© the eyeranian

I wish you would monitored the discussion here more and cut some of it. It is becoming useless, imagine
there are 90 posts but 85 of it are between a couple of people calling each others names.
This site and its comments sections used to be part of my daily web stops, but no longer. There aren't new posts and the discussion are mostly between some specific white trash ayatollahs and some specific over zealous off the chart leftist.
Feels like spring of 1980 in Enghlab sq.

To the first poster:

Here are your options: (That goes for any other thing that you whine about)

1- Participate and bring in what you think is necessary to change it. Do you know what kinds of characters get bored in social gatherings?

2- Read Pedram's posts better to understand why his postings have been fewer recently.

3- As you mentioned yourself, don't visit any site that bothers you; without telling us.

Not only your post is similar to the posts that you are complaining about, it also asks for censorship and sets a general negative tone. I can simply ignore the posts that are outright stupid and filled with name calling but I could not ignore yours!

Pedram, dude, e mail me and I'll get you a job application, but you have to work for about minimum wage. There are drawbacks to everything.

anyone read a good non fiction book lately ?

I just finished The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria.

"The Roaring Nineties"
by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Here is a quote from the Preface:

"And what I saw and felt saddened me: even those who were trained in America, who loved America and Americans, were deeply disappointed by what America's government was doing. Somehow, COLLECTIVELY, as a nation, we were so often acting in ways that seemed so different from what we stood for as individuals."

Do you have a URL for the quote you have above? I have looked at the article by the same author and the same tittle which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly issue of Oct. 2002, but this quote does not appear there... I wonder whether I was looking in the right place... Thanks!

Bickering can be tiresome. I myself tear into Pedram like there is no tomorrow, but tend to stay out of the fray with other posters. Anyway, I would say no to cencoring in general. And to his credit, Pedram seems to have avoided censoring anything but the most obviously blatent racism.

If you haven't read Angelas Ashes by Frank McCourt you should, although it's been out for years now. I just ordered Waiting for Snow in Havana, which looks dreamy.

Nima,

The quote comes from the book NOT the Atlantic Monthly article which was on the same theme.

The quote is exact except for the uppercase emphasis on the word "collectively". He has it emphasized with italics which I couldn't do here.

The quote comes from page XIX of the Preface.

The Book's ISBN: 0-393-05852-2

"anyone read a good non fiction book lately ?"

Ja, I finished this one last week:

"V2" by Walter Dornberger

(picture of book at:
http://ouray.cudenver.edu/~wrbeggs/v2rocket/books/book23.html )

and am now nearly through this one:

"The Code Book" by Simon Singh

http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Code_Book.html

You people try really hard to change the direction of discussions here and talk about anything but the posted topic. I don't believe that is very fair to the person who pays for the blog.

good luck with the move...

roya
what a beautiful name !
oh yes the posted topic. All I can say is that I never undrestood what was so special about CA.
Except maybe thats where all the nuts and fruit cakes come from ( its only a joke no disrespect intended). I hope pedram has thought this through.

Roya,
The person who paid for this blog is not really participating these days. We are abandoned to our own devices. It's still fun to check in and watch the flow of ideas and personalities. I'm always grateful for a new thought. Like, what is "The Code Book" by Simon Singh about? What kind of name is Simon Singh anyway? Is it fake? Is it Sikh? Is it a self-invented anglicization of something British people can't pronounce? Is it a joke? Some kind of obscure reference to Simon Says? Simon Says Sing? Aaah, a new project. Find Out About Simon Singh. Fareed Zakaria's book was riveting. Sadly at the moment, I am in the middle of "Epilepsy: Patient and Family Guide." A very slow go, indeed. LIke walking in hip deep mud.

Talking about names, what kind of name is Atmikha? Is it Indian? Or Brit? Is it female or male? I just know it is not Iranian.

I have one quesion, how comes you have Google adsense ads on your site? I swear they said it was only allowed on non personal sites?!

Good luck with the move, if I was in America I'd live in New York or Orange County.

