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Behrooz Parhami's Blog & Books Page
Page last updated on 2023 September 29
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 2023
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 2023
2023/09/29 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Global warming's toll on the body: According to Science magazine's special section on "Heat and Health" (issue of Sep. 29, 2023), a warmer climate is unhealthy, both due to its direct impact on the human body and because of its effects on vector-borne and other diseases. [Center] Status and solidarity of women in Afghanistan and Iran (see the next item below). [Right] Barbara W. Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (see the last item below).
(2) Gender apartheid in Afghanistan and Iran: Georgetown University panels have chimed in on the situation of women in the Middle East.
On Afghanistan, they suggest that "eradicating the deeply rooted and institutionalized discrimination faced by Afghan women necessitates a resolute and unified stance from the global community."
On Iran, they note that "the Iranian regime has proposed a new law that could put women in prison for up to 10 years for not wearing the mandatory hijab," adding that the strict dress code constitutes gender apartheid.
(3) Make sure to thank an earthworm for bread: Earthworms help make soil more fertile by burrowing, which renders it more porous, and by digesting dead plant matter. Their impact on improving wheat harvest is roughly equivalent to one slice in every loaf of bread. [Source: Science magazine, issue of Sep. 29, 2023]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Dianne Feinstein [1933-2023]: First female mayor of San Francisco & 6-term California Senator dead at 90.
- US Secretary of State Tony Blinken conducts musical diplomacy. [1-minute video]
- An Iranian couple dressed in Qashqa'i attire walk on a street in northern Tehran. [1-minute video]
- Silvergreens, a defunct salad joint in my area, is back (sort of): It delivers salads & wraps to businesses.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 29, 2017: When two cats ate my daughter's loan copy of a book!
- Facebook memory from Sep. 29, 2011: Work vs. play.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 29, 2010: Fast food in ad photos vs. in reality.
(5) Book review: Tuchman, Barbara W., The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, unabridged 18-hour audiobook, read by Wanda McCaddon, Blackstone Audio, 2009.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The author discusses the four most-important follies of world governments, as follows:
- Troy's falling for the horse offered by the Greek and taking it into their city, thus losing the war.
- Popes' failure to reverse the church's decline, leading to Protestant reforms of the 16th century.
- England's policies during the reign of King George III, in connection with the United States.
- United States' misguided policies during the Vietnam War, prolonging the conflict and losing it.
The latter part takes up about 40% of the book, with the other three covered in lesser depth.
The book covers important topics, that is, the narrowmindedness and selfishness of those in power, but it is written in a way that does not arouse the reader's interest. A dry subject matter along with dry writing and dry narration make for a less-than-pleasurable reading/listening experience.
A Persian translation of this book exists under the title "Tarikh-e Bi-Kheradi" ("History of Idiocy," translated by Hassan Kamshad).
2023/09/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: HP-35 was one the first pocket scientific calculators. It was certainly the first affordable one at ~$50. I bought one in 1972, when I was a grad student at UCLA and had much fun with it. [Top center] Throwback Thursday: These gadgets of mine, now headed to e-waste dump, were once among the coolest digital devices. The Canon Powershot SD1000 camera was the first camera I could put in my shirt pocket so that I could take it out quickly to capture various events. The Flip Mino camcorder, with 1 hour of video storage, was even thinner than my digital camera and most people would watch in disbelief as I told them that I was video-recording. [Top right] Persian calligraphy: Rendering of the Iranian people's revolutionary slogan #WomanLifeFreedom. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Compute the area of the quadrangle ABCD. [Bottom center & right] Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below).
(2) In many countries, the military wants to oust civilian leaders to establish a dictatorship: In the US, some civilian leaders advocate ousting or even killing military generals who oppose their dictatorial schemes!
(3) Last night's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Saied Tousi, CEO of USVOLT and board member of several biotech & industrial companies, spoke under the title "New Economic World Order: 'The End of Globalization' and Cold War II." There were ~130 attendees.
Dr. Tousi began by recapping his previous talk, allowing the audience to ask questions if any point needed clarification. He then embarked on a detailed discussion of two worldwide trends.
The first trend is the collapse of global fertility rate, with the exception of most countries in Africa. Italy, Japan, and China are among the countries that are affected most severely. In Japan alone, there are 10 million unoccupied dwellings that city governments are anxious to give away. Russia also has serious problems in demographics, owing to a reduction of the number of young people (lower birth rate, plus casualties of war), which is particularly detrimental to its military power.
