sociologists' turn to figure out why 70+ million Americans wanted four more years of corruption and ineptitude.
(3) Iranian athletes are campaigning to remove the country's ban on competing against Israelis: While anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, Iranians (not the ruling mullahs) accept and even embrace Israel.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Georgia official tells Trump to stop inspiring violence against election workers who are doing their jobs.
- The 2020 Right Livelihood Award goes to 4 champions of human rights, including Iran's Nasrin Sotoudeh.
- Humor: The WH has suddenly become a very polite place: Everyone is going around saying "pardon me"!
- A real queen's gambit: An Iranian female chess player describes why she left Iran to play chess in the US.
- Remote work is great and it helps with social & environmental problems, but it's applicability is limited.
- Memory from Dec. 4, 2011: Director responds to a Khamenei crony likening Iranian cinema to a brothel.
- A new, effective way to fight COVID-19: Satanize (or satanise, if you're British) your hands! [Photo]
- The soup part of this Azerbaijani dish resembles the Iranian aabgoosht: But so much food for two people!
(5) Artificial intelligence solves 50-year-old grand-challenge science problem: The AI group DeepMind has created AlphaFold, an algorithm that accurately predicts the formation of proteins in hours rather than years. This is thought to be AI's first major contribution to science.
(6) This is a Soviet-era street joke, which applies to Iran with minimal modifications: A man on his way to work in Tehran bought a Kayhan newspaper every morning, took a quick look at its first page, and disgustedly tossed it into a trash can. One day, the newspaper kiosk owner who had seen this behavior hundreds of times decided to solve the mystery and asked the man what he was looking for in the paper. The man replied that he was looking for an obituary. "But obituaries do not appear on the first page," said the kiosk owner. The man replied: "The one I am looking for would definitely appear on the first page!"
2020/12/03 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book talk by Dalia Sofer (see the last item below). [Center] Manufacturing in today's world: Sometimes, I get an eerie feeling that products from different brands are really the same, but packaged and labeled differently. Here is evidence in one instance. Tea bags with distinct brand names and allegedly manufactured in different countries are identical with regards to bag shape/size, tab shape/size, and string length. [Right] Memory from December 3, 2011: My daughter and I after her ballet performance.
(2) Undergraduate MIT student pushes the frontiers of graph theory: Ashwin Sah, Portland, Oregon, native who just turned 21, has already published enough important results to qualify for a faculty position. One of his most-striking results is improving the upper bound for two-color Ramsey numbers, a problem that many talented mathematicians have worked on since the introduction of an attack method by Erdos and Szekeres.
(3) Scientists are becoming more politically-engaged: This is a double-edged sword. With political activism comes social awareness, which helps tailor science to people's needs. On the other hand, there is some danger that the politicization of science will make our society more suspicious of scientists and their recommendations.
(4) Book talk, Man of My Time: Iranian-American author Dalia Sofer, best known for her first novel The Septembers of Shiraz, talked this morning about her new novel. The talk was sponsored by Stanford University's Program in Iranian Studies. [Cover image and excerpt]
Sofer's first novel, set during the turbulent days of the Iranian Revolution, chronicled the plight of a wealthy Jewish family whose patriarch was arrested, brutally interrogated, and accused of spying for Israel. It was turned into a film, starring Salma Hayek, Armin Amiri, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Adrien Brody, and Velislav Pavlov.
Sofer's new book is also receiving critical acclaim. She began her book talk by briefly recounting her life, including how her father turned her passport into a family passport by erasing some information and writing in the new information, along with a new photo, in order to escape Iran. She said that she was conflicted about her first novel, viewing it as turning her grief into a commodity in the American consumer market, trading that grief for money and fame/awards.
Man of My Time is set in Tehran & New York and tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, an Iranian alienated from both himself and the world. "After decades of working with ambivalence for the Iranian government, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father. Tucked into a mint tin in Hamid's pocket, the ashes propel him into an excavation of a lifetime of betrayals, forcing him to confront his past. Exploring variations of loss, Man of My Time is not only about family and memory, but also about the relationship between captor and captive, country and citizen, and individual and history." [From Sofer's narrative for her talk]
Asked whether she sees this second book also turned into a movie, Sofer responded that she had a terrible experience with the previous movie and that she would not repeat the same mistake!
Here is a question I asked Sofer, to which she responded with an acknowledgment of the positive impact of her first novel: "You mentioned that you were conflicted about trading your and your family's grief for money and recognition by writing your first novel. What about the positive side of your first novel, that is, providing many Iranians in exile and their children a window into the mistreatment of people, Jews in particular, in the post-revolutionary Iran. My daughter, born in the US, loved your book."
2020/12/02 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] RIP, Dr. Mohammad Maleki, 1933-2020: The first President of Tehran University after the Islamic Revolution was jailed both by the Shah's regime and by the mullahs (an initial death sentence commuted to 10 years jail time). He was a harsh critic of the closure of Iranian universities under the banner of "Cultural Revolution" and remained a staunch critic of the Islamic regime, after retiring from his faculty post. [Center] Persian poetry: A couple of verses from a Hafez ghazal (English translation). [Right] Neptune's Grotto: Located in the town of Alghero on the island of Sardinia, Italy, this stalactite cave was discovered by local fishermen in the 18th century and has since developed into a popular tourist attraction.
(2) Memory from December 2, 2012: "It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'" ~ Aldous Huxley, British author (1894-1963)
(3) Memory from December 2, 2017: Any demagogue or despot who ends up destroying a country keeps insisting till his last day that it is moving it toward greatness.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Daily US deaths from COVID-19 are nearing 3000: This is a much more important stat than Dow 30,000!
- The US Justice Department is investigating the White House in a case of bribe-for-pardon.
- Disputing Trump, AG Barr says the Justice Department found no widespread election fraud.
- Historians fear that Trump may destroy records on his way out, so they sue to ensure preservation.
- Memory from December 2, 2014: Kudos to the in-betweeners! [Facebook post]
(5) "The Crisis in Karabagh: Causes and Consequences" [Screenshot]: This was the title of today's Zoom talk by Anna Ohanyan, Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Stonehill College, and two-time Fulbright Scholar to South Caucasus. I was able to join the webinar, after initially giving up, when technical difficulties from the speaker's side caused my loss of connection.
Information that I share below comes in part from the speaker, who, understandably, presented a pro-Armenian view, and a New York Times article, which is more balanced.
The territory of (Nagorno-)Karabagh, with majority Armenian and minority Turkish residents, has been in dispute for decades. It had recently been run as a near-independent, democratic, de-facto state (it was pushing for independence from Armenia). The word "Nagorno" derives from the Russian word for "highland," given that more than half of the 1700-square-miles region is elevated by 3000+ feet above see level.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia prevailed and took control of Karabagh in an early-1990s war. A low-intensity conflict (border skirmishes, with fewer than two-dozen fatalities per year) with Azerbaijan ensued. Recent escalation of hostilities, during which Turkey supported Azerbaijan and Russia remained on the sideline, despite its defense agreement with Armenia, transferred control of the region to Azerbaijan.
Hostilities have now ended due a peace deal brokered by Moscow, with Russian and Turkish peacekeeping forces patrolling the territory, which is salt on the wounds of the area's Armenian residents, who got just a small fraction of the land they lost returned to them as part of the peace deal. Whether Russia will be willing or able to protect the Armenians returning to their homes in the area remains to be seen.
2020/12/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] The eerie geometry of Martian dunes: First observed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the dunes form a polygonal pattern similar to those seen in some live organisms on Earth. Here is one theory about how the patterns come about. Winds blowing from multiple directions push sand around. During the day, warm air rises up towards the crater's rim, possibly sweeping sand along with it. At night, cool air moves in the opposite direction, potentially blowing sand, too. Geological features within craters, such as mountains, add turbulence, causing gusts to collide and swirl around. Swept back and forth by these winds and confined to a crater, sand can pile into intersecting ridges oriented in many different directions, resulting in polygonal shapes like those seen in the images. [Right] Single-authored scientific papers are nearly extinct (gray area in chart): Papers authored by multi-national teams are on the rise (orange area).
(2) Will Donald Trump write a memoir? The publishing industry dreads the possibility. For one thing, Trump's most-ardent fans aren't book readers. For another, memoirs are filled with exaggerations and wishful pronouncements, even with the most-honest writers.
(3) Everyone was excited about the Iranian calendar date 9/9/99 a couple of days ago: A few centenarians, including the oldest Shi'i cleric in Qom, yawned, because they had seen the special date before!
(4) Black holes: We all have heard about black holes, but many of us are at a loss in explaining exactly what they are, how they are formed, and why they are important in the architecture of the cosmos. In today's Zoom gathering of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968 (Fanni '68), Professor Djamshid Farivar, speaking in Persian, provided some answers to the questions above, which have become more current by the award of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics to Roger Penrose (1/2), Reinhard Genzel (1/4), and Andrea Ghez (1/4) for their black-hole-related discoveries. [Zoom screenshot]
One of the intereting facts I learned from this talk is an explanation of why nothing can escape a black hole. For a spherical object of mass M and radius R, the escape velocity, the minimal initial speed of an object in order to escape the gravitational pull of the sphere, is given by the formula sqrt(2GM/R), where G = 6.674 x 10^(–11) is Newton's gravitational constant. The formula is readily obtained by equating the sum of kinetic and potential energies of an object on the sphere's surface with the corresponding figures at distance h, while letting h tend to infinity. According to this formula, Sun's escape velocity is 617 km/s. For Earth, it is 11.2 km/s. For a black hole, the mass M is huge and the radius R is tiny, so escape velocity becomes greater than the speed of light, making escape impossible. If Earth were compressed into a globe of radius ~1 cm, it would become a black hole. Sun's radius must be reduced to ~3 km to turn it into a black hole.
The discussion will continue next Tuesday, December 8, 2020, beginning at 10:00 AM PST.
Here is NASA's introductory article on black holes, with links to additional information.
2020/11/30 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Walking along State Street in Downtown Santa Barbara: In mid-afternoon on this last day of November 2020, I had to do a store pick-up on State & De La Vina Streets. Given the sunny and mild weather, I decided to do my daily walk from there to Stearns Wharf and back (around 7 miles, round trip). Along the way, I shot photos of downtown architecture and various businesses on the almost-deserted street, given the time of day on a weekday. [Top center] The full Moon, shot from my bedroom window at 4:17 this morning: I was hoping to capture the penumbral lunar eclipse, when the edge of Earth's shadow touches the Moon, but missed it by a couple of hours. [Bottom row] More photos from downtown SB.
(2) Book introduction: Arion Golmakani's Solacers isn't a book about Iran, as the author clarifies early on, but about a boy who happened to grow up in Iran. The emotional and physical abuse he suffered could have happened anywhere on the planet Earth. My review of the book will be forthcoming here and on GoodReads.
[Unabridged audiobook, read by Neil Shah, Tantor Audio, 2017]
[Titled Alireza in the Persian translation by Shadi Hamedi, RedCornPoopy Books, UK edition, 2014]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump lawyer says Krebs should be taken out at dawn and shot for defending election security.
- The universal geometry of geology: A detailed discussion of how nature does geometry.
- Cartoon of the day: Zoom-meeting tip for cat owners. [Image]
- Croatian pianist Maksim Mrvica plays Theme from "Game of Thrones". Look him up on YouTube!
- Free on-line musical event: Ziba Shirazi tells the life story of Mariam Safinia. [Facebook page]
- Persian music: A performance of the oldie song "Bordi az Yaadam" by Hooshmand Aghili and two women.
(4) Reza Rohani (son of maestro Anoushiravan Rohani) performs a new arrangement of his dad's beautiful composition "Emshab" ("Tonight"), with vocals by Sara Naeini. [3-minute video]
(5) RIP, Ramesh [1946-2020]: Azar Mohebbi Tehrani, professionally known simply as "Ramesh," was a popular and influential singer during my youth in Iran (she was a few months older than me). Despite remaining popular after the Islamic Revolution, she chose not to be active on the music scene. [Music samples]
(6) Going back towards the Middle Ages: As the list of civilized countries banning the death penalty expands, Trump's DoJ rushes to include new execution methods such as firing squads.
2020/11/29 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Aerial view of Manhattan, 1931. [Top center] Iranwire cartoon: Khamenei, his image, and his enablers. [Top right] Iran's Shargh daily writes about Biden's election victory, characterizing it as a rejection of populism. They do know a lot about populism in Iran! [Bottom left] The Flat-Earth Society: Have Flat-Earthers ever produced such a photo of a lunar eclipse? [Bottom center] GOP obstructionism, detailed by Obama in A Promised Land, will likely be repeated for Biden. (The Economist) [Bottom right] Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
(2) "Women in STEM" interview series: Eva Tardos, Professor and Chair at Cornell University's Computer Science Department, "found it important and enjoyable to be open to changing areas throughout [her] career. A key advice for a young person staring out is to plan for this change in keeping a broad enough interest."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Execution of Swedish-Iranian academic Ahmadreza Djalali is imminent. #DoNotExecute
- Women's rights, Wahhabi style: Saudi Arabia refers activist Loujain Al-Hathloul to terrorism court.
- Chris Krebs, cyber-security director, interviewed on CBS News' "60 Minutes": We did the election right.
- "The Female Voice of Iran": Documentary film about Iranian women's singing, despite official restrictions.
- Largest fast-food chains in the world: From 1971 (KFC at the top) to 2020 (Subway at the top). [Video]
- Memory from 2015/11/29: Celebrating the life & contributions of poet/lyricist Rahim Moeini Kermanshahi.
(4) Iran's hostage-taking mullahs: Australian-British academic and expert on Islamic studies Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was serving a 10-year prison term for espionage charges, has been exchanged for three Islamic terrorists arrested in Thailand and welcomed back to Iran as heroes. One of the terrorists blew off the lower part of his body when he attempted to throw a bomb at Thai police.
(5) Statue of Cyrus the Great, riding a horse: The 6-meters-tall artwork, being created from reinforced concrete by Shahram Goudarzi, has been in progress for 5 years at a site in Iran's Mazandaran Province. The project has faced challenges, from sabotage to inquiries from government agencies.
(6) Final thought for the day, at the end of a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with the family: "I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual." ~ Henry David Thoreau
2020/11/28 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Interesting facts about world geography: [Top left] Countries that are mentioned or alluded to in the Bible. [Top center] Two regions of Africa with the same population. [Top right] Half of all Canadians live below the red line on the map. [Bottom left] Each of the 10 slices shown on the map hold 10% of the world's population. [Bottom center] You can fit Poland within Texas, and still be able to drive around it. [Bottom right] World's smallest country (Vatican City) vs. world's largest building (Aalsmeer Flower Auction, Netherlands).
(2) Persian music: Iranians belonging to my generation used to wake up to the song "Morning Greetings," which was the theme of an early-morning radio program. [3-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran's top nuclear scientist assassinated: Iran blames Israel for killing Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in a shoot-out.
- Activists project "LOSER" in large letters at Trump's Turnberry Golf Resort. [Video]
- GM's car-insurance business to set rates according to driver behavior, as tracked by its OnStar system.
- Humor: White House landlord asks Trump to supply a forwarding address to receive his security deposit.
(4) Burnt City: This ancient archaeological site in southeastern Iran dates back ~5000 years. It holds evidence of an advanced drainage system, an artificial eye, brain surgery, and an animated picture. [11-minute video]
(5) Final thought for the day (humor): A young man was driving by a roadside eatery, when he noticed a sign reading "Eat today, we will collect from your grandson." He went in, ordered a sumptuous meal, and was about to exit the eatery when the server presented him with a huge bill. He protested, pointing to the sign. "Yes, sir," the server replied, "we will collect from your grandson, but this is your grandfather's bill!"
(6) Abolhassan Banisadr on "The Transformation of Iranian Women's Lives in Post-Revolutionary Iran": Today, on Zoom and Facebook Live, Islamic Republic's first president talked about and answered questions on the status of women in Iran. The event was hosted by PhD scholars Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U.) and Oslem Has (U. Copenhagen), with Behrooz Parhami acting as translator. I made it clear to the organizers and Dr. Banisadr that I was merely acting as a translator and would not allow my own ideas and opinions on women's rights and on the Islamic Republic of Iran to affect the discussion; in other words, I did not attempt to do any fact-checking or to insert my own commentary into the questions or answers. Dr. Banisadr began by offering a list of 30 inequities affecting women in Iran (and, in some cases, worldwide). He then proceeded to discuss the social harms resulting from these inequities and ended with a discussion of why women and their activism form the most consequential force in bringing about freedoms and social justice. [Recording] [Screenshot]
2020/11/27 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Sights along Goleta's Hollister Ave., photographed on Tuesday, November 24, 2020: [Top left] The former Hollister-Fairview drive-in theater is now an "economy" long-term parking lot for Santa Barbara Airport, which is across the street, with its entrance ~1.5 miles away. [Top center] Many people are surprised to learn that Direct Relief International has its headquarters in Goleta, CA: The highly-effective, top-rated charity is located on Hollister Ave., across from SB Airport. [Top right] A few tech companies and an adjacent hotel: The vacant lot may have once been considered as a possible site for a Walmart or Target store. Target has now replaced our defunct K-mart. The Walmart project seems to have been withdrawn. [Bottom left] Raytheon, with multiple buildings, has been a long-term tech presence in Goleta: This particular building is near SB Airport's control tower. [Bottom center] A few more tech companies and other businesses. [Bottom right] A lushly landscaped stretch along Goleta's Hollister Ave.: Part of the route I took on foot towards home, after leaving my car at a detail shop to have it thoroughly cleaned for the holidays, when it will be sitting in the garage for the most part!
(2) When life gives you lemons, make lemonade: Instead of worrying about overgrown weeds next to my carport, I decided to enjoy their pretty purple and white flowers. [Photos]
(3) Selected courses offered to IEEE members for $10 each (until 11/30): IEEE Learning Network listings include: Understanding 5G Fundamentals; Intelligent Control of Connected and Automated Vehicles; Technical Writing for Scientists and Engineers; Introduction to Numerical Methods; The Digitized Grid.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Yesterday's small gathering of my family for Thanksgiving, at my sister's. [Photos: Batch 1, Batch 2]
- Driving from Santa Barbara to Ventura: Fairview Ave. on-ramp to Telephone Rd. off-ramp. [Time-lapse]
- Persian music: Wonderful rendition of the old song "Mihmaan" ("Guest").
- Persian music and dance: "Beh Rahi Didam Barg-e Khazaan" ("I Chanced Upon an Autumn Leaf").
- The song "El Condor Pasa" was quite popular in my youth. Here, it is played on a 5-chord zither.
- Many posts like this 1-minute video showing 3D paintings on tree trunks, are circulating on the Internet.
(5) A message from Nasrin Sotoudeh: The Iranian human/women's rights activist, on temporary medical leave from prison, thanks the city of Florence for honoring her with the key to the city and praises the Italian city for its leading role in the fight against death penalty.
(6) A story of injustice and incompetent leadership in Iran: Mohammad Nourizad tells the story of a young cell-mate, a brilliant college student imprisoned for insulting Ahmadinejad and whose father was murdered by a top Islamic Republic official. He then addresses and shames snake-oil salesman President Rohani for bringing such tragedy to the country's youth and their families.
(7) Tribute to Mohammad-Reza Shajarian [1940-2020]: Stanford University's Program in Iranian Studies will hold a virtual celebration on Thursday, December 10, 2020, 10:00 AM to 12:00 noon, PST.
2020/11/26 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Thanksgiving Day to all! Even under a deadly pandemic and an equally deadly presidency, we have much to be thankful for this year. There are indications that by mid-2021, herd immunity will set in as a result of vaccinations. Even before then, we will get rid of the worst President in US history and will see some degree of civility restored to our hoplessly-divided society. There is light at the end of the tunnel, as they say! [Top center] My daughter's pre-Thanksgiving feast: She prepared Turkey breast with veggies and gravy, along with a large batch of cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries to take to our small family gathering today. Lots of leftovers! [Top right] "Indigenous Communities and Intersectional Environmental Ethics": This is the title of a free Zoom discussion session, to be held on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020, 5:00 PM PST (ucsb.zoom.us/j/97423097793). [Bottom left & center] In the battle between ignorance and enlightenment, one can't remain on the sideline: Executing women for minor indiscretions isn't morally equivalent to educating and empowering them via a book club. [Bottom right] Tears are not all the same: Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher captures tears of grief, joy, laughter, and irritation.
(2) November 25 was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women: Conservatively, one in three (by some accounts, up to 70%) of women experience violence in their lifetime.
(3) Allies turning against Trump: A battle is raging between Donald Trump and three heavyweight media supporters, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Rush Limbaugh. I have a feeling that Trump will prevail.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump pardons his former advisor Michael Flynn. Roger Stone and Paul Manafort are rumored to be next.
- Quote of the day: "The stock market will crash if Biden is elected President." ~ Donald J. Trump [Meme]
- Humor: Melania Trump is seeking a publisher for her tell-all book, tentatively entitled I Write Book.
- Slavery behind bars: Criminals collude with prison guards to set up production lines in Iranian prisons.
- Trump, on the best people he hires and the worst people he fires: They are the same people! [Video]
- Political humor: Trump may escape to Iran, where he has lots of supporters!
- Hope humor returns to the White House: Obama's remarks at his last WH Correspondents' Dinner.
- Soccer loses one (Argentina's Diego Maradona, dead at 60) and gains one (Brazil's Natalia Guitler, 33).
(5) Iranian Baha'is harassed: In simultaneous operations in several cities, security agents ransacked the homes of tens of Baha'is, confiscating their personal effects, mobile phones, computers, and religious books.
(6) UCSB virtual talk on the Armenian crisis: Dr. Anna Ohanyan will speak on Wed., Dec. 2, 2020, at 12:00 noon PST, under the title "The Crisis in Karabagh: Causes and Consequences." [Registeration (free)]
2020/11/24 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Art in the park: Statues of an elderly couple, in London and Tehran! [Top center] A few roses and rosebuds from my four rose bushes: Many more are on the way! And I am enjoying some surprisingly long-lasting carnations, going into their third week! [Bottom left] The Economist survey: Scientists opine on whether policymakers have taken their advice into account in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. [Bottom center] We are "letting" this monster stay in the White House (very reluctantly), because, unlike him, we are law-abiding citizens. He is entitled to "serve" (if you can call what he does "serving") until the last day of his term. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Can you spot the error in this proof of the "identity" 2 + 2 = 5? Then generalize the erroneous method to prove a = b for any a and b.
(2) A national disgrace: Trump's legal team alleges serious election fraud in tweets and press statements, but presents completely different arguments, not involving fraud, in the courtroom. Meanwhile, Trump is upset with his legal team for making him look bad!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- While remaining defiant about the election outcome, Trump endorses transition funding and briefings.
- AP's running and continuously-updated list of Joe Biden's cabinet picks.
- Biden picks former Fed Chair Janet Yellen as the first woman to head the Treasury Department.
- Biden selects two more women: Avril Haines as DNI and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN Ambassador.
- Other Biden picks: Anthony Blinken (State), Alejandro Mayorkas (DHS), and John Kerry (Climate Czar).
- Reporter Vida Rabbani has been arrested in Iran for the second time this year.
(4) Talk about election fraud! Mystery spoiler candidates, Republicans running as "liberals" with dark-money support, influence the outcomes of multiple Florida State-Senate races.
(5) Feeding hungry Americans: Dow Jones breaks the 30,000 barrier. Trump holds a 1-minute press briefing to boast about the record, without mentioning that record numbers of people are being hospitalized and dying of COVID-19 and miles-long food lines are appearing from coast to coast. By the way, what happened to the claim that the stock market would crash if Biden were elected?
Here is a Web site that helps you find your local food bank to make an urgently-needed donation to help feed your fellow-Americans.
(6) Final post for the day: Reza Rohani (son of maestro Anoushiravan Rohani) performs his dad's beautiful composition about autumn, with vocals by Sara Naeini. [2-minute video]
2020/11/22 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Saturday 11/21's colorful sunset in Goleta, California (1-minute video). [Bottom row] Interesting facts about the animal kingdom (left to right) The path of an eagle, tracked over a 20-year period. GPS tracking of six different wolfpacks around Voyageurs National Park shows that they really don't intrude into one another's territory. Some four-dozen sharks are being actively tracked off the US East Coast to study their movements; each dot on the map represents one shark at a particular time.
(2) Trump doesn't want to remain in office: His delay tactics are motivated by hopes that the resulting chaos will help him cut a Nixon-style deal to escape prosecution. Read Edward Norton's tweet-thread for details.
(3) Some plan to get together with their elderly loved ones during what might be their last Thanksgiving: Yes, this may be their last Thanksgiving, but please don't make it their last Thanksgiving by your actions!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Americans are ignoring Thanksgiving travel warning: Brace yourselves for many more cases & deaths!
- Attorney Sidney Powell: How crazy do you have to be for Rudi Guiliani to disavow you as part of his team?
- SBPianoBoys return to public performance after being sidelined by the pandemic. [Article] [Video]
- Academic humor: Your typical thesis committee, according to www.phdcomics.com.
- Changuiz Jalilvand, who voiced many Iranian and foreign actors in dubbed films, dead of COVID-19 at 80.
- Persian poetry: Amazing superposition of shadows, bringing to mind a verse of Sa'adi. [Tweet]
- Persian music: The oldie pop song "Mahtaab" ("Moonshine"), performed by Viguen.
(5) For those who live outside North America: Iranwire.com provides a free viewing link for the documentary film "Nasrin" (about Nasrin Sotoudeh, Iran's prominent human/women's-rights activist who is serving a long prison term), for 10 days, November 18-28, 2020.
(6) Chronic effects of COVID-19 on the young: Physically-fit and healthy people are coming down with dibiliatating conditions (post-acute COVID-19 syndrome) months after beating a mild version of the disease.
(7) Socialism is good when it benefits hard-core capitalists: Georgia Senator David Perdue's Dollar General, a chain catering to low-income customers, benefited directly and indirectly from government assistance.
(8) Donald Trump's concession speech (humor): I hereby concede that I beat sleepy Joe Biden, the worst possible candidate Democrats could have chosen, BY A LOT (all-caps text means its true).
2020/11/21 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & Bottom center] Photos from yesterday's late afternoon walk along the beach in Isla Vista, California. [Bottom left & right] Photos taken during my mid-morning walk today on Goleta's Hollister Ave.: The sites include Goleta City Hall and company headquarters within business/research parks.
(2) Murphy's Law: How one Trump loyalist, Emily Murphy, is holding up the means for smooth transition of power to the Biden/Harris administration, much to the delight of our adversaries abroad.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Emmys to honor NY Governor Andrew Cuomo for his 111 daily COVID-19 briefings earlier this year.
- Iran and the United States: Stuck in the no-man's land between peace and war.
- Iran's campaign of terror in Iraqi Kurdistan has claimed 259 victims.
- Iran sentences Kurdish girl in West Azerbaijan to 5 years in prison on political charges.
- Former Iranian diplomat faces trial for foiled bomb plot in Paris.
- Persian music: Honoring the late Mohammad-Reza Shajarian by performing one of his compositions.
(4) SUTA talk by Dr. Mehdi Zarghami (Zarghamee): Sharif/Arya-Mehr University of Technology's fifth Chancellor, and the first one to be chosen from among the institution's faculty members, spoke today under the title "Developing Science and Technology in Iran."
He began his remarks with an overview of the science & technology scene in Iran, from ancient times to the 1960s, when AMUT was founded. Zarghami, a doctoral student at U. Illinois at the time, recalls being surprised that Iran's national budget, almost entirely coming from oil revenues, was $1 billion, that is, merely 6-7 times the $150 million annual budget of U. Illinois!
One challenge in founding AMUT was making it a non-public entity to avoid bureaucratic constraints on public institutions and to be able to pay competitive salaries to the faculty in order to absorb the best talent. Yet it wasn't clear at the time where funds for running the institution would come from.
Serious political unrest at AMUT began in the 1970s, leading to the arrest of many students and formation of the University Guard, which monitored political activities on campus and made healthy interactions among students and faculty impossible. It is a testament to the strong foundations of AMUT that it survived both political unrest before the Islamic Revolution and external meddling in its affairs, including student and faculty purges, afterwards.
Construction of AMUT's Isfahan campus began in 1971, the vision being that of a two-campus university. This statement of Zarghami is at odds with my recollection that in the 1970s, faculty members were told that AMUT had been planned for Isfahan and that the Tehran campus was a temporary set-up, until the campus in Isfahan was completed (the Tehran campus had become serious trouble for Shah's regime, given the high level of student and faculty activism).
Dr. Zarghami then briefly reviewed the current state of education and research at SUT (and Iran, more generally). While various quantitative indicators (students admitted, papers published) show healthy growths, relying on such bean-counting measures, without an attendant evaluation of quality, is misleading. For example, there is no sign that the high level of publication activity translates to high impact in advancing the attendant fields of science and technology.
A lively Q&A period followed. I asked a question that appears at the &ndash'7:35 mark of the talk's recording on YouTube. [122-minute video] [Screenshot (one of three)]
2020/11/19 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Funny tweets about Zoom meetings. [Top center] When you insult people left & right, and consider yourself smarter than everyone else, you'll be left with third-rate people (such as Rudi Giuliani), who are incapable of helping you, even if they give it their best. [Top right] Pocket tweet: After 2+ weeks of silence and refusing to authorize the presidential transition process, Emily Murphy, the Trump-appointed head of GSA, issues a covfefe-like tweet. [Bottom left & right] Interesting geographical facts: Australia is almost as big as the continental US; Japan is much bigger than many of us think! [Bottom center] Roman aqueduct in Tunisia: The Zaghouan aqueduct was built during the reign of Emperor Hadrian in 122 to bring water from Jebel Zaghouan to Carthage. The section shown in this photo is near Tunis. [Bottom right]
(2) Book talk: Iranian author Dalia Sofer, best known for her earlier novel Septembers of Shiraz, will talk about her new novel, Man of My Time, on Thursday, December 3, 2020, 10:00 AM PST.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biden appoints someone who advised DuPont on skirting environmental regulations to advise him on EPA.
- Worst in US history: Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees at State, Justice, and Education.
- Election fraud? Supposedly-dead Georgia voter is very much alive!
- Donald Trump's 100 most-tremendous scandals. [25-minute video]
- Dancing on the side of a high-rise: Amazing skill and grace! [3-minute video]
- Having fun with music: Two young men change from casual to formal clothes, while playing the piano.
(4) COVID-19 is a health crisis, but also an education nightmare: Colleges are losing revenues, applications, students (both domestic and international), and visiting scholars, who form pillars of research programs.
(5) How Oxford English Dictionary changed its definition of "Woman": The update was sparked by a Change.org petition (started in 2019 by London-based communication strategist Maria Beatrice Giovanardi), which said the dictionary's examples of the use of "woman" in a sentence showed them as sex objects, subordinate, and/or an irritation to men, and the dictionary entry for "man" was far more substantive. Many definitions related to gender, particularly those concerning "sexual attractiveness or activity" were revised and references to gender were removed from the examples for words typically associated with women, including housework, high-maintenance, and anatomy.
(6) Final thought for the day: House and Senate Republicans who just got re-elected to office support Trump's assertion that the elections were rigged. Chew on that!
2020/11/18 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Sunset on Tue. 2020/11/17: Photographed from Isla Vista and UCSB West Campus. [Center] Isla Vista murals: A few samples, shot during a late-afternoon walk on Tue. 11/17.
(2) Too close for comfort: According to the Center for Near-Earth Studies, a pickup-truck-size space rock passed within 240 miles (385 km) of Earth's surface on Friday, November 13, 2020, at 5:20 UTC.
(3) Trump is fighting to keep a job he shows no interest in performing: He and his top aides have been missing in action for two weeks, as the country struggles with a worsening pandemic! [The Washington Post]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's disputed claims, clearly marked as such, are still retweeted tens of thousands of times. [Tweet]
- Sculptures come to life: Kids and adults are equally stunned or scared. [3-minute video]
- Lucio Dalla's "Caruso": History, meaning, and many renditions of the 1986 Italian song. [15-minute video]
- Well, this traditional Iranian strength-training exercise regimen is no longer for "macho" men only!
(5) What Donald Trump is doing isn't a sign of toughness: He is a scared man, who may spend the rest of his life defending decades of corruption. Russia and payment to hookers are the least of his problems. His foundation, Trump Organization, and the rest of his operations are built on dishonesty and cheating others.
(6) What'll Moscow Mitch say in 2021? Extrapolate from the despicable swamp creature's previous musings:
2010: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a 1-term president."
2016: "One of my proudest moments was when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy."
2018: "Will Dems work with us, or simply put partisan politics ahead of the country?"
(7) Large-scale sexual abuse: The Boy Scouts of America, already undergoing bankruptcy, faces more than 92,000 sexual abuse claims. This is even more serious than charges against the Catholic Church.
(8) This evening's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Rich Wolski (Professor and holder of Duval Presidential Chair in Energy Efficiency, Department of Computer Science, UCSB) spoke under the title "Experiences with IoT and The New Internet as a Platform of Things." For detailed description and images, please see the IEEE CCS Technical Talks page or my Facebook post.
2020/11/17 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Memory from November 17, 2011: My daughter and her Engineering Academy teammates meet The Science Guy. [Top center] A most-spectacular still shot of a dance group: The Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. [Top right] Memory from November 17, 2012: Demonstrating the "not impressed" face! Looking forward to a healthy sense of humor returning to the White House. [Bottom left] A second crook is about to bite the dust: The first one left reluctantly too, but he did not try to burn the country in contempt. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: The Republicans wondering how much longer they have to keep up the circus act. [Bottom right] An amazing 3D objects that looks completely different based on the viewing angle.
(2) Category-5 Hurricane Iota isn't tiny: With winds of up to 160 mph, Iota is expected to make landfall in northeastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras, affecting some of the areas still water-logged from Eta.
(3) Deja vu all over again: We are witnessing the second straight instance of a Republican president leaving his Democratic successor a crisis to manage and a mess to clean up.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump had to be dissuaded from bombing Iran: I hope we survive the last 63 days of Trump's presidency!
- Quote: "Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." ~ Astrophysicist Carl Sagan
- Magnificent moonrise: Captured from Byron Bay Lighthouse at Australia's easternmost point. [Video]
- Magic tricks: Some of the secrets revealed! [2-minute video]
- Persian music: Kayhan Kalhor plays the kamancheh as you likely haven't seen before! [2-minute video]
(5) Immigrants' son who built Dropbox, an $8B company: Arash Ferdowsi's upbringing was a mix of Iranian traditions at home and American culture while hanging out with friends. "Nobody at Blue Valley Northwest High School cared that my parents were immigrants; my peers simply accepted me as one of their own."
(6) On social-media etiquette: When you retweet or repost something, please consider adding a brief description of your own to provide context. Notifications often include just your text and not the original tweet or post. So, if you say something like "This," "Must read," or "Hahaha," you are not helping the recipient of the alert decide whether s/he wants to pursue the tweet/post. We all receive many dozens of alerts daily and can't possibly pursue all of them. I, for one, ignore any alert that does not tell me what the tweeet/post is about.
(7) Final thought for the day: "I firmly believe that the important things about humans are social in character and that relief by machines from many of our present demanding intellectual functions will finally give the human race time and incentive to learn how to live well together." ~ Merrill M. Flood (formulator, with Melvin Dresher, of the basis of the game-theoretical Prisoner's dilemma model of cooperation and conflict)
2020/11/16 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Fitting meme of the day: John McCain liked people who don't lose Arizona! [Center] Happy International Day for Tolerance: Coming amid one of the most intolerant eras in US political life. Hoping for better conditions when we celebrate next year! [Right] Professor Alenoush Terian (1920-2011): Iran's first woman physicist, a Sorbonne-educated Armenian, would have turned 100 on November 9, 2020. She is known as the mother of modern Iranian astronomy. (P.S.: Wikipedia lists her birth year as 1921, but other sources indicate that 1920 is the correct year. One of the photos indicates that she indeed celebrated her 90th birthday, before passing in March 2011.)
(2) Al Qaeda's second-in-command perishes in Tehran: Israel may have been behind the drive-by shooting that killed the experienced Al Qaeda operative. Iran's Foreign Ministry has denied that the killing occurred.
(3) The criminal administration strikes again: Trump adviser Dr. Scott Atlas encourages an insurrection against Governor Gretchen Whitmer over Michigan's new COVID-19 safety protocols.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Voter fraud: Explained by comedian John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight." [18-minute video]
- Trump has been an avid promoter of flights to Mars: He is thinking of building his Mars-a-Lago escape resort!
- An ER nurse in South Dakota says her patients dying of covid-19 continue to deny the pandemic's existence.
- Evening of Sunday 11/15 on Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach. [31-second video]
(5) Older people should rejoice: A US study published in New England Journal of Medicine (2018) concludes that we tend to be most productive in our 60s, followed closely by our 70s, and then our 50s. So peak productivity is achieved in the second half of life, which is an argument for raising our retirement age. In his TEDx talk, "The Most Productive Years of Your Life May Surprise You," Lloyd Reeb makes the same point.
(6) Persian poetry: Khosro Shahani was bed-ridden, when a friend visited. He reportedly composed this verse impromptu: My illness led to a beloved's inquiry | I'll die of sadness for feeling better tonight [Persian poem]
(7) Virtual tour of the British Museum: As we are stuck at home due to COVID-19, let's not forget that we can explore many distant tourism and cultural sites on-line. The British Museum is one!
(8) Literary humor from Iran: Writer/poet Reza Baraheni once related that during Shah's reign, he and cohorts tried to write political poems in a manner that people got the message but SAVAK (Shah's secret police) didn't, but it worked backwards; people didn't get the message, while SAVAK did!
(9) Final thought for the day: In his wide-ranging "60 Minutes" interview, former President Obama talks about Trump's non-concession, his new book, The Promise Land, and his presidential center.
2020/11/15 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Magazine covers celebrate America returning to normalcy. [Right] Cover imagae of Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility (see the last item below).
(2) Recommended documentary film on Netflix: "The Social Dilemma" tackles the ill effects of technology on society. And here is Journalist Katie Couric in a 75-minute conversation with tech experts and Jeff Orlowski, the maker of the said documentary.
(3) Misogyny hurts your loved ones: Just a friendly reminder that when you say ignorant things about women in power, they don't hear you, but your mother, your sisters, your daughters, and your nieces do!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Major League Baseball gets its first woman as general manager: The Marlins hire Kim Ng.
- Amazing 3D paintings and murals. [3-minute video]
- Persian music: "Ghogha-ye Setaregan," music by Homayoon Khorram, lyrics by Karim Fakoor.
- Persian poetry: Young woman with a beautiful voice recites a politically-charged poem. [1-minute video]
(5) Both CIA and FBI directors are reportedly on the chopping block: Watch Hannity, Ingraham, and other Fox News commentator to see if the order to fire will be issued!
(6) Book review: DiAngelo, Robin, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Amy Landon, Beacon Press, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is about defensive moves white people make, when challenged about their racial attitudes. Counter-productive reactions range from anger to guilt, and from fear to withdrawal. The author, a race/racism-dialog facilitator who happens to be white, relates her experiences and those of her white & colored friends in interacting with people who are overtly racist and those who exhibit unconscious racist behavior. Individuals in the latter group often absolve themselves of responsibility with statements such as "I grew up in a tolerant family" or "I have black friends."
Perhaps the most revealing point in this book is the separation of racism from "badness." Not all racism results from ill intentions. Racism isn't just deliberate acts committed by evil people with the intent to harm others, but it can thrive and spread through White Privilege, even without racists. If a colleague of us discriminates against blacks by not hiring them and we (white people) don't speak up, our benefiting from the act of exclusion constitutes racism. That is, closing our eyes to racist behavior is racist. In a similar manner, sexism can also exist without sexists.
According to DiAngelo, racism is a social structure and a legacy of slavery, not specific acts by individuals. Even though this main message of the book is valid and welcome, there is too much repetition and other forms of redundancy in examples and arguments. Such redundancy can turn off readers, both those who are receptive to the main arguments and those who must be brought over to our side. Despite the latter criticism, I do recommend the book highly!
2020/11/14 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The spectacular Mount Fanjing in China: Pay attention to the path for getting to the top! [Center] This is what can and does happen when you add a new feature to existing code. [Right] Cover image of Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's Melania and Me (see the last item below).
(2) A talk about growth in businesses, by Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School): Successful companies often wind up as middle-of-the-pack businesses a few decades later, and the scary thing is that this undesirable outcome is a natural consequence of good management!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The law-&-order President will face laws he claims to uphold & law-enforcement entities he feigns to support.
- The lawn-and-order President holds official event at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
- Breath of fresh air: A day after election of Joe Biden as the 46th US President has been officially certified.
- Iranian cleric: Women with improper hijabs invested in the stock market, causing it to crash! [Meme]
- Cartoon caption of the day (Boy to his father in 2075): "Dad, how come buildings don't have 45th floors?"
- Persian/Azeri music: "Lonely," a song, with music, lyrics, and vocals by Homay. [7-minute video]
(4) Book review: Wolkoff, Stephanie Winston, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2020.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is yet another tell-all book about the Trump family. The author, Melania Trump's former best-friend and advisor, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, was unceremoniously dumped after it was disclosed that she had made millions personally from producing Trump's inaugural celebrations. I wasn't sure I wanted to peruse this book, but changed my mind when it became available at my local library during a period when I had long wait periods for other on-hold books.
Among the book's revelations is a characterization of Melania Trump as calculating, cold, and cruel, just like her husband, but, in some passages, she is described as a carefree, basking-in-the-sun person. Wolkoff also includes tidbits on Melania's relationship with the adult children of her husband, particularly "Princess" Ivanka. She confides that Melania insisted on calling herself "First Lady Elect" during the transition period, even though she was told by aides that she was not elected to the position.
It is rather odd that Wolkoff rose in stature, eventually landing a high-level political job, with dubious qualifications. She essentially leveraged her friendship with Malania Trump and connections with other famous people to get ahead. A good chunk of the book is a day-by-day diary of the two months she spent on planning Trump's inaugural festivities, including a rather boring account of budgets and who got/did what. This part is likely Wolkoff's self-defense against allegations of financial improprieties.
It is unclear when Wolkoff turned on her friend and began secretly recording her. Melania Trump's profanity-laced rant about Christmas decorations and children separated from their families is among the recordings that Wolkoff has released. In my humble opinion, the Mafia-like, greedy, and swindling Trump family deserves the back-stabbing staffers and aides that it gets.
2020/11/13 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Anti-Blackness: Difficult Dialogues": This is the title of a UCSB lecture series, sponsored by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, spanning fall 2020, winter 2021, and spring 2021. [Center & Right] Today's IEEE Educational Activities Board webinar (see the last item below).
(2) Trump asks supporters to help fund the recount effort: But fine print in the donation request indicates that much of the money will go to pay off his campaign's debt and finance his PAC! A final scam, before he leaves!
(3) On the Lincoln Project and other anti-Trump Republicans: They are all hypocrites. None of them ever said that an unqualified, criminal President should not be allowed to shape our country's legal system for decades to come. And no one complained about tax cuts for the rich and corporations that put us in a big hole, with exploding deficits. They used Trump to achieve their goals and should not be allowed to wash off their hands, as if they had no role in this abomination.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Department of Homeland Security calls the 2020 election the most secure in American history.
- Do not donate to Trump's election-recount account: He is running yet another scam to enrich himself.
- A group of Iranian women remove their hijabs on streets and other public places, singing about freedom.
- Humor: The real thing is much scarier on Halloween! [13-second video]
- Kurdish music and dancing. [4-minute video]
- Persian music: A song about Isfahan, with video clips of the city's historical and cultural sights.
(5) Funny oxymorons: Found missing; Open secret; Small crowd; Act naturally; Fully empty; Pretty ugly; Original copy; Only choice; Liquid gas; and, to top them all, Social distancing!
(6) IEEE Educational Activities Board: This morning, in my role as Education Chair of IEEE California Central Coast Section, I attended a webinar offered by IEEE EAB. This global event had several panelists and more than 90 attendees. Here are some resources that are accessible to both IEEE members and non-members.
- IEEE Learning Network: A central source for continuing education opportunites from across IEEE
- IEEE Education Portal: Includes pre-university, university, and continuing-education resources
- IEEE Teaching Excellence Hub: Includes resources and tips for effective on-line teaching
- TryEngineering: Includes tools for those who want to do outreach to high-school students
- Key facts: IEEE membership is 14% women; Users of EAB resources trend younger and are ~30% women.
I asked whether it's possible for sections to purchase educational products and offer them to section members free of charge? If so, what would be the pricing model? Answer: Yes. Reach out to EAB Managing Director.
2020/11/12 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] In 2017, Moscow Mitch dismissed the effect of tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations on the deficit. Now, he is worried about the exploding deficit and thinks that cutting social-safety programs is the solution. [Center] Ratio of women university students in STEM fields by country (see the next item below). [Right] Something is awfully wrong with our society and law enforcement if Neo-Nazis can walk on our streets openly, with their heads held up high, while black Americans are afraid to do the same.
(2) Women in STEM fields: According to 2014 OECD data, in three countries, at least half of university students within STEM fields are women: Portugal (57%), Italy (53%), Turkey (50%). Turkey has since moved further toward fundamentalism, so the fraction may have fallen. At 40%, the US is 14th on the list. Iran might have appeared near the top, but it is not included, perhaps due to lack of data. These two charts depict the gender-equality paradox in STEM: A higher value of Global Gender Equality Index is associated with both higher relative strength in science in favor of boys and a lower fraction of women among STEM graduates.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Reposting from November 12, 2016: Why Donald Trump Isn't My President. [My Facebook post/essay]
- Proud Boys leader, in a social-media post: "We're rolling out. Standby order has been rescinded."
- These concession speeches represent the American way of honoring and strengthening democracy.
- Chris Cuomo exposes the hypocrisy of Trump cronies by showing what they said about previous elections.
- Mayor of a small Japanese town, whose name has the alternative pronunciation "Jo Baiden" finds fame.
- The long-standing assumption that only male prehistoric humans engaged in hunting has been upended.
- In Iran, unjust laws grant husbands full control over their wives, forcing them to leave the job market.
- Disabled Iranian body builder arrested: Hardliners call for his execution over an Instagram post.
- Decipher these eight common sayings that are disguised in the fanciest verbiage.
- What number should replace the question mark? 48-12-39; 87-15-96; 56-11-74; 63-?-27
(4) Trump's three mutually inconsistent thoughts about Iran: Publicly, Trump threatened to annihilate Iran while also speaking of the noble people of Iran who love America. Privately, he was writing letters to invite Iranian authorities to agree to talks.
(5) How Hafez might have sung his verses: Maestro Ali Tajvidi speculates on this question, based on evidence that Hafez had a good singing voice and that regional melodies in Shiraz are centuries old. [6-minute video]
(6) "Women and Resistance Arts and Literature": This is the subject of a webinar to be held on Saturday, December 5, beginning at 6:00 PM PST. PhD scholars Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U.) and Ozlem Has (U. Copenhagen) will host speakers Azam Ali (singer & visual artist) and Nabina Das (poet).
2020/11/11 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Veterans' Day! This ageless quote is appropriate for today, 11/11, when we honor soldiers and veterans, who make sacrifices in fighting wars, while generals and politicians are remembered in historical records as heroes: "In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one." ~ H. L. Mencken [Top center] Time magazine election charts: In the pyramid-shape chart, block heights represent electoral votes and block widths represent margins of victory in percent. [Top right] Cover image of Your Brain Is a Time Machine (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Monday 11/09 at UCSB: The beautiful blue skies inspired me to snap these photos. [Bottom center] Walnuts, with and without the two shell layers (wooden, brown inside and soft, green outside). [Bottom right] Proposed for the area behind our home by our complex's Landscaping Committee: Major improvement over the current design. In my approval, I expressed hope that the implemented version looks as good as the virtual model (not like real Big Mac vs. the advertisement photo)!
(2) New US election records set: $14 billion total spending; 65 million mail-in votes; 101 million early votes; Ruth Graham Ray, 108, voted for President for the 22nd time.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UAE to collect its prize for signing a trade pact with Israel: Approval to buy fifty F-35 stealth fighter jets.
- Iran's mixed reaction to US elections: Rouhani is cautiously welcoming; Khamenei sees continued enmity.
- Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei continues empowering his cronies and disenfranchising the parliament.
- The boyish Matt Damon is now 50: Here are a few more celebrities with milestone birthdays in Oct. or Nov.
(4) Book review: Buonomano, Dean, Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time, W. W. Norton & Company, 2017. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is composed of 12 chapters, numbered 1:00 to 12:00, arranged in two 6-chapter parts entitled "Brain Time" and "The Physical and Mental Nature of Time."
Time—Person—Year—Way—Day. No, this list of words isn't from a cognitive test designed to detect the onset of dementia! These are the five most-frequently used English nouns. The facts that "time" tops the list and two units of time are in the top five are clear indications of the importance of time in our lives. Beginning with the latter observation, UCLA neuroscientist Buonomano takes us through a non-stop feast of ideas and challenges. As we ponder the topic of this book, we "learn that our intuitions and theories about time reveal as much about the nature of time as they do about the architecture and limitations of our brains."
It's reasonable to expect that a book about time would start by defining the term precisely. Unfortunately, no such definition exists, despite scientists and philosophers attempting to get a handle on the notion for many centuries. There has been little progress since 1600 years ago, when Saint Augustine opined: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." We don't even know whether time exists at all!
A key observation of Buonomano is that we don't have one internal clock, but several different ones associated with different time scales. Our internal clocks for telling days and months do not have minute and second hands, so to speak, and the mechanisms we use to measure short time periods, such as how long we have been waiting for our cup of coffee, lack hour and day hands. And this "multiple-clock principle" applies to other animals as well.
When we think of memory, our mental record of events, each one time-stamped in some way, we think of reminiscing about the past. Actually, the sole purpose of memory, from the point of view of evolution, is as a tool for predicting the future. So, if the same thing has happened at sunset every day over the recent past, we come to expect it to happen at the next sunset. This is where the brain's sense of time becomes important to our survival. Prospective timing ("Remind me to leave in 5 minutes!") and retrospective timing ("How long ago did Amy leave?") also have different brain mechanisms.
One of the difficulties in dealing with time is that we use the word "time" in three different senses, for which some languages have separate words: a lecture on the nature of time, an event ending on time, and a meeting dragging on for a long time.
Buonomano considers the brain to be a time machine for four inter-related reasons.
- Remembering past events and their timings, in order to predict the future.
- Telling time, a process similar to other computations, such as recognizing a face.
- Creating a sense of time; unlike vision or hearing, we don't have a time organ.
- Allowing mental travel, projecting ourselves backward and forward in time.
I had previously read several books about the human brain and a few dealing with the physical and philosophical underpinnings of time. How our brain influences the notion of time and how it is in turn affected by it are the key ideas we learn from this wonderful book.
2020/11/10 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Rosa sat, so Ruby could walk, so Kamala could run (credit: Gemma Aitchison). [Center] Electoral maps that are constructed at election time are misleading: Land doesn't vote, people do! [Right] A few uncredited paintings of our new leadership team: Perhaps the portrait of former President Obama will finally go up in the White House after years of delay.
(2) Racism isn't just deliberate acts committed by "bad" people with the intention to harm others: Racism can thrive and spread through White Privilege, without racists. Sexism can also exist without sexists.
(3) The 50 richest Americans have more than 30% of the country's wealth: The bottom half have about 2%. Furthermore, the rich got six times richer since January 2020, as the poor struggled mightily with the pandemic and its economic consequences. The Rich Americans Club is almost exclusively male, with the first woman, Alice Walton, making an appearance at #10. Furthermore, women on the list gained their wealth through marriage or inheritance.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump is going through his third messy divorce: It's with Fox News, not Melania!
- Iranian human-women's rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh tests positive for coronavirus.
- Quote: "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." ~ American philosopher Eric Hoffer [1898-1983]
- Good old days? We used to eat cake after someone had blown on it. Chew on that!
(5) Magnitude-3.3 earthquake, today at 8:15 AM, near Goleta: Just a small shaker for us Californian, especially those who were wondering whether to get out of bed! It felt stronger than 3.3, though.
(6) The story of Zahhak in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings): As part of the weekly Zoom gatherings of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968, Mr. Rashid Hazrati, civil engineer and Shahnameh enthusiast, continued his very interesting presentation in Persian. In the story's conclusion, covering a protracted conflict between Fereidoon and Zahhak, Fereidoon avenges the death of his father, Kaveh, by arresting Zahhak and imprisoning him in a cave under Mt. Damavand. Fereidoon then proceeds to reverse Zahhak's misdeeds and to erase all traces of his tyranny. [Any resemblance to the current US situation is purely accidental!] I learned some interesting points from the verses of Zahhak's story. In one passage, Ferdowsi offers the sage advice that militarymen should not enter the domain of commerce, as mixing the two roles can lead to serious problems. A good discussion on Zahhak's story is provided by Ali-Akbar Sa'idi Sirjani in his book, Zahhak-e Mardush (3rd ed., 1990). Here is a previous Facebook post of mine on this series of 3 lectures.
2020/11/09 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Fox News is trying to save itself from the poison of Trumpism: It is unclear whether the years-long Trump mouthpiece can remove the stain and the stench. Trump supporters are already declaring it dead! [Center] A symbol of strength still smiles: Iranian human/women's rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh, after her recent temporary release from prison to seek medical care, with her daughter Mehraveh. [Right] Today's UCLA-sponsored lecture by UNC Chapel Hill's Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (see the last item below).
(2) Siri in hot water: Her answer to the question "How old is the President?" triggers conspiracy theories that she wants to put VP-elect Kamala Harris in charge of the White House!
(3) Structural batteries: Batteries will soon disappear, merging with the object they are powering. In cars, layers of carbon fiber in the body will form the battery, instead of a separate bulky unit sitting on the chassis. This will free up much space for adding conveniences and functionality, or just reducing size and weight.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Saudi Arabia, Israel come around to congratulating Biden on his election victory; China, Russia still mum.
- Pfizer announces 90% effectiveness for its COVID-19 vaccine: The markets rally to new record highs.
- A positive development due to COVID-19 is a re-examination of building ventilation systems.
- This fall, the changing of colors had a different meaning in a number of US states!
- Young Iranian activist Saba Kord-Afshari sentenced to 24 years for removing her headscarf in public.
(5) "Embodiment, Power, and Politics in the Context of Sigheh Marriages in Modern Iran": This very interesting talk by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (Roshan Institute Associate Professor in Persian Studies, UNC Chapel Hill), postponed from spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was offered today at 3:00 PM PST in the framework of UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran. The talk was based on Dr. Yaghoobi's recent book, Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Film and Literature (The Global Middle East, Book 12), Cambridge, 2020. My 4-star review of the latter book offers much of the needed background on the role of temporary marriages and how they are viewed and justified, both religiously and politically.
Dr. Yaghoobi began with some general remarks about the institution of temporary marriage ("sigheh"). At one point, sigheh wives were viewed essentially as maids, men bringing them home to provide help to their permanent wife/wives and merchants renting them out to earn additional income. During Ahmadinejad's government, sigheh marriages were officially encouraged, with the former President asking the youth to enter into such marriages without seeking permission from their parents. Women's rights groups opposed these efforts to further legalize and normalize sigheh. Women who enter sigheh marriages often do it due to financial need, but satisfying their sexual needs in a way that doesn't get them into trouble, socially or legally, also plays a role.
For the remainder of her talk, Dr. Yaghoobi discussed Hossein Farahbakhsh's 2012 film "Zendegi-ye Khosoosi" ("Private Life"), the topic of Chapter 8 in her book.
Ebrahim, a conservative Muslim, who pursues "improperly-veiled" women and pushes thumb-tacks into their foreheads as punishment, is transformed into a reformist and meets Parisa, an educated and independent woman who looks down at the institutions of religion and marriage. They enter into a relationship (an informal temporary marriage, which was religiously sanctioned from Ebrahim's view but was not officially registered). Ebrahim considers the relationship a fling, showing his extreme hypocrisy, but when Parisa gets pregnant and confronts him about accepting paternity and officially registering the marriage, so that the child can get identity documents, he suggests abortion. When Parisa refuses to abort the fetus, Ebrahim sees his "reputation" and permanent marriage threatened and proceeds to kill Parisa and the fetus.
One of the themes of the film is referring to and portraying the independent Parisa as hysteric or crazy, state-sanctioned terms for women who step outside their limited options in social molds and relationships with men.
A discussion period followed, with questions about both sigheh marriages in general and the way the particular relationship was depicted in Farahbakhsh's film. Dr. Yaghoobi indicated that the film was one of the few she could find that address the subject of sigheh; she did not choose it for its cinematic value or realism.
2020/11/08 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Happy National STEM Day! I used today's fitting occasion to revise and resubmit my paper "Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries." Will learn about the publication outcome in early 2021. [Top right] Biden wins, Trump is in denial (see the next item below). [Bottom left] One of these US vice-presidents doesn't look like the others ... in several different ways. But she does belong! [Bottom center] Retired Four-Star General Lori J. Robinson on our 'messy' democracy and the importance of hearing harsh truths. [Bottom right] News media in the US and other free countries of the world are celebrating Biden's victory: Saudi Arabia is reportedly anxious!
(2) Despite Biden/Harris prevailing, most Democrats are rather disappointed with the election outcomes: We lost seats in the House, failed to flip the Senate (although there is still a small chance for gaining control of the Senate), and made little or no headway in local elections. I hope Biden/Harris govern in a way that restores the public trust in the Democratic Party and its policies. I, for one, wish that both Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi step aside or are driven out in favor or younger, more dynamic, and more flexible leaders.
(3) Ex-presidents tend recede from public life: But I don't think Donald Trump would be interested in writing a memoir, planning his presidential library, or pursuing hobbies. Expect to hear from him loudly and often!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Alex Trebek: Who's the popular game-show host who just passed away at 80?
- Twitter continues to flag Trump's rage-tweets, spreading falsehoods about the presidential election.
- Some Christian supporters of Trump think that he is a model human being and was chosen to lead us.
- Iranian cuisine: Making aash-e reshteh (noodles pottage). [Video]
(5) Over the past day, I have seen many black fellow-citizens, including a couple of prominent commentators, crying for joy over the election of Biden/Harris: Imagine how relieved they must be that they will no longer be frequent targets of hate speech from government officials at the highest level, that they won't be left to fend off the pandemic on their own, that their children will be a bit safer on the street, that girls of color will see a glimmer of hope for reaching the pinnacle of success. Black Lives Matter, indeed!
(6) "The Transformation of Iranian Women's Lives in Post-Revolutionary Iran": Webinar moderated by PhD scholars Nasim Basiri (Oregon State U.) and Ozlem Has (U. Copenhagan) and featuring post-revolutionary Iran's first President, Abolhassan Banisadr. Saturday, November 28, 2020, 8:30 PM CET = 11:30 AM PST.
2020/11/07 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Dignity restored to the White House: Joe & Jill Biden and Kamala Harris & Douglas Emhoff form a well-educated, decent, and compassionate team. [Center] Uninstalling Donald Trump and bringing back art, music, love, and joy to the White House and the country. [Bottom left] White Supremacy and toxic masculinity on display in the US presidential election results (credit: Josh Goodman). [Bottom center] A young Shirazi engineer builds a complete model of Persepolis, as it appeared in its heydays: Mehdi Fathi-Nezhad spent 14 years on research and construction to complete his model. [Bottom right] It's time for unification (see the next item below).
(2) We celebrated today and can afford to continue with the festivities tomorrow: But we need to get back to the work of rebuilding our country and removing the wall Trump erected between its citizens. I, for one, will not be worshiping the Biden/Harris team but will hold them to task in fulfilling their campaign promises. We got our country back from Trump and his fear-mongering. The next order of business is to get it back from coronavirus and the fear of losing our loved ones to it. Let's get to work!
(3) Talk about election fraud! Two armed men, arrested with a load of fake ballots they intended to deliver to a vote-counting site in Philadelphia, appear to be QAnon followers.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Start spreading the news ("New York, New York"): Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States!
- Murdoch prepares his media outlets for the post-Trump era, asking Trump to accept defeat with grace.
- Geometric-puzzles books: Geometry Snacks and More Geometry Snacks, by E. Southall and V. Pantaloni.
- Puzzles book: If you are into number theory, try Recreations in the Theory of Numbers, by A. H. Beiler.
(5) Mark Meadows, Trump's Chief of Staff, tests positive for COVID-19: He has been appearing mask-less in a large number of campaign events and with many groups, including Trump and his family members.
(6) Persian Classical Melodies: Performed by maestros Javad Maroufi (piano) and Homayoun Khorram (violin). [Album 1, "Shokufeh-ha"; 63-minute audio file] [Album 2, "Del-e Shekasteh"; 74-minute audio file]
(7) Final thought for the day: "When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
2020/11/06 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] US presidential election map as of late last night: Joe Biden needs 6 more electoral votes to win, with any one of the three states where he currently leads (Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia) being sufficient for victory. [Center] Coverage of Trump's "press briefings" should have discontinued a long time ago: He would have been nothing without the press spreading his vile falsehoods. It's easy to do it now, when he is on his way out. So, "better late than never" does not apply here. [Right] An extraordinary piece of art: Can't even imagine how this is made. Perhaps broken-off pieces of china, stitched together?
(2) A second John helps Biden prevail: I wrote earlier that Biden's victory in Arizona was in part due to Trump's insults against John McCain, a respected hero in his state. It seems that the district of Congressman John Lewis, another target of Trump's insults, may have delivered Georgia for Biden. Words have consequences!
(3) Humor: "I move on him like a bitch! I just keep counting. And when it's a democracy, they let you do it." ~ Count Dracula, the avid counter of Sesame-Street fame
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- People dying from COVID-19 have been forgotten, as we watch this election circus and its orange clown!
- Talk of possible Biden cabinet members is starting! [Image]
- Today's "Sounds of Democracy" jazz concert: Wynton Marsalis performed live at the Lincoln Center.
- Iran's history: Construction of the Black Bridge over Karoun River in Ahwaz during Reza Shah's reign.
- Reposting from Nov. 6, 2013: Old saying: Think before you speak. New saying: Google before you post.
- Today, I received a certificate of appreciation for my participation in IEMCON-2020 as a keynote speaker.
(5) Iranian Women in Academia: As in every other domain, Iranian women have been rising in academic ranks within the US. Today, three young women academics shared their personal stories and their uphill battles that culminated in landing academic positions. The conversation was moderated by Nasrin Rahimieh (Howard Bakersville Professor of Humanities, Comparative Literature), an established academic in UC Irvine's School of Humanities, who has served as a mentor to numerous women in multiple fields. [Images]
Very brief descriptions of the panelists follow. It would be impossible for me to adequately summarize all the points made in this wide-ranging and informative panel discussion, so I urge you to listen to its recording.
- Annahita Mahdavi (Associate Professor, Human Services Addiction Studies, Long Beach City College), who came to the US as a refugee, related her challenges in academia, including being told on many occasions that she should be thankful for being given her position, which she characterized as a form of micro-aggression.
- Nooshan Shekarabi (Professor of Political Science, Santiago Canyon College), who found her way to a regular academic position after carrying heavy teaching loads as adjunct faculty at a liberal-arts college, and who has been chairing her current department for a decade, related the strange experience of getting a push-back from some members of the Iranian-American community when she self-identified as a woman of color.
- Claudia Yaghoobi (Roshan Associate Professor of Persian Studies, UNC Chapel Hill) related her experiences as part of the Armenian minority in Iran, coming to the US and having to go from tenured faculty member to a CVS clerk, and then navigating her status as a woman of color in academia, while belonging to the Christian majority in the US.
I end this brief report with a few words to men wondering what they can do to help women in their uphill struggles in academia: Consider forming or participating in an advocate group for gender equity. Here is an example group which we have founded at UCSB.
2020/11/05 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The US presidential race, as of 7:00 AM today: Winning any one of these four states (NV, GA, NC, PA), all of which are close, would put Biden in the White House. [Top center] Pleasant dining experience and great conversations during Wednesday evening's IEEE Central Coast Section Executive Committee Meeting at Masala Spice Indian Cuisine, on Goleta's Calle Real. [Top right] Architects' vision for Santa Barbara Downtown's State Street, redesigned for pedestrian-only traffic. [Bottom left] The next US President, Joe Biden: Not for sure, but very likely! [Bottom center] If Arizona goes to Biden, we owe it in large part to John McCain: Trump's insults against this national hero and a legend in his home state turned off many Arizonans. [Bottom right] A chat with author/journalist Homa Sarshar (see the last item below).
(2) An embarrassment of a president: Trump holds a "press conference" during which he spews a series of baseless accusations against states and election personnel, then leaves without answering a single question.
(3) CNN is running a continuous analysis of voting in five battleground states: They are presenting vote-differentials and discussing chances that the candidate who is behind will be able to catch up. Let's not allow this illusion of precision and know-how make us forget the gross incompetence of our news media and polling industry in predicting the results in several states that went the opposite way from predictions by wide margins!
(4) Trump would have won 100% of the votes in all 50 states without Biden voters: My response to former AG of Nevada's tweet that Trump would have won Nevada decisively without mail-in ballots! [Trump retweet]
(5) Twitter permanently suspends Steve Bannon's account: After claiming that Trump had won the election, he had suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.
(6) The increasingly deranged Trump: What we are seeing from Trump is something that we were repeatedly warned about by psychologists, even before his election in 2016. He himself told us that he won't commit to a peaceful transfer of power. A narcissist cannot accept defeat and will try to pull us all under, as he sinks.
(7) Stanford University's Program in Iranian Studies features author/journalist Homa Sarshar: Titled "Iranian Women: The Achilles Heel of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Sarshar's chat with Dr. Abbas Milani covered her illustrious life and work, as well as reflections on the women's-rights movement in Iran. Recordings of this and previous Stanford Program in Iranian Studies webinars are available on their Web site.
2020/11/04 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Trump whines about red results turning blue: Trevor Noah of the "Daily Show" responds! [Center] Post-Election-Day sunrise is just as beautiful, even though the results may end up not to be. [Right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Sleeplessness due to late-night anxiety.
(2) Nail-biters in the US: Votes were still being counted as today ended, with no definitive results known in the presidential race (Biden seems headed for a win) or control of the Senate (will likely remain with the GOP).
(3) Luckily, Trump needs Arizona: So, his hands are tied in challenging late counting elsewhere. Besides tweeting, he's eerily quiet. His advisers have probably tied him to a bed to stop him from worsening the situation by dumb statements!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A kind-hearted woman reflects on the US election and how its outcome may hurt marginalized groups.
- US voter turnout is projected to exceed the previous highest of 73.7% in the 1900 election.
- Historic election of Iranian-American women to public office in the US.
- Prop 16 (restoring affirmative action) fails in CA: U. California remains committed to student-body diversity.
(5) Today, I gave two talks at IEMCON 2020: The 11th Annual IEEE Information Technology, Electronics, and Mobile Communication Conference (based in Vancouver, Canada) is being held virtually this year. My keynote address, presented on 11/04, 9:30 AM PST, was entitled "Hybrid Digital-Analog Number Representation in Computing and in Nature." It was about a number representation scheme, using analog residues, that helps explain a rat's navigation abilities and sense of location, as proposed in key scientific theories that led to the award of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. [Slides] My regular talk in Session 8, entitled "Reliability and Modelability Advantages of Distributed Switching for Reconfigurable 2D Processor Arrays," was presented at 12:30 PM. [Slides] [Paper] A third talk, entitled "Number Representation and Arithmetic in the Human Brain," will be presented by my co-author, Ms. Jennifer Volk, on Friday 11/06. [Slides] [Paper]
2020/11/03 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Our scientist dolls are hoping to get more respect in the new US administration! [Center] America is expressing its disgust with the past four years, choosing blue hope over red fear. Stay tuned! [Right] The ruling mullahs in Iran: Halloween every day, for more than 40 years!
(2) This is Mohammad Zahed, one of the students killed in the terrorist attack at Kabul University: Backward minds in both Iran and Afghanistan are killing the brightest young talents or forcing them to flee their homelands, leaving little hope that their political and economic conditions will improve.
(3) Persian music: Soheila Golestani performs "Setareh Ahoo," the story of an improbable love between a star and a doe, music by Homayoun Khorram and lyrics by Houshang Ebtehaj. [7-minute audio file]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Jewish cemetery defaced with MAGA and Trump symbols: Congratulations to Trump's Jewish supporters!
- Indians, the white people of the brown people: Comedy routine by Vir Das.
- Artist at work: Taking advantage of the physics of vibrations to create amazing patterns.
- Amazing jump-rope skills! [The music does not match the context and is likely added by others.]
(5) Kurds in Georgia: According to Wikipedia, there are around 13,000 (Yazidi) Kurds in Georgia, down from ~33,000 in 1989. They moved to Georgia as a result of Ottoman and later Turkish persecution. The Persian text within this post isn't in agreement with the above, but it does contain some interesting facts.
(6) Optical physicist Nader Engheta wins a major award: Institute of Physics honors him with the Newton Medal and Prize for "groundbreaking innovation and transformative contributions to electromagnetic complex materials and nanoscale optics, and for pioneering development of the fields of near-zero-index metamaterials, and material-inspired analogue computation and optical nanocircuitry."
(7) Iranian Women in Academia: As in every other domain, Iranian women have been rising in academic ranks. Hear about the experiences of three such women in this November 6, 1:00 PM PST panel discussion. [Flyer]
(8) IEEE award/honor: I have been chosen to receive the IEEE Transactions on Computers Award for Editorial Service and Excellence. This award comes on the heels of my handling the evaluation/refereeing process for the 126th manuscript for IEEE TC, in addition to a comparable number for other IEEE publications.
(9) Final thought for the day: "Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." ~ Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel
2020/11/02 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Sensei Steve Ota (?-2020): My son's Aikido teacher, who taught him martial arts as well as many life skills, loses his battle with cancer. RIP. The dancing couple are his dad and mom, Sensei Ken (1923-2015) and Miye (1918-), founders of Goleta's Cultural School, which was being run by Steve. [Right] There's a Persian saying, "You can't lift two watermelons with one hand": We desparately need a new saying for the situation in this photo!
(2) Trump claims that doctors inflate the COVID-19 death counts to earn more money: Imagine attacking selfless front-line workers who save lives, including Trump's own life! What a low-life!
(3) Republicans are one by one distancing themselves from Trump: They cite being embarrassed by him as the reason. But speaking out this late, after nearly four years of destructive boorishness and 90 million votes already cast, makes one believe that they are trying to save their own political careers and/or social standings, rather than helping the country. No one will ever trust them again!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Quote of the day: "Tomorrow is another day!"
- Washington, DC, and other major cities have been boarded up in anticipation of trouble after the election.
- Terrorism in Afghanistan: Attack by gunmen on Kabul University leaves 19 dead and 22 wounded.
- These NYC fist-fights can easily escalate into armed conflict. Hope we pass Nov. 3 safely and peacefully!
- Dubbed "1001 Podcasts," Twin Cities Iranian Cultural Festival is a good source of programs about Iran.
(5) Yet another sign of the rise of fascism in America: Biden/Harris campaign bus was followed and harassed by Trump supporters in Texas. Trump retweeted the video, with the comment "I love Texas."
(6) Russia Today in the White House: Trump's new favorite medical adviser Dr. Scott Atlas gave an interview to the Kremlin-tied propaganda outlet, Russia Today, in which he slammed lockdowns. The interview endorsed Trump's policies, but it also helped Putin, who is under attack for his COVID-19 policy failures.
(7) A front-line medical worker's response to the Liar-in-Chief: She refutes his claim that doctors benefit from the COVID-19 pandemic and gets messages of appreciation and pledges to kick Trump out of office.
(8) Biden won't raise your taxes, the GOP will: Built into the 2017 "tax reform bill," which slashed taxes for the super-rich and corporations, are provisions for tax increases (already approved and signed into law) that will become effective in 2021, and will gradually raise our tax burden until 2027, when it will include almost every American. Most of us will be paying more in taxes than we did before the so-called "tax cuts." For details, read this opinion piece by Nobel-Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.
(9) American Jews as a whole support Biden, while Iranian-American Jews support Trump, both groups by a wide margin: There are exceptions however, as reflected in this opinion piece by Karmel Melamed.
2020/10/31 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Don't worry: We're rounding the turn! [Center] Connery, Sean Connery: The Oscar-winning actor and the first James Bond dead at 90. [Right] Cover image for the audio course Philosopy of Science (see the last item below). [P.S.: Happy Halloween! It's mostly "trick" this October 31. The "treat" will be coming on November 3 or shortly thereafter!]
(2) Stanford Program in Iranian Studies Zoom talk (November 5, 2020, 10:00 AM PST): Author/Journalist Homa Sarshar discusses her life and work and the role of women in Iran, under the title "Iranian Women: The Achilles Heel of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
(3) Interesting and important talk by Reza Zia-Ebrahimi: Delivered in 2019 at Stanford University, "The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation" is an insightful review of how Iran came about as a nation-state, not by adopting native-born ideas, but by following the constructions of European orientalists. Leading figures in creating Iran's national identity were Qajar-era intellectuals Fath-Ali Akhundzaden and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, who, somewhat simplifying here, built the identity on the white Aryan race and its violation by invading brown Arabs. [100-minute video]
(4) International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) adopts a new code of ethics and professional conduct: Based on ACM's recently-revised code, IFIP's code and its associated prologue, along with some case studies to help in its application, will appear on a website at www.ifiptc9.org in the coming months.
(5) Course review: Kasser, Jeffrey L. (NC State U.), Philosophy of Science, 36 lectures in the "Great Courses" series, packaged in three 12-lecture parts (each with a guidebook), The Teaching Company, 2006.
[My 5-star review of this course on GoodReads] [Course Web site]
This course is about the intersection of philosophy and science as fields of study. According to American Heritage Dictionary, "philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science." That there is a branch of philosophy dealing with science is evidence of the importance of science and its special place in human history and culture.
The philosophy-of-science discipline aims to answer questions such as:
What qualifies as science?
Are scientific theories reliable?
What is science's ultimate purpose?
Ethical dilemmas in science, such as questions in bio-experimentation and scientific misconduct, are usually not considered part of philosophy of science but subjects within ethics.
Philosophy clearly has a lot to say about science, sometimes questioning the very foundations of physics, biology, and other disciplines. It is also concerned with distinctions between good science, bad science, and pseudoscience. One may wonder whether science also has things to say about philosophy? Yes, it does. In fact, some philosophers do use scientific results to reach conclusions about philosophy itself.
Philosophy of science has deep roots in history, but when we discuss it today, we use vocabulary and concepts that are only about a century old. Our discussions are based on logical positivism, aka logical empiricism.
Positivism holds that every rationally justifiable assertion admits logical or mathematical proof, thus dismissing metaphysics and theism. Empiricism, developed in the 17th and 18th centuries by the rise of experimental science, maintains that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience.
There is fundamental tension within science, because it requires scientists to be both cautious and bold. This inner tension is what creates some of the nastiest philosophical debates.
Here is a brief table of contents for this excellent course:
Lectures 1-12 introduce the basics, demarcate the problems, and tell us why induction is illegitimate and how this very serious objection can be overcome.
Lectures 13-24 begin with Kuhn and his ideas and take us through discussions of revolutions, sociology, postmodernism, probability, and reduction.
Lectures 25-36 discuss meaning, realism, naturalism, Bayesianism, and entropy, wrapping things up with a lecture entitled "Philosophy and Science."
This isn't a course to go through sequentially just once, expecting to absorb all the important concepts. I, for one, plan to revisit the 36 lectures of this course (whose CDs I happen to own) from time to time, as I learn more about the foundations of science and challenges faced by scientists.
2020/10/30 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today's sunset, photographed along Goleta's Slough Road (Video 1) (Video 2). [Center] Two of today's top stories: A day before Halloween and four days before America reclaims its identity from the Trump cult. [Right] Humor: Upon leaving office on January 20, Trump hides in a cabin in the woods to avoid arrest (credit: Seth Meyers).
(2) Keeping Americans in the dark: HHS Department collects and analyzes COVID-19 hospitalization data to see which area hospitals are close to being overwhelmed, but it does not share the data with the public.
(3) A necessary math lesson: Trumpists are trumpeting the "good news" that US GDP grew at an annualized rate of 33.1% during the third quarter of 2020. Of course, they never mention that it fell by 5.0% during the first quarter and by 31.4% during the second quarter. Remember that if something falls by 50%, you need a rise of 100% to go back to the starting point; so, we can't just add/subtract percentages. Not only is our GDP not back to where it was at the beginning of 2020, it has fallen to where it was in 2018. [Chart]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Magnitude-7.0 quake jolts Turkey: Centered close to Izmir in the Aegean Sea, it destroys many buildings.
- "Anonymous" reveals his identity and endorses Biden: He is Miles Taylor, former Homeland Security official.
- If a cat got your tongue, don't worry: UK scientists have 3D-printed a synthetic human tongue.
- Persian music: A wonderful rendition of the classic oldie song "Beh Esfahan Ro" ("Go to Isfahan").
(5) GOP candidates abandon Trump, often dodging questions about whether they support him: Some are saying that keeping GOP's control over the Senate is an insurance policy against a possible President Biden!
(6) Melania Trump, slamming the Democrats, with a straight face and no sense of irony: "Children watching and learning about politics in our country deserve a better display of political responsibility."
(7) "The Marginalization of Third World Feminists in Academia and Politics": This was the title of a webinar sponsored by University of Copenhagen and IUAES Commission on Transnational Feminism and Queer Politics (Friday, October 30, 2020, 3:00-5:00 PM EDT). Moderated by PhD scholars Nasim Basiri and Ozlem Has, the webinar featured Drs. Faye V. Harrison (Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology, U. Illinois), Zahra Tizro (Sr. Lecturer, U. East London), Subhadra Channa (Emerita Professor of Anthropology, U. Dehli), and Noha Khalaf (long-time educator/author/poet, who has held positions in Europe, Asia, and Africa) as panelists. The speakers, seasoned academics with diverse backgrounds, endeavored to share their experiences and offer advice to younger feminists in early stages of, or about to start, academic careers. [Event page] [Recording]
My question addressed to the panel: Marginalization is perhaps universal for all academics with origins in Third-World countries. However, it seems odd to me that in a discipline specifically aiming to address injustice and marginalization based on gender, discrimination based on national origin exists. So, I wonder why (some) feminists dismiss other non-gender-based struggles for equity?
I don't think my question was understood or properly answered. Today, I wore a T-shirt bearing one of my deep beliefs: "Fem.i.nism (fem-uh-niz-uhm): The radical notion that women are people." So, a feminist, woman or man, should be even more sensitive to non-gender-based inequity or marginalization than a non-feminist.
2020/10/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The slogan we need for the 2020s and beyond: Make America Green Again. [Center] The US economy's performance under Trump vs. under five recent presidents: There is nothing for Trump to brag about. Even without the pandemic, both the GDP and S&P 500 (Trump's favorite indicator) were rising at rates comparable to those of other recent administrations (CNN). [Right] Aerial view of Silverado Fire (taken two days ago), in Yorba Linda, California. Blue Ridge Fire is now raging nearby.
(2) Elderly-friendly Web sites: The pandemic has forced older adults to conduct more business on-line, so companies are simplifying Web page layouts, increasing text and button sizes, and improving image contrast.
(3) Jared Kushner has begun to reveal his true colors: The out-of-touch real-estate investor, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, bragged to Bob Woodward in April that Trump is taking the country back from the doctors, and he opined more recently that blacks don't appreciate Trump because they don't want to be successful.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Islamic extremists strike again: A woman is beheaded and two others are knifed to death in Nice, France.
- OAN (One America News) wants to win over Trump supporters as a replacement for Fox News.
- Talk about senile! Trump is determined to win both Nebraskas in the upcoming election!
- The dog ate my homework: Tucker Carlson had damning Biden documents, but they got lost in the mail!
- The rise of college-attendance costs, a decades-long trend, may have been paused by the pandemic.
- Quote of the day: "The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." ~ Billy Graham (1981)
(5) Regression-to-the-mean bias: This is a concept in psychology that has wide applications in many domains, including economics, education, and sports, to name just a few.
In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman relates that he came across the concept when talking to Israeli Air Force trainers. One trainer told him that punishing very poor performance was more effective than rewarding excellent performance, because those who were punished usually improved on the next day, while those who were rewarded often achieved worse results later. This common judgement error results from inadequate knowledge of probability and statistics.
Performance, be it in fighter-jet maneuvers, golf scores, or school GPA, has a random component and fluctuates around a mean corresponding to the person's true abilities. When we see very poor performance or excellent performance, those are extremes that will revert to the mean, if we extend the observation period. An extremely good score on the first day of a golf tournament is unlikely to be repeated on the second day, when the score will likely rise or drop towards the mean for the particular golfer.
Given a golfer's score on one day, most people would predict the second day's score to be the same, whereas predicting something between that score and the golfer's mean score is much more likely to be accurate. Regression-to-the-mean bias is a result of rendering judgement or making decisions based on small sample sizes. Here is a nice explanation of the concept in the context of investment decisions. [4-minute video]
2020/10/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UCSB Reads 2021 book selection (see the next item below). [Center] Mehrdad Sepehri has been called the George Floyd of Iran: Except that his case didn't generate an international outrage and was pretty much ignored, even in Iran. He was handcuffed to a pole by the police and then harassed with a shocker and pepper-spray for a long time. Supreme Leader Khamenei, who spoke at length about George Floyd and injustices against blacks in America, did not even acknowledge police violence against a fellow-Iranian. [Right] Republicans who have trouble pronouncing Kamala Harris's name will soon have an easier time: They can call her Madam Vice President!
(2) UCSB Reads 2021 announcement: The best-selling 2018 book by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, has been chosen for campus and community reading. Khan-Cullors will attend virtual sessions at UCSB on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Details of campus programs, including free books for students, discussion forums, and other activities, will be announced later.
(3) OSIRIS-REx's sample collection mission from Astroid Bennu is in trouble: Apparently, the sample collection device retrieved such a large amount of material that a rock is preventing its container door from closing. NASA engineers are scrambling to find a solution, before the collected sample is spilled back into space.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Face-masks are mandated in Russia, due to a spike in coronavirus cases: Will Trump follow his master?
- Hurricane Zeta strengthens and speeds up ahead of today's landfall in the New Orleans area.
- Trump repeatedly refers to "hypersonic missiles" as "hydrosonic missiles," and no one dares to correct him!
- Sacha Baron Cohen's refreshingly literate speech, upon receiving ADL's International Leadership Award.
- Wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas trumps up fake claims of corruption against Joe Biden.
- One hundred historical, natural, and cultural sites to see in Iran.
[217-page PDF file]
(5) For jazz afficianados: Jazz at Lincoln Center is being offered as a free event by UCSB Arts & Lectures at 5:00 PM PST on Friday, November 6, 2020. Wynton Marsalis and his septet perform his composition entitled "The Democracy Suite," which will be followed by a 1-hour discussion with Marsalis. Registration is required.
(6) Isla Vista and the magnificent ocean next to it: The college town abutting UCSB has more going for it than crowded housing, streets with no sidewalks, and wild parties. [38-minute video]
(7) What should be done about social media? This is the topic of Moshe Vardi's insightful column (CACM, November 2020). A case in point is Facebook, whose global reach and content policies are undermining democracy worldwide. In the US, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act frees companies such as Facebook from liability by classifying them as platforms, rather than publishers. Such companies have come to accept some responsibility for the proliferation of "bad speech," but it's unclear whether giant platforms with billions of users are willing, or even able, to monitor content like traditional publishers. Regulating speech on social media appears to be inseparable from the question of power concentation in technology. Currently, the five largest US corporations are all tech companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
2020/10/27 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Communications of the ACM: The November 2020 issue of ACM's flagship publication contains a special section on the status of computing in Latin America. Of particular interest to me is "A Tour of Dependable Computing Research in Latin America" (by E. P. Duarte, Jr., et al.). [Center] Cartoon of the day: Noah's wife forces him to make an exception to the "two of each species" rule. [Right] Screenshots from UCSB Library's Pacific Views Lecture of October 27, 2020 (see the last item below).
(2) Amy Coney Barrett: One month from nomination to confirmation and swearing-in. If only the Republicans were as concerned about helping Americans suffering personally and financially under a worsening pandemic!
(3) The story of Zahhak in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings): As part of the weekly Zoom gatherings of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968, Mr. Rashid Hazrati, civil engineer and Shahnameh enthusiast, continued his very interesting presentation in Persian. The third part of the talk will be next Tuesday. Unfortunately, I had to leave the meeting early to make an appointment. I will post a link to the recorded version of the talk, if and when I get it. Here's my previous Facebook post on this series of 3 lectures (includes summaries in English and Persian).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Seventy million Americans have already voted: More than half of the total number of votes in 2016!
- Lindsey Graham is prominently featured in a scathing pro-Biden, anti-Trump campaign ad.
- CBS journalist Leslie Stahl and her family get security protection due to death threats. What a country!
- My friends living in Iran tell me that they are more concerned about the outcome of US election than we are!
- Mandatory evacuation orders under the threat of Southern California wildfires affect 100,000+ people.
- Ohio's Operation Autumn Hope leads to the recovery of 45 missing children and arrest of 179 criminals.
- The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan responds to CNN founder Ted Turner about being a socialist.
- Kurdish music: This rendition of a lullaby, accompanied by a big orchestra, is really special. [7-minute video]
(5) The graph isomorphism problem: This practically- and theoretically-important problem remains unresolved. There have been recent advances, such as Laszlo Babai's result that the problem is almost efficiently solvable—theoretically—but much remains to be done.
Grohe, M. and P. Schweitzer, "The Graph Isomorphism Problem," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 63, No. 11, November 2020, pp. 128-134. [Full text on ACM Digital Library]
(6) UCSB Library's Pacific Views Lecture: Diane Fujino (Professor of Asian American Studies and author of books on Asian-American activism and Afro-Asian radicalism) and Matef Harmachis (long-time social-science high school teacher) spoke on "Black Power Afterlives: From the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter." Fujino and Harmachis drew from their new book, Black Power Afterlives, to discuss how the Black-Panther legacy continues to influence present-day activism, even though the party vanished as an entity 38 years ago.
2020/10/26 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Photos of sunset over Goleta's Devereux Slough, from Friday, October 23, 2020 (panoramic photo, 1-minute video). [Center] Cartoon of the day: Centipede's laundry day. [Right] Late Sunday afternoon on Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach: Windy, cloudy, and a bit on the chilly side for our area.
(2) Iran's #MeToo moment: Prominent Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo has been accused by 13 women, most of them journalists or former students, of sexual misconduct. He is actress Shohreh Aghdashloo's ex, and thus she too has been dragged into media stories on the topic.
(3) I hope Pete Buttigieg is given a job in the Biden/Harris administration: Every time I hear him speak, it's like a breath of fresh air. Coherent thoughts and sentences are such rarities these days! [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Five members of VP Pence's inner circle, including Chief of Staff Marc Short, test positive for COVID-19.
- Putin indicates that he sees nothing wrong in Hunter Biden's dealings with Ukraine or Russia.
- Donald Trump's and Mike Pence's full interviews on CBS News' "60 Minutes."
- Campaign to sow discord in the US: Chinese bots, posing as US citizens, are ever-present on social media.
- Anti-Trump Lincoln Project's response to a lawsuit threat from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
- Al Khwarizmi: The Persian mathematician after whom algorithm was named. [3-minute video]
(5) Talk about irresponsible: Despite having been exposed to five close associates with COVID-19 and the CDC recommendation to self-isolate, Mike Pence will go to the Senate to vote for nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
(6) A poem from John Lithgow's poetry book, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age: Recited by Alan Alda, Annette Bening , Glenn Close, and Meryl Streep. [4-minute video]
The moral of the story for Republicans who have been gobbled up by Trump:
If you coddle a tiger and venture to ride it | You're certain, dear reader, to end up inside it
(7) NASA has revealed evidence that water on the moon isn't limited to cold, shadowed areas: There is enough water on the moon's sunlit surface to sustain a human colony.
(8) Sacha Baron Cohen responds to Trump's jabs: "I don't find you funny either ... yet the whole world laughs at you. I'm always looking for people to play racist buffoons, and you'll need a job after Jan. 20. Let's talk!"
(9) Serious security breach involving 2/3 of all Americans: Trustwave, a cybersecurity company, discovers a hacker selling personal information on 245M Americans, including voter-registration data for 186M. Trustwave found the hacker by trawling "dark web" forums for threat information and used fictitious identities to induce Greenmoon2019 to provide more information, including a bitcoin wallet for collecting payment.
2020/10/24 (Saturday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrarm Straus and Giroux, 2011.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This best-selling book by Daniel Kahneman, a 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is based on the author's ground-breaking research in psychology that upended a key common assumption of economics theories. Humans, it turns out, aren't rational actors behaving in a way that maximizes their personal well-being. With the rationality assumption shown to be on shaky grounds, much of economics had to be revised and reformulated.
In the 500+ pages of this remarkable book, Kahneman outlines the results of a lifetime of psychological research in an accessible format. The verdict is that we really don't understand how human beings think and make decisions. There are two competing and often conflicting systems at work in human thinking and decision-making: One is fast, instinctive, and emotional, and the other one is slow, logical, and deliberative. Kahneman describes numerous well-designed experiments to show the existence of the two systems, their differences, and the implications of they being at odds with one another.
The book isn't about the Internet or social media, but what one learns from it provides valuable tools for avoiding traps set by those who try to manipulate us for personal gain. Once you become aware of cognitive biases in humans as a group, it should be possible (though it's by no means easy) to recognize and control these biases in yourself.
The book is full of gems that we have likely read about in other sources but seeing them all in one place is eye-opening. A prime example is the experiment in which participants are asked to watch a group of people passing basketballs around and to count the number of passes made. Most participants get so absorbed in this task, as they try to succeed in getting the correct count, that they fail to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking among those passing the balls around. The message is: If we miss such an obvious feature of a scene, what else do we miss as we process information in order to make decisions?
The choices we make are highly dependent on the framing used to present the choices to us (as in survey questions). Even though, logically, a 10% probability of losing $1000 cancels out a 10% probability of winning $1000, our aversion to loss leads to the two not being deemed compensatory, contradictory to what what economic theories predict. As a result, putting too much confidence in human judgement is misguided.
Kahneman presents numerous examples of people ignoring statistical characteristics in large populations, being influenced instead by a limited number of examples (sometimes just one) to justify their decisions. We human beings are not very good at estimating or understanding probabilities, particularly when it comes to rare events.
I end my review by listing the books table of contents.
Introduction
Part I. Two Systems
1. The Characters of the Story; 2. Attention and Effort; 3. The Lazy Controller; 4. The Associative Machine; 5. Cognitive Ease; 6. Norms, Surprises, and Causes; 7. A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions; 8. How Judgments Happen; 9. Answering an Easier Question
Part II. Heuristics and Biases
10. The Law of Small Numbers; 11. Anchors; 12. The Science of Availability; 13. Availability, Emotion, and Risk; 14. Tom W's Specialty; 15. Linda: Less is More; 16. Causes Trump Statistics; 17. Regression to the Mean; 18. Taming Intuitive Predictions
Part III. Overconfidence
19. The Illusion of Understanding; 20. The Illusion of Validity; 21. Intuitions vs. Formulas; 22. Expert Intuition: When Can We Trust It?; 23. The Outside View; 24. The Engine of Capitalism
Part IV. Choices
25. Bernoulli's Errors; 26. Prospect Theory; 27. The Endowment Effect; 28. Bad Events; 29. The Fourfold Pattern; 30. Rare Events; 31. Risk Policies; 32. Keeping Score; 33. Reversals; 34. Frames and Reality
Part V. Two Selves
35. Two Selves; 36. Life as a Story; 37. Experienced Well-Being; 38. Thinking About Life
Conclusions
Appendix A. Judgment Under Uncertainty
Appendix B. Choices, Values, and Frames
Notes | Acknowledgments | Index
Here is some additional useful information about the book and Kahneman's ideas.
Kahneman's 2011 talk at Google
Kahneman's 2013 lecture "A Psychological Perspective on Rationality"
Animated book summary on YouTube
My Facebook post about regression-to-the-mean bias
(2) Book review: Afari, Janet and Jesilyn Faust (eds.), Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage, I. B. Tauris, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Dr. Janet Afari holds the Mellichamp Chair Professorship in Global Religion within UCSB's Department of Religious Studies. She has written and spoken extensively on Iran's history as well as feminism and sexual politics in post-revolutionary Iran. Jesilyn Faust is a doctoral student at UCSB's Department of Global Studies.
This 272-page book consists of 10 separately-authored chapters, packaged in three parts, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue. Here are the titles of the three parts and the chapters therein.
Part I. Norms, Romance, and the Breakdown of Arranged Urban Marriage
- "The Emergence of Independent Women in Iran: A Generational Perspective," Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi
- "Transnational Marriages of Christian Filipinas and Muslim Iranian Men and Social Experiences of their Biracial Children," Ashraf Zahedi
- "Ideological Codes, Multiple Biases, Textbooks, and the Standard Iranian Family: Local and Global Hegemonic Formations of the Ideal Family," Amir Mirfakhraie
- "Beyond the Shari'a: 'White Marriage' in the Islamic Republic of Iran," Gholam Reza Vatandoust and Maryam Sheipari
Part II. Online Dating, Hymenoplasty, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies
- "Negotiating Intimacy through Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities for Muslim Women in Iran," Vahideh Golzard and Christina Miguel
- "Recreating Virginity in Iran: Hymenoplasty as a Form of Resistance," Azal Ahmadi
- "Whither Kinship? Assisted Reproductive Technologies and relatedness in the Islamic Republic of Iran," Soraya Tremayne
Part III. Reconstructing Hierarchies: Rural and Tribal Marriages
- "How Marriage Changed in Boir Ahmad, 1900-2015," Erika Friedl
- "Changing Perceptions and Practices of Marriage among People of Aliabad from 1978 to 2018: New Problems and Challenges," Mary Elaine Hegland
- "Changing Established-Outsider Relations? A Case Study of Bakhtiaris in Iran," Behrouz Alikhani
This book, a collaboration among highly informed and qualified authors, forms an important addition to the literature on women's movement, family traditions, and sexual intimacy in Iran.
(3) Book review: Crouch, Blake, Recursion: A Novel, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Jon Lindstrom and Abby Craden, Random House Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this course on GoodReads]
We have come to think of time as the fourth dimension. If time were a normal dimension T, just like the X, Y, and Z dimensions, we would be able to move in 4D space from point (T1, X1, Y1, Z1) to point (T2, X2, Y2, Z2) with ease, thus traveling in time just like we travel along the other three dimensions. In this alternative world view, there is no such thing as the flow of time and everything is happening all at once.
Of course, if all events are pre-determined and free-will does not exist, no problem arises from such time travel: No matter how many times we arrive at point (T2, X2, Y2, Z2), we will experience the same things, and nothing ever changes. But, if we do have free will and are capable of changing those experiences and modifying some of the events, then serious inconsistencies will arise, because we would be able to live an infinite number of parallel lives, with memories of those lives intermixed.
In Crouch's time-travel novel, New York City cop Barry Sutton comes across the phenomenon of intermixed memories of multiple "timelines," dubbed by the media as "False Memory Syndrome" (FMS), which drives people mad from experiencing memories of lives they have never lived. In his quest, Sutton meets Helena Smith, a neuroscientist, who has dedicated her life to technological means for preserving our most-precious memories. The two work together against a dark force that causes, and aims to benefit from, FSM.
A well-written, highly-enjoyable, and fear-inducing sci-fi story!
2020/10/23 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Duct tape does miracles: "Be patient where you sit in the dark ... Dawn is coming." ~ Mowlavi (Rumi). [Center] On herd immunity: Or "herd mentality," as Donald Trump once said. [Right] UCSB IEE Emerging Technology Review event (see the last item below).
[Top left] [Top center] [Top right] [Bottom left] [Bottom center] [Bottom right]
(2) Many have opined that Trump isn't running for re-election: He's setting up his next act, "Celebrity Hatemonger Former Politicians." His entire administration will be involved.
(3) Please support Joe Biden's boring campaign with full enthusiasm: His dullness and thoughtfulness are exactly what our country needs to recover from four years of mayhem and mindlessness.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Light at the end of the tunnel: Only 10 days left, 50 million have voted.
- Arrested: Teen with a van full of guns and explosives, who planned to assassinate Joe Biden.
- A gay feminist tells the story of being trolled by "mean Christians" and other right-wing Breitbart followers.
- During maintenance work at a UNESCO WHS, huge Feline geoglyph, dating back to 200-100 BC, emerges.
- Deepfake videos and the dangers they pose, explained in Persian. [2-minute video]
- Unsolved Mysteries (WH Edition): What exactly is Ivanka Trump's job in Trump's White House? (Humor)
(5) A very good question: Why is it that "if you can't pay rent, buy fewer lattes" makes sense but "if you can't pay your employees a living wage, buy fewer yachts" does not? [Credit: @Strandjunker]
(6) Semantic Scholar: Given that one of the talks at UCSB's "Responsible Machine-Learning Summit: AI and COVID-19" was by Oren Etzioni, who talked about Semantic Scholar, I decided to write a few words about this service/website that hails itself as "a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature." The About-Us page of Semantic Scholar, which was launched in 2015 and partners with IEEE, Microsoft Academic, Springer Nature, and more than 500 other publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies, reads in part: "Our mission ... is to accelerate scientific breakthroughs by helping scholars locate and understand the right research, make important connections, and overcome information overload. ... Semantic Scholar applies artificial intelligence to extract the meaning from the scientific literature allowing scholars to navigate research much more efficiently than a traditional search engine."
(7) UCSB IEE Emerging Technology Review: "Food-Energy-Water Nexus" was the focus of today's third and final installment of UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency's annual event. The first part was a workshop on "Energy-Efficient Cloud and Data Center" and the second part dealt with "Smart Societal Infrastructure." A list of presentations/discussions follows.
- Olivier Jerphagnon (CEO, AgMonitor): "AI to Solve Practical Problems in the Food and Agriculture Sector"
- Chandra Krintz (Computer Science, UCSB): "The SmartFarm Project"
- Debra Perrone (Environmental Studies, UCSB): "Groundwater Depletion Amplifies the Water-Energy Nexus"
- Steve DenBaars (Materials, UCSB): "Development of UV LEDs for Disinfection & Sterilization for COVID-19"
- Stuart Woolf (Pres./CEO, Woolf Farming & Processing): "A Perspective from the CA Agricultural Industry"
- Speakers' panel discussion: "The Food-Energy-Water Nexus," Moderated by Bob Wilkinson (UCSB)
2020/10/22 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet. 
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IEEE Central Coast Section talk by Dr. Yangying Zhu (see the next item below). [Top center & right] Book introduction and interview (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Time magazine changes its cover logo for the first time in its history. [Bottom center & right] The final presidential debate: "Sleepy Joe Biden vs. Donny Bone Spurs" (Cartoon from The New Yorker).
(2) Last evening's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Yangying Zhu (Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UCSB) spoke under the title "Microscale Thermal-Fluids Engineering for Next Generation Energy and Electronics Systems." Detailed reports of the talk, including a link to the presentation slides, are available as a Facebook post and on IEEE CCS's Technical Talks Web page.
(3) Quote: "They're children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it." ~ Pope Francis, on the need for civil-union laws to allow homosexuals to form families
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This is what Trump calls "rounding the corner": 60,000 new daily COVID-19 infections, and rising!
- Utah's Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates air a joint ad about the upcoming elections.
- Purdue Pharma pays $8.34 billion settlement fine for its role in spreading opioid addiction.
- On people picking and choosing among scientific truths, believing only what is convenient for them. [Tweet]
- Study: 28% of US college students come from immigrant families.
- Needy California community-college students to be helped by gift of $100 million.
(6) An amazing sci/tech event: Watch images and a short video of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touching down on asteroid Bennu, more than 300 million km away from us, to collect samples before returning to Earth.
(7) US Department of Homeland Security agents arrest 15 international graduate students: They are accused of abusing the OPT (optional practical training) program.
(8) Book interview, with author Negar Djavadi: This morning, starting at 10:00 AM PDT, Dr. Abbas Milani of Stanford's Iranian Studies Program interviewed the award-winning author of the best-selling first novel Disoriental in the course of an hour-long program. The historical novel, based mostly on the author's experiences of living in and fleeing Iran through Kurdistan's treacherous mountains, has been translated into many languages (not yet available in Persian). The title of the novel is perhaps derived from the two words "disoriented" and "oriental," denoting the double lives of many refugee and exiled easterners. By the way, Negar Djavadi is the daughter of the late writer and dissident (Ali-)Asghar Haj Seyyed Javadi.
2020/10/20 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Something of possible interest to my daughter! [Center] Donald Trump has maintained that he hardly knew Jeffrey Epstein: Photos taken at social occasions tell a different story. Here, they are shown with two unnamed children. Are these child-sex victims or family members? Either way, more than a casual acquaintance is implied. [Right] US election campaign art: VP candidate, Senator Kamala Harris.