Simon Singh's parents are from Punjab...he was born in the UK.

Pedram jan,please get an application for me too.
Congratulations for the place and good luck with DSL;that does not mean less posts ,does it ?!

Farah Pahlavi's Memoirs:

An Enduring Love
http://www.farahpahlavi.org/enduringlove.jpg

I think it's a great book in providing another view of the Islamic Revolution. I'm alsmot in the middle.

===============================

Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World

Stewart Bell

http://www.wiley.ca/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470834633.html

An eye opening book! It came as a shock to some naive canadians. I have read only a little bit of it but I totally suggest you guys take a serious look at it specially if you're Canadian.

Thanks

Payam,

Any mention of the Mojahedin-a Khalq in that book? They do pretty well in the U.S., too. Actually, most terrorists do pretty well here. The U.S. Constitution is very user friendly.

Brad:

Sure, Actually, I think US itslef has the largest number of terrorists wheter it's homegrown white supremacists, islamic militants or other groups.

Actually that book is mostly about connecting the dots about some stuff that happened before and after 9/11. It's very interesting, for instance it covers those first arrests in Singapore if you remember? It was right after 9/11 and I never found out what it was all about.

One other part in the book they talk to people from Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and how evertime there is an attack on western interests they run the names of suspects to find out if any are Canadian! I agree that most Allied Passprts are becoming unreliable considering the shoe bomber and that dirty bomb suspect but Canadian papres are especially becoming unreliable. Did you know of yearly 25000 or so passports lost or stolen, none are reported to the Canada Customs Agency which mans the borders?

Brad:

Looks like we share a common interest about WWII :-) I'm so very much in to that era. I remember when I was a kid about 9-10 years old I finished a whole book on the subject. I've always been facinated about those days.

I really like to know how do you think the WWII shaped the European and US cultures? What do you think of the "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"? I personally think the US went over the line by using Fat Man on a Japan already dazed by Little Boy. What do you think?

Payam,

I am interested in history, in general, but I picked up Dornberger's book mainly because of an interest in the history of technology (which is also related to selection of the book on cryptography). I had just finished another book on rocket development but it was very weak on techical matter. Colonel, and then later Major General, Dornberger was the research director of the Wehrmacht rocket program and so an appropriate authority on both the history and technology involved. The book was very interesting but, as some reviewers have said, it was somewhat self-serving (he came to work for Bell in the U.S. and was not directly working with his "protege" Wernher von Braun) and his Nazi sympathies come through plainly even though he expresses contempt ("pity"?) for Hitler and the bureaucrats.

On the atomic bomb, an excellent book to read is "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes (you may also be interested in the sequel "Dark Sun" which is about the Hydrogen bomb ... but it is less interesting ... unless you find espionage fascinating). Rhodes' book starts at the turn of the century and walks the reader through the history of particle physics and how this leads to the technology that makes the bomb possible.

My personal feeling on the use of the atomic bombs in Japan is that the line had already been crossed. The allies were already incinerating cities with conventional weapons and this only made it faster. Whether one dies in an atomic bomb blast or in a firestorm created by incendiaries (several years ago I read an excellent book on the firebombing of Hamburg that I urge anyone to read: http://www.valourandhorror.com/BOOKS/middlebrook.htm) makes little difference. It is the horror and level of war that is the problem. In order to prevent these things happening again, we need to find ways to prevent wars from starting and escalating to this level of total warfare. Dropping the atomic bombs was not some new landmark in immorality, IMHO. More people were burned up in Tokyo by conventional incendiary bombing than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

OK, just to keep this message on topic ... if you can't waste your time on the INTERNET, waste it reading a good book!

Brad and Payam,
Another book about living through a fire bombing (of Dresden) is "Slaughter House Five" by Kurt Vonnegut. It was made into a movie, but something is lost in the translation. A Japanese Anime film, "Grave of the Fireflies" is the story of a couple of orphaned kids living through the fire bombing of Tokyo. Very touching, very beautiful.
BrainMafia,
The feminine diminutive of Atman, "Great Soul"