The second trend pertains to large-scale changes in energy resources and markets (see the image). North America has become pretty much independent of Middle Eastern oil, which now goes almost exclusively to India, China, and Japan. Concurrent with changes in energy markets, the global supply chain is also undergoing a transformation. For example, Mexico is attracting a good chunk of the business that previously went to China.
There was also some discussion of the drumbeat about the US dollar being ousted from its position as the default currency for international trade. These stories are propagated primarily by Russia, China, and Iran. Despite these claims, the US dollar continues it rise, while other currencies, including euro, are declining. During the Q&A period, I mentioned that Bitcoin and gold dealers also contribute to propagating these falsehoods in order to boost their sales.
I also introduced during the Q&A period Tim Marshall's book Prisoners of Geography (my review), which confirms many of the points made by the speaker about the self-sufficiency and relative safety of the US (North America, more generally), compared with other countries/regions.
2023/09/27 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Interactive Learning Pavilion (a UCSB classroom building) & some its outdoor seating to study or take a break: I will be teaching my fall 2023 graduate course ECE 257A on fault-tolerant computing in this nicely-equipped new building, which hosted an open house yesterday (2-minute video). [Top center] Monday night atop UCSB's West Campus bluffs, looking westward & eastward (1-minute video). [Top right] Sidewalks are important: Don't treat them as if they are necessary evils (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What is the ratio of the blue area to the yellow area within the outer square? [Bottom center & right] UCSB Library's reception for the start of the new academic year: Chancellor Henry Yang, EVC David Marshall, Librarian Kristin Antelman, and about 40 faculty members were in attendance. The UCSB Reads 2024 book selection, Your Brain on Art (my review), was announced during the festivities.
(2) Sidewalks as afterthoughts: Having walked in many neighborhoods of different cities, I've wanted to write about this issue for a long time. It seems that in developing city neighborhoods, planners first allocate space to roads and to parking lots serving road-side businesses. Then, whatever space is left over is used for sidewalks. Nowhere is this problem more visible than in a section of State Street near Santa Barbara's Las Positas Road. To make the city pedestrian-friendly, there is no need to close the streets to traffic, as done recently in the downtown area. Let's begin with providing decent sidewalks of reasonable width and with smooth surfaces.
(3) At least 125 people were killed and hundreds wounded in a fuel depot explosion in Nagorno-Karabakh amid an exodus of ethnic Armenians from the region. Turkey is supportive of Azerbaijan's military offensive.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fireworks cause a deadly fire, killing at least 100 at a wedding hall in Iraq.
- Google turns 25: The optimism about a benevolent company has turned into worries about too much power.
- Iranian agents and regime apologists are in positions of power in the US government.
- Mind your surroundings: This Chicago woman puts up a fight, but she has no chance against two burly men.
- Math puzzle: What is the rightmost digit of the number 2019^2018^ ... ^3^2^1?
- Vera Rubin [1928-2016]: The hidden figure who proved the existence of dark matter in the universe.
- Goleta Lemon Festival celebrates 30 years: Saturday-Sunday, September 30 & October 1, 2023; Girsh Park.
(5) American might on full display: Iran releases several American hostages in exchange for getting some of its own money back, but pretends that the releases were motivated by humanitarian concerns and the US "coming to its knees." North Korea releases an American soldier who had entered the country illegally, saying that the American was expelled, as if being returned from North Korea to the US constitutes a punishment!
(6) I become upset when people say they are dissatisfied with both major parties: Equating the Democrats' faults with the atrocious behavior of the Republicans is a disservice to our country and to democracy.
(7) Inequity in grocery pricing: You have probably noticed that upscale supermarkets in affluent neighborhoods have much higher prices. According to a PBS Newshour story, low-scale markets in poor neighborhoods also have higher prices, while also offering fewer deals to their customers.
2023/09/25 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iran's architecture: The historic Qavam mansion in Shiraz. [Center] Physics joke: Inside the box, Schrodinger's cat plans its revenge. [Right] Knot theory (see the next item below).
(2) Knot theory is a branch of topology concerned with the study of mathematical knots: While inspired by knots which appear in daily life, such as those in shoelaces and rope, a mathematical knot differs in that the rope ends are joined so that it cannot be undone. A mathematical theory of knots was first developed in 1771 by Alexandre-Theophile Vandermonde. Alan Turing knew that telling whether two knots are equivalent (one can be turned into the other, without cutting the rope) is extremely difficult. [8-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The 4.5-billion-year-old rock that has been brought back to Earth. [6-minute video]
- Scientists use 5 million hours of supercomputer time to create a 3D model of exotic supernovae.