(2) Quote of the day: "We need a president with decency and a sense of respect." ~ Retired Admiral William McRaven (who was in charge of the operation that eliminated Osama Bin Laden), endorsing Joe Biden
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A fridge-size asteroid will narrowly miss Earth the day before the November 3 US election.
- A NASA probe will attempt touching down on Astroid Bennu today to gather a sample.
- Stay tuned for more gender pay equity actions: Women professors sue Rutgers University re pay equity.
- Persian music: This song is about a victim of violence against women in Iran.
- "One Love": Bob Marley's hit, performed by John Legend, Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton, & Gwen Stefani.
(4) Teaching theory of computation via search problems: Much of computing theory is formulated in terms of decision problems, such as whether or not a graph has a Hamilton(ian) cycle, which has a single-bit or yes/no answer. The corresponding search problem to find and output such a cycle, if one exists, is much more useful in practical terms. The answer to a search problem can be converted to the answer of the corresponding decision problem, but not the other way around. Writing in the October 2020 issue of CACM, John MacCormick argues that computer programs and search problems should be the foci of courses on the theory of computation.
(5) The story of Zahhak in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings): As part of the weekly Zoom gatherings of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968, Mr. Rashid Hazrati, civil engineer and Shahnameh enthusiast, made a very interesting presentation in Persian. [Screenshot]
In this mythical story of Shahnameh, Iranians turn against Jamshid, the vain king who had provided all sorts of creature comforts for his people, but had begun referring to himself as God. They select Zahhak to rule over them, based on the reputation of his father, Merdas, as a fair and compassionate ruler. This turns out to be a dire mistake, as Zahhak, with a snake growing from each of his shoulders, takes to feeding the snakes the brains of two young men daily to keep them in check. Iranians grow disillusioned and set their hopes on a child, Fereidoon, to rid them of Zahaak. Sensing danger, Zahhak sets out to find Fereidoon and eliminate him before he becomes old enough to act. Eventually, Feridoon succeeds in overthrowing Zahhak and Iranians live happily ever after.
In the story of Zahhak, Ferdowsi demonstrates his mastery of the Persian language and of political intrigue, not to mention the frailties of human nature.
[Note: According to Wikipedia, the Persian folkloric character Azhi Dahaka pre-dates Ferdowsi, who renamed the supernatural monster and turned it into an evil human being, Zahhak.]
[P.S.: This discussion will continue for 2 more weekson the next two Tuesdays, with the end of Zahhak's story appropriately coinciding with the US election!]
[Shahnameh on Ganjoor.net: Jamshid, Zahhak, Fereidoon; Once you go to Part 1 of the multi-part sections above, you can navigate to other parts through links at the bottom of the page.]
[Summary of Zahhak's story (in English). Ali Akbar Saeidi Sirjani's book on Zahhak]
2020/10/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UNESCO defines literacy (see the next item below). [Center] Wear the damn mask: COVID-19 transmission risks, with and without masks. [Right] The year 2020 in emojis.
(2) UNESCO's definition of literacy: Just having gone to school is no longer enough to be considered literate in the 21st century. According to UNESCO, "Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts." Therefore, literacy also has emotional, interactional/social, financial, media (distinguishing fake news from real news), educational, and computational components.
(3) Quote of the day: "Patience isn't sitting and waiting, it's foreseeing. It's looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day." ~ Mowlavi (Rumi)
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Several officers of a Russian military intelligence unit charged for multiple high-profile cyber-attacks.
- Rudy Giuliani is under FBI investigation for a disinformation campaign guided by Russia.
- After using a voice clip from Anthony Fauci in a campaign ad, Trump resumes his anti-Fauci rants.
- Free on-line access to Iranian news media archives: From Qajar era to the present.
- Persian poetry: Sholeh Wolpe recites a Forough Farrokhzad poem and her own English translation of it.
- What's the difference between a genie and a scientist? One grants wishes, the other wishes for grants!
(5) Why the #MeToo movement has fizzled in universities: According to Aisha Ahmad (U. Toronto Assoc. Prof.), it is extremely difficult to have tenured professors fired over sexual misconduct, because such predators know the system; and institutions worry about liability and risk.
(6) "Parts of a Circle: History of the Karabakh Conflict": Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists cooperated in making this 76-minute 2019 documentary about the continuing conflict.
(7) "The Marginalization of Third World Feminists in Academia and Politics": This is the title of a webinar sponsored by University of Copenhagen and IUAES Commission on Transnational Feminism and Queer Politics (Friday, October 30, 2020, 3:00 PM EDT). The webinar is moderated by PhD scholars Nasim Basiri and Ozlem Has and features Drs. Faye V. Harrison, Noha Khalaf, Zahra Tizro, and Subhadra Channa as panelists.
(8) "Women of the Gulag": This 2019 documantary film will be screented virtually by UCSB (Tuesday, 10/27, 7:00-8:00 PM PDT; registered participants will receive a link to view the film). There will be a discussion with its director Marianna Yarovskaya and author Paul Gregory. Solzhenitsyn's classic Gulag Archipelago focused on the experiences of men caught in Stalin's camps. Here is your chance to hear the women's stories.
2020/10/18 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Protest sign: "This suburban housewife supports BLM." [Center] Torment of the Uyghurs: The Economist cover. [Right] Meme: In lieu of flowers for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, please go vote.
(2) It's funny how the Iranian regime tries to smear its opponents, even after their passing: The mullahs are doing it to the immensely-popular late singer, Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. Because their opposition research has not revealed anything negative and people would not believe manufactured dirt about him, they are taking the path of calling him a decent but simple-minded man, who allowed Iran's enemies to take advantage of his popularity. The "simple-minded" attack had been used multiple times before on people with impeccable credentials, including PM Mohammad Mossadeq, PM Mehdi Bazargan, and Grand-Ayatollah Montazeri.
(3) Je Suis Samuel: The world rallies in support of the French teacher who was beheaded outside his school for showing his students cartoons of Prophet Muhammad to make a point about freedom of expression.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Chants of "lock her up" are back at Trump rallies: This time the target is Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
- This isn't a joke: Trump issues proclamation on "National Character Counts Week," October 18-24.
- Corruption at the highest level: Mexico's defense chief was "El Padrino," godfather to drug cartel.
- Fourth annual Women's March: The main event in DC and sister marches in other cities draw thousands.
- "Girl in the Mirror": The Lincoln Project's highly-effective ad against Donald Trump.
- Iranian regional music and dance: The Rojin all-women ensemble performs.
- "We Must Save Democracy from Conspiracies": Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's Time magazine essay.
(5) Jacinda Ardern scores a landslide election victory: New Zealand's PM vows to resume her reform programs, which were interrupted by a string of disasters.
(6) Rats abandoning Trump's sinking ship: Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump, as they eye life in a post-Trump world, but four years of enabling his vile behavior (still continuing in the form of the SCOTUS confirmation hearing) has left them no credibility.
(7) Joke: I dreamt I was walking along in mid-2021. We were all wearing diapers because of the diarrhea-21 pandemic and were thinking to ourselves that last year's face-masks were so much more comfortable!
(8) Persian talks about Zahhak in Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh" ("Book of Kings"): Rashid Hazrati, civil engineer & Shahnameh enthusiast, will talk on Tuesdays, Oct. 20 & 27, 2020, 10:30 AM PDT, 9:00 PM Iran time. [Details]
(9) "The Iranian Jews Who Joined the Islamic Revolution": Haaretz article about Jewish participants in the anti-Shah street protests and their surprising stance on the Islamic Revolution.
2020/10/17 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Replacing my beat-up umbrella has brought new color and life to the patio adjacent to my study. [Center] Liar, liar, pants on fire: Newspaper headline from the early post-revolutionary days in Iran, assuring women that there will be no compulsory hijab. [Right] My daughter on her last day with two foster kittens: They have been adopted and will leave this weekend.
(2) Loris Tjeknavorian: The Iranian-Armenian composer/conductor lives modestly in Iran, despite being a most-celebrated cultural figure in Armenia, Iran, and Australia. Here is the story of his life (in Persian).
(3) Fiscally conservative GOP? The US federal budget deficit hits $3.1 trillion, more than double the previous record of $1.4 trillion set in 2009 after the financial crisis. Well done the party of don't-tax-and-spend!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Rudy Giuliani's daughter, Caroline Rose, urges everyone to "vote this toxic administration out of office."
- In the competing, simultaneous town-halls, Trump was hit where it hurts most: He got lower ratings.
- Is confirming a Supreme-Court judge more important than helping people cope with financial disaster?
- Mark your calendar: 11/1, set clocks back by one hour; 11/3, move the US forward by many decades!
- Why gender equality isn't just about women: An eye-opening 18-minute TEDx talk by Caroline Strachan.
- Matthew Whitaker: The blind teen jazz prodigy amazes audiences as well as scientists who study him.
- Humor: Eating junk food and drinking, when someone tries to instill healthier habits in you! [Video]
- Persian music: Street art honoring the late great singer Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. [Video]
(5) University of California's "Expanded Curtailment Program": This is euphemism for salary cuts to address the financial crisis the University faces as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(6) UCSB IEE Emerging Technology Review: "Smart Societal Infrastructure" was the focus of yesterday's 2nd installment of the UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency's annual event. The first part was a workshop on "Energy-Efficient Cloud and Data Center" and the final part, scheduled for Friday, October 23, 2020, will be a workshop on "Food-Energy-Water Nexus." A list of today's presentations/discussions follows. [Screenshot]
- Sila Kiliccote (eIQMobility): "From Demand Response to Fleet Electrification: A Search for High Impact Sol's"
- Raphaele Clement (UCSB), "Towards Next-Gen Energy Storage Sol's for the Grid and Electric Transportation"
- Igor Mezic (UCSB): "Improving Building Energy Efficiency through Machine Learning"
- Gary Barsley (Southern California Edison): "Southern California Edison Smart Grid/EV Plans"
- Mahnoosh Alizadeh (UCSB): "Real-Time Control Mechanisms for Community Energy Management"
- David Erne (California Energy Commission): "Towards a Zero-Carbon Electric Grid"
- Panel discussion (moderated by Mahnoosh Alizadeh and Igor Mezic)
- Closing talk: Sangwon Suh (UCSB), "Moving Bits Not Watts"
2020/10/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A special report by The Economist discusses how COVID-19 is reordering the global economy, creating winners and losers. [Top center] The most-powerful woman and most-respected leader on the world stage goes shopping: Angela Merkel leads one of the world's strongest economies, yet, as a leader, she receives no free state services, no free housing, no free phone, no entertainment expenses, and no personal chef. She pays for groceries and carries her own grocery bags, like any other German citizen. She is a scientist by training. Besides German, she speaks English and Russian fluently. [Top right] Book introduction: A new book by Jennifer S. Hirsch (Columbia U.) and Shamus Khan (Columbia U.), Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, is hailed as a groundbreaking study that transforms how we see and address the most-misunderstood problem on campus, that is, widespread sexual assault. [Bottom left] New Yorker cartoon: "Welcome to our in-person voting site: please proceed when ready." [Bottom center] UNC symposium on Persian-language pedagogy (see the last item below). [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon: "According to the latest poll, we are 50% for Biden and 50% for Trump."
(2) Trumpery: A dictionary word pre-dating Donald Trump by five centuries. It means "attractive articles of little value or use = junk" as a noun and "showy but worthless" as an adjective.
(3) "Persian Language Pedagogy: Challenges, Obstacles, and Innovative Responses": This was the title of Thursday's wonderful UNC virtual panel discussion, organized by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (UNC) & Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi (McGill U.) and moderated by Dr. Shahla Adel (UNC). [Facebook Live recording]
I became interested in language teaching pedagogy more than 5 decades ago, while attending English-language classes at the Iran-America Society in Tehran, where spouses of Americans stationed in Iran as diplomats, military advisers, and corporate officers taught English classes, with focus on conversational skills. A question that arose at the time, and which has occupied me since, is whether being a native speaker of English is sufficient qualification for teaching it to others. The answer, I soon discovered, is a definite "no."
Teaching English as a second language is a highly-developed field and knowledge of discoveries and advances in the field is necessary for effectiveness as a teacher. I was curious to see how teaching of Persian fares in comparison with the highly-developed state of ESL teaching. The presentations in this panel, some of which were a bit too technical for my level of knowledge, did not disappoint. I will pursue some of the works presented and cited by the panelists in due course.
Here's a list of the six panelists. [The title announced by the moderator was sometimes different from the one appearing in the speaker's slides, perhaps due to attempts at limiting the presentation scope, given the 15-minute time limit per speaker.]
- Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi (McGill U.): "Second Language Morphology: Case of Idiomatic Expressions"
- Dr. Karine Megerdoomian (MITRE Corp.): "Linguistics Competence of Persian Heritage versus Second Language Speakers"
- Dr. Nahal Akbari (U. Maryland): "Second Language Reading in Persian"
- Dr. Michelle Quay (Columbia U.): "Communicative, Task-Based, and Content-Based Approaches to Persian Language Teaching: Second Language, Mixed, and Heritage Classes at the University Level"
- Mohamad Esmaili-Sardari (Johns Hopkins U.): "The Persian Language Educator's Role in Developing Effective Blended Language Learning: From Principles to Practice"
- Dr. Peyman Nojoumian (USC): "Using Technology to Develop Instructional Materials for Persian, Based on Task-Based Language Teaching"
2020/10/14 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Sharif University of Technology: This 20-minute film, narrated in Persian, introduces and sings the praises of SUT as a leading educational institution in the world. Like everything else produced by the Iranian government, it contains some distortions and religious propaganda, but, by and large, it is well-done. I was delighted to see some of my former SUT colleagues in the various testimonial clips. The images above are screenshots from the film, depicting the entry gate & campus overview (left), the administration building & landscaping (center), and math sciences & computer engineering buildings (right).
(2) The Russia-Taliban-Trump axis: Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks. The Taliban endorsed Trump against Joe Biden.
(3) Narges Mohammadi retells stories of torture of Iranian female political prisoners: In her just-published book, White Torture, Mohammadi records first-hand stories of torture, sexual abuse, and coercion by male interrogators and prison guards. [BBC Persian story]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UN Human Rights Council rejects Saudi membership: It's a sign of the times that we are surprised!
- At a Vatican conference, economist Jeffrey Sacks warns of dire consequences if Trump is re-elected.
- Trump-era version of the classic song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (humor): "The Liar Tweets Tonight"
- [Cancelled] New Frontiers in AI (Sat. 11/17, 10 AM to 6 PM PDT). [Web site] [Registration]
- Five stupid questions women ask men: Comedy routine. [10-minute video]
(5) "Songs that Never End": This is the title of a documentary film about the Jewish Dayan family, who fled their home in Iran and settled in the Houston, Texas, area. There will be a post-screening discussion with the film's director, UC Merced Professor Yehuda Sharim. [Flyer] [Zoom link]
[Brief review: The film was quite disappointing, so I stopped watching at the halfway point. It looked more like the stitching together of a bunch of random home videos than a professionally-made documentary.]
(6) "Lessons from COVID-19: Efficiency vs. Resilience": This morning I watched an ACM webinar by Moshe Vardi, Prof. at Rice U. and Sr. Editor of CACM. I had previously posted about Vardi's ideas in this domain based on his July 2020 column in Communications of the ACM, paraphrased in the following paragraph.
"Economists hate redundancy, computer engineers embrace it: The world economy is extensively optimized by the pursuit of maximum profits, to a degree that our systems are rendered fragile by removing all redundancies and inefficiencies. This fragility is the root cause of the socioeconomic difficulties brought about by coronavirus. The Internet, by contrast, has built into it a great deal of redundancy and adaptability, which allowed us to work/teach/learn from home during the pandemic, despite vastly increased usage and unexpected workloads."
In today's talk, Vardi added many more wonderful quotes, some of which are captured in the accompanying slide images. A key insight is viewing efficiency as short-term optimization and resilience as long-term optimization. Social benefits take a long time to materialize. Meanwhile, politicians are elected by our votes, not the votes of our grandchildren. It's difficult to forego short-term gains to achieve long-term benefits. Referring to the infamous quote "Greed is good" from the movie "Wall Street," Vardi reminded the audience of the common knowledge in computer science that greedy algorithms are seldom optimal.
2020/10/13 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Victims of police violence memorialized in front of the White House: Photo by Larry Irving. [Center] New shelter in our courtyard for my daughter's cats, in anticipation of the rainy season. [Right] Cover image for Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel (see the last item below).
(2) Trump gains new endorsements: Domestically, the Proud Boys have warned about civil war if Trump isn't re-elected and, internationally, the Taliban have endorsed him.
(3) IBM to split into two companies: It will spin off lower-margin lines of business into an as-yet unnamed company, with the main part focusing on higher-margin cloud services.
(4) Amy Coney Barrett on "Roe v. Wade": The Supreme Court nominee has given several lectures on the topic of abortion laws, including a public talk in 2013 entitled "Roe at 40: The Supreme Court, Abortion, and the Culture War that Followed." Video of the lecture, advertised as being available on YouTube, has since been removed. Hers is the only lecture out of a group of 11 that has been removed by Notre Dame's Law School.
(5) "Nasrin": Filmed in Iran by women and men who risked arrest for making the anti-regime documentary, "Nasrin" paints a detailed portrait of Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of the most-prominent Iranian human/women's-rights activists, and the surprisingly-resilient women's-rights movement in a country where women are still viewed as second-class citizens. Today's film screening, sponsored by CSUN, UCI, and UCSB, was followed by a panel discussion featuring the filmmakers, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Professor, CSUN), and Reza Khandan, Nasrin's husband.
Unfortunately, due to recurring screen-freeze problems from the streaming site or my computer, I could not watch the film or the discussion. Other participants experienced similar problems, but they were able to get over them by refreshing the page or updating their browsers; no such luck for me. I had seen much of the film in another screening by Stanford U., but was looking forward to this particular post-screening discussion featuring the viewpoints of Dr. Tohidi.
(6) Book review: Evaristo, Bernardine, Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel, unabridged audiobook, read by Anna-Maria Nabirye, Blackstone Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Evaristo, the first black woman to win the Booker Prize for fiction (she was co-winner along with Margaret Atwood for her book The Testaments), follows twelve very different characters (Amma, Yazz, Dominique, Carole, Bummi, LaTisha, Shirley, Winsome, Penelope, Megan/Morgan, Hattie, Grace), mostly women, Black, and British, as they lead their lives and face life's challenges. The stories of these "members of the human family" are told separately in the first four chapters, with three characters per chapter, and then they come together in Chapter 5, entitled "The After-Party." In the Epilogue, Evaristo reveals a number of surprising facts about the characters, their connections, and their self-images.
I listed the names of the 12 characters in the opening paragraph of this review, because the names by themselves hint at the diversity of the lives portrayed. Evaristo's book reveals to us that it is utterly simplistic to refer to someone merely as a "Black woman." Evaristo's British-accented characters have roots in countries such as the Caribbean, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Scotland. Even though the book is fiction, it still constitutes a significant contribution to Black British history.
Evaristo is an unapologetic feminist, and her sociopolitical views are clearly visible in the stories she tells. Her writings span a broad range, covering novels, poetry, verse-fiction, and essays. On her Web site, Evaristo states that one of her aims as a writer is "to explore the hidden narratives of the African diaspora, to play with ideas, conjure up original and innovative fiction and forms, and to subvert expectations and assumptions." She enjoys breaking "the shackles of convention." Girl, Woman, Other is a perfect example of Evaristo's philosophy.
2020/10/12 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day in the US, formerly known as Columbus Day. [Top center & right] Results of 4.5 hours of work laying down weed screens in my two patios on Sunday: All the bending and kneeling took a toll on me, necessitating a period of rest! [Bottom left] Time magazine cover: The White House is now a coronavirus hot-spot. [Bottom center] A seldom-seen view of Iran's highest peak, Mt. Damavand: Photographed from its north side, in Mazandaran Province.[Bottom right] Two of my posts from October 12 of 2018 and 2017 that are still quite relevant. Please vote!
(2) The Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to two Americans: Stanford University economists Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson have been honored for new insights on auctions, including explanations of how bidders seek to avoid the so-called "winner's curse" of over-paying, and what happens when bidders gain a better understanding of their rivals' sense of value.
(3) The green tsunami: The GOP is running scared, because Democratic candidates are out-fundraising their Republican rivals by a wide margin. Hope this enthusiasm in financial support leads to a massive voter turnout!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Twitter slaps warning label on Trump claim that he's immune from coronavirus and no longer contagious.
- Talk about voter fraud! The GOP installs unauthorized ballot drop-off boxes in California to harvest ballots.
- 50 = 165,000,000: That is, net worth of the richest 50 Americans equals that of the poorest 165 million.
- Trump: "Maybe I'm Immune" (parody of a Paul McCartney song, by the Late Late Show's James Corden).
(5) Glad to see the talk by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (UNC Chapel Hill) in the framework of the UCLA Bilingual Lectures on Iran rescheduled, after it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic: "Embodiment, Power, and Politics in the context of Sigheh Marriages in Modern Iran," Nov. 9, 2020, 3:00 PM PST. [Flyer] [Registration]
(6) Real, live war as entertainment: This is so sad, but residents of northernmost area of Iran flock to the border to watch the raging war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, as if they are going to a drive-in movie.
(7) Iran's historic treasures were given away by weak, incompetent rulers: The French got their share, snatching artifacts from archaeological digs in Shush and displaying them proudly at Louvre. [6-minute video]
(8) After beating Miami in Game 6 of the NBA finals to win the series 4-2, Los Angeles Lakers dedicated their 17th championship trophy to the memory of their late star player Kobe Bryant.
(9) There are many wonderful performances of "The Impossible Dream" (aka "The Quest"): Here's a rendition of the 1966 song by Andre Rieu and The Platin Tenors, along with my Persian translation of the lyrics.
2020/10/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB Faculty Association's Racial Justice Series: "Acknowledgment and the Land-Grab University," Zoom meeting, 7:00 PM, October 12 (Indigenous Peoples Day), PDF flyer. [Top center] "On Research Quality and Impact: What Five Decades in Academia Has Taught Me": This is the title of an article of mine that has been accepted for publication in J. Computer Science and Engineering. [Top right] Virtual Halloween: While traditional trick-or-treating may be canceled, teachers, parents, and kids can still make a difference all October. Get your UNICEF box today. [Bottom left] Trump and his supporters have called these accomplished, beautiful women "monster" and "monkey." Judge for yourself! [Bottom center] Word salad recipe for your upcoming corporate meeting (image source: The New Yorker). [Bottom right] Right-wing American militia vs. ISIS: Explain the difference (in goals and methods).
(2) A troll unmasked: Craig Chapman, a male U. New Hampshire professor, is placed on leave because he pretended to be an immigrant woman to make racist and sexist social-media comments in response to those supporting social justice and other progressive causes.
(3) All Iranians, in their homeland or in exile, are mourning the loss of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, except for one person: That one person is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has not spoken, tweeted, or posted anything about the loss of the once-in-a-century music legend. Khamenei is a petty, self-absorbed person, much like Donald Trump, who cannot see anything great in someone who opposes him.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hope someday girls around the world will bear broad smiles on this International Day of the Girl. [Photos]
- Bill Barr is a staunch supporter of Trump, but his servitude has not protected him against Trump's wrath.
- Risk of COVID-19 transmission is low on airliners: Who did the studies? Boeing, Airbus, and Embraer!
- October 10 was World Mental-Health Day: WHO hosted a global on-line advocacy event.
- Princeton University agrees to pay $1.2 million to female professors after the feds find men earned more.
- Deadline for IEEE's student poster competition extended to October 19, 2020. [Flyer]
- A Third-World refugee's apt response to a tweet about migrants' inability to assimilate into civil societies.
- Persian poetry: Another amazing-sounding woman, also named "Baran" (like Baran Nikrah) recites a poem.
(5) Vote to end attack on science: Scientific American takes a position in the 2020 US elections for the first time in its 175-year history. "As president, Donald Trump's abuse of science has been wanton and dangerous. It has also been well documented. Since the November 2016 election, Columbia Law School has maintained a Silencing Science Tracker that records the Trump Administration's attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, to undermine science education or discussion, or to obstruct the publication or use of scientific information. By early October, the tracker had detailed more than 450 cases, including scientific bias and misrepresentation (123 instances), budget cuts (72), government censorship (145), interference with education (46), personnel changes (61), research hindrances (43) and suppression or distortion of information (19)."
2020/10/09 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Responsible Machine Learning Summit at UCSB (see the last item below). [Center] Portrait of the late singer Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, combined with a map of Iran, created by visual artist Hassan Nozadian. [Right] A new slogan and meme has emerged after the VP debate: "MAGAS" (the word means "fly" in Persian).
(2) The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize goes to the United Nations World Food Program for its efforts to combat hunger under challenging conditions, including war, conflict, and climate extremes.
(3) Two University of California women were honored with Nobel Prizes in STEM fields this week: Andrea Ghez of UCLA was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics; Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley received hers in chemistry.
(4) Editors of a prestigious medical journal call for Trump's ouster: New England Journal of Medicine condemns the Trump administration for its bungled response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(5) "Stand back and stand by": Thirteen members of two right-wing extremist groups who wanted to kidnap Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and execute her after a show trial, have been arrested.
(6) Cheating over Zoom: We had our departmental PhD screening exam today, held for the first time over Zoom, instead of via in-person oral questioning. There is evidence that some participants cheated by sharing the exam questions among themselves. This is being investigated. The irony is that the department went through a lot of trouble to organize the Zoom exams, in part because canceling the exam would have inconvenienced many students. The investment of time and effort by our staff was significant, given the large number of examinees and examiners involved. Taking advantage of the trust placed in examinees in order to help them is unconscionable.
(7) "Responsible Machine-Learning Summit: AI and COVID-19": Today, in between several other commitments, I sampled a few of the talks in this very interesting event, run by CS Professor William Wang. This was the second in an annual series sponsored by UCSB's Center for Responsible Machine Learning.
There were three keynote speakers, a panel on "AI and COVID-19," and a number of speakers in four sessions.
Keynote 1: Oren Etzioni (CEO, Allen Institute for AI, and Prof. Emiritus, U. Washington)
Keynote 2: Ryan Tibshirani (Assoc. Prof., CMU)
Keynote 3: Jeannette M. Wing (Director, Data Science Institute, Columbia U.)
Session 1: Contact Tracing
Session 2: Health Data Processing and Resources
Session 3: Epidemiological Forecasting
Session 4: Prediction, Diagnosis, and Vaccine Design
2020/10/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Panel discussion on the documentary film "Narsin" (see the next item below). [Top center] Delusional Trump supporters are still posting nonsense like this (the actual list is much longer). [Top right] Panel discussion on the documentary film "Picture a Scientist" (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Mohammad-Reza Shajarian dead at 80: He was the best-known and most-popular male singer among Iranians inside and outside Iran, in part because of his political stances (siding with people against a brutal autocratic regime) and interpretation of mystical lyrics. Various gatherings and sing-alongs in his honor are being planned. Shajarian is best-remembered for his signature song "Morgh-e Sahar" ("Dawn Bird"; lyrics). [Bottom right] I voted, using a drop-off box: Now, I will relax and await the outcome in early November.
(2) Stanford panel discussion entitled "Nasrin": Having watched the documentary film "Nasrin", this morning I attended a webinar in which participants Shirin Ebadi, Marietje Schaake, Jeff Kaufman (film director), and Reza Khandan (Nasrin's husband) discussed Nasrin Sotoudeh's life; moderated by Abbas Milani.
(3) The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature: The honor went to American poet Louise Gluck "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Monster-in-Chief calls Senator Kamala Harris "a monster" during his Fox News interview.
- Iranian state-TV network drops coverage of an international soccer match because it had a woman referee.
- The film "Coup 53" withdrawn over its false claim that the British government censored an interview.
- One of the best performances of Bahar Choir: "Khoun-e Arghavanha" ("Blood of Judas Trees").
(5) "Medicare for all" means that everyone will get free health care, financed by our taxes: Just like President Trump, but without the dozen or so attending doctors or helicopter rides to/from the hospital!
(6) Trump will not debate Biden in a virtual format: After the Debates Commission announced switching to a virtual format in the second (October 15) US presidential debate because of Trump's COVID-19 infection, Trump indicated he won't participate. I think it was fear of the mute button that did it!
(7) A piece of good news in a year filled with disasters and tragedies: Human/Women's-rights activist Narges Mohammadi is released from prison after serving more than half of her 10-year prison term.
(8) UCSB panel discussion on the documentary "Picture a Scientist": Having watched the film on Vimeo, this afternoon I attended a webinar in which participants Ian Cheney and Sharon Shattuck (co-directors and producers) and moderator Emily Goard Jacobs (Psychological and Brain Sciences, UCSB) discussed the making of this documentary, which chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. Biologist Nancy Hopkins, chemist Raychelle Burks, and geologist Jane Willenbring lead us on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, overcoming brutal harassment (including overt sexual advances), institutional discrimination (from hiring to advancements and promotions), and years of subtle slights (such as women scientists assigned smaller labs than men) to revolutionize the culture of science.
2020/10/07 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Getting ready to take our household's mail-in ballots to a local drop-off location. [Center] Hurricane Delta headed for likely landfall in Louisiana: After rapidly intensifying in the Caribbean, the 110 mph winds could soon top 130 mph. [Right] Trump portrait by the Dutch artist Seigfried Woldhek.
(2) Who says nothing can come out of a black hole? The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Roger Penrose (1/2; British; U. Oxford), Reinhard Genzel (1/4; German; UC Berkeley and Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics), and Andrea Ghez (1/4; American, UCLA) for their discoveries about black holes.
(3) The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Awarded in equal shares to Emmanuelle Charpentier (French, affiliated with Germany's Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens) and Jennifer A. Doudna (American, U. California Berkeley), the Prize recognizes the development of a method for genome editing.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Rules of virus transmission are the same for the meek and the mighty: A lesson GOP officials are ignoring.
- The British government is under pressure to intervene in the sale of ARM to the US company NVIDIA.
- How China and Russia are benefiting from hostilities between the US and Iran.
- Lincoln Project's parody song, mocking Trump's Peron-like appearance on the White House balcony: "Covita"
- Persian music: Paris-based Bahar Choir performs the "Ey Iran" anthem. Enjoy!
- Iranian regional music: Partak Ensemble performs "Sherti Shapaki," an old song in the Shirazi dialect.
(5) Trump lacks a basic understanding of ordinary people's illness ordeals: Here's the story of a woman who had to nurse her husband and three children at home when they came down with COVID-19, getting only minimal help from doctors over Zoom. No tests. No x-rays. No monitors. No state-of-the art therapeutics.
(6) A huge TRUMP sign, installed next to Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, a la the famed HOLLYWOOD sign, has been taken down: The same fate awaits Trump himself in less than a month!
(7) War between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Iran is purportedly "neutral" in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict happening just outside its border, but a long history of meddling on both sides tells a different story.
(8) Panel discussion on "Black and Afro-Iranians in Iranian Cultural Imaginary": I missed this UNC event due to other commitments. Glad to see that it was recorded in full. [Screenshot] [124-minute video]
(9) Hillary Clinton trumps everything: Four years after Trump won the US presidency, with Russia's help, he wants us to focus on Hillary Clinton, not the pandemic, not the economic devastation under his watch, not the fact that he cheated on his taxes, not he and his family benefiting financially from his presidency, not our country being ridiculed worldwide, not heightened racial tensions, not the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, not driving Iran to the laps of Russia and China, not his failure in forging trade deals, ...
2020/10/05 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] White House Rose Garden ceremony to introduce Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett emerges as a super-spreader event. [Right] Happy International Teachers' Day: The day was inaugurated in 1994 to honor "the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. This Recommendation sets benchmarks regarding the rights and responsibilities of teachers and standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment, and teaching and learning conditions."
(2) The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice for discovering the hepatitis C virus.
(3) The lying club: The same doctor who said Trump isn't obese is now saying he's doing well with COVID-19 and allowed him to go on a car ride outside the hospital, when he was highly contagious: I for one have doubts about his honesty and competence!
(4) New Trumpian narratives: Trump defeated COVID-19; see, it isn't a big deal! Trump now has first-hand experience with the pandemic, while Biden does not. I'm not kidding you; this is what they are saying!
(5) Light at the end of the tunnel: I am so looking forward to next month, when the big fat liar is voted out, my phone stops ringing every five minutes, and every other post on Facebook isn't about the election!
(6) Book review: Saad, Layla F., Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Blackstone Audio, 2020.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Saad is an East-African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman living in Qatar. In this book, after some introductory material about White supremacy, Saad introduces her 28-day program for recognizing White supremacy in yourself and beginning to deal with it. Each day's work concerns a single term or concept, beginning with familiar ones and ending with ones that are used or understood less commonly. Activities on each day include thinking about personal experiences in a particular domain and reflecting journaling.
One thing I learned from this book is the importance of clearly-defined terms and concepts in dealing with difficult issues that are sometimes well-hidden in our conscience. Understanding terms such as "White privilege," "White exceptionalism," "tokenism," and "White saviorship" goes a long way toward formulating personal strategies for dealing with their undesirable consequences. New acronyms I learned from this book are "BIPOC" (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), and its subset "POC."
All of us living as a big, color-blind human society would work, were it not for White Supremacy and the privileges it bestows on White people, whether or not they are consciously aware of them. So, color-blindness isn't a strategy, until we have worked through all the damage done by White supremacy. In way of analogy, if a scale is tipped because of one side being much heavier than the other, adding equal weights to both sides will not bring it back to balance.
Week 1: The basics
1. White privilege: Advantages you have, or things you don't have to worry about, because of your whiteness
2. White fragility: Being easily offended by discussions on race, because you feel criticized or accused
3. Tone policing: Trying to silence people by criticizing the tone (anger, harsh words) they use in conversations
4. White silence: How you are silent or stay on the sideline about racial issues, often caused by White fragility
5. White superiority: Considering BIPOCs morally or intellectually inferior and thus in need of "White saviors"
6. White exceptionalism: I am a good person; can't possibly be racist ("It can't be me, I voted for Obama")
7. Week-1 review: Take stock of what you have learned and reflect on journal entries you made
Week 2: Anti-Blackness, racial stereotypes, and cultural appropriation
8. Color-blindness: The falsehood that if we stop seeing race, racism goes away; racism can exist w/o racists
9. Anti-Blackness against Black women: The most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected group of people
10. Anti-Blackness against Black men: Trapped in a one-dimensional imagining of who they are supposed to be
11. Anti-Blackness against Black children: Viewed as cute early on, they transition into being a danger later on
12. Racist stereotypes: Stereotypes and pre-judgement exist not just for Black people but for all non-Whites
13. Cultural appropriation: A dominant culture using clothing, hair styles, or objects of a non-dominant culture
14. Week-2 review: This week's work was heavy and ugly. If you didn't run away, you are making progress
Week 3: Allyship
15. White Apathy: A self-preservation response to protect yourself from having to face your complicity
16. White-centering: Nothing (no film, no book) is complete w/o including white people as central characters
17. Tokenism: Including non-White people or multiple cultural motifs to create a superficial sense of diversity
18. White-saviorism: White heros rescuing BIPOCs from misery, e.g., by going to Africa and hugging Black kids
19. Optical allyship: Acting as allies at the level of writings and slogans, without doing the hard work needed
20. Being called out or called in: White fragility may cause hurt or defensiveness when errors are pointed out
21. Week-3 review: White supremacy can be perpetuated by actions that are apparently well-intended or noble
Week 4: Power, relationships, and commitments
22. White feminism: Discounting the role of race and other factors in what women experience (intersectionality)
23. White leaders: Your relationships with White-privileged people ahead or above you in the power hierarchy
24. Your friends: Your relationships with White-privileged or BIPOC peers (friends, co-workers, etc.)
25. Your family: Your relationships with racist relatives, and discussing racial matters within the family
26. Your values: Principles/beliefs that guide our lives and determine where we choose to place our energies
27. Losing privilege: You must be willing to let go of some of the privilege bestowed upon you by Whiteness
28. Your commitments: This is the finish line of the book but not the end of your lifelong work on anti-racism
I was pleased to learn that I have been doing things right, for the most part, in this domain. I am definitely not on the sideline regarding racism and racial-injustice, although I do realize that some deep-seated attitudes towards race, infused in me due to growing up in Iran, will need more time to properly deal with. I also learned that being an introvert isn't a valid excuse for staying away from activism and participation, as you can still do much as an introvert. [Here is the author's C-SPAN presentation about her book.]
2020/10/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Humor that's dead serious: Since you white folk have made Jesus white, we colored folk decided to make Elvis black. Hope no one takes offense in our "colorblind" society. [Center] The man getting free health care from an army of doctors at a world-class medical facility has an army of lawyers in court trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act and take away its vital protections for the rest of us.
(2) Orwell's Animal Farm: After demonizing humans for a long time, the pigs (Farm leaders) explained to the other animals that trading with humans was now necessary for their well-being.
Trump's White House: Trump is reportedly mad at his Chief of Staff for contradicting Dr. Sean Conley on his health status after contracting COVID-19! So, now specialists are good and must be believed?
(3) Is lying contagious? (Lying doctor downplays the status of his lying patient): "Conley ... admitted Sunday that he had omitted those alarming drops in the President's oxygen levels during Saturday's news conference because he wanted to 'reflect the upbeat attitude' that the team and the President had about his condition and didn't want 'to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction.'"
(4) Humor: "I've tested positive. Experts say it's the most positive test they have ever seen. It was so positive they couldn't believe it. They say no one has tested this positive ever. They're quite frankly amazed!"
(5) Doctors condemn Trump's PR stunt of riding in a motorcade outside the hospital: Under no circumstances should a contagious patient endanger the health of others, including Secret-Service agents, in this way.
(6) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: On Sunday, October 04, 2020, 11:30 AM PDT, Dr. Kaveh Madani was featured in a Zoom conversation in Persian on "Environmental Security in Iran and the Middle East," with Professor Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge and Coordinator of the UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran) acting as moderator. Dr. Madani will more or less repeat the lecture in English on Monday October 05, 2:00 PM PDT, under the title "Water Bankruptcy and Environmental Politics in Iran."
Dr. Madani is currently the Henry Hart Rice Senior Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Areas Studies of Yale University and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College, London. He has received many honors and briefly held a position within Iran's President's office, but did not last long in that capacity.
Dr. Madani spoke as part of this lecture series on October 28, 2019, under the title "Water Bankruptcy and Environmental Politics in Iran." [Facebook post] [Tweet] Because the talk and its associated discussion have been recorded in this 155-minute video, I will provide only a one-paragraph summary below.
The main environmental problems in Iran stem from mismanagement and doling out favors to this or that group. Stakeholders are rarely consulted and they are routinely excluded from decision-making circles. Somewhat surprisingly, politicians are aware of the problems, talking about them and making promises to voters at election time, but serious action is missing. Iran's environment and resources are quite different from its neighboring countries and from the West, so cookie-cutter solutions do not work across the region. The know-how is there and careful plans are sometimes laid, but the political and social chaos resulting from a tanking economy (sanctions) and the existence of numerous centers of power at the regional level doom these plans to failure. There are some bright spots, though, including heightened awareness in Iran's society of environmental problems and the active presence of many NGOs devoted to environmental preservation. By the way, climate change and its associated environmental challenges aren't handled much better in advanced countries of the West. In the Middle East, Israel and a couple of rich Arab countries appear to be more advanced in their planning and implementation efforts, but even they have a long way to go.
A super-long Q&A session concluded the event. Even with multiple time extensions, many questions from the 600+ participants remained unanswered. [a href="https://www.facebook.com/bparhami/posts/10158771168127579">Screenshot]
2020/10/03 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] One of the four rose bushes that I pruned a few days ago has begun flowering. [Center] UCLA lectures on the environment and water resources in Iran and the Middle East (see the next item below). [Right] A talk on Iran's Academy of Persian Language and Literature (see the last item below).
(2) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: On Sunday, October 04, 2020, 11:30 AM PDT, Prof. Kaveh Madani will be featured in a Zoom conversation in Persian on "Environmental Security in Iran and the Middle East." Then, on Monday October 05, 2:00 PM PDT, he will discuss "Water Bankruptcy and Environmental Politics in Iran," in English. The events are free with pre-registration. [Registration links: Sunday, Monday]
(3) Persian poetry: Mr. Haloo, famous for his humorous poetry, recites his serious poem honoring Navid Afkari and other martyrs of the fight for freedom killed by the Iranian regime.
(4) "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Panels" (Organized by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, UNC Persian Studies Program): Today, I watched the final part of the Symposium, the previous parts having been three panels and a keynote address. In this part, a round-table discussion, three prominent women's-rights scholars discussed their views on the topics covered in the Symposium. I take this opportunity to thank Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, others involved in organizing the Symposium, and, above all, the participants in this wonderful series.
- Mehrangiz Kar (Writer, Attorney, and Women's-Rights Activist): "Laws Against Love and Loving in Iran"
- Janet Afary (Chair Prof., UCSB): "Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriages to White Marriages" (based on a book by the same title, due out in February 2021)
- Nayereh Tohidi (Professor, California State U., Northridge): "The Trajectory of Change and Continuity in the Past 40 Years in Attitude, Norms, and Discourses Toward Love, Marriage, Sexuality, and Body Politics"
[Recording of the discussions on Facebook Live] [Symposium Program] [Screenshot]
(5) "History of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, and Word Selection": This was the title of a presentation in Persian by Sayeh Eghtesadinia, Deputy Head of the Academy's Contemporary Literature Department. The talk was sponsored by Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA) over its Telegram channel. I found the presentation absorbing and highly informative. The questions asked by members of the audience also brought out quite a few interesting points.
The current Academy, headed by Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, is known as the Third Academy, the first (called "Academy of Iran"; note the absence of "Language" or "Persian" from the name) having convened during Reza Shah's rule and the second (called "Language Academy of Iran") having operated under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
It is very difficult to summarize the many interesting points discussed by Ms. Eghtesadinia, who seemed quite informed about the subject matter. Many useful, pleasant, and popular Persian words have emerged from the three Academies. Key criteria for word selection are derivability ("eshteghagh-paziri," or the ability to form derivatives, such as "Pasban" and "Pasgah" from "Pas," or "Fann-avari" and "Fann-salari" from "Fann"), conjugatability ("tasrif-paziri," such as "Rayanidan" from "Rayaneh"), and attachability to prefixes/suffixes ("tarkib ba vand-ha").
I will just cite one set of examples having to do with the five senses: Vision ("Bina-ee," which replaced the Arabic "Basereh," now almost defunct), hearing ("Shenava-ee," which replaced the now-defunct "Same'eh"), touch ("Basava-ee," which has seemingly lost the battle to the Arabic "Laameseh"), and words for the senses of taste and smell ("Chesha-ee" and "Booya-ee," with Arabic forms "Za'egheh" and "Shammeh"), which live parallel lives, as both the original Arabic terms and the new Persian terms are in use. These five terms were introduced nearly simultaneously, with some catching on and others (partially) failing.
2020/10/02 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] An oasis in a very dry area of Iran: Shazdeh Mahan Garden is located 6 km away from Mahan, Kerman Province. [Center] Santa Barbara City Council approves name change for a street: How the name "Dead Indian" was allowed to exist for so long (since 1851) is beyond me! [Right] Three panoramic photos I took at Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach this afternoon: The beach was packed with surfers and sun-bathers; UCSB students are back, as fall quarter classes began yesterday. [Video 1] [Video 2]
(2) October surprise? If you lie a dozen times per day, no one sympathizes with you when you get sick. Everyone is waiting for a leaked story or NYT expose about the trick that is being played on them!
(3) Trump identified as the single-largest source of misinformation on coronavirus: By analyzing 38 million articles about the pandemic, Cornell University researchers found that mentions of Trump made up 38% of the overall "misinformation conversation."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tested positive for coronavirus: Donald & Melania Trump. Negative: Mike & Karen Pence, Joe & Jill Biden.
- Biden tests negative for COVID-19: But, given the up to 2-week incubation period, he isn't in the clear yet.
- Watching this video clip of two young men playing volleyball at a dizzying height isn't easy!
- Persian music and dance: Two young women from Helia Dance Company perform. [2-minute video]
- Persian music: Bahar Panjehpour, 14, demonstrates her talents in playing 25 different musical instruments.
(5) Ireland's Supreme Court rules that Subway sandwich bread has five times as much sugar as the maximum of 2% allowed for bread, so it is classified as confectionery, not as a tax-exempt staple food.
(6) Former FLOTUS aide Stephanie Winston secretly recorded Melania Trump's profanity-laced rant about Christmas decorations and children separated from their families. You know what? The cruel, cold-hearted Trump family members deserve the back-stabbing staffers and aides that they get.
(7) "Emerging Technology Review: Clouds and Data Centers": This was the title of a half-day webinar sponsored by UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency. The webinar began with introductions by Dean of Engineering Rod Alferness and IEE Director John Bowers (who reviewed IEE's various divisions and the brand-new energy-efficient buiding that houses it).
Session 1: Data Center and Cloud Efficiency and Sustainability [Screenshot]
- Raj Yavatkar (CTO, Juniper Networks): "The Revolution in Data Center Communications and Interconnects"
- Nicola Peill-Moelter (Sr. Director for Sustainability, VMWare), "Hunting Zombies (unintentionally-hidden compute/storage resources) for Fun, Profit and Sustainability"
- Rich Wolski (CS Professor, UCSB): "Energy Efficiency on the (IoT) Edge"
- Tim Sherwood (CS Professor, UCSB; Panel moderator): Speakers 1 & 2, plus Jonathan Balkind (UCSB), Brent Gorda (ARM), Michael Haney (ARPA-E)
Session 2: Energy Efficient Photonic Interconnects and Data Centers [Screenshot]
- Katharine Schmidtke (GM of Silicon and AI, Facebook): "Cloud-Scale Interconnect Architectures in the Context of Hardware and Software Codesign"
- Daniel Blumenthal (ECE Professor, UCSB): "Low Energy Frequency Stabilized Coherent WDM for Data Center Interconnects"
- Robert Blum (New Business GM, Si Photonics, Intel): "The Promise of Co-Packaged Optics: Paving the Way for Improved Power Efficiency, Size, and Cost"
- John Bowers (IEE Director, UCSB): "Photonic Integration for Data Centers"
- John Bowers (Panel moderator): Speaker 3, plus Alexis Bjorlin (Broadcom), Gordon Keeler (DARPA), Kushik Patel (Cisco), Clint Schow (UCSB)
Closing Talk and Discussion
- William Wang (CS Professor, UCSB): "Towards Dramatically Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning"
- John Bowers (IEE Director, UCSB): Closing discussion
2020/10/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Kicking off the US National Cyber-security Awareness Month: Now in its 17th year, the month-long program aims to ensure that all Americans have the resources they need to be safer and more secure on-line. [Right] You know it's election time when you open your mailbox and stuff spills out!
(2) More interesting than the Harris-Pence VP debate: Face-off between SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett and one of her questioners, Senator Kamala Harris, member of US Senate's Judiciary Committee.
(3) Logical puzzle: We want to poll 2000 people to find out the level of support for candidates A and B among them. Assume that all participants support one of the two candidates, that is, there are no undecided voters. We want to preserve the privacy of those polled, so that we cannot tell from their answers who they really support. How can such a privacy-preserving polling be accomplished? [Source: CACM, issue of October 2020]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Not wearing face-masks and ignoring other common-sense pandemic guidelines have consequences.
- Make America Great Again: Third 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.
- Generic question that works at any technical talk these days: How will all this be affected by 5G and beyond?
- Israeli orchestra covers the Emirati hit song "Ahibak" ("I Love You").
(5) Armenia and Azerbaijan are on the brink of war in a strategically-important Mideast region: Russia, Turkey, and Iran are stoking the fire. The US is too wrapped up in shouting matches to notice. We have no credibility left to do much internationally anyway, other than broker fake "peace treaties" between friendly countries that were never at war!
(6) Iranian regional music: The lyrics of this wonderful modern song by Faghan appear to be in Guilaki, a dialect spoken on the Caspian shore. ("Nooshoo" = "Don't go")
(7) First-grade Persian textbook from pre-Revolution Iran: Note four full-page portraits of the Shah and his family at the beginning and a few more near the end. [Video]
(8) NOVA on PBS: Episode 13 of Season 47 of PBS's science program premiered on Wednesday, September 30, 2020, and it will run several more times (check your local listings). This episode, entitled "A to Z: How Writing Changed the World," explores how writing and printing press technologies transformed the spread of information and ignited the Industrial Revolution. I was interviewed on 2020/09/25 by NOVA journalist Alissa Greenberg for a story on Persian/Arabic script's adaptation to print technology, in connection with this episode of the program. I will post a link to the story when I get it. [54-minute video]
2020/09/30 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] If we don't laugh at last night's presidential debate, we'll have to cry! [Center] The restaurant scene in downtown, Santa Barbara: Photos from my walk along the new pedestrian-friendly State Street, yesterday afternoon. [Right] Burgers in ads, vs. reality: Sort of like political candidates!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- COVID-19 deaths: World, 1,000,000+; USA, 200,000+ ... and rising (USA has 5x per-capita deaths).
- Fox News commentators are attacking debate moderator Chris Wallace for making Trump look bad!
- Trump and his cronies aren't sure whether to deny or justify his not paying taxes: So, they do both!
- Political humor: After NYT report on Trump's taxes, Melania realizes what she was digging into wasn't gold!
- Eric Trump said he's part of the LGBT community, then clarified when people thought he had come out.
- Yesterday at Sprouts Farmers Market in Goleta, California, filming mostly the fruits and vegetables.
(5) Everyone is freaked out over Trump not denouncing White Supremacists during the first presidential debate: Seriously, how can he denounce them, when he is counting on them to help him win the election?
(6) I couldn't bring myself to write something about the first presidential debate last night: I needed to sleep on it and calm myself down, letting the anger arising from the most-uncivil debate in memory disappear. There was no debating, that is, presenting plans, arguments, and counter-aguments. It was a series of attacks and interruptions, with little bearing on the questions posed. And Chris Wallace's performance was just as disappointing as Trump's and Biden's. [Fact check]
(7) "Transcendence: A Sufi Music Festival": Today's second program in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art series, entitled "Persian Mystic Songs: Omar Khayyam and Farid al-Din Attar," featured Sahar Mohammadi (vocals), Siamak Jahangiri (ney = Persian recorder), and Farhad Safari (tombak). Next week's installment will feature Moroccan music. [Attar love poem, with English translation]
(8) Book discussion (in Persian): As part of the weekly Zoom gatherings of Tehran University's College of Engineering Class of 1968, Dr. Sirous Yasseri presented and led a discussion on Daniel Kahneman's ground-breaking 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman is a psychologist who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for a lifetime of work that upended a key common assumption of economics theories. Humans, it turns out, aren't rational actors behaving in a way that maximizes their personal well-being. With the rationality assumption shown to be on shaky grounds, much of economics had to be revised and reformulated. The book isn't about the Internet or social media, but what one learns from it provides valuable tools for avoiding traps set by those who try to manipulate us for personal gain. Once you become aware of cognitive biases in humans as a group, it should be possible (though it's by no means easy) to recognize and control these biases in yourself. I will complete and publish my review of the book in the near future. A lively extended discussion followed the talk. [Facebook post, with images] [Tweet]
2020/09/28 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Art images: [Left] Homeless under-the-bridge art: For discovery by future archaeologists! [Center] This is not a photo: Oil painting by Iranian artist Akbar Beigi. [Right] Feast for the eyes: Pavement tiles in Barcelona.
(2) Demand for major appliances far exceeds the supply: This NPR story confirms what I shared with you about my difficult experience of buying a new fridge. Delivery times of two months or more are common.
(3) Coal-miner's daughter attains first rank in Afghanistan's university entrance exam: Shamsieh Alizadeh, who became a national sensation before she learned of her achievement (because she does not own a cell phone), plans to study medicine.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California's Napa Valley burns: Heat, dry conditions, and gusty winds create a dangerous cocktail.
- Look what Trump tweeted in 2012, attacking Obama for paying an income tax of only 20.5%!
- In 2016, Trump whined in a tweet that he gets audited by the IRS every year, while his rich friends don't.
- Bullying diplomacy: Trump warns Iraq that the US is preparing to shut down its embassy in Baghdad.
- Persian music: Payam Samimi and Yoosef Rasti play a lively tune on one piano.
- Persian music: French Street musician plays & sings the "Ey Iran" anthem, despite not speaking Persian.
(5) Anyone who paid his/her fair share of taxes should be outraged, but only some Democrats appear to be. America's system of "justice" punishes petty crime tenaciously, while encouraging and rewarding grand theft!
(6) Trending on Twitter: Retweets of Trump tweets in which he whines about "our" tax dollars being spent on this or that. OUR tax dollars? Your tax dollars aren't being spent on anything, because they don't exist!
(7) Donald Trump's business empire built on sand: He has $300 million in loans coming due in the next four years, as his businesses continue to lose millions annually: His run for presidency and, now, re-election bid has been motivated by a desire to do favors for despotic foreign leaders and international banks, in order to get new loans or have existing obligations restructured to give him more time.
(8) Trump family's epic fight over finances: When Donald faced financial ruin, he tried to take control of his elderly father's estate, which enraged the rest of the family. So, not only did Donald build his business with millions of dollars in direct contributions by his dad, he tried to cheat him and the rest of the family out of more money to survive after making disastrous business decisions.
2020/09/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranian authorities take no offense at the sight of this destitute woman: But if she tries to ride a bike, all hell will break loose! [Top center] Imagining iconic historical figures, as they might have looked today: Becca Saladin has been transforming historical figures, from Mona Lisa to Marie Antoinette, into modern-day people. [Top right] "Notorious ACB" T-shirts? Come on, Republicans! What happened to your American inventiveness and originality? [Bottom left] Some wonderful and somewhat surprising mathematical identities. [Bottom center & right] Weeding and pruning in the COVID-19 era: I had ignored my two patios (one of which is shown in the photos; the other one is similar) for so long that I had to hire help to do the weeding yesterday. Today, I pruned my rose bushes to give them a chance at fresh growth. Over the next couple of days, I will lay down weed screens to make my job easier in future. By the way, gardening gloves are necessary when dealing with rose bushes! I tried to go without them, the way Trump supporters go without face-masks. The result was regrettable!
(2) Presidential debates: All 2020 debates will be held 9:00-10:30 PM ET (6:00-7:30 PM PT). Tue., Sep. 29 (Fox News), Wed. Oct. 07 (VP debate, USA Today), Thu. Oct. 15 (C-SPAN), Thu. Oct. 22 (NBC).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A new low for the party of Lincoln: Reagan and Trump opine on presidential transfer of power.
- It's more than incompetence: It's pure evil against people who are not white, Republican, and rich.
- COVID-fighters' best friend: Helsinki Airport deploys dogs trained to sniff out the coronavirus.
- People around the world: Slide show of beautiful and heartwarming photos of human-beings being human.
(4) Ofjesse (aka Amy Coney Barrett) nominated by Trump for the Supreme Court seat left open by RBG's passing: If you have read The Handmaid's Tale or its sequel, The Testaments, you will understand the name "Ofjesse." Sects similar to People of Praise, which teach that husbands are the heads of families and have authority over their wives, inspired Margaret Atwood's best-selling novels.
(5) "Fake News" New York Times reports: Surprise! Trump paid $750 in taxes the year he was elected and during his first year of presidency. He paid no taxes at all during 10 of the previous 15 years, claiming substantial business losses. In one instance, he received a $73 million tax refund, which the IRS is trying to reclaim, because it deems the refund illegitimate.
(6) My Facebook post of September 27, 2019: I shared an article that outlined the role of stochastic computing in solving the immense challenges of building highly-energy-efficient digital systems. I am happy to report that one of the article's authors, Dr. Kerem Y. Camsari, is now a colleague of mine, having just joined UCSB's ECE Department. He has hit the ground running with his OPUS Lab (Orchestrating Physics for Unconventional Systems). A warm welcome to him!
2020/09/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Niwrad's theory of devolution confirmed: Humans during the 1918 Spanish Flu vs. the 2020 COVID-19. [Center] Sample slide from today's talk on 5G technology by Dr. Masoud Olfat (see the next item below). [Right] Screenshot from today's UNC Symposium panel (see the last item below).
(2) Sharif University of Technology Association's technical talk this morning: Telecommunications expert Dr. Masoud Olfat spoke (in Persian) about 5G technology. After an introduction covering the seven pillars of the fourth industrial revolution and basics of wireless communications, Dr. Olfat discussed the nature of 5G (what it is, ITU process, performance metrics, standardization), 5G use cases, 5G economics, 5G around the world, 5G distinctions/enablers, and what comes next (6G and beyond). Communications services companies use 5G as a marketing tool, even though many of them do not actually offer 5G (the same thing previously happened for 4G). The authority for defining 5G is International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which sets clear definitions and performance standards. I had to leave the talk after 1 hour, some 10-15 minutes before it ended. The lecture was recorded and is available on YouTube.
(3) Post Trump: Even more satisfying than seeing Trump and his enablers, such as Pompeo and Barr, ousted will be the info that will emerge about their attempts at destroying democracy and silencing critics.
(4) Trump administration's withdrawal of a journalism award scrutinized: The International Women of Courage Award was given in 2019 to Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro for exposing Russia's misinformation campaigns and troll factories. Shortly after notifying Aro of the honor, the State Department rescinded the award, because an employee discovered social-media posts that were critical of Trump's "fake news" narrative and attacks on journalists as "enemies of the people." What's more, a false reason was stated for rescinding the award.
(5) "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Panels" (Organized by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, UNC Persian Studies Program): Today, I watched the third panel in the series, entitled "Religio-Political Dimensions of Desire in Modern Iran," with the following three participants. Looking forward to the the final installment of this wonderful program, a round-table discussion on Saturday, October 3, 2020.
- Maryam Zehtabi Sabeti Moqaddam (PhD student, U. Mass, Amherst): "Girls for Sale: The Politics of Child Marriage in Iran"
- Nasim Basiri (PhD student, Oregon State U.): "The Politics of Love in Iran: Implications of 'Religious Hypocrisy of Clerics' in the form of Temporary Marriages"
- Mahdi Tourage (Assoc. Prof., King's U. College, London, Ontario, Canada): "The Supreme Leader and I: Erotic Desire in Iranian Female Poets Reading their Poems for the Supreme Leader of Iran"
2020/09/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cover of The New Yorker magazine, issue of October 5, 2020. [Center] Inside the minds of young Santa Barbara voters: SB Independent polls our youth on national and local issues that will affect their voting decisions in November. [Right] Capitalists cashing in: Gold coin, marketed to MAGA folks and Evangelicals, puts Donald Trump and Cyrus the Great side-by-side, staining Iran's proud history.
(2) Twitter's racist image-cropping algorithm exposed: The company apologizes after many Twitter users confirmed the bias, which takes the form of cropping non-White people out of displayed images. Here is a most-striking experiment to show the racial bias of Twitter's image-cropping algorithm.
(3) The election that could break America: Unless Biden wins a resounding victory, Trump may attempt to steal the election by using the courts, which he has stacked with judges friendly to him. The final step in this plan is to fill RBG's seat, giving him a 6-3 or 5-4 edge, should the challenge go all the way to the high court. Before leaving or being forced out, Trump will run America into the ground, much like his casino businesses.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Borowitz Report (humor): If Trump refuses to step down, just cancel White House's cable subscription!
- Silicon Valley threatened by wildfires: Will SV techies start producing solutions for wildfire control?
- Amazon's indoor drone to fill gaps in the coverage of static cameras in home security systems.
- Deep-learning robots beat humans in curling: Not the most-exciting of sports, but a good start for robots!
- Iran's nature in winter: Mountain-climbing in the vicinity of Babak Fort, near Kaleybar, Azarbaijan Province.
- Good morning: Finding good music you used to love is like getting back in touch with an old friend.
- A beautiful Persian song, composed for Mohammad Reza Shajarian on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
(5) The social-bot pandemic: As we learn how to detect existing bots, new ones are developed with advanced characteristics that make them much harder to detect. This CACM article discusses the progress made in, and challenges of, detecting bots. [Cresci, Stafano, "A Decade of Social Bot Detection," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 63, No. 10, October 2020, pp. 72-83.
(6) "Picture a Scientist": This 2020 film, screened by UCSB (October 8, 2020, 4:00 PM PDT; free with pre-registration), chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. A biologist, a chemist, and a geologist lead us on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, overcoming brutal harassment, institutional discrimination, and years of subtle slights to revolutionize the culture of science. Ian Cheney and Sharon Shattuck (co-directors and producers) will join moderator Emily Goard Jacobs (Psychological and Brain Sciences, UCSB) for a Q&A about the making of this documentary.
2020/09/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today's UCSB ECE Department day-long retreat (see the last item below). [Center] After all the political meddling into CDC, FDA, and NIH, will the American public trust a COVID-19 vaccine? [Right] The 200,000 US COVID-19 deaths constitute 25% of global deaths, while our share of the world population is 4%. Alternative facts: We have done "a great job" that merits an "A+ grade"!
(2) "The State of the Islamic State" (an AFPC Webinar I attended yesterday morning): Alberto Fernandez (Vice-President, Middle East Media Research Institute), Craig Whiteside (Associate Professor, Naval Postgraduate School), and Katherine Zimmerman (Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute) were panelists in this program offered by American Foreign Policy Council. The unnamed AFPC moderator asked the panelists questions about how ISIS came about, how it describes itself (its messaging), how it's different from Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups, and why it is showing alarming new signs of life after going downhill from its 2013-2014 peak and being banned from social media platforms. A video recording of the webinar will be posted to afpc.org and AFPC's YouTube channel in a day or two. [Screenshot]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The woman who promised never to lie to the press is a more-shameless liar than Sarah Huckabee Sanders!
- Mitch McConnell breaks with Trump, saying there will be a peaceful and orderly transition in November.
- California Governor Gavin Newsom orders new gasoline-powered autos to be phased out by 2035.
- Univ. of California (including UCSB) admitted well-connected or rich students over more-qualified ones.
- Iranians advocating for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities are targeted by government hackers.
- NASA maneuvers the International Space Station to move it out of the way of space debris.
(4) UCSB ECE Department's day-long Zoom-based retreat, today: Here is a very brief summary of key points.
- UC has borrowed $2B as a result of the pandemic; $1.8B already spent. Paying back this loan will put additional budgetary pressures on our campuses.
- Student enrollment: 299 grad students; 261 CE undergrads; 293 EE undergrads; 853 in all. CS has 182 grad students, 648 in all.
- Pre- and post-graduation student polls re their impressions of college experience and quality of education.
- About 70% of our entering freshman students graduate from ECE, with the remainder almost equally divided between not graduating and graduating from some other department.
- Improving our undergraduate advising program and providing more opportunities for undergraduate research.
- Intensifying our efforts to recruit women students. Currently, the percentage of women among our students is dismal, compared with other (engineering) departments at UCSB and elsewhere: CE ~11%; EE ~13%; ChemE, with 40% women, has the best record within our College of Engineering. Must examine successful disciplines, such as medicine and law, in this regard.
- Departmental Committee for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI): Charged by the Dean with developing an action plan for eliminating discrimination of all kinds in our College of Engineering.
- Formalizing our junior-faculty mentoring arrangements.
- Decadal Curriculum Reform; improving the undergraduate experience; providing more flexibility for students to tailor their study plan to their interests and career plans (increasing the number of elective courses).
- Research excellence: ECE has $31M in annual research funding (largest department in both enrollment and research funding).
- Reforming our PhD screening exam to better serve its purposes.
- Looking at our long-range plans: How do we want to distinguish ourselves, as a mid-size ECE department, from much-larger programs, nationally and internationally?
[Photos are from early morning breakout "breakfast" session and one of the general sessions.]
2020/09/22 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy first day of autumn! Paris-based Bahar Choir performs the Persian song "Paeez" ("Autumn"). [Center] Jewish holidays: Six-year calendar (see the last item below). [Right] Flowers laid in front of the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, commemorate the Notorious RBG.
(2) Criminal lies: No, it's not hyperbole when Trump calls himself a champion of health care or the great environmentalist. It's lying through his teeth, plain and simple! His administration is in court, trying to gut Obamacare and its consumer protections. He is 100% against environmental-protection laws and regulations, in order to line the pockets of his billionaire friends and supporters.
(3) The GOP leadership says they have the votes for replacing RBG: So, they'll vote to confirm the nominee, regardless of who she is? The Senate's role used to be "advice & consent." Now it's "accede & rubber-stamp"!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Worst pandemic since 1918. And now, worst storm season, in terms of hurricanes' US landfall, since 1916.
- Today's walk in downtown Santa Barbara: I walked along State Street, filming the city's farmers market.
- Footprints found in Saudi Arabia, believed to be human, are 120,000 years old.
- Classical music on the guitar: Lily Afshar plays J. S. Bach's "Cello Suite No. 1, Prelude."
- Persian music: Ali Ghamsari's wonderful tar performance, with tombak accompaniment.
(5) What the Bible says about "Black Lives Matter": For those who claim to be Christians but don't seem to have understood the meaning of Luke 15. [Image]
(6) "Building 3D Models from 2D Images, and Vice Versa: From Puzzles to Real Applications": This is the title of my talk this morning to a group of graduates of Tehran University's College of Engineering. Unfortunately, video recording of the talk ran into problems and was terminated very early, but the PDF file of my slides, which includes links to a number of interesting videos, is available for perusal. [Screenshot of Zoom meeting]
(7) Hebrew leap years: Because the Hebrew calendar is based on lunar months, a 12-month year would be about 11 days shorter than a solar year. In order to synchronize the years with the Earth's rotation around the Sun, seven 13-month leap years are used within 19-year cycles, with years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 assigned 13 months. Because of this anomaly, Jewish holidays and festivals fluctuate by about a month relative to solar-calendar dates. Things become complicated because of solar leap years, so the number of days in a Hebrew year also fluctuates. The year 5781, which just started, is year 5 in the cycle above, so it is not a leap year. Mathematically, a leap year's number y satisfies (7y + 1) mod 19 < 7. So, the next Hebrew year, 5782, is a leap year. Definitely not the simplest or most-logical of calendars!
2020/09/21 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Women political prisoners in Iran: Nasrin Sotoudeh and Saba Kord Afshari were transported from proison to hospitals due to poor health. Sotoudeh is in CCU, following her 40 days of hunger strike. [Center] Someone added one of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's collars to the Fearless Girl statue in NYC.
(2) CDC flushes its credibility down the toilet: After informing us that COVID-19 can spread through the air, the statement disappears from CDC's Web site. Explanation: It was posted due to an error!
(3) Iranian operatives hack their way into secure messaging systems: Both Telegram and WhatsApp have been broken into. The goal appears to be access to data on Iranian opposition groups in Europe and the US.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- As justification for withholding federal funding, DoJ declares a number of cities "anarchist jurisdictions."
- Great sense of humor: Biden uses a 10-second clip from Trump's campaign rally as an ad!
- Electric cars are becoming mainstream due to improved technology and rapidly-declining battery prices.
- One of my UCSB Faculty Housing Complex neighbors, Dr. Petra Persolja, offered a Zoom recital on 9/20.
(5) President Rouhani's VP for Science & Technology: "Brain drain from Iran is on the decline." Yes, because very few "brains" are left in the country and, at 280,000 rials per US dollar, those who want to leave can't afford airfare, visa fees, and other immigration costs, even ignoring travel restrictions due to COVID-19.
(6) Table-Top Shakespeare: UCSB Arts & Lectures offers the Complete Shakespeare, all of his plays, each with a single performer using a table-top stage and household items as stand-ins for the characters. The program runs from Thursday, September 17 ("Macbeth"), through Sunday, November 15 ("The Tempest"). With a few exceptions specified on the following Web page, all performances are at 12:00 PM PDT.
(7) What my daughter did this summer: One of her summer projects was teaching herself to play the piano, using an electronic keyboard. Here is a part of one of the songs she has been practicing! [1-minute video]
(8) What I did this summer: One of my accomplishments as summer 2020 comes to a close is clearing my backlog of book reviews, that is, books that I had finished reading/hearing, without having compiled my notes into public reviews. As I write this note, I have posted my completed reviews to GoodReads (now containing 222 items), Facebook, Twitter, and my Blog & Books page. So, other than two hard-copy books, an e-book, and an audiobook I am currently perusing, I'm all caught up with book reviews! I have also completed half-dozen research papers and prepared a dozen or so lectures for conferences, keynote addresses, technical talks to various groups, and informal presentations. Now, on to preparing and recording lectures for my fall 2020 graduate course at UCSB, "Fault-Tolerant Computing" (ECE 257A)! [Screenshot of my GoodReads page]
2020/09/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] White Torture: A dozen women political prisoners in Iran talk about experiencing solitary confinment. The book is written in Persian by Narges Mohammadi, who is herself in prison and has endured solitary confinement. (Nigara Afsharzadeh; Atena Daemi; Sima Kiani; Fatemeh Mohammadi; Sedigheh Moradi; Nazila Nouri; Hengameh Shahidi; Mahvash Shahriari; Reyhaneh Tabatabaei; Shokufeh Yadollahi; Nazanin Zaghari; Zahra Zehtabchi) [Center] Cover image of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (see the last item below). [Right] My daughter and I with our RBG T-shirts, yesterday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and the first day following a major loss for the cause of women's rights.
(2) Every week, someone described as a "disgruntled employee" speaks or write about Trump's cluelessness, dangerous behavior, and narcissism: Are there any "gruntled" employees in the White House?
(3) Next time someone calls Trump "The Jobs President," show them this chart: New jobs created, in absolute numbers and as a fraction of total jobs.
(4) Donald Trumps 2015 deposition in the case of Trump University (extended video clips): For someone with "one of the greatest memories of all time," he remembers very little!
(5) Book review: Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Michael York, Blackstone Audio, 2008. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I first read this 1932 dystopian sci-fi novel, whose title is a quote from Shakespeare's "The Tempest," in my 20s. Having gotten my hands on this special 75th-anniversary audiobook edition, I thought a deeper second perusal and writing a review might be appropriate, given enormous changes in my knowledge, attitude, and world-view in the intervening five decades. The book has stood the test of time and is now considered one of the top-100 greatest novels in history. Brave New World has been turned into a play, multiple radio broadcasts, and at least two films. Huxley [1894-1963] followed this book with the 1958 essay "Brave New World Revisited" and with his 1962 utopian final novel, Island.
Huxley's Brave New World is often compared to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, because both revolve around totalitarianism in a futuristic society. Huxley envisages a world with a caste system composed of intelligent humans and serf-like beings, with order maintained via government programs for hypnotism and producing test-tube babies, a swipe at eugenics, which had come into prominence in the 19th century, having been first proposed by Plato around 400 BC. Everyone is content because of a system of drugging and forced promiscuity instilled into all beings from the moment of birth.
Huxley's frightening futuristic society, dubbed the "World State" and having the motto "Community, Identity, Stability," is built around science and efficiency. Years are designated as before- and after-Ford (BF & AF), in honor of the 1908 introduction of Model-T by Henry Ford, who is referred to as "Our Ford," a la "Our Lord." Brave New World can be viewed as a critique of the prevailing technological optimism between the two World Wars, as Huxley focuses on limitations of technology in saving us from ourselves.
In Huxley's imagined world, citizens are put in classes, named "Alpha" through "Epsilon," with nearly everything controlled by Alphas and their subordinate Betas. The other three classes perform low-level jobs. Outsider "Savages," who live in reservations, constitute another social group. Citizens are taught to be happy within their castes and are instilled with the belief that everyone is equally important to society. Each fetus is assigned to a specific caste, with interference measures guaranteeing that the lower-caste members are born with limited intellectual abilities.
The most-important question asked and answered by Huxley's Brave New World relates to things humans would miss in a society where shortages of food and consumer goods, as well as aging, are relics of the past. The book's critical reception was quite negative when it was published, and it still appears on lists of banned books because of its depiction of promiscuity and drug use as mechanisms for holding the masses in check.
2020/09/19 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Ruth Bader Ginsburg passes at 87: The champion of gender equality served on SCOTUS for 27 years.
(2) Air quality in California's Yosemite National Park: The place people used to choose for rejuvenation and enjoying the fresh outdoors is breaking air-quality meters! [Image]
(3) Flu shot this fall: California Department of Public Health recommends it for almost all individuals, and University of California mandates it for all students and employees. (UCSB flu-shot clinic, 9/30-10/7)
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Last night's mag-4.6 jolt felt stronger to Angelinos: Same area had quakes in 1987 (5.9) and 2014 (5.1).
- Approximate solution of the "traveling salesperson" problem, using a deterministic O(n^2) algorithm.
- A soothing, continuously-running video of a stream in Stubai, Austria.
- Parisa Tabriz's 10/2019 keynote talk: "Google's Security Princess" asks "So, You Wanna Work in Security?"
- Country music: Chris Stapleton performs "Starting Over." [4-minute video]
- Iranian regional music: Ronak Ensemble performs.
- Persian music: The instrumental piece "Bidaad," performed by a group of young girls from Tabriz, Iran.
(5) Everything Trump touches dies: CDC is the latest casualty. Under pressure, it has issued statements that go against the scientific consensus, and it is then forced to reverse itself upon further consideration. One of the many formerly-trusted entities that has been forced to mud-wrestle with a demagogue!
(6) Iran to cut the fingers of three young men for theft: There is no such savage and cruel punishment for regime insiders who steal billions!
(7) "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Panels" (Organized by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, UNC Persian Studies Program): This morning, I watched the Symposium's Horner-Jarrahi keynote lecture by Dr. Janet Afari (Chair Professor, UCSB), entitled "The Growing Popularity of Non-Standard Marriages and Unions in Iran and South West Asia/North Africa (SWANA)." Dr. Afari listed the various forms of non-standard marriage, such as temporary marriage (Shi'a), traveling marriage (Sunni), and white union (cohabitation), excluding child marriages from her discussion and focusing on the last form for much of her talk. She presented data from a Facebook study that sought to assess the practices of non-traditional unions and the participants' attitudes toward them, including whether or not they should be legal. A lively Q&A session followed the talk. [Facebook Live] [My Facebook post, with a few slides] [Info]
2020/09/18 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Rosh Hashanah to all those who observe this Jewish holiday! The new Hebrew calendar year 5781 will start tomorrow and, like all Jewish holidays, is celebrated beginning with the night before. Jewish traditional celebration of Rosh Hashanah involves several fruits and vegetables. For example, apple dipped in honey represents sweetness and pomegranate signifies fruitfulness. [Center] Cover image for Ta-Nehisi Coates' We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (see the last item below). [Right] For legacy software, it's perpetual crisis: The COVID-19 pandemic has pulled back the curtain on legacy software's slow-motion catastrophe, according to IEEE Spectrum magazine's September 2020 issue.
(2) Hypocrisy exposed: Lindsey Graham kept bugging his opponent Jaime Harrison to release his tax return if he has nothing to hide. He did, and now he is pressing Graham to demand the same of Donald Trump!
(3) "Is Privacy Dead?" is the title of an interesting and timely article in IEEE IT Professional magazine, September-October 2020. In the article, Nir Kshetri and Joanna F. DeFranco observe that "governments and big companies have been aggressively collecting personal data in an unprecedented scale in legal as well as deceptive and illegal ways ... [helping to create] a data market based on an ethically questionable foundation."
(4) Book review: Coates, Ta-Nehisi, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Beresford Bennett, Random House Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Ta-Nihisi Coates, a MacArthur Fellow, who is widely regarded as an influential writer and thinker, rose to fame through the essay "The Case for Reparations" and his best-selling book Between the World and Me, written in the form of letters from a father to his teenage son.
We Were Eight Years in Power consists of eight of Coates' essays on race, written during Barack Obama's presidency and published in The Atlantic. Each piece, reproduced as originally written, is preceded by a newly-written essay that includes reflections on the events in America when he wrote the essay and the path of his development as a writer. Here is a list of the essays, along with links to them on The Atlantic Web site.
- This Is How We Lost to the White Man [Link 1]
- American Girl [Link 2]
- Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War [Link 3]
- The Legacy of Malcolm X [Link 4]
- Fear of a Black President [Link 5]
- The Case for Reparations [Link 6]
- The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration [Link 7]
- My President Was Black [Link 8]
Whereas one can read the original essays through the links above, the new introductory essays do add much value to the collection. For example, in Essay 1 about Bill Cosby, Coates discusses Cosby's brand of black conservatism, warts and all, but, in retrospect, admits that he should have written more than a single sentence about allegations of sexual misconduct against him, which, though, not widely publicized at the time, were quite well-known.
Coates considers "The Case for Reparations" the best piece in this collection and "My President Was Black" the second-best. He observes that Barack Obama's presidency led to the emergence of a large number of black writers and journalists. There were many other positive outcomes too, including the fact that black children and youth were energized with hope and pride. Unfortunately, however, the election of Donald Trump was, in part, a way of erasing Obama's presidency, raising the prospects that our country's embrace of the first black president was disingenuous.
The book's title is a quote from South Carolina's African-American congressman Thomas E. Miller [1849-1938], who wondered why Southerners hated African Americans, despite all the good they did during the Reconstruction. Coates sees parallels between that earlier era in US history and Obama's presidency. All eight essays are insightful, informative, and eye-opening.
2020/09/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Contrast: Feast for Iran's mullahs and their cronies; dumpster-diving for children of the streets. [Top center] Former US President Barack Obama's latest book, A Promised Land, will be released two weeks after the November election. [Top right] Meme of the day: "LOSERS" spary-painted, using orange spray tan, on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. [Bottom left & right] Photos from my afternoon walk along Isla Vista streets: A few of the many religious establishments and some of the mostly-Spanish street names in the student community adjacent to UCSB. [Bottom center] Attention in the search for extraterrestrial life turns from Mars to Venus: Scientists believe that microbial life forms may exist on Venus. A spacecraft scheduled to fly by the planet may help us assess this claim.
(2) Microsoft retrieves an underwater data center off the coast of Scotland to assess its performance: Over two years, only 8 of the 855 servers in the submerged data center had failed. Microsoft attributes the lower failure rate to the absence of humans and the center being filled with nitrogen rather than oxygen.
(3) Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious journal Science: "It's pretty hopeful that in another year we'll have people vaccinated and we'll be able to go back to the way things were, but the situation—both in terms of the virus and the ways in which the administration has tried to undermine scientists and scientific research—is something we've never seen before." [Source: Wired]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Bob Woodward's Rage has already been forgotten, even before its official release, much like his 2018 Fear!
- Sedition: AG Bill Barr discovers the word used by Iran's Islamic regime to describe anti-government protests!
- Republican Senators are worried about losing their control over the US Senate, according to a GOP memo.
- No one attempted this puzzle (The Sanjay Gupta Problem) when I posted it 7 years ago, today!
(5) Our worst fears may be coming true: In a Facebook Live video, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo (now on leave) warned of a CDC plot against President Trump and urged Trump supporters to stock up on ammunition.
(6) Poetic humor: Hossein Golchin recites his Persian/Arabic/English poem. Arabic words are used within Persian constructs for comic effect. The English words used contain a few typos. [5-minute subtitled audio]
(7) Lecture of possible interest to my Iranian readers and others who might want to learn about women's rights (or lack thereof) in Iran: Dr. Mehrangiz Kar will discuss "Women, Power and Politics Before and After the Iran Revolution 1979" on Saturday, September 26, 2020, as part of The Global Square program of Gothenburg Book Fair in Sweden. [Image]
(8) No sharpie needed this time to include Alabama in a hurricane's path: Widespread flooding wrecks havoc, as the slow-moving Hurricane Sally dumps 50 inches of rain on Alabama.
(9) Fox News disagrees with the president: Trump has opined that his ABC-sponsored town hall went great, while Laura Ingraham of Fox News thinks that he was ambushed by the TV network.
2020/09/16 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] "Africa is a poor country": Feeling sorry for Iranian kids, who have to learn from textbooks prepared by ignorant fools. [Top center] Images of Nasrin Sotoudeh and Navid Afkari (see the next item below). [Top right] We humans grow, then stop growing as adults: Certain life forms, such as the redwood tree, some mollusks, and possibly elephants, continue to grow as long as they are alive (source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of September 2020). [Bottom row] Sample slides from this evening's IEEE California Central Coast Section talk by Dr. Luke Theogarajan (see the last item below).
(2) A movement is afoot to have Iran banned from the Olympics for executing champion wrestler Navid Afkari: There has been some criticism of anti-regime activists in Iran and abroad for focusing on the cases of "celebrities" such as Nasrin Sotoudeh and Navid Afkari. For each such famous individual, they maintain, there are hundreds of nameless political prisoners suffering the same or worse fates. While this observation is quite true, campaigns, political or otherwise, need symbols in way of recognizable faces in order to reach mass audiences globally. So what if Sotoudeh or Afkari get a bit more attention than they deserve, as long as the Iranian regime is exposed for its oppression and brutality? Apparently, FM Javad Zarif's visit to Germany has been put on hold because of the execution of Afkari. Such is the power of symbols!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's "peace" in the Middle East: Palestinians fire rockets and Israel bombs Gaza Strip in retaliation.
- US West-Coast residents report health problems from poor air-quality caused by a blanket of smoke.
- Ignoring COVID-19 guidelines kills other people: Maine wedding linked to the death of 7 who didn't attend.
- US Space Force confirms detecting Iranian missiles aimed at US forces in Iraq, using infrared satellites.
- This isn't a joke (a la Borowitz Report): Trump blames Biden for not implementing national mask mandate.
- Confusing the totally-different "herd immunity" and "herd mentality" is a sure sign of cognitive decline.
(4) This evening's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Luke Theogarajan (Professor and Vice-Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UCSB) spoke under the title "Electronics Meets Biology."
The vision of electronics closely integrated with biology, popularized in science-fiction, is now becoming a reality. Dr. Theogarajan outlined the role of electronics in biology, within the two areas of neural interfacing and biosensing. Rapid advances in CMOS devices with the ever-shrinking transistor dimension has enabled the packing of unprecedented power in a small silicon area. However, there has not been a concomitant advance in the technology currently used for therapeutic devices. Some fundamental reasons as to why this is the case and ways of overcoming the barriers were outlined. Additionally, work in biosensing and interfacing at the micro-, nano-, and macro-scale done by Dr. Theogarajan's research group was highlighted. Challenges of remote-powering of these devices and some of the clever techniques that have been explored constituted another area of discussion. The continued role played by electronics in advancing human health concluded the talk.
[Speaker's website (includes his bio)] [IEEE CCS Technical Talks page] [Facebook post] [Tweet]
2020/09/15 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] For firefighters in California, this week may be worse than last week: The entire US West Coast continues to burn. [Top center] Time magazine's cover, as we approach 200,000 US deaths from COVID-19. [Top right] Sunday night's gathering of old friends, including a couple visiting from Iran. [Bottom left] Trump takes no responsibility: What happened in the past is Obama's fault. What happens now or in future is Biden's fault. Some of the stuff in the past was Hillary Clinton's fault. (Cartoon by Akeem Roberts) [Bottom center] The Trump campaign can't even spell the name of the "Nobel Peace Prize" for which he has been nominated: As for the claim that he has "achieved PEACE in the MIDDLE EAST," I refer you to Middle Easterners! [Bottom right] Don't panic ... Keep calm ... Rest in peace!
(2) University of Washington's David Baker wins the $3 million Breakthrough Prize: Baker's use of computers to design complex molecules has the potential of leading to new treatments for COVID-19.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least 33 dead and dozens missing in ~100 separate wildfires raging on the US West Coast.
- Portland has the worst air quality among major world cities: Smoke from West-Coast fires has reached NYC.
- Projection: Because pro-White movements are anti-Black, they think pro-Black movements are anti-White.
- A nerdy thought: 7^2 days to the US election. 2^7 days to Trump's disappearance.
- Roger Stone says Trump should declare martial law to seize power if he loses the election.
- #YouKilledNavidAfkari, because you hate both "navid" ("promise" or "good tidings") and "afkar" ("thoughts").
- "The State of the Islamic State": Public webinar, hosted by American Foreign Policy Council.
(4) US News & World Report's 2021 university rankings: Among public universities, UCSB ranks #6, behind UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, Virginia, and UNC Chapel Hill. In the overall rankings, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Yale, and Stanford occupy the top six spots.
(5) My general lecture (in Persian): I talked about "Recommender Systems: How Machines Can Discover Your Thoughts and Preferences" on Tuesday 9/15, 10:00 AM PDT. One thread in the discussions, included in the lecture video, was the potential of robots (technology, more generally) taking over, or one social group controlling other groups, through amassing data about individuals in huge databases. One participant recommended the film "Social Dilemma" (available on Netflix) about issues of privacy and vast amounts of private data collected by tech companies.[104-minute video] [PDF slides]
2020/09/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Schrodinger's Cat T-shirt: Wanted, Dead & Alive! [Center] Image of the day (#YouKilledOmidAkbari): Hangings of young people in Iran for merely protesting oppression and economic hardships. [Right] Talk about a dysfunctional family! Kellyanne Conway, who recently left her White House job to focus on her family, is a fierce defender of Trump's every action and word. Her husband, George Conway, is one of Trump's harshest critics and co-founder of the Lincoln Project to help defeat him in 2020. Their daughter Claudia has posted about her hellish family life, accusing her parents of abuse via social media!
(2) A quote I first posted two years ago, today: "There is rape because there are rapists, not because there are pretty girls." ~ Leni Lobredo, Philippines VP, responding to President Rodrigo Duterte's remark that rape will exist "as long as there are many beautiful women"
(3) Andriy Derkach has officially been identified as a Russian spy: He had been working closely with Rudy Giuliani, who claims he didn't know Derkach was a spy. Okay, let's take Giuliani at his word. Then, any day now, he should be releasing a record of all his contacts with the spy to US intelligence officials to help them build their case against Derkach and perhaps uncover other spies. And, of course, Trump should fire Giuliani, because he is either a traitor or a patsy. Don't hold your breath in either case!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Grandparents' Day: For a chuckle, search for grandparents' answering-machine greeting!
- Prominent wrestling champion Navid Afkari executed in Iran, despite international campaign to save him.
- Do you know anyone who wants to quit drinking? Buy him/her this gadget!
- Persian music: An old song by Viguen, which, somehow, I had never heard before. [6-minute audio]
(5) Humorous Persian poetry: Mr. Haloo recites his confessions ahead of time, because he is worried that at his age, he may not survive confession-extracting torture in Iranian prisons.
(6) Spineless Republicans are keeping quiet these days in the face of new revelations about Trump: They don't want to rock the boat and lose the support of Trump voters. Meanwhile, they are hoping for, and in some cases working to ensure, Trump's defeat in the election. Their plan is to maintain power, while getting rid of Trump!
(7) "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Panels" (Organized by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, UNC Persian Studies Program): On Saturday 9/12, I watched the second panel in the series, entitled "Embodied Bodies, Non-normativity, and Power Dynamics in Modern Iranian Literature and Film," with the following two participants. Looking forward to the rest of the program.
- Dominic Parviz Brookshaw (Assoc. Prof., U. Oxford): "Shirin's Equal, Leyli's Rival: Allusion, Embodiment, and Archetypal Stand-off in the Poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad"
- Alexander Jabbari (Ass't Prof., U. OK): "Race Against Time: Racial Temporality and Sexuality in Modern Iran"
* Mostafa Abedinifard (Ass't Prof., UBC) withdrew his presentation "Negotiating (Un)Desirability: Non-Normative Bodies and the Patriarchal Economy of Power in Modern Iranian Fiction and Film" for personal reasons.
2020/09/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] The 19th anniversary of 9/11: As we remember and honor the ~3000 victims of that dark day in US history, let us also honor Leslie E. Robertson, the engineer, who, with his then partner John Skilling, designed the unique structure of World Trade Center's Twin Towers that saved thousands of additional lives in the minutes following the two Boeing 767s crashing into the buildings. [Right] There is no limit to the Islamic Republic's misogyny: For a country that gave the world Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman winner of mathematics' Fields Medal, it is indeed shameful to have ignorant officials who would order the removal of images of two girls from the cover of the third-grade math textbook. Iranians are not standing by idly, raising objections and suggesting alternate covers bearing the image of the late math genius.
(2) Disney's "Mulan" opens in China, the world's second-largest market for movies: Disney is under fire for making the $200M live-action remake of the original animated film with the approval of the Chinese government and using actors and locations in China, including sites near Muslim re-education camps.
(3) Iran's corrupt regime: A cleric who is very close to Supreme Leader Khamenei claims that his only worldly possession is an apartment given to him as a friendly gift. He has been accused of land-grabbing.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Elbow-bumping masked men: Joe Biden and Mike Pence have a brief encounter at NYC's 9/11 Memorial.
- Today in Goleta, California: This photo shows the sun, not the moon!
- Arab rulers' distaste for satire: Jordanian cartoonist Emad Hajjaj arrested for mocking the Israel-UAE pact.
- Fitness routine, Iranian style: If this video doesn't motivate you to get on the treadmill, nothing will!
- Iranian boy paints-in the girls removed by the government from the cover of his 3rd-grade math textbook.
- Iranian regional music: "Shirin Joonom" ("My Beloved Shirin"), performed by Dafan Band.
(5) Today's political lesson: Defining two common terms.
- The fire department arrives minutes after you call them and doesn't charge you a penny: That's socialism
- The insurance company nickle-and-dimes you or refuses to pay altogether for fire damage: That's capitalism
(6) Walking tour of UCSB's North Campus Open Space: I have posted photos and other information about the area before, as I explored it during my daily walks. This illustrated Web page has in-depth information about the space and its various natural and artificial features.
(7) Our new fridge arrived today: I opted for a simpler model, with few bells and whistles. Each appliance repair costs more than half the price of a new one, if you go for the low-cost models. They are all energy-efficient nowadays, thanks to policies of previous US administrations. Now on to buying food to replace what we had to toss during the heat wave, a probable cause of the failure of our previous unit!
2020/09/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] New book on Iran (see the next item below). [Top center] This math problem is due to Heron, with Al-Khwarizmi's solution described in A History of Mathematics (by Uta C. Merzbach and Carl B. Boyer, 3rd ed., 2011): Find the side length of the square inscribed in an isosceles triangle of side lengths 10, 10, and 12. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Tomb of the unknown loser. [Bottom left & center] Iran's historical architecture: Babak Khorramdin Fort sits atop a 2600-meter-high mountain near Kaleybar, Azarbaijan Province, Iran. [Bottom right] Cover image of the Iranian 9th-grade textbook for civic education, 1973.
(2) Book introduction: Janet Afari and Jesilyn Faust (eds.), Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage, I. B. Tauris, 2020. This 272-page book consists of 10 separately-authored chapters, packaged in three parts, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue.
Part I. Norms, Romance, and the Breakdown of Arranged Urban Marriage
Part II. Online Dating, Hymenoplasty, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Part III. Reconstructing Hierarchies: Rural and Tribal Marriages
(3) Trump revises a part of his stump speech (humor): "I could stand in the middle of the US, unleash a pandemic, and kill 200,000; and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?"
(4) "History of Iranian Cinema": This was the title of today's highly enjoyable and informative webinar by Dr. Shaherzad Ahmadi, Assistant Professor of History at University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN. [Screenshot]
The talk announcement promised answers to the following questions. How did film express Iran's national aspirations, gender roles, and class tensions? Why did film become such an important art form in the post-revolutionary period? How did Iranians challenge Hollywood's dominance in the industry?
Dr. Ahmadi reviewed the history of film and filmmaking, beginning around 1900, when Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar ordered the purchase of two cameras and as many films as could be obtained. At first, films were a government/court affair. It took a while for the experience to become democratized. The first movie theater was opened in 1904.
The first talkie, the highly successful "The Lor Girl" was made by Abdolhossein Sepanta, with sponsorship from India's Parsi community. The film, which depicted pre-Pahlavi era's lawlessness, made its female actor, Roohangiz Saminejad, a target of abuse and sexual harassment. This unfortunate view of Iranian actresses as "prostitutes" or "loose women" has continued to date.
During Reza Shah Pahlavi's reign, movies were made with the intent of introducing Iran to the West. The first film depicting a female actor without a veil was made possible by the fact that the actress (name?) was Armenian and thus not subject to the Islamic dress code.
During the second Pahlavi monarch, cinema became much more standardized. Foreign advisors created the Ministry of Culture and helped jump-start various art projects. Ebrahim Golestan and Mohammad Ali Issari were major forces in Iranian cinema in those days. The problem of how Iran was portrayed abroad became of utmost importance for the Shah. Isari, who produced nearly all the country's newsreels, directed "A Mother for Shamsi." The film depicted a very poor Jewish family, a portrayal that was of interest to Israelis worried about the status of Jews in Iran. Showing this abject poverty nearly destroyed Isari's career. Golestan was perhaps the most serious filmmaker of the Pahlavi era. He was the lover of Forough Farrokhzad, Iran's most-influential women poet, who herself made films as well.
After the Islamic Revolution, Iranian cinema was in disarray, while those involved tried to figure out what can and cannot be portrayed, especially with respect to female actors. Later, however, the film industry flourished, catering both to Iranian audiences (who favor comedies) and international film festivals (looking for dramas).
2020/09/09 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Trump impersonator in London. [Top center] Satellite image of US West Coast Wildfires, from northern California to southern Washington. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: "You're really disrespecting all of the suckers and losers." [Bottom left] A dangerous gap: Stock-market performance and real economic conditions are quite different animals. Despite rises and falls, the market has been doing reasonably well during the current pandemic. The real economy, however, is in the dumps. [Bottom center] Multi-lingual apologies to the world for our president. [Bottom right] Panoramic view of Tehran and its two iconic pre- and post-revolution landmarks: Shahyad, aka Azadi, monument in the foreground (designed by architect Hossein Amanat, 1971) and Milad Tower in the background (designed by architect Mohammad Reza Hafezi, 2008).
(2) Spinelessness personified: Republicans are in denial, keeping eerily quiet and pretending they haven't heard what Trump has said on the record about intentionally downplaying the pandemic (tape-recorded interview with Bob Woodward). [CNN interview with Senator John Kennedy]
(3) Mars in high-resolution: Stunning images of the red planet, captured by three different NASA rovers, stitched together into a 10-minute video.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- It's official: Donald Trump has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian parliamentarian.
- This 98-year-old WWII prisoner of war has a clear message for Donald Trump and his GOP enablers.
- California sees its worst fire season on record: Many evacuation orders forthcoming. [Update]
- Apocalyptic scenes and red skies, as fires multiply and spread in Oregon.
- Persian poetry: Recitation of a Sa'adi poem by Baran Nikrah.
- English cover of a Persian song: Martin Bogren's "Gol-e Yakh" sounds just as good as the original.
(5) Economic news: Iran's stock market is expected to crash soon, devastating many who invested their life savings, and, in some cases, sold their homes to buy stocks, falling for the promise of lucrative gains.
(6) Now that the initial shock of Woodward's book, Rage, has worn off, a question arises: Wasn't Woodward morally obligated to reveal what he learned about the pandemic in February, rather than wait for his book release seven months later?
(7) I thought I am done with reading books on Trump: I have read about a dozen; they all reveal damaging info, with no consequence to the Teflon-Don, so what's the point? However, this one seems to be different in extent & degree (Watergate tapes, on steroids), so I will read it, and hope others do too, before the election!
2020/09/08 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] French-Iranian photojournalist extraordinaire Reza Deghati describes himself as a humanist photographer and his more than 50 years of work in 100+ countries is a testament to the accuracy of this label. [Top right] Photos taken during my 9/08 walk along the UCSB West Campus Bluffs, and a video of the crowded surfing scene. [Bottom left] Why students may not object to wearing face-masks! [Bottom center] I previously posted the photo of 2020 model-year swings: Here's a 2020 model-year slide! [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: Why Mona Lisa smiled.
(2) Yes, Biden has problems and weaknesses; lots of them: But as someone noted, his supporters compare him to the alternative, not to God almighty!
(3) Iranian women's-rights activist Gity Pourfazel has been arrested and imprisoned: She was one of the signers of a letter demanding Supreme Leader Khamenei's resignation. #SetThemFree
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- COVID-19's US death toll for 2020 could double before the year ends.
- Surveiling students is wrong, with or without the pandemic: It's also ineffective.
- Inspiring TEDx talk by Sam Berns, progeria sufferer [1996-2014]: "My Philosophy for a Happy Life"
- Borowitz Report: Trump fears that military controversy could overshadow his fantastic pandemic response.
- Several times each day, robotic apps want to deny me service if I can't prove that I'm not a robot!
- A food-truck in San Diego has made tah-dig (crispy rice) self-sufficient, using a small amount of rice.
- Arabic music: A human-rights anthem, with the refrain: "I breathe freedom; don't constrict my breathing."
(5) Heat wave and the pandemic: This is a heads-up about possible delays, in case you need to replace major appliances. Our large fridge-freezer combo has been failing intermittently since Friday, leading to the tossing of a lot of foodstuff and use of ice-boxes. We guess that the extreme heat wave overloaded it. I have been looking on-line and visiting local stores (Costco, Home Depot, Best Buy) to find a replacement. Unfortunately, most models aren't available for delivery until October and in some cases November. I was told that appliance manufacturers are struggling to catch up with orders after factory closures. I finally found a model on-line that will be delivered on Friday 9/11; not the ideal unit in terms of capacity and fit to our space, but it seems we can't afford to go without a fridge during the continuing hot spell!
(6) Attending the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), since very early this morning: I listened to a number of talks, including a keynote address by Ignacio Alvarez, entitled "Towards Universal Safety Guarantees of Decision Making in Automated Vehicles." Attendance this year is free, thanks to a grant from Intel. As you log-in to the Web site for the event, you are taken to a virtual venue, which starts with the image of a lobby having clickable elements for auditorium and help desk. Nice, intuitive user interface!
2020/09/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The US Labor Day tradition began 138 years ago, with a New York City parade on September 5, 1882: I wish everyone a happy Labor Day with this wonderful quote from Indira Gandhi. "My grandfather (Mahatma Gandhi) once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition." [Center] A piece of modern Iranian history: Dedicated to a sergeant and two soldiers who gave their lives to delay the advance of the Soviet army into Iran for 48 hours during August 1941, a bridge over Aras River in northwestern Iranian city of Jolfa merits a visit if you are ever in that area. [Right] Some Americans complain that face masks cause breathing difficulties, but they can breathe okay in their pointed hoods!
(2) Quote of the day: "What is the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the owner could scarcely read through in a lifetime?" ~ Roman philosopher Seneca, predicting information overload some 2000 years ago, but failing to foresee search engines for dealing with it
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Washington Post editorial: "This is a president who does not so much govern the country as harass it."
- Massive fire traps campers at Sierra National Forest: Military helicopters air-lift 163 to safety.
- Intense California heat wave sets many temperature records and fuels dangerous wildfires.
- If you are sweating during this record-shattering California heat wave, remember that it's all a hoax.
- SoCal Edison requests energy conservation to avoid power outages during the long-weekend heat wave.
- Nasrin Sotoudeh to receive the biennial Human Rights Prize of the German Association of Judges.
- Women's-rights activist Maryam Shariatmadari is detained in Turkey for possible extradition to Iran.
- Persian music: Veteran singer guides a newcomer in performing his 40-year-old song. [2-minute video]
(4) The costs of male entitlement: Kate Manne's ideas from her two books, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017) and Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (2020), are discussed in this interview. Among other topics, Manne discusses the difference between sexism and misogyny. She cites Trump as an example: "I'm thinking of Kellyanne Conway & Betsy Devos & Sarah Huckabee Sanders. These are women whom he thinks of, I believe, as competent. So that's the sense in which he's not particularly sexist, but he is misogynistic, in how he lashes out viciously and disproportionately against women who don't defer to his authority."
(5) Final thought for the day: An upside of being surrounded by criminal associates is that when you dump them and they write books about what a horrible person you are, no one believes them!
2020/09/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cover image for Hector Tobar's The Last Great Road Bum: A Novel (see the last item below). [Center] President Harry Truman on the use of socialism as a scareword. [Right] Prehistoric sharks living millions of years ago had a length of ~15 m, according to U. Bristol researchers.
(2) Batteries for electric airplanes: If all-electric air transportation is to become technically and economically viable, much lighter, high-capacity batteries must be developed. Improvement in battery weight will pay off in other domains as well, such as enabling lighter and extended-range electric cars.
(3) New Yorker cartoon caption of the day (Congressional commentary): "I abhor his despicable tweets, but I'm not going to abandon my core principles of keeping the base happy and getting re-elected."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump to cut funding for sensitivity/anti-racism training in government agencies, calling them "un-American"!
- Iran, filmed in high-resolution: From the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea. Breath-taking! [3-minute teaser]
- Painting an entire life in a 4-minute time-lapse video!
- Persian Mystic Songs from Omar Khayyam & Farid al-Din Attar (Free event, 2020/09/30, 12:00 PM EDT).
- Persian music: Elnaz Abedini's wonderful rendition of "Ze Dast-e Mahboob" ("What to Do with My Beloved").
(5) Virtual conference of Friends of Persian Culture Association: Yesterday, I watched parts of Day 2 of the conference (run by the Baha'i community) and enjoyed a number of talks, discussions, and musical interludes.
(6) Trump claims that Democrats are destroying our cities and states: I have news for him. Cities and states are not destroyed by windows breaking and a few buildings burning. They are destroyed by decadence, greed, incivility, divisiveness, self-centeredness, and deriding civil rights.
(7) Glaciers are melting: This is one of the worrisome consequences of global warming, which also has the dangerous side effect of filling unstable lakes to the brim, thereby creating serious flood dangers.
(8) Book introduction: A fascinating new book by journalist Hector Tobar and his dead collaborator, adventurer Joe Sanderson, is entitled The Last Great Road Bum: A Novel (MCD, 2020). Sanderson, an epitome of White Privilege, traveled the world, telling his distinguished parents that he was trying to write the ultimate great American novel. In his notes, that Tobar studied for a decade, Sanderson refers to his blue eyes opening many doors for him. Sanderson traveled to many dangerous places across the globe, at times coming close to starvation in Africa, eventually ending up in El Salvador, where he died in 1982 fighting alongside anti-government rebels before he could publish anything. Tobar, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning Latino, put himself in Sanderson's skin to write the book for him. [NPR source of the story]
2020/09/05 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UNC Chapel Hill Persian Studies Program "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Panels" (see the last item below). [Center] A new article of mine: Just published in the October 2020 issue of Computers & Electrical Engineering, the comprehensive survey paper is entitled "Computing with Logarithmic Number System Arithmetic: Implementation Methods and Performance Benefits" (PDF). [Right] The original Iron Man: Fe-male!
(2) UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency's Emerging Technologies Review: Free on-line event, with registration.
Friday, October 02, 2020 (Day 1, 09:00-14:00 PDT): Energy Efficient Clouds and Data Centers
Friday, October 16, 2020 (Day 2, 09:00-12:00 PDT): Smart Societal Infrastructure
Friday, October 23, 2020 (Day 3, 09:00-13:00 PDT): Food-Energy-Water
(3) Several news outlets, including Fox News, confirm that Trump did call our fallen soldiers "suckers" and "losers," which makes his denial a blatant lie. [I have lost count, but it is at least Lie # 20,051].
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Endorsements: Biden/Harris (81 Nobel Laureates); Trump/Pence (My-Pillow guy).
- Borowitz Report (humor): Eric Trump downplays dad's comments on soldiers: 'He calls me a loser every day'
- Daylight-saving time is literally killing us: Sleep experts officially call for the elimination of DST.
- Students apparently more upset about partying restrictions than curtailment of instructional activites!
- The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, edited by Professor Touraj Daryaee, is now available in Persian.
(5) Cowardice: It's mind boggling that General John Kelly continued to serve Trump after he called Kelly's son and others killed on the battlefield "losers" and "suckers" early during his presidency.
(6) My virtual tech talk: This morning Iran time (late last night, California time), I gave a virtual talk entitled "Recursive Synthesis of Digital Circuits" to Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. I enjoyed the experience and am delighted that my efforts were appreciated by attendees. [Tweet].
(7) "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Panels" (Organized by Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, UNC Persian Studies Program): Today, I watched the first panel in the series, entitled "Love and Desire Across Borders in Modern Iran and in Diaspora," with the following three participants. Looking forward to the rest of the program.
- Leila Zonouzi (PhD student, UCSB), "Integration in Diaspora: A Study of Interracial Partnerships in Iranian Diasporic Literature"
- James Barry (Research Fellow, Deakin U., Australia): "Intermarriage and Ethnic Boundaries in Iran"
- Ehsan Sheikhalharam (PhD student, UNC Chapel Hill): "Crumbling of Spatial Boundaries and the Collapse of the Intimate Domain in Farhadi's Cinema"
2020/09/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The triple torments of black mothers in America: Fear for their children's safety, having colored skin in the world's most-racist developed country, and womanhood in a resurrected patriarchal order. (Photo credit: National Geographic) [Center] A disturbing pattern: Heavily-armed criminal White-Supremacists are arrested with no incident, while unarmed blacks are murdered during arrest. [Right] Mine workers at the end of their shift: Bringing mining jobs back is nothing to brag about! (Photo: Keith Bernstein)
(2) "The Septembers of Shiraz" is now on Netflix: The 2015 film, directed by Wayne Blair and starring Adrien Brody and Salma Hayek, as the husband-and-wife protagonists, and Shohreh Aghdashloo, as their housekeeper, is similar in lack of depth and authenticity to "Not Without My Daughter," starring Sally Field, which also received poor reviews. The producers have taken liberties with the original source material, Dalia Sofer's highly-acclaimed 2007 debut novel of the same title. [New York Times review]
(3) The greatest political con job: "To watch a President wage a 4-year campaign of deliberate division, trolling, and stoked unrest, and then when that steady injection of national division boils over, to watch him blame the party not in power." ~ Seth MacFarlane
(4) Million LED Challenge: UC students, staff, and faculty can purchase LED light bulbs at nearly half the price of on-line competitors through this Web site, as part of University of California's carbon-Neutrality Initiative. California State University is also included on the Web site.
(5) Trump's scorched-earth policy: Having become convinced that he won't be re-elected, Trump has begun taking revenge on the American people for rejecting him, the way he takes revenge on whistle-blowers and everyone else who stands up or speaks back to him. He will try to take America down with him if he goes down. Listen to author Frank Schaeffer's musings in this 6-minute video.
(6) Effects of racism go deeper than most of us might think: "How systemic racism destroyed black innovation in the US: Violence and segregation undermined African-American inventors throughout the 20th century" is the title of a short report in the September 2020 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine. The report argues that racism, far from affecting only those who are discriminated against, holds back our country's progress and prosperity by stifling innovation. By the way, the same kind of damage has been reported as a result of holding women back from participation and advancement. This chart shows variations in the number of patents awarded to black inventors in the context of the prevailing social conditions during the perio4 1870-1940.
(7) Final thought for the day: Trump has made it clear that he does not respect those who were captured on the battlefield (a swipe at John McCain). Now, there are reports that he also dismissed as losers those who died while fighting wars! New chant at the GOP Animal Farm: Bone spurs good, capture/death on the battlefield bad!
2020/09/03 (Thursday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Atwood, Margaret, The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, unabridged audiobook, read by Derek Jacobi, Mae Whitman, Ann Dowd, Bryce Dallas Howard, Tantoo Cardinal, and the author, Random House Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Not having read Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985), broadly viewed as foreseeing Donald Trump's vision for America, complete with internal divisions, border walls, and "Eyes" (secret police), I jumped at the opportunity to check this title out, when it unexpectedly became available at my local library. In this sequel, Atwood picks up 15 years after where she left her hugely successful book, which was adapted into a successful 2017-2021 Hulu series.
The setting of this sequel, like the original dystopian novel, is Gilead, a state run by the "Sons of Jacob" sect that has overthrown the US government, having killed the President and most of Congress. In Atwood's own words, addressed to her readers: "Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in."
The totalitarian state's quasi-Christian ideology is based on strict censorship and denial of individual rights, most notably to women, who are prohibited from reading, writing, owning property, and handling money. When assigned as a baby-producer for a commander, a woman's name changes to correspond to her owner, such as "Offred" belonging to Fred and "Ofkyle" being the property of Kyle.
Women of Gilead, deemed cunning and dangerous, are nothing more than sex objects who are routinely raped. The grim state of affairs in Gilead, which teaches women to be good wives and avoid tempting men, comes with a number of positive traits. Food waste and consumerism are frowned upon, and children take nature-appreciation classes.
It is in this setting of a totalitarian state subjugating fertile women to reverse a serious decline in population that the main characters (the compromised Aunt Lydia, a survivor who uses her knowledge of history and literature to keep a grip on power and to remain relevant, and two idealists, Agnes and Daisy) interact. Both men and women have suffered a decline in fertility but, of course, only women are blamed for the problem.
The young women are products of the new order, so their courage and friendly demeanor appear odd at first. But even though Agnes and Daisy do not remember the old order, their human nature drives them toward hope and freedom. Like all young people, Agnes and Daisy see holes in fairy tales that they are fed and dig deep to discover the truth. As Agnes puts it, "Once a story you've regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories."
Read the print book if you must, but the audiobook, with multiple narrators acting out the experiences (testaments) of the main characers and what happened to them since the end of The Handmaid's Tale, and how current events relate to the original story, is a special treat.
(2) Book review: Harris, Kamala, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, unabridged audiobook, read by the author, Penguin/Random-House Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Senator Kamala Harris, one of 23 candidates to run for US presidency in the current cycle, rose to fame as California's Attorney General, paving the way for her successful run to occupy the US Senate seat vacated by Barbara Boxer in 2016. Harris, with her semi-progressive credentials, is one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party who can attract young, minority, and women voters, while also appealing to middle-of-the-road Democrats, some of whom have voted Republican in the past.
According to this, her second, book (the third one, if you also count her 2019 picture-book Superheroes Are Everywhere; her first book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer, was published in 2009), Harris's Indian cancer-researcher mother and Jamaican economist father met at Berkeley during the Civil-Rights movement. So, she is considered to be both an African-American and an Asian-American.
With her experience as a prosecutor and AG of a large, diverse state, Harris is uniquely positioned to contribute to the much-needed reforms in our policing methods and criminal-justice system. She devotes a good part of this book to her law-enforcement career, citing examples of cases she handled and contributions she made to making the voiceless heard. Her biggest accomplishment in this regard was winning a major settlement for working families during the foreclosure crisis.
Harris believes that we should live our common truth, focusing on our shared struggles, shared purpose, and shared values, sustaining this great nation through shared effort. This is in direct contrast to those who try to convince us that our differences are much greater than our commonalities.
Now that Harris is a VP candidate, becoming familiar with her background, professional experience, and life philosophy, described in this book, is a must for every voter. The book is also an uplifting read for young Americans, particularly women and men of color. Harris's special brand of feminism is likely to propel her to new heights, in a country where misogyny and patriarchy not only persist but are strengthening.
(3) Book review: Gates, Melinda, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this title on GoodReads]
In a July 2020 Foreign Affairs article, entitled "The Pandemic's Toll on Women," Gates writes: "History teaches that disease outbreaks—from AIDS to Zika to Ebola—play out with a certain grim predictability. As they infect societies, they expose and exploit existing forces of marginalization, seeking out fault lines of gender, race, caste, and class."
In this book, Melinda Gates describes her philanthropic philosophy, which has the empowerment of women as a main pillar. Gates has made it clear in her previous writings, and stresses the fact further in this book, that access to contraception saves lives, helps end poverty, and empowers women by allowing them to time and space their pregnancies. The result is more-productive women and happier, healthier, more-accomplished children. To sell this idea to skeptics, she characterizes it as capitalism, not feminism, at work. The position above has not endeared Gates, a Catholic, to the Vatican, but she sees no contradiction in being a devout Catholic and supporting women's right to choose.
After years of progress in bringing down the rates of teen and unintended pregnancies in the US, we face a danger of regression through the dismantling of family-planning and reproductive-health programs. Not only are policies of the US government doing long-term damage to the health of mothers and children in the US, they are contributing to even more serious problems internationally, by withholding aid to NGOs that provide abortion services or referrals in other countries.
Gates stays away from politics and advocacy of specific policies, which, depending on your point of view, is a shame or a wise choice. It is a shame, because the immense power of her foundation could be used to mobilize women, and Americans more generally, to seek change. It is a wise choice, because a charitable foundation tainted by politics may be less-effective in the US and in areas of the world where autocracy and patriarchy are dominant.
This book by one of the most-powerful women of our time is a must-read for everyone. The wealth of data Gates uses in support of her arguments is eye-opening and enriching, as are accounts of her interactions with authorities and philanthropists worldwide.
2020/09/02 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Every task becomes easy with the right viewpoint! [Top center] Swings: The latest 2020 model! [Top right] Your username or password is incorrect! [Bottom left] Idiot running to enter the swamp: This woman, who prefers murderer Kyle Rittenhouse to environmental activist Greta Thunberg may end up in Congress in a couple of months. Scary! [Bottom center] Jesus is the only colored activist liked by right-wing extremists: That's because they don't realize he was colored! [Bottom right] Iranians boast about having a 2500-year-old civilization: It would be more accurate to say that we were civilized 2500 years ago!
(2) Sarah Huckabee Sanders writes a book: Not a tell-all, because she is still a loyal Trump supporter. But she does reveal his misogyny. Now, coming from an admirer, that's something! [Image]
(3) Young UCSB faculty member honored: Political Science Assistant Professor Leah Stokes has been chosen to receive the prestigious Plous Award, for her exceptional achievements in research, teaching, and service. Stokes is the author of the acclaimed 2020 Oxford University book, Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States, which examines the role played by utilities in promoting climate denial and opposing clean-energy laws.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Facebook and Twitter remove Russian-troll accounts masquerading as a left-wing news group.
- What if Fox News covered Trump the way it covered Obama? No need to guess. Here's what you'd hear!
- UCSB's fall reopening plans are scaled back after a rise in COVID-19 infections among students.
- Ventura County completes the construction of a specializing in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
- Amnesty International reports torture and sexual abuse of political prisoners in Iran.
- Iranian regional music: A wonderful song with Guilaki lyrics from the Caspian-Sea region.
(5) Yet another tell-all book about the Trump family: This one by Melania's former best-friend and advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who was unceremoniously dumped after it was disclosed that she had made millions personally from producing Trump's inaugural celebrations. I am not sure I want to read this one, so I took a look at some excerpts. Among the book's revelations is a characterization of Melania Trump as cold and cruel, just like her husband. There are also tidbits about Melania's relationship with the adult children of her husband, particularly "Princess" Ivanka.
(6) Quote of the day: "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." ~ Douglas Adams, English humorist and sci-fi novelist (1952-2001)
(7) Final thought for the day: Remember that the same Russian hackers who swung the 2016 election are capable of infusing a false sense of security in you that Democrats have an insurmountable lead in 2020. Don't believe them. Vote and encourage others to vote!
2020/09/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cover image of Vanity Fair's September 2020 issue: Edited by best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the special issue bears the theme "The Great Fire." [Top center] Fighting for rights and justice: Imprisoned Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is continuing her hunger strike, is reportedly in poor health. [Top right] Newsweek magazine cover (Issue of September 04, 2020): Posing a question about undecided voters. [Bottom left] Bolton, John, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, Simon & Schuster, 2020 (my 4-star review on GoodReads). [Bottom center] This incredible spiral staircase was carved from a single tree in 1851 and is located in the Lednice Castle in the Czech Republic. [Bottom right] How to do quick measurements of length: Numbers are in centimeters. In some sources, the first number is listed as 25, but my own measurement indicates that 20 is a better approximation.
(2) Nimrata Randhawa thinks that America isn't a racist country: Yet, she wouldn't be where she is today, had she not assumed the name Nikki Haley.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- "Racial Violence and the Global Protests Against It": Webinar in Persian, by Professor Nayereh Tohidi.
- The alarming increase in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among children. [Charts]
- Meme of the day: America's homegrown ISIS-like militants seeking a religious state. [Image]
- The 2nd Amendment gives you the right to fight government tyranny, not a license to kill political opponents!
- The $2000 smartphone is here: Samsung goes to the extreme in the war of features and capabilities.
- A feast for the eyes and the ears: Houser plays music from "The Godfather." [4-minute video]
(4) [So much is happening in the battle against authoritarianism and racial injustice that women's rights internationally and in the US seem to be taking the back seat. Let's not drop one fight to engage in another!]
Iranian women's #MeToo message: No means no, and nothing in woman's demeanor or clothing should be viewed as a license or invitation to rape her. [4-minute video]
(5) Jared Kushner has come out of his White House dungeon: He has begun making statements and giving interviews, showing how ignorant and out-of-touch he is. In his latest faux pas, Kushner characterized NBA players as lucky rich people who can afford to take a night off from work with little financial consequences.
(6) Videos taken during my beach walk this afternoon: The first one is a time-lapse video of a 20-minute northward walk from Goleta's Coal Oil Point beach. The second video shows a large population of snowy plovers (endangered bird species) on the Coal Oil Point nature preserve. The preserve, which is off limits to human visitors, is beyond the ropes that can be seen in the video. The birds in my video are actually outside the protected area, so there are likely larger populations further inland.
2020/08/31 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Donald Trump's plans for his second term: In his own words, uttered on August 27, 2020. [Top center] Let us thank Scotland for giving us a word we have sought for more than four years: Cockwomble. [Top right] Humorous full-page newspaper ad: Law firm catering to soon-to-be-ex-presidents facing criminal charges, whose lawyers are in jail. [Bottom left & right] T-shirts being marketed to fashionable and classy MAGA folk! [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: So, basically, the key takeaway from the RNC is: "Look at how terrible America is right now! Vote for four more years of it!"
(2) Los Angeles Times op-ed sees Kamala Harris as potentially becoming our country's second black and first woman president: Donald Trump thinks that his daughter Ivanka is more qualified for the latter honor!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Borowitz Report (humor): White House rally a huge success, says the coronavirus.
- To right-wingers, killing in response to inflicting property damage is okay, but not the other way around!
- Data vs. the pandemic: Jobs and salaries of data scientists show immunity to COVID-19.
- The decommissioning of Oil Platform Holly off the coast of Goleta has stalled due to the pandemic.
- Self-sailing boats out-perform self-driving cars: Not a surprise, given their more-predicatable environment.
- Elon Musk demonstrates Neuralink's coin-size wireless brain-computer interface device on live pigs.
- Azeri music: Young boy joyfully displays his tombak-playing and dancing talents. [4-minute video]
- Music history: Years of research has brought this 3400-year-old Persian harp back to life. [6-minute video]
(4) Tech talks of general interest: I will offer the following two Zoom talks in Persian to a group of my college classmates on Tuesdays September 15 and 22, 2020, 10:00-11:30 AM PDT (9:30 PM Iran time). These talks are based on lectures from a puzzle-based freshman seminar that I teach at UCSB every spring.
- Recommender Systems: How Machines Can Discover Your Thoughts and Preferences [Zoom link, TBA]
- Building 3D Models from 2D Images, and Vice Versa: From Puzzles to Real Applications [Zoom link, TBA]
(5) We need comedians to tell us like it is: John Oliver's review of the Republican Convention, events in Kenosha, and Jared Kushner's clueless reaction to NBA players suspending playoff games is pure brilliance. It's filled with insightful observations, important video clips (including one of Jacob Blake's sister speaking), and a conclusion that Biden's election won't solve all of these deep-rooted problems, but will only be a start.
(6) Selective freedom: A Wisconsin high school refuses to require face-masks to save students' lives but prohibits girls from wearing tops with spaghetti straps which "distract boys"! Two girls fought back and won!
2020/08/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Meme of the day: Please Don't Kill Us! [Center] My daughter's pie creations: In progress and all done. [Right] Construction of UCSB's new classroom building to begin soon: We've had a chronic shortage of classroom space on campus, which has made scheduling of classes very difficult and acquiring space for special meetings, such as out-of-class exams and make-up/review sessions, nearly impossible. Classroom audio-visual equipment have also been lacking in quality. The new 3-part building, to be erected at a central location between the Powell Library and Psychology Complex, will go a long way toward improving the situation. (Construction-site photos, taken this afternoon.)
(2) Laughable: The guy most of whose close associates and family members are in jail, under indictment, or being investigated, and he himself would be too were he not a sitting president, talks about law & order!
(3) Trump 21.6M, Biden 24.6M (TV audience for the candidates' acceptance speeches): Normally, I don't care about TV ratings, but citing the lower ratings is fair game for a man who always mocks other people's ratings.
P.S. (humor): The difference is due to the 3M illegal aliens who gave Hillary Clinton her edge in popular vote!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In an unprecedented show of force aimed at Moscow, six B-52 bombers fly over all 30 NATO nations.
- Trump ads trying to scare people from lack of safety in Biden's America use footage from Trump's America!
- Meghan McCain to Ivanka Trump: Your father's Twitter use isn't a "communication style"; it's "cruelty"!
- Sending submarines to Saturn's moon Titan in a decade or two is being explored by scientists.
- Berkeley and Merced plan to open classes this week as the first two University of California campuses.
- Pakistani-American astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala appointed Dean of Science at MIT.
(5) Islamic Republic of Iran "justice": Saba Kord Afshari gets a prison term of 15-24 years, for "promoting prostitution" because of removing her headscarf during protest marches. Father of Romina Ashrafi gets 9 years for beheading his 13-year-old daughter. [Persian tweet]
(6) Iranian-Canadian software engineer Behdad Esfahbod tells of his detention and interrogation in Iran earlier this year: He was coerced by the intelligence arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps to spy for Iran.
(7) Free on-line beginning-English lessons: ESL teacher Richard Campbell has a YouTube channel on which he posts videos (~15-20 min each) teaching English as a second language at an elementary level. I have looked at a few of the videos and found them to be reasonable. Here are direct links to the first 10 lessons, plus samples of other lessons. Campbell began posting these lessons 2-3 years ago and is now in the process of updating and expanding them (the first few lessons are already updated for 2020 and the remainder will be updated in due course). Interested parties can subscribe to Campbell's YouTube channel to keep informed.
[Lesson 1]
[Lesson 2]
[Lesson 3]
[Lesson 4]
[Lesson 5]
[Lesson 6]
[Lesson 7]
[Lesson 8]
[Lesson 9]
[Lesson 10]
[Lesson 26]
[Lesson 50]
[Lesson 95]
[Lesson 103]
2020/08/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] ALOHAnet began the wireless networking revolution (see the next item below). [Top center] A funny real incident: Indian woman seeks divorce, because her husband helps too much with housework and does not fight with her, apparently messing with everything she has learned about marital relationships! (Source: Gulf Times, August 22, 2020) [Top right] "Shirin Ebadi: Until We Are Free": This is the title of a documentary by Dawn Gifford Engle, to be featured at the upcoming Venice International Film Festival. [Bottom row] Two viral memes and a cartoon: Try to imagine Michelle Obama wearing that outfit!
(2) Computer networking history: Early networked computers linked together via telephone lines on a point-to-point basis. In 1968, University of Hawaii researchers began to investigate if radio communication could be used to link multiple computers at once. The resulting protocol of the Additive Links On-line Hawaii Area network (ALOHAnet) forms the basis of modern wireless communication systems that send packets over shared channels. The ALOHAnet protocol was based on detecting transmission collisions, with the colliding units abandoning their attempts and retransmitting after random delays, with small probability of further collisions.
(3) The 2020 Virtual March on Washington, with the theme "Get Your Knee off our Necks," is being held today on the 57th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Unprecedented solidarity: NBA playoffs shut down in protest over yet another racial killing by the police.
- Japanese Prime-Minister Shinzo Abe will resign, citing health reasons.
- Fire at University of Delaware's Jewish Center on August 25, 2020, ruled arson.
- Trump 41, Biden 0: Number of mentions of the opponent by name in each candidate's convention speech.
- Start-up formed by former SpaceX and Tesla employees aims to build self-flying planes.
- Elon Musk will introduce his Neuralink company and its brain-computer interface technology today.
(5) My forthcoming virtual talk (in Persian) at Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences, Zanjan, Iran: "Recursive Synthesis of Digital Circuits" (Saturday, September 5, 2020, 10:00 AM Iran time; 2020/09/04, 10:30 PM PDT; final connection link TBA)
(6) A carnival of disinformation thankfully comes to an end: "Americans who tuned in to this week's Republican National Convention were treated to a slickly produced, four-day dispatch from an alternate reality—one in which the president has defeated the pandemic, healed America's racial wounds, and ushered in a booming economy. In this carnival of propaganda, Donald Trump was presented not just as a great president, but as a quasi-messianic figure who was single-handedly preventing the nation's slide into anarchy."
(7) Toxic masculinity, on full display in the 2020 US election, has turned Kamala Harris into a footnote: What a shame, because our problems call for more femininity!
2020/08/26 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Women's Equality Day: One hundread years ago, on August 26, 1920, the US Congress officially adopted the 19th Amendment to our Constitution, establishing women's right to vote. [Top center] Time magazine cover: Issue of August 31, 2020. [Top right] Gifts I received yesterday: An interesting book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and an appreciation plaque were sent by Sharif University of Technology's Seattle Chapter because of a remote lecture I presented to its members on July 28. Thank you! [Bottom left] Police shot a black man seven times in the back ... SEVEN TIMES! ... IN THE BACK! Meanwhile, this boy, who can't possibly own his military-grade assault rifle legally, roamed the streets for hours under the watchful eyes of the police. The boy later killed two peaceful protesters and maimed several others, before driving himself away from the area undisturbed. Double-standards doesn't even begin to describe the travesty! [Bottom center & right] Our caring First Couple and one of their supporters!
(2) "Persian Language Pedagogy: Challenges, Obstacles, and Innovative Responses": This is the title of an interesting UNC virtual panel discussion to be held on Thursday, October 15, 2020, 8:00-10:00 AM PDT.
(3) How does contact-tracing work? If someone tests positive for COVID-19 and mentions you as a person s/he has been in contact with, you may get a call from a contact-tracer asking questions and suggesting self-isolation. As usual, criminals have stepped in to defraud people, while posing as contact-tracers. Be careful!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hurricane Laura upgraded to category 4: Hurricane Center warns of "unsurvivable" storm surge.
- The Borowitz Report (humorous news headline): Hundereds of RNC attendees test positive for delusion.
- My cheese-crackers-fruit plate from this morning. [Photo]
- New style of musical self-flagellation for Muharram mourning rituals in Iran!
- Persian music: An old song entitled "Iran Kojaast" ("Where's Iran"), based on lyrics from Mirzadeh Eshghi.
(5) Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers on the Republican Convention: They're spewing this fear, but we're the ones being killed! We keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.
(6) Math puzzles from the August 2011 issue of Communications of the ACM (reposting from 2011/08/26): Show that any given number n divides: (a) Some non-zero decimal number whose digits are only 0s and 1s; (b) Some Fibonacci number. For example, 7 divides 1001 and it also divides 21, the 8th Fibonacci number. As a second example, 9 divides 111,111,111 and it also divides 144, the 12th Fibonacci number.
(7) Quote of the day: "This God-damn tweet and the lying. Oh, my God, I'm talking too freely, but you know, the change of stories, the lack of preparation, the lying, the—holy shit!" ~ Maryanne Trump Barry, former federal judge and Donald Trump's sister, talking about him
2020/08/25 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Only one of these women is a natural-born US citizen. [Center] A view of California fires from the air: Almost pretty from a distance, but devastating up close! [Right] Presidents and wives deplaning: One of these photos is not like the others, one of these photos just doesn't belong!
(2) Another "family values" evangelical exposed: Jerry Falwell Jr. was fired from his job as President of Liberty University, but he denies that he has been sidelined. The reasons for his troubles read like a bad soap opera, involving marital infidelity, sex scandals, financial intrigues, and other Godly activities!
(3) Alternative facts are on full display at the RNC: Trump is a caring individual, a champion of equality and racial justice, working on behalf of all Americans, and bent on saving our suburbs from lawless protesters!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Reports of Kim Jong-un being in a coma resurface: His younger sister faked his recent appearances.
- UC Santa Cruz evacuates 1200 staff and students living on campus due to encroaching wildfires.
- Texas A&M researchers develop a technique for using a 3D-printer to build greener buildings from soil.
- Beethoven's "Fur Elise," piano duet in the style of jazz. [Another version] [Jazzy "Symphony No. 5"]
(5) Benford's Law: The highly-recommended Episode 4 of the Netflix documentary "Connected" is devoted to the amazing Benford's Law, which is also described nicely by Wikipedia. The science-documentary's coverage includes the Law's applicability not just to fraud detection in financial data, but also the understanding of many natural phenomena, such as the height of volcanoes, inter-galactic distances, and so on.
(6) On technical problems affecting on-line instruction: There are legitimate concerns about the effectiveness of on-line instruction in terms of engaging the students, but technical glitches and the attendant disruptions do not constitute a significant problem. Yes, Zoom, like all other systems, can fail from time to time, but the level of disruption is far less than if we had in-person instruction. Here are some examples of my in-person classes being disrupted over the years: Fire alarm (real/false), evacuation due to hazardous materials leaking in nearby labs, power outage, strikers/marchers being too loud, and audio-visual classroom equipment not working.
(7) Persian panoramic travelog: Russian physician Pavel Yakovlevich Piasetsky depicted the scenes he encourtered during a trip from Anzali Port (at the west end of the Caspian Sea coast) to Tehran on a continuous roll of paper, which upon completion in 1895 became known as Panorama of Persia. According to Wikipedia, the 60-meter roll is now in the possession Russia's State Hermitage Museum.
(8) Are we the only intelligent life form in our ginormous universe, spanning 93 billion light-years across? Probably not, but no one knows the answer beyond a statistical argument that puts the probability of us being the only intelligent life form in our universe very close to zero.
(9) Science detective work: One infected person attending a Feb. 2020 Boston meeting of Biogen caused 100s of infections worldwide (super-spreader event). We know this due to a simple error in the virus's genetic code, the switching of two letters in the 30,000-character code, which made the virus distinct and thus traceable.
2020/08/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book introduction: It's not that Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. He is actually a fitting representative of the modern GOP that has repeatedly violated its supposed bedrock principles. [Center] Collaboration: My daughter's cheese/deli tray and my fruit plate. [Right] Cover image for the audio course The Skeptic's Guide to American History (see the last item below).
(2) Outsmarting the king of the jungle: Sometimes a simple idea produces amazing results. In an experiment, cows with eyes painted on their rears became totally immune to lion attacks.
(3) The Russian hackers of the 2016 US elections never left: They are still very much active, trying to influence the 2020 elections. This "60 Minutes" investigative report is bone-chilling. [14-minute video]
(4) The egotist in the WH hasn't said much, if anything, about two developing climate-related disasters in our country: Fires in the west and the 1-2 punch of simultaneously-arriving tropical systems in the south.
(5) Kellyanne and George Conway are either trying to mend their marriage or need time to focus on a divorce settlement: will leave her job of defending Trump at the end of August and George is stepping away from the Lincoln Project, a Republican anti-Trump group that is trying to promote Joe Biden.
(6) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California fires keep multiplying and spreading. [Map]
- Six years ago, Joe Klein recognized that race remained an open wound, but no one was listening.
- Persian dance: Improvisations by Banafsheh Amiri of Miniature Dance Academy.
- Music and scenes from Iran's Caspian-Sea region: Rasht Grand Bazaar on a rainy day. [3-minute video]
(7) Course review: Stoler, Professor Mark A., "The Skeptic's Guide to American History," 24 lectures (on 12 CDs, with an accompanying booklet) in the "Great Courses" series, 2012.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
What we are fed as "American History," be it in high-school courses, college programs, and in much of the media is an idealized version of real events. History is full of myths, but American history has an even greater share of false narratives and half-truths. This course tackles such myths about American history, as well as myths about history and its study in general, such as the belief that history repeats itself.
The pitfalls of projecting contemporary values onto the past, the changing meanings of key words over time, why people/events in history are lost and then rediscovered, and differences between history and memory are also discussed.
A main take-away message is that history is a dynamic field that changes with the questions each new generation asks of it. For example, women's history did not exist a century ago, because no one was asking questions about it.
A second take-away is that politicians have an outsize role in the historical narrative, with much less weight given to civic leaders, moralists, industrialists, and educators; this deficit needs to be corrected.
A third take-away is that our tunnel vision tends to attach much greater weight to recent events and experiences. Statements such as "the computer is the most important technological innovation of all time" is questionable, because railroad, electricity, flight, and many other innovations have arguably had comparable influences. As another example, we tend to think that anti-war activism began with the Vietnam War, but the Civil War was supported by only 1/3 of all Americans (this is an estimate, because there were no polls then). These latter points are the focus of the final lecture.
The following listing of lecture titles provides a good synopsis of the course's contents.
1. Religious Toleration in Colonial America?
2. Neither American no Revolutionary?
3. The Constitution Did Not Create a Democracy
4. Washington—Failures and Real Accomplishments
5. Confusions about Jefferson and Hamilton
6. Andrew Jackson—An Odd Symbol of Democracy
7. The Second Great Awakening: Enduring Impacts
8. Did Slavery Really Cause the Civil War?
9. The Civil War's actual turning points
10. The Myth of Laissez-Faire
11. Misconceptions about the Original Populists
12. Labor in America—A Strange History
13. Myths about American Isolation and Empire
14. Early Progressives Were Not Liberals
15. Woodrow Wilson and the Rating of Presidents
16. The Roaring Twenties Reconsidered
17. Hoover and the Great Depression Revisited
18. What Did Roosevelt's New Deal Really Do?
19. World War II Misconceptions and Myths
20. Was the Cold War Inevitable?
21. The Real Blunders of the Vietnam War
22. Myths about American Wars
23. Who Matters in American History?
24. History Did Not Begin with Us
And here is the Web site with an overall introduction and more details on each lecture, including a synopsis that becomes visible by hovering your mouse over the lecture title.
2020/08/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IEEE Spectrum magazines August 2020 issue carries a special feature about how AI can help forestry. [Top center] Interesting fact: The world's most powerful mobile crane, built in 2014, has a lift height of 188 meters and a capacity of 1200 metric tons (image from IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of August 2020). [Top right] The choice is yours: For the price of a luxury car (around $75K), you can have a very smart, very capable, very yellow robot dog (image from IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of August 2020). [Bottom left] The Collective for Black Iranians: An organization founded to bring the previously unheard voices and unseen faces of Black and Afro-Iranians into the consciousness of Iranians within the diaspora. [Bottom center] At the post office: "Does this parcel contain anything liquid, fragile, perishable, or potentially hazardous to the President's re-election chances?" [Bottom right] Seeker going to see the wise man.
(2) Compounded ignorance (jahl-e morakkab, in Persian): There are some kinds of ignorance so outrageous that there is a Persian expression to describe them. Compounded ignorance is so deep-seated and so zealously protected that there is just no way to get through to or educate the subject. This video clip shows Pakistanis uprooting trees recently planted to convert a stretch of baren land into a forest. The reason? Their imam told them that if god wanted that stretch of land to have trees, he would have created it with trees already in place! I bet that citizens of other countries are posting videos of certain groups in the US with similar commentaries!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Republicans continue to create false narratives to distract voters from their utter failure in governing.
- Talk show host Larry King, 86, loses two adult children within weeks of each other: Andy, 65, and Chaia, 51.
- Breath-taking glass-floor platform in China for viewing the surrounding nature and a musical waterfall.
- Here are several more amazing nature-viewing platforms in China.
(4) Another upcoming virtual talk of mine: This one is at the invitation of Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. The talk, entitled "Recursive Synthesis of Digital Circuits," will be on Friday, September 04, 2020, 10:30 PM PDT (Saturday, Shahrivar 15, 1399, 10:00 AM Iran time).
(5) This morning, Trump tweeted: "Happy Sunday! We want GOD!" After he was done with tweeting, he headed to his golf club to play a few rounds. Yes, that's what God-loving Christians do on Sunday mornings!
(6) The conspiracy-theorist POTUS: When asked about QAnon, Trump said he didn't know much about the group (shades of David Duke in 2016), but that he appreciated their support. Meanwhile, FBI deems QAnon a terrorist group. Shouldn't our President try to learn more about the group before basking in their support?
2020/08/22 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Book introduction: Ervand Abrahamaian's 2013 book, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iran Relations, is generally viewed as the definitive account of the joint MI6-CIA coup that reinstated the Shah to power, overthrowing PM Mohammad Mosaddegh's popular government that was bent on nationalizing Iran's oil resources and facilities. Persian translations of this and several other books by Abrahamian on Iran's recent history are available. [Right] Cover image of The Cuckoo's Calling, a novel by Robert Galbraith (see the last item below).
(2) Ann Syrdal dead of cancer at 74: She was a psychologist and AT&T computer science researcher who helped give computers female voices such as those used for Siri and Alexa.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Northern California battles extensive wildfires, while facing a severe shortage of firefighters.
- Two tropical systems are approaching the US, with potential simultaneous landfall on the Gulf Coast. [Map]
- Partying students throw a monkey wrench into carefully laid-out college re-opening plans.
- Archaeology: Exploring the tunnels and passageways under the Persepolis palace in Iran.
(4) Book review: Galbraith, Robert (pen name for J. K. Rowling), The Cuckoo's Calling, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Robert Glenister, Mulholland Books, 2014. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the debut novel in the Cormoran Strike crime-mystery series, written by J. K. Rowling under the pen name Robert Galbraith. I had previously read and reviewed the 2015 third title in the series, Career of Evil.
Because I don't read much fiction, it is rare that I encounter books with recurring characters. I found this appealing, as familiar characters facilitate understanding and heighten enjoyment.
Newly homeless due to being essentially kicked out by his long-time, well-to-do, gorgeous girlfriend, and struggling financially in his private-detective business, Cormoran Strike, who lost a leg during a stint in Afghanistan, gets lucky within a single day, when a highly capable temp secretary, Robin Ellacott, reports to work for him and he lands a lucrative murder investigation contract from a rich attorney obsessed with the death, ruled a suicide, of his supermodel sister (by adoption).
The writing is quite absorbing. The affection and sexual tension between the two main characters begins here and was quite evident in the third title of the series cited earlier. Ellacott is engaged, but seems to want to do something exciting and meaningful, even if it does not pay as well as a position in human resources, a choice her fiancee scoffs at. Strike, just freed from a tumultuous relationship, is wary of letting his feelings mar the business partnership. He thinks to himself that, in terms of looks, Ellacott is no match for his ex, but he does admire her initiative, wit, and discretion.
The story goes through twists and turns typical of crime-mysteries, as it introduces a host of characters who could have potentially benefited from the supermodel's death or who might have helpful information on her state of mind. There are also the standard decoys of crime-mysteries, but the story is well-constructed, with realistic and richly-developed characters. There's a bit too much cussing for my taste, but, I guess, that goes with the realism territory.
2020/08/21 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Newest form of Muharram mourning ceremonies in Iran: The ad boasts a large, open-air facility, with free take-out food and nightly raffle of a 2-million-toman loan! You know you won't find a better deal, so come on in! [Center] UCSB Summer Music Festival 2020 (see the next-to-the-last item below). [Right] Review of the film "Coup 53" (see the last item below).
(2) Memories: Three years ago today, my daughter and I were in the Salem area of Oregon to watch a historic solar eclipse that spanned the entire length of the Continental US. A side benefit of the trip was a visit to Oregon State University, where I earned my master's degree 50 years ago (August 1970). [Photos]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine enters phase-III clinical trials in UAE and Peru.
- Another opponent/rival of Putin falls ill is in critical condition, with poisoning suspected.
- Susan B. Anthony Museum declines Trump's pardon (of her defiant act of voting illegally) on her behalf.
- Big trees lost to fire at the Big Basin Redwoods State Park are irreplaceable.
- Repost: Regretting vs. apologizing. Or, nobody respects pieces of ass (I mean women) more than Trump.
- Doctor and women's-rights activist Riham Yaqoob assassinated in Basra, Iraq.
- College soccer season has been postponed from fall 2020 to spring 2021.
- Santa Barbara continues to have air-quality problems from SoCal fires, none of which is in SB County.
(4) Some highlights from UCSB's Summer Music Festival 2020, on YouTube:
- Sat. 8/22, 01:15 PM: Percussionist/vocalist/producer/educator Miguel "Miguelito" Leon performs.
- Sat. 8/22, 02:30 PM: Marc Evanstein presents compositions featuring the computer as a creative partner.
- Sat. 8/22, 05:00 PM: LA-based new-music piano duo HOCKET shares excerpts from its new project.
- Sun. 8/23, 12:00 PM: Wesley Arai presents arrangements of well-known classical and popular music.
- Sun. 8/23, 01:15 PM: Concert/discussion on steelpan (or steel drums), popular in Trinidad and Tobago.
- Sun. 8/23, 02:30 PM: Gamelan singer Surya performs Indonesian songs with UCSB Gamelan Ensemble.
(5) "Coup 53" (film review): I rarely write film reviews, but I was compelled to write about this documentary film because of its sensitive subject (being released on August 19, 2020, the 67th anniversary of the MI6/CIA-led coup that overthrew the government of Iran's PM Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinstated the Shah to power) and the hoopla surrounding its release. After decades of denial, the role played by MI6 and CIA in removing Mosaddegh and putting him on trial has been in the open for a couple of decades, particularly since 2013, when CIA declassified many secret documents.
The film has some positive elements, among which I should mention the use of new archival material and on-camera interviews with some of the Brits and Americans involved in the planning and execution of the coup. The role played by Ashraf Pahlavi, the Shah's twin sister, in the process was also news to me.
Overall, however, I was underwhelmed with the film's production aspects. There is too much talking and showing images of documents, instead of cinematically more-interesting historical footage. The presence of the co-writer/producer/director Taghi Amirani in much of the film, a la Michael Moore documentaries, is also detrimental to the viewing experience. Finally, there is much reference to the British "End of Empire" book/TV-series, hardly a source of objective information.
The film's on-line release was less than smooth. I encountered difficulties watching the film, which I had pre-ordered, on my iPad and, after repeated trials without success, had to switch to my laptop, where it worked, but with fits and stops.
2020/08/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mehraveh Khandan, the daughter of Nasrin Sotoudeh (a political prisoner, now on hunger strike) and Reza Khandan, has been attested by Iran's security forces. Hostage-taking and applying pressure on family members have become standard tools for Iran's brutal regime. [Top center] Released by the US Senate Intelligence Committee: Trump's old fan mail to Putin, long before he became President. "As you probably have heards, I am a big fan of yours! Take care of yourself." [Top right] With the end of its national convention, held virtually over four days, the Democratic Party started its historic journey to bring the politics of empathy, hope, and inclusion to save our country from a government of cruelty, grievance, and division. [Bottom] Persian poetry: Selected verses from a poem by Nader Naderpour, translated into English at the request of my dear friend Koorosh Yazdani, who composed and performed a song based on it and wanted to use English subtitles in his music video. My translation includes only the verses that Koorosh used in his song. I have maintained the poem's Persian rhyming scheme (javaani; nahaani; zabaani; khazaani; jahaani) using the rhyming English endings (youth; sleuth; tooth; truth; booth).
(2) Big Brother at UCSB: We have just received notification that as part of the process of implementing virtual parking permits, cameras will be installed on campus to scan and read license-plate numbers.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The pressure is on Trump to produce a national convention that matches the Democrats' in scope & impact.
- The criminal administration: One more former member of Trump's inner circle charged with fraud.
- Forbes reports that several business partners of Donald Trump were allegedly involved in serious crimes.
- Kurdish music and dance. [Video 1] [Video 2]
(4) In a Fox News interview, Ted Cruz accidentally advanced an excellent idea: "If these guys win, we're gonna wake up in January with Elizabeth Warren as treasury secretary."
(5) Final thought for the day: It is regrettable that instead of spending time on refining her programs and plans as VP and focusing on her party's platform, Kamala Harris is being forced to deflect viral falsehoods thrown at her by Trumpians and their Russian helpers on social media. The most frequent accusations via retweets and other social-media posts are pretty much the same ones used against former President Barack Obama:
- She wasn't born in the US; she was in fact born in Oakland, CA (not that this fact would deter the birthers!)
- She isn't black enough; why does this even matter, except to drive black Americans away from her?
- She isn't a Christian, implying that she is a Muslim; she is in fact a baptist
- She is a leftist/radical; she is a moderate on most issues, but her feminism frightens powerful patriarchs
2020/08/19 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] My keynote lecture at CADS 2020 (see the next-to-the-last item below). [Right] IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk (see the last item below).
(2) Many children in Iran's Sistan & Baluchistan have no shoes to wear: Not wearing shoes isn't part of their local culture. In a land with vast natural resources, they just don't have enough money to buy a pair, because the country's oil revenue is plundered by corrupt officials or given away to terrorist organizations.
(3) Extreme hypocrisy: Ayatollah Alam-ol-Hoda, a prominent and powerful Islamic Republic of Iran cleric, is shown lavishly praising both Ayatollah Khamenei and the late Shah in this 6-minute video.
(4) Fires sparked by lightning rage in Northern California: Fighting fires amid a pandemic is quite challenging for our heroic firefighters. Let's hope that the need for evacuations does not add to their challenges.
(5) My remote keynote address at CADS 2020: The 20th International Symposium on Computer Architecture & Digital Systems (CADS 2020), Guilan University, Iran, August 19-20, 2020, is in progress now. Late last night (this morning, Iran time) I gave the following talk, in English, to conference attendees. [62-minute video]
Title: "Neurophysiological Discoveries of the 2014 Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine from a Computer Arithmetic Perspective" [Persian title and abstract]
Abstract: The discovery that mammals use a multi-modular method akin to residue number system (RNS), but with continuous residues or digits, to encode position information led to the award of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine. After a brief review of the evidence in support of this hypothesis, and how it relates to RNS, I discuss the properties of continuous-digit RNS, and present results on the dynamic range, representational accuracy, and factors affecting the choice of the moduli, which are themselves real numbers. I conclude with suggestions for further research on important open problems concerning the process of selection, or evolutionary refinement, of the set of moduli in such a representation.
(6) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Today's event was held over dinner, beginning at 6:00 PM, in the courtyard of Santa Barbara's Arnoldi's Cafe. Dr. Eckart Meiburg, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UCSB, spoke under the title "Modeling the Pacific Ocean on the Computer." This interesting and highly-relevant climate-related talk was our first live event, after two months of cancellations and another two months of on-line talks. [IEEE CCS Technical Talks Web page]
Professor Meiburg earned his PhD degree from U. Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1985 and joined UCSB in 2000, after appointments at Stanford U., Brown U., and USC. A Fellow of American Physical Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Dr. Meiburg has been widely honored for his research on computational fluid dynamics, focusing on environmental and multiphase flows.
The transport of heat, CO2, and other substances by ocean currents plays a crucial role in shaping Earth's climate. Dr. Meiburg highlighted some of the important mechanisms that dominate the dynamics of the ocean and generate large-scale ocean currents. He discussed the basic concepts underlying his research team's approaches to modeling and predicting the dynamics of the ocean on the computer, introducing some of the smaller-scale models developed in his research group. To illustrate the power of such computational models, he showed several computer-generated movies of oceanic transport processes.
Some of the interesting facts alluded to in this talk included ocean currents and their effects on global climate, movement of sediments that enter the oceans from rivers and how they create underwater landslides and canyons, underwater ocean waves, and differences in computational requirements and accuracies between fine-grain and coarse-grain models. [Speakers slides (281 MB)]
2020/08/18 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Pages from Hamid Rahmanian's Shahnameh (see the last item below). [Center] Michelle Obama's moral call to action: In her DNC keynote speech, the former First Lady said things that every politician wishes s/he could say about the conditions in the US and its broken leadership structure.
(2) In Praise of Folly: This is the title of a book by Theodore Dalrymple, subtitled The Blind Spots of Our Minds (Gibson Square, 2019). There is also a Latin essay by the same title, a satirical attack on superstition in Europe by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was published in 1511. Dalrymple's book offers the thesis, supported by many examples among theologians, philosophers, generals, judges, astrophysicisists, writers, and others, that high achievers, praised for their accomplishments in one area, are more often than not naive and error-prone in other areas.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Talk about being out-of-touch: Kushner repeats his claim that the US pandemic strategy is a success story.
- This guy has no shame: He began destroying the USPS and now wants to save it ... from himself! [Tweet]
- After community outrage, the drive-up mail-drop box on Goleta's Patterson Avenue returns.
- Turkey's version of #ChallengeAccepted: The social-media movement about women supporting women.
- Breath-taking beauty, both natural and human-made. [3-minute video]
- Ney-anbaan: A bag-pipe instrument that originated in southern Iran and, from there, spread to Europe.
(4) The Borowitz Report (humor): "To obtain my birth certificate, I have to send a letter to the California Department of Public Health. That is really tricky without a mailbox." ~ Kamala Harris, to Donald Trump
(5) Virtual gathering of a group of Tehran University's College of Engineering (Fanni) graduates: In what turned out to be a visual and spiritual feast, graphics artist Hamid Rahmanian (graduate of Tehran University's School of Fine Arts) spoke to us about "Shahnameh and Visual Arts." Rahmanian has created the highly-successful children's pop-up book Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King, a magnificently-illustrated abridged Shahnameh (which I happen to own), the shadow-theater play "Feathers of Fire," and the forthcoming "Song of the North" shadow-theater play, all in English and based on Ferdowsi's Book of Kings.
Rahmanian works tirelessly to promote the wonderful Iranian culture in the face of growing xenophobia in the US, and the West more generally. You can contribute financially to his endeavors through his Kingorama page. Let's support this wonderful artist by contributing directly or by buying his books, say, as gifts to our kids and other family members. [Mano-To TV report] [LA Times 2017 interview] [Shahnameh audiobook]
2020/08/17 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Trump wants to build a DC statue to honor women: Here is Ivanka's preferred design involving a handbag, which is an actual statue in Russia. Trump's own preferred design involves some sort of grabbing. [Right] Cover image for the book In Praise of Folly (see the last item below).
(2) A beautiful and tender Kurdish song: I asked a friend, and she confirmed that the words are in Kurdish, even though the clothing and other lifestyle details do not match those of Iranian Kurds. [3-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California's Death Valley hits the third-highest temperature ever recorded: 130 F (54.5 C).
- Belarus protesters subjected to extreme violence, as the country's dictator rejects calls for new elections.
- Facebook, far from removing anti-Semitic content, promotes Holocaust denial through its algorithms.
- DeVos wrecked our education system. DeJoy is just getting started at the USPS. DeVote the bums' boss!
- "It Is What It Is": New Trumpian lyrics for the Doris Day oldie, "Que Sera Sera."
- UNC Chapel Hill returns to on-line classes after detection of COVID-19 clusters in dorms and a fraternity.
(4) "Foundations of Social Justice for Engineers": This is the title of an ASEE webinar I attended from 10:00 to 11:30 PDT this morning (a few slides). Facilitated by Brenda Bryant (Marygrove College) and Carol Miller (Wayne State University), the webinar introduced key concepts of social justice, provided case-study examples to illustrate social justice issues, and explored ways that engineers and engineering educators can ground their practice in these concepts. Key concepts in social justice include equal/just relations; dignity; common good; human rights; humanitarianism vs. humanism. Today's college students yearn for socially-relevant work. Nearly half of them would give up 15% in salary to have a job that makes social or environmental difference. For those who want to get involved, Engineers Without Borders provides an excellent channel. An important on-line resource is Ethics Center for Engineering and Science. There is also a book, now somewhat dated, but still a good starting point: Donna Riley, Engineering and Social Justice (Synthesis Lectures on Engineers, Technology, and Society), Morgan and Claypool, 2008. [Here is a question I submitted to organizers at the time of registration (not satisfactorily answered): Social justice is intimately related to ethics. Is it possible to augment the ethics course required in most engineering programs to include ideas on social justice?]
(5) In Praise of Folly: This is the title of a book by Theodore Dalrymple, subtitled The Blind Spots of Our Minds (Gibson Square, 2019). There is also a Latin essay by the same title, a satirical attack on superstition in Europe by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was published in 1511. Dalrymple's book offers the thesis, supported by many examples among theologians, philosophers, generals, judges, astrophysicists, writers, and others, that high achievers, praised for their accomplishments in one area, are more often than not naïve and error-prone in other areas.
2020/08/16 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Returning from Los Angeles after a lunch date: The goodies I brought back include kabobs, herbs, veggies, jams, and three kinds of Persian bread, one of which is a blanket-size sangak! [Center] Cartoon of the day: Understanding data, information, knowledge, insight, wisdom, and conspiracy theory. [Right] Bahai's are still being persecuted in Iran, just as they were in the 19th century.
(2) For Donald Trump, women come in two flavors: "Housewives," who are dependent on men and must be protected from exposure to black and brown people, and "Nasties," a group which includes all independent women who are self-sufficient, speak their minds, and can't be bullied into submission. [Sample images]
(3) Disloyal: A Memoir: Yet another tell-all book about the Teflon President to whom nothing seems to stick. This one is by his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and is due out on September 8, 2020.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Robert Trump, the younger brother of Donald Trump, dead at 71: He was an avid supporter of Donald.
- Despite Trump's claims re wide margin of victory over Clinton, his electoral college win was rather weak.
- Hand-drawn animation: An age-old art form is brought back to life. [3-minute video]
- Yesterday, on Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach: The heat wave brought out many surfers and sunbathers.
(5) "Peace" deal between UAE and Israel: Trump supporters are hailing their Dear Leader for brokering a peace deal between UAE and Israel. What does a peace deal between two countries that were never at war mean? UAE and Israel have actually been on friendly terms for many years. They were united by trade and by their opposition to the Iran nuclear accord. The new "peace" deal reminds me of this joke. A drunk was on his knees looking for his lost wallet near a lamp post. A passerby asked him whether he had dropped the wallet in that area. He answered that he had not, but that it was the only place with enough lighting to allow him to search!
(6) A retelling of how MI6 & CIA overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh's government: On Wednesday, August 19, 2020, the 67th anniversary of the Anglo-American coup in Iran that returned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power, the documentary film "Coup 53" will premier at 6:00 PM. A live Q&A session with director Taghi Amirani, editor Walter Murch, and actor Ralph Fiennes will follow on August 20. Please buy your tickets from UCLA's Celebration of Iranian Cinema to support this excellent program. [2-minute teaser] [The film's Web site]
2020/08/15 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] What Donald Trump has said recently when asked about women in the news. [Top center] The Barr Exam: It involves two questions. Friend or enemy of the White House? Republican or Democrat? [Top right] Storm renders extensive damage to Iowa corn fields and destroys many grain-storage bins. [Bottom left & center] Learning geography in the shower: I had received this shower curtain as a gift several years ago. Yesterday, I finally installed it, after my old shower liner fell apart. The map is unfortunately an older Northern-Hemisphere-centric one. Africa is 14 times as large as Greenland! [Bottom right] Cartoon: In the absence of football and other sports, colleges must again rely on academics if they crave news headlines.
(2) The Borowitz Report (humor): Obama hurt by Trump's reuse of birther strategy [for Senator/VP-candidate Kamala Harris]. "I thought it was a special thing between him and me," said the former president.
(3) Lily from AT&T: The geeky TV spokesperson with her girl-next-door looks is Russian-born actress Milana Vayntrub, who is also active on behalf of refugees (she was one as a little girl).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's claim that he has done more for women than just about any president gets its due. [Tweets]
- Racist birtherism is followed by planted rumors that Kamala Harris refused being sworn in on the Bible.
- Misogyny on display: "Harris is like AOC, but w/o the bar-tending experience." ~ LA Sen. John Kennedy
- Iowans struggle to find assistance for recovery from storm-caused damage to homes and farms.
- Unprecedented heat wave causes electricity shortages and rolling blackouts in California.
- Simple math puzzle: What do the following numbers have in common? 6, 28, 496, 8128
(5) Math puzzle: A man who owns a contiguous piece of land wills the land to his five children, provided they can divide it up into five contiguous pieces, so that each piece has a border of some non-zero length with each of the other four pieces. Is such a division possible?
(6) A significantly more-challenging math puzzle: Finding the minimum number of straight line-segments needed to form exactly n squares on a plane is a challenging task. For example, you can readily verify that we need 6 line-segments to form 5 squares, and 7 line-segments for 8 squares. Now, try your skill at forming exactly 168 squares with the minimum possible number of line-segments.
2020/08/14 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Cartoons of the day: [Left] Sham TV "confession" of political prisoners in Iran (source: Iranwire.com). [Center] US Postal Service: Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor @#*$? (The New Yorker). [Right] Mike Pence brings a chaperone to his debate with nasty woman Kamala Harris (The New Yorker).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Birtherism 2.0: The Trump campaign retweets a claim that Kamala Harris was not born in the US!
- Former FBI lawyer is expected to plead guilty in review of the Trump-Russia inquiry.
- AOC challenges Trump to release his college transcripts, after called her a poor student on Fox News.
- How to support "Black Lives Matter" if you can't, or don't feel comfortable to, attend protests. [Tips]
- If BLM has to answer for looters, shouldn't the NRA answer for school shooters?
- Tokyo Olympics fireworks show goes on: I guess too much money was spent to just let it go to waste!
(3) Authoritarian regimes cannot survive without external and internal "enemies": For Iran's Islamic regime, Israel, America, and several other Western counties serve the first purpose, with religious minorities, particularly Baha'is, serving the second. Meanwhile, parliamentary representatives of "sanctioned" minority religions have turned into mouthpieces for the regime out of the need for survival and protecting the few rights given to their constituents. Misbehaving members of religious minorities are routinely accused of being Israeli and American spies or of acting to undermine national security.
(4) What I learned from the UCSB webinar entitled "Creating Conditions for Effective Dialog about Difference": Held yesterday, the webinar was conducted by Caroline Adams and Brett Collins. The need for the webinar arose because it's not enough to believe in diversity, racial justice, or other important philosophies; you need to acquire skills to communicate about these issues with those who may not agree with you. Academia teaches us how to read, critique, or rebut, but not how to listen. To listen effectively, you need to suspend disbelief and stop yourself from judging. In an effective dialog, you need to connect your comments to what came before. Repeat or paraphrase what came before and connect it to what you want to say. Doing so does not imply confirmation, just connecting ideas together. Speak of your own experiences ("I"); avoid using "you," "I heard," or "they say." If you find yourself talking a lot, step back, listen, and invite others to pitch in. Put your own needs aside and imagine you are watching yourself talk. Find out what goals the others are trying to meet. The main barriers to effective communication are anxiety, confusion, ignorance, and insecurity. A prerequisite for changing someone's mind is to show that you care about them and that you want to understand them.
I end this description with a couple of pertinent quotes.
- "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." ~ Anais Nin
- "You can't listen to others unless you listen to yourself first." ~ Anonymous
At the end, I asked the following question, because I believe much of what we know is from books and other accounts by other people (not direct experiences); the answer did not quite satisfy me: Isn't speaking with "I" a tad too limiting? Over the past two weeks, I have read four books on race and racial justice. How can I bring what I learned from those books into the conversation, even though they do not involve personal experiences?
2020/08/12 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Joe Biden has consistently said that he views himself as a transitional figure, a bridge: We now have a better picture of what the next generation of Democratic leaders at the other side of the bridge looks like! [Center] "Kamala" is a Hindu name related to "Kamal," a male name used in Arabic and Persian. Though not mentioned in sources I checked, it likely is related to the Arabic form "Kameleh." Wait until Trump discovers this! [Right] Iranian women worth knowing: Dr. Delaram Shakiba, Post-doctoral fellow at Washington University of St. Louis leads a team that studies ways in which wounds heal.
(2) UCSB Reads Program narrows down the short-list of 6 titles to 3:
I am not at liberty to reveal those choices at this time, while our Arts & Lectures Program contacts the authors and publishers to forge a participation contract for the top selection or, failing that, one of the two alternates.
The alphabetized short-list, all of its titles I have reviewed on GoodReads, is given below. Links to my reviews are also provided.
- '1619' the 5-episode podcast by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times [My review]
- Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates [My review]
- Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon [My review]
- Monument: Poems New and Selected, by Natasha Trethewey [My review]
- The City We Became, by N. K. Jemisin [My review]
- When They Call You a Terrorist: A BLM Memoir, by Patrice Khan-Cullors & Asha Bandele [My review]
(3) Hot and cold, as only Neil deGrasse Tyson can explain them: Thermal energy, how you can make things hotter or colder, absolute zero, and the unit kelvin (yes, with lower-case "k") for temperature.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The new Web site of the authoritative Dehkhoda Persian Dictionary is up and running.
- Iran continues to arrest and imprison Baha'is during the coronavirus pandemic. #NoPrisonForBahais
- Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory is badly damaged by a thick support cable falling onto the dish.
- An oldie but goodie French song: "Une Femme Amoureuse" ("A Woman in Love"). [4-minute video]
(5) Puzzle: Throw k balls uniformly at random into n bins. What is the probability of having a bin with at least s balls? The special case of s = 2 and n = 365 leads to the famous birthday paradox. [Source tweet]
Reference: K. Suzuki, D. Tonien, K. Kurosawa, and K. Toyota, "Birthday Paradox for Multi-Collisions," Proc. Int'l Conf. Information Security and Cryptology, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4296, Springer, pp. 29-40.
(6) [Final thought for the day] UCSB West Campus Point Faculty Housing Palm Plaza in photos: The top photo of the then new drought-tolerant landscaping, taken on August 12, 2014, popped out on my Facebook memories today. So, I had to go and take the bottom photo to show the difference after six full years.
2020/08/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Rumors confirmed: The White House did reach out to the Governor of SD about adding Trump to Mount Rushmore. (Humor: No word on whether the inquiry included a hotel permit at the base of the iconic mountain.) [Top center] McDonalds introduces the McTahdig (aka Bozorg Mac) sandwich. [Top right] Rule of etiquette: Don't make fun of anyone's appearance or weight, unless s/he makes fun of other people's appearance or weight. [Bottom left] My visit to the UCSB campus this evening: Around 7:00 PM, the campus (Storke Tower, Central Library) and our departmental mail-room, where mailboxes are overflowing with pieces of mostly-unwanted mail, looked deserted. The selfie was taken in my office. [Bottom center] "Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora": This is the title of a UNC Zoom-based symposium consisting of a series of panels held on September, 5, 12, 19, 26, and October 3, 2020 (tweet, with links). [Bottom right] Another interesting panel discussion about Iran, offered by UNC Chapel Hill.
(2) Biden-Harris, a historic Democratic ticket: An excellent pick by Biden that has Trump running scared, because both he and his daughter Ivanka have supported Harris's campaigns in the past.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Perseids meteor shower peaks tonight: Nature is putting on a show for all of us who are bored at home!
- An old woman's joy of painting street art. [1-minute video]
- Sights of Tehran, Iran: Slide show, set to Viguen's song "Del-e Divaaneh" ("Crazy Heart").
- Iranian regional music: Rastak Ensemble shines as usual in this 3-minute video.
- Iranian regional music: A spirited and highly-enjoyable Azeri song. [3-minute video]
(4) Iranian officials intend to kidnap exiled Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad: Such acts are regular occurrences. Kidnapping and hostage-taking is in the Islamic Republic's DNA.
(5) Hafiz's influence on Goethe: This 14-minute video, narrated/subtitled in Persian, offers a description of new information gleaned from the just-discovered Persian and Arabic handwritten texts left by the German writer/philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Under the influence of Hafiz, Goethe composed his West-Eastern Diwan (book of poetry). These two images show the Diwan's table of contents from Wikipedia and a sample poem from its Book 2, "Hafiz-Nameh" ("Book of Hafiz"). Here is the Diwan's English translation.
2020/08/10 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] The latest issues of Newsweek and Time magazines feature Trump's images as part of their election coverage. [Top center] These T-shirts are selling like hot-cakes (another one). [Bottom row] Photos from yesterday's long walk around Goleta and UCSB North Campus Open Space: I arrived in the Open Space from the Ellwood or east end, via a creek-side trail, rather than the usual Stork-Road or west end, thus experiencing some new sights.
(2) Humorous Persian poetry: Recitation of a poem about the dumb people who don't wear masks and go on pleasure trips, totally oblivious to the coronavirus pandemic. [1-minute video]
(3) Ancient Persian statue: The story of a 7-meter-tall statue of Shapour the First, looking out from the entrance of a cave at the elevation of 800 meters. [5-minute video, narrated in Persian]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- After forcing the government to resign, Lebanese protesters celebrate their power.
- Well, who is in decline and allegedly "not all there," Donald Trump or Joe Biden?
- Trump has strong feelings about presidents signing too many executive orders and playing lots of golf!
- Please don't go to church, God will understand: One infected man's church visit led to 91 COVID-19 cases.
- Persian music and dance: Dilnoza Ortiqova performs in this 5-minute video.
- Persian music: Beautiful song, played as a conversation between two tars. [2-minute video]
(5) Is Donald Trump obese? Not according to official figures, which put his weight at 239 lbs and height at 6'3", for a BMI of 29.9, only 0.1 below the obesity level. Politico has obtained a copy of Trump's NY driver's license on which his height is listed as 6'2" (and even that is self-declared). A one-inch growth at such an advanced age is remarkable, especially, since most of us older folks actually shrink in height!
(6) Two silent centuries are beginning to talk: In his 1957 Persian-language history book Two Centuries of Silence (translated into English by Avid Kamgar in 2016 and by Paul Sprachman in 2017), Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub maintained that for some 200 years after the Arab invasion, native Persian writers and scholars went mostly silent, so that there is hardly any documentation on how ordinary people lived in the immediate aftermath of the Arab rule. Touraj Daryaee of UC Irvine believes that with recent discoveries of tablets and other texts in eastern Iran, we are beginning to see accounts from that period by people of Iranshahr (as today's Iran was known then). Here is a Daryaee's recent article entitled "Getting Over Two Centuries of Silence: Newly Discovered Texts from Tabaristan," published in Bokhara. And here is a link to the PDF file of Touraj Daryaee's book, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, I. B. Tauris, 2009.
2020/08/08 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The dangers of table-top runways: This photo is from Sedona Airport in Arizona, but a similar table-top runway caused Friday's crash-landing of Air India Flight 1344 in Calicut, killing at least 17 of the 190 on board. [Top center] "Nobody saw this coming": Actually, several people saw this coming and talked/wrote about it. You were just too pre-occupied with your hair, fake facial tan, and Fox-News cronies to hear them. [Top right] Mental conditioning: Iran's central bank, to prepare citizens for a change in the country's monetary unit that will remove four zeros from financial figures, has printed bills with four of the zeros in faded color. [Bottom left] Art to the rescue during isolation periods at home! [Bottom center] Book introduction: We all think we can be the man in the 1936 B&W photo, standing for our beliefs among a herd of blind followers. But voicing our opinion when we see tyranny or bias is much harder than we think. The photo is described in the introductory pages of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, a new book by Isabel Wilkerson I am looking forward to reading. [Bottom right] Tea and memories: Tea with perfect color, served in traditional tea glasses, somewhere along Iran's Caspian-Sea coast.
(2) Former President Obama's final White House Correspondents' Dinner speech: It's distressing to see how far we have sunk in four years! If you don't have time for the entire 33-minute video, skip ahead to the 28:00 mark to hear Obama's final remarks about his relationship with, and the importance of, the press.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Help for defeating Trump: American Bridge 21st Century's Trump oppo research is available for free.
- Looking back at Obama's presidency: His remarkable 42-minute 2011 speech at the British Parliament.
- UCSB webinar "Creating Conditions for Effective Dialog about Difference" (Thu., Aug. 13, 2020, 11:00 AM).
- Persian lullaby: Rita, the Israeli singer from Iran, brings tears to the cameraman's eyes in an interview.
(4) Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic adviser: You would think that the man influencing every economic decision in the world's richest and most-powerful nation is a top-notch economist. Far from it. Kudlow got a history degree from U. Rochester in 1969. He enrolled in a master's program in public and international affairs at Princeton, but he left before completing his degree. He was an early supporter of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and Trump's border wall. Now you know the reason for the current economic mess in the US!
(5) Individualism vs. community: Much has been made of the benefits of individualism and personal freedom in spurning growth in a capitalist society. However, during a national crisis, we need the opposite of individualism. We need community, to help, care for, and comfort each other, as we battle a common enemy, be it a foreign power or a pandemic. Imagine if during World War II, everyone said that the government sending soldiers to fight against fascism is tyranny and a violation of people's individual freedoms! Please wear a face-mask!
2020/08/07 (Friday): Book review: Trump, Mary, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, Simon & Schuster, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[Note: Page numbers cited in this review pertain to the e-book (PDF) edition.]
Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece, who earned a PhD in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, opens her book with this quote from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables: "If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." This is nice, but needs a clearer accompanying explanation about why the author waited this long to illuminate the darkness.
The author relates that she liked her name as a child, but when "Trump" began appearing on buildings throughout Manhattan, a series of failed products, and, later, on shampoo, conditioner, shower cap, shoe polish, and many other items at the Trump International Hotel, where she stayed for a night to attend a birthday party for her aunts at the White House, things became complicated. She takes another jab at the "Trump" name a few pages later, when in describing a wine served at WH's Executive Dining Room, she writes that it was genuine wine, not Trump wine.
Mary Trump gets to the inevitable psychological diagnosis part quite early in the book [p. 21], opining that considering Donald Trump's condition "malignant narcissism" or "narcissistic personality disorder" may not go far enough. Other conditions that are amply supported by evidence include "antisocial personality disorder," "comorbidity," "dependent personality disorder," and a form of "chronic learning disability."
The author then goes on to state [p.22] that, "many, but by no means all of us, have been shielded until now from the worst effects of [Donald's] pathologies by a stable economy and a lack of serious crises. But the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides ... and devastating uncertainty about out country's future have created a perfect storm of catastrophes that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage."
Here is another example of Mary dissing both her grandfather Fred and her uncle Donald: "Donald, following the lead of [Fred] and with the complicity, silence, and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can't let him destroy my country" [p. 25]. The author's grandmother, Mary, also does not escape blame, although, in her case, the roots of emotional unavailability, instability, and neediness are traced to her husband's callousness, indifference, and controlling behavior [p. 31]. Both parents cared for their children out of their own needs, not the children's.
Mary Trump considers her grandfather, Fred, responsible for her father Freddy's death at age 42, because he created within the Trump family the same kind of division that Donald later inflicted on the entire country. Fred always preferred Donald, the trouble-maker who was sent to the Military Academy to reign him in, over Freddy, who worked hard to please his dad, only to be put down as a "glorified bus driver in the sky" when he became a commercial pilot with TWA for a short while. Mary does hint that Donald was favored because he possessed attributes that even Fred lacked, so he hoped to make use of his middle son's attributes in advancing his business [p. 98].
Mary's father, Freddy, was also slighted by his siblings, who did not offer his family a reasonable share of Fred's inheritance or include him in the quasi-legal wealth-transfer scheme from Trump Properties to a sham company they founded to receive funds for purported services. This fact does trouble an objective reader, who may wonder whether the bulk of what Mary Trump writes results from a family dispute over finances. Besides the financial disputes, Mary has another reason to be bitter: As a lesbian married to another women, she was never really accepted by her prudish family. So, is the book simply sour grapes over the issues just mentioned? Not entirely, in my judgement.
One dominant theme in the book is that Donald Trump has always gotten away with bullying, lying, cheating, and scamming. Neither at home nor, later, when he ran the Trump Organization, did anyone care or dare to challenge him. So, with his life and actions under close scrutiny by the media and his political opponents, he has been thrown off-balance, thus committing many unforced errors and having to double down on misguided opinions/statements even more often.
Donald Trump's need for affirmation, from his father and everyone else around him, is another prevalent theme. "Donald's need for affirmation is so great that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn't condescend to be seen with outside of a rally" [p. 220]. Mary Trump confirms a point that I have been making about Trump's intensifying edginess and paranoia, since he occupied the White House: "For decades, he has gotten publicity, good and bad, but he's rarely been subjected to close scrutiny, and he's never had to face significant opposition. His entire sense of himself and the world is being questioned" [p. 221].
The book's penultimate paragraph sums up Mary Trump's assessment of her uncle: "Donald's monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he's been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence, my father's short life is evidence of that. The country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump."
This is an easy book to read, packaged into 16 fairly short units and logically well-organized. A brief table of contents follows.
Prologue
Part One. The Cruelty Is the Point: 1. The House; 2. The First Son; 3. The Great I-Am; 4. Expecting to Fly.
Part Two. The Wrong Side of the Tracks: 5. Grounded; 6. A Zero-Sum Game; 7. Parallel Lines; 8. Escape Velocity.
Part Three. Smoke and Mirrors: 9. The Art of the Bailout; 10. Nightfall Does Not Come at Once; 11. The Only Currency; 12. The Debacle.
Part Four. The Worst Investment Ever Made: 13. The Political Is Personal; 14. A Civil Servant in Public Housing.
Epilogue. The Tenth Circle
2020/08/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Emmanuel Macron in Beirut: He walked the streets. People surrounded & hugged him and asked for help in changing Lebanon's conditions. No local officials were in sight. Hassan Nasrallah is somewhere in Beirut too, but no one knows where. He likely changed his secret hiding place after the blast. [Center] Throwback Thursday: I still have this T-shirt, which I wore to Fiesta celebrations in August 2017. [Right] Plans to set up a branch of Iran's National Museum at Khomeini's Mausoleum criticized from many sides: The site includes a mish-mash of styles, not bearing any elements from ancient Persian architecture.
(2) Vice-President Mike Pence says that SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts has been a disappointment to conservatives: I can name at least two people who have been greater disappointments to conservatives!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US deaths from COVID-19 approached 2000 over the past 24 hours: That's one death every 40 seconds!
- Facebook and Twitter remove Trump posts claiming falsely that children have immunity to coronavirus.
- Foreign countries take sides: Iran and China are against Trump, while Russia is working against Biden.
- Corruption & mismanagement: Gathering to clean up their city, Beirut residents demand answers.
- There are five kinds of vaccines and all five varieties are under study for COVID-19. [Table]
- Goleta City Council has selected a traditional train-station design, reflecting our agricultural heritage.
(4) The roots of "honor" killings: A collection of Persian articles on "naamoos," arising from the patriarchal notion that men (husbands, fathers, brothers, and male guardians in general) own the women around them and can force these women, under the threat of violence, to behave according to what the men deem appropriate for preserving family "honor" and reputation ("aabroo").
(5) Foreign trolls, posing as Trump's African-American supporters, kicked out from Facebook: Many accounts associated with the right-wing outlet Epoch Times, specializing in conspiracy theories, were also removed.
(6) Persian music: This 6-minute performance, entitled "Song of Humanity," is dedicated to doctors, nurses, and other front-line workers in the battle against COVID-19.
(7) Quote of the day: "To assert conspiracy is to believe what you want when you are missing data to fully support what you want to believe." ~ Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson
(8) Beirut photos and videos are heartbreaking and heartwarming: A was blown away as she was shooting photos on a street (she was unharmed). A baby's arrival was delayed by an hour, when the delivery room was torn to pieces by the explosion (everyone survived).
2020/08/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The devastating explosion of an ammunitions warehouse in Beirut's port area is a human tragedy, brought about by incompetent leadership, much like ours. Please support the relief efforts of Lebanon Red Cross (another pair of before and after photos). [Center] Frances E. Allen, the first female IBM Fellow and the first woman to be awarded ACM's Turing Award, dead at 88. [Right] The kulbar phenomenon: Humans used like mules in Iran's border regions #Dont_Kill_Kulbars (images from Iranwire.com).
(2) Mostafa Salehi executed on August 5 in Isfahan, Iran: Sentenced to death because of participation in the protests of December 2017 and January 2018, he maintained his innocence under torture. #NoToExecution
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Search and rescue efforts continue in the Beirut blast that killed 100+ and injured thousands.
- Why do cartoon characters' hands have 4 fingers? Are they from civilizations that do arithmetic in base 8?
- Please do not validate the sham Nov. 3 election by voting. Stay home to teach the liberals a lesson. MAGA!
- Grand opening of Iran's trans-national railroad, connecting southern and northern parts of the country.
- Spiral honeycombs of stingless bees are based on the same math model that explains crystal growth.
- Lecture by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi on the global problem of racism, with an emphasis on the case of the US.
- Try to replace "Hey guys" with one of these gender-neutral greetings at the start of meetings.
- Here are highly-successful and stunningly-beautiful daughters of famous athletes that inspire many.
- Persian music: "Negaah-e Garm-e To" ("That Warm Look of Yours"), performed by Abdolvahab Shahidi.
- Persian music: A nice rendition of the oldie song "Mey-Zadeh" ("Intoxicated"), made famous by Marzieh.
(4) We are waking up to the reality of hidden racism in America: A racist President heightened our awareness of racism and helped reduce our denial, and the pandemic exposed the horrific consequences of racial injustice, but a shift of attitude toward race and racism was already afoot before Trump. The percentage of Americans who thought that racial and ethnic discrimination is a big problem has changed as follows.
51% (January 2015) ---> 68% (July 2016) ---> 76% (June 2020)
(5) Persian music and dance: "Zendegui" ("Life"). [Thanks to my violinist friend Joseph Salimpour, whose brother wrote the piece and whose sister sang it; talent runs in the family, it seems!]
2020/08/04 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Baby goat optical illusion: This photo of a bird facing to the left can also be seen as a baby goat looking to the right. [Top center] Relaxing on Sunday afternoon with fava beans from a can (couldn't find fresh ones) and a challenging crossword puzzle. [Top right] Keivan Beiranvand's statue of "koolbar," a kind of porter in Iran's border regions who carries the heaviest objects, usually smuggled, across arduous terrains, often losing his/her life to accidents, the elements, or to bullets of Revolutionay Guards. [Bottom left] Sunset and sturgeon full moon, photographed from atop UCSB West Campus Bluffs during my Monday walk (1-minute video). [Bottom center] Today's gorgeous fruit plate. [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon: The strongman thinks he's doing things all by himself, but he would be nothing without his enablers.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump finds out that gaslighting doesn't work with a well-prepared, hard-pressing interviewer.
- SpaceX capsule bringing two US astronauts back from the ISS splashes down safely in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Judge Salas says she was the target when her son was killed: He took a bullet trying to protect his dad.
- Navy Seals demonstrated K-9 attack using someone wearing Colin Kaepernick's Jersey.
- Massive explosion in the port area of Beirut causes extensive damage with unknown casualties.
- Trump Organization is under investigation for insurance and bank fraud.
- Premature vaccine roll-out a real danger, as Trump runs out of options for overcoming growing polls deficit.
- Spread of coronavirus at summer camps provides a preview of what might happen when schools reopen.
- MI6 documents show the outsize role of the Brits in the 1953 coup that reinstated the Shah to power.
(3) The massive Beirut explosion occurred in a missile warehouse built amid a residential/commercial neighborhood. Third World (new definition): Where protection of missiles is more important than people's lives!
(4) Having your cake and eating it too: Trump often admonishes our helalthcare system for doing too much testing, because tests reveal COVID-19 cases, which he doesn't like. But then, when he compares the US to other countries, he cites our low death rate as a fraction of cases, not population. A large number of cases helps him in this regard, but he is just too stupid to see the contradiction!
2020/08/02 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Paintings by the two wives of Khorow Sinai (see the last item below). [Center] "The Chess of the Wind" (1976): A most-important Iranian film has been restored and will be shown at Cannes and other festivals. The film was screened in Iran just once before the revolution but was never released for screening in theaters, not because of censorship, but due to poor critical reception.
(2) "The Pandemic's Toll on Women": This is the title of a Foreign Affairs article by Melinda Gates. "History teaches that disease outbreaks—from AIDS to Zika to Ebola—play out with a certain grim predictability. As they infect societies, they expose and exploit existing forces of marginalization, seeking out fault lines of gender, race, caste, and class."
[P.S.: I will soon review Melinda Gates' The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.]
(3) UCSB Summer Music Festival: Offered on YouTube on August 22 and 23, 2020, the free program includes performances by multi-percussionist/vocalist Miguelito Leon, LA-based new-music piano duo HOCKET, carillonist Wesley Arai, Nesta steel-drum band, and more.
(4) Corruption is the new normal: A brave soul (unknown to me) speaks of rampant corruption in Iran and how the new elites don't even feel shame for living in mansions, while many of their fellow-citizens, teachers and factory workers in particular, are being crushed due to low or unpaid wages.
(5) Reimagining downtown Santa Barbara for the next century: In the coming months, the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Institute of Architects will be creating designs and a new vision for our downtown (from Sola Street to the freeway, from Chapala Street to Anacapa Street). Volunteer architects will work with landscape architects, planners, engineers, and cost estimators to provide plans and 3D images of a possible new downtown for the next century.
()6 Khosrow Sinai [1941-2020]: Much has been written since yesterday about Sinai's death. A film director, screenwriter, music composer, and scholar, his death is generally viewed as a great loss to the art scene in Iran. Yet, I have seen only a couple of mentions of the fact that he had two wives: Gizella Varga (his sweetheart from student days in Hungary) and Farah Ossouli (a younger Iranian woman), both painters, who are apparently friends with each other and have even held joint painting exhibitions. Sinai wasn't religious, a common trait of polygamous Iranian men. In fact, his works attack superstition and religious dogma. A question that's being asked is whether it is even relevant that he had two wives. "What's wrong with being in love with two women?" In my humble opinion when praise is offered to a public figure who serves as a role model (even if reluctantly), negative traits must also be mentioned, hence this post.
2020/08/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Working and living in paradise (see the last item below). [Center] This afternoon, walking around my mom's housing complex in Goleta, California, with a few cute visitors.
(2) The crisis in the antibiotics industry: As the coronavirus heightens the need for antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections, pharmaceutical companies have stopped researching and producing new antibiotics, essentially because the profit margins are too thin.
(3) The fun-loving, cheerful lesbian in front of the camera may not be so nice backstage: Ellen has denied that she was aware of sexual misconduct on her TV show.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci schools a questioner who tries again to promote hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19.
- Chinese disinformation agents dupe Larry King into conducting a fake interview with a Russian journalist.
- Khamenei criticized for being out of touch with Iran's woes, because he dismisses sanctions as ineffective.
- A symbolic depiction of Mount Damavand in Tehran pays tribute to its historical and mythical significance.
- Marjane Satrapi's "Radioactive" captures the humanity of double-Nobel-Laureate Marie Curie.
- What does a guy earning a living from travel reports do in a pandemic? Rick Steves counsels patience.
(5) Here is the recording of my August 1, 2020, virtual talk for Sharif University of Technology's Computer Engineering Department, "Recursive Synthesis of Counting Networks" (69-minute video, in Persian).
(6) Living in paradise: I have been residing at UCSB's West Campus faculty housing complex for 32 years. This is a planned development with below-market purchase prices to help attract faculty to our area, where open-market housing is unaffordable for most young recruits or senior faculty coming from areas with much lower real-estate prices. From time to time, I and my faculty neighbors worry or complain about the prices of our houses not appreciating as much as houses on the open market (basically, we have to sell back to the university at a formula-derived price). An ongoing discussion on this topic led to some neighbors listing the benefits of living in this paradise, which more than offsets what many view as a poor investment in housing.
- Living steps away from the ocean and nearly surrounded by a nature preserve.
- Living at walking/biking distance to work.
- Living in a friendly community, with faculty colleagues from many disciplines.
- Lower assessed prices translate directly to lower property taxes.
- Paying less for housing has allowed us to invest in educating our children and helping them in other ways.
As usual, it is always a good idea to sit down and take stock of the positive aspects of your life, when something negative bothers you and threatens to bring you down.
2020/07/31 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Former presidential and future Darwin-Award candidate Herman Cain dead of the nonexistent Wuhan Flu. [Center] COVID-19 cases are rising exponentially in South Santa Barbara County: The positivity rate for the County hovers around 10% (charts from report by UCSB's Vice Chancellor for Research). [Right] Top travel destinations for 2020, as reflected on our passport pages!
(2) Persian-language webinar: "Racial Violence and the Worldwide Protests Against It," Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, Prof. of Gender & Women's Studies, Sun. August 2, 2020, 7:00 PM CET (9:30 PM Iran time; 11:00 AM PDT).
(3) Yes, China caused the spread of coronavirus by its lack of transparency: But blaming China, justified as it is, does not solve our current problem. Each country's leader is responsible for helping citizens cope with the pandemic and its health and economic consequences, in the same way that a paramedic helps an injured victim, regardless of who caused the injuries.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US economy shrank at a 33% annualized rate during April-June 2020, the worst downturn since WW II.
- The racial-violence legacy of British colonialism: Eye-opening facts from an erased history. [7-minute video]
- White-Supremacist David Duke permanently banned from Twitter for racism and other hateful conduct.
- Music video: The beauties of music and nature are combined in this video of the Croatian cellist Hauser.
- Persian music: The all-women ensemble Mah Banoo in concert. [26-minute video]
- Persian music: A wonderful song featuring ney, an ancient end-blown flute. [2-minute video]
- Persian music: Pink Martini performs "Kaj Kolah Khan" live in a June 2017 concert.
- Persian Poetry: Saeed Biabanaki recites a humorous poem re Zakariyya-ye Razi, who discovered alcohol.
(5) Invited virtual talk at Sharif U. Technology (Friday 7/31, 11:30 PM PDT; Saturday 8/01 11:00 AM Iran time): I spoke in Persian under the title "Recursive Synthesis of Counting Networks." English abstract follows.
Abstract: Recursive synthesis of digital circuits leads to systematic design methods, reuse of building blocks, and clean mathematical models for circuit cost and delay. Recursive integer and matrix multiplication, and Fourier transform, are prime examples. In this talk, I will show that counting networks (parallel counters and other weight determination and comparison circuits), can be synthesized from smaller counting networks in a simple and easily analyzable way. At the end of the recursion, we get to readily-available AND and OR gates, 3-input counters (or full-adders), and 2-out-of-3 majority circuits, which are realizable in a variety of designs, including with emerging atomic-scale digital technologies. [Title slide] [69-minute video]
(6) Final thought for the day: Trump is asking Americans to re-elect him so that he can put a stop to the prevailing social and economic chaos. But he is President now, and all this chaos is happening under his watch!
2020/07/30 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Selfie taken during my Wednesday afternoon walk, with face-mask at the ready in case of close encounters! [Center & Right] Virtual film discussion at UCSB: The two-part 2020 documentary "And She Could Be Next," available for streaming on PBS, was discussed by director/producers Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia in tonight's Zoom session, moderated by Wendy Eley Jackson (Film and Media Studies, UCSB).
(2) David T. Hines got $4 million in COVID-19 relief loans from the US government for his moving business: He immediately bought a $318K super-luxury car, the Lamborghini Huracan Evo.
(3) The RBG class: Remarkable stories of the other nine women in the Harvard Law School class of 1959, as told by them, their families, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
(4) Jockeying for position in Iran's next presidential election begins: The sham process entails disqualifying all but a few candidates, hand-picked by the Supreme Leader and his cronies.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Prison diaries of Iranian activist Sepideh Gholian, who was tortured to "confess" and got 18 years in jail.
- Religious apartheid in Iran under scrutiny after the killing of a Zoroastrian priest.
- What's with the #ChallegeAccepted glam B&W photos being posted by women? This article explains it all.
- Persian-language BBC interview with Lord David Alliance, who recalls his family residence in Kashan, Iran.
(6) Drone videography: Recently, several Iranian dams and their artificial lakes have been videographed using drones. Here is one such video from Lar Dam. I am posting this particular one, because it features Mount Damavand in the background. Fortunately, the majestic volcanic mountain appears to have been saved from partial sell-off to private entities as a result of significant public opposition and social-media campaigns.
(7) UCSB is disabling many networked printers: Printer firmwares are often old and unsupported, so once a vulnerability is discovered, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to implement a fix.
(8) Trump re-tweet categorized as fake news: A video featuring a group of "doctors" making false and dubious claims about coronavirus was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but not before it went viral.
(9) Mitch McConnell needs a remedial math class: In response to a PBS interview question about cutting unemployment benefits from $600 to $200 per week amid the ongoing pandemic, he responded that the GOP proposal also includes a $1200 payment to make up for the cut. Basic math: $1200 / ($600 – $200) = 3. So, the one-time $1200 payment makes up for only 3 weeks of the reduced unemployment benefit. The question referred to unemployed people needing money for rent, medications, and other expenses. I am curious to know what McConnell thinks people pay for rent and prescription medications these days!
2020/07/29 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Move over botox and cosmetic surgery: Digital de-aging has arrived! The image shows actor Will Smith at his current age and in de-aged form for the 2019 action movie "Gemini Man," where he appears alongside a younger clone of himself. [Top center] The shifting economic order: The world's top ten economies over time. [Top right] Technolochicas: A program that provides various types of resources, in English and Spanish, to help families encourage young women to pursue computing. [Bottom left] America becoming greater every day: Hope this kind of greatness ends soon! [Bottom center] Linguistic faux pas: This Persian ad announces a new method for losing hair! We mostly need new methods for keeping or growing hair; losing it needs no new method!
[Bottom right] This billboard in Dubai declares "We began in desert and have now gone to space": The goals of Dubai's space program remain unclear, though, much like its urban real-estate development, now in trouble.
(2) Hostage-taking by Iran's Islamic regime enters its fifth decade: Australian-British academic and expert on Islamic studies Kylie Moore-Gilbert is serving a 10-year prison term under espionage charges.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump-McConnell $1 trillion coronavirus relief bill faces an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled US Senate.
- Trump really likes Blacks ... when they confirm his kooky ideas and conspiracy theories!
- The Trump administration finally succeeds in flattening the COVID-19 infections curve! [Cartoon]
- Visualizing the lives lost to various pandemics in the course of recorded human history. [2-minute video]
- Could expanding fires/explosions in Iran's military and industrial sites lead to an "October-surprise" war?
- Student groups in Iran condemn the re-imprisonment of activists Bahareh Hedayat and Keyvan Samimi.
- Conversion of passenger planes to carry more freight is a new trend amid the changing aviation industry.
(4) This year's hajj rites: Only about 1000 worshippers, who are already in Saudi Arabia, will be allowed to participate, and they will be monitored by electronic means to ensure the safety of all those involved. Normally, millions of pilgrims descend on Mecca for the annual rites.
(5) "Culture Clash" film discussion: "Amar Akbar Anthony" (1977) is the title of an unintentionally funny film with a social message, about three Bombay brothers who are separated from their parents, with each one raised in a different religion. At the end, they discover they are true brothers, despite their vastly different upbringings. The film is available on Amazon Prime Video. Here is the link for a 45-minute discussion with the authors of Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation.
2020/07/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] This afternoon, I went on a long walk atop the Elwood Bluffs: A beautiful, sunny afternoon with a strong breeze greeted me, as I explored the dozens of criss-crossing walking paths in the region. [Bottom left] Some selfies taken during my walk on a breezy afternoon. [Bottom center] Time magazine, double-issue of August 03/10, celebrates the legacy of civil-rights legend John Lewis (1940-2020). [Bottom right] Congressman John Lewis's body travels over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, soon to be renamed in his honor. He and others passed over this bridge in the iconic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
(2) Pandemic intensifies famine and food insecurity: Food aid need for 2020 is up by 25% compared with previous estimates and it's up by 31% compared with 2019.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This is how the 2nd-Amendment is being used: Not against a tyrannical government but to quell dissent.
- Local Santa Barbara news: Black bear roams on a street in Montecito, a community just to our south.
- The RV market is sizzling: Hassles of flying has made many RV models quite popular, with long wait-lists.
- Akala, on how African and Black history was distorted to justify and propagate slavery. [77-minute video]
- Quote of the day: "Keep your words sweet, because someday you may have to eat them." ~ Anonymous
- Kurdish music: Jamshid sings "Khana-Bandan," accompanied by LA Daf Ensemble. [YouTube version]
(4) Wonderful cover of the beautiful song "One Moment in Time" by Dana Winner; written by Louis Hammond and John Bettis; originally sung by Whitney Houston. [5-minute video]
(5) My virtual tech talks: I will be speaking for Sharif University of Technology Association's Seattle Chapter on Tuesday 7/28, 7:00 PM PDT (Zoom meeting ID 953 2556 9334; Recorded lecture), and for Sharif University of Technology's Computer Engineering Department on Saturday 8/01, 11:00 AM Tehran time (Friday 7/31, 11:30 PM PDT; Virtual classroom address). The two talks overlap, but they are not identical. The SUTA Seattle talk, entitled "Recursive Methods for Synthesizing Digital Circuits" and delivered in English, contains an overview of recursive hardware design strategies, whereas the SUT CE talk, entitled "Recursive Synthesis of Counting Networks" and delivered in Persian, focuses more on my own research in recursively building a class of networks that are of interest in computer arithmetic and fault-tolerant computing. Both talks should be understandable to those with minimal background in digital circuits.
2020/07/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Comet Neowise, photographed by a couple of my neighbors sharing their photos. [Center] Joke of the day: "I am just as surprised as you! I learned on Friday morning about a new mandated turban style." [Right] Suggestion for creating travel photos while you're stuck at home and can't go anywhere!
(2) Olivia de Havilland dead at 104: The last remaining star of #GoneWithTheWind, she died of natural causes at her home in Paris, where she had lived for more than 60 years.
(3) The universal appeal of film music: Theme from "Game of Thrones," composed by the German-Iranian musician Ramin Javadi, is immensely popular across the world and sounds just as wonderful when played in a wide range of musical styles, from Indian to Persian and alt-rock. And speaking of film music ... The theme from "The Godfather" and the film's various other tunes are unmatched in beauty and musical wonder.
(4) Free conference attendance: The European Dependable Computing Conference will be held virtually from September 8 to 10, 2010. Intel and Fraunhofer IKS are covering all organizational expenses. Hence, participation is free of charge, but you need to pre-register. [Conference program] [EDCC workshops]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Anti-immigration militia member advocated lining up illegals at the border to shoot or gas them.
- One example of why Trump hates the press: Barbara Walters calls out his bullshit in this 1990 interview.
- Cal State University undergrads required to take ethnic studies or social justice course, starting in 2023.
- Right-wing artist Jon McNaughton is cashing in on the Trump cult, and laughing all the way to the bank.
- Bitter humor: Artist's reaction to Iran selling off parts of Mt. Damavand to fill empty government coffers.
- Heavenly piano music: I know neither the name of the piece, nor the two piano maestros, but here it is.
(6) I have a joke ... but: A new challenge on Twitter consists of starting to tell a joke and then explaining why you won't tell it! Monica Lewinsky stole the show by writing, in response to "I have a Charles Manson joke and it kills," "I have an intern joke and it ... nevermind." Other examples include "I have a Mitch McConnell joke, but it's in Russian" and "I have a joke, but you won't be able to hear it until a male writer repeats it as his own ten minutes later."
Here is my contribution: "I have a coronavirus joke, but Trump won't let me test it."
(7) Fake degrees in Iran: A report (in Persian) on the trial of an Iranian man who forged credentials from institutions around the world, catering primarily to government officials.
(8) Insight into mathematics: Why mathematicians enjoy proving the Prime Number Theorem, that the number of primes less than n tends to n/(ln n) as n grows large, over and over again.
2020/07/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Hyper-realistic portrait of Jesus: Dutch photographer Bas Uterwijk applies AI to create portraits of historical figures from paintings and other sources. When shown these portraits of Jesus, Donald Trump reacted with disdain toward the radical left that wants to make the white, blue-eyed Jesus look Middle-Easterner! [Center] Undated photo of Nasrin Sotoudeh, Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist now in prison, holding a sign reading "No to Execution." [Right] My anniversary tweet (see the next item below).
(2) My third Twitter anniversary: Can't believe I have been on Twitter for 3 years already (according to a notification from Twitter). Here is the special anniversary tweet I was asked to send. It conveys my love of books. Fittingly, I will follow this tweet with a book review.
(3) Iran recent history: Who was Masih Daneshvari and why is a hospital in northern Tehran named after him? This 4-minute video explains it all (in Persian).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- China launches the Tianwen-1 unmanned mission towards Mars on a Long March 5 Y-4 rocket.
- New international students headed to US universities holding classes remotely told to stay home.
- Television host Regis Philbin dead at 88: He leaves behind a TV legacy that will be hard to match.
- Santur player Farshid Savar plays the "Ey Iran" anthem, in what appears to be a hot-air balloon.
(5) Professor's remains found in Arizona dumpster: Two Louisiana teens have been charged with killing and dumping the body of Junseok Chae, Professor and Associate Dean for Research at Arizona State University's School of Engineering, who was reported missing March 25.
(6) This morning, I participated in a Zoom memorial meeting for our departed Tehran University College of Engineering classmate Abbasali (Mehdi) Katiraei: Mehdi's wife Nahid, daughter Nikoo (on behalf of herself and her brothers), and several close friends said a few words and shared memories of him. Unfortunately, I wasn't very close to Mehdi during our student days in Tehran, but I have learned a great deal about him, his encyclopedic knowledge, and love of books, both as a reader and an an author, through our common friends, particularly over the last few days. My condolences to his family and friends. May his soul rest in peace!
(7) After AOC dressed down Florida Congressman Ted Yoho for insulting her on the steps of the US Capitol, Fox News posted this fake tweet attributed to her, which has since been removed with barely an apology.
[Fake AOC tweet, shared by Brian Kilmeade: "It's vital that Governors maintain restrictions on businesses until after the November Elections because economic recovery will help Trump be re-elected. A few business closures or job losses is a small price to pay to be free from his presidency. #KeepUsClosed"]
2020/07/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Representative democracy? [Center] What to do with toppled statues? Ask Russians about their Fallen Monument Park. [Right] Humans arrived in the Americas earlier than previously thought: This map, taken from Wikipedia, dates various populations to 11,000-16,000 years ago, with a couple of exceptions. Stone tools just unearthed in Mexico date back 33,000 years.
(2) COVID-19 update from Santa Barbara Sansum Clinic: While SB County is doing much better than the US as a whole, the densely-populated South Korea has a mortality rate that is 1/10th that of SB and 1/75th that of the US. And SK has achieved this by doing nothing more than following the advice of healthcare professionals.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Federal agents tear-gas Portland protesters, including the mayor who had showed up to talk to them.
- Trump campaign misleadingly uses a photo from Ukraine's 2014 pro-democracy protests in Facebook ad.
- Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, VA, has been renamed John R. Lewis High School.
- Don't underestimate the power of trending hashtags: The hashtag #DoNotExecute saved 3 lives in Iran.
- Hand-sanitizer recall expanded to at least 75 brands across the US due to inclusion of toxic material. [List]
- Humor: Video by comedian Sarah Cooper. [#PersonWomanManCameraTV]
- Cartoon of the day: Parts of the cognitive test taken by Trump released to the public. [Image]
- Persian music: This piece includes a style of singing known as "chah-chah," which is like yodeling in a way.
(4) "UCSB Reads 2021": The program has converged on a short list of six titles, from which we will select our preferred title and a couple of alternates, in case of problems in negotiating with the publisher or author about participating in the program. I will read these titles over the summer months and will share with you both my reviews and the final selection. I would appreciate any input, sent publicly or privately, on any of these titles.
- Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir, Scribner, 2018.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, One World, 2015.
- Patrice Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele, When They Call You a Terrorist, St. Martin's Griffin, 2020.
- Nikole Hannah-Jones and New York Times, 5-episode podcast "1619," 2019.
- N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became, Orbit, 2020.
- Natasha Trethewey, Monument: Poems New and Selected, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.
(5) Yes, you should speak up if your family or friends post something racist: "Nice white people, including those in your family, can still be racist. ... Sometimes speaking up isn't even about educating the other person so much as it is standing up for your own morals and ethics. It's saying: Whether or not I change their mind, I refuse to let this happen without saying something." Hitting "unfollow" or deleting the person solves nothing. Try to engage (or re-engage after taking a break).
2020/07/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Tuesday afternoon at Goleta Beach Park: I walked to the Park's east end and snapped photos, as my daughter paddle-boarded at the west end. [Top center] Teachers feel unsafe returning to classrooms as the coronavirus pandemic rages out of control. [Bottom left] Racism in Iran: Milk and chocolate-milk bottles bear images of a white girl and a black boy. [Bottom center] Religious dogma: Sign at the entrance to a mourning ceremony in Iran advises against using face-masks. [Bottom right] Cartoonist Touka Neyestani's take on the #DoNotExecute movement. #NoToExecutionsInIran (Source: Iranwire.com)
(2) Demand for robot cooks is on the rise: Mixing salads from customer-selected ingredients is a possible application, now that salad bars are defunct. Flipping burgers and making French fries are other possibilities.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Highlights of Chris Wallace's interview with Donald Trump on Fox News. [Tweet]
- Trump wishes arrested pedophile and sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell well: Chew on that for a minute!
- US-China tension escalates: US State Department orders China to close its Houston consulate.
- Powerful magnitude-7.8 earthquake off Alaska's southern coast triggers tsunami warnings.
- A US diplomat asked UK officials for help in steering the British Open to Trump's Scotland golf resort.
- Iranian regional music: Ensemble from the northeastern province of Khorasan. [3-minute video]
(4) The Iranian-American diaspora & the Black Lives Matter movement: Yesterday afternoon, beginning at 4:00 PM PDT, I attended an on-line discussion by a panel composed of Dr. Cornel West (Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard University), Dr. Ali Akbar Mahdi (Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Ohio Wesleyan University), and Dr. Touraj Daryaee (Maseeh Chair in Persian Studies and Professor of History, UC Irvine), moderated by Dr. Annahita Mahdavi (Associate Professor of Social Sciences, Long Beach City College). Organizers indicated a webinar attendance of around 500, with many others participating through Facebook.
BLM is new only in terminology and methods. American Blacks have been in this struggle for 400 years. They have a proud culture, similar to, though not going as far back, as the Iranian culture. Alliance between American Blacks and Iranian-Americans would seem a natural occurrence. But the situation isn't as simple.
The notions of color and race are somewhat different in Iran compared with the US. In the 19th century, there was much trade between southern Iran and Zanzibar, one of the suppliers of slaves (ancestors of Afro-Iranians) to Iran. Color isn't a basis for discrimination in south Iran, where many Afro-Iranians reside, because those who grew up in the sunny south are naturally dark-skinned. But the situation changes if we look at north Iran.
It's a very natural question to ask whether Iranian-Americans, many of whom have been persecuted and discriminated against, in Iran, in the US, or both, identify with the BLM cause. Shouldn't Dr. King's sentiment that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," and the great poet Sa'adi's proclamation that "Human beings are like parts of a body, created from the same essence," bring the two communities together? The answer is complicated and differs by immigrant generations.
First-generation immigrants from Iran, raised in a racist society, which discriminates against racial and ethnic minorities, generally don't believe that BLM is their problem. A tad over half of this first generation (53%) say they have experienced discrimination in the US. Having weathered discrimination, and having worked hard to get resettled after their roots were forcefully cut in many cases, they see it as risky to their position to get involved in sociopolitical matters.
Second-generation immigrants from Iran, better-educated and more integrated in the American society and culture, are quite different. Interesting, and sometimes contentious, conversations go on between members of this second generation and their parents about BLM and other civil/human rights issues. Surprisingly, this second generation has also experienced discrimination, but mostly from individuals rather than institutions.
Then there is the 1.5th generation Iranian-Americans, those who immigrated to the US as young children and were almost-entirely educated here. Members of this group fall somewhere in between, being closer in opinions, behavior, and experiences to the second generation.
In short, alliance between the Iranian-American diaspora and Black Americans, while seemingly natural, has not quite materialized.
On-line information on panelists and moderator:
[West]
[Mahdi; aamahdi@owu.edu]
[Daryaee]
[Mahdavi]
2020/07/22 (Wednesday): Book review: Johnson, Allan G., The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, Temple U. Press, revised ed., 2005. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I was introduced to this book by Roger Green (ND State U.) and Robert Gordon (Auburn U.), who conducted a couple of "Allies" and "Advocates" workshops at UCSB, leading eventually to the formation of a staff/faculty group, "Men Advocating for Gender Equity," now in the process of organizing and planning its activities, which will include offering educational workshops for other groups of UCSB staff and faculty.
Let me begin by listing the book's table of contents in brief.
Part I: What Is This Thing Called Patriarchy? 1. Where Are We? (p. 3); 2. Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us (p. 27); 3. Why Patriarchy? (p. 51); 4. Ideology, Myth, and Magic: Femininity, Masculinity, and "Gender Roles" (p. 78); 5. Feminists and Feminism (p. 99).
Part II: Sustaining Illusions, Barriers to Change. 6. Thinking about Patriarchy: War, Sex, and Work (p. 133); 7. What Patriarchy? (p. 154); 8. It Must Be Women (p. 178).
Part III: Unraveling the Patriarchal Legacy. 9. Shame, Guilt, and Responsibility (p. 207); 10. Unraveling the Gender Knot (p. 224).
Appendix: Resources for Unraveling the Knot (p. 224); Notes (p. 259); Index (p. 283).
At first glance, a book on patriarchy, white privilege, and male privilege written by a white man may appear suspect. However, after reading the book, most reviewers I sampled on Amazon.com agreed that Johnson has done a decent job of defining/exposing the problems. One reviewer characterized it as "The best book on feminism for men"!
The gist of the book and all of its key top-level ideas appear in Chapter 1 and elaborated upon in subsequent chapters. So, in the following, I present 12 take-aways from the book's Chapter 1, a list which I compiled to share at a Zoom meeting of our staff/faculty group in July 2020.
01. Women & men know that there's inequity, but we don't know what to do with that knowledge w/o tightening the knot. [p. 5]
02. Privilege is any unearned advantage available to members of a social category that's systematically denied to others. [p. 5]
03. We are trapped inside a patriarchal legacy (promoting male privilege), a topic to which the entire Chapter 2 is devoted. [p. 5]
04. Four attributes of patriarchy: Male domination; Male identification; Male centeredness; Obsession with control [pp. 6-15]
05. Women's lack of control over their bodies, sexuality, marriage/divorce, education, and profession is a form of slavery [p. 15]
06. Patriarchy encourages men to accept male privilege and perpetuate women's oppression, if only through silence. [p. 17]
07. Hot-button issues, such as abortion, pornography, violence, can prevent us from focusing on the nature of patriarchy. [p. 18]
08. We go about our daily lives, without an ongoing awareness of the deep structures that define prevailing social terms. [p. 19]
09. Sexuality is an example of what society dictates, with many of us not questioning the fixed notions or digging deeper. [p. 20]
10. We should distinguish between the positions of women and men as groups and their experiences as individuals. [p. 22]
11. Patriarchies are male-dominated, even though most men may not feel dominant, especially in relation to other men. [p. 22]
12. Men do not have to feel cruel or malevolent toward women in order to participate in, and benefit from, patriarchy. [p. 25]
Here are elaborations on take-away point #04, which isn't as self-evident as the other items:
- Male domination: Positions of political, economic, legal, religious, and educational authority are generally reserved for men.
- Male identification: Core cultural ideas about what is good, desirable, preferable, or normal are tied to men and masculinity.
- Male centeredness: Focus of attention in news reports, movie subjects, and all else is primarily on men and what they do.
- Obsession with control: Men, seen as cool and collected, control women and anyone else who might threaten their privilege.
Let me end my review of this influential and highly-recommended book with a couple of quotes from the book.
On page 33, we read: "If a society is oppressive, then people who grow up and live in it will tend to accept, identify with, and participate in it as 'normal' and unremarkable life. ... When privilege and oppression are woven into the fabric of everyday life, we don't need to go out of our way to be overtly oppressive for a system of privilege to produce oppressive consequences, for, as Edmund Burke tells us, evil requires only that good people do nothing."
And on page 50, we read: "Ultimately, the choice is about empowering ourselves to take our share of responsibility for the patriarchal legacy that we've all inherited."
2020/07/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] COVID-19 fatality rate per 100,000 inhabitants: As of July 19, 2020, the US had the third-highest death rate in the world, ahead of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and Iran (source: Johns Hopkins University).
[Center] Virtual film discussion at UCSB: The two-part 2020 documentary "And She Could Be Next," currently running on PBS (it can also be streamed for free until August 29 on this Web site), will be discussed by director/producers Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia in a July 30, 7:00 PM PDT, Zoom session moderated by Wendy Eley Jackson (Film and Media Studies, UCSB). The event is free but prior registration is required. [Right] The rail route between China and Iran (see the last item below).
(2) The pot accusing the kettle: Ayatollah Khamenei scorns the US for the criminal act of separating children from their mothers, as moms languishing in Iranian prisons are denied visits from their minor children.
(3) Even zoo animals are kept in cages where they can tell day from night: Iran keeps many political prisoners in solitary confinement within tiny, windowless cells, where calls to prayers are their only markers of time.
(4) The new Birtherism: "Biden has dementia and can't pass a cognitive test." Repeat it often enough and it becomes a truth for Fox News audience and even sows doubts in non-Foxers!
(5) Don't get too excited about preliminary positive results from vaccine trials: Some positive results are expected from any vaccine that advances to the human-trial stage, or we wouldn't be doing the trial. The ultimate test of a new vaccine is how it performs in large-scale clinical trials, our ability to effectively produce and distribute it, and whether people accept it (remember that in the US, we have many anti-vaxxers).
(6) On the Iran-China cooperation deal: I have made several negative posts about the 25-year economic-security pact between Iran and China. It has been my sincere belief that the deal reeks of colonial pacts during Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, giving the country's resources and strategic assets to foreigners on the cheap. Seeing that Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Trump administration vehemently oppose the deal, has made me doubt the previous assertions. It was the US that pushed Iran toward Russia and China through its annulment of the nuclear deal and expansion of the economic sanctions that have created extreme hardships for the people of Iran. In a world governed by powerful nations, almost no nation with an economy the size of Iran can go it alone and not align itself with a major power. When alignment with the US was no longer an option, and relations with EU also faltered due to EU's internal discord and pressure from the US, Russia and China became the only options for military support (as Saudi Arabia is armed to the teeth) and economic stability.
2020/07/20 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Afro-Iranians: A taboo minority in Iran, because Iranians generally deny the existence of slavery in our history (Photo-essay) ("Asia by Africa") (Slavery in Qajar Iran). Many Iranians find it hard to accept that Iran had African slaves as recently as a century ago. Iran's parliament abolished slavery in 1929. The maps show slave-trading routes out of Africa, including the often-overlooked trade from east Africa, with destinations being Persia (18%) and Arabia/India (~50%). [Bottom row] Photos from this afternoon's stroll on UCSB's North Campus Open Space, including newly landscaped areas on the north side.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Int'l Chess Day: Unfortunately, like other human domains, racism pervades this cerebral activity.
- The judge whose husband & son were shot had just been assigned to probe Epstein & Deutsche Bank.
- The killer of judge Esther Salas (subject of the previous item) was found dead.
- A new record high for US dollar exchange rate in Iran: 1 US dollar = 1/4 million Iranian rials
- Emel Mathlouthi, voice of the Tunisian Revolution, sings a song based on the Persian "Soltan-e Ghalb-ha."
(3) Do not fret lack of accuracy in testing for COVID-19: There is much discussion on social media and news outlets about the imperfection of tests available for coronavirus infection. The worries are misguided. While tests may be imperfect for each individual, they work well at the community level. The ultimate goal in controlling the pandemic is to reduce the infections to ~5% of the population. This is achievable with an imperfect test and contact-tracing.
By the way, all tests, even those for well-known ailments, have false positives and false negatives, as illustrated in the accompanying diagram. There is often a trade-off between a test's sensitivity (performance in detecting positive cases) and specificity (avoiding false positives). In the diagram, the yellow blob represents the test. If you expand the blob to cover more of the true-positive cases (a larger fraction of the sick), it may also generate more false positives. A small false-positive fraction can lead to highly misleading results when the infection rate is low. If 95% of the population does not have the infection, a very-good specificity of 90% can produce more than twice as many false-positives as true-positives.
The following article provides a good introduction to the notions of sensitivity and specificity for medical tests.
K. J. van Stralen et al., "Diagnostic Methods I: Sensitivity, Specifity, and Other Measures of Accuracy," Kidney International, Vol. 75, No. 12, pp. 1257-1263, June 2009.
2020/07/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This is the dome of Middle East's largest caravanseria in Qazvin and these are Iranians oblivious to the need for protecting a priceless relic of their cultural heritage. [Center] Artists opine about face masks. [Right] Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach, this afternoon: The ocean was quite choppy, and the bluest ever (video). My daughter and I walked there, before going to UCSB's North Campus Open Space.
(2) Iran repairs Qare Kelisa (Black Church), world's first-ever church, built on the tomb of Saint Thaddeus in West Azerbaijan. The original church was black (reminiscent of a 1000-year-old black church I visited in Armenia during 2018), with the white structure seen in the photo within this report added in 1810.
(3) Celebrating my 200th invited lecture: Later this year, the number of my technical lectures will reach 200. Here's the list of lectures, updated with recent and upcoming events, should you be interested in details.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Chris Wallace holds his own during today's Fox News interview, in the face of shameless lies from Trump.
- Joe Biden's VP may transform a constitutionally-insignificant office into a force for change in the US.
- Sen. Marco Rubio honors Rep. John Lewis: But he includes a photo with a different Black Congressman!
- Neuroscientists identify a small number of brain cells that help humans adapt to change.
- Who makes Costco's Kirkland-brand products? The answers might surprise you.
- A dialog, in Persian, with Mahshid Amirshahi, a novelist whose writings are banned in Iran.
- Signs of cultural decay in Iran, from the educational system to economic policies.
[Video, in Persian]
- Close your eyes and try to convince your mind that you're hearing an 8-year-old harpist. [6-minute video]
(5) Competing conspiracy theories: Many recent fires in French churches, including the latest at Nantes, have fueled conspiracy theories on both sides, with the media refusing to cover the events and some claiming that attributing the fires to electrical problems is a cover-up effort.
(6) Final thought for the day: Much has been made of Trump's incompetence in running the country. I think, however, that lack of empathy, that is, not giving a hoot about anyone but himself, is an even bigger vice.
2020/07/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Civil-rights icon and long-time Georgia Congressman John Lewis dead at 80 of pancreatic cancer. [Top center] The Poser: Artists install living statues of Donald Trump in Washington, DC. [Top right] Yes, Jeffrey Epstein was photographed with other celebrities, but this photo conveys a special friendship. [Bottom left] New Yorker cartoon: The origins of White House's "Don't let science stand in the way!" proclamation. [Bottom center] My forthcoming invited talk (in English): Speaking for the Seattle Chapter of Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA), I will discuss "Recursive Methods for Synthesizing Digital Circuits" on Tuesday, July 28, 2020, 7:00 PM PDT (Zoom link). [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon: "Ask your doctor if taking a pill to solve all your problems in right for you."
(2) Shaming campaigns work: Executions of three young men may be halted by Iran, following a worldwide social-media campaign, but at at least 7 other executions have occurred in recent days. [#NoToExecutions]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Chris Wallace fact-checks Trump, but facts have never deterred Trump from repeating false claims.
- Decades after people of Behbahan, Iran, fought Saddam's army, they face Khamenei's security forces.
- Iran repairs Qare Kelisa, worlds first church, built on the tomb of Saint Thaddeus in West Azerbaijan.
- Humor: Al Capone went to jail for tax fraud, not for his many violent crimes. Take a look at his tax returns.
(4) The academy is collapsing: Writing in the June 2020 issue of IEEE Computer magazine, Hal Berghel sees ominous clouds on the academic horizon. State support of public universities has been eroding, so that they are now "public" in name only, as they charge exorbitant tuitions. The erosion will get worse in the aftermath of the pandemic. Emphasis on fundraising has made professional administrators rather than professors the faces of our universities. A side effect is that "performance-based" funding, using misguided indicators, has brought bean-counting to curriculum assessment. In the domain of research, the sloppily-prepared Bayh-Doleful Act, which was rushed through the Congress in 1980 allegedly to facilitate technology-transfer to the private sector, has not benefited universities as much of corporations exploiting the monopolistic value of exclusive licenses.
[P.S.: Chancellor Henry Yang has just warned UCSB's faculty and staff about hard times ahead. Previously-appropriated budget increases will be reversed and an actual budget cut is in the works, which will no doubt affect salaries (forming the bulk of our operating budget). And these cuts will be compounded by other revenue losses and rising expenses due to the pandemic.]
2020/07/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] My walk of last evening along UCSB's West Campus bluffs, Goleta's Devereux Slough, and UCSB West Campus faculty housing complex. And here is a 1-minute video taken at the West Campus stairs, looking toward Coal Oil Point and Platform Holly, during high tide. [Bottom left] Abbasali (Mehdi) Katiraei, our beloved class-of-1968 friend from Tehran University's College of Engineering (Fanni) has passed away in Iran: Sincere condolences to his wife Nahid and children Nariman, Nikoo, and Kamran. [Bottom center & right] Tehran history: "Karaj Water," as it was known a century ago, today's "Keshavarz Blvd." bore the names "Karaj Blvd." and "(Queen) Elizabeth Blvd." over the years. Sadd-e Karaj High School, which I attended from 1958 to 1963, was on this very wide street, with its tree-lined median stream a favorite picnic spot.
(2) NASA and ESA release the closest pictures ever of the sun: Taken by the joint US-Europe Solar Orbiter, these amazing images will help scientists piece together the sun's atmospheric layers and understand how it drives space weather near the Earth and throughout the solar system.
(3) Hollywood goes "big data": Film-industry tech companies are developing data-driven tools to help producers with generating and refining content that captures and retains audiences. The industry relies on a continuous feedback loop of recommendation algorithms, viewing-habit trackers, and studio production teams to sustain audience interest.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Emulating Iran: US federal agents in civilian clothes and unmarked cars grab people in Portland.
- Chris Wallace of Fox News, whom Trump has called "nasty" and "obnoxious," will interview him on 7/19.
- Louisiana's Democratic governor calls for three days of fasting and lunchtime prayers over COVID!
- IBM stands against stigmatizing America's Asian community and has also urged Trump not to end DACA.
- Shamefully lax security on Twitter: Hacker used Twitter's "Admin" tool to spread cryptocurrency scam.
- Launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed from next March to October 31, 2021.
- Diversity in AI workforce is crucial to the industry's health and to ensuring that the resuls benefit everyone.
- Persian music: Kayhan Kalhor & Yo-Yo Ma play the classic song "Morgh-e Sahar" on kamancheh & cello.
(5) Math puzzle: Three people, A, B, and C, can do a job at different, fixed rates. A and B, working together, can do the job in 2 hours. A and C can do it in 3 hours. B and C can do it in 4 hours. How long would the three of them, working together, would need to complete the job? We are, of course, assuming that the job is perfectly divisible among any number of participants.
(6) Final thought for the day: "If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." ~ Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (quote used by Mary Trump to open her just-released book on the Trump family, Too Much and Never Enough
2020/07/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Statue of a female protester replaces that of a 17th-century slave trader. [Center] Throwback Thursday: Fifty-one years ago, in spring of 1969, I was in Washington DC studying English with an old friend, Djamshid Farivar, in preparation for attending graduate school, I at Oregon State and he at Penn State, that fall. Djamshid and I parted ways, never to see each other again ... until Tuesday, July 14, 2020, when I attended his Zoom presentation on cosmology to a group of civil-engineering graduates of Tehran University's College of Engineering. [Right] As Americans continue to die, feel down, and suffer serious economic hardship from COVID-19, our clueless President is all smiles while posing with cans of beans and other food products on "the resolute desk" in the Oval Office!
(2) "West Side Story" re-imagined: The new, updated production of what was itself a retelling of "Romeo and Juliet" uses the same music but changes the dance movements to what today's young people can identify with. It also uses high-tech to project images on the set. [14-minute segment from CBS News' "60 Minutes"]
(3) Trump administration's attempt at limiting international students at US colleges shape-shifts: Now, ICE wants to ban visas for new students if the colleges they will attend go fully on-line. Harvard and MIT are ready to challenge the directive's new version, as they did successfully with the original version.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russian state hackers tried to steal research data on COVID-19 vaccine development.
- Harvard's Steven Pinker is criticized in a letter signed by 550 linguists for insensitivity to racial justice.
- Multilingual message of togetherness and hope: Musical ode to coronavirus.
- Humor: This 9-second video clip is reminiscent of Persian Mullah Nasreddin stories.
- Kurdish dance music: 10-minute audio file.
- A mullah recites his humorous Persian poem, criticizing Iran's officials and regime.
(5) Local statue removal: Ventura City Council voted unanimously to move statues of Junipero Serra, the man who erected California's missions and decimated the area's Native-American culture, from public spaces to inside a mission. [Photo]
(6) Final thought for the day: Some Republicans squirmed when Trump turned a White House briefing into an incoherent campaign rant, but they are too deep in this sh*t to turn back now. Like a losing poker player, down to the last few chips, they continue to bluff, with foolish hopes.
2020/07/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) My IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Offered today via Zoom to 16 participants, the talk, entitled "Recursive Synthesis of Digital Circuits: Advantages and Examples," covered the role and benefits of recursion in hardware design via a well-known example (FFT networks), a lesser-known strategy (recursive multipliers & squarers), and a new class of circuits (counting networks). [IEEE CCS event page] [FB post] [Tweet]
(2) UCSB Arts & Lectures hosts free summer films under the stars: Screened Wednesday nights at 8:30 (Goleta's West Wind Drive-in, July 15 to August 19) and featuring food trucks, the 6-week series consists of family-friendly sports films.
(3) The Iranian-American diaspora & the Black Lives Matter movement: A discussion by Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Ali Akbar Mahdi, and Dr. Touraj Daryaee, moderated by Dr. Annahita Mahdavi (Wednesday, July 22, 2020, 4:00-5:00 PM PDT; free with registration).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hospitals ordered to bypass CDC and send coronavirus-related data to Trump administration.
- Reposting from July 15, 2018: Video from Fanni friends' 50th graduation anniversary gathering in Yerevan.
- A new girls' high school in northeast Iran is named in honor of the late mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani.
- Perry Mason, the pioneering TV law series and a favorite of mine during my youth, is coming back to HBO.
(5) Hashtags denouncing executions in Iran are trending: Masih Alinejad urges the media not to cover the violent reaction and mud-slinging of Iranian mullahs and their supporters in the name of equal time and freedom of speech for "the other side" of #StopExecutionsInIran. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who is an avid supporter of death penalty in the US and who has never uttered a word against waves of executions in China, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, suddenly feels for three death-row inmates in Iran. Don't fall for this charlatan's crocodile tears! #NoToExecution #SaeedTamjidi #AmirHosseinMoradi #MohammadRajabi
(6) Journalist Ruhollah Zam "confesses" to his crimes on Iranian state TV: "Interviewed" by a Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence officer, Zam was told that the Guards had hacked and taken over his Amad News Telegram Channel, causing fear among his followers. Zam is on death row, so the Guards/judiciary/state-TV unholy alliance must have promised to spare his life if he confessed. On social media, observers are comparing this method to that of ISIS butchers, who used to bring Westerners to read prepared texts in front of cameras, assuring them that their sins will be forgiven, only to utterly surprise them with an on-screen beheading.
2020/07/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] New Yorker cartoon: Disney World grand re-opening, with spectacular coronaworks every night! [Center] Der Spiegel (Germany) cover image [Right] Math puzzle: The sides of a square are divided into three equal parts and line segments are drawn to an interior point as shown. The areas of some of the resulting regions are given and the area of the one marked with "??" is sought.
(2) Visa restrictions withdrawn: As predicted by many, ICE and Trump administration back off from the threat of visa revocation for international students whose college campuses opt for on-line-only instruction during the coming academic year. Just another shiny object to distract from the dismal COVID-19 response!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump turns today's WH briefing into a campaign rally, bashing his opponents in a 63-minute monologue.
- A new low for our country: Trump openly blackmails an unnamed Senator who is "on the other side."
- Jeff Sessions, a Senator before becoming Trump's AG loses his primary bid to run for his old Senate seat.
- Three young lives are in danger of being taken by Iran's justice system to induce fear in other protesters.
(4) The mathematics of mass-testing for COVID-19: Imagine if we could test every American once every 2 weeks, asking those who test positive to self-isolate and letting the rest of the economy function as usual. According to Nobel-Laureate economist Paul Romer's simulations, this technique will keep the population's active infection rate below 5%, ensure that most people do not get infected, and spur rapid economic recovery. The requirement of testing 7% of the US population per day is unrealistic, given that only 4% of the population was tested in the 3-month period March-May 2020. Enter mathematical/statistical methods that allow dozens of patients to be pooled and cleared, in most cases, with a single test. Mathematicians are busy developing even more efficient test strategies to have a given number of tests reveal more information.
(5) Musings on acupuncture: Acupuncture, an organized system of diagnosis and treatment using needles, is at least 2000 years old, but in recent history, it was brought back from near-oblivion by China's communist regime as low-cost healthcare for the masses; what one might call "Maocare." One modern interpretation of the practice is that it works through neurohormonal pathways. You put needles through specific points in the body, stimulating nerves, which then send signals to the brain. In response, the brain releases (more accurately, commands the pituitary gland to release) hormones, such as beta-endorphines, causing euphoric feelings and increasing the pain threshold. Another hypothesis is that acupuncture works by reducing pro-inflammatory markers, or proteins, in the body. One can see from a scientific standpoint how acupuncture may help in treating pain, but believing that it helps cure other maladies requires a leap of faith. Side effects of acupuncture include soreness, minor bleeding, interference with pacemakers, and stimulating labor in pregnant women.
2020/07/13 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Making progress, but the nose should be covered too! [Top center] Accidental progress toward climate goals: CO2 emissions are projected to drop 7% in 2020, but this is far from adequate for meeting climate goals, especially given that it comes with much economic damage whose repair will create even more emissions. [Top right] Remembering her name: Giant portrait of Breonna Taylor painted in support of #BlackLivesMatter. [Bottom left] A physics puzzle (said to have been an Amazon interview question): A cable of length 80 m is hanging between the tops of two poles of height 50 m. What is the distance between the poles if the center of the cable is 10 m above the ground? Once you answer the interview question, take the center of the cable to be 20 m above the ground and solve the more-challenging physics problem that results. [Bottom center] One of the most-crowded freeway interchanges in Los Angeles (guess where?) was nearly deserted on April 24, 2020 (photo from Time magazine). [Bottom right] Iran's soutern-border wall: Artist's conception of Iran conceding the Persian Gulf and other resources in southern Iran to China.
(2) All Muslims not created equal from Iran's perspective: Palestinians are defended and Israel is condemned, whereas the detention & forced "re-education" of Uighur Muslims are ignored and China is praised & rewarded. [This old article has become relevant again in view of Iran's 25-year economic-military pact with China.]
(3) Not a remedy, but a positive step nonetheless: Belgium's King Philippe expresses his "deepest regrets for the wounds of the past" to the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a former Belgian colony.
(4) Teachers' unions and education advocates are determined to oppose politicians who want to use our children and their teachers as poker chips to win political points.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The White House tries to smear Dr. Anthony Fauci because of his open disagreements with Trump.
- Mental health experts express their opinions on Donald Trump and his fitness to serve as US President.
- Sunset on a hazy evening at Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach, yesterday 7/12. [Photos]
- We have mapped 99% of the surface of Mars but only 19% of Earth's ocean floor. [Source: Time magazine]
(6) The UN virtual leadership summit for young women, "Girl Up," starts today at 10:00 AM EDT and runs until July 15: Keynote speakers include Michelle Obama and Meghan Markle.
(7) Another Great Wall: Pre-dating China's Great Wall by hundreds of years, the Great Wall of Gorgan, in northern Iran, extended 155 km along an irrigation canal, which doubled as a moat, with the aim of defending the economically-important region from huns roaming to the north.
[Text and 11-minute video]
2020/07/12 (Sunday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Zomorodi, Manoush, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self, unabridged MP audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The average American spends 3 hours a day on his/her smartphone and 11 hours a day in front of a screen. Zomorodi, who hosted WNYC's podcast and radio show "Note to Self," led thousands of listeners through an experiment in 2015 to help them unplug from their devices. This book builds up on that experiment to show that getting bored is a prerequisite for creativity. Zomorodi does not advocate totally abandoning our devices. Rather, she aims to help us unplug long enough to give our faculties a chance to breathe and create.
In way of examples, many experimental settings have been tried for children's use of electronics, spanning a range from total ban on devices to a free-for-all attitude. A total ban on devices is nearly impractical in today's highly-connected world. A youth summer camp, that took devices away for only the first week, to allow attendees to interact more-intensely and get to know one another, achieved excellent results in the sense of the participants voluntarily limiting their device use after the first week.
Bored and Brilliant is one of numerous new books that use results from neuroscience and cognitive-psychology studies that have mapped out our brain's functioning when we engage in various activities or when we do nothing. The latter part of the brain, dubbed the default-mode network, which is active during daydreaming and mind-wandering, holds the key to creativity. Unfortunately, this vital part of the brain virtually shuts down when we use our brain's goal-oriented attention networks. Disruptions in the default-mode network have been observed in people with Alzheimer's or autism-spectrum disorders.
On the negative side, there isn't much new information in this book for those who have kept up with extensive media reports on modern society's addiction to electronic gadgets (yes, devices and their apps are addictive, and purposefully so). But Zomorodi does a good job of putting all the pieces of research together in an absorbing and convincing way. She also describes her 7-step challenge that helps readers/listeners adjust their priorities to deal with device addiction.
[Author's 1-hour interview during her 2017 book launch]
(2) Book review: Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (10th Anniversary Edition) unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Karen Chilton, Recorded Books, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Since its publication in 2010, The New Jim Crow has influenced criminal-justice reform, judicial decisions, and community discussions. For the book's special tenth-anniversary edition, Alexander has written a new preface, assessing the book's impact and the current state of the criminal-justice reform in the US. She notes in the new preface that incarcerating immigrants is simply a new form of the same mindset that marginalizes Blacks.
Let me put forth the book's negative attributes at the outset, so that I can then focus on the many positive aspects. Alexander's writing is redundant and repetitive. The same ideas appear, with slightly different wordings, in many different parts of the book. Countless examples are given, where a couple would do. The space taken up by these redundancies, and presenting close-ups of many individual trees that obfuscate a long-shot view of the forest, could have been better used for developing the arguments further and avoiding hand-waving and overly-general statements.
As I listened to the audiobook, I was left with the impression that many of the examples are presented with lots of details around some aspects and not enough for others. This feeling was reinforced after I came upon Ryan Bert's 2-star review of the book on Amazon.com. Bert maintains that Alexander's description of President Bill Clinton as a closeted racist is unfair and inaccurate. Alexander faults Clinton for attending the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, "a mentally impaired black man," while he was Governor of Arkansas and a presidential candidate. Bert presents details of Rector's crimes: Killing a man and injuring several others in an altercation with a bar bouncer, then killing a cop he knew since childhood, who went to his house with the expectation that he would surrender to authorities. Rector was not mentally impaired at the time. The self-inflicted impairment came when he tried to commit suicide by putting a bullet through his own head and surviving the attempt.
Now, on to the positive attributes of the book. Alexander's central argument is that racial caste has merely shape-shifted in America, as reflected in the following diagram:
Slavery -----> Jim Crow -----> Mass incarceration
Today's control and marginalization of blacks occurs within the prison system and, with the help of high-tech, outside of it for parolees and those returning to society after serving time.
Jim Crow refers to an American song & dance from 1828 whose name was used to describe racial-segregation laws passed at the end of the 19th century. These laws remained in effect and were broadly enforced until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Alexander uses "mass incarceration" (further incentivized by a privatized prison system) as the set of criminal-justice mechanisms that lead to permanent marginalization of disadvantaged communities. Even non-violent offenders who have served prison sentences face permanent restrictions in life and work and a lifetime of shame and stigma.
The danger of marginalized Blacks, forming a permanent underclass, uniting with underclass Whites to demand change, was recognized early on, leading to two preventive strategies. One was to feed underclass Whites the narrative that they are superior to Blacks (White supremacy). The other was to recognize Blacks who rose to elite status on their own or with help from elite Whites as tokens to support the claim that systemic racism does not exist. The following chart shows the main parts of the resulting caste system.
Elite Whites
/ \
/ \
Underclass Whites Elite Blacks
\ /
\ /
Underclass Blacks
Evidence of unconscious racism has been piling up. In one study, participants were told to close their eyes and imagine a drug user. When asked to describe the person they imagined, 95% described a Black person, whereas only 15% of drug users were Black at the time (and now). In another study, participants were shown a number of individuals, standing in front of a variety of backgrounds, holding various objects (guns, cell phones, wallets) and asked to decide quickly whether they would shoot the person in self-defense. The result was that many unarmed Black men would be shot and quite a few White individuals holding guns would not be.
The point is sometimes raised that Blacks are most-often killed by other Blacks as proof that racism isn't at work. There is, however, the inconvenient truth that a murderer killing a White person is five times more likely to be sentenced to death as someone killing a Black person. Our prisons being disproportionately filled with Black and Brown people could be simply due to the fact that they commit more crimes, but numerous studies have shown that colored people are disproportionately targeted and arrested for drug and other offenses.
Why are so many Black and Brown people charged with drug offenses, despite the predominance of white offenders? Here is one explanation. Poor Black youth live in cramped households and have no access to private spaces, so their drug offenses (dealings and use) occur in public spaces, such as street corners and parks, in full view of everyone, including the police. These are areas that the police targets in drug raids, because they will be deemed more efficient by netting more arrests for a given level of resource deployment.
When the Reagan administration endowed the police with the authority to seize property (cars, wallets, houses, ...) during drug raids, keeping the money for their district, an incentive was created that has led to many illegal seizures, even when no charges are eventually filed. Black victims of such inappropriate property seizures are less likely to sue for the return of their property, given lack of access to legal representation.
I was drawn to reading this book as a result of nationwide outrage over police brutality, that had been building up for decades, reaching a boiling point when a Black man, George Floyd, was choked to death by a White cop kneeling on his neck for several minutes, while ignoring his repeated pleas that he couldn't breathe. Police brutality occurs in all communities, but it is particularly prevalent in Black communities, hence the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The shortcomings cited at the beginning of my review notwithstanding, The New Jim Crow is a must-read for all Americans.
(3) Book review: Newport, Cal, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author and Will Damron, Penguin Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This review comes on the heels of my 4-star review of Manoush Zomorodi's Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self. The main difference between the two books is that Zomorodi (a fun-loving reporter and technology commentator) is a tech buff who just wants to prevent it from taking over our lives, so she aims to reduce the dose of our addiction, whereas Newport (Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, who, among other things, has suggested that people should ignore the "follow your passion" advice) opts for more extreme recommendations. Both authors advocate taking a backward approach: Identifying life elements that matter to us and then seeing how technology can serve to improve those elements. In other words, use technology to support your goals and values, rather than letting it take over your life.
Warnings about the ill effects of "new technology" on our lives have been with us for centuries: Writing doing irreparable harm to the spoken language (Plato), the typewriter destroying the essence of writing (Heidegger), and TV as the enemy of contemplation (Thomas Merton); many more examples exist. The main difference between the latter misguided predictions and today's takeover of our lives by digital gadgets is the level of addiction caused by devices and apps, mostly by design.
Newport shows us how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media and take more pleasure in the off-line world. He suggests a 30-day digital decluttering process that has proved successful in making participants feel less overwhelmed and more in control. He uses the word "decluttering" deliberately and warns against viewing the process as "detoxing." The latter, exemplified by disabling all notifications for a period of time, may not be sustainable in the long run, leading to a return-to-normal bounce at the end of the detox period.
Part of decluttering is avoiding apps that produce only minor improvements and conveniences in our lives, focusing instead on those we cannot live without. Avoiding perpetual distractions is another sound advice. Some digital minimalists remove all social-media apps from their phones and opt to use them only on their laptops, at designated times.
A surprising fact I learned from this book is that the Amish (and Mennonites) aren't tech-hating groups; they do use tech in ways that promote their independent, sustainable lifestyles, after a trial period in which their leaders experiment with a particular technology. For example, they do use electricity, but opt for solar cells, diesel-generators, and batteries, instead of connecting to the grid.
I had previously read Newport's Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (my 4-star review on GoodReads). The two books have a great deal of overlap, because a prerequisite for doing deep work is minimizing distractions. I recommend both books, but I think Deep Work is the more important title of the two.
2020/07/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The iconic Hagia Sofia: Beginning as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, it was turned into a mosque and, eventually, a museum and a World Heritage Site. Now, Turkey is turning it back into a mosque, against public outcry. [Top center] It's sad that a nation of immigrants seizing this land by force must be reminded that there are only four categories of Americans! [Top right] Climbing Mount Everest: From a National Geographic story about the search for a lost camera which may hold much valuable information. [Bottom left] Uncle Sam has another fight against a reconstituted and increasingly-deranged "Alt-Right" on his hands! [Bottom center] We sell arms to the Saudis, and they, in return, continue to preach hate in their textbooks against women, Jews, Christians, and the West in general. [Bottom right] A worrisome, but fitting, image: US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaking, with the background of a bookcase holding no books.
(2) Constitutional violation: Trump has threatened to have universities' tax-exempt status revoked based on the contents of their curricula. He just doesn't like educated people. Where are the freedom-of-speech, federal-government-out-of-our-affairs, and states-rights Republicans?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mob rule: Trump commutes the prison sentence of his long-time associate and friend Roger Stone.
- The lone Republican Senator calling out Trump for commuting the sentence of his partner in crime.
- Why is everyone so nasty to you, Donald? I suggest you have someone read your tweets back to you!
- Observation: Harvard, charging $57K/year, now tries to compete with free and low-cost streaming services!
- An incredible chain reaction involving 250,000 dominoes. [15-minute video]
- Persian music: Santur solo, followed by a santur-tombak rhythmic tune. Enjoy! [7-minute video]
(4) My keynote talk in early November: I will present a keynote talk, entitled "Hybrid Digital-Analog Number Representation in Computing and in Nature," at the 11th Annual IEEE Information Technology, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference (IEMCON), this year being held virtually during November 4-7, 2020.
(5) My invited talk later this month: I will be presenting a remote talk entitled "Recursive Synthesis of Counting Networks" for Sharif University of Technology's Algorithms Group, within the Computer Engineering Department, on Friday, July 31, 2020, 11:30 PM PDT (Saturday, August 1, 11:00 AM Tehran time). Attendance is free to all interested parties (enter the talk site as a guest).
2020/07/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Mathematical puzzles (the first one is the most-challenging): [Top left] Inside a 10-by-10 square, draw two semi-circles and a quarter-circle, as shown. Calculate the area colored in red. [Top right] We have a semi-circle of radius a inside a rectangle and a smaller circle of radius b. What is the ratio a/b? [Bottom left] Related to the next puzzle: Each of the four squares shown inside the circle has a side length of 2. What is the radius of the circle? [Bottom center] Find the radius of the circle in terms of the lengths a, b, and c. [Bottom right] Build a smaller blue square inside a 3-by-3 square as shown. What fraction of the area of the big square is blue?
(2) Gaslighting, pure and simple: Trump's linking of the rise in COVID-19 cases in the US to more/better testing is deliberate disinformation. Every health official around him admits we need more testing.
(3) California becomes the first state to join universities, including Harvard and MIT, in suing the Trump administration over its directive on international students losing their visas if universities go fully virtual.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Pretending to be dumb, or actually being dumb, on schools re-opening? The outcome is the same for us!
- "They whisper about you": Lincoln Project ad tells Trump that his entire inner circle is against him!
- Post-Trump Republican Party is being shaped: Much gaslighting is needed to explain the last four years.
- These tweets explain why Trump thinks he is a multi-billionaire: He is worth at least $10 billionth!
- Reality-show host overrules epidemiologists on the COVID-19 pandemic, and Republicans cheer!
- Mars month: Three Mars missions, by the US, UAE, and China, will be launching in July 2020.
(5) A metaphor for small problems, when ignored, snowballing into major challenges: Each domino can knock over another one that is 1.5 times as large. Starting with a tiny domino of height 0.5 cm, the height of the 29th domino will be 0.005((1.5)^28) ~ 426 m, which is taller than the Empire State Building (381 m)! [Video]
(6) Ethics in AI: A survey by the software firm Anaconda found that only 15% of instructors are teaching ethical considerations in AI and only 18% of data-science students say thay are learning about ethics.
(7) Deep-fake technology's positive side: Documentary filmmaker David France uses deep-fake technology in his HBO film "Welcome to Chechnya" to shield the identities of at-risk gay and lesbian Chechens fleeing the region, while maintaining an emotional connection with viewers.
2020/07/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today, I pitched two books as possible choices for "UCSB Reads 2021" program. The first book, Jennifer L. Eberhardt's Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, is about unconscious bias ingrained in all of us by our evolutionary path and our surrounding social fabric. A 2014 MacArthur "Genius Award" recipient, Eberhardt is a leading social-psychologist at Stanford, who produces top-notch scientific work and, as a black woman, has first-hand knowledge of the prevalence and impact of unconscious bias. Here is the author's 4-minute introduction to her book. [Center] My second pitch for "UCSB Reads 2021" program is Caroline Criado-Perez's Invisible Women, for which I have posted a 5-star review on GoodReads. [Right] On the nature of complicity (see the next item below).
(2) History will judge the complicit: Writing in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum (best-known for her writings on the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries) scorns Republicans such as Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney, who "were devoted to America's democratic traditions and to the ideals of honesty," for supporting and enabling Trump's "America First" agenda, which really meant "me and my friends first." While Romney partly redeemed himself, Graham sank deeper and deeper into making excuses for Trump's abuse of power.
(3) One day, Republicans who chose Trump over America will come to you and tell you that they can repair the damage done by Trump: Remember their names, remember their actions, and never, ever, trust them again.
(4) An honest and uncensored Iranian social documentary: Shiraz-based photographer Maryam Nematollahi captures the lives of female students living in dormitories.
(5) Iran tries to solve its housing problem by building micro-homes: At 25 square meters (~270 square feet) each, the planned homes have estimated prices that still put them out of reach of most Iranians.
(6) Khomeini criticizing the late Shah: "He left people in poverty and despair, even in areas where they lived atop vast reservoirs of oil." The words in this 2-minute clip are more applicable to Iran's Islamic regime!
(7) "Facts of Life": If you don't mind scrolling through an annoying number of ads, you might enjoy seeing how Eve Plumb and other "Facts of Life" actors look like today.
(8) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: I will be speaking under the title "Recursive Synthesis of Digital Circuits: Advantages and Examples" (Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 6:30 PM PDT). Free event with registration.
(9) Final thought for the day: People of Yazd, Iran, convey celebratory messages on the anniversary of their city being registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
2020/07/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Santa Barbara downtown architecture, photographed during my long walk on Monday. [Bottom left] Santa Barbara downtown restaurants/cafes have taken over much of State Street, now closed to vehicle traffic: The scene, photographed on Monday, is sad and refreshing at the same time. Sad, because the normally-bustling State Street is reduced to a fraction of its foot traffic, despite the new pedestrian-friendly changes. Refreshing, because the city is adapting to changes forced upon us by the pandemic and is making the best of a terrible situation. [Bottom center] Santa Barbara downtown parks, photographed during my long walk on Monday. [Bottom right] Plus ca change ... (The more things change ...): A culture built on servitude and idol worship will never achieve greatness. (Repost from July 8, 2019)
(2) Capitulation: Iran grants major concessions to China in a leaked draft document entitled "Iran-China Comprehensive Partnership." Among the provisions are Iran's commitment to supplying China with oil for 25 years, while giving China veto power over how it spends the revenues.
(3) US Major League Soccer games are back: The teams will play a World-Cup-style tournament, with round-robin group stage followed by a knock-out stage, in Orlando's Disney World, over the next few weeks.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iranian civil-rights activist Atena Daemi's prison sentence extended on the day she was to be released.
- The devastating social cost of paying 27 cents less for a Big Mac at McDonald's. [Meme]
- Persian music: Wonderful performance of "Mast-e Eshgh" ("Drunk on Love") at a music store.
- Word puzzle: Transform APE to MAN, changing only one letter in each step to form common English words.
(5) Michael V. Drake, MD, named the 21st University of California President, replacing Janet Napolitano, who is stepping down: Formerly President of Ohio State University (2014-2020) and Chancellor of UC Irvine (2005-2014), Dr. Drake has served as a faculty member at UCSF's School of Medicine for over 2 decades and as UC Systemwide VP for Health Affairs for 5 years. He is the first person of color to become UC President.
(6) UC and UCSB stand by our international students: "The University of California recognizes that our country benefits when the world's brightest students and academics learn, teach and research on our shores. International students provide unique contributions that enrich our campuses and their perspectives ensure that we continue to be a leading academic force around the world. Making it more difficult for international students to study here undermines decades of collaboration between the United States and our international partners, particularly in fields that contribute to America's economic vitality." [UC's full statement]
2020/07/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ahead of his time: Virologist Nathan Wolfe proposed an ingenious plan to insure businesses against economic fallout of a global pandemic. [Top center] Newsweek magazine devotes its latest issue to a global reckoning on race and to companies stepping up to confront the coronavirus pandemic. [Top right] Shannon LaNier, a TV host in Houston, is pictured in a photo in Smithsonian Magazine alongside his direct ancestor, Thomas Jefferson. [Bottom left & right] A rather unconventional breakfast and a yummy fruit plate for snacking. [Bottom center] Barack Obama's White House portrait: The petulant child in the WH seems to have no intention of unveiling the former president's portrait, a tradition going back four decades.
(2) Iranian women can be their own worst enemies: Following requests by some women parliamentarians to be represented in committee leadership positions, MP Somayyeh Mohammadi opined that women should focus on having kids and attending to household chores. Why then, one might ask, is she in the Majlis herself?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Some "fine person" drove a car through Seattle protesters, killing one and seriously injuring another.
- How do you crop someone out of a photo "by mistake," as Fox News claims to have done? [Image]
- Apparently, Disney's Pluto was also connected to Epstein's child-sex ring! [Photo]
- Humor: Mount Rushmore, after Trump's July 4th event there. [Image]
- The child-labor aspect of this video is sad, but the talent and skill in tiling are amazing!
- Teen enters her coronavirus-themed prom dress, made of duct tape, into a scholarship competition.
(4) Racism is ingrained in our culture and language: Everyday words and phrases that we use without much thought reek of racism: Master bedroom/bathroom; Master/Slave components (in computing); Blacklisting; Blackballing; Cakewalk (a type of plantation dance); Lynch mob.
(5) International students at US colleges may lose their visas: New ICE orders indicate that international students would lose their student visas if the colleges they attend operate fully on-line during fall 2020. This will be VERY disruptive at UCSB and other research universities whose teaching and research functions are heavily dependent on international students. Our College of Engineering and campus are hard at work, in cooperation with UC President's Office, to seek clarifications from the US State Department and other federal agencies over the next couple of days, but like most recent orders coming from the Trump administration, no one understands the rules and the intentions behind them. I hope this isn't a ploy to force universities to re-open in-person classes before it is safe to do so. Many faculty members are thinking of offering in-person independent-study courses to circumvent the restrictions, in case they actually go into effect.
2020/07/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Hear no evil: New mask for Republicans who don't want to hear anything about the raging pandemic and its death toll. [Top center] Persian poetry: Let's opt for compassion, equality, and justice for all genders and races. [Top right] Michigan vs. Florida: Competent, caring governor versus shoot-from-the-hip Trump crony. [Bottom left] Is this why Trump calls the coronavirus pandemic "Kung Flu"? [Bottom center] Mount Touchmore, a monument celebrating sexual predators, planned for Donald Trump's second term! [Bottom right] Trump to Putin: "When you have a minute let's talk about November."
(2) Home repairs: Sixteen months after reporting a crack in my master-bedroom wall resulting from a glaring construction defect to the homeowners' association, the first phase of repair has been completed, with texturing and painting to be done in the coming week. One year of the delay was due to dereliction of duty on the management company's part and four months were added by the coronavirus pandemic. [Photo]
(3) Life where no one expects it: Dubbed "extreme life," tiny creatures living in remnants of an ancient ocean at the bottom of deep South-African gold mines provide clues on what life on Mars, if it exists, might look like.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Anti-Trump Republicans, who got steamrolled in 2016, aim for better organization this year.
- Japan flooding: The country braces for more rain, as the death toll from flooding rises to at least 37.
- Legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone, best-known for his spaghetti-Western scores, dead at 91.
- A white guy sings a Bruno Mars funk tune to mostly-empty seats at White House's July 4th celebration.
- Iran's most-important uranium enrichment site suffered significant damage from an "accident."
- Boeing to retire its iconic 747 jumbo-jet, the workhorse of many long-haul flights across the globe.
(5) Inflation-adjusted non-defense R&D spending by the US government fell during the 2010-2019 decade, even as the country enjoyed the longest economic expansion in history.
(6) Isolated shootings at protest sites may devolve into a full-scale race war if POTUS continues to characterize those who demand racial justice as extreme-leftists and anarchists to his gun-toting supporters.
(7) Yet another Trump enabler: Though not brave enough to directly dispute Trump's false claims that 99% of coronavirus infections are harmless and that vaccines/therapeutics will become available way before the end of the year, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn did so by dodging the questions.
(8) Repeating from 5 years ago, today: Remember that separation of religion and state does not only protect civil liberties and social institutions from theocratic dogma; it also protects religion from secular politicization.
2020/07/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Highlights from IEEE Spectrum magazine, July 2020: [Left] How air-conditioning came about: In 1902, Willis Haviland Carrier (1876-1950) was asked to help improve production quality and worker productivity in a color-printing factory in Brooklyn, NY, by keeping the temperature at 27 Celsius and relative humidity at 55%. He used cold well water for half of the cooling and mechanical refrigeration based on evaporative cooling for the other half. [Center] Cover feature on energy scavenging: Human sweat to provide energy source for wearable electronics. [Right] World's first digital camera: Eastman Kodak engineer Steven Sasson designed this camera to test the imaging capabilities of Fairchild Semiconductor's 100-by-100-pixel charge-coupled device. The toaster-size portable camera used 16 AA batteries and weighed 3.6 kg.
(2) Quote of the day: "I will say one last thing for him. I know he would be disappointed not to have lived to see Trump's eviction from the White House, to make America safe again for honor and truth. Please VOTE!" ~ Annie Reiner, comedy legend Carl Reiner's daughter, writing on her dad's Instagram account
(3) Prince Andrew and other powerful men are sweating: Recently-arrested Jeffrey Epstein friend & procuress, Ghislaine Maxwell, reportedly has decided to talk and name names.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kellyanne Conway's daughter trolls her on Tik Tok, and tells her father she is sorry his marriage failed.
- Decades-old Goleta murder cases finally put to rest with Golden-State Killer's guilty plea.
- Fifty years of market downs and ups: Recovery tends to be slower than the crash.
- Alan Alda: The film/TV star who is a fierce science advocate (story in AARP magazine).
- Dear Trump supporters: Sorry, but you got played by a con man. [Meme]
- Sign of the times: A friend had watermelon & blueberries at home, while attending an on-line wedding!
- Pretty healthy-looking 80-year-olds. [Image credit: AARP magazine, June-July 2020]
- Spectacle: Elvis Costello, with Diana Krall and Elton John, who interviews Krall. Wonderful music!
(5) Trumpians are obsessed with store looters: I don't condone looting, just as I don't condone the murder of 127,000 Americans by negligence, but the damage caused to the American economy by store looters (estimated at ~$0.5 billion by the Anderson Economic Group, cited on Fox Business) pales in comparison with those caused by Wall-Street execs during the 2008 financial crisis or by the current mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is even orders-of-magnitude less than the damage caused by a major hurricane (Katrina, $55 billion in today's dollars). The real looters wear expensive suits and ties.
2020/07/04 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Happy Independence Day (top row): On this day, we Americans celebrate the freedoms that our forefathers fought hard to secure and other generations since then sacrificed to maintain. We do not celebrate our flag, but the ideals that are behind it. We do not celebrate our military might, but how it is used to safeguard our freedoms and help others protect theirs. There is a reason that Lady Liberty is holding a torch and not a gun!
Images (bottom row): [Left] Meme of the day: It took "Click it or Ticket" to get people to wear a seatbelt. I wonder if "Mask it or Casket" might work for curbing the coronavirus pandemic? [Center] Movie buffs rejoice: Walmart is set to convert 160 store parking lots to drive-in theaters. Note the absence of car-side sound systems, one of the major cost and maintenance headaches of old-style drive-ins, before the age of smartphones. [Right] One day soon we will again have a president who reads, understands, and learns!
(2) Dumb as they come: Eric Trump deleted his "Birds of a feather ..." tweet after commenters began posting photos of his dad with recently-arrested child-sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell (circled in the tweet).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This year, I will celebrate American Independence Day with a 4-month delay, on November 4th!
- The majestic Mount Damavand, observed and photographed by Majid Behzad over a decade.
- Reposting from July 4, 2010: "The great multi-colored hope" [My Facebook post]
- Are we wise enough and brave enough to divert some of our military budget to madical research? [FB post]
- Spectacle: Elvis Costello, with Diana Krall and Elton John, who interviews Krall. Wonderful music!
- French music: Zaz performs "Je Veux" in concert.
- Persian music: A nice rendition of "Gho'ghaa-ye Setaaregaan" ("Celebration of the Stars").
- Persian music by unnamed group, featuring vocals and four traditional instruments. [4-minute video]
(4) I was delighted to see David Tovar back at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace this afternoon, performing his wonderful music, as I sipped coffee and read a couple of magazines. [Video]
(5) "Hamilton: An American Musical": The movie version (stage recording) of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical production is finally out. My daughter and I watched and enjoyed it yesterday. The show's 47 musical numbers (listed in Wikipedia) span a wide range of styles, from modern hip-hop to traditional show-tunes. The Broadway production, which won the 2016 Tony Award for best musical, as well as many other accolades, has been described as the story of America's founding (America then) told by today's Americans (America now). Here is my 5-star review of Lin-Manuel Miranda's and Jeremy McCarter's book, describing the ideas behind and the making of the musical, which took many years.
2020/07/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Anti-face-mask misinformation: If masks cannot stop the 10-micron drywall-dust particles, how will they stop the 0.1-micron virus? (See the next item below) [Center] My alley in Tehran, Iran! [Right] JPL scientist/engineer Shouleh Nikzad, at work (see the last item below).
(2) Russia pays the Taliban to kill Americans in Afghanistan: It is doing it more cheaply in the US, by spreading anti-face-mask misinformation. Bill Hahn Jr. addresses this particular piece of misinformation (comparing drywall dust with the much smaller virus) quite well. It's a long explanation, but well worth the read.
(3) February 27, 2020, was a typically chaotic day in the Trump White House: Events included beefing up the Coronavirus Task Force, a day after VP Mike Pence was chosen to lead it, and an early-afternoon intelligence briefing on Russian operatives paying the Taliban to kill Americans in Afghanistan.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- More than 120 die in Myanmar jade-mine landslide following heavy rains: The death toll continues to rise.
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ordered by court to wear a face-mask in public.
- Insecure, paranoid leaders increasingly use national security as a pretext for persecuting their people.
- Three Iranian environmental activists die in a fire witnesses say was started by Revolutionary Guards.
- World's oldest film clip from 130 years ago, after restoration, stabilization, and dubbing.
- A museum in Tehran is wiped clean of all of its valuable artifacts in an overnight heist.
- Iran's architecture: Tour of a luxury suite in Esfahan's Abbasi (former Shah Abbas) Hotel.
(5) Humor from Iran: Teach your children English. We've been telling the Islamic Republic officials for decades that "we can't breathe," in Persian and in every regional dialect there is. George Floyd said it in English and all of our officials, from the lowest level all the way up to the Supreme Leader, understood it!
(6) Sports 2.0: Like everything else in our politically-charged society, sports are changing, and it is mostly for the better. Soccer players kneel to support BLM. College athletes speak about racial justice. NASCAR drivers want confederate symbols out. Athletes no longer accept the advice to just play and leave politics alone.
(7) Introducing a JPL scientist/engineer: Dr. Shouleh Nikzad is a Senior Research Scientist and Principal Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she leads the Advanced Detector Arrays, Systems, and Nanoscience Group. She heads a multidisciplinary team of cosmologists, material scientists, chemists, electrical engineers, physicists, and others to tackle key challenges in space exploration and medical science. She holds a PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech, a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering (Electrophysics) with honors from USC. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and holds 20 US patents.
2020/07/01 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The historic Constitution House in Esfahan, Iran. [Center] Undated old photo from Esfahan's Naghsh-e Jahan Square. [Right] Positive spin: The coronavirus pandemic is bringing about necessary innovations that improve capitalism.
(2) Carl Reiner dead at 98: The comedy legend had a long list of acting, writing, and other film & TV credits. He was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center in 2000.
(3) James Taylor at Fenway Park: The singer's August 2015 concert will be streamed free of charge on Saturday, July 4, 2020 (YouTube, 11:00 AM PDT; Facebook, 2:00 PM PDT). [Facebook post]
(4) Ruhollah Zam, dissident journalist and founder of Amad News, sentenced to death in Iran: Zam, who fled Iran and lived in France for many years, was kidnapped by Iran's Revolutionary Guards while visiting Baghdad.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Canada Day: On July 1, 1867, Britain's Canadian colonies gained self-governing dominion status.
- Ode to Canada: Today, our neighbors to the north celebrate their country & culture, including with this song.
- Two pandemics at the same time? A new swine flu, found in China, can potentially spread worldwide.
- Exodus of advertisers from Facebook continues: Ford, Adidas, Denny's, and HP are pulling their ads.
- Protesters descend on Texas Capitol to oppose bar closures, while Americans are dying! [#BarLivesMatter]
- Persian calligraphy: Beautiful samples, in an image and a 6-minute video.
- Redesign/restoration plans for the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. [Video]
- Some impressive magic tricks. Enjoy!
- Music played with an instrument made of bottles: "Granada"
- Persian music: Solmaz Naraghi performs her own composition, playing the setar and singing. Wonderful!
- Persian music: Kayhan Kalhor, master kamancheh player, takes playing the instrument to new heights.
- Persian music: Kamancheh solo, with piano accompaniment. Wonderful! [4-minute video]
(6) Savage treatment of animals continues in Iran: Stray dogs are collected in Salmas, West Azerbaijan, and killed by putting them in the compression chamber of a garbage truck.
(7) Iran, Turkey, Iraq (triangle of murder): Turkey extradited two Iranians wanted for street demonstrations. Iraq delivered to Iran a journalist visiting from France. All three were tried and given death sentences.
(8) UCSB's 2020 GRIT talks: The GRIT (Ground-breaking Research & Innovative Technology) program introduces UCSB denizens, and, now, via Zoom, anyone else who might be interested, to the amazing breadth of research on our campus. The talks (5:30 PM PDT) are free but one must pre-register to receive a Zoom link. Past GRIT talks are available on UCTV. This year, I am particularly looking forward to the following two talks.
- 7/06: Benjamin J. Cohen (Plitical Sci.), "Currency Wars: How National Currencies Compete"
- 7/22: Tobias Hollerer (Computer Sci.), "The World as Computer Interface: How Will Humans Stay in Control?"
(9) Final thought for the day: Donald Trump sues to stop the publication of a book by his niece, Mary Trump, and loses on appeal. What could be the basis for suing her? There can't be any classified information involved!
2020/06/30 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cover image of Claudia Yaghoobi's book, Temporary Marriage in Iran, and a photo of the author (see the next item below). [Center] Humorous meme of the day: CDC's new plan to increase the number of people who wear face-masks in public. [Right] Teasing the great Iranian poet Sa'adi: Are you serious? All human beings are created of the same essence?
(2) Book review: Yaghoobi, Claudia, Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Film and Literature (The Global Middle East, Book 12), Cambridge, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[Side note: I had been wanting to write about the institution of marriage in Iran, including monogamy, polygamy, and temporary unions, in the context of women's rights, for some time. Coming across Claudia Yaghoobi's book provided this opportunity, which I grabbed with delight. What I write in this review is based on the role of marriage and women in traditional, religious Iranian communities. Things are quite different among the enlightened elites and a vast majority of the youth. Temporary marriage is frowned upon, or even ridiculed, by the latter, to the extent that sigheh has become a pejorative term and carries a stigma. Interestingly, however, the stigma affects women entering into temporary marriage disproportionately. For brevity, I will forego citing exceptions such as the ones above in my statements. I will also use a broad brush, painting the average or common case and ignoring some of the finer points of the practice, which include variations such as nonsexual temporary marriages.]
Yaghoobi's book, a comprehensive treatment of the institution of temporary marriage in Iran, consists of three parts, preceded by a 6-page prologue and followed by a 20-page bibliography and a 13-page index.
Part I, General Overview: Introduction (pp. 9-44) + Chapter 1 (pp. 45-74)
Part II, Representation of Sigheh/Sex Work in the Literature of the Pahlavi Era: Chapters 2-6 (pp. 75-200)
Part III, The Islamic Republic and Sigheh in the Film Industry: Chapters 7-8 (pp. 201-250) + Epilogue (pp. 251-265)
In any dictatorship, a lone dictator or a ruling junta makes up laws and rules. There is no independent legislature to deliberate on the wisdom or nuances of such laws/rules. Autocratic rulers often do not need to justify a new law or rule that is obviously designed to benefit them, but they sometimes do provide justifications of sorts to the masses. And, of course, religious justification is the most convenient, as it cannot be challenged without being accused of heresy.
Patriarchy is similar to autocracy, in that men, who wield power over women, make up laws/rules with or without offering justifications. Temporary marriage is a case in point. At some juncture, powerful men decided that they are entitled to more sex, and wanted to avoid the stigma of using paid sex-workers, so they came up with laws/rules for polygamy and temporary marriage (sigheh). Both practices predate Islam, so they should be considered cultural rather than religious constructs. Over the centuries, various justifications have been advanced. During the spread of Islam and other periods of war, many men died in battle, leading to a dwindling men-to-women ratio. So, men declared themselves altruistic in wanting to satisfy the sexual needs of widows and other lonely women who could not find husbands.
When, in modern times, the men-to-women ratio moved toward near-balance, economic needs of women were brought to the fore, never mind that women being economically subservient to men is the fault of the same rule-makers, who do not allow women into certain professions, or pay them less for the same job, on the account that they are physically and intellectually inferior to men. The latter justification essentially equates women with slaves, who should provide sexual and home-making services to their masters, in return for food and shelter, and, if the master sees fit, luxuries such as jewelry and creature comforts. And women should be eternally indebted and subservient to show their gratitude.
It is a sign of moral decrepitude and cultural backwardness that sexual relations between unmarried young couples, who love and respect each other, and enter the relationship as equals, is frowned upon, whereas hours-long temporary unions, in which the man sets the rules, and usually pays a sum of money as part of the "contract," is a sanctioned activity! In other words, the rule-makers approve of women being used as commodities to satisfy men's needs but they cannot enter a relationship as equal partners.
Interestingly, "nikah al-mut'ah," the Arabic term for temporary marriage or sigheh, literally means "pleasure marriage," which flushes all the other justifications down the drain! As they say, it takes two to tango. Women who enter into temporary marriage bonds do so willingly and can negotiate for better terms. However, selecting between being stoned to death or maimed for satisfying a basic human need and engaging in a sanctioned activity with financial rewards isn't a real choice.
Yaghoobi tackles the institution of temporary marriage, a staple of Twelver Shiite Islam, which is particularly ingrained in Iran's culture and legal system, by reviewing how it has been portrayed in Persian literature and film over the last century. Even though the institution is older than a century, it was apparently not discussed openly in the pre-Pahlavi era.
Literature from the Pahlavi era (1925-1979) is represented by Morteza Moshfeq-e Kazemi's Tehran-e Makhuf (Horrid Tehran) Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh's Ma'sumeh Shirazi (Ma'sumeh from Shiraz), Jalal Al-e Ahmad's "Jashn-e Farkhondeh" ("The Auspicious Celebration"), Ebrahim Golestan's "Safar-e 'Esmat" ("'Esmat's Journey"), and Sadeq Chubak's Sang-e Sabur (The Patience Stone). One cannot help but to notice that all the works included were written by men. For the benefit of Persian-speaking readers, Yaghoobi quotes a number of short passages from each work in Persian, followed by translations in English.
In the Islamic-Republic era (1979-present), discussion of temporary marriage virtually disappeared from the print literature, with fear of censorship or political persecution being a possible explanation, but films such as Behruz Afkhami's "Shokaran" ("Hemlock") and (Mohammad) Hossein FarahBakhsh's "Zendegi-ye Khosusi" ("Private Life") do devote some attention to it. Both films were made by men who happen to be former supporters of the Islamic regime. This may explain why they dared to tackle such a controversial and politicized topic. In the case of the two films, there is no equivalent to quoting short passages to give the book's reader a feel for the original source material (the quote from Imam Ali on p. 226 notwithstanding), so, I have included links to full versions of the films on YouTube for the benefit of readers of this review.
["Shokaran" (full 82-minute movie)] ["Zendegi-ye Khosusi" (full 96-minute movie)]
The treatment of polygamy and temporary marriage derives from how regular marriage is viewed in Shiite Islam, and thus Iranian law. A woman, regardless of her talents and accomplishments, gains her social status from her father or other male guardian before marriage and from her husband afterward [p. 45]. It is not uncommon to refer to a woman as X's daughter or Y's wife, rather than by her name. So, a woman is primarily a wife, daughter, or sister, before she is a doctor or teacher. The male "master," of whom the woman is a mere extension, controls her in every way, particularly with regard to sexuality.
Yaghoobi ends her book's epilogue thus [p. 265]: "Reading Western feminist theories alongside Iranian feminist discourse and modern Iranian fiction and cinema, I have placed texts in conversation with feminism to better understand not only female sexuality, sex work, and sigheh marriages in Iranian culture, but also the modern definition of Iranian womanhood."
Yaghoobi has produced a valuable addition to the literature on women's rights, feminism, and sexuality in Iran. I recommend the book highly to those who want to gain a better understanding of one of the key issues that separates political Islam and its patriarchal foundations from modernity.
2020/06/29 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Somber reflections on the Black experience (see the last item below). [Right] NYC's Central Park gets a monument of women's rights pioneers: Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are shown gathered around a table to draft a document.
(2) Trevor Noah interviews Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show": What if our politicians could think and talk like these literate people, instead of like people who never went to school or forgot everything they learned?
(3) "From Tehran to Jerusalem": This is the title of a Persian-language documentary film, featuring interviews with Iranian immigrants and their children living in Israel, answering questions about where they consider home and their connections with Iranian history, arts, and culture.
(4) Segments of an interview with Iranian filmmaker Masoud Kimiai (1941-): At one point, Kimiai shows the interviewer ridiculous annotations made by Iranian censors on one of his film scripts. And here is a teaser for the interview which features different segments, as well as Kimiai playing the piano.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The real looters in America aren't the ones breaking store windows: Robert Reich explains.
- Trump's PDB may have included info on bounties paid by Russia to the Taliban for killing of Americans.
- The number of COVID-19 cases tops 10 million and deaths surpass 0.5 million, 1/4 of them in the US.
- Well, suppose a COVID-19 vaccine comes along soon: What will we do with anti-vaxxers?
- Jennifer Hudson reportedly shines as Aretha Franklin in "Respect," the soon-to-be-released biopic.
- Cyber-insecurity: A new Android ransomware is disguised as a COVID-19 contact-tracing app.
- The magnificence of Paris: Eiffel Tower's aerial tour and its recent re-opening ceremony.
(6) A mathematical advance, thanks to COVID-19: While confined to their homes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, mathematicians Joshua Greene and Andrew Lobb decided to tackle a version of an easy-to-describe problem that had remained unsolved for a century. Does every closed curve include 4 points that are the corners of a rectangle of any desired proportion? This Quanta Magazine article describes the problem and its solution method, and it includes a video.
(7) The Black experience: Thanks to recent protests for racial justice, I am learning more about the treatment of Blacks, Black women in particular, throughout our nation's history. The images above are the cover of Time magazine's July 6/13 double-issue, featuring essays on why America must change its outlook on race relations, and the illustration accompanying a New York Times opinion piece entitled "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument," in which poet Caroline Randall Williams describes how Black female slaves among her ancestors were raped on a regular basis by their masters, in part to produce more slaves.
2020/06/28 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg, Russia (1907). [Top center] Nature's amazing colors and design: Flower surrounded by a cobweb, photographed in Goleta, CA, on June 27, 2020. [Top right] The Qajar-era Sa'd al-Saltaneh (Esfahani) caravanserai in Qazvin, Iran (photo credit: @sina.mpoor). [Middle left] Happy Tau Day (6/28): Tau = 2 Pi is an even more important constant in mathematics and physics than Pi itself. [Middle center] Discarded Trump/Pence campaign signs: Come November, it will be Trump himself and his enablers! [Middle right] Singer/actress Cher, with her mom at 86. [Bottom row] Photos from family gathering in Ventura, California, after a long time.
(2) Humor from Iran: If wearing face-masks continues much longer, pretty soon women's mouths will be classified as private parts to be covered at all times. Then, mullahs will start telling stories about how the Prophet or Imams would never enter a house where women weren't wearing face-masks!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- #ByeIvanka: A political ad that puts Trump White House's hypocricy on full display.
- The corporate response to Black Lives Matter is heartening, even if it is motivated by the bottom line.
- The coronavirus pandemic has made bicycling more popular: NYC may get a new pedestrian/bike bridge.
- Zomato food delivery guy eats a bit of each order, reclosing the boxes as if nothing happened.
- Message to POTUS and VPOTUS: #RealMenWearMasks
- Attributes required for various careers: Comedy routine with Venn diagrams and much truth.
(4) 3D integration technologies for mitigating the memory and power walls in computer architecture: As we reach the end of Moore's-Law-scaling, that has given us automatic factor-of-2 density and performance improvements every 1.5-2 years, the limitations imposed on performance by memory latency/bandwidth (memory wall) and bounds on the power we can safely consume and dispose of in the form of heat (power wall) are getting more serious, given our continued appetite to transfer and process more data arising from big-data applications, AI, and high-fidelity multimedia. 3D integration, can place the myriads of components needed in a modern digital system closer together, thereby reducing communication latency and power consumption. The down side is that denser 3D designs make it harder to get rid of the generated heat, making low-power designs even more critical. Currently, 3D technologies are at best 2.5D, meaning that the third dimension doesn't enjoy the same status as the other two, because it uses a different interconnection scheme and has strict dimensional limits (a handful of layers, perhaps a dozen or two at best). For example, we may use through-silicon-vias (essentially metal-filled holes in the silicon that connect elements on one separately-manufactured layer to those on an adjacent layer, or we may deposit layers sequentially by means of a single manufacturing process, allowing smaller, more efficient interconnects. Because energy density is smaller for memory elements compared with computational circuitry, 3D integration is currently more suited to memories.
2020/06/27 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Humorous Persian poetry: A poem by Iraj Mirza, in which he talks with a donkey and emerges wishing humans were more like donkeys. [Center] New Yorker cartoon: "It's a new punishment. We place them in an endless video-conference with everyone they couldn't stand in life." [Right] The four seasons of the tiny Kotisaari Island in Finland.
(2) The Dixie Chicks drop the word "Dixie" from their band's name: This is part of a broad nationwide trend to get rid of symbols of confederacy and slavery.
(3) Model accuracy: Trump enablers are pointing to the pessimistic epidemic models that predicted the number of COVID-19 deaths in the US could exceed 1 million. Yes, those pessimistic models were off by a factor of 8, because they assumed no interventions, such as business closures and social-distancing. Not one of these imbeciles points to Trump's prediction that the number of cases would go from 15 at the time to 1, an under-estimate by a factor of millions in the number of cases and by a factor of 125,000 in the number of deaths!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mike Pence: "We succeeded in flattening the curve." (He must be looking at the chart sideways. MAGA!)
- European Union to bar most travelers arriving from the US and several other countries.
- IMF predicts an 8.0% drop in US GDP this year, vs. a 4.9% drop globally.
- Colored woman sprayed with fuel and set on fire in Wisconsin: UST, UST! (T stands for Taliban)
- "Predictive policing" is euphemism for racial profiling: Santa Cruz is the first US city to ban the practice.
- Brace yourselves for jam-packed flights: Airlines are gradually removing the empty middle seats.
(5) But Montana has very few cases: This is essentially the defense offered by Trump administration officials when confronted with data about a surge in the number of new coronavirus infections, nationally as well as in several of America's most-populous states.
(6) Puzzle (not to test you, but because I am genuinely puzzled): Automatic fuses trip when excessive current flows through them. I had put one of these automatic fuses in the off position, because it feeds a microwave oven which is malfunctioning and its fan does not turn off (the fan's heat/smoke sensor must be stuck). Yesterday, the breaker flipped to the on position on its own. I had never seen such a reversal of function.
(7) Economists hate redundancy, engineers embrace it: The world economy is extensively optimized by the pursuit of maximum profits, to a degree that our systems are rendered fragile by removing all redundancies and inefficiencies. This fragility is the root cause of the socioeconomic difficulties brought about by coronavirus. The Internet, by contrast, has built into it a great deal of redundancy and adaptability, which allowed us to work/teach/learn from home during the pandemic, despite vastly increased usage and unexpected workloads. [Paraphrasing Moshe Vardi, writing in Communications of the ACM, issue of July 2020] [Full text]
2020/06/26 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Coat of many colors: Angela Merkel seems to really, really like this particular jacket style! [Center] Second wave in action: Iran sees a surge in daily new coronavirus infections (green curve) and daily deaths (red curve), after the government eased restrictions. While more detected cases can be attributed to increased testing, the surge in number of deaths cannot. Is this trend what awaits us in the US? [Right] Fact-based humor: Land-o-Lakes, a butter brand which featured the image of a Native American woman on the packages, has removed the Native American and kept the "Land." How American!
(2) Interesting article in the prestigious journal Science: J. R. Cimpian, T. H. Kim, and Z. T. McDemott, "Understanding Persistent Gender Gaps in STEM," Vol. 368, No. 6497, pp. 1317-1319, June 2020.
[Full text]
(3) Quote of the day: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." ~ Roman-Catholic Archbishop Don Helder Camara
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- White House ordered NIH to cancel coronavirus research funding, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
- Three people standing on rocks just north of Malibu were swept into the ocean by a wave and drowned.
- Surprise birthday party produces a real surprise: Eighteen relatives testing positive for coronavirus!
- Mathematician and computing pioneer Alan Turing will be featured on UK's new 50-pound note.
- Observation: If you don't need a mask because Jesus protects you, then why do you need an assault rifle?
- Dangerous profession: Installing and maintaining high-voltage electric transmission lines. [Video]
- Humor, from The Onion: Clueless talking heads discuss the volatile political situation in Nigeria. [Video]
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Song & dance, Bollywood style. [3-minute video] [On YouTube]
(5) An apt analogy: Trump blames China for the pandemic, as if this would excuse his inaction. Imagine an American city being hit by a nuclear bomb and, rather than helping those injured by the blast and sickened by radiation, Trump just blamed North Korea and demanded that we stop testing for radiation effects!
(6) Humor: Putin takes a cue from Trump in telling the Olympics Committee, "Don't test our athletes for doping. We won't have any doping cases if you stop testing!"
(7) A final thought: It's scary that with all the laws Trump has broken, his incompetence, lies he has told, his incoherent & contradictory speeches, the racism he has stoked, and the pandemic he has helped worsen by his denials and science-phobia, we are still wondering whether he will be re-elected! Why is it even close?
2020/06/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Exchanging Khomeinis for Ben Franklins: Iranian currency continues its decline. The free-market price of one US dollar is now ~200,000 rials (~20,000 tomans). There is a joke going around in Iran that Khomeini promised to make water, electricity, gas, and bus fare free for the masses; instead, he made the rial free! [Center] The number 36 is both a perfect square and triangular (see the next item below). [Right] The building that is held together with a zipper: A work by British sculptor Alex Chinneck.
(2) Math puzzle: The diagram above shows that 36 is both a perfect square and a triangular number (defined as the sum of all consecutive integers from 1 to some value n). The previous number which is both a square and a triangular number is 1. What is the next number with this property?
Challenge for the more daring among you: If we write the sequence of numbers that are both perfect squares and triangular, calling the kth one N(k), with N(1) = 1, N(2) = 36, and so on, what is the limit of N(k+1)/N(k) as k tends to infinity? [See this Wikipedia article for the answers]
(3) From Russia with lies: Alternative news from Russia pumps disinformation about coronavirus to US and Europe. And such fake news from Russian sources will be around, with or without Kremlin's backing.
(4) Coronavirus disrupts recycling: Reuse, communal use, and second-hand purchases have gone down and waste has increased, as grocers bring back the single-use plastic bag to reduce person-to-person transmission.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Powerful magnitude-7.4 off-shore earthquake hits near Oaxaca, southern Mexico.
- Iran's Supreme Court upholds the death sentences of 3 young men arrested in the Nov. 2019 protests.
- Thirty Iranian Baha'is have been sentenced to long prison terms averaging 5 years.
- Popular Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti sentenced to 5 months in prison for insulting law enforcement.
- Ayatollahs have issued edicts against women riding bikes, because it can arouse men! [Iranwire cartoon]
- On-line book release event: Ziba Shirazi & Kamran Afary, Iranian Diaspora Identities: Stories and Songs.
(6) Some 65% of US colleges plan to hold in-person classes in fall 2020: In many cases, the term will be shortened or shifted to end before Thanksgiving, in anticipation of a second wave of coronavirus spread.
(7) A new king of supercomputers: According to the biannual Top500 list, Japan's Fugaku, installed in Kobe, is now the world's most powerful supercomputer, dethroning an IBM system at US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and putting us near the halfway point in the quest for ExaFLOPS performance.
(8) A final thought: Trump lives in a biological bunker, with everyone around him wearing masks and tested daily, as he insists that COVID-19 has passed and no testing or other measures are needed for you and me!
2020/06/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The cover of National Review: Nearly all Amreican magazines have highlighted the #BlackLivesMatter movement. [Top center] Chains and obstacles make the achievement of equity a serious challenge for women (source). [Top right] The "weaker" sex or superhuman? You be the judge. [Bottom left] Colosseum at sunset, Rome, Italy (source): Magnificent! [Bottom center] This Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) magazine ad is unrelated to the documentary film screening, reviewed in the last item below, but it conveys the same message. [Bottom right] Iran's historic architecture: The Aali Qapu ("Supreme Port/Gate") Palace, occupies one of the sides of Esfahan's Naqsh-e Jahan Square.
(2) Quote of the day: "[T]here were [in 1982] 85 institutions in the Western world that had been in continuous existence since 1520; 70 of those 85 institutions were universities. This continuity could be seen as a sign that universities are conservative and resistant to change, but it is also a sign that they are resilient and adaptable." ~ UCSB Executive Vice-Chancellor David Marshall, quoting former UC President Clark Kerr's 1982 update to his 1963 book, The Uses of the University
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Reporter Masih Alinejad being out of reach of Khamenei's mafia in Iran, they have imprisoned her brother.
- Nine more Baha'is arrested in Iran. [Facebook post, with photos and names]
- Yet more evidence that animals enjoy music: Dancing horse. [2-minute video]
- "Azerbaijan: A Timeless Presence": Full 49-minute concert by Iranian-born German musician Sami Yusuf.
(4) "Pioneers in Skirts" (film introduction/review): This is the title of a one-hour documentary film screened by IEEE Women in Engineering group yesterday morning as part of the WIE Int'l Leadership Conference. The film's director, Ashley Maria, and producter Lea-Ann W. Berst (the director's mom) introduced the film and discussed what motivated them to make it. Maria talked about her personal experience of finding it hard to get a foot in the film industry, where only 4% of directors are women. Berst related that when she was first looking for a job, newspaper classified ads included male and female jobs in different sections! Gender apartheid and bias aren't as overt today, but they definitely exist.
Stereotyping occurs more often than we realize, even by the affected women themselves. For example, women, and other under-represented minorities, often become timid and withdrawn due to a fear of reinforcing one of the negative stereotypes. In an experiment, when the question about gender was moved from the beginning of a test to the end, women scored higher and men lower. So, just reminding someone of their sex (which is something they already know) rekindles their unconscious biases.
The documentary features a number of pioneering women, including the founder of National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), Lucy Sanders. It also features an all-girls robotics team.
Here are a few things you can do, even before watching the film:
- Recognize and call out your own biases and pre-conceptions
- Speak out, and do it often, when you see injustice
- Support women in your own profession and elsewhere
For a list of the film's screenings, see the "Pioneers in Skirts" Web site. [Screenshot from WIE ILC session]
2020/06/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Some of the architectural features of Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace, photographed yesterday afternoon. [Center] The entrance of Costco at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace. And here is a 3-minute video showing about 1/4 of the gigantic store's inside. [Right] Flowers photographed during my walk yesterday afternoon: Along Storke Road and within Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace.
(2) Facebook on Trump campaign posts and ads: "We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol."
(3) Kid to MAGA folks: "So, me wearing a bullet-proof backpack to school, which has armed guards and mass-shooter drills, is "the price of freedom," but you wearing a mask in Walmart for 10 minutes is "tyranny"?
(4) A lawyerly story: The amazing feat of a lawyer who insured two-dozen expensive cigars against fire and then collected $15,000 after he smoked them all! Wait for the punchline! [3-minute video]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Time-lapse video of cloud movement around Japan's Mount Fuji. [Tweet, with video]
- Like murder, racism comes in degrees: Many of us "non-racists" are guilty of third-degree racism.
- World's first flying-car race will be held in South Australia later this year.
- Abandoned ship, with trees growing on it: Must be a freshwater lake. Or is it? [Photo]
(6) The loneliness epidemic in America: In 2018, 54% of Americans said they felt lonely, vs. 61% in pre-virus 2019. In the UK, Canada, and Australia, 22% of those surveyed said they feel lonelier post-virus, vs. 31% in the US. [Source: Time magazine, issue of June 22/29, 2020]
[P.S.: I will be writing a review of former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's book on the topic: Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.]
(7) Offerings from IEEE Computer Society's Distinguished-Lecturer webinar series (times are US EDT):
- 7/09, 11:00 AM: Leonel Sousa, "Unconventional Computer Arithmetic for Emerging Appl's & Technologies"
- 7/16, 06:00 AM: Dimitrios Serpanos, "Smart and Circular Cities: Status, Trends and Opportunities"
(8) What Fiona Hill Learned in the White House: New Yorker article about the former expert on Russia within the Trump administration, who like most women working under Trump was addressed as "honey," "sweetie," or "darling," felt out of place in a West Wing where women wore designer clothes and lots of make-up.
(9) Neo-Nazi terror plot thwarted: A 22-year-old US Army soldier was to provide location and organizational info for a Neo-Nazi terror group to ambush his unit in Turkey.
2020/06/22 (Monday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by James Lurie, PublicAffairs, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a welcome effort by two Nobel Laureates, a husband-and-wife team who previously wrote Poor Economics, to explain global ills and the wrong reasonings that produced and exacerbated them. In reality, there is no Nobel Prize in Economics. The economics honor that is bestowed alongside Nobel Prizes each year is an add-on from 1968, when a major bank gift allowed the Nobel Committee to establish the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
The authors begin by explaining why economists are among the least-trusted professionals, later confiding that economics is too important to be left to economists! Talking heads who pass themselves as economists are part of the problem, but even serious economists in academia don't have a much better record of predicting trends and prescribing remedies. Banerjee and Duflo are down to earth and know the limits of their craft: "We, the economists, are often too wrapped up in our models and our methods and sometimes forget where science ends and ideology begins."
The authors discuss many topics, from immigration to growth and taxes, providing a balanced account of the various theories and viewpoints. On immigration, for example, they contend that there is no evidence whatsoever that an inflow of low-skilled immigrants (or any other kind, for that matter) has a negative impact on the local labor market. One reason is that labor is unlike any other commodity, in that it does not obey the laws of supply-and-demand. As a case in point, incoming migrants are not just workers, but also consumers, taxpayers, and agents of social change.
On growth, the authors point out the dismal record of economists in predicting long-term growth. They cite examples where growth predictions using mountains of data did no better than using averages or random guesses. Indeed, they even doubt that a high growth rate is a positive attribute in and of itself. In fact, the high growth rates of certain countries in recent decades is a historical aberration and most-likely unsustainable in the long run.
On taxes, Banerjee and Duflo cite the discredited, but still oft-invoked, theory of trickle-down economics, which sings the praises of lowering top marginal tax rates for the rich to spur job creation and, thus, economic growth. They maintain that there is no evidence in the mountains of data collected after the Reagan and Bush tax cuts and Clinton's top-marginal-tax-rate increase that higher taxes provide a disincentive for the rich to try hard in creating more wealth.
I found Good Economics for Hard Times solid, eloquently argued, and useful in understanding how economics works, how it can be a useful tool for planning, and how it has limits that, when not exposed, can lead to more harm than good.
(2) Book review: Urrea, Luis Alberto (translated by Enrique Hubbard Urrea), Into the Beautiful North: A Novel, Little, Brown and Company, 2009. [My 3-star review of this book on Good Reads]
This book was the 2017 "UCSB Reads" selection and I tried to read it then, in order to participate in, and make sense of, various planned campus and community discussions, including a lecture by the author on April 24, 2017. For reasons that will become clear in the review that follows, I could not finish the book at the time. As part of the clean-up effort in connection with my to-read list, I recently returned to the book and finished reading it.
First, a few words about the author. Urrea was born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, received an undergraduate degree in writing from UC San Diego, did graduate work at University of Colorado, Boulder, and is currently Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at University of Illinois, Chicago.
The book's protagonist, Nayeli, a 19-year-old taco-shop worker in Mexico, who also moonlights as campaign manager for her feisty mayoral-candidate grandma, notices that there are hardly any men left in her village, most of them, including her father, having long gone to the United States in search of work. She hatches a plan for going north with a few friends to recruit seven capable men, a la "The Magnificent Seven" of movies fame, and bring them back to protect her village from bandits.
This is an interesting premise, but, unfortunately, Urrea turns it into a cartoonish quest by making constant connections to films and other artifacts of American pop culture. The characters, and their obsessions with Hollywood movies and other things American, are equally cartoonish. I started reading the book hoping to learn something about life in Mexico and the border culture. Instead, I read page after page about watered-down and distorted images of life on both sides of the US-Mexico border, presented with lots of hard-to-decipher Spanglish.
Urrea has received much recognition for his body of work, including a non-fiction border trilogy that begins with the 1992 title, Across the Wire. Perhaps, I will get a chance to read some of his other books that live up to the praise.
[P.S.: In fairness, I must admit that I am in the minority in my assessment of this book. Amazon readers give it 4.3 stars on average, with 62% giving it the perfect 5 stars and 22% opting for 4 stars. On GoodReads, the average rating is 3.8 stars.]
(3) Book review: Murthy, Vivek H., Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, HarperAudio, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Dr. Murthy is a former US Surgeon General, who believes loneliness and reduced family and social-network support is making us less well, both physically and emotionally. The root of the problem is a mismatch between how we are wired by evolution to be tribal and trust only family and/or tribe members and how we live in the modern world, where individuality drives us to achieve more by going far away from home and interact mostly with strangers.
Murthy finished writing the preface to this book in early 2020, just as coronavirus was beginning to spread, with quarantine and social-distancing recommendations adding to the problem of loneliness, which was already widespread in the Western culture. Countries like China and India, and many under-developed and developing countries, do much better in this regard. Family and even neighbors form support networks, so that a couple can feel perfectly safe to disappear for a few days, for whatever reason, and know that their children will be fed and protected.
Loneliness, which affects 22% of adults in the US, has been implicated in increased risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders, not to mention suicide and opioid addiction. Premature death upon retirement or shortly after the death of a long-time companion is certainly tied to loneliness. It's unfortunately not uncommon for hospitalized elderly to be alone most of the time and even die alone. When nurses and other medical personnel developed schemes to provide companionship for such patients and listen to what they had to say, health outcomes improved markedly.
Time magazine, in its issue of June 22/29, 2020, paints an even more-alarming picture, both pre- and post-pandemic. According to Time, 54% of Americans said they felt lonely in 2018, vs. 61% in pre-virus 2019. In the UK, Canada, and Australia, 22% of those surveyed said they feel lonelier post-virus, vs. 31% in the US.
Women are much better at recognizing loneliness and seeking help. Men are often in denial and feel discomfort in admitting their need for companionship, because they have grown up to think of such an admission as not a "manly" thing to do. When we feel awful due to loneliness, that feeling is our body's signal that we must tend to our social and emotional wounds, in the same way that pain is a signal telling us to seek treatment for a physical ailment.
What makes the problem of loneliness harder to deal with is our tendency to be ashamed of it and to place the blame on ourselves. Admitting to being lonely feels like saying that you aren't likable. Of equal importance as, if not more important than, connections to others is our connection to ourselves. Being grounded and confident in who we are makes it easier for us to connect to others. Establishing and nurturing such connections has become even more important, as we deal with the present-day quarantine and social-distancing requirements. It's much easier to multi-task and be distracted on Zoom than in person.
It is important to deal with loneliness before it becomes a chronic condition with a permanent stress-state. To this end, Murthy suggests a number of steps we can take as individuals, and describes successful social programs that provide an infrastructure for companionship and caring. Personal steps include:
- Spend time with those you love; at least 15 minutes every day.
- Focus on those near you and give them your undivided attention.
- Embrace solitude, which is different from loneliness; you can feel lonely in solitude or at a party with dozens of others.
- Give, and be open to receiving, help and provide community service to strengthen your social bonds.
Successful social support programs across the globe include helping women to defy the odds in their patriarchal villages and become health-care providers, establishing community workshops where men can socialize while tinkering and building (talking shoulder-to-shoulder, as Murthy describes it, compared with women's face-to-face interactions), and modern-age digital pen-pals, often pairing the elederly with young volunteers.
2020/06/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A very happy Fathers' Day to all dads and father-like mentors, past, present, and future! [Top center] It's puzzling why Iranians, who recite this poem of Sa'adi (and similar ones by other great Persian poets expounding on equality, justice, and human dignity) at every opportunity, do not empathize more with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. [Top right] I have already started to use my Fathers' Day gift: A practical implement for those who love seeds and nuts. Certainly more useful than a tie or other common gifts! [Bottom left & right] Photos from an enjoyable Fathers' Day hike with my daughter (see the next item below). [Bottom center] A partial list of fears of armed White people declaring that they won't live in fear of the coronavirus: Blacks, immigrants, Jews, independent women, journalists, LGBTQ+ community, progressives, environmentalists, George Soros, Bill Gates, windmills, vaccines.
(2) Fathers' Day hike: My daughter and I went to the Douglas Family Preserve (the family of Kirk and Michael), adjacent to Hendry's Beach in Santa Barbara, for a very pleasant 3-mile hike. The photos of us on the bluffs were taken with parts of UCSB showing in the distance. The photos also depict the onerous stairway leading from just outside the bluffs-top Preserve to the beach (less than half of the stairs appear in each photo), and a close-up of my T-shirt, a gift from a prior year, for the nerds among you.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Surprise, surprise! Trump is corrupt and inept, a deadly combination, according to John Bolton.
- Trump is expected to sign an order to suspend H-1B, L-1, and other temporary visas.
- Sadegh Zarza, a former PDKI leader, survives an assassination attempt in the Dutch city of Leeuwarde.
- Tesla Motors has narrowed the site of its gigafactory to two US cities: Austin, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
(4) John Bolton joined the Trump administration on April 9, 2018: By then, multiple books on the dysfunction in the White House had been published, Trump's Twitter attacks on the press and anyone else who did not praise him unconditionally were broadly known, and his nepotism, profiteering, and dictatorial tendencies were in full view. Does Bolton not read, just like Trump? Bolton has criticized the Democrats for not going wide/deep enough in the impeachment proceedings, yet he refused to testify to set the record straight. As delighted as I am with the release of Bolton's book, The Room Where It Happened, I can see why a large segment of the American public is skeptical about his sincerity and motivation.
(5) UCSB College of Engineering's faculty, staff, and students sign a letter expressing solidarity with Black students: This action came after Dean Rod C. Alferness pledged on June 5, 2020, that we will "work together to dismantle the structures of systemic racism in our community and in the broader society [and to] critically examine all components of the College to identify disparities, in order to work toward equity, access, and success for all students, staff, and faculty. ... Four hundred years after the first ships brought slaves to the American colonies, we believe it is high time to do much more than simply repeat the deeply self-evident truth that Black lives matter. We pledge to work together to dismantle the structures of systemic racism in our community and in the broader society. Now is the moment."
2020/06/20 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] New Yorker cartoon: For those who can't bear any news concerning the man-child in the White House, or worse, any news at all! [Center] Cartoon from Iranwire.com: Woman as a child-making appliance, in the mind of Iran's Supreme Leader Khamanei and those around him. [Right] Cover image of a forthcoming book by Mary Trump (see the last item below).
(2) Trump tries to fire a US attorney who is investigating his friends, including Rudi Giuliani: Attorney General William Barr announces that US Attorney Geoffrey Berman is stepping down, but Berman says he has no intention to do so. Are we as great as Saudi Arabia yet?
(3) Thank you, President Trump, for discovering Juneteenth and making us appreciate its importance: Additional thanks for rediscovering and resuscitating racism, bigotry, White Nationalism, and a whole bunch of other evils we all thought were dead or dying!
(4) Sudoku puzzle, with a twist: Other than rules of regular Sudoku, sums for six 2-by-2 square regions are given in their upper-left corners and sums of 6 diagonals of various sizes are given in the margins. [Image] [Major hint: 23 + 30 + 31 + 22 = 16 + 30 + 24 + 28 + six other entries] [Play on-line]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's Tulsa rally was sparsely attended and the overflow area outside the BOK arena was shut down.
- Drs. Fauci and Birx warned Trump about the health risks of holding large indoor rallies amid a pandemic.
- New COVID-19 cases rising in states and counties won by Trump and declining where Clinton won.
[Chart]
- Spies can eavesdrop on you via a telescope and an optical sensor to monitor a glass light bulb's vibrations.
- Art made of hardware and tools. [3-minute video]
- Prolific actors from my youth: Alain Delon & Jean-Paul Belmondo, photographed at 84 & 87, respectively.
(6) Azam Jangravi: Judge Gholamreza Mansouri, who recently turned up dead in Bucharest, Romania, after embezzling billions while in Iran, ruined my life and tried to take away my daughter, because I demonstrated against compulsory hijab. Now, my daughter and I are free and he is dead. I wish he could have been tried.
(7) UCSB lays out its plans for fall 2020: Most courses will be delivered remotely, with smaller classes that significantly benefit from face-to-face lecture/lab format convening on campus or offered in a hybrid format. Regardless of how a course is offered, there are plans to "create a meaningful on-campus experience for as many students as we can." International students, and first-year students who so choose, will be provided with tools to take everything on-line. There will be no discount in tuition and fees (this will likely be challenged, given a reduction in the availability of services for which various mandatory fees are built into what student pay). Dorm rooms may be limited to single-occupancy or, at most, double-occupancy (yet to be decided). So, residence-halls capacity will be diminished. There will be testing and mandatory face-covering.
(8) Book introduction: Are you tired of books by former administration officials exposing ineptitude and corruption by and around Trump? Well, now comes an expose by a family member. Or is it a "disgruntled former niece," just fired from the family? Mary Trump's book, entitled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, is scheduled for release on July 28, 2020. Mary Trump was apparently New York Time's information source for its Pulitzer-Prize-winning exclusive on Donald Trump's personal finances. [Information about Mary Trump]
2020/06/19 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Juneteenth Day: June 19, celebrated by all Americans, is the day of freedom and emancipation for African-Americans. [Top center] These young girls are all smiles, but what does the future hold for them in a backward patriarchal society? Absence of educational opportunities? Servitude for food and shelter? Forced marriages to older men? "Honor" killings? [Top right] Drought-tolerant landscaping around my housing complex. [Bottom left & right] Cartoons on toppling statues. [Bottom center] New Yorker cartoon: A big tell-all book (What I Saw in the White House) and a tiny tell-none book (What I Did About It).
(2) An alarming increase in arrests of Baha'i citizens in Iran: The insecure and dictatorial Islamic regime is intolerant of minorities in general, but it shows an unusual level of arbitrariness and cruelty in the treatment of Baha'is. [#BahaiLivesMatter] [Photo collage]
(3) Tesla charging stations in our neck of the woods: A section of the vast parking lot for Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace now hosts a row of Tesla EV charging stations. The stations are lightly utilized for now, but it seems Tesla is betting on an expanded EV market.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California coronavirus order makes wearing face masks mandatory in public.
- Fox News argues in court that Tucker Carlson is not bound by the truth and his viewers know that he lies!
- Billionaire bishop: God's Will is for women to skip college so that they are not smarter than their husbands!
- This is bound to make you smile, even though Trump is still in office: The most-adorable rock 'n roll fan!
(5) Donald Trump's absolute lack of morality on full display: He doctors a CNN video to say the exact opposite of the original. The video, reporting on the friendship between black and white toddlers, is modified to suggest CNN falsely accused the white toddler of racism. He then blames CNN for what he committed himself, that is, fakery! May our country be saved from this shameless liar and hate-monger, who is stooping to new lows to get re-elected. Father of one the toddlers in Trump's fake video blasts his hate agenda.
(6) Largest open-access publication agreement in North America: University of California has reached a major open-access agreement with Springer Nature, world's second-largest academic publisher. Under the agreement, all articles with a UC corresponding author published in more than 2,700 Springer Nature journals will be open access by default. The initial agreement excludes some journals, but both sides are committed to expanded coverage in 2-3 years. The deal also includes reading access and perpetual rights to more than 1,000 journals in Springer Nature's portfolio to which UC did not previously subscribe. Ngotiations with Elsevier are still stuck, but there are reports of some progress.
2020/06/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Persian poems, and more: [Top left] Mowlavi (Rumi) on the limitations of an erudite and reasoning mind. [Top center] On politics tainting religion (poet unknown). [Top right] A wonderful couplet from Mowlavi (Rumi). [Bottom left] History in pictures: Students of Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, some five decades ago. [Bottom right] Yet another "honor" killing in Iran: Misogynistic laws, rooted in a fear of the backward ruling patriarchs of emancipated women, serve to enable these horrific crimes. #WomenLivesMatter
(2) The number of tweets by an increasingly worried and angry Trump is rising faster than the number of COVID-19 cases, as suggested in this cartoon-tweet by actor Jim Carrey.
(3) Scenes from "Et la Creation fut": A film by Mahmoud Chokrollahi, with the Persian title "Zan, Noor, Nagh'ghashi" ("Woman, Light, Painting"). [8-minute video] [The featured artist is Iran Darroudi.]
(4) Florida bridge closed for inspection due to imminent danger of collapse: Our infrastructure continues to deteriorate as we spend more money on the military and tax cuts for the super-rich.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Bolton didn't get his war with Iran, but his war with Trump is raging: Watch his Sunday interview on ABC.
- The US Supreme Court rules against Trump administration's proposal to end DACA.
- SpaceX to build a floating spaceport for use in Mars and Moon missions and hypersonic transport on Earth.
- Virginia librarian uses drones to deliver books to local students.
- Treasure your old books: Making a book was very labor-intensive in the early days of printing technology.
- Brooklyn Duo's rendition of Luis Fonsi's "Despacito" on cello and piano, with a touch of mandolin and cajon.
(6) Interesting lecture from IEEE Computer Society's Build-Your-Career webinar series: Elsa Velasco Paul (founder/creator of The M&E Group) talks about "What Every 'Body' Is Saying," June 18, 11:00 AM EDT (Link).
(7) The alignment of planets does affect life on Earth, but not in the way astrologers tell you: Venus and Earth, because of their relative closeness to the Sun, and Jupiter, because of its huge mass, exert influence the Sun's magnetic field, creating a 405,000-year cycle (when they all line up on the same side of the Sun) that has been verified by retrieving deep layers of sediments in at least two spots on Earth. Fascinating! [6-minute video]
(8) Report on last night's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Di Liang (HP Enterprise Systems) spoke about "Photonics in High-Performance Computing." Besides being treated to an interesting talk (Web report), complimentary virtual pizzas and beverages were provided to the 21 attendees of the Zoom session!
2020/06/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Gone with the Wind" back in the spotlight: David Selznick's highly successful motion picture, and Margaret Mitchell's novel on which it was based, are being accused of romanticizing slavery. Many film historians argue that GWTW shouldn't be erased, but it should not be watched in a vacuum either. [Center & Right] Professor Massoud Soltani, Iranian EE educator, dead at 93 (see the next item below).
(2) Professor Massoud Soltani dead at 93: He was one of my instructors at Tehran University's College of Engineering from 1964 to 1968 and supervised the electrical machines lab where I worked as an instructor for a year, before starting my graduate studies in the US. Engineer Soltani, as we called him, is credited with significant contributions to electrical-engineering education in Iran, as well as hands-on involvement in the country's electric power generation and distribution infrastructure. RIP.
(3) Science gains from COVID-19 restrictions: Conference registration fees are in the hundreds of dollars range, even after student discounts. Now, students can "attend" ACM's Symposium on Theory of Computing, a premier computer science conference, for just $25, without also spending lavishly on travel!
(4) This is Fatemeh, an Iranian girl who lived in the southern city of Abadan: She was forced to marry her abusive cousin at age 17. Then, Fatemeh's "caring" parents helped her husband retrieve and behead her after she ran away and took refuge in a women's shelter far away from home.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump administration sues John Bolton to stop the release of his tell-all book, scheduled for June 23.
- Suspicious death of a BLM activist and lynching-style hangings of blacks are being investigated.
- These guys look so much like D. Trump: There were fake names way before there were alternative facts.
- Ten days of Iranian cinema: Free film screenings by the Berlin Film Festival.
- Persian music: Historic footage of a young Viguen performing with a band. Pop music with a conductor?
- Classical music: This 9-minute video of a young girl playing the violin came to me with no identification.
(6) An excerpt from my Facebook post of June 16, 2013, about President Hassan Rouhani's election in Iran (needless to say that I have no form of optimism seven years later):
"At best, I will remain cautiously optimistic when political prisoners have been released, the rights of ethnic and religious minorities have been reinstated, and formal apologies have been issued for lawless filterings, interrogations, imprisonments, and executions. Progress, if any, is bound to be slow, given that the powerful Revolutionary Guards and their information and intelligence operations have grown deep roots."
2020/06/16 (Tuesday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Camus, Albert, La Peste (The Plague), 1947.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Many years ago, I read Reza Seyed-Hosseini's Persian translation of this classic novel (Niloofar Publications, Tehran). This brief review is the result of using summaries and several reviews of the book to refresh my memory in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The novel, set in the 1940s, is likely based on the 1840s plague afflicting the French-Algerian city of Oran. The effect of the plague on populace is related through a large number of characters, ranging from medical workers to fugitives.
Authorities downplay the seriousness of the situation, sounding optimistic notes, but eventually acknowledge the presence of an epidemic as the number of deaths rises. The city is finally sealed off, homes are quarantined, trains are turned away, and burials of corpses are strictly supervised.
Town people experience stress and become depressed due to isolation, leading one character to plan his escape with help from criminal elements. Later, martial law is declared and escapees are routinely shot. The plague begins to retreat as an anti-plague serum enters the scene. Eventually, the town reopens and people are reunited with their loved ones from other cities.
The Plague, originally written and published in French, has been translated into many languages. It has been turned into a 1992 feature film, a 2017 play, and a 1965 cantana (a mid-length narrative piece of music).
(2) Book review: Saramago, Jose, Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira (Blindness: A Novel), 1995.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Books about various plagues have been brought to the forefront by the coronavirus pandemic. Albert Camus' The Plague and Jose Saramago's Blindness are among the classics in this domain. Many years ago, I read Minoo Moshiri's Persian translation of this classic novel (edited by Mohammad Reza Ja'fari, Nashr-e Elm, Tehran). This brief review is the result of using summaries and several reviews of the book to refresh my memory.
As a city is hit by an unexplained blindness epidemic that spares no one, authorities confine those afflicted to an asylum, where criminal elements come to rule. The inept government resorts to repressive measures to confront social disintegration and supply shortages that lead to poor hygiene, dismal living conditions, and unrest.
A doctor's wife, herself not afflicted, though she must pretend otherwise at first, is horrified by atrocities at the asylum, such as rations being stolen and women being raped. She and her husband form family-like bonds with a few of their charges, taking them out and leading them through harrowing city streets, demonstrating the strength of human spirit in the face of adversity.
Blindness has been turned into a 2008 feature film (starring Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore), stage plays, and a German opera. In 2004, Saramago wrote a sequel to Blindness, entitled Seeing, aka "The Plague of Blank Ballots," which is set in the same location and features several of the same characters.
(3) Book review: Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Audio, 2018. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In this non-fiction book on psychology, the authors argue that overprotecting children and young adults can be just as damaging to their development as underprotecting (neglecting) them. Many examples from psychological studies are cited to essentially indict "helicopter parenting" and to ague that the notion of "free-range kids" should be embraced instead.
And the problem isn't limited to young children. Overprotection excesses are abundant on college campuses, where "comfort" (removing anything that disturbs or offends anyone) rather then "challenge" (bringing out different viewpoints that challenge our views and assumptions) is becoming the norm. Professors have to issue "trigger warnings," whenever they want to discuss topics that some students might find uncomfortable, and demonstrations and hecklings have become commonplace on campuses when someone with a polar-opposite view to a group of students is scheduled to speak. Talks are often cancelled or rescheduled for fear of the speakers' safety.
The authors begin by reviewing what they call the three untruths:
- Children are fragile: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker.
- Our instincts are accurate judges of people and things: Always trust your feelings.
- The world is us-versus-them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
Borrowing a term from Nassim Nicholas Taleb of the "Black Swan" fame, the authors assert that human beings are anti-fragile, which means that not only they don't break at the slightest physical or mental discomfort, but they are literally rendered stronger by what doesn't kill them (with a few extreme exceptions, such as physical or sexual abuse). Extreme coddling of children and curtailment of their freedom is driven by two misguided views, the fear of abduction and the desire for them to get into elite institutions of higher learning. Children's creativity in fact suffers from too much homework and test-prep.
The common advice that if it feels right/wrong, then it is right/wrong is fraught with danger. While our emotions and instincts are accurate in many instances, they tend to mislead us in many other situations. Emotional reactions sometimes lead to "catastrophizing" of events and being inordinately affected by what have become known as micro-aggressions. Highly emotional reactions to events are the main causes of distrust and angry confrontations.
Us-versus-them ("tribalizing") leads to a version of identity politics, the common-enemy type, which is detrimental to our advancement and well-being. It leads to tribe-like hostilities that turn disagreements into open conflicts. On the other hand, the common-humanity type of identity politics (yes, we are all different, but what we share is more important than our differences) leads to greater peace of mind and better societal outcomes.
After delineating the problems in Part 1, the authors proceed to review the recent history of campus protests and confrontations, utilizing threats, intimidation, witch hunts, and the like, in Part 2. Part 3 focuses on major causes for the recent intolerance for controversial ideas. Part 4 wraps up the book with the authors' suggestions about how campuses and students can reorient themselves through the recongnition that people are resilient and can grow when exposed to challenge and controversy. Two appendices help the readers learn CBT (cognitive behavioral training) and outline the Chicago Statement of tolerance for diversity of viewpoints, which has been adopted by many campuses.
[The book's Web site;
The Chicago Statement (PDF)]
2020/06/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Walking at UCSB on a very pleasant, but rather windy, Saturday afternoon.
[Top center] UCSB has installed a few solar-powered charging stations for electronic devices: Solar cells are atop the umbrella and battery cells are in two benches on either side. [Top right] Some points of interest in the city of Kermanshah, Iran (credit: ISNA). [Bottom left] So, you want a statue to celebrate our civilization and history? How's this statue, which commemorates April 13, 1985, when housewife Danuta Danielsson whopped Neo-Nazi Seppo Seluska with her handbag to become a local hero in Varberg, Sweden? [Bottom center] Racial harmony exists in our children but we somehow manage to teach it out of them before they become adults! [Bottom right] Tweets from Trump on kneeling: 104 devoted to the black athlete who protested, without hurting anyone; 0 devoted to the white cop who suffocated someone to death by kneeling on his neck.
(2) US Supreme Court deals two setbacks to Trump: It rules 6-3 that anti-discrimination laws do protect the LGBTQ+ community and, in a separate case, dismisses the challenge to California's sanctuary-cities law.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Quote of the day: "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any!" ~ Donald Trump
- Trump's love affair with NK's Kim Jong has fizzled, so he is starting a new bromance with Iran's Ali Joon.
- Persian music: Ebi performs "Poost-e Shir" ("Lion's Hide"), accompanied by guitarist Babak Amini.
- Fusion music: An oldie, with Spanish & Persian lyrics, performed by Faramarz Aslani and Babak Amini.
(4) The true story of an iconic Persian song: "Maraa Beboos" ("Kiss Me") is a 6-decades-old song, originally written by Majid Vafadar for the movie "Ettehaam" ("Accusation"). In this 6-minute video, Vafadar's niece sets the record straight and quells the rumors that have been floating around about the song's authorship and inspiration, and its politicization by left-wing groups.
[P.S.: There are alternate accounts of this history, including an article in Encyclopedia Iranica.]
(5) America's four major problems: The coronavirus pandemic, protests for racial justice, economic downturn, and the military's increasing distaste for the Commander-in-Chief's inclination to bring them into the streets. Not one of these was addressed in Trump's West Point speech!
2020/06/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Walking around the UCSB lagoon on a gorgeous late-spring afternoon. [Top center] Graduation site: Here's a view of UCSB's Faculty Club Green, which would normally be hidden under a giant stage and hundreds of chairs for multiple graduation ceremonies on Friday (when the photo was taken) and over the weekend. [Bottom left & right] Flowers on the UCSB Campus. [Bottom center] A different kind of graduation weekend: On the days leading to graduation ceremonies, UCSB is filled with graduates and family members trying to shoot photos in front of important campus landmarks. There were only a few such groups on Friday afternoon and a handful of moving vans, given the sparse presence of students on campus. There was also far less trash and discarded items on the streets connecting my home to the campus.
(2) A page from Jay Forrester's notebook of 71 years ago: Proposal for magnetic core memory elements that were used to build random-access main memories for early digital computers of the 1950s.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Obamas are trending on social media: These are special gifts to President Trump on his 74th birthday!
- Can you imagine Trump in such poses with former Presidents and/or First Ladies? Me neither!
- "Black Hole": This 3-minute British film from 2008, depicting human greed, has won multiple awards.
- Practical demo of acoustic physics: Playing the sax in front of an open gas pipeline. [1-minute video]
(4) Persian music: The oldie song "Khandeh Khandeh" is performed by Elaheh, with Majid Vafadar and his orchestra, in this grainy video. Here is a better-quality sound file.
(5) The building that housed Iran's first radio station: It now provides extra working space for the adjacent Ministry of Communications and serves as a museum of radio. [6-minute video]
(6) Final thought for the day: I wonder why no one has pointed out that Trump's recent physical difficulties may be side effects of hydroxychloroquine, perhaps a reason for FDA to revoke its authorization of the drug for the treatment of COVID-19.
2020/06/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Linguistic composition of Iran: Map from Persian Heritage web site. [Top right] Newsweek magazine cover: The end of Hong Kong, as Beijing gobbles it up. [Bottom right] The graduating class at UCSB and other colleges make do with individual photo shoots on campus, as they enter a highly unusual job market (photo credit: The UCSB Current).
(2) Insect-size robots might one day help us explore other planets: Bulky rovers are too inflexible and slow, and human participation is too dangerous, for exploration on the surface of other planets. CSUN scientists bet on swarms of tiny robots to help us explore far and wide.
(3) Cybercriminals extort universities: They steal sensitive information and then threaten to share it on the dark web, unless a ransom is paid. Michigan State, UCSF, and Columbia College Chicago have all been targeted by the NetWalker malicious software and given 6 days to pay as yet undisclosed amounts.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Conspiracy-Theorist-in-Chief's Press Secretary accuses others of spreading conspiracy theories! [Image]
- Trump's campaign rhetoric, revised for 2020: They are bringing drugs, they are bringing coronavirus, ...
- My new Facebook cover photo reminds us all of the primacy of racial harmony and racial justice.
- Chess grandmaster Ghazal Hakimifard plays for Switzerland, because Iran forced her to play in hijab.
(5) The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump: This is the title of a new book by Mary Jordan, asserting that Melania learned about Donald's relationships with women during the 2016 campaign and delayed her move to the White House as leverage in negotiating a new pre-nup. Melania's office calls it "fiction."
(6) On defunding the police: My fellow-liberals have developed a habit of putting their feet in their mouths when it comes to messaging. The latest episode has to do with calls for "defunding the police." When asked in interviews about what they mean by the phrase, they invariably reply that they do not want to abolish the police but to reform it, overhaul its training procedures, improve its community relations, demilitarize it, and redirect some of the funding to programs that provide appropriate remedies to problems such as homelessness and mental illness that in essence are not law-enforcement problems. Defunding a program or activity is synonymous with eliminating it. Calling for the elimination of something, and then explaining that we don't really mean that, is self-defeating. The 10-second sound bytes of today's news leave no time for additional explanation. We have to make sure that the headlines or sound bytes capture the essence our message. If we don't really want to eliminate the police, then we should not use the word "defund."
2020/06/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Russia's to-do list for weakening the US, as shown at a NATO meeting last year: Judge for yourself how much of this strategy has been implemented by Trump. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Old artistic tree. [Bottom right] Cartoon strip: The terrorist group calling itself "AARP" teaches its members secret tactics to use against the police!
(2) Racism exposed: University of Louisiana Monroe fires one instructor, Dennis Bell, for posting racist slurs and has started the termination process for Mary Holmes, who will not be teaching during fall 2020.
(3) Mike Pence, Head of the US Coronavirus Task Force, with Trumps campaign staff (photo): No mask. No social-distancing. No shame. The guidelines he issues apply only to us, mere mortals!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Someone, whom Trump called SOB, receives Amnesty International's highest honor. [#ColinKaepernick]
- Five under-age kids orphaned in Los Angeles when their parents die of coronavirus one day apart.
- Tim Cook announces a $100 million Apple commitment to promoting racial justice.
- Spirit MER-A Robotic Rover traveled to and was deployed on Mars in 2003-2004 (5-minute animated film).
- Moving a 2600-ton building in China: Time-lapse video.
- Persian music: The oldie song "Bot-e Chin," performed inside what appears to be a historic carvan-
- Persian music: Faezeh performs "Asir-e Daam-e To," an oldie song made famous by Delkash.
- Persian poetry: Kory Yazdani sets Houshang Ebtehaj's poem "Flight of the Ash" to Leonard Cohen's music.
(5) Patriarchy in action: This 2-minute Persian video-essay sounds interesting and enlightened, until we realize that it promotes manhood and manliness as attributes that women should aspire to. This attitude is a result of centuries of patriarchy that has programmed us to equate manliness with a virtue and womanliness with a liability. So, a strong, virtuous woman aspires to, and takes pride in, being "manlier than a man"!
(6) After months of coyness and playing it safe, Facebook chief finally takes a stand against Trump's dishonesty and divisiveness: "We are deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric at a time when our nation so desperately needs unity."
(7) Can you imagine being a black soldier or officer assigned to a military base bearing the name of a confederate general who fought, and in some cases gave his life, for maintaining slavery?
2020/06/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Gakutensoku: World's first friendly robot built in 1929 (see the last item below). [Center] My paper on evaluating research quality and impact (see the next item below). [Right] Taking guns to protest sites is ill-advised: A mistake or mis-step separates armed men appearing at racial-justice protests to "keep a watch on illegal behavior" from armed conflict. A group of citizens cannot declare moral superiority to control another group (photo from NPR).
(2) "On Research Quality and Impact: What Five Decades in Academia Has Taught Me": This is the title of an invited paper that I have just finished and submitted to J. Compter Science and Engineering. As the title implies, this work represents an effort to share with my younger colleagues in academia and elsewhere some metrics and pitfalls in assessing research quality and impact. Hope some of you find it useful. I will post a final version after the paper's acceptance. [PDF] [A couple of clarifications]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Blatantly racist post by nursing professor at ULM makes all higher-education teachers cringe in disbelief.
- As we are distracted by a pandemic and racial-justice protests, Iran ramps up its persecution of Baha'is.
- Wonderful performance of "Hava Nagila" by three players on one guitar. [2-minute video]
- Those who remember old Indian movies (now called Bollywood films) will enjoy this 6-minute musical clip.
(4) Now that spring-quarter teaching is over and grades have been reported for my freshman seminar course, "Ten Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering," I am getting comments, such as this one, from students:
"I greatly appreciate the online lectures you have been providing ... Ever since I have watched your online lectures, I have taken great interest in computer engineering in general, and I have enjoyed approaching certain engineering problems as puzzles that you have provided. You have changed my overall perspective of this field of engineering, and I just want to spend time to say that I feel appreciative for this reason."
(5) "The Short Strange Life of the First Friendly Robot": This is the title of a fascinating article by Yulia Frumer, published in IEEE Spectrum magazine's June 2020 issue. Biologist Makoto Nishimura's giant robot, Gakutensoku ("learning from the rules of nature"), toured through Asia after its creation in 1929, appearing before enthusiastic audiences, but then it was lost under mysterious circumstances in the 1930s. The faintly-smiling robot was 3+ meters tall and had pneumatic mechanisms inside its head that allowed it to move its eyes, mouth, and neck. A faithful replica of the robot was built during 2007-2008 at a cost of $200,000 and is now sitting in a museum. The designers did not have much to go on (no blueprints or other documentation), just a few grainy B&W photos and a handful of articles written by Nishimura and others.
2020/06/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] GRiD Compass rugged laptop (see the next item below). [Center] Entering a flight at the airport or ICU at the hospital? [Right] The classic Sinclair Scientific (see the last item below).
(2) The first laptop in orbit: The GRiD (Graphical Retrieval Information Display) Compass was the first to use a clamshell design. The laptop's 21.6-cm plasma screen was bright and could be viewed from any angle and under any lighting conditions. NASA used the laptop on Space Shuttle missions through the early 1990s. The rugged 4.5-kg laptop, costing $8150 ($23,000 in today's money) reportedly survived the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger crash. [Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of June 2020]
(3) Colleges dealt one-two punch by COVID-19: On top of income reduction and rising expenses, they are expected to receive less in philanthropic donations over the next few years.
(4) COVID-19 may have plagued China as early as October 2019: Satellite photos, showing a near-doubling of the number of cars parked at some Chinese hospitals in October 2019 compared with the previous year, and records of heavy Internet searches for "chills" and "diarrhea," indicate that China hid coronavirus from the world far longer than previously thought.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US GDP predicted to fall by 5.9% for 2020, the sharpest yearly decline since the 11.6% drop of 1946.
- Cartoon of the day: The end isn't near. We're just beginning to have a serious dialogue about race. [Image]
- Wow, what a talent: Creating realistic clay sculptures from photos. [4-minute video]
- Iranian regional music: Hossein Zarouri performs "Jaan-e Maryam," with a big orchestra and choir.
(6) Trump retweets his son Eric's tweet on reopening of Trump Doral Miami: In 15 minutes, he gets 14.6K likes, 3.6K comments, and 3.5K retweets. How is this not using the office of presidency for personal gain?
(7) Internet of animals: IoT applied to live animals (both domesticated species and wildlife) becomes IoA. Potential applications include ranch herd management and monitoring of endangered species in the wild.
(8) Reverse-engineering a classic calculator: The Sinclair Scientific digital calculator was a hit upon its introduction in 1974. "Cleverly written firmware dragooned its limited processor, intended only for basic arithmetic, into performing way beyond specifications. This allowed Sinclair to sell a scientific calculator to countless folks who otherwise could not have afforded one. But it was also slow and sometimes inaccurate, provided barely enough mathematical functions to qualify as a scientific calculator, and was difficult for the uninitiated to use." [From: IEEE Spectrum magazine, issue of June 2020]
2020/06/09 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top] Panoramic view of a nearly-dry Devereux Slough in Goleta, California, this evening around 8:00, as the sun was starting to set (actual panorama on Facebook). [Left] How to build a leaning tower: Indian style (could be a PhotoShopped image). [Center] Great advice re "Black Lives Matter": Treat racism like COVID-19. Assume you have it. Listen to experts about it. Don't spread it. Be willing to change your life to end it. [Right] Trump enablers must be kicked out! Susan Collins isn't the worst of them, but it is encouraging that her opponent, Sara Gideon, has opened a lead in their Senate race.
(2) Yes, we support law & order too: That's why we don't want a president who considers himself above the law and repeatedly dishonors and breaks the supreme law of our land, the US Constitution. [Trump tweet]
(3) Trump loves a sawtooth-shaped stock market curve: He just distracts us to something else when it falls and claims credit for each rise! [Trump tweet]
(4) Challenging math puzzle: Given a positive integer n, compute f(n) as follows. Begin with n. Round the value up to the nearest multiple of n – 1. Then, round up the new value to the nearest multiple of n – 2. Continue in this manner until you have rounded up to the nearest multiple of 2.
What is the limit of g(n) = (n^2)/f(n) as n tends to infinity?
[Example] f(10): 10 -> 18 -> 24 -> 28 -> 30 -> 32 -> 33 -> 34; g(10) = (10^2)/f(10) = 2.941
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The US becomes a role model again: Mexico and several other countries protest against police brutality.
- Ivanka Trump remains as clueless as ever amid economic struggles and demands for racial justice.
- Ben Carson: "Reserve judgment on Trump until he speaks again." Dozens of daily tweets don't count?
- Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's essay "Reflections on the Color of My Skin." [18-minute video]
- The Pacific Ocean, around 8:00 PM today, as viewed from Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach. [2-minute video]
(6) Int'l Symp. on Computer Architecture has honored a paper by UCSD scientists Dean Tullsen, Rakesh Kumar, and Victor Zyuban with its 2020 Influential Paper Award. The paper, originally presented in 2005, offered new ways of modeling the impact of interconnections on power and performance in multiprocessor chips. The paper was the first to measure real multi-core designs to assess the global trade-offs of interconnect design decisions.
(7) ACM ByteCast, Episode 2: Donald Knuth, winner of the 1974 A. M. Turing Award, discusses "what led him to discover his love of computing as well as writing about computer programming, his outlook on how people learn technical skills, how his mentorship has helped him write 'human oriented' programs, the problems he is still working to solve, and how his dissatisfaction with early digital typesetting led him to develop TeX, as well as his interest in playing and composing music for the pipe organ."
2020/06/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] To those who dislike "Black Lives Matter" and want to replace it with "All Lives Matter": Do you also scream "All Cancers" when someone posts about breast-cancer awareness? Did you proclaim "All Cities" when people expressed solidarity with Las Vegas or Paris after mass shootings in those cities? Raising awareness and offering support to one abused or oppressed group in no way discredits or diminishes other groups. [Center] Elnaz Abedini: A multi-talented vocalist, who is equally at ease with opera, pop classics, and Persian music ("Caro Mio Ben" Arietta | "Smile" | "Sari Gelin" | "Man-o Gonjishka"). [Right] Cover image of IEEE Computer magazine, June 2020, featuring my article (see the last item below).
(2) BLM movement's surprising ally: Has the NFL finally seen the light in the realm of racial justice, or did it simply realize it won't make any money or even exist without black athletes?
(3) Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigns from board: He asks that his seat be filled with a black candidate, commits $1 million to Colin Kaepernick's nonprofit "Know Your Rights" Camp, and promises future donations to serve the Black community and curb racial hate. Ohanian cited his family, tennis-star wife Serena Williams and black daughter, who might one day ask him, "What did you do?"
(4) Racial awareness keeps growing: The very first Sambo's Restaurant, that grew from Santa Barbara to a nationwide chain of hundreds, and the last one still bearing the racially-charged name ("Sambo" is a derogatory term used for a person having mixed blood) opts to change its name. The name was formed in 1957 from "Sam" and "Bo," initial letters in the last names of its founders.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Needed: A leader to allay the fears and soothe the anger, rather than look for praise and photo-ops.
- Ben & Jerry's gets political: Its latest ice-cream flavor is "Pecan Resist" (see if you can resist it)!
- Fusion music: "Lambada," performed Persian style. Or is it Greek style? [3-minute video]
- Persian music/history: The central Iranian city of Esfahan, as it looked ~55 years ago. [4-minute video]
(6) Lists of former (41) and deceased (10) faculty members of Sharif University of Technology's Electrical Engineering Department: I note that one faculty member who was reportedly executed after the Islamic Revolution does not appear on the deceased list. I have no doubt that the list of former faculty members is also incomplete for ideological reasons. [Web page]
(7) My article in IEEE Computer magazine's June 2020 issue: Chosen as the lead cover feature for a special "Cyberthreats" issue, the article, entitled "Reliability Inversion: A Cautionary Tale" (Vol. 53, No. 6, pp. 28-33), points out the dangers lurking when we compare systems with respect to reliability. In brief, reliability calculations provide lower bounds, as opposed to exact values, and a lower bound for R1 being larger than a lower bound for R2 does not imply R1 > R2. [Full-text PDF]
2020/06/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Iranian woman in traditional clothes, photographed by Amin Sedaghaty in front of Persian rugs. [Top center] Long-range turbine-powered cargo drones are coming: The June 2020 IEEE Spectrum cover feature. [Bottom left] How to explain to your relatives and friends, who care more about looting than violations of civil rights, the "Black Lives Matter" movement and its aspirations. [Bottom center] Milad Tower, Tehran, Iran, against a full moon. [Bottom right] Colorful field of flowers.
(2) NFL reverses course: Commissioner Roger Goodell admits that the league was wrong in its treatment of protesting athletes. Quarterback Drew Brees apologizes and tells Trump that kneeling isn't about the flag.
(3) A virtual graduation event: The Obamas and an array of other notables, including Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Malala Yousafzai, help graduates celebrate on YouTube, June 7, 2020, 12 noon PDT.
(4) Our age in 2020: Some friends posted that they won't add a year to their age on their next birthday, because they haven't actually lived this year. Others think we have aged by a couple of years just in the first half of 2020. What's your take?
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ivanka Trump's commencement address cancelled over the President's reaction to George Floyd's murder.
- Jewish-Iranian immigrant, 81, loses his Melrose Ave. store, which included much in personal memorabilia.
- Short history of women singing in Iran: This 7-minute video is loaded with memorable singers and songs.
(6) The First Couple diverge on Twitter: While Donald Trump peddles law & order and domination of the streets, Melania Trump has been tweeting about peace & healing and taking care of one another.
(7) Of interest to readers who are in the market for a new car or upgrade/trade: Car buying/leasing experience is more torturous than ever these days. I have been in touch with Goleta's Honda dealership, and the Toyota dealership as a back-up, in case of poor service from Honda. Poor service is what I got! I have been looking at various options, to upgrade my current leased car from the basic Accord LX to an Accord EX-L (or a comparable Toyota Camry), with leather interior, sun/moon-roof, and a few new electronic safety features.
It seems that, given the interruption in the supply of new cars, dealers are trying to make as much money as they can from their existing stock. They are utterly inflexible in their pricing (lease and purchase) and very devious in telling you up-front about all the costs. Of course, car salespeople have always been dishonest, but they have taken it to a new level, to maximize their sales commissions, which I assume have dropped due to the dismal economic conditions. Dealers also seem to be reluctant to swap cars to serve a customer whose desired car isn't in stock in his/her home location. I even experienced a case of bait-and-switch, where I was told my desired car was in stock, only to find out that they had a fully-loaded model with ~$6000 in additional options and $180 extra in monthly payment.
In the end, after also considering cars offered by Hertz, the rental-car company which has declared bankruptcy, I decided to pay the residual purchase price on my current Honda Accord and keep it until the car sales/lease market conditions improve.
2020/06/06 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Remembering D-Day (June 6, 1944): The annual commemoration of the Allied landings in Normandy is muted this year by the pandemic and racial unrest in the US. [Top center] A few memes related to Black America's struggle for racial justice. [Top right] These were George Floyd's last words, as a racist cop casually knelt on his neck. [Bottom left] Washington, DC, street: "Black Lives Matter," painted in giant letters. [Bottom center] Every professional and social group with which I am associated has condemned racial prejudice and supported the BLM movement. [Bottom right] Role reversals: Mother and child!
(2) We are keeping a record of physical deaths from COVID-19: Some suggest that we are under-counting, but at least efforts are made to keep track of the casualties. Tracking of the mental-health toll is woefully lacking.
(3) Talk about clueless: George Floyd is looking down with satisfaction at the jobless rate shrinking from 14.7% in April to 13.3% in May, according to Trump!
(4) The market shot up for, and Trump boasted about, a fake reduction in the US unemployment rate: Let's see if either one offers a correction. An error described as "misclassification" reduced the May unemployment rate by ~3%, so the rate actually went up from 14.7% in April to about 16.3% in May, as predicted by economists.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The pandemic showed us the importance of two things: Universal healthcare and free higher education.
- Jews should support BLM, given our past experience and rising anti-Semitism fueled by the Hater-in-Chief.
- A new viral challenge: Taking a photo with a book you haven't read in front of a building you never enter.
- Cartoon caption of the day: "No, Mr. President, D-Day was not named after you!"
- Michael Jackson music ("They Don't Care About Us"), played Persian style on Tar!
- Persian music: Wonderful piece in the style of (if not actually from) early 20th century. [6-minute video]
- Persian music: Darya Dadvar's musical tribute to the medical personnel battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
(6) Khamenei's deceit revealed: Fact-checking is all the rage these days. In the US, fact-checkers have the unenviable task of keeping up with the increasing rate of Trump's lies and misleading statements. Iranwire has just fact-checked a 30-minute speech by Khamenei, uncovering 10 untruthful statements.
(7) Axis of corruption: Iran's three branches of government are now headed by corrupt individuals. President Rouhani's brother is serving a 5-year prison term for corruption, enabled by his proximity to the country's power centers. Rouhani himself has not been formally implicated, but it is difficult to imagine that he was unaware of his brother's misdeeds. Rouhani has threatened on multiple occasions to expose corrupt individuals, but his remaining silent is an indication that the other power centers have "compromat" on him. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the new Speaker of the Parliament, has links to some of Iran's worst corruption scandals. Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's Head of Judiciary, was a member of a notorious Death Commission, which approved and oversaw the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s. He also faces allegations of financial misappropriations both before and after assuming his current position.
2020/06/05 (Friday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Rosen, Jeffrey, Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Peter Ganim and Suzanne Toren, Macmillan Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Based on conversations he conducted with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the 1990s to the present, Rosen, National Constitution Center's President, paints a unique portrait of RBG that shows her careful, minimalist approach to constitutional law, humanity, compassion, sense of humor, exercise regimen, love of opera, and astounding friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia (subject of the "Scalia/Ginsburg Opera" composed by Derrick Wang).
Among the topics discussed are the Court's Roe v. Wade decision and whether it will be overturned, her approach to and favorite dissents, the role of precedents, the #MeToo movement, the four women who have served on the Supreme Court, husband Marty's support and cooking skills, confirmation hearings then-and-now, and the Court's future.
I was surprised to learn that at the time of RBG's appointment to the Court, many feminists were against her, because she had opined that the Court over-reached in its Roe v. Wade decision. She would have preferred to see a decision to strike down the specific extreme Texas law before the Court, fearing that generalizing and issuing a broad opinion actually antagonized anti-abortion forces, who became much more animated in their opposition.
This book is filled with both serious legal arguments and personal anecdotes. The discussions of voting rights and gerrymandering are superb. So is Ginsburg relating an advice she received early in her marriage from her mother-in-law: "It helps sometimes to be a little deaf," which she took to mean that you should just tune out any unkind words.
(2) Book review: Power, Samantha, The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir, Dey Street Books, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Power, a fierce advocate of human rights and one of the "foremost thinkers on foreign policy," according to former President Obama, has lived the American dream, rising from an immigrant to a cabinet official. She served as Obama's advisor on foreign policy and human rights for four years and then became the youngest American to be named US Ambassador to the United Nations. While telling her life story, Power also answers the question of whether one person can make a difference in today's complex and highly-contentious world with a resounding "yes."
Power began her career as a journalist covering the genocide of Bosnian Muslims, which led to her writing the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide. In The Education of an Idealist, Power weaves together four stories seamlessly and masterfully: Her personal journey, her family story, including raising two children as she held what many consider to be a 24/7 job, diplomatic history, and moral dilemmas in politics.
The jobs of presidential advisor and UN Ambassador are tough even on the most-pragmatic individuals, so they are nothing less than torture for an idealist, who must decide every day whether she has had enough and can't take it any more, or strike a compromise to be able to take her fight to the next day. Power discusses her challenges and moral dilemmas openly and honestly, giving the reader a window into her regular fights, including with Obama, who alternated between seeking her opinion and putting his realist hat on to dismiss her advice.
Power argued for intervention in Syria, a battle she eventually lost. It is very difficult to judge, even with the benefit of hindsight, whether we would have been better off if Obama had taken her advice instead of avoiding intervention and a third Middle-East war, thus giving the Syria-Russia-Iran axis an open hand in running the show. The younger Power probably would not approve of her older self, who witnessed misery during a visit to Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria, countries involved in a vicious fight against the terrorist group Boko Haram, and contributed to the misery when her team's car hit and killed a young boy.
Having been in the no-win zone between idealism and realism, I very much identified with Power's equivocations. The Education of an Idealist is most-certainly among the best books I have read in recent years, in terms of both content and writing style.
(3) Book review: Andrews, Julie (with Emma Walton Hamilton), Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Julie Andrews, Hachette Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I was surprised to learn that this Julie Andrews book, a collaboration with her daughter Emma, is her second memoir, the first one having been titled Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. Andrews recaps those early years at the beginning of this new memoir, which details her transformation from a traveling vaudeville performer to a Hollywood superstar, most-famous for her roles in "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music." It seems that from a young age, Andrews was her family's provider, having paid household expenses and helping to keep a roof over their head.
The prose is frank and intimate, laced with humor and sassy gossip, including her treatment by tabloids. Andrews discusses many private matters (insecurities, therapy sessions, and feeling of lack of control over her career) openly. In describing the divorce from her first husband, costume designer Tony Walton, which happened after she had met and begun to "seriously date" director Blake Edwards (of "The Pink Panther" and "The Party" fame), Andrews confesses that she felt like a failure. It seems that Andrews being tied to the movie industry in Hollywood and Walton's attachment to the theater scene in New York City was instrumental in their marriage falling apart.
One can't help but be awestruck by how Andrews pulled it all together in her Hollywood years, living with a wildly creative but very moody Edwards (occasional prescription-drugs abuser), balancing the demands and visitation calendars of three children, one from her first marriage and two from Edwards' first marriage, plus two adopted children, managing the antics of a druggie brother, and dealing with the crazy work and travel schedules of an international mega-star. Andrews tells us that she wasn't in control of her career and personal life, despite outward appearances.
One disappointment is that movies and her co-workers/co-stars are discussed superficially, for the most part. Instead, the focus is on family juggling acts which she had to perform in order to get to do the films. Perhaps, a third memoir that details her professional life will be forthcoming: Home, Home Work, Work (?). Or, it could be that Andrews' conservative disposition makes it impossible for her to describe her relationships with, and feelings toward, co-workers in greater detail.
Both memoirs of Andrews have been very well-received. I highly recommend this second one to the fans and non-fans of Dame Julie Andrews. Try to get the audiobook, if you can, as hearing the words in Andrews' own voice, and elegant British-English accent ("aafter," "baasket," "tomaato"), is a special treat.
2020/06/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Pure Persian Dictionary's cover and sample texts with various degrees of purity (see the last item below).
(2) Former Defense Secretary James Mattis sees Trump as a threat to the US Constitution: In his published memoir, he wrote that as a military-man, he won't speak ill of a sitting president. I guess he has decided that he can't take any more of this nonsense! All four living former US Presidents join retired General James Mattis in supporting the "Black Lives Matter" protesters. [My review of Mattis's memoir on GoodReads]
(3) Stocks are rising, as the pandemic, record-high unemployment, and civil-rights protests continue: Another evidence that the market has little to do with the economic well-being of the average American.
(4) University of California's Academic Council statement on current US events: Let's observe a moment of silence at 11:00 AM PDT on Thursday 6/04, when memorial services for George Floyd start in Minneapolis.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- No president has had a pandemic, an economic depression, and race riots, all at the same time. MAGA!
- One racist kicked out, many more to go: Rep. Steve King has lost in Iowa's Republican primary election.
- Haircut: Check. Dental cleaning: Check. Still far from normalcy, but at least I'm starting to look normal!
- Art heals: Wonderful artistic collaboration between cellist Yo-Yo Ma and dancer Lil' Buck.
(6) Signs of the times: Many of my fellow Iranian-Americans screaming "Law and Order" have experienced bigotry, xenophobia, and oppression first hand. So, their lack of compassion for the legitimate claims of the African-American community is quite puzzling. [Photos] [Cute protest sign] [Memes of the day]
(7) Iranian authorities shed crocodile tears over George Floyd's death: The same authorities, mind you, who used roof-top snipers and security forces armed with machine guns to kill hundreds (by some accounts, thousands) during Iran's street protests. [Photos]
(8) FIFA to suspend Iran's membership: The world soccer body has given Iran until June 5 to comply with its rules, which prohibit governmental interference in the affairs of a country's soccer federation. Dozens of other violations are also involved.
(9) Today's Persian, refined Persian, and pure Persian: Over the last two centuries (Kia, 1998), there have been movements to reestablish a pure form of the Persian language and to encourage Persian speakers and writers to avoid the use of foreign (primarily Arabic, English, and French) words. As has been the case elsewhere in the world, the task of purifying a language is a tough one, and it encounters much resistance. In the case of Iran, the task of getting rid of Arabic words and constructs is rendered more difficult by a regime whose very survival depends on the infiltration of the Arabic language and cultural norms. Here is a good example. Government documents tend to refer to "zanaan" ("women") and "mardaan" ("men") by the Arabic words "nesvaan" and "rejaal," respectively. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for these substitutions. For other words, the situation is more complicated. Sometimes a word or concept is too well-established to be changed by edict. In a WhatsApp group with old friends, we have been discussing appropriate Persian equivalents for Arabic words such as "ekhteraa'" ("invention"; "no-aafarini"?) and "ebdaa'" ("innovation"; "no-aavari"?), English words such as "luxury" (pronounced as "luck-cherry" by Persian speakers) and "start-up" (no equivalents yet), and other technical and semi-technical terms. Moving one notch down from pure Persian, one may be satisfied with refined Persian, as exemplified by the following passage from the front-matter in a dictionary of pure Persian, published by Iran's Academy of Persian Language (PDF).
Reference: Mehrdad Kia (1998), "Persian Nationalism and the Campaign for Language Purification," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 9-36, April.
2020/06/03 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Nasir al-Molk Mosque, Shiraz, Iran. [Top center] Hezar-Tappeh ("Thousand Hills") region in Iran's Golestan Province. [Top right] A deep-blue section of Shah Mosque in Esfahan, Iran. [Bottom row] Photos from my Sunday 5/31 evening walk around Goleta's Coal Oil Point and Devereux Slough.
(2) Racism is a global phenomenon: When we Iranian-Americans condemn racism and xenophobia in the US, we have to be mindful of the 40% support by Iran's citizens for kicking Afghan refugees out of Iran and for denying them educational and other opportunities. [Iranwire story, in Persian]
(3) Justice in America: One of the two individuals in this meme was arrested and murdered for a forged check (or bill?) of a few dollars. The other one embezzled millions of dollars in an insider-trading case and will not be investigated, after her husband made a sizable political donation.
(4) Why did the chicken cross the road (after tear-gassing everyone to make sure the road is clear)? To hold a Bible he hasn't read and does not follow in his personal and political lives for a photo-op!
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Wow! So compassionate: Many arrests, overwhelming force, domination. I thank myself! [Trump tweet]
- For the first time ever, Blacks protesting police brutality are supported by a large number of Whites. [Photo]
- Looters linked to Neo-Nazi groups arrested in Georgia: I am not saying that all the looters were White.
- Justin Trudeau on US protests: Collects his thoughts, before providing a compassionate answer.
- Reposting from June 2, 2017: A conversation with Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi on women's rights in Iran.
- Farrokhi Yazdi [1889-1939] wrote these verses for the politics/politicians of his time, but they look so fresh!
(6) Iranian regional music: Live performance of the oldie Guilaki song "Banafsheh Gol" by its original singer/composer, accompanied by a representative from the new generation of Iranian singers.
(7) An interesting graphic novel: The Garden of Inside-Outside; Post-revolutionary Iran, as seen by Chiara Mezzalama, daughter of the Italian Ambassador to Iran. [BBC Persian report]
(8) Dr. Javad Ashjaee [1949-2020]: A former colleague of mine at Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology in Iran, who went on to found Javad Positioning Systems (later sold to Topcon) and Javad GNSS (still operating), succumbs to coronavirus in Russia. He has been characterized as an industry disrupter and credited with many innovations by the global-positioning community. I overlapped with him for a few years at AMUT/SUT around the time of the Islamic Revolution and visited him and his company's sizable headquarters in San Jose in the 1990s. He had set up a branch of his company in Moscow to take advantage of cheap engineering talent. He told me horror stories about the threats faced by, and payoffs expected from, businesses operating there. I won't be a bit surprised if there is more to his death than the COVID-19 pandemic. He used to hire bodyguards for his stays in Moscow. Suspicious deaths and fake death certificates are quite common there. RIP.
2020/06/02 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Night view of Kakh-e Chehel-Sotoon, Esfahan, Iran: The monument's name means "40-Column Palace," because of the reflection of its 20 columns in the pond. [Top center] Esfahan's Naghsh-e Jahan Square: This beautiful partial view of the square shows the dome of the Shah Mosque undergoing repairs. [Top right] Another view of Naghsh-e Jahan Square: This one from behind the dome of Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque. [Bottom left] Kurdish-speaking regions of the Middle East (see the next item below). [Bottom center] When an Amish-like group joins the protests demanding law-enforcement reforms, you know it's serious! [Bottom right] Top 10 most-admired men & women in the world, 2014-2019, according to Gallup.
(2) Kurdish languages: Belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family, Kurdish has three main dialects; Kurmanji, "Northern Kurdish," spoken by 15-20 million Kurds in all areas; Sorani, "Central Kurdish," spoken by 6-7 million Kurds in Iraq's and Iran's Kurdistan (which, along with Arabic, is one of the two official languages of Iraq), and Pehlewani, "Southern Kurdish," spoken by ~3 million Kurds in Iran's Kermanshah and Ilam Provinces and parts of Eastern Iraq, near Iran's border. [Source: Wikipedia, "Kurdish Languages"]
[P.S.: I chanced upon self-teaching books on the first two of the dialects above when browsing the Web site of ParsiAnjoman, which has a wealth of information and downloadable files on Persian and related languages.]
(3) Linux vulnerability: According to US National Security Agency, hackers from a unit within the Russian intelligence agency have been exploiting a Linux vulnerability since August 2019. A patch is already available, but NSA is publicizing the problem to ensure that the fix is applied on all systems.
(4) Kurdish singer with a warm voice: Sahar Lotfi sings "Sho Saal," "Kurdish lullaby," and "Summertime." In this video, she performs with an all-women ensemble. [Photo]
(5) How to curtail oversensing in IoT: Future homes will have hundreds of sensors used to collect data for various apps. The problem is that sensing for a particular parameter or condition inadvertently collects unrelated data that can be abused. As a case in point, motion sensors can also capture nearby sounds, including words and keystrokes. We have to figure out how to collect only the data needed by, and essential to the proper functioning of, specific applications. Oversensing occurs when authorized access to sensor data provides an application with superfluous and potentially sensitive information. [From: The "Inside Risks" column, Communications of the ACM, issue of June 2020, pp. 20-24]
(6) University of California's alert to faculty members regarding Chinese graduate students and post-docs: Further info will be forthcoming once UC has studied the impact of a new Presidential Proclamation, authorizing the State Department and DHS to stop issuing visas to, and to revoke visas of, Chinese graduate students and post-docs with connections to universities associated with the Chinese military. Unfortunately, these are some of the top universities in China. The list includes:Beijing Institute of Technology; Beihang University; Harbin Engineering University; Harbin Institute of Technology; Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Nanjing University of Science and Technology; Northwestern Polytechnical University.
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2020/06/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] When it comes to duplicity, bigotry, and racism, Trump isn't our only problem. Not even close! [Top center] Cartoon of the day: Trump's new communication platform after he shuts down twitter. [Top right] Some Republican opinions on rape: I am awaiting a similar compilation of opinions on race. [Bottom left & right] You can't diffuse a tense confrontation with only threats: Cheer protesters who are forming human walls to stop looters. Encourage police officers who show compassion, letting the crowd know that they understand their frustrations and anger. [Bottom center] Cartoon about Iran-US relations: Crocodile tears from Khamenei over George Floyd's murder.
(2) New reports cast doubt on officials putting the blame for rioting on out-of-state actors. Stay tuned for more results of investigations into this matter and the underlying racism that started the whole mess.
(3) White people whining about the chaos and insecurity of the past few days refuse to acknowledge that they have been living privileged lives, at the expense of those in a permanent state of chaos and insecurity.
(4) You can be an okay real-estate developer without ever having read a book, but any high-level leader in politics or military, as General Mattis is fond of saying, must have read and digested at least hundreds of books.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This is how you diffuse tensions: Not with threats of shooting and using vicious dogs!
- Cartoon caption: Cop to African-American boy: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Boy: "Alive!"
- Persian music: "Gol-e Goldoon-e Man" ("Flower of My Vase"), performed by Monika Jalili.
- Iranian regional music: Shardad Rohani conducts and his daughter Sara Rohani sings tho oldie "Aziz Joon."
(6) Trump is incapable of saying we have heard your voice and understand your anger: Instead of comforting words, he speaks of shooting and vicious dogs! In the absence of compassionate national leadership, the burden of calming the protesters and quelling the riots falls upon local leaders and celebrities. Rapper Killer Mike implores, "it is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy."
(7) In Iran, both the people and officials are mourning George Floyd's death, but for entirely different reasons. The people hope to bring attention to even worse violence by Iranian police and security forces. The officials are trumpeting the notion that America is no champion of freedom or justice, even lnternally.
(8) Reposting from May 31, 2015: Many organizations and groups are recycling their previous programs to keep people company as they stay at home for the most part. Here is my FB post about a film screening from UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran, covering the life and work of children's songwriter Abbas Yamini Sharif [1919-1989]. [Link to the full documentary (the film starts at the 17:00 mark)]
2020/05/30 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Women of Sanandaj, a city in western Iran, protest against the notion of "honor" killing, arising from men's sense of ownership over women. [Top center] Trump playing with his wind-up toys of choice! [Top right] Meme of the day: If "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" doesn't bother you, why do you take offense at "No Mask, No Service"? [Bottom left] Alt-facts quote of the day: "The President in no way, form, or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence." ~ Sarah Sanders [Bottom center] Puzzle: Pieces of the triangle at the top are rearranged to increase its area by 1 unit. How come? [Bottom right] Street protests turn violent in Minneapolis and other cities/states across the US (see the last item below).
(2) George Floyd's murder: Everyone is tired of the racism awakened in this country by the Racist-in-Chief, who continues to spray fuel on the fire by calling the protesters "thugs." There is a difference between recognizing that some thugs (including Russian-sponsored trolls) are taking advantage of the situation, and insulting the entire angry, fed-up African-American community. [Tweet by Michelle Obama]
(3) SpaceX capsule taking two US astronauts to ISS left Earth earlier today: This is the first American manned space mission in 9 years and the first ever on private-company technology. Since the Space Shuttle was decommissioned, American astronauts have been traveling to International Space Station on Russian rockets.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- I think Trump should make it easy on everyone and change his Twitter handle to @altFactsDonaldTrump!
- Cities across the US impose curfews, as tensions rise in the George Floyd protests.
- Graffiti on the side of a Belgian train reads: "Please, I can't breathe." [Video]
- Puzzle: Explain how the shape and area of the rectangle remain the same after adding Pieces 6 and 7.
(5) Evidence of outside/foreign infiltration in Minnesota protests: MN Governor, Mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and MN Attorney General allege outside meddling to cause mayhem and turn the protests violent. Mayor Carter said every person arrested last night during the protests is from out of state. The Governor has reached out to Departments of Homeland Security and Defense and fully mobilized the MN National Guard.
[P.S.: New reports cast doubt on officials putting the blame for rioting on out-of-state actors. Stay tuned for more results of investigations into this matter and the underlying racism that started the whole mess.]
2020/05/29 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian poetry: A wonderful couplet from Mahasti Ganjavi (source: ganjoor.net). [Center] Not one woman is in sight in this photo from the grand-opening of a women's park in Sari, Iran! [Right] Today's Persian lesson, brought to you by the letter "seen" ("s"), appearing in the words "das" ("sickle") and "namoos" (broadly meaning "honor," "reputation," "chastity," and one's female relatives).
(2) US slander laws: What was it you were saying a couple of years ago about the need to strengthen slander laws, @realDonaldTrump? There is material for hundreds of lawsuits against you just in your tweets!
(3) Washington-Beijing tensions will affect American universities: Thousands of Chinese graduate students may be expelled from the US in forthcoming retaliatory measures by the Trump administration.
(4) Universities brace for tough times ahead: Almost all US states are considering massive higher-education budget cuts. Other reports indicate that graduation rates may be adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and challenges of on-line instruction.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump vetoes bipartisan legislation that facilitates student-loan forgiveness benefiting many veterans.
- The first person arrested in the George Floyd murder case was a CNN reporter, not the murderous cop!
- Quote of the day: "A riot is the language of the unheard." ~ Martin Luther King Jr. [Tweet]
- The Swish Machine: A most-elaborate Rube Goldberg construction to put a basketball through a hoop!
- Babak Tafreshi, photographer of night skies, shows and discusses some of his work. [5-minute video]
- Amazing film from Iran's Lut Desert, after unusually heavy rainfall turned it into a land of lakes.
- Iran's nature: Slide show from photographs of Roya Barrette, enhanced by the music of Mohammad Nouri.
(6) "We Are One" Film Festival (#WeAreOne): Running on YouTube from May 29 to June 7, 2020, the on-line event is co-curated by over 20 film festivals from across the world.
(7) The COVID-19 pandemic brought drones to the forefront: The technology was ready to step in for many uses, including law-enforcement and medicine/test-kit deliveries.
(8) [Final post for the day] African-Americans have offered to trade Kanye West for Taylor Swift, who tweeted: "After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? 'When the looting starts the shooting starts'??? We will vote you out in November. @realDonaldTrump"
2020/05/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] There is absolutely no honor in "honor" killings (see the last item below). [Center] Today is World Hunger Day: As we are preoccupied with a pandemic, let us not forget a much bigger worldwide problem that has persisted for decades if not centuries. Those of us who continue to shelter at home and venture outside on a limited basis, should try to imagine being hungry/homeless and also afraid of contracting COVID-19! [Right] The Supreme Holocaust Denier has a solution for Israel: Khamanei's published poster and who is included in it betray his intentions.
(2) Trump threatening Twitter is ironic: He would be nothing without his Twitter account, which reaches ~80M users. At 20K apiece, he needs 4000 rallies to reach the same number of people directly and unfiltered.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In a tweet, Trump thanks "Cowboys for Trump," a group that says "a good Democrat is a dead one."
- "GREAT DAY FOR THE DOW!!" ~ Eric Trump, on the day when deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 100,000.
- Get to know this proud, and funny, black man better, before you call the cops on him. [Video]
- Artist's rendering of patriarchy, in the wake of Romina Ashrafi's beheading by her father.
[Magazine cover]
- Recent heavy rainfall has turned Iran's Lut Desert, normally very dry, into a land of lakes. [Pictorial]
- Flattening my curve by practicing social-distancing from my refrigerator! [Cartoon]
(4) Disturbing facts about "honor" killings: Let me share with you some information that I have gleaned from posts/tweets, media stories, and interviews with various experts on Iran's laws and culture in the wake of the beheading of Romina Ashrafi by her father. "Shame killing" is a more appropriate name for such acts, but I will use the more common "honor killing," always putting "honor" in quotes.
According to Iran's penal code, which, as specified by the country's constitution (adopted after the Islamic Revolution of 1979) is based on Islamic law, a father/grandfather isn't accused of a criminal act if he kills his child/grandchild. The "reasoning" goes like this (what I write applies to a father, not grandfather, who for some odd reason is treated like a father by this law). The father created the child and has his/her best interests at heart. So, whatever he does is well-intentioned and not criminal. Note that there is no mention whatsoever of the mother's role in creating the child! The view is that man creates the child, using his sperm and and a piece of property known as "woman"!
This law is based on the medieval Arab notion that a father "owns" his child (again, no role for the mother here) and thus he can do all that's needed to "protect" and "improve" his property, just as he would confront a thief who enters his home and takes a rug or piece of jewelry, say. In the case of the stolen rug or valuable jewelry, it isn't destroyed after recovery, but a woman who is raped or runs away with a boyfriend becomes so worthless that her life has no value.
While lenient treatment for the murder of one's child isn't the primary reason for "honor" killings, it certainly provides an incentive in this regard. The roots of "honor" killings run much deeper than this backward law. Brothers, husbands, uncles, and male in-laws of a woman also commit murder to remove a "stain" from the family's reputation, and they are not similarly protected by law, although, certainly, they are treated leniently by Islamic judges who support this way of thinking.
On the surface, the law isn't misogynistic in the treatment of victims, just inhumane and misguided. It applies to the killing of both boys and girls by fathers. However, it is extremely rare for a father to kill his son for bringing dishonor to the family. But misogyny is certainly at play where the perpetrator is concerned, because no such "ownership" privilege is afforded to mothers. Furthermore, victims of "honor" killings are predominantly women and girls. So, the law becomes misogynistic when enacted within a culture of misogyny.
By the way, "honor" killings occur in the Christian and Jewish traditions as well, but the incidents are few and far in between.
2020/05/27 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Challenging math problem: Show that the sum of inverses of triangular numbers, 1/1 + 1/3 + 1/6 + 1/10 + 1/15 + 1/21 + ... , converges to 2. The nth triangular number is the sum of consecutive integers from 1 to n, that is, n(n + 1)/2. [Center] Cryptic puzzle: For this one, you have to provide the puzzle's statement and solution! [Right] Counting puzzle: How many triangles are there in this image?
(2) Yet another victim of "honor" killings: Acting as judge, jury, and executioner, father of 14-year-old Romina Ashrafi beheads her with a sickle. Romina joins an already-long list of victims of violence against women and girls in the first two months of the new Iranian year. Romina was doubly victimized by a 35-year-old "lover" (child sexual predator) and by her father. After the murder, the father reportedly boasted that he had removed the stain! To add insult to injury, Romina was mourned by the male members of the family (no mention even of her mother in the announcement of memorial services; only father, grandfathers, brother, uncles)! And now the murderous father mourns his daughter? Words fail me in describing this stain on humanity!
[P.S.: In reporting on the gruesome murder, Iran's news media PhotoShopped an image of the victim to show a headscarf that covers more of her hair and a couple of inches of neck seen in the original photo!]
(3) Musings on the misguided notions of "gheirat" and "namoos" (Persian words): This morning I read and made a couple of posts about another "honor" killing in Iran. Violence against women and girls continues under the guise of "family honor" and other misguided notions. I have made many posts over the past decade about the topic. Here are samples from my diary, found with a search for the word "gheirat."
(4) The restaurant industry is going through a near-death experience: Here is a provocative opinion piece, arguing that the racially-discriminating, economically-exploitative, and environmentally-destructive industry should not be bailed out.
(5) Racist cops: George Floyd, a black man choked to death in Minnesota when a police officer put a knee over his neck for several minutes to hold him down, kept saying that he couldn't breathe.
(6) Restrictions in Optional Practical Training being considered: OPT allows international students in the US a period of practical training in a job, while remaining on student visas. India and China are the top two countries in terms of students enrolled in OPT. Amazon is the largest employer that benefits from the program.
2020/05/25 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] On this Memorial Day, we honor the memory of those who fell to protect our freedom: Kissing and hugging the flag and wrapping our misguided policies in it are cheap. Doing something for our veterans, including protecting them from predatory private colleges that mislead them and milk their educational benefits would be priceless. [Top center] Meme of the day: Love, from my house to your house. [Top right] Chaotic reopening defies common sense: Many Americans ignore the guidelines for reopening safely. [Bottom left] Manteqi-Nejad Historic House, Shiraz, Iran. [Bottom center] Meme of the day: - Good morning, doctor! - Ma'am ... I'm your hairdresser! [Bottom right] Mollabashi Historic House in Esfahan, Iran.
(2) Every move you make, every step you take, Google is watching you: How Google collects your data even if your phone has no WiFi or cellular connection and is set on airplane mode. Surveillance capitalism. Scary!
(3) Sessions v. Trump: Jeff Sessions has finally begun to stand up to Trump's abusive tweets. Sort of. But it's too late for him to recover from hypocritically supporting a man he knew to be a crook.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kim Jong Un holds a high-level meeting to bolster NK's nuclear arsenal and put its military on high alert.
- Russia, if you are listening, please convince people that it's safe to get haircuts and congregate in churches.
- Lindsey Graham & Donald Trump: Marriage of convenience between two hypocrites and shameless liars.
- "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." ~ Mark Twain
- In the next Batman and Superman sequels, the heros will be working from home!
- Graceful and somewhat surprising periodic mechanical motions. [5-minute video]
- Persian music on Turkish TV: Wonderful instrumental piece. [5-minute video]
(5) Mohammad Mo'in [1914-1971]: The Iranian scholar, who, despite dying at a relatively young age, left behind many noteworthy publications, including an acclaimed 6-volume Persian dictionary. [9-minute video]
(6) Persian music: A wonderful song involving a large number of participants, including Pari Zangeneh, celebrating medical and other front-line workers and the spirit of community. [Full credits on the video]
(7) [Musings of someone who has lost three family members in the span of less than a month.]
Mourning vs. celebration of life: A mourner's focus is on the loss s/he has suffered personally, so, it is rather self-centered. We see in the Iranian culture that a mourner wails, beats himself/herself, and feels despair. A better approach when losing a loved one is to celebrate his/her life. This is what the American culture advocates. Instead of highlighting the loss, one tells stories of the departed's life and experiences, including funny ones that bring a smile to everyone's face. We should remember a loved one by his/her life-long passions and contributions, rather than by the losing battle of the final days. [Recitation of my Persian poem]
2020/05/23 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Can't blame you if you see a woman in this landscape scene with animals! [Top center] A review of Hossein Kamlay's History of Islam in 21 Women: "[It] has a special resonance at a time in which Muslim women are often caricatured as powerless and dependent, and their alleged oppression is often used by western powers as justification for intervention in the Middle East." [Top right] "Pioneers in Skirts" is a feature documentary which uses both real subjects and industry experts to portray how everyday people experience and combat stereotyping, sexism, and bias. The film is produced by Lea-Ann W. Berst and directed by Ashley Maria (trailer). [Bottom left] The highest marginal tax rate was not set to 37% in the Bible: It is a product of negotiations and compromise. In the US, it rose to 94% during World War II, and it was at or above 70% from 1936 to 1980. [Bottom center] Mourning mass-shooting victims (see the next item below). [Bottom right] I Madonnari Street-Painting Festival 2020: Artists will create chalk paintings on their driveways over the Memorial-Day weekend and share them on-line, instead of gathering at Santa Barbara Mission.
(2) Remembering the Isla Vista mass-shooting victims: Today, the Isla Vista Love and Remembrance Garden at People's Park provided a space for remembering the six victims of the tragic events that shocked UCSB and its surrounding communities six years ago. Six young souls and their dreams were taken by a spoiled, gun-loving rich kid, who thought women owed him love and attention he did not deserve. [2-minute video]
(3) Speaking truth to power: A brave soul, speaking (in Persian) at an unknown forum, says that Islamic Republic of Iran officials have no choice but to divert people's attention with anti-America slogans, because there isn't one thing that they can point to as a positive development under their rule.
(4) A petite woman in her 30s, who is often mistaken for a pre-teen, writes about her ordeal: Many people might think that her problem is a good one to have, but she begs to differ.
(5) Beautiful math: The Riemann hypothesis is a seemingly-simple math problem that has remained unsolved, that is, neither confirmed nor contradicted, since it was formulated in 1859. This video will help you understand the hypothesis and why it is perhaps today's most-important open math problem.
2020/05/22 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cartoon of the day: Restaurants' new offering after they re-open to diners. [Top center] When you have no clue but get lucky. [Top right] Drive-in theaters are coming back: They have built-in social distancing and allow people holed up at home to have a night out. Meanwhile, ordinary theaters are using their marquees for humor and public announcements. [Bottom] My invigorating walk at Goleta's Lake Los Carneros Park on a gorgeous Thursday afternoon.
(2) Virtual tours of important attractions in Shiraz, a south-central city in Iran.
[Nasiralmolk Mosque]
[Persepolis]
[Tomb of Hafez]
[Tomb of Sa'adi]
[Shah-e Cheragh Shrine]
[Vakil Bazaar]
[Vakil Bath]
[Vakil Mosque]
[Afif-Abad Garden]
[Jahan-Namaa Garden]
[Quran Gate]
[Ghavam Orange Grove]
[Zinat-al-Molk Residence]
[Karim-Khan Fort]
[Haft-Tanaan Monument]
[Khan School]
(3) Quote of the day: "I like to play this DVD on the TV in my bar, because my customers end up drinking a lot more." ~ Curtis Ledger, Texas, on the Ken Burns documentary film about the Trump administration
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Humor: In Trump's re-opening guidelines, you are asked to socially-distance yourself only from scientists!
- Two southern churches reclose indefinitely after pastor dies and churchgoers catch coronavirus.
- UC leads by example: Univ. of California becomes world's largest university to divest fully from fossil fuels.
- Rira Esmaeilion, a victim of the Ukrainian plane downing, would have turned 10 today. [Her dad's tweet]
- Peaceful music: "No Return," by Invisible Blue. [4-minute audio clip]
- Art reflections: Hidden designs emerge from thin air on reflective surfaces. [Video]
(5) Possible set-back to public transit: In recent years, many people had begun favoring public transit over private cars. That trend may reverse owing to health fears in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both traffic conditions and air quality will be adversely affected by greater reliance on private cars.
(6) The historic city of Darab, Iran: Located in the south-central Fars Province, this city of 55,000 residents was founded some 2500 years ago by Darius I, on a site that is believed to have once hosted a 7000-year-old civilization. It was originally called Darabgerd (round Darius-town), with a 6-km-long circular wall and moat.
(7) IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference: Comprised of one-hour sessions throughout June 2020, the conference is free with advance registration. This Web site has the program details, registration links, and a library of pertinent videos. I particularly recommend the session on June 23, during which director Ashley Maria will make a presentation about the documentary film "Pioneers in Skirts."
2020/05/21 (Thursday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: McCullough, David, The Wright Brothers, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Sons of a preacher and a mother who died young, Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, on a small side-street. Their family's residence lacked electricity or indoor plumbing, but was filled with books, which the unschooled brothers never stopped reading. The brothers ran a fairly successful bicycle shop, that provided them with enough income to live and to pursue their main passion: human flight. Amazingly, in those days, bicycles were viewed as having negative influences on innocent youth, keeping them from reading books and encouraging sexual freedom!
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Wright brothers did not invent human flight. Rather, they perfected the mechanisms needed to control flight in a fixed-wing, heavier-than-air machine and to make it less dangerous for humans on board. In fact, alongside their own rigorous observations of birds in flight, they read books by others who had already thought about and suggested workable schemes for human flight. The Wright brothers took immense risks in the process, leading, for example, to Orville suffering serious injuries, requiring a long recovery period, during a test flight.
The determined and mechanically skilled brothers finally demonstrated sustained flight in December 1903, thus heralding the age of aviation. They achieved this remarkable feat on their own meager income, using simple and inexpensive mechanisms. Only after their successful flight did the Smithsonian, which was conducting its own flying experiments (embarrassingly flopping into the Potomac) showed any interest in their work on behalf of the US government.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning master historian McCullough draws upon correspondence, diaries, notebooks, and scrapbooks to tell the story of Wright brothers, who were 5 years apart but often deemed to be twins; Wilbur was the older brother, but Orville became better known. The elaborate detail that the book provides was made possible, owing to meticulous record-keeping by the Wright family and interviews with the people of Kitty Hawk, the small North Carolina beach town, with an expansive beach and moderate, steady winds, where the brothers did many of their test flights.
(2) Course review: Harvey, Prof. Hannah B. (Professional Storyteller), The Art of Storytelling: From Parents to Professionals, 24 lectures in the "Great Courses" series, 2013. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This audiobook in the "Great Courses" series should be required listening for everyone. We all tell stories in our daily lives, not just to our children but also to our friends, underlings, superiors, and virtually everyone else. Research has shown that humans arrange facts and remember them by weaving little stories. In other words, our brain is hardwired to build and understand stories. It relishes good stories and experiences pain when faced with bad or poorly-told stories.
And, in teaching too, research suggests that stories play a key role in effective information transfer and understanding. You can talk for hours about the importance of following engineering and ethics rules in system design, but for students to internalize the concepts, you have to tell actual human stories of how skirting such guidelines can lead to loss and even tragedy.
skills you will learn from this course include choosing expressive language; crafting compelling characters; refining your narrator's point of view; shaping your story's plot, structure, and emotional arc; developing imagery, vocal cues, and intonation; and using body language to connect with your audience. Most people, whether they are stand-up comics or teachers, reuse stories, refining them prior to each new use, until they become finely-tuned and effective.
Sometimes, though, people overuse stories. It is a pet peeve of mine to see news reports that begin with a fascinating story, which potentially obfuscates the main point of the report. The story may pull in some readers with dramatic statements and teasers, but I think it could also lead to loss of focus and reader interest.
(3) Book review: McCabe, Andrew G., The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The publishing industry must love Trump, who has been the subject of best-selling book, after best-selling book, ever since he took office as the 45th president of the United States. These books have significant overlaps in describing the Trump administration's most-egregious acts and constant lying to the press and the public. Yet, each book invariably has a personal angle that adds to the overall story. Perhaps someday, someone will synthesize all the available information into a coherent and critically-acclaimed whole.
McCabe has been a central figure in the investigations of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He personally knew James Comey, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and Jeff Sessions, which makes him privy to much sensitive information. McCabe seems to like the disposition and cordiality of VP Mike Pence, abhor Jeff Sessions, and harbor mixed feelings about Rosenstein. He considers Comey singularly responsible for Clinton's defeat. The most positive character in the book is Robert Mueller, whom McCabe considers a role model and hero. Yet, we don't hear a final verdict from McCabe on whether Mueller did his job well in investigating the Russia connection of Trump's campaign.
On multiple occasions, Trump tried to goad McCabe into acknowledging that the rank-and-file members of the FBI loved him and hated Comey, an offer which McCabe says he refused because he felt that the exact opposite was true. In his relentless search for personal loyalty, Trump also asked McCabe about how he had voted in the 2016 presidential election, a question McCabe dodged at first, later admitting that he had not voted.
As they say, an autobiography is the story of how a person thinks his/her life was led. There are passages in this book where the reader/listener might doubt McCabe's fortitude and honesty, but the book does add another dimension to the many volumes that describe Trump and his dysfunctional administration. Many more books will be written in time and we will get to know the extent to which McCabe's self-serving claims pan out.
2020/05/20 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Not racist at all: Some "very fine people" are against wearing masks, which are for dogs and slaves! [Top center] Iranian police will deal harshly with hijab-less women on Instagram (news reports) Here's an excellent idea. Instead of women being forced to cover their hair, why not those who are troubled by seeing women's flowing hair not using Instagram or, if they have to be on Instagram, covering parts of their phone screens (cartoon from: Iranwire.com). [Top right] Iranian presidential adviser Shahindokht Molaverdi shares an image depicting diverse families on Telegram and faces a strong backlash. [Bottom left] It bears repeating: YouTube isn't a legit news source on science or any other matter. [Bottom center] Ordibehesht 28 (May 17 this year) is the birth date of Omar Khayyam, the Persian philosopher, mathematician, poet, and polymath. Here is one of his more-famous couplets, stating that as we increase our knowledge, we also raise our awareness of our ignorance. [Bottom right] The flag won't save us from a pandemic, science will!
(2) An Oscar-worthy acting performance: "Jane Roe" of "Roe v. Wade" fame was paid by anti-abortion groups to denounce her advocacy of abortion rights, but she later returned to her original stance. The documentary "AKA Jane Roe" details her story and deathbed confession.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This isn't normal: Trump compared to former presidents in reacting to national crises.
- Your religious freedom and right to go to church do not take precedence over "Thou shall not kill"! [Video]
- A survey result even Fox News can't ignore: Opinions on the greatest threat to world peace.
- Iran: The Jewish shrine of Esther and Mordechai undamaged in fire, which burned in an annex building.
- Music: A talent-competition-show singer with an amazing vocal range. [Video]
- Female composers earn a stage: They set out to change Iran's male-dominated music-composition scene.
(4) Double disasters: Imagine being under stay-at-home and social-distancing restrictions because of a pandemic, when flooding causes two dams to break. How does one go to a shelter and observe social distancing? Hope Michiganders stay safe!
(5) Avoid fighting two wars at once: Matthew McConaughey shares his message about political divisiveness in the era of COVID-19 and the need to focus on defeating the virus.
(6) Dictators with failed ambitions: Hitler failed in his pursuit of painting. Stalin coveted the role of a theoretician. Khamenei aspired to be a poet, and he compensates for his failure in this domain by holding poetry-recitation sessions, where he assumes the role of a critic.
2020/05/19 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This explains Trump's reluctance to wear a mask! [Top center] Seven Iranian Baha'is sentenced to a total of 33 years jail time: Just for practicing their faith! [Top right] Meme of the day: Even on Gilligan's Island, they listened to the professor, not the millionaire! [Bottom left & center] Protests by armed and dangerous "terrorists" (see the last item below). [Bottom right] UCSB's Pollock Theater spotlights three films in the "Beatles Revolutions" series (see the last item below).
(2) UCSB's Pollock Theater, closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, spotlights its past screenings, including three films in the "Beatles Revolutions" series (follow links for details and post-screening discussions):
- "A Hard Day's Night" (1964, available on Amazon Prime Video) [Link]
- "Across the Universe" (2007, available on Amazon Prime Video) [Link]
- "Yellow Submarine" (1968, available on iTunes/AppleTV) [Link]
(3) Household-disinfectant poisoning on the rise: April 2020 saw a 121% increase in household-disinfectant poisoning (over the same month last year). It's all Obama's fault, because he did not prepare the nation for disbelieving snake-oil salesmen! [Data from Time magazine, May 25, 2020]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Increasingly worried about going to jail after leaving office, Trump invents "Obamagate"!
- US President thinks Secretary of State shouldn't have to wash dishes if his wife isn't around.
- Police in Iran to deal harshly with women showing their hair on Instagram: Are family photo albums next?
- Persian music: Japanese (Tajik?) children singing and dancing to "Gol-e Sangam." Very cute! [Video]
- Either the building's janitor wrote this sign or Iranian doctors aren't required to take a few units of Persian!
- Word-search puzzle: Find 16 country names in this 8 × 12 grid (two of them are abbreviations).
(5) Terrible historical analogies: Under the guise of protesting social restrictions imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19, certain groups of people bearing assault rifles, US and Confederate flags, and swastikas took to the streets and went as far as physically threatening governors and others at state capitols. Such groups are normally called terrorists, if their skin color is anything but white. The groups and their apologists liken the state restrictions and stay-at-home orders to Nazism and slavery. It is safe to say that none of these people has experienced or even read a book on what went on during the Nazi reign in Germany or the dark years of slavery in the US. Such ill-advised analogies aren't much different from Holocaust denial or condoning racism.
2020/05/17 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: My cousin Farkhondeh passed away on Saturday (see the next item below).
(2) Farkhondeh Hatami Ghaffari-Vala [1948-2020]: It's only mid-May, and the third member of the extended Parhami family has passed away this month. My cousin Farkhondeh was part of the cohort of Parhami cousins that included me and my oldest sister. Her family, aunt Zohreh's, and mine were very close. I and my sisters and Farkhondeh and her four brothers and two sisters got together often, both at our parental homes and in outings such as picnics in the country, ski trips, hiking in northern Tehran, and camping on the Caspian-Sea shores. Farkhondeh was always the life of the party, as well as a caring and kind person. I composed a poem, with the initial letters of the half verses spelling "Farkhondeh," in her honor. May her soul rest in peace!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Coronavirus stats, in round numbers: World cases 5M; US cases 1.5M; World deaths 300K; US deaths 90K.
- Toxic masculinity: Men are less likely to wear masks, because of the belief that masks are emasculating!
- Here we go again: "Arthur" is the first Atlantic storm of the year. [Map]
- Borowitz Report (humor): Trump wishes he could replace Fauci with the doctor who saved him from Vietnam.
- Having fun with face masks! [Video of woman wearing a mask painted with a big grin]
- The up side of coronavirus: Eat as much as you like; Summer is cancelled!
- Natural wonder in Iran's Lorestan Province: A 3-km-long water-carved pass, with many geologic features.
- Duet by Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli: What a treat! The song is called "Perfect Symphony." [Video]
(4) The double-whammy hitting US college towns: Small towns hosting major universities are being doubly impacted by the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout. The economies of such towns are highly dependent on the presence of, and spending by, students as well as by visiting parents, especially at graduation time.
(5) My forthcoming remote keynote address: To be delivered in English at 20th International Symposium on Computer Architecture & Digital Systems (CADS 2020), Guilan University, Iran, April 22-23, 2020 (postponed to unspecified dates in June 2020, due to the coronavirus epidemic, which has hit particularly hard in the Caspian-Sea province of Guilan). [Read the Persian title and abstract]
Title: Neurophysiological Discoveries of the 2014 Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine from a Computer Arithmetic Perspective
Abstract: The discovery that mammals use a multi-modular method akin to residue number system (RNS), but with continuous residues or digits, to encode position information led to the award of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine. After a brief review of the evidence in support of this hypothesis, and how it relates to RNS, I discuss the properties of continuous-digit RNS, and discuss results on the dynamic range, representational accuracy, and factors affecting the choice of the moduli, which are themselves real numbers. I conclude with suggestions for further research on important open problems concerning the process of selection, or evolutionary refinement, of the set of moduli in such a representation.
2020/05/15 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A sample of how English has changed: The 23rd Psalm over the last 1000 years. [Center] The new normal: Children playing. [Right] Cover of Newsweek magazine (see the last item below).
(2) Persian poetry recitation: Fereydoon Moshiri's "Gord Afarid," describing a mythical female character from Ferdowsi's Book of Kings. Ferdowsi is often credited for saving the Persian language. Were it not for his efforts, Iranians would be speaking Arabic today, much like several non-Arab countries of North Africa.
(3) COVID-19 scams proliferate: If you get e-mails, texts, or calls about stimulus checks, testing, etc., do not respond or click on links.
(4) Hope this isn't true, but the report is in line with previous defacing and destruction attempts: Holy Jewish site of Esther and Mordechai set ablaze in Iran.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Why is Trump so obsessed with Obama? This Guardian article has some answers.
- In-n-Out Burger drive-through in Goleta now has two waiting lines, which extend to Turnpike Road. [Photo]
- The Obamas read a children's book, The Word Collector, to support public libraries. [Video]
- The Water & Fire Park: Near Tehran's Vanak Square, not far from my parental home of 3 decades ago.
- Persian music: A nice rendition of "Gol-e Sangam" with kamancheh and tar.
(6) "Twenty Actresses, Twenty Destinies, Fifty Years of Iranian Cinema": Iranian families, even educated and enlightened ones, discouraged women from pursuing acting careers and, in extreme cases, disowned them or threatened them with death. [7-minute trailer]
(7) Freedom/privacy vs. safety/security: The age-old trade-off is staring at us in the age of coronavirus. Other than contact tracing, featured on the cover of Newsweek, I learned from an NPR program that monitoring the heart rates of large populations (possibly millions) can provide important clues about the distribution and spread of COVID-19. This scheme, which does not need any new equipment, because smart watches and other health-monitoring equipment already collect the data, was invented in the US, but China is its primary user.
2020/05/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Artist's expression of his/her frustrations these days (GIF link). [Center] These women are believed to be the front-runners for becoming Joe Biden's running mate. [Right] Work by another frustrated artist, this time a sand-sculptor: One of the winning entries in a Texas competition.
(2) SAT and ACT are out: UC President Janet Napolitano recommends multi-year suspension of SAT and ACT test requirements. Eventually, the standardized tests will be replaced by UC's home-grown test.
(3) Higher-education News: California State University, the nation's largest 4-year college system with 23 campuses, will cancel most in-person classes in the fall and instead offer instruction primarily online.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The coronavirus timeline: Don't let Trump try to rewrite history and blame Obama for his own failings.
- "Transition to Greatness" starts on November 3, 2020. Only 174 days to go!
- Artist at work: Using a can of paint and leaving the rest to a swinging pendulum! [5-minute video]
- Persian music: A composition by Hossein Alizadeh, with lyrics by poet Fereydoon Moshiri. [5-minute video]
- Music & dance from Lorestan: The western Iranian province that is home to the oldest human civilizations.
- Puzzle: How can we use 4-minute and 7-minute hourglasses to measure 9 minutes?
- Puzzle: What two things do these words have in common?
aisle | hour | knot | scent | whole | wrested
(5) Puzzle: X wants to let Y and Z know his birth date. He first indicates that the date is among the following ten options: January 13, 15, 19; February 17, 18; March 12, 13; April 12, 15, 17.
He then tells Y the month and Z the day.
Y says: "I don't know X's birth date, but I am certain that Z doesn't know either."
Z then says: "I didn't know before, but I know now."
Y then says: "Now I know too."
Which of the 10 options represent X's birth date and why?
(6) Arab literature isn't popular in Iran: Only a handful of Arab writers are known and, with the exception of those writing in English or winning international awards, their work is pretty much ignored by Iranian intellectuals. One surprising reason is the dearth of capable translators and editors, despite the fact that Arabic instruction is broadly supported by the Islamic regime and is included at all grade levels. Fascinating!
2020/05/13 (Wednesday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Kristof, Nicholas D. and Sheryl WuDunn, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, Unabridged MP3 audiobook read by the authors and Jennifer Garner, Random House Audio, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
By telling stories from the lives of real Americans who are struggling to make ends meet amid unprecedented national and global economic expansion, the authors provide a sobering narrative on the current state of our country and of our national priorities. Given America's deteriorating economic situation due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the fragilities and inequities that it has exposed, the message of this book has become even more urgent.
Kristof grew up in Yamhill, Oregon, a rural community that is representative of much of the American underclass. Kristof and WuDunn draw the reader in by telling the stories of one quarter of Kristof's school-bus buddies who have died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents, all caused, directly or indirectly, by being marginalized.
The book then proceeds to outline causes and symptoms of economic inequality, which is often blamed, wrongly, on globalization. Economic strains and downturns caused by globalization are, well, a global phenomenon, but workers in Germany and many other European countries, or in Canada, aren't impacted in the same way as US workers, thanks, in part, to their better social safety nets and the government actively helping the citizens, rather than blaming them for personal irresponsibility.
Economic desperation, along with easy access to opioids and guns, is a recipe for disaster that the aforementioned countries have avoided, as they went through rough economic times. Decades of policy mistakes, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, have reversed the economic progress of the mid-twentieth-century in rural America. For example, Mississippi, which had a per-capita income of only 30% of Massachusetts in the 1930s, was catching up and reached 70% by 1975, before starting to go backwards to the current 55%.
One particular story of the life of marginalized people was eye-opening for me. A drunken Oregon man awakens his wife and orders her to make dinner for him. When she doesn't move fast enough, he punches her and chases her out of the house with a rifle. She spends the night in the fields near their house, hoping and praying that their five children are not harmed. Four of the five children die gruesome deaths in later years, while the fifth child is afflicted with HIV and hepatitis.
This book isn't an easy or pleasant read. Despite the appearance of the word "Hope" in the subtitle, there are precious few things in the book that spark hope. But we owe it to our country to familiarize ourselves with how the underclass lives and how our choices of leaders and support for fiscal and social policies contribute to the worsening crisis.
(2) Book review: Lama, Dalai, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, unabridged MP3 audiobook read by Douglas C. Abrams, Francois Chau, and Peter F. James, Penguin Audio, 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
On the occasion of the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday, the two spiritual leaders, Nobel Peace Laureates, and infectiously-happy old men got together for a week in Dharamsala, India, to compare notes about joy (an inner condition) and how it differs from happiness (an outer condition). The moderator and audiobook's narrator Douglas Abrams, a Jew, observes that the combination (a Buddhist, a Christian, and a Jew), which sounds like the set-up for a joke, actually adds to the serious message that joy is independent of religion or even of the belief in a deity.
The two spiritual leaders are highly qualified to talk about finding joy in the face of hardship and pain. The Dalai Lama escaped Tibet, where his life was in danger, and has lived in exile for decades. Desmond Tutu played a key role in Africa's freedom movements, including the fall of the apartheid state in South Africa. Frequent mentions are made in the book of Nelson Mandela, another spiritual leader who chose humility, forgiveness, and gratitude, the three key ingredients of joy.
The book's plan was to build a "three-layer birthday cake," with the layers being the spiritual leaders' stories/teachings about joy, the latest psychological and neuro-scientific discoveries about human happiness, and the joyful men's daily practices encompassing their emotional and spiritual lives. The two men, still jubilant and mischievous in their eighties, may never get together again. So, this book will likely remain their final collaboration in bringing joy to the world.
The audiobook's second and third narrators are voice actors, who presumably have accents similar to the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. This makes listening to the audiobook a much more enjoyable experience than merely reading the printed book.
(3) Book review: Thiel, Peter with Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Blake Masters, Random House Audio, 2014.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Building a start-up company means creating something from nothing, thus the book's title. Drawing from his experience as a founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, Thiel outlines conditions for success in a domain where the landscape is littered with failures. Among his recommendation is starting small, focusing on one narrow domain and aiming to monopolize it by creating something that provides clear value to users. Being too ambitious at the outset, or using the finite resources of a start-up to compete with one or more established businesses is unlikely to lead to success.
Thiel's embrace of monopoly is quite unconventional. We are told that monopoly is bad and competition is good. Thiel suggests that too much competition shaves the profit margin and dampens innovation. On the other hand, a monopolistic enterprise may be highly motivated to invest in innovative processes and products, given its relative market security and long-term profit potential. Thiel does mention in passing that monopolies can be misused, but he glosses over the dangers.
Despite the book's shortcomnings, I believe that exposure to Thiel's ideas and arguments would be beneficial to many readers. For example, there is much truth to Thiel's assertion that competition restricts vision and produces obsessive hostility. Competition often leads to copying of ideas and products, rather than invention and innovation. Thiel also stresses the importance of marketing, an area that is often overlooked by techies, dismissing the myth that "if you build it, they will come."
As a co-author of The Diversity Myth, a critique of multiculturalism and the rape-crisis movement that vilifies men (he has since apologized for the latter stance), Thiel is no stranger to controversy, and he creates a lot of it in Zero to One. Read it with an open mind and take what you find acceptable to your way of thinking and priorities. As the Persian saying goes, Luqman the Wise claimed that he learned decorum/manners from the tactless/impolite!
2020/05/12 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meme of the day: And no surprise! [Top center] Grandma trying to be helpful! [Top right] Puzzle: Of the four screws in this figure, three are known to have the same length. Find the lengths of the screws, assuming that the squares shown are 1 x 1. [Bottom left] Coronavirus stimulus $100 bill! [Bottom center] Optical illusion: Two different visualizations, depending on whether you focus on the top or bottom of this GIF image. [Bottom right] Virginia Tech is proud of Professor Mona Ghassemi, whose research on accelerated aging of electrical insulators has been recognized with an NSF CAREER award.
(2) Ghost guns: Do-it-yourself firearms are flying off the shelves like toilet paper. These guns have no serial number and need no background check, making them essentially untraceable. Criminals are now attracted to ghost guns, which were originally popular only with gun enthusiasts. No one knows the exact number of such guns in the US or how many crimes have been committed with them. A ghost gun was involved in at least one school mass-shooting. [14-minute video]
(3) Mini-Louvre Museum in Izad-Shahr, Iran: Built by a philanthropist, the Caspian-Sea-region museum houses works by contemporary Iranian artists. [3-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Thirteen killed in attack on Kabul hospital's maternity ward run by Medicins Sans Frontieres.
- Never again: High-ranking Ukranian police official requests list of Jews in western city of Kolomyya.
- US Supreme Court will start hearing oral arguments on Trump's tax-returns case today.
- Iranian navy ship hit by friendly fire in the Gulf of Oman: The "incident" leaves 19 dead and 15 injured.
- Examples of people responding to museums' challenge to recreate works of art at home. [Pictorial]
(5) Petulant-in-Chief: At 4:56 this morning, Trump experienced a fit of jealousy over governors with high approval ratings for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he had to send this tweet!
(6) Mitch McConnell thinks that Obama is "classless" for criticizing Trump: Says nothing about the propriety of Trump talking and tweeting about Obama's "failures" almost daily.
(7) Invasive species are loving it: Many conservation, eradication, and control efforts have been paused around the world due to stay-at-home mandates. The final toll may be a set-back of years in such efforts.
(8) The missing billion years in the geologic record: A feature known as "The Great Uncomformity" in the Grand Canyon has puzzled scientists for well over a century. The feature refers to more than one billion years of missing rock in certain places. UCSB Earth Sciences Professor Francis Macdonald and a number of co-workers in Colorado have a new theory about the missing rock, attributing it to the movement of tectonic plates, rather than mass movement of glaciers some 700 billion years ago, the previous dominant theory.
2020/05/10 (Sunday): Today's posts are all in honor of Mothers' Day.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Happy Mothers' Day! I wish my own mother and all other selfless mothers in the world a wonderful day filled with love, celebration, and appreciation. As we honor our mothers in the West, let's not forget that in Iran and elsewhere, mothers are separated from their children and other family members, as they serve long prison terms for the "crime" of advocating for human/women's rights and justice-system reforms. Brave women have demonstrated repeatedly that they won't be silenced by made-up charges of treason or acting against national security (#NasrinSotoudeh #NargesMohammadi #HumanRights). [Right] Parinoush Saniee's 'Sahm-e Man' ('My Share'): See the last item below.
(2) Special Mothers' Day book review: Saniee, Parinoush, Sahm-e Man (My Share), in Persian, Roozbehan, 2003. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a best-selling debut novel by Iranian sociologist/psychologist Parinoush Saniee, whose writings were twice banned in her homeland. Sahm-e Man has been translated into English by Sara Khalili under the title The Book of Fate (2013).
Massoumeh, the novel's protagonist, moves with her family from Qom to Tehran. Her family views girls as trouble and easy targets for corruption in the capital city. Massoumeh is envied by her older brothers, because she is bright and a favorite of their father, and one of them, a sadist, drinker, and drug addict makes life difficult for her and her friends. When a young man, a pharmacist, is smitten by Massoumeh and sends her private notes, the brothers accuse her of being loose and blame Parvaneh, a friend and confidante, for leading her along a deviant path.
After turning down several suitors seeking arranged marriages, and forgetting about the pharmacist who left town with no trace, Massoumeh agrees to marry a man whom she did not know at all, because she saw marriage as her ticket out of her suffocating home life. The man turns out to be quite enlightened and an advocate of women's rights, who suggests that she pursue her education, but he is too busy with a left-wing underground group, with secret meetings and operations, to pay much attention to his wife. The marriage produces two sons and, years later, a daughter, who fill the void in Massoumeh's life.
In time, Massoumeh comes to love her husband but feels uneasy about her place in his life, her relationship with his friends, and the dangers he puts the family through. He vanishes for days or weeks at a time and does not talk about his activities when he returns. He justifies this silence by telling his wife that she would be better off if she knew less. The husband is eventually arrested and imprisoned. The Islamic Revolution takes him out of the prison, and, for a while, he pays more attention to his wife and children. But he soon returns to underground activities and the attendant long absences.
Saniee weaves an intricate tale of the life of a lonely woman, who is a prisoner of societal norms and expectations of family members, her own and her husband's. She keeps herself occupied by reading, taking courses, cooking, cleaning, and tending to her children's physical and emotional needs. When her husband is home, she comes to enjoy his presence and spending time with him, if his other commitments do not interfere.
Hundreds of pages later, we see Massoumeh as a middle-aged woman who takes pride in her accomplishments. Her sons are out of the house, one fleeing to Germany and the other getting married after fighting in the Iran-Iraq War, and her daughter finds love, having started her college education. In a final dramatic twist, Massoumeh's pharmacist crush reappears in Tehran. Dealing with decades-old suppressed feelings, in the face of surprisingly selfish reactions of her children to their mother pursuing a new romance, creates major complications in her life.
I found this book one of the best-written modern novels in Persian. The prose is engaging, grammatically solid, and correctly punctuated, while being rather informal, a rarity in Persian-language books. On the negative side, I found the overly long chapters (~100 pp.) at the beginning of the book somewhat distressing. I like a bit more structure in a book, including reasonably-sized chapters with titles, that provide milestones and guidance to the reader. Frequent citation of poems is another annoyance, in my opinion. But these are minor qualms for an otherwise excellent and highly-recommended book.
2020/05/09 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Iran of a century ago: Color photos from the April 1921 National Geographic special. [Center] Today, we celebrated my daughter's birthday on Zoom, with the extended family.
(2) Iran's other side: I often make positive posts about the nature, architecture, and culture of Iran. Unfortunately, all this beauty has a flip side that is often hidden from view. In this 8-minute video, Mohammad Nourizad shows us around a town in southeastern Iran, near the Pakistani border and less than half-km away from the resource-rich Gulf of Oman, where people live in abject poverty, forsaken by both the central government and local authorities.
(3) Seems like Trump has come to accept that the US economy is in the dumps: Every chance he gets, he talks about a "transition" third quarter, which will morph into a "great" fourth quarter and a "phenomenal" 2021. In other words, suck it up and I will make it wonderful after you re-elect me!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Little Richard, the rock legend who was an inspiration to many who came after him, dead at 87.
- The US unemployment rate is now worst since the Great Depression, when it hit 25.4%. [Time cover]
- Tech companies are America's bright spots, as we strive to come back from the COVID-19 pandemic's abyss.
- Meme of the day: "I am not a crook,*" (*By today's standards). [Image]
- A group of UCSB students have joined forces to recreate that campus feeling in Mine-Craft.
- Interpreting the eyes' language in the age of coronavirus and social distancing. [Cartoon strip]
- Theme music from "Titanic," reimagined in classical Indian style. [Video]
(5) Health workers are in a war zone: Those who are put in a position to reuse masks and gowns bear the same risks as soldiers in the early months of the Iraq War patrolling the combat zone in unarmored vehicles.
(6) Persian music: A nice-sounding trio, one of the many musical groups that have sprung up across Iran, in defiance of the government's restrictions on arts and artists, particularly women artists who are excluded from many public performance venues.
(7) Disneyland's "Star Wars" attraction: Theme-park attractions and other mass-gatherings are disallowed until the fourth stage of the state's re-opening plan.
(8) UCSB's Pollock Theater spotlights "Shakespeare on Film" with three virtual screenings.
- Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" (1948; available on Amazon Prime Video); film info and video of post-screening discussion with UCSB English Professor Mark Rose.
- "Haider" (2014; available on Netflix), "Hamlet" reimagined as a contemporary crime drama; film info and video of post-screening discussion with USC Cinema and Media Studies Professor Priya Jaikumar.
- "Macbeth" (2015; available on Amazon Prime Video); film info and video of post-screening discussion with screenwriters Todd Louiso and Jacob Koskoff.
2020/05/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This is our president's understanding of diagnostic tests. [Center] The floor was somewhat taken aback by the alarmed door and the startled window. [Right] The late Forough Farrokhzad: Famed contemporary Iranian poet, with her brother Fereydoon and a sample of her work.
(2) Obama to deliver televised commencement speech for the entire high-school class of 2020: The special, hosted by The LeBron James Family Foundation, XQ Institute, and The Entertainment Industry Foundation, will air simultaneously on ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC (May 16, 8:00 PM EDT). Many other celebs will participate.
(3) Exciting news from the 3D-printing front: University of Bath (UK) researchers have produced an open-source design that allows the 3D printing of a laboratory-grade microscope for less than $20. The microscope has motorized sample-positioning and focus control.
(4) A failed presidency on full display: Not caring about 70,000+ deaths, but sweating over a 7000-point drop in DJIA. A just-us system that wants to dismiss charges against a confessed criminal and seems to be okay with White Supremacists gunning down an unarmed black man while jogging. [Meme and tweet]
(5) Earthquake near Tehran: Centered to the south of Mt. Damavand, a volcanic peak 70 km east of Tehran, the magnitude-4.8 quake (5.1?) seems to have caused few casualties and little damage.
(6) Coronavirus in the White House: VP Mike Pence's Press Secretary Katie Miller (wife of Trump aide Steven Miller) has tested positive for the coronavirus. White House staff will now be tested daily for the virus, but testing is unnecessary for the rest of US population!
(7) A secret love affair that emerged from the shadows after 60 years: The story of Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel began in 1947, when they fell in love. But they had to hide their love for each other from even their families, until 2009, when they decided to cautiously reveal the nature of their relationship to their loved ones. The documentary "A Secret Love" (Netflix), directed by Chris Bolan, tells this incredible story. [Trailer]
(8) Many college-bound students will take a gap year: Quite a few high-school seniors say they will definitely or most likely delay their college attendance by a year. Google searches for "gap year" have increased by 60%. Meanwhile, many colleges are still trying to fill their open slots for fall 2020.
(9) A final thought: While we are distracted by the pandemic and its economic fallout, Trump is pushing and implementing his dictatorial vision for America. Examples include DoE's watered-down sexual assault rules on university campuses and DoJ's dropping of charges against Michael Flynn, who had confessed to his crimes.
2020/05/07 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UK newspapers celebrating Monday's easing of restrictions on economic activities. [Center] Roohanguiz, and breaking taboos (historic footage): She was the first Muslim Iranian woman to appear in movies, including the very first Persian talkie, "Dokhtar-e Lor" ("Lor Girl"). For this, she was disowned by friends and family and needed security protection for the many threats against her life. She eventually abandoned acting after making a few films. [Right] Success at last: After several trips to Costco, today I finally emerged with paper towels! P.S.: Does anyone else miss Costco samples?
(2) To mark National Nurses' Week, RNs protested PPE shortages in front of the White House, symbolically placing 88 pairs of shoes on the ground in memory of nurses who have perished due to COVID-19.
(3) From Rebecca Solnit's highly-acclaimed book, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir, Viking, 2020.
"Mostly when people write about the trauma of gender violence, it's described as one awful, exceptional event or relationship, as though you suddenly fell into the water, but what if you're swimming through it your whole life, and there is no dry land in sight?"
(4) Years of progress in addressing the campus rape culture is being flushed down the drain:
Betsy DeVos releases new campus sexual-assault rules that will likely discourage victims from coming forward.
(5) On the importance of perspective, from an unknown author: "For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 MILLION. When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren't even over the hill yet. When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WW II. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills 11 million, 6 million of those were Jews. At 50, the Korean War starts and five million perish. At 55 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn't end for 20 years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening. As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn't think their 85-year-old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing art. Let's try and keep things in perspective. Let's be smart, help each other out, and with a little time we will get through all of this as well."
2020/05/06 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Helping to fight the pandemic in Iran: Some of the hospital beds and associated monitoring equipment purchased for and donated to a hospital in Tehran by Fanni graduates, class of 1968. [Center] Coronavirus has given us the cleanest air in decades: Remember this fact when we return to normal. Many of the car trips we make are inessential and avoidable. Many of the possessions we collect, all made by expending natural resources and energy, are likewise dispensable. [Right] On Kurdish dancing: In addition to upbeat music and colorful costumes that raise the spirit, two other features of Kurdish dancing are noteworthy. Alternating positions of men and women in the line-up reflect their equal social status and holding hands represents community and solidarity. Unfortunately, after Iran's Islamic Revolution, mixed dancing has become much less common and we often see separate men's and women's lines.
(2) "Mourning in America": Playing on Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" slogan, the Republican-led Lincoln Project airs an ad on Fox network that slams Trump for his failed presidency.
(3) ABC's David Muir went very soft on Trump: He got a rare interview opportunity outside of Fox, but failed to ask follow-up questions or challenge Trump's many blatant lies, including blaming Obama and the Russia probe for the lack of adequate preparation to deal with COVID-19. Interestingly, Trump essentially acknowledged that we were unprepared, contradicting his many previous claims that "we have it totally under control." [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US skips the meeting in which world leaders pledged $8 billion to fight COVID-19.
- New York subways deliberately shut down for the first time in history to disinfect more than 500 stations.
- NASA confirms that it is working with Tom Cruise on a feature film about the International Space Station.
- Observation: Not only did we not get flying cars, even our planes aren't flying any more!
(5) Eight Starbucks locations in Goleta and Santa Barbara are re-opening: "In order for this to happen, employees must wear protective gear and have their temperature checked before shifts. Customers will be able to order and pay ahead of time using the Starbucks App and pick up orders at the door."
(6) Is a war between the US and China inevitable? Trump will be a major beneficiary of a conflict, but there are others, like Pompeo and his backers, who are worried about China's threat to US supremacy and are stoking the fire of war.
Here is a 19-minute TED talk by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, arguing that war between the two world powers might be inevitable. [Abridged version, with Persian subtitles]
(7) Humor from Iran: After the removal of four 0s from finanacial figures (that is, rolling out a new monetary unit equal to 10,000 rials), officials are thinking about also removing four 0s from Ayatollah Jannati's age!
2020/05/05 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Mona Lisa in coronavirus quarantine: No longer smiling! [Center] Older woman photographed at Hajj pilgrimage: Reminds me of two young men chanting "Death to America" while wearing Harvard and Disney T-shirts. [Right] Time magazine's clever cover image, issue of May 11, 2020: Open? Nope!
(2) Quote of the day: "Realizing justice, freedom, and human rights is worth losing all that I have, including not hearing the voices of my Ali and Kiana." ~ Anti-death-penalty activist Narges Mohammadi, on her twins, who were 7 when she began serving a long prison term 6 years ago [Tweet]
(3) On Trump claiming future credit: He boasted that he's done a good job, because the 15 COVID-19 cases at the time "will soon go to 0" (the current number actually has 5 more 0s and a 1)! Now he says he's done a good job because deaths will not surpass 100,000. As a bonus, he will also eradicate AIDS in 8 years!
(4) Almost everyone saw this coming: Gun-packing goons protesting against shutdown orders, coming face-to-face with law-abiding citizens trying to enforce federal and state regulations, such as the Michigan security man, father of 7, who was shot to death for asking people to wear face-masks. The accused may or may not be Trump supporters, but it doesn't matter, when POTUS encourages lawless individuals to "liberate" their states (from Democratic governors). I am fearful for November 4th, the day after the US election.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- It was bound to happen: ABC News reporter Will Reeve went on air without pants and it showed! [Photo]
- Modern Persian music and dance: Beautifully choreographed and performed. [Video]
- Persian poetry: Baran Nikrah, a social-media star and a physics PhD student, recites one of her poems.
- Azeri dance: This performance features wonderful drum beats and a replica of a culturally-significant rock.
- Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" as you've never heard it before: Gimnazija Kranj Symphony performs.
- Violinist Caroline Campbell's wonderful rendition of the theme from "Skyfall" (music by Adele).
(6) Last night's casserole: I set out to use leftovers, such as baked sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and mushrooms, which I combined with penne pasta, cheese, chicken, and marinara sauce. I gave some to my daughter (who isn't a pasta fan to begin with, and was skeptical about my choice of ingredients) and she complimented me thus: "It's not atrocious!" [Photos]
(7) Trump's "nobody knew what was coming" defense falling apart: This new whistle-blower complaint by ousted vaccine scientist Rick Bright is much more devastating than the one about "the perfect phone call." Administration officials ignored his January warnings and, instead, tried to push investment on unproven drugs.
(8) Drs. Fauci and Birx contradicted Trump on multiple occasions, so they couldn't stay. Firing them would have been politically inconvenient. The solution: Dissolve the entire coronavirus task-force!
2020/05/04 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Clean-up of nuclear waste from plutonium processing is still ongoing after 3 decades: Located in Hanford, south-central Washington state, the 177 underground storage tanks holding remnants of materials from some 60,000 nuclear weapons built during World War II and the Cold War, hold a total of 212 million liters of toxic waste, enough to fill 85 Olympics-size swimming pools. [Top center] "Peak Oil" doomsday prediction did not materialize: Whereas a peak was reached as predicted, the post-peak drop did not pan out. (IEEE Spectrum article) [Top right] Trump cannot hide his disdain for Anthony Fauci: The White House has blocked Fauci's testimony at a Congressional hearing next week. [Bottom left] Beautiful spring colors of Aligudarz, a county in the western Iranian province of Lorestan. [Bottom center] The invention of radio: Russian physicist Aleksandr S. Popov demonstrated on May 7, 1895, a device for detecting electrical disturbances in the atmosphere, thereby proving the feasibility of radio transmission. Around the same time, Guglielmo Marconi was developing his radio apparatus in Italy, which led to his recognition as "the inventor of radio" in much of the world. The Soviet Union celebrated, and Russia now marks, "Radio Day" on May 7. (Photo credit, IEEE Spectrum, May 2020) [Bottom right] Two multi-panel paintings depicting the four seasons.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- SB News Press chief editor leaves paper after owner likens public-health restrictions to Nazi Germany.
- Najaf Daryabandari, prolific Iranian author and translator, dead at 90. [Tribute video]
- Nostalgia: Scenes, artifacts, and music from Tehran of six decades ago. [Video]
- Fishing with raw eggs and Pepsi: This guy makes it look so easy! [3-minute video]
- Nested fruits of various kinds (and a final surprise): I don't even know how this is possible! [Video]
- Modern Persian music: Played with the backdrop of streets and historical sites of Isfahan, Iran. [Video]
(3) Trump supporters are demanding that churches, hair salons, and tattoo parlors re-open: No mention whatsoever of bookstores or libraries!
(4) Innovation in coronavirus testing: A team of Israeli researchers has built upon previous work on a mathematical framework for detecting carriers of rare mutations within large populations to develop efficient and accurate coronavirus tests. This idea was used by the US during World War II, when samples from 5 soldiers were combined to test for syphilis. If the test came back negative, all five soldiers were cleared; if not, then individual tests were carried out. The Israeli technique pools samples from 384 subjects, with each individual sample incorporated into six different pools mixed by liquid-dispensing robots. This translates to only 48 tests required for all 384 subjects, with the outcome deduced in just one round. Because each individual sample is tested six times, the method more effectively addresses false positives or false negatives.
2020/05/03 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] World Press Freedom Day: May 3 is when we celebrate press freedom where it exists and remember marginalized and imprisoned journalists where it does not (Iran and Turkey, to name just two). In reality, every day is Press Freedom Day! [Center & Right] Ya'ghoub Yussefian (?-2020): The month of May has not been kind to the extended Parhami family so far. I have learned of my uncle Yacov's passing in Israel. He is survived by four sons. As the oldest of my mom's three brothers (she also has two sisters, one living and one deceased), he had been in poor health for some time. He became ill and lost the zest for life after his wife's passing. Because he lived in Israel, I had very little personal contact with him, other than during several trips there, including a 10-month stay in the late 1950s. I knew him in his younger years as a kind and good-humored man. I worte the two poems above in his memory and honor. May his soul rest in peace!
(2) World Press Freedom Day special: Ali Alinejad, brother of journalist Masih Alinejad, has been jailed in Iran for his sister's "sins" abroad: Yet, he has refused to disown his sister Masih.
(3) Iranian authorities are terrified of women activists: While many prisoners have been released due to the COVID-19 threat in prisons, women political prisoners are being guarded closely.
(4) Iran continues to batter dissidents: Ali Younesi, student of Sharif University of Technology and winner of an international gold medal in has not been heard from since his violent arrest a couple of weeks ago.
(5) The mother of all freight trains: This amazing train with 200 containers is used for shipping between China and Germany: It travels the 10,000 km distance in 2 weeks, whereas shipping by sea takes 2 months. Plans are underway to increase the number of containers to 300. [5-minute video]
(6) Synchronous vs. asynchronous instruction: I am doing what may be called semi-synchronous teaching myself, recording lectures and posting them a few days ahead of the originally-scheduled date, allowing my students to watch them at their preferred times. But it turns out that synchronous instruction has its benefits, in the sense of providing socially-isolated students a schedule and sense of community. It does, however, create disadvantages for some students, including those with disabilities, and it can also overwhelm professors.
(7) "The Magic of Content-Addressable Storage": This is the title of an interesting, and accessible, article by Konrad Hinsen in IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (Vol. 22. No. 3, May/June 2020). [Access link]
2020/05/02 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mattel's #ThankYouHeroes: The 16 action figures, whose sales will benefit front-line workers, include doctors, delivery drivers, nurses, EMTs, and store clerks. [Top center] Friday afternoon at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace: Starbucks and a few other stores are closed. Restaurants have removed their indoors and outdoors seating, offering only take-out. The movie theater is now a popcorn store. The normally-bustling parking lot holds a few socially-distanced cars. Rather sad to see this de-facto town square devoid of life! [Top right] A bird of prey and its big catch: After struggling to pull the big fish out of the water, it is barely able to hold on, as it flies away. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: This is an extension, and a more challenging version, of the square puzzle I posted on April 30, 2020. A regular hexagon is divided into six sections by connecting an interior point O to the midpoints of its sides, as shown. Areas of three of the sections are given. What are the areas of the remaining sections? (Solution) [Bottom center & right] Nahid Sami Parhami, one of the tree last members of Parhami family's old guards, has passed away. May her soul Rest in Peace! I have composed a Persian poem in her memory and honor.
(2) International Teachers' Day is on Monday, October 5, 2020: A number of former students of mine from Iran were kind enough to send me congratulatory messages for the Iranian Teachers' Day, which is chosen to coincide with the date of passing of Ayatollah Morteza Mottahari (May 2, 1979; 12 Ordibehesht). While being remembered on any day is a thrill, choosing religion-specific days for such honors is against my beliefs. I prefer international celebrations.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Evidently, the virus did not miraculously go away by April: 4/01 cases = 220K; 4/30 cases = 1.1M.
- Joining New Zealand, Canada bans the buying and selling of some 1500 types of assault weapons. [Tweet]
- Universities are hurting financially and the inevitable layoff of staff and faculty may have begun. [Tweet]
- "Deep-speare" AI crafts Shakespearean verse that few readers could distinguish from the real thing.
(4) University of California campuses unlikely to fully re-open in fall, according to UC President Janet Napolitano: Financial losses in the month of March alone amounted to $600 million, half of it due to dorm-fees and other refunds to students and the other half at UC hospitals.
(5) "Information Technology and the Fight Against COVID-19": This is the title of a free IEEE Computer Society webinar, May 26, 2020, 6:00 PM EDT. [Registration link]
(6) Muhammad Ali's 1971 seriocomic musings on why everything of significance is white (Jesus, Santa Claus, angels, the White House), while a lot of bad things are black (black cat, the ugly duckling, blackmail).
2020/05/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy International Labor Day, aka May Day! In these challenging times, we have come to appreciate the value of labor and its effects on our society's well-being and prosperity even more. The men and women in the world's labor force should be extolled, not exploited. [Center] Finding friends (pen-pals) before the age of social media: Iranian magazine page with personal profiles/ads. [Right] These screenshots are from yesterday's Zoom meeting of the UCSB Faculty Legislature (see the last item below).
(2) Universities adjust "commitment deposit policies": Traditionally, May 1 is decision day for prospective college students, but things are complicated this year. Some parents are comfortable paying a deposit to secure their child's spot in hopes that things will return to normal soon. Others are struggling to afford $500 right now, and the looming tuition. Schools are adjusting accordingly. Some are giving students until June 1 to make their decision. Others are still asking for commitment now, but accepting deposits later.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US GDP contracted by an annualized rate of 4.8% during Q1: Results of Q2 are expected to be even worse.
- Photos of empty Los Angeles locations you may never experience again. [Pictorial]
- Will glass tanning booths on the beach be the new normal?
- Tulip park in Iran: Located in Kondor Village of the Alborz Province, the colorful park is a sight to behold.
- One of my all-time favorite musical pieces, performed by a symphony orchestra: "Miserlou"
- And here is an energetic performance of "Miserlou" by a smallish group of virtuosos.
(4) UCSB Faculty Legislature meeting: Fresh out of the oven (announced in yesterday's meeting and not yet posted on-line), the list appears in the image above. I will describe two of the awards.
- UCSB Faculty Research Lecturer: Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alison Butler has been chosen for this highest honor UCSB faculty can bestow on one of its members.
- UCSB Faculty Diversity Award was given to Art Professor Kip Fulbeck, College of Creative Studies.
A summary of other business discussed at the meeting follows.
- Professor Susannah Scott (Chemistry and Biochemistry) will be the incoming Academic Senate Chair.
- The status of fall quarter has not been settled, but commitment has been made to allow those international and domestic students who cannot attend for whatever reason to take courses remotely, even if the campus re-opens. This will create serious challenges for instructors, who will be faced with more work to manage the dual instruction mode.
Statements of intent-to-register for fall 2020 are about 10% below normal, so we may have to resort to the waiting list to get our 5000 incoming freshmen.
- UC faces multibillion-dollar revenue loss, should the pandemic-caused restrictions and the associated economic slowdown continue past the fall quarter.
- There is some tension between the faculty and systemwide administration about who owns the copyright to recorded material from on-line teaching. Apparently, UC views the material as a possible source of revenue.
2020/04/30 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Math and word puzzles: [Top left] What number should replace the question mark? [Top center] How many triangles are there in this diagram? [Top right] A square is divided into four sections by connecting an interior point O to the midpoints of the four sides, as shown. What is the area of the blue section? (Note: The drawing isn't to scale.) [Bottom] See how many of these movies you recognize from their emoji renderings.
(2) A self-evident statement: If your jokes and sarcastic remarks are always interpreted as serious suggestions, then perhaps you aren't good at humor or sarcasm!
(3) Image processing pioneer Thomas Huang dead at 83: His method of deriving a relationship between 2D and 3D imaging was foundational to innovations in 3D urban-modeling programs like Google's StreetView.
(4) Clean energy under attack: UCSB Professor Leah Stokes faults Michael Moore's new documentary, "Planet of the Humans," coming to us on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, as unfairly criticizing energy and climate activists, thus giving a gift to Big Oil. [The documentary in full: 100-minute video]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Armed protesters storm Michigan's State House: State troopers are protecting the Governor.
- Los Angeles is the first major city to offer coronavirus testing to everyone, with or without symptoms.
- NASA awards human moon-lander contract to three US companies: Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX.
- A couple of screenshots from my Zoom office hour early yesterday afternoon. [Photos]
- The Borowitz Report: VP Pence starts wearing mask after Dr. Fauci tells him it will protect him from women.
- A joyful and virtuous piano performance at a London train station. [Video]
- Andre Rieu introduces an incredibly-talented young soprano: Amira singing "O Mio Babbino Caro"
- Persian music: Iran's National Orchestra performs "Sabokbaal," a composition by the late Hossein Dehlavi.
(6) According to Ben Shapiro, discussing COVID-19 deaths in the US, those who have lived past the US life expectancy of 80 are disposable: This statistically-challenged moron does not realize that statistical measures, which are valid in large groups, cannot be applied to individuals. A particular 81-year-old may have 20 years of life left, whereas a particular 30-year-old may have 10 years left. We should not put anyone in a position to decide who's worth saving! Following his logic, we should line up all 80-year-olds in front of a firing squad and end their misery! The only problem is that eliminating people at 80 will reduce the life expectancy figure, so we will be forced to eliminate people earlier and earlier.
(7) Iranian sports celebs and social-media influencers, a couple with children who are 4 and 2, were summoned, questioned, and threatened by Iran's Ministry of Information. When will this nightmare end?
(8) Jared Kushner thinks the US response to coronavirus is a success story! He is the "many people" Trump constantly references when he wants to push a crazy idea. A shadow president controlling the orange puppet!
2020/04/29 (Wednesday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Harari, Yuval Noah, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, unabridged audiobook on 10 CDs, read by Derek Perkins, Penguin/Random-House Audio, 2018.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Harari's previous two books, Sapiens and Homo Deus, explored the past and long-term future of us humans. His new best-selling social-science book, 21 Lessons, focuses on today's most-pressing issues and the key choices we face as we navigate the new landscape. Among the challenges highlighted are technological progress, the roles of computers and robots, the fake-news epidemic, the place of religion, and educating the next generation.
In 21 thought-provoking chapters, Harari untangles political and social issues in order to prepare us for fundamental changes brought about by big data, new jobs and skills, the threat of terrorism, and the potential demise of liberal democracy. One challenge that cuts across all human endeavors is the ability to function in a world filled with noise and uncertainty.
Here is a 59-minute video of Harari's October 2018 moderated talk about this book at Google. The video's caption describes Harari as a "macro-historian," a term I found interesting!
(2) Book review: Rucker, Philip and Carol Leonnig, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the authors and Hillary Huber, Penguin Audio, 2020.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The title of this book comes from Donald Trump's self-description, boasting about his stability and intelligence, apparently in response to reports of mental fickleness, volatility, and intellectual limitations. This is one of a continuously-appearing string of books about Trump and his dysfunctional administration. I have read and reviewed several of the previous volumes, but this one is head-and-shoulders above the others in terms of detail, sourcing, and connecting the dots.
While there is a great deal of overlap between this book and accounts by other authors, the book does contain a few exclusive scoops, but the most important contribution of the authors is in cataloging in great detail and providing context for how reasonable and patriotic individuals were driven from the administration, until only yes-men and yes-women were left.
For example, each Chief of Staff exerted less control than his immediate predecessor, in time letting Trump run loose with his crazy ideas, conspiracy theories, and idiotic pronouncements. John Kelly, Trump's second Chief of Staff, is quoted as saying that he chose to join the administration in order to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, pointing out that the oath he took "doesn't say anything about being loyal to the president. It doesn't say anything ... about the GOP being more important than your integrity."
If you choose to read this book, you can safely ignore other tell-all books that preceded it, though not future volumes. I have a sense that much remains untold about this abomination in the history of America. Rucker's and Leonning's story ends, as Trump launches his 2020 campaign in a Florida rally. Trump's handling of the coronavirus epidemic, and the inept individuals around him who enabled his murderous inaction, dishonest happy-talk, and peddling of dubious remedies will no doubt provide ample material for future tell-alls.
(3) Book review: Yousafzai, Malala, We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Neela Vaswani and Deepti Gupta (with prologue read by the author), Hachette Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education and women's/girls' rights activist. She begins this book with "I Am Displaced," which contains a brief version of her own story, told in greater detail in her previous book, I Am Malala. Her family was displaced, both within Pakistan, and outside their home country, when they eventually moved to England to escape atrocities by Taliban extremists who shot Malala in the head because of her advocacy on behalf of girls' education.
The second part, "We Are Displaced," contains the experiences of nine refugee girls and young women. Yousafzai provides a brief introduction to each story, with the narrative continued by the subject. Girls from Yemen, Syria, Congo, and other diverse lands are featured in this part. Yousafzai is uniquely qualified to tell these stories, given her own background and societal oppression as a girl. Fortunately for Yousafzai, her parents were enlightened and believed that girls and boys should be educated. Her father ran a school for girls, but under Taliban rule, was forced to shutter it.
An epilogue covers Yousafzai's 2018 visit to Pakistan after a 6-year absence. The 4-day visit to her old home in Swat Valley required extensive security provisions. Yousafzai reportedly said in an interview that she missed everything about Pakistan: Rivers and mountains, of course, but also the dirty streets and the garbage around their house.
I find it amazing that a girl who grew up in a society where women were considered inferior and suffered from numerous restrictions has accomplished so much by age 22: Winning the Nobel Peace Prize, writing best-selling books, and becoming one of the most-recognized advocates of women's/girls' rights!
2020/04/28 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] On the federal government bailing out states or letting them go bankrupt: Governor Cuomo shames Mitch McConnell for wanting to bankrupt blue states. McConnell has said that NY and other coronavirus hot spots should not be bailed out. In fact, the charts Cuomo flashed show that blue states have been bailing out red states for decades. [Top center] Young women in Kabul, Afghanistan, nearly five decades ago (1972). [Top right] The Swiss project images of different flags, including Iran's, on Matterhorn to show international solidarity in the fight against coronavirus. [Bottom left] A few pencil drawings of mine from the end of the 1960s (50+ years ago). [Bottom center] Brainwashed Iranians, at an audience with Khamenei, holding a banner that says they would give their lives for the Supreme Leader. [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: Role reversal!
(2) I was so spot-on in this April 28, 2014, Facebook post about racism in the US: "If someday a racist administration comes to power in the US, then we will see the true extent of the hidden racism in our society."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- History's lesson: San Francisco reopened too soon after the 1918 flu pandemic and paid a heavy price.
- Contributions to COVID-19 relief efforts: Hard cash vs. thoughts and prayers! [Meme]
- If you didn't know the leader of the US coronavirus task-force, would you be able to tall from this photo?
- Meat-supply disruptions may be coming: Meat processing plants have become coronavirus hot-spots.
- Why Trump is incapable of showing empathy toward COVID-19 victims: "I like people who didn't die, okay?"
- SuperbadTransmittableContagiousAwfulVirus: Mary Poppins sings about coronavirus! [Video]
- If classic Disney songs were about quarantine and social-distancing.
[Video]
(4) Coronavirus humor: One-liners to bring a smile to your face in these challenging times.
- I am so excited! It's time to take the garbage out. I wonder what I should wear!
- The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to return to a society where pants and bras are required!
- Don't open any e-mail with the subject "Knock Knock." It's a Jehovah's Witness working from home!
- When we were little, our underwear had the days of the week on them. They'd be so helpful right now!
(5) We are living in an inverse-welfare state: Wealth is created at the bottom and devoured at the top, through a multitude of subsidies and tax breaks for billionaires and giant multinational corporations.
(6) Tehran University faculty and staff develop an open-source ventilator: According to an IEEE Spectrum newsletter, Professor Hadi Moradi and colleagues will share the design details with others worldwide.
2020/04/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book introduction: Concurrency: The Works of Leslie Lamport, edited by Dahlia Malkhi, consists of two parts. In Part I, experts in the field of concurrency, where Lamport made seminal contributions, describe and interpret his original ideas. Part II contains a selection of Lamport's most-influential papers. In addition to academic/technical contributions to concurrent computation, Lamport is known for designing the widely-used LaTeX typesetting system (Lamport's TeX). [Center] Honoring women in computing: IEEE Computer Society accepts new nominations through October 1, 2020. Here is a list of women honored in recent years. [Right] The COVID-19 cloud's silver lining (see the next item below).
(2) The COVID-19 cloud's silver lining: Our world is in despair over the social isolation and economic woes resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, the glass is more than half-empty, but we may emerge from this crisis stronger and more focused on important things in life. We have already become aware of the critical importance of healthcare workers and other job categories we used to dismiss as boring and unglamorous, but which are really the engines that make our society work and move forward. As the saying goes, one week without sanitation workers leads to disastrous filth and odor, but years without clerics or reality-show stars won't cause a ripple in society! We have also become more aware of inequities in the way such pandemics affect different races and social group. The history of human progress is riddled with tragedies and disasters.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Reposting from April 27, 2017, along with today's update after three years. [Image]
- A compilation of Donald Trump's "scientific" musings: A large brain, indeed, but unclear what it's made of!
- The largest number of from-home collaborators that I have seen in producing a music video. [Image]
- Delightful art humor: Life imitates art for these stay-at-homers during the coronavirus pandemic.
- It takes a village: Washington Conservatory musicians play together on a single piano, to delightful effect.
- Persian music: Wonderful performance of "Del-e Sheyda" by Hessar, an all-women ensemble.
- Persian music: The newest version of "Ta'neh" ("Taunt"), a song made famous by Mahasti.
(4) Immigrant-bashing continues amid the pandemic: More than a million Americans who are married to immigrants without Social Security Numbers aren't eligible for $1200 stimulus payments.
(5) Mother Teresa wants an Indiana GOP congressional candidate to stop using her image in campaign ads: I guess she doesn't like tax cuts for the rich, stripping the poor of healt insurance, and similar policies!
(6) Google claims its AI design tool can produce a chip layout, which honors placement-density and routing-congestion constraints, in hours instead of weeks it would take human experts: Rather than each time starting from scratch, Google's AI leverages knowledge gained from placing prior chips to improve over time.
(7) Some good news: These COVID-19 death-rate charts, for the US (top) and California, indicate that social-distancing orders can be lifted (with proper testing and contact-tracing) around May 18 for our state and in early June for the entire country.
(8) Sea-level rise and local Santa Barbara marshlands: This 13-minute presentation by UCSB researchers Andrew Brooks and Charles Lester provides an overview of how sea-level rise might affect us locally in Santa Barbara. The presentation is part of the "UCSB Reads 2020" program. [Main talk, by author Elizabeth Rush]
2020/04/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cartoonists' dilemma (from The New Yorker): "Personally, I worry that, with everyone wearing masks, readers won't be able to tell who in the cartoon is speaking." [Top center] All-purpose commemorative photo: No matter how many places this group of women visits, there in no need to take more photos! [Top right] The Adam and Eve story in China: It has a happy ending, because the snake, not the Apple, is eaten and they live in heaven happily ever after! [Bottom left] The May 2020 issue of Communications of the ACM has a cover feature on fairness in machine learning. [Bottom center] Next ACM President will be a woman: Both candidates for ACM's top leadership position for the 2-year period from July 2020 to June 2022 are women. [Bottom right] The April 2020 issue of IEEE Computer magazine stresses the fact that complexity is at odds with trustworthiness: Two modern examples where needless complexities in design and operation led to disaster are the Boeing 737 MAX jetliner and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
(2) Dr. Deborah Birx on "Meet the Press" this morning: She did not answer even one question directly and honestly, citing unrelated facts and using scientific jargon to obfuscate. She clearly has a political appointment in her sight. There are reports that she is being considered as HHS Secretary, replacing Alex Azar.
(3) Republicans are worried about losing the Senate, as Trump sinks: They seem to be blaming Trump for their own doings. GOP Senators up for re-election fully deserve being ousted!
(4) Melania Trump celebrates her 50th birthday: Donald Trump's short tweet ("Happy Birthday to Melania, our great First Lady!") calls her a "great First Lady," but does not contain a single affectionate word!
(5) How orchestras coordinate their performances in the age of social distancing: They can't just play simultaneously as usual, given the varying communication latencies between different points. I learned today that their leader/conductor produces a master tape, containing the piano part, say, along with a beat guide, that they use at home to record their portions of the performance. Musicians have to be able to perform their parts individually, in isolation, for this to work. Someone then puts the various recordings together, producing the video that depicts dozens of musicians performing together. It's definitely more complicated than doing FaceTime with family members! [Screenshot]
(6) My improvised lasagna dinner: These leftover portions from tonight's dinner look like spaghetti, but they are really lasagna, made with spaghetti noodles. Not seen in the photo is a bottom layer of fried potato slices (tah-dig) and garlic bread on the side.
2020/04/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Walking around the Devereux Slough and Goleta's Coal Oil Point: After walking with my daughter and taking videos of surfers (Video 1, Video 2), I went out for a second solo round and photographed the gorgeous sunset from various vantage points. Surfers were out in full force, due to a combination of gorgeous weather and excellent waves! [Center] Bittersweet word-play, for Persian-speakers.
(2) A decades-old conjecture about computational complexity is proven in just a few pages: Typically, longstanding open problems tend to have complicated solutions. A prime example is Fermat's Last Theorem that persisted for 358 years and eventually required 100+ pages to prove. By contrast, Emory University mathematician Hao Huang needed just 2 pages to complete the proof of the Boolean Sensitivity Conjecture, dealing with a particular measure of computational complexity.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sources report that Kim Jong Un has died of heart surgery complications. No confirmation from NK yet.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had joked that he wanted to be portrayed on SNL by Brad Pitt, got his wish tonight!
- Mitt Romney endorses Joe Biden: A story meant as satire goes viral, with many falling for it!
- Quote of the day: "Every disaster movie begins with a scientist being ignored." ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
- In-house data centers are migrating to the cloud: 80% of corporate data centers will be shuttered by 2025.
- Posted on April 25, 2019, this cartoon reminded me that now, every day is Take-Your-Child-to-Work Day!
(4) Humor: "A bunch of governors have said that my opinion about allowing states to go bankrupt is incredibly irresponsible. I've been morally bankrupt for years. It's not that bad." ~ US Senator Mitch McConnell
(5) A new word is born: "Multislacking" is a relatively new word that means having multiple windows open on your screen to create the appearance of working, while actually slacking. This is one of the many interesting things I learned from Professor Anne Curzan's delightful course "The Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins," a set of 36 lectures in the "Great Courses" series, which I reviewed on GoodReads last year.
(6) Nepotism personified: While the jobless ranks swell and numerous small businesses fold, Kushner Cos. gets an $800 million federally-backed apartment loan.
2020/04/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Remembering the Armenian genocide on its 105th anniversary: Yes, there are Holocaust deniers, but their number pales compared with those who deny the mass murder of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, generally believed to have started on April 24, 1915. [Center] Cartoon of the day: The administration of billionaires doing the bidding of the billionaires. [Right] Humor: The Lysol brand seizes a marketing opportunity in treating COVID-19 patients!
(2) Stable genius proposes new coronavirus therapies: Trump's ideas about disinfecting the inside of your body with ultraviolet light or household cleaners ridiculed.
(3) Cartoon caption of the day (for those who listened to Marie Kondo and are stuck at home, with not much to keep them busy): "I'm not the one who threw out everything that didn't spark joy, Robert. Enjoy spending the next few months rolling and unrolling your seven T-shirts."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The United Nations fears coronavirus-related famines of "Biblical proportions" in developing countries.
- Giuliani thinks if we do contact-tracing for coronavirus, we should also do it for heart disease & cancer!
- Trump's golf resorts seek coronavirus bailout money from Ireland and Scotland to pay workers' salaries.
- Trump has a $211 million loan from the state-owned Bank of China, which will come due in 2022.
- Jordanian study claims that Arabs are genetically immune to coronavirus.
- Iranian folk music and dance: From the Caspian-Sea Region.
[Video]
- Azeri music and dance: The dance seems to have been modernized a bit.
[Video]
(5) USPS won't get bailout money unless it raises prices: Yet another devious plan to tax the middle and lower classes, via higher postal rates and across-the-board price hikes triggered by increased shipping costs.
(6) Trump's imaginary friend didn't know that there are 184 countries in the world: And he was playing with reporters when he suggested that injecting disinfectants can help cure COVID-19 (although he was clearly asking questions of, and referring to promises made by, medical professionals on the coronavirus task force, and they acknowledged his queries as he ranted).
(7) Celebrating 30 years of Hubble Space Telescope: Hubble helped us explore distant galaxies and showed us in vivid colors parts of our universe that we had never seen before. [Video]
(8) Final thought for the day: In a country with many leading researchers, including more Nobel Laureates than any other country, isn't it amazing that an illiterate politician dispenses medical advice?
2020/04/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] MIT Professor Daniela Rus to serve on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology: Rus is Director of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and College of Computing's Deputy Dean of Research. She works in robotics, AI, and data science. [Top center] Calligraphic rendering of the Persian verse "Love turns thorns into flowers." [Top right] Nasrin Sotoudeh is still serving a long prison term: More than a year ago, I included a photo of Sotoudeh on my traditional Norooz/Nowruz haft-seen spread. I am still keeping that beautiful photo on display, as a daily reminder of the horrible injustice dealt to this conscientious and courageous human-rights activist. [Bottom left] A nice aerial photo of Isfahan, Iran, featuring Zayandeh Rood and one of its historic bridges. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Our planet celebrated Earth Day with sister planets via a Zoom meeting! [Bottom right] Local Santa Barbara history: Quarantina Street in downtown Santa Barbara is tied to multiple past pandemics since 1851 (video).
(2) Governor Cuomo slams Senator McConnell for saying that the feds should not bail out New York: He points out that it is NY that bails out states like Kentucky by putting more into the federal coffers than they take out!
(3) College campuses planning for the fall term: Several, including Boston University and Cal State Fullerton, have announced that they will continue with on-line instruction through the fall term. Others, like Purdue, plan to bring the students back to campus in August. Most remain undecided at this time.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- College students forced to go home by the coronavirus pandemic stuck paying rent for empty apartments.
- A love story from the time of World War II, and an unlikely reunion of the lovebirds after 75 years!
- Kurdish music: Two different styles, but equally pleasant! [Video 1] [Video 2]
- Creative dancing with traditional Persian music: "Circle," featuring Ziya Azazi.
[Video]
- Humor: Trump singing an Indian song! [Deep-fake video]
- Indian music: Romantic comedy, old Indian style. Indian films are now a tad more sophisticated! [Video]
(5) California has sent 36 doctors and nurses to NYC: These compassionate souls are putting their lives at risk and donating their time to help fellow-Americans and to bring back first-hand experience to our state.
(6) Certain features of modern homes, such as tiled bathrooms and easily cleaned kitchen surfaces, have their origins in the 1918 Spanish-Flu pandemic. Experts believe that COVID-19 will also affect future home designs. A possible change: Prominent and easily-accessible sinks for frequent hand-washing.
2020/04/22 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22, 2020 (see the next item below). [Center] My Earth Day selfie, taken as I awaited students during my Zoom on-line office hours: Scrapes from last week's fall while climbing a beach cliff are nearly healed. I was scolded by friends and family members, who told me I was getting too old for adventures and "Tarzan-like behavior"! My response was that each person should decide for himself or herself what activities make life worth living. If one sat down all day, the probability of taking a fall would be near-zero, but then ...
(2) Happy Earth Day: Today, April 22, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, inaugurated a year after the Santa Barbara oil spill of winter 1969, which remains the largest spill off the coast of California (it is now the all-time third largest, including the subsequent Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon incidents). This year, there is no Earth Day Festival in Santa Barbara, but various on-line events have been scheduled to mark the occasion, including Elizabeth Rush's 4:00 PM on-line talk. Details are in the last item below.
(3) How the Earth has changed over the past 50 years: As research and monitoring projects go dark or dim, climate, weather, and other data sets going back for decades will soon develop coronavirus-associated gaps.
(4) Today's webinar by author Elizabeth Rush: In a talk sponsored by UCSB Library, Rush discussed her book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, the "UCSB Reads 2020" selection for campus and community reading/exchange. After being introduced by UCSB's David Pellow, Rush began by showing an 11-minute documentary film entitled "Home or High Water," in which "Rush shares her experience among coastal communities large and small, from the storm-ravaged eastern shore of Staten Island to the disappearing bayous of Louisiana."
An objective of Rush in writing her book was to show that sea-level rise has repercussions here in the US, whereas most people associate coastal flooding and disappearing lands with far-away regions of the world, such as Bangladesh. In order to make people relate to the problem, she felt the need for telling stories from communities closer to home. Likewise, if you want Mexicans to see the magnitude of the problem, you need to relate stories from communities in Mexico, not Asia or the US.
One dire consequence of sea-level rise is the creation of "climate refugees." To appreciate the scope of this problem, consider that a single storm, Hurricane Maria, led to 130,000 people leaving Puerto Rico. Throughout Rising, Rush tells stories about families, who after multiple storms and floods, give up their fight and relocate to higher grounds.
Rush is now working on another book about her 2.5-month journey alongside researchers investigating Antarctica's "Doomsday Glacier" to gather observational data about its rapidly-crumbling ice. Currently 8 months pregnant, Rush will be weaving the glacier story with her own journey through pregnancy, including challenges induced by COVID-19.
Rush explained that we humans are pretty good at thinking about three generations: our own, our parents', and our children's. So, even though climate change is a greater peril than COVID-19, the immediacy of the pandemic deprives the other problems of due attention. When we try to talk about the year 2100, people lose focus. In today's electronics age, we constantly concentrate on a screen that is 12-18 inches away from us. This proximity makes it even harder to see events happening across space and time. She joked that we are becoming Zoombies!
I submitted the following written question, for which there was no time before the webinar ended at 5:15. There is a great deal of skepticism among the general public about models that predict catastrophes (climate change, pandemics, overpopulation). What should we do to improve these models and to convince the skeptical general public that models do not have to be 100% accurate to give us useful warnings?
[Video recording of today's webinar]
[Facebook event page]
[Event poster]
[Zoom meeting, with Q&A]
[Live-stream via UCSB Library's Facebook page]
[My 4-star review of Rising on GoodReads]
2020/04/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized (see my review under the last item below). [Top center] No traditional royal gun-salute for today's 94th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II: She has ruled Britain for 68 years. [Top right] A 2-hour concert filmed at the 2020 Grammys aired tonight on CBS to honor Prince on the 4th anniversary of his death. [Bottom left] A gorgeous week ahead in Santa Barbara and super-clean air in downtown Los Angeles: Would have been much more enjoyable without the vile virus and POTUS! [Bottom center] Cinderella, in the age of coronavirus: "Quick! Someone give me a Clorox wipe." [Bottom right] Anti-vaxxers are pro-choice when it comes to their own bodies: They just want to control other people's bodies!
(2) Joke of the day (with reference to oil futures prices dropping below zero): "I told you that after the Revolution oil will be free!" ~ Iran's former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini [Photo]
(3) A woman ruler for North Korea? With Kim Jong Un not seen in public for a long time, there is much speculation about his health after surgery and the future role of his trusted sister in case of his death.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- American can-do story: Protective-gear workers slept at factory for a month, as they split 12-hour shifts.
- Demands by college students for tuition-and-fees refund escalate.
- Harvard University, with its $41 billion endowment fund, gets $9 million in taxpayer CARES aid.
- UCSB holds a virtual open house for admitted students on Wednesday 4/22, 1:00-7:00 PM PDT.
- Persian poetry and music in honor of poet-philosopher Sa'adi's birthday. [Video]
- Persian music: Musicians perform the oldie song "Lab-e Darya" ("Sea Shore") from their homes.
(5) Book review: Klein, Ezra, Why We're Polarized, Unabridged MP3 audiobook read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Once upon a time, our two major political parties contained a somewhat even distribution of economic, social, and racial groups. There was little change when one party gave up power and the other one took over. This continuity or moderation, which has been a hallmark of the American political system, preventing wild policy swings with the change of leadership, is now being threatened, as one party reverses the decisions of another one and imposes its own priorities, only to be overturned in the next change of guard. Such wild swings are at the root of businesses shunning long-term planning, focusing instead on their annual metrics or, worse, on quarterly performance.
The problem began in the 1960s, when Democrats championed civil-rights legislation. Blacks and other minorities were thus drawn to the Democratic party, while many white Democrats defected to the Republican party. The formerly-very-similar parties thus assumed much different economic, social, and racial distributions. The increased homogeneity within the parties intensified their external conflicts, aided, in part, by our evolutionary urges toward tribalism.
With changes in their compositions, the two parties have been moving further apart, cementing their differences with each new election. Klein tells us, among other things, that the Republicans call their party "The Party of Lincoln," mostly to hide the fact that the hard-line conservative and racist/bigot Strom Thurmond was its actual architect. Thurmond single-handedly directed the mass defection of white Democrats to the Republican party.
So, to recap, human beings are tribal and tend to organize around their perceptions of friends and enemies. The current political-party structure in the US is a reflection of this tribalism, which was kept in check until a few decades ago by wise political and social leaders and is now rearing its ugly head. As Richard Dawkins put it, "the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. ... DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music." What about our reasoning mind, you might ask? It's a scary thought, but could it be that our reasoning mind is merely a rationalization of our loyalties and prejudices?
2020/04/20 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This guy thinks COVID-19 is a lie, but, judging by his protective gear, he isn't absolutely sure! [Top center] Anthony Fauci mug: Get it before it's gone, or he's gone! Fauci-palming should be the new name for the face-palming emoji! [Top right] Never thought such a day would come: Trump supporters are now pro-choice! [Bottom left] Risk assessment in policy-making and engineering design, or the monetary vlaue of a human life (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: New passenger squeezing in on Tehran's Metro! [Bottom right] Woman professor teaches an on-line class in Iran.
(2) This is why Trump hates oversight: The funds set aside to help small businesses were depleted because loans were given to some giant hotel and restaurant chains.
(3) Fairness doesn't mean that "the other side" composed of small groups of anti-science and anti-logic protesters should be given the same coverage as the entire medical establishment, public-health experts, and a majority of Americans who approve of social-distancing measures.
(4) The oil glut hits the markets: There is so much excess oil in the world that all storage facilities are full, so, for the first time in history, oil future prices have gone negative (people who own the options must pay big bucks to get rid of them).
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Canadian police arrests mass shooter who killed at least 16 in Nova Scotia, disguised as a police officer.
- While Trump eggs on anti-lockdown protesters, VP Pence is siding with governors facing the protests.
- Clever street art: Revolution, with love! [Photo]
- Persian music: Hassan Kasaei's instrumental piece "Salaam" performed by Hamavayan Ensemble.
(6) Trading off citizens' lives for economic recovery (it isn't as crazy as it sounds): I am writing this essay, because there is much discussion about saving human lives vs. economic recovery in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Let me begin with an answer, which I found jarring upon my first encounter, and then go back to explain. The current going rate for a human life is roughly $10 million! I won't blame you if you protest, but please read on!
In policy-making and tech development, we are forced to place a monetary value on a human life. This may seem cold and cruel, but we really have no choice. Consider the dilemma faced by an airplane designer. The design process often involves choosing a target life-critical failure probability, such as 1-in-100-millions, which means that for an average flight, there is a small, but non-zero probability of 10^–8 that the plane crashes, killing all on board. We cannot make this probability zero, no matter how hard we try or how much time and money we spend. It may be feasible to reduce the probability to 1-in-a-billion, say, but that may increase the cost of the plane ten-fold or more.
Let's say the plane carries an average of 100 passengers and that it flies 10,000 times over its life, to use round numbers. The expected number of passenger deaths over the plane's life will be (10^–8)(10^4)(10^2) = 0.01. If a human life is worth $10 million, as reflected in the payment for each fatality upon a plane crash, then the airline/plane-manufacturer must budget $100,000 for payments due to the plane's crash (or, alternatively, buy insurance for it). The loss of the plane itself is a much bigger financial hit to the airline. From an economic standpoint, the plane manufacturer and the airline are not motivated to reduce the crash probability by making the plane ten times more expensive, given the relatively low budget of $100,000 in average payments due to fatalities.
Now, let's see how a public-safety advocate or official may view the problem above. S/He may take the view that human life is too precious to accept even one fatality, but such a pronouncement is just a slogan. We accept fatalities all the time. When we pay double the salary for a job that has a high risk of death, we are essentially putting a value on human life, which equals the difference in lifetime pay between the dangerous job and an ordinary low-risk job, divided by death probability. If the difference in lifetime payment is $1 million and the cumulative death probability is 0.1, then we are valuing a life at $10 million. This trade-off is essentially a contract between the employer offering the job and the employee who accepts it.
Here is a thought experiment I often use in my graduate course on fault-tolerant computing to get the students thinking about the ethical issues involved in evaluating life-critical computer system failures. Suppose you are in a stadium of 100,000 people and a terrorist announces that he will randomly kill one of the spectators, but he will remove those who make a payment of $100 from the pool of candidates. Are you willing to make the payment? Your risk of death is 10^–5 and the $100 payment represents a life valuation of $100/(10^–5) = $10^7. Most people won't pay the $100 and accept the 10^–5 risk of death. Of course, the decision depends on whether you are a poor student or a multi-millionaire watching the game from a luxury box, so the valuation of one's own life has a personal/circumstantial component.
I admit that the analyses above are over-simplified, but the reality isn't much removed from this simple view. To reiterate, policy-making and engineering design decisions, whether we are building a passenger-jet, a bridge, or a space station, involve life-vs.-cost trade-offs in the context of socially-acceptable risks.
2020/04/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The cover story of National Review ("The Battle of COVID-19") says it all. [Top right] The war in Afghanistan rages on amid the coronavirus pandemic. [Top center & bottom row] "One World: Together at Home": Screenshots from a 2-hour concert carried last night by ABC, NBC, and CBS. Great music from internationally-acclaimed artists. More importantly, segments featuring those who put their lives at risk to help, including health workers, a woman giving haircuts to the homeless, and groups feeding the needy. I felt ashamed of how little I have been doing to help!
(2) Criminally sad: Trump encourages protestors to "liberate" their states from restrictions imposed by governors following his administration's guidelines, which he uttered (reluctantly, it seems) at press briefings!
(3) Press briefing or campaign rally? During Yesterday's COVID-19 briefing, Trump called Joe Biden "a patsy" and Vladimir Putin "a gentleman." Stop airing this festival of lies and stupid pronouncements!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The data is in: Coronavirus infection, hospitalization, and death rates depend on ethnicity/race. [Chart]
- Persian music: A song about rain, with scenes from Isfahan, Iran, on a rainy day. [1-minute video]
- Persian music: The oldie song "Shaaneh" ("Comb"), with some Turkish lyrics.
- Persian music: A powerful rendition of the old popular song "Beh Khaater-e To" ("For Your Sake").
- Lady Struna performs soothing music on a santur-like instrument. [Also, Pink Floyd's "The Wall"]
- Ode to on-line teaching: Talented teacher wrote a song to express her feelings about on-line instruction.
(5) Extreme hypocrisy: Donald Trump, who is fond of the expressions "a lot of people think" and "an extremely credible source tells me," faults the media for using anonymous sources.
(6) Access Engineering: McGraw-Hill offers free access to its on-line content database for UCSB Library patrons through May 31, 2020. Check with your library to see if they have the same offer.
(7) Trump now blames China and World Health Organization for his inept COVID-19 response: But WHO was issuing warnings and guidelines, week after week, as Trump held rallies, praised China, and went golfing!
(8) Final thought for the day: Economist Jeffrey Sachs bashes Trump in his concluding remarks of February 5, 2020, at a conference on "New Forms of Solidarity: Towards Fraternal Inclusion, Integration, and Innovation."
2020/04/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cover story of the May 2020 issue of Scientific American suggests that we are on the verge of conquering Alzheimer's. [Top center] Art showing up in unlikely places: Accidental shadows. [Top right] Cover image of Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi's Revolution and Its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran, 2019. [Bottom left] Saudi Princess Basmah, who had called for Saudi Arabia to become a constitutional monarchy, reveals that she is in prison. [Bottom center] I took this selfie at my workstation this morning, where I plan to prepare a couple of course lectures for the coming week and, later during the day, record them: Thanks to everyone who expressed concern and sent well-wishes. [Bottom right] NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, have returned to Earth after spending 200+ days at the International Space Station.
(2) Promoting and using medical "experts" like Dr. Mehmet Oz, who think it's no big deal if 2-3% of children die after reopening of schools should be criminalized. [Tweet]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Returning to normal too quickly can wipe out progress in flattening the curve through social-distancing.
- Anti-vaxxers and climate-science deniers target a new enemy in science: Coronavirus-spread models.
- Super-rich US Treasury Secretary thinks Americans can get through 10 weeks on $1200 stimulus pay!
- Iranian teen chess prodigy, Alireza Firouzja, scores shocking victory over #1 grandmaster Magnus Carlsen.
- Iranian musicians play on roof-tops during the stay-home period. [Pictorial]
- Ziba Shirazi's musical life story, featuring songs she grew up with, is now available on-line.
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
(4) Cryptogrphy: Here is an introductory lecture on cryptography, prepared for my freshman seminar course, "Ten Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering" (UCSB ECE 1B). In this course, each lecture begins with puzzles, which are then related to practical and research problems in computer engineering.
(5) On Saturday, April 18, "One World: Together at Home," a series of concerts from 100+ musicians and celebrities will be streamed worldwide in support of healthcare workers and the World Health Organization. Watch on NBC, CBS, ABC and most major social media platforms, beginning at 8:00 PM PDT.
2020/04/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Lady Liberty follows New York's face-mask order. [Top center] Republican chart of disaster fatalities: The rightmost bar has now shrunk to more than 30,000! [Top right] Trending: Healthcare workers display photos of themselves to help patients see the real person behind the protective gear. [Bottom left & right] Walking to Goleta Beach Park (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Puzzle: How many squares are there in this diagram? (Answer is in the last item below.)
(2) Low tide allowed me to walk along the beach, all the way from home to Goleta Beach Park: The invigorating walk and beautiful sunny afternoon were somewhat marred by a fall when trying to climb a rock near Goleta Beach. No major damage though; just a few scrapes! [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4] Right after I finished shooting the fourth video, a nasty wave soaked me!
(3) Classical music: "Sword Dance," by the Armenian composer Aram Iljitsch Khachaturian, who also has compositions based on Persian folk music, a reflection of his early training in Tehran.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ultraviolet LEDs prove effective in eliminating coronavirus from surfaces and, potentially, air and water.
- White Supremacist, planning to blow up a nursing home in Massachusetts on "Jew killing day," arrested.
- Research misconduct: Rice University pays $3.7 million to settle National Science Foundation fraud claims.
- New guests arrive on the south coast of France, now that the tourists are gone. [Video]
- UCSB Library's on-line exhibitions: Past events to enjoy, as we await the return to normal on campus.
- Kurdish women discard their despised compulsory headscarves and dance! [Video]
(5) UCSB's Pollock Theater presents classic films: Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1963; available on Amazon Prime Video), along with previously-recorded post-screening discussion with actress/author Tippi Hedren.
(6) UCSB's Pollock Theater presents classic films: Frank Capra's "Meet John Doe" (1941; available on Amazon Prime Video), along with previously-recorded post-screening discussion with author Victoria Riskin.
(7) The answer to the square-counting puzzle is 51: In counting tasks like this, one must devise a systematic method to ensure that nothing is overlooked. For example, one can count squares of various sizes separately, beginning with the smallest 1x1 squares, then proceeding to 2x2 squares, and so on. In this particular puzzle, there are two 3x3 squares that are the most-difficult to see; so, 49 is a common wrong answer.
2020/04/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] ACM Athena Lecturer for 2020-21: Sarit Kraus of Bar-Ilan University receives the honor for foundational contributions to artificial intelligence, notably to multi-agent systems, human-agent interaction, autonomous agents, and nonmonotonic reasoning. [Center] ACM Web talk on history and future of computer graphics (see the last item below). [Right] Los Angeles County billboard: Being a hero has never been easier. Stay home to save lives.
(2) Iran claims technological superiority: The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps claim to have invented a machine that detects the presence of coronavirus from a distance of 100 meters. The device is eerily similar to a 2013 "invention" of a universal detector by someone who was later convicted for fraud!
[Tweets]
[Video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tax filing deadline, normally on April 15, has been extended by 3 months to July 15.
- Coronavirus-related scams keep coming: The latest is IRS/stimuls-check scam. Stay vigilant!
- Many students are rethinking their college choices, citing cost-cutting and staying closer to home.
- Pastors sue California's Governor Gavin Newsome for "criminalizing the free exercise of religion."
- Life under COVID-19 lockdown provides a window into how humans might fare during a mission to Mars.
- Drone footage of the eery calm on Los-Angeles-area beaches. [Video]
- Heavenly guitar music ("Malaguena"), with dancing. [Video]
- Historic Iranian wedding photos: Slide show, with nostalgic Persian music.
(4) "Past, Present and Future of Computer Graphics: Perspective from Two Forerunners on the Inception and Evolution of CG": This was the title of yesterday's ACM-sponsored Web-talk by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and 2019 Turing Award Laureate, and Richard Chuang, co-founder of PDI/Dreamworks. Scheduled to run for 1 hour, this facsinating talk, moderated by Juan Miguel de Joya, actually took 2 hours.
Both speakers began by acknowledging the heroic efforts of healthcare and other essential workers on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19, as we sit at home and pursue our technical interests via this Web-talk. Just as WW II triggered decades of sci/tech progress, our hope is that this on-going war will also trigger advances that would make our lives better.
Catmul related that his interest in computer graphics has its roots in his art (drawing) interests as a child. He later took a course on computer graphics, which he considered just another course to take. Chuang was also interested in art as a kid. He showed some of his medical and abstract-nature paintings, and followed them with a description of his breaking into his school's computer room to gain access to its PDP minicomputer.
Beginning with the 1970s, technology produced advances in film-making, as clearly visible in Lucas Films' "Star Wars." Subsequent challenges included convincing the predominantly-analog film industry to embrace digital graphics technology. Innovations such as the use of frame buffers helped in subsequent advances. The speakers then proceeded to describe their early experiences with graphics and the "ancient" hardware devices they used to solve seemingly-insurmountable technical challenges by building special-purpose systems, such as the Pixar Image Computer.
Pixar eventually failed as a hardware company and moved into producing commercials and special scenes in films such as "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast." Silicon Graphics revolutionized the field of computer graphics by offering powerful supercomputers, which were, unfortunately, unaffordable at first.
Catmull related that the special-effects business was a low-margin enterprise, so Pixar concluded that it had to move into making feature films to become commercially viable. This led in the 1990s to producing a 22-minute TV program and, eventually, feature films for Disney. Getting from brief commercials to a 22-minute program and then to a 75-minute feature film was quite challenging in the face of film-industry's brutal deadlines.
One of the latest advances in computer graphics for live-action film-making, now being used by Disney, is to produce the entire background (including all the CG elements) on an LED screen in real time, while live actors perform and are filmed normally in front of it. This reduces production costs substantially.
Relevant free books for ACM members:
Peter Shirley, Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, A. K. Peters, 2nd ed., 2005, 651 pp.
Andy Beane, 3D Animation Essentials, Sybex, 2012, 352 pp.
Rachel Nabors, Animation at Work, A Book Apart, 2017, 80 pp.
2020/04/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Magazine covers continue to be dominated by the coronavirus pandemic: It never becomes too repetitive to remember and appreciate those who are risking their lives to save us. [Center] Wonderful colors of nature in stay-home snacks.
(2) Trump halts funding to World Health Organization: Even if there are legitimate concerns here, did the WHO funding cut have to occur amid a devastating pandemic which has mobilized the entire world and exposed our interdepedencies? Or is this just one more shiny object to divert attention from Trump's own failings?
(3) Joke of the day: Upon hearing that the COVID-19 pandemic may set back world's economy by 30 years, Iranians celebrated. They are secretly praying for a set-back of 45 years!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Former President Obama strongly endorses Joe Biden for President, while also praising Bernie Sanders.
- Wildfires in Ukraine, near Chernobyl's nuclear plant, are within 2 km of critical nuclear-waste site.
- In the fight against coronavirus, Iranian NGOs try to fill the void left by government inaction.
- Blaming Israel in Iran's downing of a Ukrainian airliner adds salt to the wounds of mourning families.
- The woman who aims to Persianize aerobic workouts. [Video]
- Persian Jeopardy! There are a couple of other segments of this show on YouTube. [Video]
(5) People helping their fellow citizens: NGOs and individual citizens have jumped into action in Iran, US, and elsewhere to fill gaps left by government inaction and/or incompetence. This Iranian woman from the Kurdish city of Kermanshah works on disinfecting her neighborhood, donating her time and paying for supplies.
(6) Final thought for the day: I learned, from an NPR program, why we are experiencing severe shortages of various kinds. Yes, some people are hoarding, but there is an even more important reason. Take toilet paper, for instance. As we stay home, we need more TP at home. Meanwhile, there is an excess of commercial TP of the kinds used at work, hotels, and other public places. The two kinds of TP aren't interchangeable, as they have different sizes and even different producers and distributors. The same differences apply to restaurant vs. supermarket food supplies. It takes a while for producers and distributors to adjust to the new demand profile. But adjustments will be made and shortages, other than those due to dearth of raw material, will disappear.
2020/04/13 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Reposting a few noteworthy quotes and memes from April 13 of years past. [Center] Persian poetry: Reposting two Mowlavi/Rumi couplets from April 13 of years past. (Another poem) [Right] Please consider ordering food directly from restaurants: This restaurant owner writes that his/her business barely makes any money from orders placed through Grubhub and similar outfits due to the high commissions they charge.
(2) The dysfunctional presidency: Infighting within the US administration and Trump's inattention to warnings from intelligence and public-health experts delayed the US pandemic response by weeks. Trump was warned about the potential for a pandemic early and often, but internal White House divisions, lack of planning, and reliance on his own instincts led to a halting response.
(3) Acid spraying comes to the US: Seems like the Great-Again America will look a lot like Afghanistan or Islamic Republic of Iran, where women and other "undesirables" are killed or scarred for life!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- In a tweetstorm over Easter weekend, Trump congratulated himself repeatedly for his pandemic response.
- Luxembourg court releases $1.6B in blocked Iranian assets: One lawyer defending Iran was American!
- Brazilian study on using chloroquine to treat COVID-19 halted after the death of 11 patients.
- A comprehensive New Yorker profile of infectious-diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
- This year's college grads will be entering the worst job market since the 2008-09 recession.
- Citing lack of in-person attention from on-line instruction, college students file lawsuit for tuition refund.
- Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli sang inside and in front of Milan's empty Duomo Cathedral for Easter.
- Nature is not fazed by COVID-19: It seems to even be thriving in the space regained from us humans.
(5) The Sokal hoax: This year, we are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the formal publication by Alan D. Sokal (NYU) of a brilliant parody entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" in the peer-reviewed journal Social Text. Sokal's article maintained that quantum gravity has progressive political implications. When interviewed on the US radio program "All Things Considered," Sokal cited as his inspiration to submit the bogus article the 1994 book Higher Superstition, in which Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt claim that some humanities journals would publish anything as long as it had "the proper leftist thought" and quoted (or was written by) well-known leftist thinkers.
2020/04/12 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Kansas City's World War I Museum: April 6 marked the 103rd anniversary of America's entry into "The Great War." [Top center] Persian poetry: Selected verses from a tender 'ghazal' on aging, by Shahriar. [Top right] Convincing people to stay home and practice social-distancing would be much easier if the virus were big enough to be seen. [Bottom left] What a difference a year makes, 52 little weeks! (Adapting the Dinah Washington song title/lyrics) [Bottom center] Meme of the day: Healthcare workers' slow-moving but determined battle against coronavirus and COVID-19. [Bottom right] Justin Trudeau breaks down when talking about the hardships Canadians are enduring. A very weak person, according to you-know-who!
(2) Playing politics with people's lives: The feds seize Colorado's order for 500 ventilators. Now, Trump claims he is sending 100 ventilators to the state at the request of his crony, Senator Cory Gardner, who is facing an uphill reelection battle. Colorado has a Democratic Governor who is being punished by his state getting 400 fewer ventilators than requested, while Trump makes himself and Cornyn look good. Shame!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- OPEC+ agrees to a reduction of ~10 million barrels per day in oil production, beginning in May.
- Nobody is fuller than himself than Donald Trump, believe me! [Video mashup]
- Countries with women leaders seem to have responded better to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Artist at work, drawing spring blossoms and birds (with a live model) on a domed ceiling. [Video]
- Debra Messing's amazing transformation into Lucille Ball, to bring joy to us when we need it most.
(4) Trump claims he knew all along about dangers of coronavirus and that he was acting as a cheerleader when he presented happy-talk: Our country needs a knowledgable and trustworthy leader, not a mindless cheerleader! Even cheerleaders know to stop pretending when their team is down 0-45!
(5) What's the situation with Rudi Giuliani? He has been lurking in the background for months now. There is a real possibility that he'll be indicted soon, yet Trump has not dumped him like so many other inconvenient former allies. Perhaps Rudi wasn't kidding when he said he had insurance against being discarded!
(6) Misogyny personified: A male Iranian psychologist tweets that women must be held tight and brought into focus by men, because they are naturally uncollected and diffused! [Response tweet]
2020/04/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] New magazine covers: I'd be delighted to see Lindsey Graham ousted in November, because he is complicit in Trump's destruction of the US government. [Top right] Why Trump said he won't be wearing a breathing mask! [Bottom left] Cartoon of the day: Captain Trump reassures passengers on the Titanic that lifeboats and vests are on order! [Bottom center] Meme of the day: Religion is eerily quiet these days. No worries though. It will return with claims of saving us, once the current pandemic fades away. [Bottom right] Book introductions: Adam Hart-Davis, Fibonacci's Rabbits, and 49 Other Breakthroughs that Revolutionized Mathematics, Elwin Street Limited, 2019. Hart has also written other books that might be interesting: Schrodingers's Cat, and 49 Other Experiments that Revolutionized Physics and Pavlov's Dog, and 49 Other Experiments that Revolutionized Psychology.
(2) Evidence points to the presence of coronavirus in California since December 2019: There was a peak in February, when COVID-19 deaths began, and it remained undetected because of an unusually-nasty flu season.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fox News commentators and Wall-Street execs to decide when the US economy should reopen!
- Reposting from April 11, 2011: Remember when our Secretary of Energy was a Nobel Laureate?
- Dr. Anthony Fauci jokes that he wants Brad Pitt to portray him on SNL: It will more likely be Ben Stiller!
- I just read that bell peppers have male & female varieties, discovering right away that the claim is false!
- We watched a Facebook jazz concert by a couple of my daughter's friends this afternoon. [Photo]
(4) More than 12,000 of the 150,000 Android apps studied found to contain backdoors: These included secret access keys, master passwords, and secret commands, which could allow unauthorized access to user accounts, grant hackers access to a device, or allow them to run code on a device with elevated privileges.
(5) Quote of the day: "[T]he business practices of Facebook and Google are closer to those of Enron and Theranos than they are to Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. ... [Attributing] honorable motives to social media companies like Facebook is both naive and misplaced. It is not so much that the executives of these companies are immoral, but amoral. Considerations of truth, justice, fairness, diversity, rights to privacy, and so on do not appear on their compass cards." ~ Hal Berghel, in a March 2020 IEEE Computer magazine opinion piece entitled "New Perspectives on (Anti)Social Media"
2020/04/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Primitive PhotoShopping to erase women continues: Iran's state TV replaces singer Elaheh with poet Rahi Moayyeri in a documentaty about music. Why do they even have to produce such films, if it requires distortion of history? [Center] Borna Izadpanah's photo of his 1850 printed edition of Sa'di's Golestan, produced in Cairo with Nastaliq movable type. [Right] Meme of the day: If anything distracted Trump from the coronavirus pandemic it was ignorance and playing golf, not impeachment!
(2) I don't know what to make of this dance routine: I have never seen this type of dancing before, and someone has replaced the jazz music in the original clip with a Kurdish song, a variation on "Asmar, Asmar."
(3) Spies are hard-pressed in this social-distancing period: They often rely on crowded bars/restaurants and streets to meet with their contacts, or for drop-offs and pick-ups, without being noticed or raising suspicion.
(4) The story of the movement to ratify the Equal-Rights Amendment and the opposition to it led by the conservative Phyllis Schlafly: "Mrs. America," starring the talented, and beautiful, Cate Blanchett, will premiere on April 15, 2020.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Stanford researchers: Californians may have developed a kind of herd immunity to coronavirus last year.
- US Representative Katie Porter tells it like it is and has no time for bullshitters. We are with you, Katie!
- Rain has raised SB Cachuma Lake's water level from the 2016 low of 7% to 15 feet from spilling.
- Good for a smile on this Good Friday: Hidden-camera subjects thought it was their lucky day! [Video]
(6) Multiple-choice math puzzle: A shopper buys a $20 item and presents a $100 bill. The merchant does not have change for $100, so he goes to the neighboring store and gets change for the bill, returning $80 to the shopper and keeping $20. After the shopper leaves, the neighboring merchant comes rushing in to tell the first merchant that the $100 bill is counterfeit, asking for his money back. The original store-owner takes the counterfeit bill and gives the other merchant a genuine $100 bill. How much money did the first merchant lose?
Choose one: (a) $20 (b) $80 (c) $100 (d) $120 (e) $180 (f) $200 (g) None of the above
(7) Two convicted Iranian women: One, who handed flowers in Tehran's Metro to promote women's rights, is languishing in prison, the other, guilty of corruption and price gouging, is living in a gated luxury community.
(8) Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in a Time magazine interview: Two interesting questions on how FDR and the US industry prepared for World War II, and what we can learn from that monumental mobilization.
2020/04/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] My phone screen early this morning: Virtual social interactions seem to be rising to make up for physical social distancing. [Center] Some of this morning's news stories: The Editorial Board of Wall Street Journal finally says what I have been pondering all along. Why does the supposedly free press subject itself to lies and humiliation by attending Trump's press briefings? [Right] Cover image of Elizabeth Warren's This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class (see the last item below).
(2) VP Pence's office blocks public health officials from appearing on CNN: Pence was put in charge of the US coronavirus task force to serve his master, not the American people. He is barely allowed to speak himself, and Kushner was put on the panel to keep an eye on him and others on behalf of The Dear Leader. [Image]
(3) Sign this petition to help Persian-speaking authors expand the publication channels available to them: It asks Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing to support the Persian (Farsi) language.
(4) Trump still keeps insisting that nobody saw this pandemic coming: Well, Bill Gates repeatedly warned us about a pandemic potentially being more deadly than war. And here is Barack Obama talking about the need for preparation and building a response infrastructure in 2014. [Tweet]
(5) Book review: Warren, Elizabeth, This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class, unabridged audiobook on 9 CDs, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I read and reviewed Warren's best-selling book, A Fighting Chance, in December 2014. As I wasn't on GoodReads in those days, I recently entered my 4-star review there for archiving and easier access.
Warren is the rare law professor who descended from the ivory tower to become a highly effective policy activist and communicator. Having been elected to the US Senate in 2012, she wasn't on the ballot in 2016, when she sat down with her family to watch the election returns. In the early pages of this book, she describes her horror as she witnessed the outcome.
Also early on, Warren describes her life as a skinny young girl in Oklahoma, when her father needed heart surgery and her mother had to accept a minimum-wage job at Sears to help keep their home and put food on the table. Her disdain for those well-fed and well-dressed lawmakers who take the position that setting a minimum wage is unnecessary and that in a free market, an employer should be able to pay whatever wage the workers accept, comes across clearly and forcefully.
Going to college appeared an inaccessible dream for Warren. Given her family's finances, her aspiration to attend college was dismissed as selfish and unrealistic. The fact that she eventually attended college and became the success that we see now is in good part due to the availability of low-cost, quality higher eduction, all but vanished these days. "A $50-a-semester tuition changed my life," she declares. The corruption of big-money has taken away the fighting chance we used to enjoy, while further widening income and wealth gaps to record levels.
Warren follows the stories of three individuals, one of them mobile-home dweller Gina, a Walmart employee asking for anonymity, because she really needs her job. We learn that Gina was a proud Trump voter, who hoped he will "shake things up." The message seems to be that Democrats should strive to earn the votes of people like Gina. Warren's policy views, once considered fringe and too far to the left, are now more accepted by rank-and-file Democrats, which explains her rise in the race to the White House in 2020.
Warren was a fierce advocate of, and helped establish, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which successfully reduced financial fraud in the US. She is maddened by the revolving door between US government and big business (Goldman Sachs, in particular, which had its fingerprints all over the subprime crisis). Warren criticizes Bill Clinton for aggressively pushing tax cuts and deregulation, asking, "Is this the best that capitalism has to offer?"
I am very impressed with Warren's command of facts and figures. She argues convincingly that trickle-down economics, peddled since the time of Ronald Reagan (and famously dismissed by Reagan's own VP George H. W. Bush as "voodoo economics") has never worked as advertised but, instead, has served to increase inequality. On the negative side, formulating all problems and reactions to them in economic terms is a tad simplistic. Democrats did not lose in 2016 merely because of Trump's economic message, as dishonest as it was, but also because of cultural and religious factors, again laced with dishonesty.
Warren speaks kindly of her former fellow-presidential-candidate Bernie Sanders, but slams Michael Bloomberg for pretending to be fair and balanced by criticizing both Democrats and Republicans even-handedly, without considering the significantly different social and economic implications of the two types of extremism.
Warren's candidacy was very appealing to me, giving her working-class family background and first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by the vanishing American middle class. Too bad it didn't work out. I recommend Warren's book highly.
2020/04/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Happy Passover to all those who observe this Jewish holiday! Tomorrow is the first day of Passover, and, as is usual for Jewish holidays, its observance began tonight (over FaceTime and Zoom). New commandments for our time should read "Thou shall not socialize in the flesh during a pandemic" and "Thou shall be grateful to tech for enabling virtual gatherings"!
(2) This is no time for negativity, but US colleges have a difficult road ahead: They are paying all the salaries for now, while also having to refund some educational, residential, and dining fees. Enrollments may not rebound to the pre-coronavirus levels, once current emergency conditions go away. Layoffs are a real possibility come fall term, whose status with regard to in-person or on-line instruction is still unknown. For students, colleges are offering pass/fail grades to ease their immediate worries, but such grades will cost the students in the long run. Disabled students are struggling to adapt to the new normal, where they don't get much, if any, personal attention. Tutoring programs, financial aid, and other key resources for students are also slow to adapt. Graduate students' legitimate claims for salary upgrades are all but forgotten. Overall, it seems that community colleges might survive, but most research universities which do not have deep pockets will be in for long-term challenges, if not outright closure.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Bernie Sanders drops out of the presidential race: A loss, if his healthcare and higher-ed ideas are discarded.
- Baghdad's Mutanabbi St. hosts a thriving literary scene, fueled by rare/subversive books and their fans.
- Lateral-thinking puzzle: What is the missing entry in the sequence 16, 06, 68, 88, __, 98?
- Persian poetry: Young contemporary poet Hila Sedighi recites her poem about love and loss.
(4) The all-consuming emotional labor caused by coronavirus—and shouldered by women: "The coronavirus has laid bare many divisions in our society. And, like any serious crisis does, it has elevated the extent to which structural sexism permeates our lives: impacting the gendered division of labor within the home and also shaping what is possible for women, and particularly mothers, in the public sphere."
Sexism isn't the only thing exposed in this crisis, although it, and its domestic-violence product, are very important side effects. Racism, whose cumulative effects over the years has made the African-American population more vulnerable to COVID-19 is on full display too. I was impressed with Dr. Anthony Fauci who addressed the latter issue in a press briefing. Unfortunately, we lack political leaders who can, or are willing to, make the connection. As they say, it's easy to be friendly and generous in good times. Human beings' true natures emerge during difficult times.
(5) Final thought for the day: Why do conservatives oppose conservation and progressives disdain progress produced by exploiting natural resources? [Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century; written from memory (not an exact quote)]
2020/04/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Today is World Health Day: An opportunity to raise awareness of health issues and to appreciate heroic healthcare workers. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, and lungs! [Top right] Association for Computing Machinery has named Maria Florina "Nina" Balcan of Carnegie Mellon University the recipient of the 2019 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for foundational and breakthrough contributions to minimally-supervised learning. [Bottom left] Photos from my walk on a sunny April 6 afternoon, following overnight and morning rain: Low tide had significantly widened the beach at Goleta's Coal Oil Point. The "No Drone Zone" sign was a first sighting for me. [Bottom center & right] Tonight was my food-prep night: I made pasta, with meat and vegetables, along with mixed-green salad. For some reason, elbow macaroni was the only type left on the otherwise empty pasta shelves at the supermarket!
(2) COVID-19 deaths surpass 10,000 in both Iran and the US: Iran's authorities, much like the Trump administration, called coronavirus a hoax and an enemy plot, losing much valuable time in curtailing it. One reason for Iran having suffered so many deaths, despite its five times smaller population than the US, is religious dogma. Just like certain evangelicals in the US who think that the blood of Jesus will protect them (they have said this in many interviews), some Iranians believe that dead imams, whose shrines they frequent, have the cure for everything. Iran also has significant trade with China, and there was much travel between the two countries, including dozens of Muslim religious students from China studying under the ayatollahs in the city of Qom, the epicenter of the infection.
(3) January 29 memo of Peter Navarro to NSC about risks of coronavirus: Apparently, he put his thoughts in writing to make sure Trump would see the analysis and would act accordingly. Alas! [Page 1 of the memo]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump has a stake in the drug company that makes the anti-malarial drug he promotes at press briefings.
- Stephanie Grisham dismissed: The WH Press Secretary never held a press briefing during her 9 months.
- Apple and 3M to produce many millions of face shields for healthcare workers.
- Persian/Turkish music: Let's take a break from grim news with an oldie song. (Video from 45+ years ago).
(5) New Jersey's information systems are hopelessly outdated: Their four-decades-plus-old mainframes (that's Stone Age in computer technology) are struggling to meet increased demand from unemployment applications and other vital services. Recently, the state has advertised to hire COBOL programmers to help maintain and upgrade the systems. I won't blame you if you don't know what the six-decades-old COBOL is!
(6) Final thought for the day: Questions you cannot answer are far better than answers you cannot question. [Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century; written from memory, not an exact quote]
2020/04/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Free on-line community talk with the "UCSB Reads" author Elizabeth Rush: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 (Earth Day), 4:00 PM, based on her acclaimed book on the topic of sea-level rise, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. [Center] The world economic pie. [Right] My mom preparing halegh (which the younger members of the family affectionately call "matzo sauce") for Passover.
(2) It's not just tech gurus like Bill Gates; even George W. Bush could see this coming in 2005: "There is no pandemic flu in our country or in the world at this time. But if we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare. And one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we failed to act today."
(3) Those of us who work from home (and urge others to stay home) must not forget that many workers lack the luxury of staying home. Hats off to heroic doctors, nurses, first-responders, and those involved in producing and distributing life's necessities, so that we can stay home.
(4) Tensions in the federal coronaviarus response team: Non-doctors, Donald Trump and Peter Navarro, are pushing a therapy, which infectious-diseases expert Anthony Fauci doesn't endorse, citing insufficient studies/data. Another sour point is over issuing a national stay-at-home recommendation.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Americans may be dying from COVID-19 all around the country, without being included in the official stats.
- Coronavirus has dispelled the myth of equality among students in university classes.
- Iranian doctor making Instagram posts on coronavirus is summoned to court and threatened with murder.
- Airbus blends aircraft body and wings, creating new options for cabin designs. [Photo]
- Latest dieting aid: 3D-printed foods can be designed to trick diners into eating less while still feeling full.
- Persian music: "Cheshm beh Raah" ("Expectant"), from Alireza Eftekhari's "Safar" album. [YouTube mix]
(6) Two Iran-related tweets of the day (in Persian):
- An Iranian MP maintains that Iran's Revolutionary Gaurds Corps did the right thing in shooting down the Ukranian airliner, because it was suspicious and under the control of the United States and Israel!
- Iran's national database of identity registrations has been hacked, exposing the names, national ID-card numbers (similar to SSNs in the US), and phone numbers of the country's entire population.
(7) Humor from Iran: Those planning to send donations to Iran from abroad for fighting this pandemic, please send funds directly to Hezbollah Leader Sheik Nasrallah, to save on the double-transfer bank fees!
(8) Trump has spoken to his friend, Saudi Crown Prince MBS: He happily reports in a tweet that MBS and Putin are set to reduce oil production and thus raise prices. Americans are dying or struggling financially, and The Dear Leader is concerned with oil-company profits rather then cheaper gas for our citizens!
2020/04/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] I prepared a hearty brunch yesterday, trying to reconstruct the good old pre-coronavirus days. Your place was empty! [Top right] This morning's healthy snacks: Cottage cheese and fruit on Triscuit crackers. [Bottom left] A new style of painting: Pieces of old, worn-out Persian carpets used as canvas to produce interesting art pieces, some of which are displayed on a street near Isfahan's City Hall, Iran. [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Marriage ceremony in the age of social-distancing! [Bottom right] Eco-efficient smart city designed for Mexico: Italian architect Stefano Boeri has unveiled plans to create a forested smart city near Cancun, Mexico, which will absorb 116,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
(2) Cyber security is no longer a human-scale problem: Writing in Communications of the ACM (April 2020), Gaurav Banga argues that the dizzying array of devices and apps, and the multitude of things that can go wrong on each, make totally-secure systems all but impossible. The points on the 2D device-vulnerability plane exploited in the Equifax breach are depicted in this diagram.
(3) Puzzle: Each of three people knows a number. Is there a way for them (among themselves, without using an external agent) to let all three know the average of the three numbers but not the other two numbers?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trevor Noah's very informative interview with Bill Gates about his warnings on the threat of pandemics.
- How Fox News influences Trump's statements and decisions, leading to deaths and misery.
- News of corruption have gotten lost amid the life-or-death challenges of a health emergency. [Tweet]
- COVID-19 stats in Southern California. [Map, with number of cases and deaths]
- Either six feet apart, or six feet under: The choice is yours!
- Forty Kurdish artists perform "Bella Ciao" to show solidarity with the devastated people of Italy.
- Kurdish music and dance: Omid performs "Shirina Sowza," a song about Norooz/Nowruz. [5-minute video]
(5) Trump is fond of blaming Obama for inadequate supply of breathing masks: It turns out that his HHS Department squashed an Obama-era R&D program for a machine designed to churn out millions of masks during a pandemic. The Dear Leader literally has blood on his hands!
(6) Theme music from Disney's "Elephant": Listen to snippets of the film's theme music, composed by the German-Iranian musician Ramin Djawadi.
(7) Book introduction: The 14-year-old book The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford, 2006), by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, shows us that the dysfunction in US Congress is nothing new. The book is the culmination of decades of work by the authors, beginning in 1969, when fellowships to study the US Congress brought them to Capitol Hill.
2020/04/04 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Coronavirus humor: This is me, at the end of stay-at-home and social-distancing period, unless my hair stylist adopts this clever method. [Top center] Two Iran-related tweets for my Persian-speaking readers. [Top right] Coronavirus has taken over everything in our lives, including nearly all magazine covers. [Bottom left] My daughter made us a delicious salmon dinner, with Greek lemon-potatoes and brown-buttered carrots. [Bottom center] Tomb of Hafiz in Shiraz, Iran, aka Hafezieh, after and before the arrival of coronavirus. [Bottom right] Here is Vanity Fair seizing on Trump's attack tweets to boost sales!
(2) COVID-19 news: Number of confirmed cases reaches 1 million worldwide, a quarter of them in the US. Some countries are restricting travel from the US. Ten million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits.
(3) Persian poetry: Selected verses from Mowlavi (Rumi): I was dead, then alive | Weeping, then laughing | The power of Love came into me | And I became fierce like a lion | Then tender like the evening star
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump fires intelligence watchdog who forwarded the whistleblower complaint leading to impeachment.
- The mother of all conspiracy theories: COVID-19 is caused by 5G cellular service!
- Sniffer dogs are being trained to detect the smell of coronavirus in carrier, but asymptomatic, individuals.
- Bill withers, of the "Lean on Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine" fame, dead at 81 of heart problems.
- How the food supply chain is adapting to eliminate shortages. [Graphic: Time magazine, April 6/13, 2020]
- Taking breathing masks and other protective gear seriously! [Humorous/uplifting video]
- Obama, on Trump's weakening of fuel-economy standards. [Tweet image]
- Persian music: "Sarnevesht" ("Destiny"), joint work by Anoushirvan Rohani and Homayoun Shajarian.
(5) Government by the corrupt for the corrupt: Not just rewriting history, a la 1984, but changing wordings on Web sites to correspond to erroneous claims by The Dear Leader and his cronies. We will have so much history and records to correct when this band of criminals is gone!
(6) Excesses of the nouveau-riche in Iran: This video, showing a three-story penthouse atop a tower in northern Tehran, appears to be a commercial for a real-estate development company.
(7) Final thought for the day: What does a "Stay Home" order mean for those with no home, be they homeless elderly in Los Angeles or homeless children working on the streets of Tehran to avoid starvation?
2020/04/03 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Selfies taken around UCSB campus on Wednesday, April 1, 2020. The spookily empty central plaza next to the library appears behind me in the center photo. [Bottom left] These days, the deserted UCSB campus is being safeguarded by police patrols. [Bottom center] 3D-printing of violins: Will artisans, who spend dozens of hours crafting a fine violin, become dispensable? (Photo credit: IEEE Spectrum, April 2020) [Bottom right] Some among my readers will immediately recognize this college campus. Others may even know the exact spot from which the photo was taken!
(2) Water on Mars has two different sources: This conclusion was reached by University of Arizona's Jessica Barnes, after studying the hydrogen-isotope compositions of 1.5- and 3.9-billion-years-old Mars meteorites.
(3) Trump pivots 180 degrees: After his early assertion that the then 15 US COVID-19 cases will soon go away "like a miracle," Trump reluctantly comes to terms with the fact that tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans will likely die of the disease. He has redefined "beating the disease" as keeping the number of deaths under 100,000. He still insists that his reaction was "perfect" though; like the phone call, you know!
(4) Islamic extremist escapes death: Pakistan overturns the death sentence of British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who killed journalist Daniel Pearl: Three accomplices with life sentences are set free.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The failed federal response to COVID-19: Bidding wars for medical supplies raise prices up to 15-fold.
- Gaps in the availability of medical equipment and supplies are being filled with 3D printing.
- Some 8.5% of 150,000 phone apps studied had backdoors for unauthorized access or sharing of user data.
- As numerous oil platforms reach the end of their useful lives, decomissioning is becoming a hairy problem.
- Fake 16-yolked egg? The odds of a double-yolked egg is 1 in 1000. For a triple-yolker, it is 1 in 25 million.
- Puzzle: The numbers 512, 4913, 5832, and 17,576 have something surprising in common. What is it?
(6) Charitable donations to help the fight against coronavirus: Last year, I recommended Moms Against Poverty for Iran flood-relief donations, after thoroughly researching their impressive activities and alliances on location. The charity is accepting coronavirus-relief donations. You can select US or Iran as the target of your donation.
2020/04/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The US combats COVID-19: Makeshift hospital in New York City's Central Park. [Center] Burial place of COVID-19 victims in the city of Langarud, Iran's Caspian-Sea region (photo credit: Reza Khandan). [Right] Giuseppe Primiero's On the Foundations of Computing (see the last item below).
(2) Yesterday was April Fool's Day: Instead of good-hearted tricks/pranks and hearty laughs, many of our fellow citizens faced vanishing paychecks, just as rent and other monthly bills became due. If you are less-affected by the pandemic and its economic consequences, please donate generously to charities!
(3) Iran does not release or furlough political prisoners amid COVID-19 threats: Reza Khandan's observations on women's section of Evin Prison, where his political-activist wife Nasrin Sotoudeh is serving a long jail term.
(4) Any day now, Anthony Fauci can become "Little Faux-chi" if he continues to contradict Trump on COVID-19 realities. Fauci has been getting death threats from some Trump goons who don't like his regularly correcting The Dear Leader's absurd statements. His security detail has been ramped up.
(5) Journalism and communications professors write open letter to Fox News: Stop causing loss of life by spreading coronavirus misinformation, especially given the large fraction of older people among your viewers. Interestingly, Fox actually suffers financially (losing ad revenues) because of its lying/racist/sexist commentators, which is tantamount to the organization subsidizing Trumpism.
(6) Big-data to the rescue: Fever map of the US, built with data from one million Kinsa Health Internet-connected thermometers, shows that restrictions have reduced the cases of high fever substantially.
(7) Campaigning on the back of a health crisis: Why these coronavirus guidelines were distributed under Trump's name, rather than the country's health organizations or authorities, is being investigated.
(8) Book review: Primiero, Giuseppe, On the Foundations of Computing, Oxford, 2020.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Popular-press headlines, such as "Rise of the Machines" and "How Algorithms Control the World," play on readers' fears (AI vs. humanity), arising from opacity and complexity, and amplified by lack of knowledge. This book attempts to bridge the knowledge gap via a transparent and rigorous exposition of the foundations of computing.
Sandwiched between a 3-page introductory chapter and a 1-page concluding chapter (the latter followed by an extensive 19-page bibliography), Chapters 2-16 are divided between mathematical (6 chs., 110 pp.), engineering (5 chs., 99 pp.), and experimental (4 chs., 56 pp.) foundations of computing. Primiero does an admirable job of revealing the structure of the field in terms of the three main foundations that have guided its birth and evolution. The book strikes an excellent balance between historical, philosophical, and pragmatic aspects of the three foundational domains.
In the mathematical domain, foundational crises in math/logic, the birth of decision problems, computability (including Church's Thesis), the notion of mechanical computation, the nature of algorithms, and computing as a methematical discipline are discussed. This part alone contains 103 numbered definitions.
Discussion of the engineering domain consists of early computer history (beginning with Shannon's circuits), laws of evolution, properties of implemented computations, specification vs. implementation, and computing as an engineering discipline.
Discussion of computing as an experimental discipline in the penultimate chapter is preceded by elements of experimental computing, models and simulations, and formal relations (including identity and dependence, isomorphism, and similarity).
This isn't casual reading of the kind that one would peruse sequentially from cover to cover in short order. Rather, I recommend an initial scan of the chapters, reading Chapters 1 and 17, followed by Chapters 7, 12, and 16, and concluding with as many of the other chapters as the reader feels interested and motivated to pursue. In fact, I am writing this review, having finished the first pass according to the recommendation above. I am looking forward to spending many hours, over time, on detailed examination of these and other chapters.
Chapter 7, "Computing as a Mathematical Discipline" (pp. 81-114): The essence of this chapter, which ends the book's Part I, is the assertion of equivalence between establishing correctness, that is, formal verification, with mechanical computability.
Chapter 12, "Computing as an Engineering Discipline" (pp. 199-213): The essence of this chapter, which ends the book's Part II, is the belief by some, including Richard Hamming, that "the theoretical question whether something can be done is considered less important for the discipline than finding a cost-effective way of building it" (p. 206). An aspect of the ongoing debate is whether computing has what it takes to be a "legitimate" science.
Chapter 16, "Computing as an Experiemental Discipline" (pp. 255-270): The essence of this chapter, which ends the book's Part III, is a discussion of "minimal criteria" (usability and fitness) and "maximal criteria" (robustness and reliability) of artefacts we create for computing.
In the concluding chapter, the author reveals the book to be "a plea for a methodologically rigorous approach to computing and its overall impact, as well as for a critical stand towards its ontological and epistemological principles. Once these are solidly grounded ... ethical, political, and social principles can be formulated in a similarly consistent fashion" (p. 271).
2020/04/01 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Giant US Navy hospital ships have anchored on both coasts to provide relief for inundated hospitals, by taking in their non-COVID-19 patients. [Center & Right] Magazine covers this week focus on feeding the needy and working from home, as we deal with the COVID-19 crisis.
(2) New Yorker cartoon caption selection for the day: "Are you talking about the new normal of an hour ago, or is there a new new normal right now?"
(3) Cuba becomes an icon of the global fight against COVID-19: At the risk of being accused of praising Castro and/or communism, and be beaten on the head like Bernie Sanders, I share this Persian-language video about how Cuban doctors/nurses are helping Italy and several other countries deal with medical emergencies.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Idaho is hit with a magnitude-6.5 earthquake for the first time in 50 years.
- UCLA biodesign student builds a low-cost ventilator from parts he bought at Home Depot.
- Cool tricks and optical illusions for your enjoyment on this April Fool's Day! [Video]
- Satellite images show markedly clearer skies due to reduced emissions during the coronavirus emergency.
- Close to home: A COVID-19 case has been confirmed in Isla Vista, a community adjacent to UCSB campus.
- Santa Barbara and Goleta grocery store hours for seniors.
- Have you ever wondered about who provides the beautiful whistling sounds in spaghetti-Western themes?
(5) The digital divide rears its ugly head: One in five teens report having difficulties doing their homework because of lack of access to computers and the Internet. Access to the Internet has always been considered a basic right. The current work-from-home and study-at-home paradigms make it an even more important commodity. Tech companies should step forward to provide computers and ISPs should consider providing free Internet access and the requisite equipment.
(6) Assisting the poorly equipped hospitals and medical personnel in Iran: I am extremely proud of Tehran University College of Engineering's Class of 1968 (my college buddies) for kicking into action to procure emergency medical equipment and personal protective gear for the heroes fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of dead among Iran's medical teams is mind-boggling.
(7) UCSB's Pollock Theater goes on-line: The Theater is highlighting some of its past screenings and providing access to recorded post-screening discussions.
- "Knock Down the House" (2019) is available on Netflix.
[Recorded discussion]
- "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch" (2019) is available on Amazon Prime Video.
[Recorded discussion]
(8) Learn about the history of computer graphics and its future development: Two forerunners of the computer graphics industry, Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and 2019 ACM Turing Award Laureate, and Richard Chuang, co-founder of PDI/Dreamworks, will share their personal reflections on the past, present, and future of CG. [Details: Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 9:00-10:00 AM PDT, Registration link]
2020/03/31 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & bottom left] Monday afternoon on UCSB campus (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Humor: Indians are ordered to stay home! [Bottom right] This week's Santa Barbara Independent is quite thin: Its calendar section lists a few webinars and other on-line events on one page.
(2) Yesterday at UCSB: On Mondays, I have a scheduled office hour and two class sessions converted to office hours, to give students a chance for one-on-one discussion and advice-seeking about course material and other academic matters. Between the scheduled times in my office, I walked on campus twice, going to different parts, to see first-hand how the coronavirus pandemic has affected us. Beautiful as ever, and even cleaner than usual (including disinfected restrooms), the campus has become a ghost town. Three of the photos in the fourth batch above show the usually-bustling library plaza at the heart of our campus and the equally-busy bike path and walkway connecting central campus to Isla Vista. It seems that the UCSB campus is one of the safest places to be during this crisis! My plans call for being on campus all afternoon on Mondays and Wednesdays.
(3) A thought from March 2017: I'd take an arugula-loving, fist-bumping, bookish President, who does not take himself too seriously, over an arrogant, emotionless, amoral, ignorant one, who considers himself God-sent savior of the masses, any day!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- We have found the society's real heroes: Let's not forget them once this crisis is over! [Video]
- Of the first 3 doctors who died protecting the UK from COVID-19, two were Sudanese and one was Iraqi.
- ACM has made its Digital Library freely available during the coronavirus emergency (through June 30).
- Wonderful cuisine from the city of Rasht in Iran's Caspian-Sea region. [9-minute video]
- Persian music and dance: Traditional and coronavirus-modern!
- This video appears 3-dimensional, with vivid apples on trees that you feel you can reach out and touch.
(5) History of medicine: Ten centuries ago, Avicenna [~980-1037] (known to Iranians as Abu Ali Sina or Ibn Sina) told people to stay away from mosques and bazaars in order to control the spread of cholera, according to this clip from a 1956 Soviet biopic.
(6) Infomercial during Trump's press briefing: Trump gives the "MyPillow" Guy the podium to announce his planned production of medical face-masks. Whether this is a great act of charity or grabbing of a business opportunity, his infomercial-like announcement, which included lavishing praise on Trump, doesn't pass the smell test. And to top off the absurdity, the guy seems to think that all Americans are Christians! [Image]
(7) Final thought for the day: Health-care activist Ady Barkan sees COVID-19 as yet another reason to pass Medicare-for-All: "ALS made me really see what a moral abomination our health care system is."
2020/03/30 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Anonymous, on Trump's shortcomings and dysfunction in the White House (see the last item below). [Center] Viruses have no nationality or religion: Respect nature and be kind to your fellow human-beings. [Right] People are dying and our insecure President rants about ratings for his news briefings!
(2) Coronavirus in Iran: President Rouhani asserts that all is well in the fight against coronavirus in Iran and that America and Europe are in dire straits. Meanwhile, it's business as usual in waging war around the Middle East and in handing down long prison terms to political activists in Iran's kangaroo courts. [Persian tweets]
(3) Adios to the all-too-brief spring break, which I spent in my study, with occasional visits to its adjacent courtyard! The coming first week of the spring quarter will be hectic, with adaptation to exclusively on-line classes and working through all the uncertainties and questions adding to normal first-week challenges. I'll keep my face-to-face contact with students via in-person office hours. By mid-April, I will settle into a routine and will start the countdown to summer!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US COVID-19 deaths surpass 2000: Anthony Fauci warns 100 times more may die before it's all over.
- Former Defense Chief, centerist Benny Gantz, to form a coalition government in Israel. [Time magazine]
- Israeli historian/author Yuval Noah Harari interviewed on BBC Persian by Rana Rahimpour. [In English]
- Iran denies that pilgrims still flock to the country's religious shrines, but this video suggests otherwise.
(5) Book review: Anonymous (a senior Trump admiminstration official), A Warning, unabridged MP3 audiobook read by Robert Fass, Twelve, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I have mixed feelings about this book, which is a follow-up to the September 2018 anonymous op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," published by New York Times in September 2018.
On the one hand, much of what Anonymous writes makes sense and is consistent with numerous other accounts of Trump's presidency and his dysfunctional White House. The book provides a comprehensive catalogue of laws Trump has violated and immoral/corrupt acts he has committed. The author describes himself/herself as part of the "Steady State" (countering Trump's "Deep State" label), or the so-called "adults in the room."
On the other hand, Anonymous isn't a never-Trumper and professes to like most of the policies that Trump promotes, although, over the years, Trump has promoted every possible policy and its opposite. S/he accuses others, in the cabinet and Congress, of cowardice in facing up to Trump, yet strings together excuses for not joining a growing number of other adults in the room in leaving a White House that has become a den of incompetent yes-men and yes-women; enablers who go out of their way to justify any stupid and obviously-wrong pronouncement by the Egotist-in-Chief.
While a year and a half into Trump's presidency, anonymous criticism of his actions and exposure of his insanity might have been helpful, near the end of his first term, and with the prospects of his re-election looming, it is doubtful that anonymous resistance is the way to go. Anonymous justifies his/her actions by pointing to Alexander Hamilton's use of a pseudonym for the Federalist Papers. But it is not likely that Anonymous has a stature like Hamilton's, whose words would have carried much more weight had he written under his own name.
Still, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the author's characterization of Trump as constantly stumbling, slurring, confused, paranoid, irritable, and having trouble synthesizing information. The reader is left to wonder, though, whether the accuracy of the information presented has been compromised, and facts fuzzified, by the need to remain anonymous.
Among the more interesting passages in the book is where the author cites negative comments certain politicians made about Trump, before he won the presidency and after they joined his administration or became his staunch allies in Congress. Every single Trump apologist and derriere-kisser had made nasty remarks about him and about his lack of qualifications and temperament for presidency, before and/or after his election.
2020/03/29 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Perhaps this beautifully-rendered calligraphic message convinces you to stay home! [Center] Printing in Persian (see the last item below). [Right] Positivity and negativity in two consecutive tweets: While Asian-American feminists endeavor to issue an entertaining and informative newsletter for the age of coronavirus, our supposedly very-busy President is spreading disinformation and picking fights with governors who dare criticize his handling of the crisis.
(2) Quote of the day: "We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist (1803-1882)
(3) Universities may face challenges in student retention: After the on-line instruction period due to the coronavirus epidemic is over, many students may not return to campuses, particularly given the reduced quality of instruction as well as faculty apathy and tech-aversion in the interim period.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Can the US government be charged with criminal negligence in its handling of the coronavirus epidemic?
- Adult dependents and many students are left out of the coronavirus economic stimulation package.
- Coping with social isolation: UNICEF Exec. Dir. Henrietta H. Fore shares ideas from her day 4 at home.
- Traditional Persian music, with a modern big-orchestra twist. [7-minute video]
- Beautiful Iranian dances: Azeri and Kurdish.
- Humorous country song: "I'm My Own Grandpa" (with a graphical explanation).
(5) How the coronavirus pandemic will end: "A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk. In 2018, I wrote a story for The Atlantic arguing that America was not ready for the pandemic that would eventually come. In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. 'What if?' became 'Now what?'" [Article]
(6) Historical nuggets about the Persian script and its printing (figures above): Three dots were added to existing non-dotted Arabic letters to form the Persian letters "pe," "che," "zhe," and "gaaf." The current form of the letter "gaaf" is different from this early European practice.
In this example of typesetting the Nastaliq Persian script, composition of kernel characters and dots forming the Persian word "shahrak" is shown. Printing in Nastaliq script requires many multi-letter combinations to be produced for results with acceptable aesthetic quality.
[Source: Figs. 4 & 25 in Borna Izadpanah's "Early Persian Printing and Typefounding in Europe," J. Printing Historical Society, New Series, No. 29, Winter 2018, pp. 87-123]
2020/03/28 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian word puzzle: Persian proverbs/sayings and poem half-verses in emoji. [Center] Call Sign Chaos (see the last item below). [Right] Word puzzle: Movie titles in emoji.
(2) Update by Dr. Siavash Kurdistani from UCLA Medical Center, late last night: "We have tested a total of 2,503 patients since March 9. Of those, 193 tested positive. We currently have 27 patients hospitalized who have tested positive, including 8 who are ventilated. Test results are pending for 18 hospitalized patients. Six of our health care workers have tested positive for COVID-19 because they were exposed to a colleague in the workplace who tested positive."
(3) Trump's character flaws make him unsuitable for dealing with a crisis of this magnitude: He is trapped in a deadly situation from which he cannot escape by lying or changing the subject to Clinton's e-mails.
(4) Coronavirus-related hacking: Computer-security experts warn that a hack of Linksys and D-Link routers for homes and small offices is redirecting users to malicious sites that pose as COVID-19 info resources.
(5) Trump wants governors to thank him for the health-care supplies the federal govenment is providing to states, as if they are procured with his personal funds. Now, there are reports that he wants his signature to be on the checks sent to families as part of the stimulus bill he just signed!
(6) Book review: Mattis, Jim and Bing West, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Danny Campbell, Random House Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
James (Jim) Norman Mattis makes it clear at the outset that he refrains from commenting on the actions of a sitting president. So, if you want to learn about what went on in the White House between Mattis and Trump that led to his eventual resignation in February 2019, this book isn't for you.
True to form for a lifelong military man, the prose is very dry: Bing West's co-writing and Danny Campbell's reading can't help liven the drudgery of trying to learn from detailed description of military deployments confronting insurgencies. This is why I gave the book 4 stars; were I rating the content, rather than the overall book, the rating would have been higher.
CHAOS (Colonel Has Another Outstanding Suggestion) was the call name given Mattis by his underlings. Other than brief references to growing up in the west and going to jail for underage drinking, Mattis does not reveal much personal information. The book is primarily about Mattis the military man or "Mad Dog," rising from a US Marine recruit to 4-star general, and less about Mattis the never-married private man, "The Warrior Monk."
Even though Mattis doesn't comment on Trump directly, the occasional barbs are there. Mattis believes that any leader, or any person for that matter, must learn from books: "If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate." Mattis reads a lot himself, particularly about past military leaders and military campaigns, ideas and quotations from which appear throughout the book. He also sings the praises of the US Constitution and the need to follow processes and precedents.
Mattis discusses three types of leadership: Direct, executive, and strategic. A rather old-fashioned man, Mattis does not seem to have learned to use gender-neural language, as if women do not lead!
Direct leadership, where the leader is in close contact with his charges (a few dozens at most) and often knows them better than family members, requires leading with compassion and personal examples. In this part, Mattis draws on his own experiences leading US Marines into battle.
Executive leadership requires clear communication to ensure that the leader's intent is well-understood by all those carrying out the commands, such that they can make independent, local decisions consistent with the leader's intent. The leader should not spell out step-by-step actions but rather leave the details to those carrying out the commands in the field. Examples in this part come mostly from the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Strategic leadership requires a military leader to interface with political leaders, reconciling decisions that can cost lives with human aspirations and the attendant ambiguities. Imprudent decisions at this level can have catastrophic consequences. Examples in this part relate to Mattis's CentCom and other command posts and, later, Secretary of Defense.
Mattis provides much detail about his military campaigns in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. There is a great deal of information about the interaction between military generals and civilian leadership, shedding light, in particular, on all the misguided decisions in Iraq that produced and then strengthened the insurgency, leading eventually to the rise of ISIS.
Learning that the civilian leadership sitting in Washington has no clue about the complexities of war and the sacrifices made by military leaders and "the grunts," under difficult and sometimes inhumane conditions, was quite valuable for me.
2020/03/27 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Not every American is hoarding: A kind soul's offer to his/her neighbors. [Top center & right] The decades-long fonts war (see the next item below). [Bottom left] He thought she wanted an 18-carrot necklace! [Bottom center & right] Social-distancing requirements have closed movie theaters and upended park benches at a Goleta housing complex.
(2) Article on the history of computer fonts: A just-published article by Charles Bigelow, "The Font Wars" (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 42, No. 1, January-March 2020; Part 1, pp. 7-24; Part 2, pp. 25-40), reviews a decades-long competition in the computer industry for dominance in font technology, viewed as necessary for success and market dominance in personal computing. These two figures from the article show the bitmap of the letter "m" in Times New Roman font and irregularities from rasterization that needed to be hand-edited to improve regularity and alignment.
(3) UCSB ECE 252B, spring 2020: I have recorded the first 2 of ~20 lectures to cover the first week of classes for my graduate course on computer arithmetic. Here is the course Web page, in case you'd be interested to learn more about the class or to follow it.
- Lecture 1, Redundant Number Representation: 81-minute video
- Lecture 2, Residue Number Systems: 74-minute video
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Close to home: There are now 32 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Santa Barbara and 61 in Ventura County.
- Emergency food distribution centers on California's Central Coast (Carpinteria to Santa Maria). [List]
- Classical music: Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Kathryn Stott (piano) perform "The Swan" (Camille Saint-Saens).
- My nature walk around Goleta's Devereux Slough, on a sunny and windy Thursday afternoon. [Photos]
- After only a few weeks of reduced human activity on Earth, nature has begun to reclaim the space!
(5) Comic news that is dead-serious: It is mind-boggling that a comedic-journalist, Trevor Noah, provides the most level-headed and informative interview with infectious-diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
(6) Lack of self control intensifies during a crisis: There are disturbing reports about a sharp rise in violence against women at home (euphemistically called "domestic violence" to hide the gender imbalance), as families are confined to home, perhaps in cramped quarters. In the West, people are raised to mind their own business and not be nosy. Please do be nosy at this critical time. If you see/hear violence against women, report it to authorities. You may just save a life!
(7) Trump's media allies continue to fall in disgrace: Fox ousts Trish Regan after her rant about critical reactions to Trump's handling of the coronavirus epidemic being "impeachment all over again"!
2020/03/26 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Trump's press briefings have become substitutes for his campaign rallies: News outlets are considering whether to give him prime-time live coverage to spread lies and misinformation. [Top center] Coronavirus cartoon: Science, not religion, will save us from this pandemic. [Top right] Satellite photo of North America: Our planet looks peaceful from above, even as a pandemic ravages us humans. [Middle] Teaching about ethical practices in computing is more important than ever: Here is a partial list of computer science and engineering courses which are ripe for discussing ethical challenges. (Table from an editorial by Cherri M. Pancake, Communications of the ACM, April 2020) [Bottom left] Most countries are on the same coronavirus trajectory, with the number of confirmed cases doubling every 2-3 days: The US is one of the worst in the effectiveness of government response. Hong Kong and Singapore limited the spread. Japan and South Korea slowed it. [Bottom center] Misogyny, disguised and presented as humor (see the next item below). [Bottom right] A depiction of the quantum-physics "hoax," as Donald Trump would call it!
(2) Hidden misogyny: The image above of two of the most-powerful women in the world in self-quarantine appears funny at first, but that is because we are all unaware of our decades of social programming. Here is another example, disguised as a joke. Woman talking to a friend: "I wasn't expecting so much shared life when I agreed to marry him. I was told that he would leave every morning and return in the evening."
(3) Quote: "There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading to the top. The only person wasting time is the one who runs around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong." ~ Hindu proverb
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Not as bad as people dying, but still sad: Holland destroys 80% of its flower production for lack of buyers.
- Computers at healthcare facilities inundated by COVID-19 patients become targets of cyber-criminals.
- Algorithms take charge of policing disinformation, as Facebook sends its moderators home on paid leave.
- Coronavirus humor: Wear a face mask, even when you are alone at home. It will help you avoid over-eating!
(5) Dumb, paranoid leaders: Iranian health official contradicts Supreme Leader Khamenei, who had advanced the conspiracy theory that a special strain of coronavirus was made by the US to cause maximum damage in Iran! Donald Trump is also frequently contradicted or corrected by US health experts.
(6) When it comes to spending money we don't have, bipartisanship takes hold: By a vote of 96-0, Senators approve $2 trillion disaster-aid bill to boost the US economy and help those who are suffering from COVID-19 or its economic impact.
(7) Atena Daemi, an Iranian anti-death-penalty activist will mark her birthday in prison tomorrow, for the fifth consecutive year. Happy 32nd birthday! Shame on the Islamic Republic authorities who can't tolerate dissent, even peaceful activism on behalf of a humanitarian cause. [Tweets]
2020/03/25 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top] My daughter and I hiked on Santa Barbara's beautiful Jesusita Trail, an easy hike that was made challenging by a muddy path. [Bottom] Eight construction projects that used a lot of concrete: 0.1-65.5 million metric tons (source: IEEE Spectrum, March 2020). Note: "The Pentagon" image is mislabeled.
(2) Happy 10th birthday, Obamacare! The Affordable Care Act has survived numerous challenges from the Republicans, thanks in part to its defense by Democratic Attorneys General Association.
(3) World's largest networked-computer is helping in our fight against coronavirus: Folding@Home, a distributed system offering 470 petflops of peak performance in the exhaustive search to find possible cures for COVID-19, is more powerful than world's top seven supercomputers combined. The #1 supercomputer on the Top-500 list has also been enlisted to help in the search.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Yemen set to execute 24 Baha'is, including a child, on charges of spying for Israel.
- Plea from medical professionals, fighting the coronavirus pandemic, that we help them by staying home.
- Stores are facilitating proper social-distancing through the use of floor markers in check-out lines.
- Historians: In 2020, the US had a president so full of **it that the whole country ran out of toilet paper!
- Italy in quarantine: Balcony sax performance of "Bella Ciao" for neighbors across the street.
- Will we ever feel such joys again? Concert pianist disguised as janitor performs at a shopping mall.
(5) A virus speaks to humans: A virus warns humans that they were on the path of destroying their planet with excesses, before the current coronavirus pandemic woke them up. Did it, really, or will we go back to our old ways, once the crisis is over? [Video in Italian, with subtitles in English and in Persian]
(6) Computing helps endangered and extinct languages: There are currently 7000 known languages in the world, 2500 of which are endangered (children no longer learn to speak them). Over the past 70 years, 230 languages have gone extinct (there are no speakers left). Automatic language translation via machine-learning has been making enormous progress in recent years. The results are particularly impressive in translating between English and French, because of the vast collection of past translations, but improvements are being made for other language pairs. Now, researchers are trying to extend these methods to translating from extinct languages. [Communications of the ACM, issue of April 2020]
2020/03/24 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] My advice. [Center] This is the son of an Islamic Republic official: Former Iranian ambassador to Venezuela Ahmad Sobhani has disowned his son Sasha Sobhani, professing failure in raising him properly! [Right] Cover image for Andrea Berstein's American Oligarchs (see the last item below).
(2) UCSB ECE 1B, spring 2020: I have recorded the first of ten hour-long weekly lectures for my freshman-seminar class, Ten Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering. Here is the course's Web page, in case you'd be interested to learn more about the class or to follow it. [Lecture 1: 65-minute video]
(3) The story of a legendary $20M Buenos Ayres bank heist in 2006 that puts Hollywood fiction to shame: The perpetrators created an ordinary bank robbery scene, with hostages, to distract the police and buy time, as they cleaned out safe-deposit boxes in the basement. They got away and thought they had pulled the perfect heist, but a lovers' dispute over the haul, and an affair, unraveled the plot.
(4) Two cancelled events: Among casualties of universities moving to on-line instruction for spring 2020 and restrictions on gatherings and travel are the following two events in UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran:
- 4/26, UCI's Dr. Roxanne Varzi, "Tehran Tourist" screening/discussion, an example of guerilla film-making
- 5/18, UNC's Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, "Embodiment, Power, and Politics in Farahbakhsh's 'Zendegi-ye Khosusi'"
(5) Borna Izadpanah's tweet about Mirza Malkom Khan's new Persian alphabet of the 1880s, known as "Khotout-e Adamiyyat" or "Alefba-ye Malkomi," and the books he published using it.
(6) Book review: Bernstein, Andrea, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The Trumps and the Kushners are a match made in Hell! Both families were corrupted by money and in turn corrupted everything around them, including lawyers, cops, and politicians. Veteran investigative reporter Andrea Bernstein digs up the dirt on both families, which had constant brush-ins with law enforcement.
The Kushners are the lesser-known of the two families, so there is more new material about them than about the Trumps. Charles Kushner, Jared's father, did time in federal prison for using a prostitute and recording a sex tape to frame his brother-in-law over business disputes. The Kushner family broke multiple laws, in Europe and the US, in trying to make it to America, including using false names and faking their country of origin. Jared's paternal grandfather, who morphed from Yossel Berkowitz into Joseph Kushner, passed himself off as the son of his father-in-law, because immigration officials treated sons more favorably than sons-in-law. It is interesting that with all this in Trumps' and Kushners' background, Trump had the nerve to mock comedian Jon Stewart for ditching the name "Jonathan Leibowitz"!
Both Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump came very close to being indicted for scams involving Trump's Soho Hotel, and Donald Trump himself escaped indictments by settling dozens of cases out of court. Bernstein describes failed project after failed project that bankrupted many investors, while the Trumps, who used licensing agreements, rather than putting up cash, emerged making millions. In many cases, the Trumps misrepresented their association with the projects, falsified the buildings' sales/occupancy levels, and used other misleading data to lure investors.
Criminal families attract other criminal families. A case in point is Rudy Giuliani, who may be in serious legal trouble now, given the indictment of two of his close associates, and whose father served time in Sing Sing correctional facility for armed robbery. Both families, the Trumps and the Kushners, associated with criminals, some of whom are now in prison or are under investigation. Jared Kushner has obtained questionable loans, abusing his position as a top advisor to President Trump. Bernstein's narrative is peppered with characters from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Persian Gulf states, and other corrupt foreign countries, as well as a few mobsters.
Bernstein's book has significant overlaps with other recent books about the Trump family. For example, both the 2016 presidential campaign and the dysfunction within the Trump White House are given broad coverage, topics that are included in dozens of other books. Nevertheless, I found American Oligarchs absorbing and informative. Sometimes a fresh perspective or narrative on an old incident can be enlightening. I recommend Bernstein's book highly, particularly in this election year.
2020/03/23 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Cover of Time magazine, issue of March 23, 2020. [Top center] We have too many nukes and not enough ventilators. [Top right] The quantum-dot image sensor will revolutionize digital imaging—and it could come to smartphone cameras within 5 years (source: IEEE Spectrum, March 2020). [Bottom row] Topical tweets about immense sacrifices from our doctors and nurses, criticism of Ayatollah Khamenei who, like Trump, is blaming everyone but himself or his government's policies for the coronavirus pandemic, and the Ten Commandments, updated for the age of coronavirus.
(2) The sick mind of Iran's incompetent Supreme Leader: The US created this new disease to reduce Iran's population. Now, in the guise of medical assistance, the West wants to bring in drugs that make the virus a permanent presence in Iran. [Not an exact quote, but an accurate translation of his words]
(3) From the US CDC Web site: The practice of quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing. This practice, called quarantine, was derived from the Italian words quaranta giorni which mean 40 days. [Explanation in Persian]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- USA had a CDC expert in China to provide advance warning of epidemics: The position was cut in 2019.
- Japan considers postponing the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after several countries withdraw from participation.
- Humor: On the perils of working from home in the age of social-distancing! [Video]
- Neil Diamond modifies the lyrics to his song "Sweet Caroline": Hands ... washing hands ... ! [Tweet]
- Students recreate their choir performance virtually, after their concert is cancelled. Wonderful!
- Iranian music: Medley of highly-popular regional/folk songs, played on santoor. [3-minute video]
(5) Donald Trump tweet: I watch and listen to the Fake News, CNN, MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CBS, some of FOX (desperately & foolishly pleading to be politically correct), the @nytimes, & the @washingtonpost, and all I see is hatred of me at any cost. Don't they understand that they are destroying themselves?
Me: Well, if you see so many going the wrong way, start thinking that maybe you are the wrong-way driver!
(6) Do not hog Internet bandwidth: Many of our fellow citizens are working at home and there are reports of significant Internet slowdown in parts of the country (there have been multiple complaints from my neighbors living in the same faculty housing complex, where suddenly dozens of us are placing extra load on the network). Be mindful of bandwidth limitations when streaming movies or TV shows during working hours.
2020/03/22 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top] Photos I took early this afternoon, during my nature walk before the onset of rain. [Bottom] In the age of coronavirus and social distancing: Classic art, and park bench.
(2) South Korea and the United States had their first coronavirus case on the same day: South Korea took it seriously and is beating it. The US called it a hoax and ignored it for weeks.
(3) Why we aren't over-reacting: Comparing the spread of coronavirus infections in the United States (red) and Italy (gray) shows that things are likely to get much worse for us in the days ahead. [Chart]
(4) I think young people are genuinely spooked by our behavior: After hearing from us repeatedly to get off their butts and do something useful for society, they don't know what to make of the advice to sit on the couch and do nothing, in order to save humanity.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Compilation of Trump supporters talking about race, LGBTQ rights, and possibility of a Trump dynasty.
- Humor (in Persian): Remeber that President Rouhani has your home address and the key. [Image]
- Persian music: Shardad Rohani plays and conducts his composition "Dance of Spring." [4-minute video]
- Quote: "The search for human freedom can never be complete without freedom for women." ~ Betty Ford
(6) Be alert for fraud in these difficult times: As in other disasters and emergencies, fraudsters have sprung into action to take advantage of people's empathy and fears. Fraudulent charities, purported preventive and therapeutic treatments, cries for help by people showing up at your door (with an accomplice lurking behind), tax-refund assistance, and just plain robberies are things to watch for.
(7) This mullah says that Norooz/Nowruz is a Zoroastrian festival and celebrating it would be un-Islamic: "What's so special about grass regrowing? Cows and donkeys should celebrate, not people"! Every time these dotards attack Iranian traditions, people become more resolute in observing them. Meanwhile, another mullah, mask-less and not wearing any protective gear, is seen in other news reports walking among COVID-19 patients in a hospital to bless them with a perfume "from the prophet." All mullahs are like this, although some do manage to hide their hatred of values and traditions from pre-Islamic Iran.
(8) Humor from Iran: With all the disasters that have descended upon us lately, I am totally confused. Today, there was an earthquake and, instead of jumping out of the house, I began washing my hands. [Persian]
(8) Coronavirus joke from Iran: My grandpa had symptoms of coronavirus, so we took him to the hospital. He has been dancing with the nurses for three hours now. When we tell him that if he feels okay, we should go home, he tells us to shut up: "You idiots, can't you see that I'm dying?"
2020/03/21 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] These are our heroes nowadays: They have always been, but we are now coming to recognize them as heroic. [Right] Shopping report: Garlic is still in short supply everywhere. Sprouts Farmers Market was business-as-usual otherwise. European Market, a local joint which specializes in East European and some Middle Eastern foods, was impressively well-stocked.
(2) Highest Math Prize: The 2020 Abel is shared by Hillel Furstenberg, 84, of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and Grigory Margulis, 74, of Yale University, two trailblazing retired professors of probability and dynamics.
(3) Words matter: The following word pairs have the same number of letters, but that's the only thing they have in common. Be mindful of your words!
Love/Hate. Friends/Enemies. Positive/Negative. Right/Wrong. Heal/Hurt. Happy/Angry. Raise/Lower.
(4) The simulation hypothesis: Is everything we do or happens to us, including the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, part of a grand simulation? Fasten your seatbelts and listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson explain why this isn't as likely to be the case as some argue.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- COVID-19 Response Team of London's Imperial College issues report on non-pharmaceutical interventions.
- Life is suspended in Iran: National Geographic article on how Iran is dealing with the coronavirus epidemic.
- Breaking: Fox News has asked its commentators to lie from home!
- Once this video clip goes viral, Dr. Anthony Fauci will be toast: He must be a spy planted be the Democrats!
- One more attempt at arguing that the Haji Firooz concept is racist and quite offensive. [2014 post]
- If you think you need to use a facial mask, here is an on-line source (courtesy of a neighbor of mine).
(6) Quote of the day: "There's a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change." ~ Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams
(7) The tech prophet: Bill Gates warned us in his 2015 TED talk that we'll likely lose millions of people to microbes, not to missiles. Spending loads of money on military instead of public health is thus misguided.
(8) Okay, I am officially overwhelmed: My in-box is deluged with daily coronavirus-related e-mails, most of them long ones, from UC President, our Chancellor, multiple Vice-Chancellors, various instructional offices offering help with on-line classes, my department chair, and a host of other campus uits announcing their modified schedules. And this is just from within UCSB. Add to these messages, e-mails from organizations with which I interact and alerts from news services to which I subscribe, and you'll understand the problem. As soon as I read and deal with a batch of e-mails, the in-box grows even larger with newly arriving messages!
2020/03/20 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Happy Norooz/Nowruz and Iranian new year (see the next item below). [Top center] "Where's Waldo" puzzles vastly simplified in the age of social distancing! [Bottom left] Lily Weng's Zoom lecture at UCSB (see next-to-last item below). [Bottom center] Iran frees or furloughs some prisoners due to the spread of coronavirus: But while embezzlers and others imprisoned for corruption are now roaming free, many political prisoners, women in particular, remain behind bars. [Bottom right] On-line MATLAB course for IEEE Central Coast Section (see the last item below).
(2) Spring is upon us (and so is the nasty coronavirus): Nature's renewal and human health concerns are battling for our attention. As we passed the moment of Spring Equinox (Persian "Saal Tahveel"), last night at 8:50:00 PM California time (Friday, March 20, 2020, 7:20:00 AM Iran time), I hoped we can turn the lessons of this global pandemic into positive changes in our lifestyles: consuming less and loving more; mistrusting less and believing more; letting the sun shine on our faces, as we go out and help those who are less fortunate. Wishing you an enlightening Norooz/Nowruz, alongside your loved ones, and a healthy and joyous new year!
Here's an eloquent Persian greeting for Norooz/Nowruz and the Iranian new year: May spring bring renewal and joy, not only to humans, but to all creatures and to the entire planet we call home.
And here's a typical Iranian's wish for the new year: Looking forward to a year with no coronavirus and no Islamic Republic! [My message above in Persian]
(3) Important news of the day related to the coronavirus epidemic: Putting these one-dozen news headlines in one place reveals the enormous global impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
- After classified coronavirus briefing, GOP Senators dumped stocks
- Governor Newsome issues California-wide "Stay at Home" order
- Multiple American auto factories are shutting down until April
- Employee furloughs begin in US aviation and other industries
- Trump assumes "war powers" but decides against using them
- Adjunct faculty and foreign students more affected by college closures
- Face-to-face research activity also comes to a halt at college campuses
- Electricity demand in the US plummets, as Internet usage surges
- EU asks residents to stream videos in standard-definition, not HD
- French President Macron suspends rent, taxes, and utility bills
- Woman marks 100th birthday in isolation; family cheers from outside
- Publishers/repositories, like Cambridge/JSTOR, provide free e-access
(4) "Evaluating Robustness of Neural Networks": This was the title of a March 18, 2020, Zoom (remote) technical talk by Tsui-Wei Lily Weng (MIT), a faculty candidate for UCSB's Computer Engineering Program.
Robustness of neural networks to adversarial examples (imperciptable modification of images that can lead to incorrect classification by neural-network-based image classifiers, such as a stop sign being misidentified as a different sign) has important reliability and security implications. One adversarial attack is deemed stronger than another if it leads to misclassification with a smaller change in the image. So, researchers are interested in finding the absolute strongest attacks against a particular neural network. Ms. Weng asserted that little has been developed towards a comprehensive measure of robustness. She then presented a series of examples from her research on robustness evaluation and certification, including the first robustness score CLEVER, efficient certification algorithms Fast-Lin, CROWN, CNN-Cert, and probabilistic robustness verification algorithm PROVEN. Her proposed approaches are computationally efficient and provide good quality of robustness estimate/certificate as demonstrated by extensive experiments on MNIST, CIFAR and ImageNet.
(5) "Data Analysis and Visualization with MATLAB for Beginners": This was the title of a 2.5-hour course presented on March 18, remotely via Webex, by Dr. Aycan Hacioglu (Customer Success Engineer, MathWorks). Mathworks Application Engineers Dr. Bo Luan and Dr. Sharon Kim were also in attendance, as were 20 IEEE Central Coast Section members taking the course.
MATLAB is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualization, and numerical computation. With MATLAB, one can solve technical computing problems faster than with traditional programming languages, such as C, C++, and Fortran.
During the first 75 minutes of this introductory course, Dr. Hacioglu provided an overview of MATLAB and its powerful statistical analysis and visualization capabilities, demonstrated how to acquire, analyze, and visualize data, briefly discussed desktop tools for editing and debugging code, and showed how to publish the results. Highlights included:
- Accessing data from files, spreadsheets, and other sources
- Performing statistical analysis, curve and surface fitting routines
- Developing algorithms and applications to automate one's workflow
- Generating reports in HTML and other file formats to share one's work
A one-hour hands-on session, involving interactive MATLAB Onramp training, followed. The course's final 15 minutes consisted of a short competition, with winners getting unspecified prizes, to be sent to them via e-mail.
[Slides (User = customer; PW = MathWorks)] [Webinar] [MATLAB Onramp] [MATLAB trial license]
2020/03/19 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] The 2019 ACM Alan M. Turing Award, the highest honor in computing, has gone to Patrick M. (Pat) Hanrahan and Edwin E. (Ed) Catmull for fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics, and the revolutionary impact of these techniques on computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications. [Top right] Man who wasn't allowed to visit his wife at a nursing home on their 67th wedding anniversary communicates with her from outside. [Bottom left] My entry in New Yorker cartoon caption contest #700: "A block of Swiss cheese, please; mousetrap on the side." [Bottom right] Cartoon of the day: The US government's rescue plan.
(2) US colleges in disarray: Transition to on-line instruction, even where feasible, is hampered by dearth of knowledge and tools. International students are disproportionately affected by classroom and dorm closures. A deluge of tuition-refund requests is expected, for which no funding exists.
(3) Persian music: "Sar Oomad Zemestoon" ("Winter Is Over") is based on an Armenian folk song. The song is often taken to mean "Better Days Are Ahead," which is a great sentiment for both Iran and the US.
(4) Facebook spam filters contain an apparent bug, says Business Insider: "Facebook is blocking users from posting some legitimate news articles about the coronavirus in what appears to be a bug in its spam filters."
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- An article, published in Nature, dispels the claim that coronavirus is human-made (biological weapon).
- China reports an expected 9% contraction in its economy, compared with last year's first quarter.
- As Trump repeatedly talks about the Chinese virus, Asian-Americans report increased assaults.
- There was talk of the Dow breaking 30,000 not too long ago: Instead, it broke 20,000, going down.
- Musical humor: "I Will Survive" teaching on-line!
- "Imagine": A message of hope and solidarity for our difficult times and beyond. [Video]
(6) Racist White House talk about Chinese or "Kung-Flu" virus, total lack of empathy, and Trump's Twitter attacks on governors who are taking or demanding action, are in direct conflict with Trump's call for non-partisanship and cooperation at the podium!
(7) On universities moving classes on-line: Some students lack access to shelter, food, or Wi-Fi in the wake of college campus closures. Calls for tuition refund are on the rise.
(8) Donald Trump admitted that he fired the NSC Pandemics scientists, explaining that he didn't want them on the payroll when there was no active threat and "when we need them, we can get them back very quickly." His apologists, however, are going around denying that he eliminated the office!
(9) The hoax becomes a health crisis: Trump and his apologists on the Dear-Leader news network pivoted, virtually overnight, from characterizing the coronavirus epidemic as "a hoax" and "totally under control" to talking about it as a serious national emergency.
2020/03/18 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Closed-theater owner's creativity and optimism are on display! [Top center] During the period of not working or working from home, these pointers are quite helpful. [Top right] What people visualized if you said "coronavirus" before 2020! [Bottom left] Goleta Trader Joe's: The stock is partially restored, but shoppers are limited to two of each item. There is a line to get in, so that in the aisles and at checkout, 6-foot spacing between people can be maintained. [Bottom center] The mystery of how glass forms (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Humor: Tightened security in stores selling toilet paper!
(2) Physicists are working to create ideal glass to unravel the mystery of why glass exists at all: When you cool a liquid, it will either crystallize (molecules are locked in a regular, repeating pattern) or harden into glass (free-flowing molecules don't reorganize, but simply grind to a halt). Which of the two happens depends on the substance and on the process subtleties that glassblowers have learned through trial and error over millennia.
(3) Lebanon's economy is on the verge of collapse: The country's financial system is hurting under the triple threat of coronavirus epidemic, Syrian refugees, and sinking oil prices, which has led to Labanese migrant workers in oil-rich countries sending home much less money. [Source: PBS Newshour]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Don't feel bad at home: Isaac Newton accomplished much while working from home during a pandemic.
- Music stars are live-streaming mini-concerts from home to provide entertainment for quarantined folks.
- Yesterday, I completed the US 2020 Census questionnaire on-line. It was quite painless! [Image]
- Humor: Mexico is now willing to pay to speed up the construction of the border wall!
- Persian music: Beautiful song based on a Hafez poem, which is included with this 3-minute video.
- May your sorrows burn in the bonfires of Chaharshanbeh Soori! [Calligraphic art]
(5) US national cybersecurity study: After a year of work, the Congressional Cyberspace Solarium Commission issued its report on the state of cybersecurity in the US, offering 75 recommendations for shoring up cyberdefense and tightening the government's cybersecurity policy responsibility. The recommendations include creating a Senate-confirmed National Cyber Director, a Bureau of Cyber Statistics, House and Senate cybersecurity committees, and a special fund to respond to and recover from cyberattacks.
(6) Chaharshanbeh Soori (a prelude to Norooz): The eve of the Persian calendar year's final Wednesday (last night), is when Iranians jump over bonfires, while telling the flames: "My yellow be yours, your red be mine." With this "purification rite," one wishes that the fire would take away sickness (yellow face) and other problems and in return provide warmth and redness (a sign of health). This year, many skipped the actual jumping but, in Iran, people appeared on balconies or at windows with a candle to celebrate and express solidarity.
2020/03/17 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Robin Williams had predicted the shortage of toilet paper a long time ago! [Center] Haft seen: I finally brought myself to set up a haft-seen (seven S's) spread for Norooz/Nowruz and spring, due to arrive in two days. As we say in Persian, I did not have the heart and the mind (del o demaagh) for this annual tradition, given all that is going on in the world. In the end, what else can a very active house-bound person do but keep himself busy with something pleasant! I actually have eight S's, after replacing the unavailable Samanu with Sonbol and Sekkeh. [Right] Mehrangiz Manouchehrian (see the last item below).
(2) Joke of the day: A reporter asked a Jewish man, who had been praying at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall daily for 60 years, what he prayed for. "Harmony among different nations and religions, elimination of war, and safe transition of our youth into caring and responsible adults," was his answer. The reporter then asked how the old man feels about his efforts. He responded: "I feel like I have been talking to a wall."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Senator Warren sounds the alarm on again bailing out corporations and leaving US taxpayers with the bill.
- It's really difficult not to touch your face: We do it habitually, without realizing that we do it.
- People are hoarding not just toilet paper, but also guns: Sales are reportedly surging in many states.
- Coronavirus distribution/spread: Informative article, with practical tips and lots of charts. [In Persian]
(4) Reviewing four of the best computers on the market. [Disclaimer: The opinions expressed aren't mine but come from a March 2020 article, based on CNET.com assessment.]
- Lenovo Yoga C930 puts its 360-degree hinges to work as the two-in-one's speaker system. The active pen is discreetly housed and charged in the body. Speed and battery life are excellent for its class. ~$1100
- Dell XPS 13 (2019): Dell has fixed this laptop's only remaining serious flaw, designing a super-slim 2mm webcam to fit into the thin screen bezel. Excellent keyboard, and decent battery life for a 4K laptop. $1700
- HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2019) is one of the best ultraportable two-in-ones, with lots of component options, including 3 display choices and class-leading battery life. Includes a sleeve and full-size active pen. ~$1000
- Microsoft Surface Pro 6 now comes with new quad-core processors that provides big performance gains. The new black color option looks cool. Still the best kickstand and keyboard for Windows tablets. $605-$900
(5) Mehrangiz Manouchehrian [1906-2000]: The first woman to earn a law degree in Iran as well as the first woman Senator, Manouchehrian was a fierce advocate of children's and women's rights. She resigned from her Senate seat when the Prime Minister insulted her during parliamentary debate and refused to apologize publicly. At issue was a law that required women to get permission from their husbands to travel abroad. She was the architect of Iran's pre-Islamic-Revolution family protection act, which was opposed by the clergy, who deemed its provisions un-Islamic. Not surprisingly, the law was scrapped after the mullahs took over.
2020/03/16 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A 104-year-old Iranian tombstone: It marks the grave of someone who perished in the Spanish Flu epidemic, which, according to the inscription's cautionary tale, killed 2/3 of the population. [Center] Coronavirus humor: Trump's and Pence's white-washing strategy exposed inadvertently in this photo! [Right] Bread shortage continues in the Santa Barbara area: Shopping at Goleta's Ralphs store on Sunday.
(2) Killing coronavirus with heat: This proposed heat-treatment is based on the fact that the virus dies at the temperature 56 C (133 F). It sounds reasonable, but I'm not certain.
(3) Santa Barbara County gets the first case of coronavirus in its northern part: Also, five UCSB students have been quarantined for coming in contact with a San Diego man who tested positive.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The big picture: Coronavirus cases have now been reported in 100 countries. [World map]
- A glimmer of hope: The last temporary hospital closes in Wuhan after dramatic fall in coronavirus cases.
- With coronavirus, the US faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself.
- Trump's ex-FDA chief critiques the administration, while maintaining respect in its inner circle.
- Persian music: Humorous song about the coronavirus epidemic and how people are dealing with it.
- For my Persian-speaking readers: Humor is the universal tool for coping with anxiety and stress! [Joke]
(5) In these difficult times, don't forget that many people are worse off: Those of us who have a home, where we can shelter or self-quarantine, have food in our pantries and freezers, continue to get paid (e.g., by working from home or using sick leave), and can keep in touch with our loved ones, even if remotely, should remember others who are less fortunate. Think of the homeless facing coronavirus. Of schoolchildren who relied on free or subsidized food programs, no longer available to them due to school closures. Of sports-arena workers and others who no longer have jobs. Of mom-and-pop restaurants that have lost up to one-half of their customers. Charitable giving is even more important now. [Touching video of Angelina Jolie accepting an award]
(6) Facebook & Twitter suspend Russian-linked accounts targeting African-Americans: The operation combined bogus accounts and actual residents of Ghana and Nigeria, apparently deceived into thinking they were serving an NGO by promoting inauthentic accounts, pages, and groups on social media platforms.
2020/03/15 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Time magazine's double issue of March 16/23, 2020, celebrates 100 women for the past century, 1920-2019. It has multiple covers and a large centerfold. [Top center] New species of tiny "bird dinosaur": Smaller than a hummingbird, the newly-discovered Oculudentavis, trapped in 99M-years-old amber, had sharp teeth on upper and lower jaws, suggesting that it was a predator. [Top right] UCSB's Professor Yasamin Mostofi honored: She has become an IEEE Fellow "for contributions to communications and control co-optimization in mobile sensor networks." An important achievement, particularly at such a young age. Congrats! [Bottom left] Commemorative jewelry for 2020! And here is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, 2020 edition. [Bottom right] Yesterday, I took my mom shopping at Goleta Trader Joe's and a couple of other stores, after dining at In-n-Out. The photo shows the bread aisle at TJ's. While shopping at Sprouts Farmers Market, wearing my Pi Day T-shirt, I encountered a beaming cashier, who began reciting the digits of pi from memory for a long time! She said she learned them for a school competition.
(2) Clever advertising by Wolfram for Pi Day: The company that markets Mathematica is offering a discount of 31.415%, rounded up to 32%, because a discount of only 3.14% would be totally irrational!
(3) Ayatollah Donald Trump has designated Sunday 3/15 as national prayer day for the coronavirus epidemic. What a brilliant idea: Dismiss the scientists; summon the preachers!
(4) Times are tough: I have made the Monday 3/16 final exam for my course on parallel processing optional, offering students the choice to be graded based on work already completed, with the final usable to improve their grades. I have also informed them of their tentative grades, without the optional final. This way, each student can decide based on his/her risk averseness whether s/he wants to take the in-person final.
(5) YouTube Live: In case you are looking for a way to put lectures and other instructional media on-line, I am experimenting with YouTube Live. Right now, I am at the beginning of the road, but will share on social media my experiences throughout the spring 2020 quarter. Here is the playlist I have started on my YouTube channel for the graduate course on computer arithmetic (UCSB ECE 252B). And here is my playlist for the freshman seminar, "Ten Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering" (UCSB ECE 1B).
(6) My first experimentation with YouTube Live: This video, recorded on March 14, 2020, is an introduction to the graduate course "Computer Arithnmtic" (ECE 252B) at UCSB, along with its requirements for spring quarter 2020. Although I have recorded my class lectures before (for example to cover for absence during a conference trip), this is my first experience in recording an entire course, necessitated by the cancellation of in-person instruction at UCSB due to the coronavirus epidemic. Please excuse the rough edges, as I get used to the medium. [Course Web page]
[Textbook Web page]
2020/03/14 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Pi Day! March 14 is known as Pi Day, because 3/14 matches the first three of the infinite sequence of digits in pi = 3.141 592 653 589 793 ... [Center] My traditional spring poem: Each year, I compose a cheerful poem to greet the arrival of spring, the Norooz/Nowruz Festival, and the Persian New Year. I must admit that in 2020, with the grim political situations in the US and Iran, and with the coronavirus spreading worldwide, I found it difficult to muster positivism and hope, and had to work harder as a result. Here is the poem, whose half-verse initial letters spell "New Year" and "Norooz." It is with pleasure that I dedicate this poem to my dear family members and Iranian friends, a week before the Persian New Year! I recite the poem in this 2-minute video. [Right] A bowl of jasmines from the plant on my carport trellis.
(2) In these days of social-distancing, real and virtual friendships become even more important. This meme, which I dedicate to all my friends, reads: "Take care of yourself, because there's just one of you in the world."
(3) UCSB cancels its Saturday 4/19, Open House 2020 (introducing the applicants to the campus, in an attempt to recruit them) and will hold a Virtual Open House on Wednesday 4/22, 1:00-7:00 PM, instead.
(4) In 2018, Trump fired all the scientists that formed the country's Pandemic Response Team within the National Security Council. On Friday, when asked about the team's dissolution, he characterized the question as "nasty" and denied that he had any role in the firings.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- We need more of such knowledgeable and persistent public servants: Rep. Katie Porter grills CDC Director.
- Computer/data scientists have begun studying how COVID-19 spreads and what can be done about it.
- Meme of the day: The keys to defeating an epidemic are trust and listening to the scientists. [Image]
- The Daily Show replaces March Madness with a competition to pick Trump's best word from 64 candidates.
- "I Can Get No Disinfection": The classic Rolling Stones song for the age of coronavirus. [Video]
- This is how a group of high-spirited Iranians spent their 10th day of self-quarantine! [Video]
- Iranian music: "Norooz Waltz," a cheerful oldie celebrating the Persian new year, performed a cappella.
- Iranian TV commercial from the mid-1970s, promoting a special Norooz/Nowruz edition of lottery tickets.
(6) Weather and climate modeling: US NOAA signs contract with Cray Computing to triple its weather and climate supercomputing capacity and improve forecast accuracy by closing the capabilities gap with Europe.
(7) Climate-change discussion at UCSB: Here is how I incorporated the "UCSB Reads 2020" seletion, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, into my winter course on parallel processing through a series of micro-projects, constituting half of the course,s homework assignments. [My review of Rising]
2020/03/13 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "I really don't mind coming into the office to work." [Center] Probabilistic computing (see the last item below). [Right] Sense of humor by striking graduate students who want COLA (cost of living adjustment).
(2) Killing people for profits: This news report shows how water is sold to Iranian people as disinfectant, at high black-market prices, after going through four intermediaries, each one marking it further up. Disgusting!
(3) Iran introduces a coronavirus phone app, but Google pulls it from its App Store: Fear of spying on citizens may have played a role, given that the Iranian regime's past record makes it hard to believe that transparency and information sharing was the goal.
(4) Compulsory hijab isn't a minor or secondary problem: This backward law is at the heart of women's oppression in Iran. Watch this woman, minding her own business as she walks on the street, being harassed and physically assaulted by a pro-regime vigilante.
(5) Things are being cancelled, closed, or moved on-line, but war rages on!
- At my university (UCSB): Classes, Arts & Lectures, music/film events, meetings, ...
- In the United States: NCAA games, NBA season, Disneyland, Broadway, movie releases, ...
- On the world stage: Cruises, conferences, sporting events, non-essential travel, ...
(6) I don't know about you, but I am growing weary of things people say about the coronavirus pandemic: What to eat. What not to eat. What boosts your immune system. What weakens it. I've got the basics down and will be ignoring all the disinformation as well as the detailed, but unhelpful info.
(7) A practice worth reconsidering: Does the tradition of a father walking his daughter down the aisle for delivery to her husband-to-be represent transfer of ownership from one male to another? [Persian tweet]
(8) This afternoon, I attended a campus-wide Zoom meeting of the UCSB Faculty Legislature. The poor experience made me reconsider using Zoom for my classes during spring quarter, which begins on March 30.
(9) "Probabilistic Computing: From Materials and Devices to Circuits and Systems": This was the title of yesterday's interesting talk by Dr. Kerem Camsari (Post-doc, Purdue U.), a faculty candidate for UCSB's Computer Engineering Program. Probabilistic bits or p-bits exhibit some of the advantages of quantum bits or q-bits over conventional or deterministic bits, but they can be built scalably with present-day technology used in magnetic memory devices.
Dr. Camsari showed that p-bits can be used to build autonomous p-circuits to accelerate applications such as optimization, invertible logic, and machine learning, while providing a bridge to Noisy-Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era quantum computers. He described a recent experimental 8-bit p-computer implementing a quantum-inspired optimization algorithm.
2020/03/12 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Teachers rock: A math teacher in southern Iran teaches an on-line class from home, using the side of her refrigerator as a make-shift white board. [Top center & right] Coronavirus-related memes: Helping you avoid touching your face, and "aaftaabeh," the Iranian solution to the shortage of toilet paper. [Middle left] UCSB's Computer Science Summit on Wednesday 3/11 (see the next-to-last item below). [Middle center] IranWire.com cartoon of the day: The Ayatollah's guests. [Middle right] Two computer engineering capstone projects (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Throwback Thursday: March 12 images from years past. [Bottom center] Trump, who boasted daily when the stock market was breaking records, is now eerily quiet: Stocks are down ~10% for today, ~15% for the past week, ~20% for the past month (indexes today: Dow ~21,200; NASDAQ ~7,200; S&P500 ~2,480). The chart shows stock market performance under the last four presidents. [Bottom right] Throwback Thursday: In a commentary about her Time-magazine essay of 50 years ago, Gloria Steinem writes: "The single biggest determinant of whether a country is violent, or will use military violence against another country, is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it is violence against women."
(2) Bernie Sanders commits an unforced error (in my opinion): He has strong support among Muslim-Americans, which constitute an important voting block. However, allowing a Shi'i cleric to speak in Arabic at a Sanders campaign rally is a big mistake. I can imagine clips of this speech used against him by both parties. Don't get me wrong. Sanders has every right to pander to any group of voters and Muslim-Americans have every right to exercise their electoral power. It is the optics of a speech in Arabic by a mullah that troubles me.
(3) "Start spreading the flus": The song "New York, New York" needs to be updated! Governor Cuomo has designated a containment zone around New Rochelle, an area with the largest number of coronavirus infections in the US, and has sent in the National Guard, not to enforce isolation but to help people with acquiring food and other necessities. [Heading credit: Steven Colbert]
(4) Trump looks on wistfully: Russia has approved sweeping constitutional reforms that will allow Vladimir Putin to stay in power for another 12 years after his current term ends in 2024. [Source: AP]
(5) Throwback Thursday: (Part 1) "Tears and Smiles": This was the title under which the beloved 1960s movie "Sound of Music" was shown in Iran. As was common then, the film was dubbed into Persian, masterfully I might add, and for the first time ever, even the song lyrics were converted to Persian. [Facebook] [YouTube] (Part 2) "Horse with Golden Hoof": This 1950s Iranian song, performed by Viguen, appears to be based on Greek music, with lyrics in the Shirazi (Bakhtiari?) dialect of Persian. [Video] (Part 3) Reposting from March 12 of years past, 2014-2017 (image above). (Part 4) In a commentary about her Time-magazine essay of 50 years ago, Gloria Steinem writes: "The single biggest determinant of whether a country is violent, or will use military violence against another country, is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it is violence against women" (image above).
(6) UCSB's Computer Science Summit: Wednesday, March 11, 2020, began with undergraduate student presentations, which I did not attend, due to other commitments, followed by a poster session on capstone projects of CE and CS seniors. Graduate student presentations were followed by Distinguished Speaker Dr. Li Deng (Chief AI Officer, Citadel), who talked about "From Speech AI to Finance AI, and Back."
(7) The two CE capstone projects I helped evaluate for ABET during yesterday's lunch-hour poster session:
#5 "Smart Meetings" (aka "Meeting Is Believing"), aimed at maximizing productivity during and after meetings. Sponsor: Invoca. Team: Max Ginger, Jackson Li, Christina Tao, Sarita Phoosopha, Tuan Le. [Vision] [Video]
#7 "Grand Potato" (aka "Text2Pay"), a secure app that allows consumers and merchants to complete transactions via texting or SMS on the consumer's phone, with no need for a terminal. Sponsor: PayJunction. Team: Benjamin Liu, Joanne Li, Howard Lin, Julia Liu, Junayed Naushad. [Vision] [Video]
2020/03/11 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meme of the day: The price of a barrel of oil drops below the price of a family-size bucket of fried chicken! [Top center] Iranian trucker puts up a banner to pay respects to Muhammad ibn Zakariya-ye Razi, 9th/10th-century Persian polymath, physician, alchemist, and philosopher, who is said to have discovered alcohol (now in great demand as a disinfectant against the coronavirus). [Top right] Stop thinking of this as the hottest summer of the last 125 years ... Start thinking of it as the coolest summer of the next 125 (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Doctors Without Borders: "A military bombing offensive in northwestern Syria has left hospitals destroyed, supplies depleted and over 600,000 people displaced. As this humanitarian crisis continues, we're increasing our assistance for those in need." [Bottom center] Preparations in Iran's sports arenas are telling signs that coronavirus infections have spread to the point of overwhelming hospital facilities. [Bottom right] Cleaning up in my courtyard: Besides working hard to plan for the rest of winter quarter and the beginning of spring quarter, in the wake of campus-wide directive to cancel in-person classes whenever possible (see the next item below), I have the challenge of disassembling and removing a canopy that collapsed and turned into a mangled mess of metal, under the weight of rain accumulation since Tuesday night. The product is likely defective, as the sloped tarp should not have collected rainwater.
(2) UCSB in-person classes mostly cancelled until the end of April: The recommendation is to cancel large lecture classes and meetings and to hold small classes/meetings for the rest of winter quarter, only if alternate arramgements cannot be made (student absences should be excused in the latter case). In my case, this affects just a single lecture on Wednesday 3/11. I have cancelled that lecture and am holding extra office hours, instead. My exam on Monday 3/16 will be held as scheduled, because I found it impossible to make alternate arrangements for it.
(3) How the US government bungled its coronavirus response: A team of researchers in the Seattle area were studying the spread of the flu and, once the first case of coronavirus was detected in late January, they asked the authorities to repurpose their aleady collected samples to monitoring the new virus. Authorities rejected the idea. Then came delays in testing, despite ample evidence of the virus spreading in Washington State.
(4) Climate Crisis 101: This highly-recommended free and open course, which is also offered for credit as English 23 at UCSB, is accessible through this Web site. Taught by Professor Ken Hiltner via YouTube lectures and open-source material, the course is built around environmental humanities. "The #1 thing that we can do to roll back global greenhouse gas emissions does not involve wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, or any sort of similar technologies. Instead, what is required is a cultural change regarding food: we need to waste far less of it and to switch to largely plant-rich diets. Doing so will result in a staggering reduction of 137 gigatons of CO2 or equivalent gases."
2020/03/10 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Trying to eat at home as much as possible, in the wake of the coronavirus threat: Perhaps this positive habit will be reinforced by the current negative situation! I may have sauteed the barberries for a tad too long, as they are supposed to be a brighter shade of red when properly prepared. [Center] The Hindu Festival of Holi begins today: Also known as "Festival of Colors," this Indian celebration of spring involves jubilant crowds throwing colored water and powders at one another in a frenzy of festivities. [Right] Would you believe there is a robust on-line discussion about the shapes of pizzas and pizza boxes? Here are some examples besides the standard round pizza in a square box.
(2) Today is Mario Day, named for the most-successful video game franchise in history. [Mar 10, get it?]
Mario the plumber first appeared in 1981's Donkey Kong. Many retailers are holding Mario-themed sales.
(3) It would be interesting to see how the spat between Saudi Arabia and Russia, which led to a sharp drop in oil prices and contributed to a correction in the US stock market, will affect Trump's relationships with his top two favorite dictators!
(4) Christian convert Ismaeil Maghrebinejad gets two more years of prison time in Iran for "Evangelical Zionist Christianity" and "insulting Islamic sacred beliefs." [Source: IranWire.com]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iranian-French academic Fariba Adelkhah, jailed in Iran since June, is ill from her 51-day hunger strike.
- Elizabeth Warren and her impersonator Kate McKinnon on "Saturday Night Live." [10-second video]
- Amazing acoustics: Scholars recreate how music sounded inside Istanbul's Hagia Sofia five centuries ago.
- Word puzzle for my Persian-speaking readers: Unscramble these Persian words to form animal names.
(6) Iranian officials should be tried for crimes against humanity: Qom clerics, who appealed to officials to quarantine the city, long before any public announcement on the coronavirus crisis, were bullied into keeping quiet. [Source: IranWire.com]
(7) In-person class cancellations: The number of US colleges that have cancelled in-person classes because of coronavirus concerns reaches 40 and is rising daily. UCSB is preparing for alternate instructional methods, in case needed, but is continuing as usual in this last week of winter-quarter classes.
2020/03/09 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Bernie Sanders seems to enjoy his Persian rug, likely coming from Iran's Kerman Province. [Center] Stocks tumble on double-whammy of coronavirus spread and oil price drop: Chart shows S&P 500 index. At today's market close, S&P 500 stood at 2747; Dow closed at 23,851, down by 2014 points. [Right] The latest Newsweek magazine cover.
(2) Coronavirus is creating conflicts and social unrest: Six inmates died in Italy during protests over virus measures. Street clashes are reported in Iran's Mazandaran Province between locals and Tehrani vacationers.
(3) Coronavirus infections in Iran likely in the millions, not the thousands: Models based on the number of senior officials afflicted or dead, and the number of cases in other countries originating from Iran, predict with high certainty that Iran is deliberately under-reporting the number of cases.
(4) In Mexico, 10-15 women are killed daily and more than 50% have suffered violence due to their gender. Today women across Mexico will take part in a "national stoppage" by not going to work or school, in protest.
(5) Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates Jews living in the Persian Empire being saved from massacre in the 5th century BCE, as recounted in the Bible's Book of Esther.
(6) Climate change puts the future of Netherland's famed 125-mile speed-skating race in doubt, as waterways no longer freeze in winter. [Compelling 13-minute report from CBS News' "60 Minutes"]
(7) What is social democracy? I recently engaged in an on-line argument with a relative who is nominally educated, but like all Trump supporters I have interacted with on Facebook, resorts to insulting and labeling people, instead of presenting arguments and facts. I pointed out that neither I nor Democratic presidential candidates support "communism" (her favorite scare word) or unqualified "socialism." One candidate self-identifies as a democratic-socialist, which is something quite different. I suggested that she educate herself in this area before expressing opinions and pointed her to this very short introduction to social democracy.
In response to her reminder about this being America (typical Trumpster's flag-waving and misrepresentation of American values), I suggested that it is she who needed a reminder of this being America, where ideas are heard with respect and debated with arguments and facts, not with insults and labels.
2020/03/08 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top] Happy International Women's Day to all the women of the world and to all others who support their struggle for equal rights! [Left & Right] On this International Women's Day, no images are more representative of perseverance and women's-rights activism than those of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [Center] What if we saw real women on fashion runways?
(2) Iranians aren't taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously: This photo shows the traffic jam on one of the roads connecting Tehran to the Caspian-Sea region. The flood of travelers using the opportunity of work/school closures to "vacation" in Guilan and Mazandaran has turned these provinces into coronavirus hotspots.
(3) Brave Iranian woman lashes out at authorities, whose inept handling of the coronavirus epidemic has led to many infections and deaths in the Caspian-Sea province of Guilan. [3-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Politicizing public health: White House over-rules CDC, which recommended that seniors avoid flying.
- Jailed Iranian lawyer and activist Nasrin Sotoudeh writes a plea for peace on International Women's Day.
- Not all sociopolitically-active Iranian women self-identify as feminists, but they are feminists indeed!
- Stanford University joins University of Washington in cancelling class attendance, until further notice.
- Genetics research: Almost 1/4 of Hispanics and Latinos are descendants of forcibly-converted Jews.
- On panic-buying being a symptom of individualism gone awry. [Tweet, by Julia Simons]
- Let's forget about diseases and the stock market with this dance performance by two young boys.
(5) OPEC discord leads to major oil-price drop: Meeting to deal with oil prices in the wake of the economic slowdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, OPEC members failed to reach agreement. The Saudis promptly announced that they are slashing oil prices and expanding production. The result was a 30% drop in crude-oil prices and a 1000-point decline in oil futures index. This price drop will be particularly hard on Iran, which needs resources for combatting the coronavirus epidemic.
(6) An interview with Dr. Fiona Hill, the competent and courageous Russia advisor, who gave compelling testimony during Trump's impeachment inquiry. [13-minute report from CBS News' "60 Minutes"]
2020/03/07 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day (special coronavirus outbreak edition): [Top left & center] Inept leaders, blaming "hoaxers" and "enemies" for the coronavirus-caused havoc in their countries. [Top right] The Great Mosque of Mecca, normally filled to the brim with pilgrims, is nearly deserted in this recent photo. [Bottom left] Trump is likely furious with this fake photo of him, tweeted by his son, using the caption, "Now, liberals will love him." I've got news for Don Jr.: Liberals won't love any version of this vile man! [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Coronavirus and the trend of working from home. [Bottom right] Disney's release plans for the $200 million remake of "Mulan" upended by the coronavirus outbreak.
(2) NASA's rover-naming contest result announced: Curiosity. InSight. Spirit. Opportunity. These are the names of past NASA rovers. What will come next? Perseverance!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Two die from coronavirus in Florida, constituting the first East-Coast deaths and raising the US total to 19.
- Experts identify Trump as "Patient 0" in a deadly misinformation epidemic being spread in the US.
- Another GOP hypocrite, fiercely against LGBTQ-protection laws while in US Congress, comes out as gay.
- Trump uses Jews/Israel to get votes from evangelicals: Fewer than 1/3 of American Jews will vote for him.
- An impressive example of digital projection of images on buildings. [3-minute video]
(4) Transformation of the US to a banana republic is nearing completion: Officials at CDC and other US government entities are now considering ways of releasing facts to the public, without antagonizing Trump!
(5) Coronavirus takes a toll on celebrations and other gatherings: I was planning to cancel my visit to Farhang Foundation's Norooz/Nowruz celebration at UCLA on Sunday 3/08, given CDC's recommendation that people over 60 stay away from crowded areas. Tonight, I heard from my daughter that the event has been cancelled. At UCSB, too, events, including conferences, are being cancelled left and right.
(6) Economic aftermath of the coronavirus: Entire industries are hurting (cruise-ship operators, hotels, and airlines, in particular), and some may go under if the current emergency persists.
Healthcare and job benefits, or lack thereof, are front and center. Most Americans lack guaranteed sick leave to be able to self-quarantine at home. It's unclear who will pay for the required tests and through-the-roof med prices, now that people are asked to stockpile in case of supply disruptions.
Work-from-home is applicable to managerial and office workers. Nearly half of Americans, who work in service industries (sales, flipping burgers, cleaning, gardening, etc.), don't have that luxury.
So, we have the health risks and potential deaths, which clearly have the highest priority, but these will be followed by even more serious economic problems for the next president to clean up. [Map]
2020/03/05 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Cartoons of the day: [Left] My submission to New Yorker cartoon caption contest #670: "I carry only one of the meds. The other one you have to get from a vet pharmacy." (I participated regularly in this contest a few years ago, but this is my first entry after a long while. Never won by being among the top-three submissions, but came close once, when my caption was chosen as a "runner-up" in fifth postion!) [Center] Certain supporters of the Iranian regime deliberately kiss or even lick enclosures at religious shrines to show that the healing powers of such shrines are stronger than the coronavirus. [Right] "It's cultural, gentlemen—these other countries can't possibly understand that nothing is ever our fault." (From: New Yorker]
(2) Hindu nationalism: While Trump was praising Indian PM Modi for unifying his country, 50 Indian Muslims were being killed in Delhi attacks: Protests are scheduled today at 21 US universities led primarily by the schools' Indian populations, as they prepare to celebrate the spring festival of Holi.
(3) Refugees as political pawns: Turkey is allowing refugees, mostly from Syria but also from Iran and elsewhere, to try to cross into Greece, but Greece is pushing them back. Both countries are playing to get EU's attention by compromising the physical and emotional well-being of desperate people.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A cruise ship is held off California coast after a disembarked passenger dies of coronavirus.
- World Health Organization announces 3.4% death rate from coronavirus: Trump disputes the number.
- Couple, 84 and 81, married for 58 years, among the dead in Tennessee tornadoes.
- NBC (and Japan) nervous about the possibility of Tokyo Olympics cancellation due to coronavirus.
- This 7-minute video states and visualizes the effects of sea-level rise on New York and other coastal cities.
- And this 27-minute documentary focuses on the effects of sea-level rise on south Florida.
(5) Elizabeth Warren drops out of the US presidential race: This is a sad day in our history, as we mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Warren was likely not going to be the Democratic nominee, but absence of a woman on the front lines of US politics will be felt, as the assault on women's rights continues.
2020/03/04 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] VP Mike Pence leads his coronavirus task force in prayers, asking God to not let the epidemic ruin Trump's chances of re-election in 2020! [Center] Farhang Foundation's Norooz banners for 2020: Paris-based graphic designer Setareh Feylizadeh submitted these winning designs. [Right] Humorous meme of the day: Ayatollah Jannati, famous for his longevity, assures the people of Iran that he will let future generations know about the hardships they have endured!
(2) Coronavirus messaging in Iran: Revolutionary Guards put the squeeze on healthcare workers by ordering that all treatment and fatality data must go through them for release to the public.
(3) Democratic institutions in the US are under attack: An article written by Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen a couple of days after our 2016 election is a must-read now, because she warned against the assault on the Department of Justice and other institutions by Trump, who had said in his campaign speeches that he would instruct his Attorney General to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Why didn't America believe at the time that it wasn't hyperbole and that he really meant it? Gessen cites eye-opening examples from how Putin and Erdogan took over, crushed long-standing institutions, and amassed power in short order.
Here are Gessen's six rules that help us survive autocracy (from her article of November 10, 2016). Pay particular attention to Rule #3, because we have had numerous examples of people who acted according to their responsibilities within our democratic institutions being fired or forced to leave. Not only that, but, in many cases, conscientious actors were attacked viciously and retaliated against even after they left the government.
Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. They depend on the good will of actors within, not on law.
Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1, you will not be surprised.
Rule #5: Don't make compromises, as Ted Cruz and other Republicans have done.
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever.
(4) Global Higher Education in 2050: Imagining Universities for Sustainable Societies (UCSB Loma Pelona Center, March 4-5): Today, I attened a couple of talks in this open-to-the-public conference on campus to get a sense of what education visionaries have in mind for universities of the future. I heard nothing earth-shattering, so I won't attend any of tomorrow's talks, when I have no class or office hour. [Program] [Flyer & Photo]
(5) Borna Izadpanah's "Early Persian Printing and Typefounding in Europe" (J. Printing Historical Society, 2018) includes a description of Persian nasta'liq punches of the Medici Press, cut by Jean Cavillon in the 1590s.
2020/03/03 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Photos I took during yesterday afternoon's walk around UCSB North Campus Open Space and Devereux Slough. [Top center] Happy Super-Tuesday! [Top right] "Stars of Jazz" screening (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: The triangle ABC has side lengths 3, 4, and 5. What is the size of its inscribed circle shown in the diagram? [Bottom center] Global Higher Education in 2050: Imagining Universities for Sustainable Societies (UCSB Loma Pelona Center, March 4-5, 2020, 9:00-6:00): Scholars from several countries discuss what universities will be like, and what we want them to be like, in 30 years. [Bottom right] Tweets of the day for my Persian-speaking readers.
(2) Three West Coast colleges (in WA, OR, CA) potentially exposed to coronavirus: Cancellation of athletic events and international student-exchange programs are under consideration nationwide.
(3) Coronavirus in Iran: A nation banned from simple pleasures of life by grim-faced, hate-mongering mullahs for four decades suddenly discovers music and dance as coping tools in its bleakest hour.
(4) Israeli stand-up wheelchair gets FDA approval for marketing in the US.
(5) Gender inequality in science careers and publishing: Men's and women's contributions are similar in terms of amount and impact, so the gender gap is due to woman having shorter careers and higher drop-out rates.
(6) "Fast and Accurate Deep Neural Network Training": This was the title of a technical talk by faculty candidate Yang You (UC Berkeley) at UCSB this morning (March 3). [Speaker's detailed abstract]
(7) "Architecting Persistent Memory Systems": This was the title of a technical talk by faculty candidate Aasheesh Kolli (Penn State U.) at UCSB this afternoon (March 3). [Speaker's detailed abstract]
(8) "Stars of Jazz": Attending tonight's screening of two episodes of the late-1950s TV show, restored digitally from material held by the UCSB Library, was an amazing experience. The two episodes screened at UCSB's Pollock Theater as part of the "TV at the Pollock" series had Modern Jazz Quartet and Count Basie Orchestra as performing guests. The sparsely-attended screening was followed by a discussion with sound engineer Nicholas Berg and archivist Mark Quigley. This UCLA Web page has a description of the restoration project.
2020/03/02 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Dominant athletes in many sports become household names and celebrities: Not in skiing, at least not in the US! [Center] The US Healthcare system is sick: We spend more money on healthcare than any other country and the results, as measured by life expectancy, are the worst among advanced countries. (Source: Time magazine, issue of March 2&9, 2020) [Right] Time magazine's special report about the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom (issue of March 2&9, 2020).
(2) Shades of the Japanese-American internment during World War II: People are reportedly avoiding China towns and Chinese restaurants for fear of the coronavirus. Chinese-American businesses are hurting as a result. There is absolutely no evidence that any area or ethnic group in the US is more likely to transmit the virus.
(3) Human-testing of a treatment drug for COVID-19 coronavirus has already begun and trial of vaccines shipped to NIH by US-based Moderna Therapeutics may start as early as April 2020.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- History shows that, on average, epidemics have no long-term impact on global market performance. [Chart]
- A graphic designer expresses the gratitude of the people of Iran to health-care workers. #Coronavirus
- Quote: "Love is like an hourglass with the heart filling up as the brain empties." ~ Jules Renard (1864-1910)
- Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius died in 1744 at 43, though his rival Farenheit was convinced he was 109.
- Persian poetry recitation: This 1-minute video is uncredited. [The poem's full text]
- Iranian regional music and dance: These two young Iranian boys break the taboo of dancing like women.
- Music and dance of southern Iran: Hikers take a break to perform "Pol-e Karoun" ("Karoun River Bridge").
- Mesmerizing music: Credits at the beginning of this 3-minute video say "Paola," followed by text in Greek.
(5) India publishes a most-impressive Shahnameh: This new version of Ferdowsi's "Book of Kings" weighs 32 kg (50 kg with its ivory-decorated box). It boasts calligraphically-written and fully-decorated pages of dimensions 50 cm by 90 cm.
(6) Coronavirus cases and deaths continue to rise: There have been 6 deaths in the US, 66 in Iran (but no one believes the government's stats), and 3000 worldwide.
(7) Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wins Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear Award: Not one mention of this achievement in Iran's state-controlled media, because Rasoulof isn't one of the regime-supported artists.
(8) "Science, the Endless Frontier": This is the title of a report submitted in July 1945 by Vannevar Bush, an American engineer and science administrator in charge of military research during World War II, to President Harry S. Truman, who had just replaced President Franklin D. Roosevelt upon his death. In 2020, we will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of that landmark report. Vannevar Bush is also credited with foreseeing in his celebrated 1945 article "As We May Think" what we have come to know as the Worldwide Web.
2020/03/01 (Sunday): Climate change and parallel processing: Participating in the "UCSB Reads" program.
Each year, "UCSB Reads" selects a book for campus-wide perusal/discussion and encourages professors to incorporate the book into their curricula, if feasible. I had never had an occasion to do this, given that I teach graduate engineering courses not easily connected to the typical "UCSB Reads" book. This year is different. The selected book, Elizabeth Rush's acclaimed Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, is about climate change (see-level rise, to be exact), and my ECE 254B graduate course on parallel processing deals with the design of high-performance supercomputers that play key roles in running computationally-intensive weather and climate models.
The topic is particularly timely, given alarming developments in the US in opposing climate-change action and the fact that April 22, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, inaugurated a year after the Santa Barbara oil spill of winter 1969, which remains the largest spill off the coast of California (it is now the all-time third largest, including the subsequent Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon incidents). Speaking of oil spills, I recently read Rachel Maddow's meticulously-researched book, Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, about the global oil industry and its greedy, devious practices. Here is my review of Blowout on GoodReads. And here is my review of Rising.
My participation in "UCSB Reads" via ECE 254B entails the use of four micro-projects as part of homework assignments during winter 2020. Enrolled students have gotten free copies of Rising from UCSB Library. The micro-projects will explore the role of high-performance computing in modeling various aspects of climate change, with the third in the series focusing on sea-level rise.
Micro-Project A: From Weather Forecasting to Climate Modeling
Micro-Project B: Ocean-Temperature Modeling: Monster Storms
Micro-Project C: Modeling of Sea-Level Rise: Disappearing Lands
Micro-Project D: Extreme-Weather Projections from Climate Data
Each micro-project entails studying the types of computer models involved, computational requirements of the models, how the computations are performed on top-of-the-line supercomputers, and data sets that allow drawing various conclusions from the modeling results. At the time of this writing, the students have completed and turned in their reports for three of the micro-projects, and the fourth one has been assigned on the winter quarter 2020 edition of ECE 254B Web page, which also contains a list of additional references (beyond the few listed in the statements of microporjects).
Descriptions of Micro-Projects A-D are given below, for those who are interested in more details.
Micro-Project A: From Weather Forecasting to Climate Modeling
Numerical weather prediction has a long history. As noted at the beginning of Section 1.3 of our textbook, British meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson formulated a vision for using a large number of "computers" (humans, with mechanical calculators) to speed up the required calculations. Now, fast processors can do a decent job of running weather models and many thousands of processors can be used to perform the calculations required by more sophisticated models within hours, not weeks or months.
Your assignment is to prepare a single-spaced typed report (12-point font, 3 pages max, including figures and references) that discusses the computational requirements of modern weather prediction models, as well as models for climate forecasting, enumerating the differences between the two kinds of models in terms of the data they use, prediction time-frames, and the kinds of calculations involved. How does the availability of exascale computers help improve accuracy and execution speed for these models?
Micro-Project B: Ocean-Temperature Modeling: Monster Storms
An aspect of climate and long-term weather modeling is predicting ocean temperatures, as briefly discussed on p. 7 of our textbook. One might think that the oceans all being connected to one another means that temperature should stabilize after a while to a common global ocean temperature. This is far from being the case, as this world-sea-temperatures map indicates. So, a key question is: How do we go about predicting ocean temperatures in a decade? In 20 years? In 50 years? This is important, because ocean temperatures have a direct impact on the number and intensity of hurricanes and other storms, and they also affect weather phenomena more generally.
Your assignment is to prepare a single-spaced typed report (12-point font, 3 pages max, including figures and references) that discusses the computational requirements of ocean-temperatures forecasting models, the kinds of calculations involved, and trade-offs between model accuracy and computation time. [Link 1] [Link 2]
[Wand19] N. Wanders, M. T. H. van Vliet, Y. Wada, M. F. P. Bierkens, and L. P. H. van Beek, "High-Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling," Water Resources Research, Vol. 55, pp. 2760-2778, April 2019. [PDF]
Micro-Project C: Modeling of Sea-Level Rise: Disappearing Lands
Sea levels rise by three distinct mechanisms: (1) Thermal expansion; (2) Increase in water mass; (3) Depth changes due to movements in the Earth's crust. Predicting sea-level rise is important. Entire island nations will disappear with a rise of only a few feet. Other nations will lose low-lying coastal lands, which are usually densely-populated regions. New York and 16 other US cities will suffer significant displacements and property loss with just a 10-foot rise in sea level (some projections go well beyond 10 feet). Stories from some of these endangered US coastal regions are covered in the "UCSB Reads" book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. Cities like Venice (Italy) are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise.
Your assignment is to prepare a single-spaced typed report (12-point font, 3 pages max, including figures and references) that discusses the computational requirements of sea-level rise models, the kinds of calculations involved, sources of uncertainty in the predictions, and probabilistic resolution of such uncertainties.
[Swee17] W. V. Sweet, R. Horton, R. E. Kopp, A. N. LeGrande, and A. Romanou, "Sea Level Rise," Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment (Vol. I), D. J. Wuebbles, D. W. Fahey, K. A. Hibbard, D. J. Dokken, B. C. Stewart, and T. K. Maycock (eds.), US Global Change Research Program, Chapter 12, pp. 333-363, 2017. [Link]
Micro-Project D: Extreme-Weather Projections from Climate Data
The term "extreme weather" refers to intense heat/cold waves, widespread floods, prolonged droughts, severe winds, and the like. An analogy with performance records in sports and other domains might be helpful. Over time, sports records improve, because of enhanced techniques and better training, as well as random variations. However, there are factors at play that also lead to more frequent breaking of records. Examples include better equipment (e.g., soccer balls, running shoes, or baseball bats), which are sometimes viewed as giving modern atheletes an unfair edge. In the domain of music, record sales provide another example, where higher sales figures do not necessarily mean better music. In extreme-weather modeling, too, we look for underlying factors beyond random variations. Predicting droughts in California is one of the important areas of focus in the US.
Your assignment is to prepare a single-spaced typed report (12-point font, 3 pages max, including figures and references) that discusses the computational requirements of extreme-weather projection models, the kinds of calculations involved, and how the models tie in with those of the previous three micro-projects.
[Pete13] T. C. Peterson et al., "Monitoring and Understanding Changes in Heat Waves, Cold Waves, Floods and Droughts in the United States: State of Knowledge," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 94, pp. 821-834, June 2013. [PDF]
2020/02/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Humor/memes for the end of a wild week! [Top center] Comparing a few recent deadly epidemics: COVID-19 (Wuhan coronavirus) is more widespread than others and more deadly than all, but Ebola, as of Friday, February 28, 2020. First US fatality was reported today in Washington state. [Top right & bottom row] Rural Iran: Nature and lifestyles.
(2) One of the reasons Iran is a coronavirus hotspot: This is the second person to post a video demonstrating his "faith" (licking the enclosure at a religious shrine) in recent days. Worthy "Darwin Awards" candidates!
(3) Soap is your best bet for hand sanitization, but you must wash for at least 20 seconds: When you don't have access to soap, use hand sanitizers with 60% alcohol. Alcohol-free "natural" hand sanitizers don't work.
(4) US-Taliban peace deal signed: Normally, I would jump up for joy when there is any progress towards peace, but bringing a religious cult that oppressed and slaughtered Afghan people, particularly women, back to power is no cause for celebration. After decades of violence against Afghans and US troops, the Taliban are being rewarded for refraining from violence for a single week. Just one week! This is retreat, not peace!
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Leap Day: Four times as many birthday wishes to the poor souls who celebrate once every 4 years!
- A paper that predicted the outbreak of a bat-borne coronavirus one year ago. [5-minute video]
- British theoretical physicist, mathematician, and influential author Freeman Dyson dead at 96. RIP.
- Joe Coulombe, 1967 founder of Trader Joe's, dead at 89: Let's open a $2 bottle of wine in remembrance.
- Bernie Sanders doesn't golf: That's $334 million in savings right there!
- UCSC fires 54 graduate-student workers who went on strike to demand a cost-of-living salary adjustment.
- Leaning Tower of Dallas: Designer takes pride in his creation that has proven super-tough to demolish.
- My jasmines are blooming: Norooz and spring are on their way! [Photo]
- John E. Southard: "The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."
- Persian Music: Two videos, each with its unique charms. [Happy New Year song] [Pop-songs medley]
(6) Today's screening of "Toy Story 4" at UCSB's Pollock Theater, as part of the "Script to Screen" series: The film tells the story of Woody (a cowboy toy, voiced by Tom Hanks) finding his way and place in the world. The screening was followed by a conversation with co-screenwriter Stephany Folsom. [Images]
(7) "If at first you don't succeed, welcome to Trump administration" (Steven Colbert): Two cases in point. Mike Pence, who failed bigly in controlling the HIV epidemic when he was governor of Indiana, is now heading the coronavirus task force. Congressman John Ratcliff, who withdrew his candidacy for Director of National Intelligence when it was revealed that he had faked his credentials, is renominated by Trump for the post.
2020/02/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Early yesterday morning, a big rig that had stalled at Goleta's busiest intersection (Storke & Hollister), along with a utilities repair project further south, created a rarely-seen traffic nightmare. [Center] Deadlier than the coronavirus: A cartoon by Touka Neyestani. [Right] Iranwire.com cartoon: Only a few people, mostly law-enforcement personnel, died in the 2019 street protests. Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 crashed due to technical problems. The enemy wants to harm us by spreading coronavirus rumors. Right!
(2) Pence will be heading the coronavirus task force to control the messaging, not the disease: Remember that Trump gave himself an A+ for handling the response to Hurricane Maria. I hope virus and pandemic experts speak the truth and are not intimated into sugar-coating their reports out of fear of the Bully-in-Chief!
(3) Coronavirus #Injustice: Iran's parliament members have been given free tests, kits with masks and other supplies, and a break until after the Norooz holidays. Meanwhile, government workers have gotten none of these. In fact, they have been threatened with replacement if they don't show up for work!
(4) Your brain knows the meds you need: Results of an exciting new study, reported in Nature Biotechnology, suggest that a simple brain test, combined with the use of AI, can help prescribe the right antidepressant to depressed individuals. The current practice of prescribing one med, tracking its effects for weeks, and then moving on to the next option, takes too long. A non-invasive EEG test that records brain waves can predict which med will work. [Source: Time magazine, issue of March 2&9, 2020]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Makers of hand sanitizers and household disinfectants step up production as demands rise.
- A space rock, a few feet across, has become a second moon to our Earth, at least for now.
- Humor-challenged mullah: Ayatollah Jannati's attempted joke about his being a subject of US sanctions!
- Persian poetry: Recitation of a poem from Sa'adi's Boustan collection (on justice, wisdom, and opinion).
(6) Iranian sprinter Farzaneh Fasihi finishes first in this 60-meter race, despite her cumbersome clothing: Interestingly, the race cannot be shown in Iran.
(7) Get to know junk healthcare plans that the Trump administration is pushing to replace Obamacare: They have lower premiums for healthy individuals but don't cover even essential healthcare needs, can charge arbitrarily high premiums for sick people, and have various caps and lifetime limits that leave patients stranded once they begin treatment.
(8) Final thought for the day: We all need to take a break from coronavirus, Republican corruption, and Trump-created crisis of the day and laugh for a minute. Hope this video helps!
2020/02/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Waves of bad news are arriving from Iran: I am posting this announcement merely as an example. Narjes Khanalizadeh, a 25-year-old nurse, has died in the Caspian-region city of Lahijan, taking care of coronavirus patients. RIP. [Center] New Yorker cartoon: On Facebook's handling of fake news! [Right] Throwback Thursday: A few college classmates visiting my home in the Vanak neighborhood of Tehran, posing inside our empty pool.
(2) John Oliver's hilarious take on Trump and Modi: Trump calls Modi "The Father of India" (unaware that Gandhi already has that title) who has brought the country together. But Modi's Hindu nationalism has actually torn the country apart, much as Trump's White nationalism has done in the US.
(3) India built a 7-foot wall to hide a slum on Trump's path to a rally: Reminds me of overnight filling of potholes and painting of dilapidated roadside walls whenever the Shah or Empress Farah came to the Vanak neighborhood of Tehran to visit the Girls' College.
(4) The stock market is in free fall: Meanwhile, Trump, who has taken credit for every single upward movement and each new record set, is blaming others for the 10% drop of the last few days. This is very similar to Iran's leaders blaming "the enemy" for coronavirus fears and their country's other ills.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Long overdue: Will the time for a woman US President arrive soon? [15-minute video]
- Living on and climbing frighteningly steep mountains: China's beautiful nature on full display!
- Quote (humor): "Coronavirus under complete control in the US." ~ Biology lab at Trump University
- Persian music & poetry: Keivan Saket plays the setar and recites Fereydoon Moshiri's poem entitled "Hand."
(6) Believe me, I know more about coronavirus than doctors: We usually laugh at Trump's incompetence and stupid pronouncements, but, in the case of a deadly disease, "alternative facts" can kill us, especially now that we have the anti-science VP Mike Pence in charge of the US coronavirus task force. Rush Limbaugh thinks that warnings about the potential spread of coronavirus are parts of a conspiracy to bring Trump down! In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia suspends pilgrimage visits for fear of coronavirus pandemic.
(7) All the coronavirus news from Iran: A doctor complains that while his hospital's intensive care unit lacks sufficient coronavirus test kits for critical patients, members of the parliament have been tested so that their precious lives are not threatened! [Tweet] Khamenei, Rouhani, and other Iranian officials are dismissing the threat of coronavirus. As people live in fear and continue to die, they claim that the risk is exaggerated by "the enemy." Much like Donald Trump's incredibly uninformed claim that the virus will go away on its own! [Image] This Iranian cleric says that the dirt from Imam Hussein's burial place is a potent antibiotic. You have to consume it every 6 or 8 hours, though, much like a regular antibiotic. Stressed health workers in Iran's Kurdistan region try to remain in good spirits by dancing! Elsewhere, a group of Iranians criticize officials for directives against public gatherings, including for Friday prayers. They believe that the government is depriving citizens of the healing powers of the tombs of imams and other Shi'i figures.
2020/02/26 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Historic document from Iran's Language Academy: This 1936 letter contains directives for the use of new Persian terms coined for the Arabic "hefz-ol-salheh" ("Behdaasht" = hygiene, health) and "sahiyeh" ("behdaari" = dispensary, public health bureau). [Top center] New Yorker cartoon: "And tonight, live from Washington, it's 'America's Funniest Conspiracy Theories'." [Top right] Recent Persian tweets about the coronavirus. [Bottom left] Leonardo da Vinci continues to awe and inspire: Five centuries after his death in May 1519, we are still learning about his contributions to art, science, and Technology. A new 224-page book picks 100 of da Vinci's works and presents them in rough chronological order to map the development of his interests and skills. [Bottom center] Meme asking Iranian mullahs to go to hospitals and use their devine aura to help cure coronavirus patients. [Bottom right] This is what karma looks like.
(2) Technology and coronavirus: Both South Korea and China are using phone apps that allow one to track where infected people have been, so that you can avoid the locations. In this video message (in Persian), a young Iranian woman living in China provides some useful information about the disease and describes the comprehensive measures taken in China to protect the citizens.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iranian health official tested positive for coronavirus a day after dismissing the severity of the outbreak.
- On-line courses get a boost: NYU Shanghai resumes educational activities by moving classes on-line.
- Existence of seismic activities on Mars ("Marsquakes") confirmed by NASA's InSight Lander.
- Beautiful, spring-like day (72F) for an early-morning walk on campus, before my first engagement on 2/25.
(4) Today's "World Music Series" noon concert at UCSB's Music Bowl: I considered skipping today's performance by the UCSB Gamelan Ensemble, because I have seen them many times before. But then, what else can beat being outdoors for an hour on this gorgeous 74-degree sunny day? [With apologies to friends dealing with icy conditions, blizzards, flooding, and the like!] [Photos] [Video]
(5) "Building Data-Driven Computers: Reimagining Systems to Reduce the High Costs of Large-Scale Data Processing":
This was the title of yesterday's talk at UCSB by Dr. Saugata Ghose (Systems Scientist, ECE Dept, CMU; PhD Cornell U.), a faculty candidate for our Computer Engineering Program.
Many new computing applications are data-centric, spending a significant fraction of their time on accessing and processing very large datasets. Unfortunately, hardware platforms remain compute-centric, whose designs are rooted in decades-old principles for computer architectures. This mismatch results in inefficiencies, with significant energy waste and program stalls. Data-centric platforms can eliminate these inefficiencies, but require that we fundamentally rethink our approach to computer design.
Dr. Ghose's research is focused on developing practical data-centric architectures and systems, beginning with experimental characterization of the sources of energy-inefficiency and poor performance in existing architectures as they run modern applications, particularly the impact of current memory systems. After showing how breakthroughs in memory technologies have made near-data computing practical, Dr. Ghose outlined his efforts in developing programmer and architectural support for near-data computing, including efficient data coherence and domain-specific system design. [Sample slides]
2020/02/25 (Tuesday): Book review: Rush, Elizabeth, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, Milkweed Editions, 2018 (with an afterword written in 2019). [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is the chosen title for "UCSB Reads 2020" program that encourages communal reading and discussion among the campus denizens and the community at large. I have incorporated the book into the curriculum of my graduate course on parallel processing during winter 2020, with a description of projects related to the theme of the book appearing on the ECE 254B page, under "Course Announcements" and "Homework Assignments." Specifically, the projects encourage and guide the students to explore the role of high-performance computing in running data- and compute-intensive models for the prediction of climate change and various other weather-related phenomena.
Rising consists of three parts, sandwiched between "The Password" and "Afterword," ending with 5 pages of acknowledgments and 31 pages of notes. The three parts are "Rampikes" (dead trees; 5 chapters), "Rhizomes" (horizontal underground plant stems capable of producing the shoot and root systems of a new plant; 6 chapters), and "Rising" (3 chapters).
A key message of Rush's book is that sea-level rise isn't just a problem for a distant future; it is already affecting US populations, as they migrate inland from our disintegrating shorelines. Rush provides first-hand accounts of how people's lives are affected in California, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island.
When we talk of sea-level rise, many of us imagine catastrophes of disappearing island nations and submerged coastal cities. But, even a much smaller amount of sea-level rise leads to the ocean water working its way into the aquifer, stunting the growth of trees and later killing many of them. And this begins a chain reaction in the ecosystem, given that of the 1400 endangered or threatened species in the US, over half are wetland-dependent [p. 6].
Since we began keeping records in 1880, global sea levels have risen about 9 inches (22 cm). At this rate, a rise of about 5 additional inches (12 cm) would be expected by 2100. But there is widespread agreement that sea-level rise is accelerating, leading to estimates of a rise from 24 to 84 inches (0.6-2.1 m) by the end of the century [p. 55].
Unfortunately, seashores are often densely populated. This is an unfortunate new development. Coastal areas used to be desolate, because swamp-borne diseases and natural disasters made them undesirable locations. Misguided federal flood insurance programs led to people migrating to and residing in such coastal areas in unprecedented numbers.
A pet peeve of mine about books of this ilk is that they do not make use of charts/graphs and maps (The only images in Rush's book are those of trees and marshes, one at the beginning of each chapter). The inclusion of at least one map would have been very natural, just to mark the locations around the US featured in the book (see the example US map above, showing migrations caused by a 6-foot rise in sea levels, and the world map depicting the distribution of sea-level rise over one decade). Comparative maps of coastlines and low-lying lands over the decades would have also been a welcome addition. The reader would get a much better sense of the accelerating sea-level rise from a graph covering a few decades or, preferably, the entire recorded history (see the examples above). Graphical representations of melting ice and other causes of sea-level rise would have also been helpful. There is no excuse for text-only communication in the age of multimedia.
Rush does an admirable job of showing us the human face of climate change. A family, with roots in one of the coastal areas enduring increasingly harsher storms that take a toll on its ancestral home, now in disrepair, with money not available to fix it, may eventually be forced to leave. People do move for various reasons, such as seeking better career opportunities, but being forced out of your home and abandoning a generations-long lifestyle is a different story. Viewed in macroeconomic terms, the migration of thousands or even millions of people, in a world with 7+ billion inhabitants, may seem insignificant, but emotions and sense of belonging cannot be measured only in economic terms.
It is also possible to go too far in the emotional direction, and Rush is guilty of this excess by portraying all change as bad. We humans can in fact deal with and control some aspects of environmental changes. It is critical to tackle climate-change problems from both prespectives: Devising policies that limit global warming and its consequences, and instigating changes in our communities to minimize the impact of those changes that we cannot prevent.
2020/02/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Sepandarmazgan, the ancient Persian festival celebrating women, love, friendship, and Earth! There are various opinions about the date of the festival, but Esfand 5 (February 24 in 2020) is the most-commonly cited. [Center] Katherine Johnson (1918-2020): NASA mathematician and inspiration behind "Hidden Figures" (book and movie) dead at 101. [Right] A 5.7-magnitude quake hits Iran & Turkey, killing 9 in Turkey's Van Province: There are no casualty or damage reports from Iran's East Azerbaijan region, but Iranian authorities are slow in assessing damage and in reporting bad news.
(2) I don't know, Donald, whether there is a law about this stuff: But since you claim to be the chief law enforcement officer of the country, you should know or should be able to find out through your lapdog at the Justice Department. Why do you throw the question at us? [Trump tweet]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Coronavirus hot spots outside China include South Korea, Iran (where schools/colleges are closed), and Italy.
- If relations between the US and India sour, Trump may start using the nickname "Midi Modi"! [Photos]
- Announcement of Harvey Weinstein's conviction on two charges, which will bring him 5-25 years in jail.
- Two 13-year-old boys charged with murder for starting a blaze that killed two firefighters at a CA library.
- Republicans salivate over Sanders becoming the Democratic nominee: Trump and Russia are promoting him.
- Cancer death rates dropped 29% from 1991 to 2016: Targeted therapies continue to work miracles.
- War crime: In 1992, Serbians torched a library with 2 million books, including rare, historical volumes.
- Quote: "You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of your choices." ~ Anonymous
(4) Google and Brexit: To avoid legal issues arising from Brexit, Google is moving its UK-based data, including those of Gmail, YouTube, and Android Play Store, from Ireland to the US.
(5) Europeans don't just pay less for healthcare (through taxes): They also get cheaper cell-phone service and better deals on many other products and services! [From: The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, by Thomas Philippon (interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on Sunday 2/23)]
(6) US military branches request $17 billion in additional funding for items not included in their 2021 budgets: I hope Congress asks some tough question about how the already increased funding was allocated to projects, including billions diverted to Trump's border wall.
(7) In Iran, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, myths are spread about coronavirus, scaring and confusing people: A typical social-media post begins, "My brother/cousin/friend is a doctor who says ..." There is no mention of the doctor's name/specialty. And the poster often has a fake name. Be alert! [Persian tweet]
2020/02/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row, plus bottom left & center] Registration and breakfast at the 2/22 CA-AAUP conference at UCSB's Mosher Alumni House, followed by morning and afternoon activities and the event program (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Bloomberg is hitting Trump where it hurts: I don't like him as a candidate, but he is doing a useful service by exposing Trump's corruption and hypocrisy.
(2) Gutting the US intelligence agencies: Richard Grenell, the newly appointed US chief spy, has begun pushing people out at the agencies he controls, compromising our ability to confront Russia and other states hellbent on causing chaos in the US political and social structures.
(3) The 17th Annual Meeting of the California Conference of the AAUP (Saturday, February 22, 2020): Fifty-two UC, Cal State, community-college, and private-institution faculty members from across California attended yesterday's day-long conference at UCSB's Mosher Alumni House. Half of the attendees were first-time participants in AAUP events. The theme of the conference was "Restoring Faculty Leadership to Strengthen California Colleges and Universities," that is, taking shared governance (defined as faculty involvement in campus decision-making) more seriously. A rough count indicated than there were twice as many women participants as men, which is an indicator of women feeling a greater sense of responsibility in discussing injustices and rights.
Representatives of the striking UCSB graduate students were invited to make a statement at the outset. We then had a panel discussion, "Sharing Governance in Unionized and Non-Unionized Environments" (Chris Sinclair, U. Oregon United Academics President, Diane Klein, U. La Verne AAUP Chapter President, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, UC Academic Senate Chair, moderated by Steven Filling, CA-AAUP President-Elect), followed by breakout sessions and a plenary, where breakout-session reports were presented.
After lunch, we began with a panel discussion, "Sharing Governance among Faculty" (Julie Bruno, California Community Colleges Academic Senate Past President, Catherine Nelson, CSU Academic Senate Chair, Mia McIver, UC-AFT President, moderated by Claudio Fugo, CA-AAUP President), followed by breakout sessions and a plenary where best governance practices were presented and drafted. The conference concluded with a business meeting and consultation on steps forward.
A variety of schemes are used for shared governance, ranging from UC System's Academic Senate, via which faculty make recommendations regarding key decisions (although, typically, by the time the recommendation goes through several layers of administration at the campus and system-wide levels and, in many cases, all the way up to UC Regents, not much of the original recommendation survives) to less-participatory schemes at community colleges and private institutions.
One key difference across the diverse institutions of higher learning in California is the extent to which non-tenure-track, teaching, and adjunct faculty are given privileges to participate in campus decision-making. The multi-tiered systems of institutions (UC, CSU, CC) and faculty (tenured, non-tenured, full/part-time, adjunct) is detrimantal to teaching and learning environments. Paying certain faculty members by the hour, with restrictions on the number of reported hours to curtail benefits and/or overtime, leads to oppression and inequities.
The need for going back to the free-education model at state universities/colleges was brought up during informal discussions. A representative from a coalition advocating for student-debt cancellation and free education at state institutions attended the event, distributing flyers touting the macroeconomic impacts of such actions. It is unfortunate that universities are talking about "business models," much like corporations, rather than focusing on educational excellence and broadening participation. Deans and presidents of universities should not be viewed as bosses but as servants of faculty members.
One unfortunate byproduct of the "business model" view is an increasing reliance on adjunct and other temporary faculty members. The path forward is for faculty of all institutions across the state to collaborate and to look for initiatives that would benefit the state as a whole, rather than focusing on narrow objectives within a particular institution. The more vulnerable groups of faculty members must be protected with high priority. Equally important are measures to inhibit administrators from dividing the faculty and other teaching personnel (such as graduate-student workers, now striking for their demands).
2020/02/22 (Saturday): Trying to make a dent in my backlog of book reviews by offering three reviews.
(1) Book review: Lewis, Michael, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is composed of three parts (Tail Risk; People Risk; All the President's Data), sandwiched between "Prologue: Lost in Transition" and "Afterword: The Drift of Things." The book covers Trump administration's disasterous transition and personnel appointments. We learn, for example, that Chris Christie, heading the transition team, was repeatedly undermined by Trump, who believed that having a transition team was a waste of time and money.
Christie was eventually fired by Trump adviser Steve Bannon, leaving Trump to handle the transition (like everything else) all by himself. This led to severe understaffing, with many key defense, civil-administration, and ambassadorial positions left unfilled. Some nominees encountered confirmation snags, but for many other positions, no one was even nominated.
Things began to go south quickly, right after the election was called. Trump's campaign had not even bothered to prepare an acceptance speech, because everyone was certain he would lose. Mike Pence's wife, Karen, was bitter on election night, reportedly telling her husband, who approached to kiss her, "You got what you wanted ... now leave me alone."
Lewis pays particular attention to three cabinet Departments: Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce. Trump's people sent to take over at these Departments were utterly unqualified and unprepared. At the Department of Energy, for example, they had no idea that part of the portfolio is the management of the country's nuclear facilities and weapons. They summarily dismissed political appointees, only to learn later that some of them were indispensable. Many briefs, prepared by civil servants at various agencies went unheard by Trump's team.
The US government may be too bloated, as Trump often claims, but letting agencies die from neglect or, worse, appointing managers who abhor their agency or are opposed to its core mission, isn't a responsible way of instituting reforms. Trump's approach to cutting government to size is a dream come true for right-wing authoritarians like Steve Bannon and for enemies of functioning democracies such as Vladimir Putin.
(2) Book review: Newport, Cal, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, unabridged MP3 audiobook, Grand Central Publishing, 2016. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
We are all distracted by electronic communication coming our way at dizzying speed. Newport believes that we need at least 4-5 hours of undistracted time during the day to do our best work, whether it is developing compelling computer programs or writing best-selling or critically-acclaimed novels.
Newport does have a point. We all turn off e-mail and Facebook when we have to write an important report or paper, or anything else that needs concentration and deep thinking. Because we can't completely turn off social interactions for extended periods of time, striking a balance is the key. An important method suggested by Newport is to plan your day around the deep work you have to do, with unavoidable shallow activities (e-mail, social media, etc.) batched into small bursts at the periphery of your schedule.
While it is true that interruptions (e-mail notifications, instant messages, and the like) take a toll on our productivity (as confirmed by the recently-studied context-switching overhead), there are others who believe we have no choice but to accommodate features of new technology, even if it means reduced productivity. Many old-school organizations now encourage their workers to maintain an active presence on Twitter and other social media, because such a presence is the price of doing business in the modern world. While it is true that writing short tweets takes time away for in-depth reporting in the case of journalists, the two modes must be combined.
There are more organizations today that embrace open work spaces and instant-message communication, which encourage interation (thus increasing interruptions) than those who provide private work spaces. In many workplaces, one does not have the luxury of disconnecting or not answering the phone. So, while Newport's recommendations should be taken into account, each person should find his/her personal balance between social engagement and deep work.
(3) Book review: Miranda, Lin-Manuel and Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: The Revolution, unabridged audiobook, read by the authors and Mariska Hargitay, Hachette Audio, 2016.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is the story of two revolutions: The American Revolution, featuring a poor kid from the Caribbean alongside other Founders, and a musical revolution, which fused hip-hop, pop, and R&B to enrich broadway traditions. The book tells us about how Miranda's ideas, and McCarter's support from the get-go, helped transform an unlikely performance at the White House to a Broadway phenomenon six years later.
New York City is an important backdrop for the musical. According to the authors, Hamilton is the story of 18th-century New York, as told by today's New Yorkers.
People who have read the paper copy of the book deem turning its pages, viewing photographs and images of notebook pages (with early drafts and outlines), and examining a fully-annotated libretto of the musical show a "sensory experience." These elements are included as a PDF file in the audiobook.
2020/02/21 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Celebrating world languages and their cultural significance: Happy International Mother Language Day! [Center] Cartoon of the day: Billionnaires Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg battling over who is bigger! [Right] Iranian architecture: Tomb of the poet Kamalolmolk in Naishabour (also known in English as Neishapour), Khorasan Province, with the domed tomb of Attar seen in the background.
(2) Sacrificing citizens' lives for scoring political points: Iranian authorities criticized for hiding the spread of coronavirus in the country so as not to hurt the election turnout. [Persian tweet]
(3) Quote of the day: "Understandable, he can't read." ~ Distributor of the film "Parasite," in Korean with English subtitles, responding to Trump's criticism of the film's best-picture Oscar
(4) "We Are All Connected": A song formed from the spoken words of science explainers Neil deGresse Tyson, Richard Fynman (who also plays the drums), Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye. [Same video, with Persian subtitles]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Racist German kills 9 and injures 6 in immigrant neighborhoods: He is found dead along with his mother.
- New form of racism in the US: Hostility toward Asian college students in the wake of coronavirus outbreak.
- "Analog Supercomputers: From Quantum Atom to Living Body": TEDx talk by Dr. Rahul Sarpeshkar.
- Women in STEM: Misguided theory of why women don't go into STEM fields gets a 1113-word correction.
- Fascinating details of engineering design and construction methods for building Persepolis 2500 years ago.
- Persian music: Darvish Khan's "Reng-e Parichehr o Parizad" (recorded live in Toronto). [2-minute video]
(6) "Reverse Engineering Neural Computations": This was the title of today's technical talk at UCSB by Dr. Nabil Imam (Sr. Research Scientist, Intel; PhD Cornell U.), a faculty candidate for our Computer Engineering Program. Neuroscience is meeting computing in exciting ways, opening up new possibilities for both disciplines. Dr. Imam described the reverse-engineering of biological neural computations in two of the most prominent neuromorphic systems built this past decade: IBM's TrueNorth and Intel's Loihi. These systems leverage digital models of neurons and synapses, colocalized memory and compute, and sparse, event-driven communications to support massively parallel architectures for real-time energy-efficient neural computations. Examples discussed by Dr. Imam included the derivation of neural algorithms from the circuit-level organization of the mammalian olfactory system and the hippocampus, that leverage spike-timing-based mechanisms of coding and computation to realize new functional capabilities.
[Some slides]
2020/02/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Great day in Harlem: Original photo from 1958 and photo of survivors in 1996. [Center] My paternal grandparents, with some of their children, ~90 years ago. [Right] My former doctoral student, and frequent co-author on technical papers, honored with a Khwarizmi International Award in Iran.
(2) Law professor and activist Dr. Anita Hill spoke to a sold-out crowd at UCSB's Campbell Hall last night, 25 years after her previous appearance and talk to another sold-out crowd. [Image]
(3) Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months in prison: This is the seventh conviction resulting from the Mueller probe (definitely not a witch hunt). Most importantly, Stone is the closest Trump ally/friend to serve jail time.
(4) The so-called "corruption fighter" just pardoned a bunch of corrupt-to-the-core white-collar criminals and is exerting pressure on the Justice Department to go easy on a bunch of others. He is trying to set a precedent for when he and his corrupt family are prosecuted.
(5) "Emerging Architectures for Humanity's Grand Challenges": This was the title of today's technical talk by Dr. Yipeng Huang (Post-doc at Princeton; PhD Columbia U.), a faculty candidate for our Computer Engineering Program. The end of Moore's-law scaling has triggered the examination of alternative computation models, which include analog and quantum computing. Among challenges we face with these new models is connecting them to conventional architectures, and in helping to facilitate their correct usage by programmers.
In the first part of his talk, Dr. Huang discussed how problems associated with the step-by-step updating of variables in all-digital machines are avoided by continuously-evolving variables in the analog model of computation. Dr. Huang then discussed two strategies for exploiting strengths of the analog model (speed and energy efficiency), while avoiding its limited-precision pitfall. In one strategy, analog approximations are obtained quickly, which are then refined via digital computation. In another strategy, digital computation is used to break down large problems into smaller ones that are suitable for analog processing.
In the second part of his talk, Dr. Huang focused on helping programmers debug and simulate quantum computer algorithms. As more capable quantum computer prototypes become available, students and researchers need guidelines and tools for debugging and testing quantum programs. His work discusses what quantum bugs are, how statistical tests may find them, and how programmers can write assertions to more effectively bring up quantum programs.
[A few slides]
2020/02/19 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "World Music Series" noon concert at UCSB's Karl Geiringer Hall: Guest artist Reshma Srivastava played Indian classical music on sitar, with tabla accompaniment.
(Video 1)
(Video 2)
(Video 3)
(Video 4) [Center] Meme of the day (for Persian speakers): Wondering which of Khamenei's relatives to vote for in the upcoming elections! [Right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Based on Internet advertising dollars, both Michael Bloomberg and the Shen Yun dancers qualified to participate in the debate."
(2) Eight environmental activists in Iran sentenced to a total of 58 years in prison: Here is a dictatorial regime that has no tolerance for dissent, even if it is in the area of environmental policies.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Side-by-side comparison: Trump's and Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.
- The myth that Trump is creating unprecedented numbers of new jobs, busted by data.
[Chart]
- Grad students unite across the UC system to demand a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to their pay.
- Today's young men embrace gender equality, but they still don't vacuum.
(4) Michael Bloomberg is toast: His stiff, unprepared appearance at the Democratic debate of 2/19 made it clear that all the money he has spent and will be spending in the coming weeks would have been better used to support one of the other candidates to improve his/her chances of beating Donald Trump. The country no longer has an appetite for men who call women fat broads, characterize their remark as a joke when it gets them into trouble, settle lawsuits with non-disclosure agreements, consider their tax returns too complex for public release, and are out of touch with the problems of working and middle classes.
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: The speaker for our February 19, 2020, technical talk, "Compression of Everything," was Dr. Jerry Gibson, UCSB Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Fellow of IEEE, and author of multiple text/reference books (PhD, SMU, 1973; MS, SMU, 1971; BS, UT Austin, 1969). Dr. Gibson's other honors and awards, details of which can be found on the IEEE CCS event page and his home page include service on editorial boards of two IEEE Transactions, Distinguished Lectureship for IEEE Communications Society, and multiple technical-achievement and best-paper awards.
As the talk's title suggests, compression is widely used. Our cell phones and other electronic devices contain sophisticated, continually-improving compression and decompression facilities that allow us to store and transmit ever-larger volumes of data. As storage capacities, processing power, and communication bandwidth continue their exponential growths, with multi-terabyte personal storage devices and the dawn of 5G communication, our appetite for more photos, higher-quality videos, and all things digital grows correspondingly, making compression as essential today as it was in the days of 2G and its predecssors.
Compression, defined as the representation of a signal in digital form with as few bits as possible while retaining the quality required for the given application, is largely hidden behind the physical and network distribution layers. The technologies used for voice, audio, still images, and video all differ but broadly consist of time or frequency domain decompositions, quantization, and lossless coding. Dr. Gibson began his talk by establishing the need for compression and them proceeded to provide details of the surprisingly complicated compression methods, with particular emphasis on the signal processing required. Developing compression applications for biological signals such as EEG, ECG, and EMG were also discussed.
[Photos] [Tweet] [Speaker's PDF slides (link forthcoming)] [Schedule of IEEE CCS Technical Talks]
2020/02/18 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Norooz (Nowruz) celebration at UCLA: Farhang Foundation's annual observation of the Persian new year will be held at UCLA's Royce Hall and the adjacent Dickson Court on Sunday, March 8, 2020, 12:00-5:00 PM. [Center] Green growth: Newsweek magazine cover feature promotes the idea that growth and taking better care of our planet are not mutually exclusive. [Right] Fun with uranium: The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab from the 1950s included four small jars of actual uranium. Children, the intended users, were warned not to take the ore out of the jars, because the background radiation would mess up the experimental results: No mention of health risks! (Credit: IEEE Spectrum, issue of February 2020)
(2) Shame on the Islamic Republic of Iran: Bahareh Hedayat is just one of the women activists languishing in Iranian prisons, for demanding human rights and abolition of misogynistic laws. There are an alarmingly large number of women prisoners, who are severely mistreated and threatened with physical and sexual violence.
(3) 'Tis the season for faculty hiring: I am headed into a month of intense seminar attendance, as we try to fill multiple faculty positions in computer engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science. The following two entries begin the seminar reports.
(4) "Modeling and Optimization for Customized Computing": This was the title of today's talk by Dr. Peipei Zhou, Research Scientist at Shanghai Enflame Technology (AI chip start-up), a faculty candidate for our Computer Engineering Program. She described her PhD research at UCLA, which dealt with highly-optimized FPGA-based designs for accelerating a wide range of applications with several orders of magnitude gain in performance and energy efficiency over general-purpose processors. Her work targeted design optimization at chip, node, and cluster level.
[Sample slides]
(5) "Programming Molecular Energy Landscapes for Precise Placement and Robust Computation": This was the title of today's talk by Dr. Chris Thachuk (Caltech Post-doc), a faculty candidate for our Computer Engineering Program. He described his work on a molecular FPGA-like structure, in which both the breadboard and the components on it self-assemble. The molecular breadboards then self-align to complete the implementation process. Whereas computation with DNA and other molecules isn't new, previous approaches required custom design for each function of interest. Dr. Thachuk described two different projects that allow a scalable and more flexible synthesis approach.
The first project, DNA origami, represents a successful example of self-assembly driven by molecular forces. This process can result in the assembly of ~10^10 copies of a designed 2D or 3D shape, with feature resolution of 6 nanometers. Designing the energy landscape of the interaction between a DNA origami shape and a flat surface demonstrates that single molecules can be placed with orientation that is absolute (all degrees of freedom specified) and arbitrary (every molecule's orientation is independently specified). Because robustness improves exponentially with redundancy, a moderate level of replication is all that's needed.
The second project addresses the design difficulty and error-proneness of molecular computing structures. A compiler has been developed that takes as input a logic description (truth table or gate-circuit) and provides as output the optimized set of breadboard components necessary to produce the desired logic behavior. By mixing these pre-existing components as prescribed, it is possible to achieve fast, autonomous and robust molecular circuits, from conception to implementation, within a single afternoon, rather than in weeks.
[Sample slides]
2020/02/17 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Happy Presidents' Day! Let's celebrate all the great ones and their wonderful deeds, from abolition of slavery, through leadership in trying social/economic times, to signing of the Civil Rights Act. [Center] Liberal and liberalism (derive from "free"): Wear the labels proudly, as the current assault on freedom and move toward oligarchy will not survive the 2020s. Hats off to Eleanor Roosevelt!
(2) "Pot hotter than pottage": This Persian saying is apt description of Iran's withdrawal from a friendly match between the women's soccer teams of Iran and Palestine, because the match was being held in Israel!
(3) Women's status in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Sociologist Dr. Nayereh Tohidi and journalist Homa Sarshar discuss the status of women, 41 years after the Islamic Revolution. [20-minute video]
(4) "Trapped in Iran": Reporter Nicolas Pelham writes about spending the summer of 2019 as a guest of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, being detained as he was about to leave the country.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump attends the wedding of Stephen Miller, his racist adviser: Thoughts and prayers for the bride!
- Some 1100 former DOJ officials call on AG William Barr to resign over interference in Roger Stone case.
- AG William Barr sought to block the indictment of a Turkish bank, after autocrat Erdogan pled with Trump.
- Father helps daughter by making her laugh whenever they hear the sound of fighter jets attacking Idlib.
- Humorous Persian poetry: Mr. Haloo recites two of his short poems about elections in Iran. [2-minute video]
- Piano Boys featured in EDHAT SB: Article with videos of a recent concert by Zeyn and Rhyan Shweyk.
(6) Iran's 1917-1919 famine: Did you know that Iran was the country with most deaths during World War I? Persia, as the country was known then, remained neutral in the WW I, but Britain occupied it anyway and confiscated foodstuff and other resources, which, combined with an ongoing drought and several epidemics, led to the starvation of millions (estimates range from 2 million to 9 million, the latter figure, widely considered an exaggeration, corresponding to half of the total population at the time).
(7) A History of Science in 20 Objects: This is the title of an article in E&T magazine. Scientific endeavors create memorable objects, 20 of which are selected as the focus of a new book. You may not agree with the selections or their heavy focus on modern times, but looking at them is instructive nonetheless.
2020/02/16 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Cartoons of the day: [Left] Glory ... Stock markets are up! America's great again! [Center] Sad days for Iran: Arab media's depiction of Iranians going through dumpsters in search of something to eat, while living atop barrels of oil. [Right] You can't take them with you: This is often said of money and other belongings, but it also applies to your to-do list. So, get busy doing things! (Credit: New Yorker)
(2) Traditional Persian music: "Chahar-Mezraab-e Mahoor," composed by Gholam Hossein Darvish Khan, with Mohammad-Reza Lotfi on setar and Naser Farhangfar on tonbak. [4-minute video]
(3) A wonderful animated short film: "The making of 'The Sixth String'," Bahram Azimi's 10-minute animated short film about how a sixth string came to be added to a Persian musical instrument. [5-minute video]
(4) If George Washington lived today: "I did not even know the cherry tree. May have taken a picture with it, but then I have pictures with everyone and everything. And even if I did cut the tree, it was for the good of the country and completely within my authority. Liberal hacks are trying to question my honesty."
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: UC Irvine Anthropologist Dr. Roxanne Varzi's "Tehran Tourist."
- Restaurants are offering cheap lobster specials, due to a drop in world demand, particularly from China.
- Kyle's Protein Grill, in Goleta's Hollister Village, offers meat-less dishes, such as meatballs and steak.
- Persian poetry: Yadollah Taremi's poem for his mom, written/recited in the Shirazi dialect of Persian. [Video]
(6) "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people": I composed a Persian poem exactly 10 years ago in a fit of rage, resulting from the vile poem in the green image, appearing on a banner in Tehran. That poem instructs women on how to behave and what types of clothes to wear.
(7) The 28th anniversary of my father's passing at age 70: Today, my family commemorated his passing and celebrated his life at Santa Barbara Cemetery. Here is a wonderful poem entitled "Father," from Delights & Shadows, by Ted Kooser, Copper Canyon Press, 2004. My own father would have been 98 today, and he passed away 28 years ago, not 20. My loose Persian translation of the poem follows the English original. [Photos]
2020/02/14 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Valentine's Day, the day when many people celebrate romantic love, while others include all manifestations of love, including those between family members and friends! (Tweet by Tim Cook, aka Tim Apple) [Top center] Anniversary of Forough Farrokhzad's passing: She perished in a car crash on February 13, 1967 (Bahman 24, 1345; 53 years ago) at age 32, yet, despite her tragically-short life, she left us with an invaluable treasure of poems and other works of art. RIP! [Top right] One way to celebrate Valentine's Day! [Botton left] Hotel 1001 Nights going up in Tehran. [Bottom center & right] Unprecedented snowfall in western and northern Iran: Streets of Khalkhal, Ardebil Province, and an 8-meter wall of snow.
(2) Carl Sagan's mind-opening reflections on the famous pale-blue-dot image of Earth, snapped 30 years ago by Voyager-1, on its way out of our Solar System: Read by Neil deGrasse Tyson in this 3-minute video.
(3) When will the wrong-way driver taking America toward a catastrophic crash realize that it is he, not the Democrats voting to impeach him, nor Republicans like Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, Jim Mattis, John Bolton, Mitt Romney, and myriad others criticizing him, who is headed the wrong way?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The doctor who assaulted Andrew Yang's wife is accused by dozens of other women of sexual assault.
- Days after being awarded the Medal of Freedom, Rush Limbaugh mocks Buttigieg for kissing his husband.
- American televangelist and Trump supporter Jim Bakker sells an anti-coronavirus liquid at $300 a bottle.
- In the kitchen tonight: My Valentine's Day dinner and a large pot of pasta for the week ahead. [Photos]
(5) Racist activity by White Supremacists on US college campuses reached an all-time high last year, more than doubling in number of reported instances (from 1214 in 2018, to 2713 in 2019).
(6) Qassem Soleimani's final interview contains his manifesto: Total deference to Khamanei, no regard for other government figures. This 11-page PDF file (in Persian) contains Soleimani's will, in which unconditional surrender to the Islamic Leader is the focus. Even where he writes about Iran and Iranians, it is in connection with, and in service to, Islam. He was no nationalist hero, as the Iranian regime is trying to make him.
2020/02/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Sistas before Mistas": February 13, the day before Valentine's Day, is designated as Galentine's Day, to allow women to celebrate their female friendships. Designation of February 15 as Guylantine Day can't be far behind (Mistas after Sistas)! [Center] Cover images of Iran's Kayhan for Kids magazine: Before the Islamic Revolution, on the right, happy themes and fantasy were emphasized; after the Revolution, the focus shifted to piety and religious indoctrination. [Right] Teaching Iranian kids to hate all 'outsiders,' Jews and Baha'is, in particular: The sign held by the young boy reads, in part, "We are future Ghasem Soleimanis. We kill the Jews" (image credit: Iranwire.com).
(2) Tremendous fraud: Days after saying in his SOTU Address that he won't touch Social Security or Medicare, Trump revealed a budget that makes deep cuts to both and to other social safety nets. He accidentally told the truth that his administration is "doing a lot of things that are good, including waste and fraud."
(3) Green growth: Environmentalists are often faulted with advocating for economic disruption to avoid climate catastrophe. According to Andrew McAfee of MIT, America's shrinking carbon footprint amidst the longest economic boom in history suggests that prosperity and taking care of our planet aren't mutually exclusive.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Senate votes 55-45 to limit Trump's use of military force without Congressional approval.
- Four members of the Chinese military charged in the Equifax data breach involving half of all Americans.
- AG William Barr says that Trump should stop tweeting about DOJ criminal cases. He may be toast!
- Iran threatens to strike Israel and the US if they make the "slightest error."
(5) Alexa, What's Amazon Up to on State Street? This is the clever headline of a story in Santa Barbara Independent about Amazon's plans for its new location in Downtown Santa Barbara. An as-yet-unnamed restaurant on the ground floor, lectures and community events in their seminar room, and, possibly, a pick-up/return location are in the works.
(6) Fake news from right-wingers: Trumpists, who have turned a blind eye on the flagrant nepotism in the Trump administration, which has given top-level adviser positions to Ivanka and Jared (who couldn't even get legitimate security clearances), or have conspired to deflect attention from it, are spreading memes alleging that, besides Hunter Biden, the sons of several prominent Democrats have high-paying jobs with Ukranian-linked energy companies. Here is what Snopes.com has to say. Not that it will make the claims go away!
(7) AG Bill Barr's complaint about Trump tweets making it impossible for him to do his job reminds me of Mehdi Bazargan, the first PM of post-revolutionary Iran, who used to say that Khomeini issuing orders over his head made it impossible for his government to function properly. Bazargan was forced to resign in short order!
2020/02/12 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: Today's "World Music Series" noon concert: Doctoral student Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa collaborated with UCSB students to perform "The Dawn of the Rooster," an opera she composed to tell the story of her family during Zimbabwe's liberation struggle. The concert was held in Karl Geiringer Hall, instead of the usual Music Bowl, likely for better acoustics. (Video 1) (Video 2) (Video 3)
(2) Fired ambassador honored: Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch receives a prestigious award. She will be given the 2020 Trainor Award by Georgetown University, joining previous honorees Madeleine Albright, Ernest Moniz, and Kofi Annan.
(3) John Kelly can no longer hide his contempt for Trump: The former White House Chief of Staff explains his misgivings in clearest terms to date. Unfortunately for him, some stains are difficult to wash off.
(4) One day soon, a Khamenei crony will propose the title "Islamophile Imam of Imams" (mimicking the Shah's "Aryaphile King of Kings") for him and suggest that the Islamic lunar calendar become Iran's official calendar!
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Four DOJ prosecutors quit after superiors over-ruled their 7-9 years of prison term for Roger Stone.
- The Goleta, CA, couple tragically killed by a drunk driver on Sunday, shown with their 4 children. [Photo]
- Papers of former UCSB professor Jonathan Pruitt withdrawn or examined for data fabrication.
- Persian tweets about dietary habits in Southeast Asia and their connection to the spread of coronavirus.
- Tweet from an Iranian stuck in traffic on a snow-covered road for 24 hours, with no sign of assistance.
- Iranian folk music: Wonderful rendition of "Gol-e Pamchal" from Guilan Province by Rastak Ensemble.
- Persian music: A wonderful rendition of Mohammad Nouri's "Ey Iran." [6-minute video]
(6) A huge iceberg three times the size of San Francisco broke off an endangered glacier in Antarctica. The glacier, if it completely breaks away, will raise global sea levels by 4 feet (1.2 m).
(7) Honoring Soleiman Haim: Growing up in Iran, I made heavy use of volumes of Haim's English-Persian and Persian-English dictionaries, which we had at home. Haim, a wordmaster, artist, and scholar, pioneered these and other dictionaries and also published a collection of Persian proverbs, beginning in 1929. I planned to attend a special ceremony in Los Angeles honoring Haim on the 50th anniversary of his passing on Sunday, February 2, 2020, but had to cancel at the last minute. I was delighted to learn that the ceremony has been recorded in full. Here is the link to the 124-minute video.
(8) Persian music and poetry: Koorosh Yazdani performs his own composition based on the poem "Ba'd-haa" ("Later On") by Forough Farrokhzad, the beloved poet who died in a car crash at age 32. [7-minute video]
2020/02/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This photo of Trump, taken on Feb. 7, 2020, on the White House South Lawn, has gone viral because of its stark tan line. It would make a nice magazine cover! [Center] Yes, "It's the economy, stupid": But, please use relevant economic indicators, not the phony stock market and GDP! [Right] Brexit.
(2) Talk about being out of touch: Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei asks Iranians who have fled the country to return home and embrace their prescribed punishment, be it jail time or execution, to save themselves from eternal torment!
(3) Following in the footsteps of Russia (a proposal for the infliltration of Iranian agents into Western societies): Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, Member of Iran's Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, speaking on an Ofogh TV program dated January 23, 2020, says that Iran should take advantage of deep economic, social, and racial divisions within the US and elsewhere to sow discord and help bring about their collapse. Young Iranian men should move to the West, get married there, and do cultural work to initiate gorilla warfare against the governments. This is what Britain did with Australia, except that they sent their felons not their best people.
(4) New Hampshire is shaping the Democratic race for president: Biden is getting the beating he deserves for his uninspiring campaign. Sanders and Buttigieg are in a nail-biter at the top. The old experienced guy appeals to young and poor voters, while the young newcomer is attracting older and affluent voters. Warren is in a distant 4th place after Klobuchar in 3rd place.
(5) "Impeachment in Historical Perspective": This afternoon, three UCSB historians spoke in a well-attended 2-hour session that was quite timely and informative.
Professor Giuliana Perrone discussed the impeachment and Senate trial of Andrew Johnson, an accidental President who rose to power upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Not a Republican, Johnson was put on the ticket to increase Lincoln's chances of being elected. Congress had serious disagreements with him over Reconstruction. In particular, the Republicans wanted to use the Army for Reconstruction, so they needed Johnson's blessings as Commander-in-Chief. Congress passed an act that it knew Johnson would violate, so Johnson's impeachment was essentially a case of entrapment. Eventually, the removal attempt failed by a 1-vote margin. Johnson was essentially impeached over violating a minor act of Congress, but his immensely more-important crime was depriving 4 million Americans of their rights. Johnson and Trump have a lot in common. Both were/are paranoid, imagining all sorts of conspiracies against them. The stakes are high now, as they were at the time of Johnson.
Professor Laura Kalman (who happens to be my across-the-street neighbor) focused on Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal and the impeachment and Senate trial of Bill Clinton. Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate Hotel break-in attempt and discovery of tape-recordings that constituted the "smoking gun" for the crime of covering up his wrongdoings, remains the only case of a US president being "removed" for the ill-defined "high crimes and misdemeanors." The case of Bill Clinton was completely different. It was simultaneously petty, involving private behavior rather than abuse of power, and quite serious, because it involved an actual crime (perjury). Professor Kalman made extensive use of slides bearing cartoons, news reports, and legal documents to make her points. I have included some of her slides, that tell much of the story of the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, in the accompanying images.
Professor Salim Yaqub spoke on presidential impeachments in the context of US foreign policy. One aspect of Nixon's troubles was his desire for secrecy in foreign policy. Nixon's love of secrecy even pervaded the conduct of the Vietnam War, where he initiated bombing campaigns in the neighboring Laos and Cambodia to deter the use of those countries for moving arms and personnel to South Vietnam. Nixon spied on his opponents and even members of his own party. The Pentagon Papers do not pertain to the Nixon administration, but they did make him nervous about the prospects of his own secret actions being exposed. This desire for secrecy was the root of Watergate. Nixon's removal could have been disruptive to foreign policy amid much turmoil in the world, but given the confidence lawmakers and others had in the ability of the seasoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to help Gerald Ford carry out foreign policy, there ware fewer reservations about the act of removing Nixon from office. In the case of Clinton, a bombing campaign, begun days before his impeachment inquiry, became known as "Wag the Dog" war, borrowing the term from a movie of the same name.
One take-away from this presentation is that we should strive to define "high crimes and midemeanors" more precisely, before the next impeachment case arises. Interestingly, the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" was a last-minute replacement for "maladministration," in order to satisfy all the signatories of the US Constitution. Other than the four cases named above, impeachment was considered in the cases of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, for the Iran-Contra scandal and staring the Iraq War under false pretenses, but the efforts were abandoned.
I have tried to touch upon some interesting points, but my report doesn't do justice to the wide range of observations and insightful commentary presented by my history colleagues. A big thanks to all three of them!
2020/02/10 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sunsets, on Mars and Earth: Blue on the Red Planet, red on the Blue Planet! (Credit: Tweet by Firouz M. Naderi) [Center] An apt name for the Trump-family boss and GOP's puppet-master: The GOP Father. [Right] Iranian architectural marvel: Tehran's Museum of Time, home of antique timepieces.
(2) Islamization of education continues in Iran: Changes in high school math textbooks, including removal of integrals "to make room for other life skills," is now officially linked to explicit directions from Supreme Leader Khamenei to take the Islamic Revolution into its "second phase."
(3) A 3D-printed object: I chose this object from the Thingiverse.com database and had it printed by the Goleta Valley Public Library as a perk of attending a 3D-printer demo on February 3.
[Print time: 3:15 hours]
(4) Cruise to hell: The number of coronavirus cases on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan reaches 135.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- China built a massive hospital in 8 days to fight the coronavirus. [The number of deaths is now 800+]
- Manhunt for soldier who massacred 26 in a crowded Thailand shopping mall ends with his being killed.
- Get to know the latest awardee of the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Rush Limbaugh, in his own words.
- Learn about "hangxiety" and dozens more recently-named feelings.
- Quote of the day: "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." ~ Confucius
- On the misogyny of some Iranian women and boycotting the upcoming elections. [Tweets, in Persian]
- Nostalgia: Clip from an Iranian TV program of 60+ years ago. ["Ya Mustafa" was quite popular in Iran]
(6) Persian music and dance: Three restaurants in Tehran, Iran, have been closed and their owners arrested for allowing mixed dancing on their premises. Watch for the diversity of people dancing in the video.
(7) This is Cher on network TV, in 1989: Apparently, evangelicals, who are suddenly offended by Shakira's and J. Lo's Super Bowl LIV halftime performance, have been asleep over the past three decades!
[Photo]
(8) Heartbreaking: A Santa Barbara couple walking on Sunday evening were killed by a drunk driver who went off the road and continued for 100 yards along a bike path before hitting them. Mary Jane and Adolfo Corral are survived by four children aged 10-20.
2020/02/09 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A UCSB Faculty Panel discussed climate change at the Goleta Valley Public Library (see the next item below). [Top center] Donald Trump Jr. accidentally told the truth when he compared his dad's acquittal to O.J.'s in a tweet. [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Image from the book Lord of the GOP! [Bottom left & center] Talk about Iran at UCLA (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Pi Day is on 3/14, but February 9 is pie day of a different kind: Happy US National Pizza Day!
(2) UCSB faculty panel at Goleta Valley Public Library on Saturday, February 8, 2020: Seated from left to right were Kathy Patterson (Writing Program), Sarah Anderson (Bren School, Political Science), Andrew Plantinga (Bren School, Economics), Eckart Meiburg (Mechanical Engineering), and Monique Myers (Marine Science Institute). They discussed Elizabeth Rush's Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, the 2020 selection for the "UCSB Reads" program. Many perspectives on the sea-level-rise problem, and climate change more generally, were presented, ranging from engineering/modeling aspects to policy issues. Rush's writing, and her putting a human face on the problem through telling compelling stories, were praised, but there were also criticisms of her inattention to the science behind sea level rise and portraying all change as bad, whereas humans can in fact deal with and control some aspects of environmental changes.
(3) Los Angeles premiere of "The Manic Monologues": Produced by Zachary Burton and directed by Elisa Hofmeister, Stanford University students who co-founded the initiative that turned mental health challenges into art, this powerful play presents in two acts (16 different stories) the struggles of those who have dealt or are dealing with various forms of mental illness. Described by NPR as "The mental illness version of 'The Vagina Monologues'," the stories are written by people in various age group and performed by actors on stage. In two cases, the writer was also the performer, making the presentations extremely touching. The stories are effective and eye-opening, revealing much struggle and pain, but also humor, triumph, and joy. [Program]
(4) UCLA Bilingual Lectures on Iran: Today, Dr. Narges Bajoghli (Middle East Studies, Johns Hopkins U.) spoke in Persian under the title "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic," based on a book by the same title (UCLA, 121 Dodd Hall, 4:00 PM). Tomorrow, Monday 2/10, Dr. Bajoghli will deliver the same lecture in English (UCLA 10383 Bunche Hall, 2:00 PM). In addition to the aforementioned book and other scholarly writings, Dr. Bajoghli has directed the acclaimed 2013 documentary "The Skin that Burns," chronicling the plight of victims of chemical warfare.
Iran Reframed is the result of a decade of field work in Iran, interviewing rank-and-file members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia, in order to better understand the Islamic Republic from the viewpoint of its supporters. Much analysis and reporting about Iran has focused on officials and centers of power (top-down view), whereas Dr. Bajoghli aimed to study the views and aspirations of low-level operatives (bottom-up view).
A main focus of Dr. Bajoghli's work is the worries of those doing cultural work in transferring the messages and ideals of the revolution across generations. IRGC power-holders are mainly first- and second-generation revolutionaries, whereas the much younger Basij is composed primarily of third-generation members of the ruling class, a class that was marginalized during the late Shah's reign and fears being driven to the margins again, should its political project fail. Among this younger generation of revolutionaries, Dr. Bajoghli had a more difficult time in establishing trust, as they were less willing to open up to a Westernized woman researcher.
Dr. Bajoghli's work with Iranians who are considered agents of oppression is viewed with suspicion by certain opposition members, who wonder why a highly educated, modern woman was given access to such a large number of power-brokers and operatives and why they confided in her. She explained that her work with one of the victims of the Iran-Iraq War, badly hurt by chemical attacks, and her directing the documentary "The Skin that Burns," led to referrals and implicit trust, although the trust wasn't universal. Interestingly, Dr. Bajoghli's work is also viewed with suspicion from the US side. She related that her university retained a law firm to help her conduct her research in the face of smear campaigns and sanctions-caused restrictions.
Both IRCG and Basij, have active propaganda programs, such as producing films, some of which are circulated via underground distribution networks and on the Internet, to hide their regime-linked origins. IRCG's and Basij's cultural propaganda arms are almost entirely male-dominated, although there are women performing functions in other areas. Involvement of armed forces in movie-making isn't unique to Iran, with two other prominent examples being the United States and Israel.
Tensions and conflicts in Iran are not limited to those between the regime and the people. The regime is layered and multi-generational, and conflicts do exist between the different layers and generations. Basijis don't trust or respect their leaders who have moved up to higher classes, viewing them as corrupted by power and wealth. It is indeed true that high-level leaders do not allow their own children to join the Basij, which is viewed as being for the underclass. Some members of IRCG have reached the conclusion that the regime has been unsuccessful in conveying the Revolution's message to young Iranians in religious terms and is increasingly resorting to nationalistic sentiments, such as using heroes and themes from Shahnameh, in its cultural work, trying to re-brand itself as defender of Iran's territorial integrity, rather than regime defender. Interestingly, the propaganda in Arabic aimed for trans-border consumption is still pretty much centered around Shi'i Islam.
A robust Q&A session ensued. Several audience members thanked Dr. Bajoghli for her pioneering work to paint a bottom-up picture of Iran's revolutionaries and what keeps them up at night. Asked whether having written a book, she believes she can continue this work, she opined that under the current political conditions and the associated tensions, it would be impossible to do any work in this area, but that it isn't inconceivable for relations to improve to the level that work may be allowed to proceed. [Persian version of this report]
2020/02/08 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The Oscars: Cynthia Erivo, a double nominee and potentially the youngest EGOT ever, reveals the loneliness of being the only actor of color in the race. [Center] Persian poetry: A couple of verses from Mowlavi (Rumi). [Right] Elmo and his friends speak Arabic: A newly-launched Sesame Street show is designed to help refugee children in war-ravaged areas by teaching them skills to cope with anger, fear, frustration, nervousness, and loneliness.
(2) US democratic system needs updating: Currently, 52 Senators are elected by just 18% of the population. And the vote in favor of acquitting Trump in his impeachment trial was 52-48 (not the same 52, but still)! Senators who voted to convict Trump represent 18 million more Americans than those who voted to acquit.
(3) Un-presidented: Trump uses the National Prayer Breakfast and a subsequent White House event to lash out at his opponents, going as far back as James Comey, using hate-filled and foul language.
(4) Moving past silicon: Dozens of startups are using light, quantum physics, and molecular biology to build computer chips and data-storage devices for future computing. "Silicon Valley" needs updating!
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Everything Trump touches is soiled forever: The latest casualty is Presidential Medal of Freedom. [Cartoon]
- FBI raises the threat level from neo-Nazis to match that of ISIS.
- World's most-amazing concert venues. [Tweet by George Takei]
- App-streaming: Getting apps on your phone only when they are needed saves around 85% in storage.
- Kepler Communications' CubeSats will create a space Internet for use by other satellites.
- Impressed by the detailed info at the museum: "Fossil of a marine creature, from millions of years ago."
(6) Iran oppression: Dervish activist Shokoufeh Yadollahi has been released from prison, having served a 2-year term. She has lost her sense of smell due to a skull fracture suffered during arrest. Her sons, Kasra and Amir Noori, are still in jail. Read the comments on Pooria Noori's tweet for more info.
(7) Persian poetry: A message to Iran's rulers, who are appealing to patriotism, while also using overt threats, to ensure a good turnout in the upcoming elections. An election boycott movement is gaining strength.
2020/02/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] The bazaar in the city of Qom, Iran: This part of the Qajar-era structure was built for carpet trading and is still used for that purpose. [Bottom left] Kirk Douglas, one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age, dead at 103. [Bottom center] Love in the age of coronavirus! [Bottom right] Senator Mitt Romney is accused of being a closet Democrat, after he voted to convict Trump of abuse of power. Here is Romney's full Senate speech (delivered in front of only 4 other Senators) explaining his impeachment vote.
(2) Three examples of failure in safety-critical software as a result of unexpected interactions between system components. [Read about them in a sidebar to Nancy Leveson's article in CACM, February 2020]
(3) Wed. noon concert at the Music Bowl: UCSB Brass Ensemble performed "Theme from Jurassic Park" and other pieces, in various subgroups (solo, trio, quintet, and larger), as part of the "World Music Series" program.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- By clogging a phone hotline, Internet trolls caused long hold times for those reporting votes in Iowa.
- Nancy Pelosi addresses the most-blatant lies Trump told during the State-of-the-Union address.
- Humor: George Conway writes in Washington Post that he believes the President, and in the President.
- Evangelist Franklin Graham dropped by all UK tour venues over his homophobic and Islamophobic views.
- STEM-linked MBA degrees at US business schools: A new trend aimed at attracting international students.
- Persian poetry: A poem by Noushin Moeini Kermanshahi. [Facebook post]
- Persian poetry: Shokoufeh Taghi wants to compose a loving, beautiful, sacred poem ... and call it "Mother."
- A story (in Persian tweets) about Kirk Douglas and the popularity of his "Spartacus" epic movie in Iran.
(5) Three Iranian women sentenced to 5.5-year prison terms for opposing compulsory hijab laws: In a country where murderers and multi-billion-dollar embezzlers go free or receive a slap on the wrist, Yasaman Aryani, Monireh Arabshahi, and Mojgan Keshavarz are accused of "promoting decadence and prostitution" for their efforts on bahalf of women's rights. Shame on Iran's "justice" system!
(6) Trump, on people who dislike him: (2013) Barack Obama isn't American. (2018) Democrats who don't applaud me are treasonous. (2020) Mitt Romney is a closet Democrat.
2020/02/04 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Moscow Mitch. [Top center] Americans' attitude towards Jews: Eye-opening figures from the Anti-Defamation League. [Top right] Confronting the return of overt racism to America. [Bottom row] Tonight's State-of-the-Union address (starts at the video's 20:30 mark) included awarding Rush Limbaugh, an epitome of racism, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, while pretending to reach out to African-Americans and other minorities, Democratic Congresswomen wearing white to support the ongoing fight for women's rights, and Nancy Pelosi ripping her copy of the address to stress the importance of recycling!
(2) Pants on fire: Iran's President Rouhani and FM Zarif were told within hours of the incident that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was hit by IRGC missiles, despite the official claims that they learned of the crash cause days later. Meanwhile, a new recording obtained by Ukraine reveals that Iranian airspace officials and a pilot saw both the missile launch and the explosion.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Democratic SOTU response: "Actions speak louder than words." ~ Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
- Fact-checking Trump's 2020 State-of-the-Union address: Filled with lies, as expected!
- Buttigieg edges Sanders by 1% in Iowa (both have 11 delegates), with Warren and Biden placing 3rd and 4th.
- Mehdi Ghadyanloo, whose expansive murals grace building walls in Tehran, exhibits his work in London.
(4) Joke of the day (translated from Persian): A broken-hearted friend came to me and said he no longer believed in love. He'd avoid falling in love from now on and try to be more like me, care-free and emotionless. I wasn't sure whether to comfort him or beat him senseless!
(5) Men Advocating for Gender Equity (UCSB MAGE): This is a group of staff and faculty members at UCSB of which I am a member. The group began with the realization that men (heterosexual white men, in particular) are privileged and may exhibit unconscious bias against women and other less-privileged members of our university and the larger community. We are determined to take steps to deal with these problems, both active personal measures to correct our own behavior and learning not to be passive bystanders when we see bias and prejudice. I have recently accepted the responsibility for mainting a list of readings and other resources to help with our advocacy efforts. This Web page (still under construction) holds the beginnings of that list.
2020/02/03 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Twitter is abuzz with opinions about the Super Bowl halftime show: Evangelist Franklin Graham and other conservatives, who fully support the foul-mouthed, pussy-grabbing, serial-philandering White House occupant, were offended by it. Most Americans, feminists in particular, found it empowering that two middle-aged Latina moms (Shakira, 43, and J. Lo, 50) performed with such energy and athleticism, pointing out that scant clothing and sexy moves shouldn't be interpreted as asking for sex. The show also made several political statements that may be the real reasons why conservatives took offense. The Puerto Rican flag and depiction of children in cages are two of the most prominent examples. [Center] A few NFL cheerleaders performing in every football game throughout the season, without offending Franklin Graham and other evangelical supporters of Trump. [Right] 3D-printer demo session (see the last item below).
(2) "Super Bowl fever": Name of the condition (hangover, celebrating if your team won, feeling lousy if your team lost) that causes 17.3 million Americans to miss work the day after the Super Bowl. [Source: Newsweek]
11.1 million using pre-approved absence; 4.7 million calling in "sick"; 1.5 million "ghosting" their employers
(3) Is another bubble about to burst in the US stock market? This chart (source: Russel Investments, Datastream) shows similar rises in big-tech stock prices, but the current climb is slower than in 2000. It is still the case, however, that a small number of tech stocks dominate the market's performance. The blue curve traces today's biggest tech companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet). The orange curve represents the biggest tech companies during the dot-com bubble (Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Lucent, Oracle).
(4) Swamp creatures: Multiple charities are paying Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow (and lining the pockets of his family members) in violation of the law that tax-exempt non-profits should not engage in partisan politics.
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section's special tech event: A 3D-printer introduction and demo session was held this evening at Goleta Valley Public Library, where two Dagoma 3D-printers are available for educational activities and to print patrons' orders at a cost of $1.00 per hour of printing time (a small object may take 2-3 hours to print). The Library's printers use plastic-corn filaments (Polyplus, Polymax) of various colors.
Nicole Lvoff, one of the librarians familiar with the 3D-printer workings, gave the 15 attendees an overview, helped us navigate Web sites where one can find/create interesting objects to print, and told us how to submit our orders to library staff. Patrons can go to Thingiverse.com, search/browse for various interesting objects, download the object's digital file, and e-mail the file to Library staff at goletavalleylibrary@cityofgoleta.org. Alternatively, a number of services can be used to create custom designs. Here are the Library's recommended user-friendly Web sites:
[Cults 3D]
[SketchUp]
[Tinkercad]
[Blender]
2020/02/02 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Magazine covers on Kobe Bryant, Hollywood, and Iran's nuclear ambitions. [Bottom left] Focus on the youth: Time magazine, issue of February 3, 2020, has a special feature on children of the 21st century. There is a separate feature on the young revolutionaries of Hong Kong. [Bottom center & right] Trump-related memes: His new book, The Art of the Quid Pro Quo, and the sinking ship Trumptanic.
(2) 2020/02/02: Today's date is a palindrome, regardless of the format used to write it down (mm/dd/yyyy, dd/mm/yyyy, yyyy/mm/dd). Today is also day 33 of the year, with 333 days left.
(3) The Vital Two Percent: Over the past few decades, the United States has spent 2.0-2.5% of its GDP on research and development. This is a kind of investment that bears fruit many years, or even decades, later. About 1/5 of this investment comes from the government, which is important to give bold, high-risk ideas a chance to flourish. If the government cuts down on its share of R&D funding, the highest-risk projects, which have the greatest potential returns, will suffer.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- KC scores 21 unanswered points late in the 4th quarter to earn a 31-20 Super Bowl victory over SF.
- Trump congratulates "the Great State of Kansas" for Super Bowl, unaware that the Chiefs play in Missouri!
- New climate simulations that take clouds into account predict more warming than previously thought.
- Classical music: I had no idea that Kobe Bryant played the piano (performing "Moonlight Sonata").
(5) Academic scams: Once in a while, I get an e-mail message or letter from a for-profit entity that appeals to our vanity to make money. A recent e-mail message had an attached certificate of membership in the EU Academy of Sciences. A Google search revealed that while there is a legit and prestigious European Academy of Sciences, there is no such thing as EU Academy of Sciences. Fortunately, someone else had already done the research on this scam and posted his/her findings on Twitter.
(6) On strategies and tools for running successful social-media campaigns: In doing research to respond to a query from an acquaintance, I came across the following three Web pages [Page 1] [Page 2] [Page 3] with information on how to run successful campaigns for worthy social causes. You might find these pages useful.
(7) Liberal-arts education isn't broad enough: In his January 2020 column in Prism, the magazine of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Henry Petroski points to factual and terminological errors in the memoir of Adam Savage of the "Mythbusters" fame. Savage does not seem to have an engineering education (or any college experience, for that matter), yet he often tackles science and engineering topics in his mythbusting endeavors. We expect editors involved in the publication process to catch factual and terminological errors. Such editors often have liberal-arts education, based on the belief that the broad range of topics covered in such educational programs prepares the graduates for dealing with any subject matter. "Adam Savage's book inadvertently busts the myth that earning [a liberal-arts] degree signals the achievement of a broad education. A broad eduction should, of course, include rudimentary knowledge of science and engineering and their basic laws and tools. It is a sad commentary on our system of higher education that it apparently does not always do so."
2020/02/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The number 73 (see the next item below). [Top center & right] Sadeh, the ancient Iranian festival of fire, dates back to Persian Empire's first Pishdadian dynasty: It is held 50 calendar days (100 days and nights, "sad" meaning 100 in Persian) before Norooz. This video shows how the festival was celebrated on January 30, 2020, in Cham Village of Iran's Yazd Province. [Bottom left] Gwen Ifill Black Heritage commemorative stamp unveiled by US Postal Service. [Bottom center] Catastrophic bushfires in Australia continue to kill a vast number of animals (photo credit: Time magazine). [Bottom right] "Pity the Nation" (after Khalil Gibran): English poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
(2) The number 73: As a numbers buff, I always check on the year number, my birthday number, and other numbers I encounter in my life. I was surprised to find out that my birthday number this year is quite special, so much so that there is a T-shirt bearing it. Here are some of the properties of 73: A palindrome in binary 1001001 and in octal 111;
The 21st prime (interestingly, 3 x 7 = 21);
A permutable prime with 37, which happens to be the 12th prime;
Part of the 8th twin primes, 71 & 73;
A star number (so is 37, see the diagram);
A star-of-stars can be made with 73 stars of 37 counters each (see the diagram);
Every positive integer can be written as the sum of 73 or fewer sixth powers;
The sole Sheldon prime, an homage to Sheldon Cooper, the fictional theoretical physicist on "The Big Bang Theory."
(3) Daring to go hijab-less in Iran: Some of the women protesting compulsory hijab laws in public seem antsy and keep looking over their shoulders in anticipation of violence or arrest. These backward laws and the way they are enforced are stains on humanity in the 21st century. Kudos to the brave women of Iran and their front-line position in fighting discrimination and backwardness. [Video]
(4) Nostalgic Persian music: Two old-time singers perform in pre-Islamic-Revolution Iran in what appears to be a car-company-sponsored ceremony to honor the country's soccer team. [3-minute video]
(5) Trump tweeted, "Getting a little exercise this morning!" with a photo of himself swinging at a golf ball: Here are sample comments. Nothing reveals the deep division in America better than reading such comments.
(6) Today is World Hijab Day: Power to all women who choose to wear the hijab based on personal beliefs, rather than social oppression or male pressure, and power to those who oppose and remove their forced hijab!
2020/01/31 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Khamenei's house of cards (credit: Iranwire.com). [Top center] A cat at the pearly gates! [Top right] Finding humor in disasters (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Mitch McConnell: The most disgraceful politician to ever set foot in the US Senate. [Bottom center] "Minorities in Iran: Legal, Sociological, and Historiographical Approaches": UCLA Near Eastern Studies panel discussion (Bunche Hall 10383, Tuesday 2020/02/11, 4:30 PM), featuring Drs. Neda Bolourchi (Rutgers) and Farzin Vejdani (Harvard). [Bottom right] Map of the Trump/Kushner peace plan: A good part of the West Bank, including the totality of the fertile Jordan River Valley (the Palestinians' "bread basket"), is taken away and given to Israel. In return, Palestinians get two clumps of land in the Negev Desert. No wonder the Palestinians rejected the plan outright!
(2) Iranians using humor to cope with anxiety and losses after recent plane crashes and emergency landings.
- I put my phone on airplane mode. It crashed!
- The agent didn't enter a destination on my plane ticket. "I can't predict where it will go down," he said!
- Is your life in a rut? Fly with us for unprecedented excitement!
- Our off-runway landings are parts of our new door-to-door service!
(3) Quote of the day: "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." ~ Author/poet William Butler Yeats
(4) Iranian composer, songwriter, and musical arranger Jahanbakhsh Pazooki, who was born in Shiraz and grew up in Isfahan, is honored in this 9-minute video, which features a composition of his from 50 years ago.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Brexit Day: The UK-Europe divorce, approved in a 2016 referendum, finally goes into effect tonight.
- The greatest difference between Presidents Trump and Obama isn't skin color, but character content.
- Bulgarian journalist Victoria Marinova, who wrote about government corruption, raped and beaten to death.
- The gender data gap: This Time magazine article is a good summary of a book I reviewed recently.
(6) World's oldest and youngest leaders: Featured in Time magazine's issue of February 3, 2020, are the 94-year-old PM of Malaysia, Mohamad Mahathir, and the 34-year-old PM of Finland, Sanna Marin.
(7) Religious apartheid in Iran: How, by denying national ID cards to followers of all but four sanctioned religions, Iran's regime has intensified its efforts to force religious minorities into fear-based submission.
(8) Telescope decommissioned: NASA officially shuts down the infrared space telescope Spitzer, one of four telescopes that map space in various frequency ranges. Even though Spitzer will send no new data from this point on, scientists should remain busy for years, combing through its vast collection of data.
2020/01/30 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UCSB Materials Research Outreach Symposium 2020 (see the last item below). [Center] A century after women earned the right to vote, we still have no Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution. [Right] Nature in art: Colorful wildflowers.
(2) This week on the UCSB campus: Graduate students remind the administration that their working conditions are the campus's learning conditions. Also, one must be vigilant as the November elections near. Not all voter mobilization efforts are legit or well-meaning. [UCSB Daily Nexus front-page headlines]
(3) Iran makes its discrimination against Baha'is open and official by denying them national identity cards: To get the cards, Baha'is have no choice but to lie about their religious beliefs by choosing one of the four officially-sanctioned religions on the application form.
(4) Trump and Kushner broke the Middle East peace process: Now they are making it worse by offering a plan designed to help the corrupt Netanyahu win re-election. Not surprisingly, the ill-advised plan was immediately rejected by the Palestinians. The corrupt rich kid who got a White House job from his corrupt father-in-law is now insulting Palestinians, further breaking the peace process. Talk about nepotism and cluelessness!
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iranian human-rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh awarded honorary doctorate by Queen's U. in Canada.
- Suspicious fire in West Los Angeles high-rise injures 13: The old 25-story tower had no sprinkler system.
- Persian music: Talented young artists, enjoying music and bringing joy to others. [4-minute video]
- Yesterday's "World Music Series" noon concert at UCSB Music Bowl: Djembe drum solos by Ngoki. [Videos]
(6) Danger of two old satellites on collision course: They were said to have a 1% chance of colliding over Pittsburgh last night. If they had collided, they would have created a large debris field, endangering many other satellites. The satellites crossed paths without colliding. So, we are safe for now, but the problem of space junk will revisit us soon, and we may not be so lucky next time.
(7) UCSB Materials Research Outreach Symposium [Schedule of events]: Held yesterday and today, the technical gathering showcased research on materials by UCSB researchers and collaborators. I attended just a few talks between my classes, office hours, and other engagements.
Engineering Dean Rod Alferness opened the symposium. The first presentation, by Professor Stephen D. Wilson, was about UCSB's recently established quantum foundry, supported by NSF, in collaboration with other academic and industrial partners. [Images] [Two key slides].
Another talk on Wednesday morning was by Dr. Angela Pitenis, a faculty member with UCSB's Materials Department, who works on soft materials needed for making medical implants. [Images]
Wednesday's last lecture before the poster session and reception, and the day's highlight, was the annual Cheetham Lecture, named in honor of Sir Tony Cheetham, founder of UCSB's Material Research Lab. This year's lecture coincided with the 100th anniversary of the publication of a landmark paper that started the interest in polymers. So, it is fitting that Tim Lodge spoke on "Bicontiuous Structures in Charged Polymer Materials." Bicontinuity is a property that allows a synthetic material to simultaneously possess two distinct properties, such as mechanical strength from one part and good electrical conductivity from the other. [Images]
Today, I sampled a few talks and took a look at some of the posters on display in the venue's lobby. Most of the talks were too specialized for me to make sense of them. However, the mere selection of topics, as well as introductions to talks and transitions between them, convey useful information. Material science/engineering is developing at an amazing pace, particularly in conjuction with nanotechnology. The age of enhanced and made-to-order materials is already here.
2020/01/29 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Remembering basketball legend Kobe Bryant (1978-2020), whose professional home and site of many of his memorable performances, the Staples Center in Los Angeles, hosted Sunday night's Grammy Awards ceremony, where he was remembered fondly, mere hours after his untimely death. [Center] Fight like a girl: Teenager Priyanka Singha Roy beats up three men who tried to sexually assault her. [Right] Cover image of Malcolm Nance's The Plot to Destroy Democracy (see the last item below).
(2) UCLA play of possible interest to my SoCal readers: I plan to attend the play "The Manic Monologues" on Sunday, February 9, 2020, 1:30 PM check-in, 2:00 PM program (James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA; free, but reservations requested). [Right before the event in the next blog entry]
(3) UCLA Bilingual Lectures on Iran: I plan to attend this event on Sunday, February 9, 2020, 4:00-6:00 PM (Dodd Hall 121, UCLA). Dr. Narges Bajoghli of Johns Hopkins University will speak in Persian under the fascinating title "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic."
(4) Iranian chess champion Mitra Hejazipour: Compulsory hijab arises from the thought of woman as the second sex. I will no longer participate in upholding this abominable practice.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Separation of church and state? Here is White House official Paula White debunking the myth!
- International ocean-science satellite #Sentinel6 will help with observations of global sea-level change.
- Four Stanford University researchers create a soft, stretchable battery prototype for wearables.
- Open-access publishing gets a boost: ACM signs agreements with U. California, CMU, MIT, and Iowa State.
- Free Persian-language e-book from a talented writer: Aida Ahadiany's Dr. Brian Climbs Up the Chimney.
- Talk about wrath of nature! [3-minute video]
- German tourist exhibits her love for an Iranian instrument (setar) in southern Iran. [1-minute video]
(6) Book review: Nance, Malcolm (with foreword by Rob Reiner), The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West, unabridged audiobook on 10 CDs, read by Peter Ganim, Hachette Audio, 2018. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Malcolm Nance, a career US Intelligence officer, describes vividly how Russia uses cyber-warfare, propaganda, and alternative reality to manipulate our news and traditional/on-line media to destroy democratic institutions from within. The consequences of not stopping such attacks by Russia and other state and non-state actors are dire indeed!
Weaponizing the news media is a Russian specialty that pre-dates electronic and social media. Nance cites examples from decades ago when the Soviet Union manipulated print and radio/TV news. With the global reach of electronic media, Russia's job in destabilizing the West, by attacking democratic institutions and economic/defense alliances, has become much easier and orders-of-magnitude cheaper.
By supporting right-wing extremist groups worldwide and exploiting wedge issues, such as immigration, class, and race, Russia succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in influencing the 2016 US election, as well as recent elections in several other countries. France was perhaps most successful in confronting and counteracting Russia's cyber-warfare, going as far as setting so-called "honey traps" for Russian hackers to divert their attention.
Nance's cautionary tale received a major boost from a December 2019 Facebook action to neutralize disinformation campaigns by Epoch Media Group and BL Media through the deactivation of 610 Facebook accounts, 89 Pages, 156 Groups, and 72 Instagram accounts (over $9 million in advertising), that used computer-generated faces to spread pro-Trump and anti-Chinese government content. Telltales like distorted backgrounds and misshapen ears helped spot the fakes.
If Nance, currently a US government outsider, can amass so much information about the Russian campaign to destroy our democratic institutions from within, our intelligence community must know a great deal more than they let out, perhaps trying to avoid embarrassment on their part and panic on the part of the public.
2020/01/28 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today's "Pacific Views" talk by Dr. Leah Stokes at the UCSB Library (see the next item below). [Center] After telling thousands of lies and being contradicted by hundreds of former associates, some people still believe this man and think he is the chosen one. Go figure! [Right] Four leading Democratic candidates in the upcoming Iowa caucuses: Sanders, Warren, Biden, Buttigieg.
(2) "Climate Change in Our Backyard: Impacts, Policy, and Politics": This was the title of a fascinating talk by Dr. Leah C. Stokes (UCSB Assistant Professor of Political Science, Environmental Studies, and Bren School) in the framework of UCSB Library's Pacific Views Speaker Series. The talk was tied to "UCSB Reads" program's 2020 book selection, Rising, about sea-level rise. As a scholar/activist with a multidisciplinary outlook, Professor Stokes is uniquely equipped to address the thorny issues associated with climate change in the realms of social impact, political discourse, and policy considerations.
Sea level rise and other impacts of climate change will have a devastating impact on California, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. We in Santa Barbara will lose much of our ocean beaches. And there are serious impacts from extended droughts, mega-wildfires, mudslides, and the like. One important aspect of climate change is the unequal way in which it affects people in different economic classes. The rich use lots of resources and contribute to destroying the nature, whose impact is felt primarily by the poor. Even today, flooding occurs in some areas of the US in the absence of a major rain event.
Progress toward managing the impacts of climate change has been slow. We need major initiatives, because individual acts, helpful as they may be, are woefully inadequate to make a dent in the enormous challenges we face. To be more effective, one should consider joining groups (e.g., 350.org, Sunrise Movement, Citizens Climate Lobby, and Sierra Club), volunteer for an electoral campaign, or lobby for climate policy. The media is for the most part silent in linking catastrophic events, such as the devastating fires in Australia, to climate change. In fact, well-funded disinformation campaigns are doing just the opposite, blaming environmentalist for setting the fires intentionally to advance their cause.
Unfortunately, in some domains, we have been going backwards: As clean nuclear power plants are decommissioned, they are replaced primarily by natural-gas plants, rather than renewable sources. Shortsighted coal subsidies in some states are promoting the most-polluting sources of energy. It is important to think strategically and deeply. For example, term limits for politicians, generally considered to be a positive development, may actually increase the influence of interest groups with deep pockets in the face of less-experienced politicians and staffers.
I eagerly await the release of the forthcoming Oxford University Press title, Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States, on which today's talk was based. [Images] [Leah Stokes on Twitter] [Climate book club] [Home page of Leah Stokes]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A powerful message to the US Republicans and all idol worshippers worldwide! [6-minute video]
- Not one word from Trump, WH, US Senate, or GOP about 3 rockets that struck US Embassy in Baghdad.
- Mary Mohammadi has been missing in Iran since the last street protest of two weeks ago.
- Important facts about the new coronavirus for those who prefer to have the information in Persian. [Text]
- Tunisian activist Lina Ben Mhenni, who chronicled the beginnings of the "Arab Spring," dead at 36.
- Prime Minister of Finland: Women being in charge benefits everyone, women and men. [Interview]
(4) Five confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US, 2 in California: This is already getting scary, even without the as-yet unconfirmed claims that Wuhan, China, where the virus originated, is the site of biowarfare labs. Could it be that the virus escaped from a biowarfare research facility? Even the thought is frightening. I await further information in this regard. As of yesterday, DNA sleuths have read the virus's genome and traced it to an animal market in Wuhan.
[Today's update: At least 100 people are monitored in 26 US states, with a quarter of them cleared.]
2020/01/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Kobe Bryant (1978-2020) dead at 41: He perished yesterday with 8 others, including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, in a Calabasas, CA, helicopter crash. Among his many honors were 5 NBA titles, 2 Olympics gold medals, and 1 Academy Award. Bryant was on the right side of history, speaking against divisiveness and hatred (tweet). Last night's Grammy Awards ceremony paid a tribute to the basketball legend on short notice. [Center] Nature dancing: Artist Chris Kenny's collection of twigs. [Right] The majestic Mount Damavand, a dormant volcano near Tehran, Iran.
(2) US veterans group up in arms against Trump: He has been asked to apologize for referring to some three-dozen cases of traumatic brain injury suffered by US troops as a result of Iran's missile attack on a US base in Iraq as "headaches and a couple other things."
(3) Trump's so-called "Peace Plan" isn't about reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians: It includes nothing that would make the Paletinians take it seriously. It is designed to help Netanyahu's re-election amid corruption charges, which would then help his own re-election bid.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- If I were Bernie Sanders, I'd be very alarmed by praise coming from Donald Trump!
- It is unfortunate that Trump has created such a mess that Americans crave safe, boring candidates.
- Humor: Ask five engineers and you'll get five different explanations—six if one of them went to Stanford.
- Riddle — Q: How do you get Trump to change a light bulb? A: Tell him Obama put it in.
- Persian poetry: A wonderful poem by Parvin Etessami.
(5) Mystery passenger: According to CNN, one of the two Ukranian passengers on the downed UIA Flight 752 was 38-year-old Olena Malakhova, an arms dealer who previously helped skirt sanctions against Libya.
(6) In defense of Masih Alinejad: A couple of Facebook friends and Twitter users took issue with this repost of mine about reporter Masih Alinejad. I am sharing my response below, because friends may not have seen it.
I too am ambivalent about Masih Alinejad. When I first saw a photo of her with Mike Pompeo, I was shocked and made a critical post about her. However, her service in exposing the misogyny of the Iranian regime and extreme prejudice against women in Iranian laws and social structure, as well as organizing opposition inside and outside Iran to compulsory hijab, is undeniable. Normally, she would have been employed by some news service in Iran, but absent that, she has made the decision to use Voice of America and other American resources to spread her message. Not the ideal choice from my point of view, but I am still amazed by how much she has accomplished. Let's not fall into the trap of demanding perfection from those who do something useful for society.
2020/01/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Whose political analysis do you believe: A woman with a PhD in political science or a bunch of male college drop-outs? [Center] Persian music: Two SoCal concerts by Koobang Ensemble. [Right] Historical reflection: Something being legal doesn't necessarily make it right.
(2) On Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attacks: Parts of the FBI report on 9/11's Saudi connection are still classified, despite valiant efforts by the victims' families to get to the bottom of things by uncovering the identities of Saudi officials purported to have helped the hijackers.
(3) Book-burning in Iran: This cleric, shown burning a medical textbook to demonstrate his trust in Islam over science, no doubt has access to modern hospitals in Iran and abroad for his own health needs.
(4) Lack of civility in Iran afflicts even an esteemed cultural venue: Manouchehr Sahbai, guest conductor for Tehran's Symphony Orchestra, badmouths its permanent conductor, Shardad Rohani, in his opening remarks, and the audience sinks to his level by screaming obscenities in protest. Orchestra members then agree to play a few pieces only if the guest conductor is kicked out.
(5) China's ambitious real-estate developments, re-creating world-famous cities, such as Paris, London, and Venice, are turning into ghost towns due to an economic bust.
(6) New linguistic invention by Lou Dobbs: The most historic president!
"People know, after 3 years of this President, the most historic President in our Country's history, that there is no one who can touch what he's done in 3 years, foreign policy, domestic policy, ..."
(7) Humor, the ultimate coping mechanism: Iran is imposing divorce quotas on its provinces. Now, people are joking about divorce tourism, about the government imposing a tax on the coveted divorce slots to make money, and about scalpers selling the slots on the black market!
(8) Fareed Zakaria interviews Iraq's President Bahram Salih: A very well-spoken man, who is quite careful when talking about Iran and its role in Iraq. The full video isn't available yet. [1-minute video]
2020/01/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The emerging black superpower: In 30 years, Nigeria will have more people than the US and by the end of the century, it will be the third most-populous country behind India and China, and the most-densely populated. Imagine how many Nigerian scam e-mails your great-grandkids will receive! [Center] Cover image of Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (see the last item below). [Right] "We the People" turtle food—Tasty bits of shredded US Constitution.
(2) Activist under attack: Journalist Masih Alinejad is being relentlessly attacked by the Iranian regime, its left- and right-wing opposition, and other bastions of patriarchy. Here is part of a woman's spirited defense.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy Chinese New Year: Entering the year of the rat!
- Andre Rieu delights his audience by paying homage to the Macarena!
- Persian music: The Kurdish band Mastoor performs "Ye Shab-e Zaar o Parishan." [4-minute video]
- Modern Kurdish dance music: Dina Qaysari performs a song by Halkawt Zaher.
(4) Book review: Perez, Caroline Criado, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Blackstone Audio, 2019. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Perez presents compelling arguments on why we need women in positions of power and influence. We are all aware of the gender pay gap and various other instances of gender inequity, such as in hiring decisions and promotions. Gender data gap is even more important, because it affects so many different aspects of women's lives in society.
I can't even begin to summarize all the different ways in which information about women is missing from our data sets and how the gap affects women's lives, so I will merely cite a few notable examples.
For years, crash-test dummies were built to male specifications, so data on the effects of car accidents on women was lacking. When testers finally came around to considering women less than a decade ago, they simply built scaled-down versions of the dummies, ignoring different weight distributions in women, not to mention pregnant women. As a result, women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash. Trials for new drugs have also systematically ignored women. Even when women are included in the trials, gender-disaggregated results are usually unavailable.
Facebook has had female employees for many years. Yet, until COO Sheryl Sandberg became pregnant, the issue of parking accommodation for pregnant employees was on no one's radar. Other instances of lack of data or accommodations in physical facilities include those of bathrooms, chair/desk heights, and stairway pitches. When women are forced in military training to walk at the same pace/gait as men, they suffer stresses and injuries. Lighting, and personal safety concerns more generally (as in parking structures), are among other overlooked issues.
There are numerous other examples, including in the tech world, where data supposedly rules. Phones that are too big for women's hands make one-handed operation all but impossible, leading to usage problems or even injuries. Women are much more likely than men to rely on public transport, yet design of buses/trains and setting of their schedules are male-centered (home-office trips, rather than school/childcare drop-offs/pick-ups or shopping).
Perhaps the most stunning data gap belongs to the way work, productivity, and leisure time are measured. Unpaid work, such as child and elder care, done predominantly by women, is usually missing in economic studies and GDP calculations. In fact, we are conditioned to associate offices with work and homes with leisure, whereas, even ignoring domestic help, home is quite often a woman's primary or secondary workplace.
I found this book eye-opening and transformative. I was aware of some of the issues addressed by Perez, but found many instances where I wondered aloud, "Why hadn't I thought of that?" I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to examine the underlying causes of gender inequity in our societies, even when there is no systemic patriarchal oppression or religious dogma and the men running the show are well-meaning.
2020/01/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Time magazine cover celebrates Gaurdians of the Year, the public servants. [Center] What has Jared Kushner done to deserve a Time magazine cover? [Right] Mr. Peanut, 1916-2020: Planters has killed off its 104-year-old mascot, originally designed by a schoolboy as part of a contest.
(2) Harvey Weinstein's dilemma: He uses a walker or holds someone's hand to walk and looks disheveled during court appearances. This may create sympathy for him in court, but his horrendous appearance punches a hole in the defense he offers that his sexual encounters with so many gorgeous women were consensual!
(3) US continues to decline from its top position in science and engineering: According to Washington Post, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, a federal agency within NSF, has reached this conclusion by examining research expenditures, journal articles, scientific workforce, and education data.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Adam Schiff's closing remarks: Yesterday, at the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. [9-minute video]
- Riddle — Q: How do you get Trump to change a light bulb? A: Tell him Obama put it in.
- New climate simulations that take clouds into account predict more warming than previously thought.
- A music/sports video, featuring many action scenes from Rio 2016 Paralympics and more: "Yes I Can"
- Tweets of the day, for my Persian-speaking readers: About Neda Agha Soltan and Masih Alinejad. [Image]
- And here is a heartfelt Facebook post, in Persian, by Dr. Shokoufeh Taghi about the UIA Flight 752 crash.
(5) The Riemann Hypothesis in computer science: Yu. Matiyasevich of St. Petersburg has reformulated the Riemann Hypothesis as the statement that a particular explicitly-presented register machine with 29 registers and 130 instructions never halts. The hypothesis, quite important in mathematics, also has surprising implications to computer science. For example, the currently-best deterministic algorithm for testing the primatlity of a number p has a complexity of at least p^6, but if the Riemann Hypothesis is assumed correct, the complexity goes down to p^4.
(6) The Vital Two Percent: Over the past few decades, the United States has spent 2.0-2.5% of its GDP on R&D. This is a kind of investment that bears fruit many years, or even decades, later. About 1/5 of this investment comes from the government, which is important to give bold, high-risk ideas a chance to flourish. If the government cuts down on its share of R&D funding, the highest-risk projects, which have the greatest potential returns, will suffer.
2020/01/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Adam Schiff is showing a mastery of persuasion and detail at Trump's impeachment trial: His impressive presentation will likely not lead to Trump's immediate removal from office, given the blind loyalty of GOP senators, but it will surely persuade many voters to kick him out, come November 2020. [Center] Holocaust Remembrance, 75th Anniversary: Dignitaries gather in Jerusalem to mark the occasion. Several speakers warn about growing anti-Semitism across the world, asserting that remembering is not enough. [Right] Jim Lehrer dead at 85: America and its news community lost one of their most eloquent and respected personalities.
(2) Joking with the news (credit: Comedian Seth Meyers): United Methodist Church is splitting into two churches. One will allow gay/lesbian marriages. The other will have a terrible choir!
(3) 'Tooth-shattering' response: A woman associated with Iran's Islamic regime opined on state TV that people who don't like the current situation should go live in a different country. A viewer tweeted, "It's difficult for 75 million citizens to settle elsewhere. It's much easier for regime supporters to move!" [Persian version]
(4) Two images originally posted on January 23, 2018: Iran's working children (art) and a snow woman, built in the Iranian city of Marivan to protest compulsory hijab laws. [Images]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Several Chinese cities quarantined to prevent further spread of a new coronavirus outbreak.
- Camera that shoots 1 trillion frames per second can capture previously unseen phenomena.
- Tesla becomes the first US automaker to surpass $100 billion market valuation.
- Astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli could be the first woman to land on the Moon. [Bio and other info]
- Tweets of the day, for my Persian-speaking readers. [Tweet images]
- Goleta seems to have moved to the Southern Hemisphere: It's summer-like this week and next. [Image]
(6) Why does time only go forward? This is one of the most fundamental questios of science. If you believe a new theory just unveiled, time doesn't have to go forward. It goes forward for us because we are in one of two mirror universes created by Big Bang. In the other universe, time moves backward. But this creates many questions, rather than answer our original one.
Like many recent theories in physics, laymen like me don't understand its basis and it looks just like handwaving. For example, the amount of matter and energy in the universe do not match our observations? Just say that there exist dark matter and dark energy!
Readers may find my review of Richard Morris's Time's Arrows: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time helpful.
2020/01/22 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Topsy-turvy: The hatched areas in the middle of this divided UCSB bike path supposedly tell bikers to stay out. But then at pedestrian crossings, where the center divider is supposed to provide protection, there is no hatching! [Center] Humor: Ayatalloh Khamenei is in Santa Barbara for the Shakesbeer festival! (Photo credit: Santa Barbara Sentinel). [Right] Mini-pizzas on sourdough bread and hearty vegetable soup for dinner (with leftovers). Your place was empty!
(2) Another case of foreign interference in US affairs: Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman has been alleged to have been personally involved in hacking Jeff Bezos's phone.
(3) World Music Series noon concert, under today's gorgeous blue skies, at UCSB Music Bowl: Kalinka, a Santa-Barbara-based quartet, with Fred Nadis (clarinet), Eric Ederer (guitar), Besnik Yzeiri (violin), and Andrew Fedders (bass), performed. The videos are variations on a Jewish tune, a dance tune from the Balkans, and two more pieces of Balkan music. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- New flu-like coronavirus epidemic is spreading: A man in Washington State seems to be the first US case.
- Oldest employee of the state of Indiana is retiring at 102: I have another 30 years to go!
- Modern Kurdish dance music: Dina Qaysari performs a song by Halkawt Zaher.
- An impressive magic-trick routine, performed at a talent competition show. [3-minute video]
(5) Learning about sex and gender specturms: Yesterday, I attended a 2-hour seminar "Queer & Trans 101," the introductory session in "Queer Trans Identities & Experiences Seminars" offered by UCSB's Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity.
I am a member of "Men Advocating for Gender Equity" (MAGE). As part of our early deliberations, we came upon the question of who can be a member of the group ("Men") and who are we trying to help ("Women")? Thus, we felt a need to educate ourselves on sex and gender identity/expression spectrums. The seminar was led by a couple of very helpful and articulate individuals, who provided us with much useful information about the LGBTQIA+ community, the basic concepts and terminology, and pertinent resources for digging deeper.
One take-away from yesterday's consultations was that we should avoid being bogged down in terminology and in efforts to be overly inclusive. There are many problems of inequity, even if we focus on just a subset of the sex/gender spectrum. There are also race, ethnicity, religion, age, and other aspects to discrimination and the resulting inequities. Doing something in a limited area is better than not doing anything, because we can't do all. As they say, "perfect is the enemy of good."
I will write more on this topic as I learn more, as well as on MAGE activities.
2020/01/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Persian poetry: Remembering Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi, the great 10th-century poet credited with resurrecting the Persian language after the Arab invasion, on the occasion on his birthday. [Center] Restoration and painting of a Qajar-era Iranian relic by Sima Azimi. [Right] Cartoon of the day: The wag-the-dog war that stopped short of becoming a real war.
(2) Trump's only hope in keeping his misdeeds secret is for the Republican support to hold up in the Senate: So, he is pandering to Republicans by praising their unity. But there is much push-back from both conservative and moderate Republicans.
(3) The oldest material on Earth: A 220-pound meteorite, which hit the Australian town of Murchison in 1969, contains 7-billion-years-old astral dust predating the birth of the Sun by more than 2 billion years.
(4) Amnesty International reports instances of brutality and sexual abuse by Iran's security forces against those peacefully protesting the downing of UIA Flight 752.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Partial list of Alan Dershowitz clients: O. J. Simpson; Mike Tyson; Jeffrey Epstein; Donald Trump. Enough said!
- Soliciting murder: An Iranian MP says he will pay $3 million to anyone who kills President Trump.
- Iran's Islamic regime creates the illusion of being popular by bussing people to rallies and feeding them.
- The first paragraph of Martin Luther King's letter, written from the Birmingham City jail.
(6) Khamenei is increasingly isolated from the realities of life in Iran: He cares more about Iran's position in Lebanon and Syria, and sabre-rattling against the US and Israel, than about Iranians suffering from crushing economic hardships and devastating natural disaters.
(7) Gelareh Jabbari, Iran's state-TV host of the program "Good Morning Iran" apologizes on Istagram for lying to viewers for 13 years. Most humans are forgiving kinds, but is it acceptable for someone to occupy a position of power, use that power against the people, and then be relieved of responsibility with an apology?
(8) For my Persian-speaking readers: A Facebook friend's partly-humorous admonition of those who keep traveling to Iran (ending up in prison as hostages) after defecting to the West.
(9) Final thought for the day (applicable to Iran and today's USA): "Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." ~ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
2020/01/20 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Happy Martin Luther King Day! Here are a couple of MLK quotes for the occasion. * "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ** "We need leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity." [Right] Unprecedented flooding in southeastern Iran (see the last item below).
(2) From an interview with actress Alfre Woodard (Time magazine, issue of Janauary 20, 2020):
Q: You have played something like 120 different roles in horror, comedy, melodrama, action.
A: Gangster! I was a gangster. And the President! Not at the same time. I could do that now.
(3) Holocaust history: Surviving members among 999 young women, now in their 90s, thought that the first Jewish transport taking them to Auschwitz was some kind of adventure.
(4) Two tweets about Iran: One notes that Khamenei did not even mention disastrous flooding in southeastern Iran during his Friday Prayers sermon. The other one honors a 49-year-old nurse, mother of four, who was killed by a bullet to her heart during recent street protests, as she headed home from work. [Tweet images]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Woman drives into oncoming traffic, believing that God would take care of her and other possible victims.
- New Yorker cartoon caption of the day: "Is there any way to get out of impeachment jury duty?"
- Modern Kurdish music: Berbuk Nasli performs a dance tune by Halkawt Zaher. [5-minute video]
- "People Have the Power": Patti Smith performs with Choir! Choir! Choir! and 250 back-up singers. [Video]
(6) Humor in the face of tagedy: The downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 had one survivor. He is stuck at his girlfriend's place in Tehran, not knowing how to break the news to his wife that he lied about having to go to Kiev for urgent business.
(7) Extracting oxygen from moon dust: Last year, a paper was published about the oxygen content of moon dust. Now, scientists are working on a large-scale facility to do the extraction for future moon missions.
(8) Two heartwrenching disasters: The shock of 176 deaths in the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 has somehow overshadowed the plight of people in Iran's Sistan and Bluchistan Province suffering from unprecedented flooding. If you don't have a favorite charity through which to contribute to relief efforts, you can use Child Foundation's Facebook fundraiser.
2020/01/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranians subtly reject the slogans "Death to America" and "Death to Israel": At a mosque's threshold, in the southern province of Khuzistan, worshippers avoid putting their shoes on the American and Israeli flags. [Center] The process of writing a book: I suspect that the creator of this graphic was thinking about writing a novel, but I can tell you that writing a technical book is no different! [Right] Cover image for Salman Rushdie's Quichotte: A Novel (see the last item below).
(2) Hamed Esmaeilion's heart-wrenching love letter (in Persian) to his late wife Dr. Parisa Eghbalian, who, along with their daughter Reera, perished in the downing of UIA Flight 752.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Bone-spurs Donnie called top military generals a "bunch of dopes and babies" in a 2017 meeting.
- For my Persian-speaking readers: Two tweets contrasting Khamenei's words with those of Justin Trudeau.
- A growing number of Iranian students with valid visas are being deported from US airports.
- Ken Starr to defend Trump during his impeachment trial: As if he weren't hated enough already!
- UC proposes annual tuition increases over five years: Bye-bye what was left of affordable education!
(4) Book review: Rushdie, Salman, Quichotte: A Novel, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by Vikas Adam, Random House Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The audiobook begins by reviewing the various spellings and pronunciations of the word "Quichotte," concluding with the recommendation of the French pronunciation "key-shot" for reading the book.
Rushdie's Quichotte unfolds at three levels. Underneath, is the story of an aging traveling salesman, Ismail Smile, an Indian-American who falls in love with a young Indian-American woman on TV and sets out, with his imaginary son in tow, on a letter-writing campaign to win her heart. At the middle level, is the Indian-born spy-novelist Sam DuChamp, who, bored with his main line of creating fictional characters and mind-numbing plots, decides to write a story featuring a much more realistic character, a TV-obsessed traveling salesman. Then, there is the top level, from which we look down on both the writer and his creation, the Quixotic salesman, both of them pedestrian characters longing to be heroes.
Many of the novel's characters are East-Indians pursuing their dreams in Trumpland. The plight of immigrant families, separated and spread over several countries, facing even greater challenges under the new anti-immigrant sentiments, is a central focus of the novel beyond the story of its fictional characters. Rushdie tries to be funny at times, but the humor falls flat for the most part.
Rushdie's life story is, of course, compelling. Should one take the fact that he has lived under death threats for decades, because his work was deemed blasphemous, into account in reviewing his work, or should one focus only on the words on the page (or in the audio file) only? Separating the writer from the work, which is always difficult, is even more so in the case of Rushdie.
I must say I was underwhelmed with this latest novel of Rushdie, perhaps because I went in with high expectation. I have not actually read any of his previous books (though, I started on Satanic Verses, before giving up), but who could escape indirect knowledge of Rushdie's work and the praise it has received? Was Rushdie trying to pull a Sam DuChamp, writing something different from his previous body of work? Did he try to rebel by creating mundane characters, surrounded by references to pop culuture, instead of philosophically and morally complex issues?
If you are a Salman Rushdie fan, read the novel and decide for yourself. If not, then you can safely stay away from this one.
2020/01/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Fourth Annual Women's March Santa Barbara (see the last item below). [Right] Where are Dubai's royal women? They keep fleeing the ultra-rich, "progressive" city-state. One of them, Princess Haya, daughter of Jordan's late King Hussein, is in London, using a high-priced "celebrity" lawyer to seek divorce from Dubai's ruler and gain the custody of their two children.
(2) A union representing UC Berkeley's teaching assistants wins in arbitration: At issue was Berkeley's EECS Department hiring TAs for 8 hours per week to avoid paying for their tuition, fees, and childcare, which are mandated at 10 hours per week. Millions will be paid back to hundreds of TAs.
(3) ERA is back in the spotlight: Virginia ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment to put it past the threshold needed for enactment. There are some complications, though, because this comes way after the deadline for state endorsements. Let's hope our lawmakers can find a way around this problem.
(4) On anonymity in social media: Yesterday, I tweeted, in English and Persian, about Khamenei's Friday Prayers sermon, calling it insulting to the grieving families and friends of the UIA plane crash victims: Within a few minutes, I was threatened with physical violence by an anonymous troll (@ssperssian) who indicated that I should watch my words, because his group is dispersed and can easily reach me anywhere on Earth.
Apparently, the cloak of anonymity emboldens people to issue edicts and threats that they wouldn't dare issue otherwise. The trouble with anonymity is that I can't even be sure that this person is a troll of Islamic Republic of Iran. He can just as easily be a part of some other group trying to make Khamenei and his supporters look worse than they really are. Anonymity and disinformation go hand in hand. Will social media survive the double-threat of anonymity and disinformation?
(5) Fourth Annual Women's March Santa Barbara: The crowd was a tad smaller than in prior years, but there was an enormous amount of energy from women marchers and speakers. The event started with a rally in SB County Courthouse's Sunken Garden, with marchers going from there to De La Guerra Plaza and on to the waterfront. [More photos] The pre-march events included a dance [video 1], a number of brief speeches, and poetry recitation [video 2]. Here are a couple of videos from the march on State Street [video 3] [video 4]. Drummers leading the march created a festive, high-energy atmosphere [video 5] [video 6]. The organizers' final message was that the Women's March won't end when we go home; we'll have to stay vigilant and active. And here's what one of the signs read: "Girls just wanna have FUN-damental human rights!"
2020/01/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The annual technology-review issue of IEEE Specturm, January 2020, lists autonomous fighter jets, wafer-scale chips, drone delivery, exascale computing, robot farm hands, and a new generation of Mars landers as technologies that will mature this year. [Center] Iran's Supreme Leader Khamanei at Friday Prayers (see the last item below). [Right] The "hidden figures" of Colossus: The team that built and operated the Colussus code-breaking computers at Britain's Bletchley Park during World War II, under the leadership of Alan Turing, included a large number of women mathematicians and coders.
(2) A dozen US service members were injured in the Iranian missile attack of January 8 on two bases in Iraq, despite the initial Pentagon denial. Lies from all sides!
(3) #ArsonEmergency is fake news: Australians are facing what the US faced in 2016. Hundreds of trolls and bots are promoting the idea that the country's devastating bushfires were set on purpose; extreme weather caused by climate change had nothing to do with it. A small number of fires may have been due to arson, which makes the false claims appear credible. #ArsonDeniers
(4) Project cost over-runs are common, but these national and multi-national projects take the cake:
Suez Canal, 1900% (x20); Sydney Opera House, 1400% (x15); Montreal Summer Olympics, 1300% (x14); Concorde, 1100% (x12); Scotish Parliament Building, 1000% (x11) [Source: E&T magazine, October 2019]
(5) Perhaps Rudy Giuliani wasn't kidding about having an insurance policy: He has become a serious liability to Trump, especially after evidence presented by his Ukranian associate Lev Parnas. Yet, Trump is still defending him as a top crime-fighter and a "good man." Anyone else would have been thrown under the bus by now!
(6) I have no sympathy for the Brits and their expelled Ambassador, who has also been threatened with physical violence: Why does England still have an embassy in Iran, after the Islamic regime's goons scaled the embassy walls and destroyed everything inside?
(7) The mullahs refuse to learn from their past mistakes: A high-ranking Iranian official says that instead of expelling the British Ambassador, he must be chopped into pieces. And the students who refused to step on American and Israeli flags are spies and must be court-marshaled as the enemy's fifth column. [Tweet]
(8) Crocodile tears: After many years, Khamenei returned to the Friday Prayers tribune to address the country's crisis. While his sermon wasn't as fiery as many had expected, he did accuse the Iranian people and foreign powers of undue attention to the downed Ukraine International Airlines plane "to make us forget the martyrdom of two of Islam's warriors." Talk about being delusional, while insulting grieving families and friends!
2020/01/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Itzhak Perlman turns 75: He'll be performing in Santa Barbara's Granada Theater on January 21. There is also a screening of Alison Chernick's biopic film "Itzhak" tonight at UCSB. Here is my way of celebrating the maestro's BD. (Biopic's trailer) (Perlman performing "Theme from Schindler's List"). [Center] Full moon rising over the snow-covered Mount Damavand, Iran (photo tweeted by Majid Ghohroodi). [Right] On markets hitting record highs (see the next item below).
(2) Market performance isn't a good indicator of prosperity for workers: Trump defenders point to record-setting markets to claim that the economy is is in great shape. But markets doing well helps only those who own stocks directly (the rich) or indirectly (the upper middle class, with 401K and similar investments), not those living on meager incomes. The theory that when the rich do better, the poor also benefit (trickle-down economics) has been debunked repeatedly.
Eighty percent of American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck (Guardian). Many of these workers will be devastated if they face an emergency, because they have virtually no savings from which to draw. Over the past two decades, the fraction of national income that has gone to workers dropped from 66% to 60%, the greatest expansion of wealth inquality in US history.
Since 1973, the median income, adjusted for inflation, has stayed flat at around $70,000 for college-educated men and has gone down by 34%, from $53,000 to $35,000, for men with high school education (factory workers, etc.). Needless to say, the numbers are signifcantly lower for women.
(3) Evelyn Yang reveals that she was sexually assaulted by her doctor while pregnant: In a classic case of minimizing the severity of sexual assault and disbelieving victims, the doctor had been arrested before, but was allowed to return to his practice, leading to many additional assault victims, including the wife of presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
(4) Theoretical advance in the speed of multiplication: The commonly-used multiplication algorithm we learn in school has O(n^2) complexity for n-digit numbers, because we have to multiply each digit of one number by all the digits of the other number. For decades, researchers thought that it should be possible to multiply n-digit numbers in O(n log n) time, but no one knew how to do it or even prove that it's doable.
Along the way, Anatoly Karatsuba, challenged by the brilliant Andrey Kolmogorov, constructed an O(n^1.58) multiplication algorithm that had eluded others, Arnold Schonhage and Volker Strassen made clever use of the fast-Fourier-transform (FFT) algorithm to reduce the time complexity to O(n log n log log n), Martin Furer managed to reduce the final log log n term in O(n log n log log n) to something even smaller, but attempts to remove that term altogether, to get the simple O(n log n), were unsuccessful.
That is, until early in 2019, when David Harvey and Joris van der Hoeven developed a multiplication algorithm with O(n log n) complexity. This solves the problem theoretically, as it is unlikely for multiplication to have a lower complexity than O(n log n), although we don't know for sure. However, other than Karatsuba's algorithm, which is used in practice to multiply numbers with thousands of digits, the asymptotically more-efficient algorithms are unlikely to be usable, unless researchers manage to improve on the huge constants involved. [Source: News article by Erica Klarreich in Communications of the ACM, issue of January 2020]
2020/01/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] An old Chevrolet at UCSB: Photographed on January 14, 2020, the impeccable 2-door car is likely an Impala from the early 1960s. [Center] Unedited drone-camera images.
(2) UCSB's resident expert on Iran interviewed on the conflicts in the region: Sociology Professor Kevin B. Anderson says that the real story isn't missiles and assassinations, which our media covers, but crushing economic sanctions that have made life unbearable for the average Iranian, as well as at least a decade of protests, with women at the forefront. "The fact that more women than men attend universities, that more books are translated each year into Persian than Arabic, that Iran has feminist publishing houses that translate many works in feminist theory, flies in the face of the 'othering' carried out by a U.S. mass media filled with stereotypes of fanatical terrorists and intensely pious Shia Muslims. Iran is in fact as polarized as the U.S., with a hard core of strong regime supporters, and equally hard core of committed oppositionists, and a vast majority in the middle that by now probably leans much more toward the opposition."
(3) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: The speaker for our January 15, 2020, technical talk, "Shattering Fundamental Design Barriers of End-to-End Ultrahigh Data-Rate Transceivers: Direct Modulation in RF Domain," was Dr. Payam Heydari, Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Irvine, Fellow of IEEE, and Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE Microwave Society, DML 2019-2021 (PhD, USC, 2001; BS & MS, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, 1992 & 1995). Dr. Heydari's other honors and awards can be found on the IEEE CCS event page and DML speaker page. [See also IEEE CCS schedule of technical talks]
All-digital RF transceivers are reaching their limits that make going beyond 10 Gbps incredibly challenging in silicon technologies. Dr. Heydari elaborated on the nature of the challenges and argued that realizing modulation and demodulation schemes directly in RF domain can take us to data rates of 100 Gbps and beyond. Dr. Heydari then discussed transmitter/receiver chip prototypes developed by his research group to achieve extremely power-efficient 15+ Gbps data rates.
[PDF slides]
[FB post, with photos]
[Tweet]
2020/01/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Volcanic ash covers large areas in the Philippines, creating health hazards. [Top center] Persian poetry (a verse by Fazel Nazari): One should ask the triumphant Rostam / What he told Tahmineh about the killing of Sohrab. [Top right] Iran protests continue in 2020: In one gathering, at Shahid Beheshti Univeristy, a vast majority of protesting students walked around, rather than step on, US and Israeli flags painted from side to side of the walkway. [Bottom row] A few interesting food/drink-related memes.
(2) After lies and finger-pointing, Iranian authorities now call the victims of UIA Flight 752 "martyrs": The same mullahs and maddahs, from whom the victims had fled to study or settle in the West, are now shedding crocodile tears for them! [Poster]
(3) Rape threats used as a tool to subdue Iranian women: This misogynist, speaking on the official state TV of Iran, addresses a woman activist, scaring her of ISIS rapists and concluding, "maybe you'd enjoy it"!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Oscars nominees 2020: The full list. [The awards show will be on ABC, Sunday, February 9, 5:00 PM PST]
- Humor: Trump's Iran strategy, in a Beatles parody song.
- QE II "approves" part-time leave from royal duties: phew, I am relieved! What exactly are "royal duties"?
- Flood victims in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan provinces all but forgotten by their government.
- Microsoft and other tech giants have been paying the ad-blocking industry to let their ads through.
- Generous donations from UCSB staff and faculty allow students to pick out free professional outfits.
(5) "Machine Learning in High-Stakes Settings: Risks and Opportunities": This was the title of an interesting talk today by Maria De-Arteaga, a joint PhD candidate in Machine Learning and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Machine Learning Department and Heinz College. A common fear with regard to machine learning is its potential use in critical decision-making and associated reliability and fairness issues. Healthcare, hiring, child welfare, and the criminal justice system are notable examples. Ms. De-Arteaga characterized how societal biases encoded in data may be reproduced and amplified by machine-learning models, and presented an algorithm to mitigate biases without assuming access to protected attributes. Even if data does not encode discriminatory biases, limitations of the observed outcomes still hinder the effective application of standard machine-learning methods to improve decision-making. Challenges discussed by Ms. De-Arteaga included the selective labels problem and omitted payoff bias. She then proceeded to propose a methodology to estimate and leverage human consistency to improve algorithmic decision making.
[Photos]
(6) "Science in a Fact-Free World": This was the title of a public lecture by Katharine Hayhoe (Atmospheric scientist, Director of Texas Tech University's Climate Science Center, and lead-author for the US National Climate Assessments under Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations), held in UCSB's Campbell Hall this evening as part of the "Forces of Nature" series that ties into the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the "UCSB Reads 2020" book, Rising.
I was blown away by Dr. Hayhoe's knowledge and presentation skills. She captivated the capacity Campbell Hall audience, particularly by her effective use of interactions involving the audience logging on to a Web page, answering questions, rating various options, and so on.
Dr. Hayhoe is a visionary, with many honors and accolades, including being named one of Time magazine's 100 most-influential people, Fortune's world's greatest leaders, and Politico's 50 thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics. If you get a chance to hear Dr. Hayhoe up close, do not miss it, because it is a transformational experience.
A recurring theme in Dr. Hayhoe's talk tonight was the need to be genuine, creative, and tactical in the discussion of climate-change topics. Just reciting facts will not convert those who are in denial of the realities of climate change. Try to find common values that you both agree on and proceed from there.
The next best thing to hearing Dr. Hayhoe in person is to watch her 17-minute TED talk entitled "The Most Important Thing You Can Do to Fight Climate Change: Talk About It." [Images]
2020/01/13 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Man, who survived in remote Alaska wilderness for 3 weeks following his cabin burning down, is spotted and rescued. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Iranian authorities apologize to the people for killing 176 on UIA Flight 752. [Right] Australia air-drops vegies in bushfire areas to feed the animals.
(2) As happened in the Khashoggi murder case in Saudi Arabia, Iran will likely try and quickly execute a handful of low-level operatives and declare "case closed, justice accomplished" in the downing of UIA passenger jet. Mark my words!
(3) What Khamenei said upon the downing of an Iranian passenger jet over the Persian Gulf: "You call it human error? How dare you?" (There is no exact equivalent for the Persian expression "ghalat kardid")
(4) Iranian authorities, including FM Javad Zarif, accept responsibility and apologize (sort of) for shooting down a Ukranian passenger jet, only after concluding that they can't hide the truth, given all the independently-collected evidence presented over the past three days. [Tweet image]
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A plane wasn't the only thing that crashed; truthfulness and trust also crashed. [Iran editorial, in Persian]
- I can't believe that I now find George W. Bush's words refreshing: What a difference a decade makes!
- Persian poetry: The protest poem "Azadi" ("Freedom"), recited by old-time Iranian singer Dariush Eghbali.
- Musical instruments made of ice. [7-minute video]
- Persian poetry: Mahzad Razi recites verses from her own poem. [1-minute video]
- Humor: The next hurricane projected to reach Alabama should be named "Sharpie"!
(6) Athletics admissions under scrutiny: Following scandals about bribery and unwarranted athletics admissions at a number of big-name schools, University of California campuses will be forming oversight committees so that faculty members can keep an eye on such admissions. This slide is from the January 9, 2020, session of Faculty Legislature at UCSB.
(7) They called it human error: But the take-off protocol at Imam Khomeini International Airport entails three separate authorizations by the air-defense unit. [Tweet image]
(8) Sharif University of Technology's 16 victims of the UIA plane crash: SUT's Alumni Association publishes a list of names with photos and urges the university to erect a campus memorial honoring the victims.
(9) I was tempted to buy this 65" OLED TV at Costco: They had the smaller 55" model on display as well for $500 less. I was impressed by the bright, sharp image and by the fact that the display is essentially a pane of glass ~5 mm thick. In the end, I decided that I don't watch enough TV to justify the investment. The news programs that I do watch look fine on my smaller, old-tech TVs!
2020/01/12 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers in the movie 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood' (see the last item below). [Center] Even Queen Elizabeth suffers from manspreading! [Right] Trump has probably put this issue of Time magazine on the Oval Office wall and is throwing darts at it!
(2) Lock her up? Another H. Clinton investigation, this one by Trump's own puppet at the US Justice Department, comes to an end without finding any wrongdoing. But will Trump and his followers abandon their vilification and conspiracy theories? I doubt it! [#LockHerUp]
(3) A world without pain: The woman who experiences suffering as an "abstract thing," making her unable to feel hopeless, may hold the genetic key to anxiety, trauma, and healing for all humans.
(4) How Russia bugged the typewriters at an American embassy: An account of actual bug-hunting (Eric Haseltine's The Spy in Moscow Station, Macmillan, 2019), includes an incident from the 1970s, where engineer Charles Gandy, unable to find any bugs that would explain information leakage from the US embassy in Moscow, had tons of electronics from the embassy shipped back to the US for disassembling and X-raying. After many fruitless X-rays, a technician noticed a small coil of wire inside the on/off switch of an IBM Selectric typewriter. Digging further revealed a number of expertly-concealed parts that were used to capture key-strokes and to send out the info in encrypted burst-transmissions. Springs and screws had been repurposed to deliver power to the hidden circuits and to act as antennas.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- To err is human. To kill your own people, while hiding your guilt and accusing others of disinformation, evil.
- Canadian universities mourn the loss of their affiliates in the crash of Ukraine International Airlines jet.
- Open the window, stick your head out, and scream "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more."
- Pick two letters, a vowel and a consonant, so that at least one of them appears in 47 of 50 US state names.
(6) Dated Soviet missile defense system from the 1970s in the hands of frightened, inexperienced grunts created a tragedy. Now, a few of those grunts will be executed, before declaring the case closed.
(7) "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood": Yesterday, I watched this 2019 movie, secreened at UCSB's Pollock Theater as part of the "Script to Screen" series. The film's co-screenwriter Noah Harpster participated in a discussion after the screening.
The film's protagonist isn't Fred Rogers (played wonderfully by Tom Hanks), but journalist Lloyed Vogel (portrayed by Matthew Rhys), whose messed-up life, including marital problems and difficult relationship with his father, was positively impacted by his friendship with Rogers. In the words of Harpster, there wouldn't have been much conflict or drama if the film's focus were on Rogers.
It took 10 years to realize this film project, during which time, the estate of Fred Rogers had to be brought around to cooperate. Once they came on board, though, the wealth of materials, including boxes of correspondence to/from Rogers, provided much insight into the ever-optimistic, kind man, who actually carried a big burden. Parts of the script and story are a tad cheesy, but this is a wonderful film overall.
2020/01/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Meme of the day (humor from the citizens of Iran): Dear Islamic Republic officials: To avenge the cruel act of assassinating Islam's warrior, General Qassem Soleimani, please bring home all your children studying or living in America. Let's unite in dealing a harsh blow to the US! [Center] Cover image of Rachel Maddow's Blowout (see the last item below). [Right] Scientists are unraveling the mysteries of pain, and exploring new ways for treating it.
(2) Statistics is cool now: UCSB's Department of Statistics and Applied Probability sees a surge in student interest, tripling the number of PSTAT majors over the past 6 years, due to new career paths.
(3) US cancer deaths dropped by 29% from 1991 to 2017: As usual, Trump tried to take credit for the good news, but the American Cancer Society immediately rebuffed him.
(4) Book review: Maddow, Rachel, Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, unabridged MP3 audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Rachel Maddow has a knack for explaining complex economic and political developments in plain, easily-accessible language. In this wonderfully-written book, she takes on the oil industry, which she describes as "essentially a big casino" with loads of cash used to empower some of the weirdest characters worldwide. One of these characters is Vladimir Putin, who used shady schemes to exert ever-greater influence over the country's oil and gas resources and to turn Russia into a petrostate.
Another unsavory character, with multimillion-dollar villas in several countries and an expensive yacht, is the son of Equatorial Guinea's dictator, whose country saw its oil revenues grow from $2 million to about $4 billion (an 1860-fold increase) in 14 years, while its citizens continue to struggle with poverty, low life expectancy, and lack of access to clean water.
Rex Tillerson, the Exxon-Mobil CEO and Secretary of State under Trump, is a recurring character, given his outsize influence on oil and gas development worldwide, including in Russia. A company the size of Exxon-Mobil, with more resources than many countries, can defy native and foreign laws, bribing its way to lucrative contracts, especially in countries ruled by corrupt strongmen, who essentially award contracts without having to consult anyone. Where there is a weaker dictator, who must get the approval of a circle of insiders, then bribery is used to buy the more influential members of that circle.
Many other stories in the book, from fracking in the US Midwest to British Petroleum's Gulf-of-Mexico oil spill, are covered with an eye for detail and the extreme influence and corruption that has kept the share of renewable sources of energy in the US to a mere 11%. Maddow argues for rules to prevent Western oil companies' corrupting influence worldwide, as well as an end to oil and gas industry subsidies.
2020/01/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row and bottom left] Eunice Foote, climate science pioneer, and the UCSB women faculty members who are following her lead (photos taken at a UCSB Library exhibit on January 09, 2020). [Bottom center] Somehow I had missed this property of 2020: It is the sum of the squares of four consecutive primes, 17^2 + 19^2 + 23^2 + 29^2 = 2020. [Bottom right] Australia braces for worsening conditions: Hot, windy days ahead are expected to complicate firefighting efforts (Newsweek). Meanwhile, the model who offered nude photos in exchange for donation to Australia's wildfire relief has raised ~$1 million (Buzzfeed).
(2) FM Javad Zarif's retort to Trump: "Humans rule the world, not military might." Great theory, but let's examine the practice. Zarif's big boss spoke the day after the Ukrainian plane crash, and did not even mention the incident that killed mostly Iranian citizens. Justin Trudeau honored the Canadian victims in his speech.
(3) Stats and names/photos of some of the Ukraine International Airlines crash victims: 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, 4 Afghans, 3 Germans, and 3 Brits. As one observer put it, there were enough Iranians with advanced degrees on the flight to staff a research center. [Slide show]
(4) Computer Science Distinguished Lecture at UCSB: Bertrand Meyer, Professor of Software Engineering and Provost at Switzerland's Schaffhausen Institute of Technology, author of several books on software development, and founder and CTO of the Santa-Barbara-based Eiffel Software, spoke under the title "A Comprehensive Approach to Requirements Engineering."
Despite software engineering textbooks emphasizing the importance of requirements, and researchers advocating the use of formal methods, the practice of requirements engineering in industry leaves much to be desired. Many projects address requirements via "use cases" and "user stories," that is, examples, often not even issuing a requirements document. Dr. Meyer advocates a systematic approach to requirements, considered a software artefact at the same level as code or tests, and using a combination of formal and informal techniques leading to what he calls "multirequirements," laying out a seamless approach to software construction, from requirements to later stages of development, integrating the best ideas from traditional software engineering, agile methods, and object technology. The talk included a brief review of other work of the speaker and colleagues on full functional correctness proofs and automatic program analysis for aliasing and frame properties. [Images]
[On the margins: Meyer began with some humor. Many opt for studying computer science, thinking that they won't need to talk anyone. But developing software does require you to communicate with users (stakeholders, according to modern terminology) in formulating system requirements. This was the first time I heard Meyer, a giant in his field, speak. I was rather disappointed with the quality of his presentation, particularly rushing through a large number of slides: a sin often committed by novice speakers. Old-timers learn to aim for communicating with, rather than impressing, the audience.]
(5) Late-breaking news: After repeated denials by multiple authorities, Iran admits to mistakenly shooting down Ukraine International Airlines' Boeing 737 passenger plane with 176 on board.
2020/01/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Australia braces for worsening conditions: Hot, windy days ahead are expected to complicate firefighting efforts (Newsweek). Meanwhile, the model who offered nude photos in exchange for donation to Australia's wildfire relief has raised ~$1 million (Buzzfeed). [Center] Engineering graduates killed in the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 in Tehran (see item 2 below). [Right] Is the US hiding the bodies of the soldiers killed in Iran's attack on airbases in Iraq? (see item 4 below)
(2) Graduates of Sharif University of Technology among victims of the plane crash in Tehran: Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA) has published the photos above, while announcing that at least 130 of the plane's passengers were Iranian. And here is a wedding video for the young couple who went to Iran, got married, and boarded a plane to return home. I know sharing photos and videos from Ukraine International Airlines plane crash victims doesn't do anything except add to our sorrow, but still, it's useful to be reminded of life's fragility. Be grateful to have survived to your current age, and make each new day count! Meanwhile, from other sources, terrorism and missile strike by Iran have not been ruled out as possible causes. Iran has reported damage to the plane's black boxes, which would suggest an explosion, rather than mechanical failure.
(3) NYT video shows the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 that crashed in Tehran was hit by a missile: "A small explosion occurred when a missile hit the plane, but the plane did not explode, the video showed. The jet continued flying for several minutes and turned back toward the airport, The Times has determined. The plane flew toward the airport ablaze before it exploded and crashed quickly." Someone in Iran has a lot of explaining to do. How can an ascending, large passenger jet be mistaken for an attacking fighter or bomber?
(4) Iran's "harsh revenge" was a farce: Meanwhile, the country lost 200+ citizens in the stampede incident (due to lack of planning and lax safety provisions) and the downing of UIA passenger jet (putting sophisticated and deadly weapons in the hands of incompetent and paranoid personnel). To divert attention from these self-inflicted losses, some regime defenders are claiming that hundreds of US soldiers were killed in Iran's attack on airbases in Iraq and that their bodies are being hidden!
(5) Facebook bans "deepfake" videos, using subtle features that may not be apparent to average viewers.
(6) News from Consumer Electronics Show: Byton, a China-based car company, introduces an electric vehicle with a side-to-side 48-inch screen on the dashboard and another screen on the steering wheel.
2020/01/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Chances of armed conflict between Iran and the US reduced (see item 2 below). [Center] Faces of victims of the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 crash in Tehran (see item 3 below). [Right] UCSB West Campus Beach during this afternoon's low tide: One of the photos includes a view of Platform Holly and the other one shows Santa Cruz Island (left) and Santa Rosa Island (right).
(2) Iran saved face and helped Trump save face too: Through a missile attack that destroyed a few unoccupied buildings, mostly storage sheds devoid of expensive equipement, Iran gave Trump a chance to not retaliate; a chance that he took. Meanwhile, the missile attack is being sold to Iranian people as a "crushing response" to calm the domestic fervor. Let's call it even (sarcasm): Iran lost its #2 person, two-dozen missiles, and 50+ lives in a stampede; the US lost a few buildings!
(3) Faces are being put on the 176 victims of the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 crash in Tehran: Plane crash victims often remain faceless. They are just a group of strangers, at best categorized by nationality. But in this age of social media, we are seeing photos of many of the victims and read their life stories, courtesy of their Facebook friends. Like the just-married couple, both educated at Sharif University of Technology, returning home from their wedding in Iran. Like the wife and daughter of a prominent Iranian doctor residing in the West. Like the young man who posted his last selfie. Like two university professors from Alberta, who were among the 63 Canadian victims.
(4) New shiny object in primeland: On January 1, 2020, a grid of thousands of networked computers found the Mersenne prime 2^(77 232 917) – 1 as the largest prime to date (it has 23 249 425 digits in decimal).
(5) Snowflake with a Purple Heart: Combat veteran, 52, a freshman at Yale University (class of 2023), is impressed with his young classmates, whom some disparagingly call "snowflakes."
(6) Year-2000 problem raises its ugly head again: Lazy fix to the Y2K problem (treating 2-digit year-codes 00 to 19 as representing 2000 to 2019, instead of 1900 to 1919) is bringing back problems, as we roll into 2020, which is seen by the poorly-fixed systems as 1920.
2020/01/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: Trump's threat to destroy cultural sites in Iran has led to a flurry of posts on such sites, including these photos of Iranian architecture by Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji.
(2) How does threatening Iraq with 'big' sanctions make sense? The US has sacrified thousands of lives and more than a trillion dollars to help the post-Saddam Iraq succeed. Now we want to make it fail if it kicks us out?
(3) Iran launches ballistic missiles into al-Assad and Erbil US air bases in Iraq. Initial assessment indicates that no US troops were killed; unclear whether this was by design, to de-escalate tensions, or accidental. Multiple Iraqi casualties have been reported, though.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least 56 dead and 100s injured in a stampede during funeral procession for Qassem Suleimani in Iran.
- Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 with 180 aboard crashes shortly after taking off from Tehran.
- New Yorker article about Qassem Suleimani, published in 2013.
- Iconic natural rock formation collapses in this morning's magnitude-6.4 Puerto Rico quake. [Photos]
- Amazon sets up shop in Santa Barbara, occupying the old Saks Fifth Avenue Building, with 100 employees.
(5) Detention and extreme vetting of Iranian-Americans at the US-Canada Border: Despite denials by CBP officials, more first-hand accounts of Iranian-born citizens being detained and questioned are emerging.
(6) John Bolton is no angel: He is working to cover his behind and to maximize his book royalties. If he cared about the US and national security, he would have an easy decision whether or not to testify; no pre-conditions or negotiations would be needed.
(7) Talk about fake news: Arizona GOP Congressman Paul Gosar posts a fake photo of former US President Barack Obama shaking hands with Iran's President Rouhani, using the caption, "The world is a better place without these guys in power."
(8) Talk about detachment from realities of war: I find it amusing, no, frightening, that Trump supporters among Iranians in diaspora, many of whom live peaceful, prosperous lives, write about a war with Iran being the necessary price for ridding the country of mullahs.
2020/01/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Ocean temperatures on Jan. 5, 2020 (see the last item below). [Right] Targeted ads based on my innermost thoughts: New Yorker cartoons by Karen Chee, illustration by Jeremy Nguyen.
(2) A lunatic throws a stone in the well that a hundred sages cannot take out (Persian saying): Trump has just turned a run-of-the-mill Iranian general into a national hero, leaving the Iranian regime no choice but to avenge his death. The retaliation may be chosen to be limited/small by Iran, which is in no position to wage a full-blown war, with its economy in tatters. But even a small act will be avenged by Trump, given his temperament and total disregard for international norms. From there, escalation is almost certain. [Video tweet]
(3) The Afghanistan Papers: America's longest war came with deliberate misrepresentation by multiple US presidents, generals, elected officials, and even news media to hide the costs and lack of a path to victory.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- On Soleimani and his elevation to hero status by the Iranian regime and its cast of extras. [Persian tweets]
- Rain provides some relief in Australia: Some estimates put the loss of wildlife at 50%.
- The three "I"s in the US news: Impeachment, Iowa, Iran.
- Intel's 10-nm Ice Lake laptop chip is overtaken by AMD's just-revealed 7-nm Ryzen 4000 CPUs.
(5) Status of computing power: This slide, from today's introductory lecture in my graduate course on parallel processing shows that computing power has been rising exponentially, like clockwork. In the year 2000, we had gigaflops performance at our fingertips (desktops), teraflops performance in the supercomputer center, and petaflops performance on the drawing board. The slide was updated in 2010 and again in 2020, to show 1000-fold performance improvement in each category (the black text is from 2000 and has not been updated).
(6) Elaborating on my November 16, 2019, blog post about climate-change-related micro-projects for the winter 2020 offering of the graduate course on parallel processing (UCSB ECE 254B): An aspect of climate and long-term weather modeling is predicting ocean temperatures. One might think that the oceans all being connected to one another means that temperatures should converge after a while to a common global ocean temperature. This is far from being the case, as the map above for January 5, 2020, indicates. [Source] So, a key question is: How do we go about predicting ocean temperatures in a decade? In 20 years? In 50 years?
2020/01/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Reposts from last year: Carl Sagan on the foolishness of nuclear arms race and Khamenei on feminism being a Zionist plot. [Center] Borna Izadpanahs article on the pioneering Iranian type designer Hossein Haghighi: The image shows a "transfer sheet" we used decades ago to compose Persian text (for headings, graphic designs, art) by trasfering one letter at a time from the sheet to paper.
(2) The bombshell in the US that may have led to the bombshell in Iraq: "Newly revealed documents paint an incriminating picture, showing administration officials anxiously struggling to follow orders from Trump himself despite concerns that the order could go against the national security interests of the United States and warnings from the Pentagon that it could be illegal."
(3) [There are conflicting reactions to the death of Qassem Suleimani in the entire Middle East region, some celebrating and some mourning the death] Afghan member of parliament criticizes her government for sending condolences for the death of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani: You are mourning the death of someone who murdered thousands in Afghanistan and Syria.
(4) Lessons from history: This film shows the funeral procession for Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed "The Butcher of Prague," assassinated by the allies three years before the fall of Hitler.
(5) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Opposing views about Iranians marching to mourn Suleimani: I tend to agree with the first view. [Tweets]
- Trump threatens Iraq with "very big sanctions" if it forces US troops to leave. [Washington Post]
- Recitation of a wonderful poem of Mowlavi (Rumi). [Video]
- Santa-Barbara-area drivers brave gas lines to fill up at $3.70/gal, as prices continue to rise. [KEYT News]
(6) There is no such thing as free shipping: We, as consumers, pay for it, one way or another. Amazon hides its shipping charges in its Prime membership fee and higher costs for items that are "Prime-eligible." Amazon and other huge retailers also have the power to negotiate for low shipping costs with major carriers. Meanwhile, small mom-and-pop retailers, facing a choice between offering free shipping (because gullible consumers have come to expect it) or losing business, see their profit margins shrink or disappear, because of their much higher shipping costs.
(7) Iranian-Americans may be subject to extreme vetting when reentering the US: I have seen a couple of very recent reports that Iranians leaving the US have faced delays and harsh treatment upon their return. I was unable to find an official report about an order to CBP for additional vetting, but if you are Iranian-American, you might want to stay in place for now.
2020/01/04 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Which material will dominate next? Carbon? Lithium? Hydrogen? Copper? (Source: E&T magazine, issue of October 2019) | Stone Age: Up to 3200 BCE | Bronze Age: 3200-1200 BCE | Iron Age: 1200 BCE - 100 CE | Glass Age: 1300 CE - Now | Steel Age: 1800s - Now | Aluminum Age: 1800s - Now | Plastic Age: 1907 - Now [Top center] Iran loses another top chess player to its idiotic policies: First, it was Alireza Firouzja, whose sin was playing against an Israeli opponent. Now, it's Mitra Hejazipour, kicked off the national team for appearing sans hijab in an international tournament. Kudos to these smart and brave young Iranians! [Top right] Cartoon of the day: Uncle Sam struggling with a 4-year hangover! [Bottom left and center] Newsweek magazine cover story question: Can Queen Elizabeth II control the royal family? Shown with three future kings of England in the photo on the left. [Bottom right] Ready to return to normal, post-holidays schedule: The kids are gone. I spent the morning cleaning the courtyard, the cat house, and other mess left by my daughter's cats. As I was hosing things down, I decided to wash the trash and recycling bins. One more day left to get ready for my first 2020 class on Monday.
(2) Iranian new year (saal tahvil): With the holiday season and new-year 2020 celebrations behind us, it's time to take a look at the next major event for Iranians; Norooz festival, which kicks off the Iranian new year 1399 beginning at the 2020 Spring Equinox. The moment of Spring Equinox is stated variously by different sources. Given that the first two times are within 23 seconds of each other, I take ~8:50 PM California time on Thursday, March 19, 2020, to be the correct time.
Thursday, March 19, 8:49:37 PM California time = Friday, March 20, 7:19:37 AM Iran time (7Seen.com)
Thursday, March 19, 8:50:00 PM California time = Friday, March 20, 7:20:00 AM Iran time (Ghandchi.com)
Thursday, March 19, 9:00:30 PM California time = Friday, March 20, 7:30:30 AM Iran time (Taghvim.com)
(3) Huge chip, 50 times the size of the largest GPU, smashes deep-learning's speed barrier: Technology from Cerebras will train AI systems in hours, instead of weeks. [Image] [Source: IEEE Spectrum, January 2020]
(4) In the wake of Qassem Suleimani's assassination: Mourners march in Baghdad and there are reports of explosions. Trump warns Iran that if they retaliate, 52 targets in Iran, including several cultural sites, will be hit. Hard to believe that a Western "civilized" country is threatening to destroy cultural sites!
2020/01/03 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] There's a tweet for that: If you wonder what Trump is up to in the Middle East, you don't need to speculate. Read his own words/thoughts from 2011-2013. [Top center] US forces assassinate two generals in Iraq (see the next item below). [Top right] Raging fires Down Under: Lost in the barrage of news about impeachment and troubles in the Middle East is the grim situation in Australia, facing its deadliest fires in history, which are still intensifying. [Bottom left] Ridiculously long sentences for Iranians demanding basic human rights: Women in particular are subject to long prison terms, because their struggle for women's rights (= human rights) is seen as undermining the Islamic Republic's misogynistic foundations. Maryam Akbari Monfared is as defiant as ever in her 9th year of imprisonment, proudly supporting the recent protests and demanding justice for the victims. [Bottom center] Can't stop hate crimes with a hateful president. [Bottom right] Let's not allow normalcy to set in: A most horrifying thing for Iran's political prisoners is being forgotten by those outside, who have come to expect/accept long jail terms for non-violent civil disobedience.
(2) Latest develpment in Baghdad: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani and Iraq's Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis reportedly killed in an air strike near Baghdad Airport. The timing of the assassinations doesn't pass the smell test, though. Now, as much as I hate Trump and his clueless foreign policy, the two generals were waging war against the US and were eliminated in an act of war. However, the question remains: Why now? Trump could have ordered this action any time during the past three years, and he would not have been faulted for killing enemy combatants. But he kept saying that he prefers sanctions and negotiations to war. Ten months before the US elections and with impeachment trial about to start in the US Senate, it's obvious what changed.
(3) [Iran's government declares a 3-day public mourning period] Americans kill 1 person: 3 days of mourning | Iran kills 1500 citizens: 0 day of mourning
(4) The Chinese, who invented fireworks, are now moving toward the use of drones, which are less polluting: For New Year 2020, some 2000 drones created a spectacle in Shanghai.
[BBC video]
(5) SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts is worried about disinformation amplified by the Internet and social media: "In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public's need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital."
2020/01/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] New Yorker cartoon: Layers of weight gain through the various months of the year. It looks funny, until you think about the mechanism for going from December to January of the next year! [Top center] One last 'Happy New Year' message, before settling into 2020! [Top right] New Yorker cartoon: First-ever case of facing a choice between family and career! [Bottom left] On polygamy officially promoted in Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Hillary Clinton begins a 5-year term as the first woman Chancellor of Queens University, Belfast. [Bottom right] Iran's top chess player (see the last item below).
(2) Polygamy in Iran: Iran's State TV is apparently running ads touting the benefits of polygamy and certain social-media influencers are also chiming in. For example, if one wife travels, three others are still available. They can also develop friendships for emotional support and help each other with childcare and home chores. Well, one can cite the exact same benefits for polyandry! In fact, the Persian word for polygamy ("chand-hamsari") happens to be gender-neutral (it means "multi-spousal").
(3) Japanese Kane Tanaka, world's oldest living person, turns 117 today: She needs 6 more birthdays to beat Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died at 122, although doubts about her age have been raised.
(4) Iranian women continue their fight against injustice: Mother of an imprisoned 22-year-old, now in prison herself, speaks out in support of labor activists and resistance to compulsory hijab laws.
[Tweet]
(5) "Science Under Attack: How Trump Is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work": Trump has "diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide." [NYT]
(6) Iran's top chess player Alireza Firouzja will play for France: He and other players had defied the Iranian government's order not to play against Israeli opponents and, as a result, the entire team was denied the opportunity to participate Moscow championships. Idiotic policies are depriving Iran of top talent in various fields, science, sports, and music being the most notable examples. European soccer teams are voraciously recruiting Iranian players and Western universities are benefiting from Iran's distinguished academics.
2020/01/01 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] See the next two items below. [Center] Happy New Year to all: Those who grew up in Iran view 20 as a sign of perfection (20 is the highest grade one can get at school, much like 100 in the West, and is also slang for "perfect"). Wishing you double-perfection in your personal and professional lives as we enter 2020. With hopes that double perfection is also experienced by the countries I love, both currently in deep trouble, my motherland, Iran, and my adopted homeland, the United States.
(2) Properties of 2020 as a number: As a numbers buff, I tend to look up the properties of the year number every January. There isn't much to report for 2020. Despite being called a magical number by some sources and signifying double-perfection in Persian, 2020 isn't all that interesting as a number!
(3) More on the number 2020: I also like to challenge myself to form as many numbers as I can, using math operators and the digits of the year's number in their original order. The two 0s make it difficult this year. I got as far as 10. In the image, I have spelled out some math operators for which I don't have keyboard symbols.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Protesters break into Baghdad's US embassy, prompting evacuation of diplomats: Shades of 1979 Tehran?
- New Yorker humor: Trump's Valentine's Day poems for Mike Pence, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and more.
- Riddle: How do you find Will Smith after a blizzard? Follow the fresh prints.
- Cosmetic surgery used to be a taboo subject. Now, you can talk about Botox and nobody raises an eyebrow.
- Persian music: Sonbol Taefi performs "Rokh-e Mahboob" ("The Beloved's Face").
(5) A young man connected to power in Iran: This prominent Iranian-regime insider, whose job is to spend government grants (lavishly bestowed on "cultural" entities), "researches" the educational system that produces Islamic clerics in Qum and elsewhere. He proudly displays his four wives in this tweeted photo.