- Manhattan Project II: Los Alamos will be the site of a new major effort to modernize the US nuclear arsenal.
- No need to wait for quantum hardware: Companies run quantum equations and quantum software on GPUs.
- Rachel Maddow's incredibly detailed report about Kazakh corruption, money laundering, and Donald Trump.
- Hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe: They've introduced a paper-currency worth 50 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.
(4) Documentary film about Wendy McCaw: She bought Santa Barbara News Press, one of the oldest newspapers in California, in 2000 for $110 million and ran it into bankruptcy in 2023. When it became clear in the late 2000s that McCaw had fired or caused the resignation of the best journalists on her staff, Santa Barbara residents began cancelling their subscriptions to the paper. This 2008 film is an excellent reminder of the importance of journalism ethics and responsibilities of journalists to the community. [79-minute film]
(5) Formulation of money-laundering detection as a graph problem: The challenge is to find large sums of money divided into smaller transactions between numerous bank accounts, a technique known as "smurfing."
(6) Machine unlearning: We are bombarded daily with reports on advances in, and new applications of, machine learning (ML). Owing to considerations such as privacy, usability, and the right to be forgotten, the need may arise to remove information about some specific samples from an ML model. This is called "machine unlearning." The most-common unlearning schemes fall under the two main categories of data reorganization and model manipulation. [Source: Article by H. Xu et al. in ACM Computing Surveys, January 2024]
(7) Is the Internet making us criminals? In a survey of 8000 teens, aged 16-19, across 9 European countries, nearly half admitted engaging in cybercriminal behavior in the previous 12 months. [Source: David Geer, in Communications of the ACM, October 2023]
2023/09/24 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: Find the area of the blue rectangle. [Top center] Math puzzle: Given the angles in this figure, prove that a^2 + c^2 = 2b^2. [Top right] Math puzzle: We have two squares and an equilateral triangle. Find the ratio of the areas of the two squares. [Bottom left] Iran's architecture: Diamond Hall at Golestan Palace Museum, Tehran. [Bottom center] See if you can read the hidden message in this photo. Painters have used this method of creating hidden messages for centuries. With the use of AI, the task is now easier than ever. [Bottom right] Andy Clark's The Experience Machine (see the last item below).
(2) Two University of Tehran professors have been suspended because they held a thesis defense exam for Leila Hosseinzadeh, a political prisoner and student activist who has been expelled from the university.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tobacco companies are doing to processed foods what they did to cigarettes: Making them more addictive.
- US Companies' insistence that employees return to the office has resulted in a wave of resignations.
- Which is the best public college in the US? Can't tell you, for there is a tie between UCLA & UC Berkeley!
- America's political system has been hijacked but we can get it back through local action. Get involved!
- At dementia cafes, catering to Japan's aging population, forgotten or mistaken orders are tolerated.
- Scenes from the 1979 movie "Tehran Incident," featuring Peter Graves and Pouri Baneai. [3-minute video]
- Persian poetry: Praising the solidarity among various regions & ethnicities in Iran. [2-minute video]
(4) Book review: Clark, Andy, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Our model of the world around us is not shaped based on a one-way transmission of information from sense organs to the brain. There are more neurons going from the brain to sense organs than the other way around. We don't use sensory information to build a model but rather to adjust/correct a pre-conceived model. This is why two people can look at the same scene and reach different conclusions, which forms the basis of lack of complete trust in eyewitness accounts. Our preconceived model of the world prevails if there is inadequate sensory information to change/correct it. Relying on the preconceived model alone, when there is no sensory data or not enough to change it, is hallucination.
Here is a visual demo of how our expectation shapes our perception. If you scan this diagram from left to right, you tend to recognize the middle shape as the letter "B"; scan it from top to bottom and you will likely see it as the number "13." Here is an audio demonstration of the importance of a previous model in our comprehension. Listen to each sine-wave speech (SWS), once before the original speech and once after. You will note that the second time, you can make sense of the words spoken.
Our brains are running a continuous simulation of the world around us. Sensory info is used to update the model, not build it from scratch. The eyes need only send to the brain the visual details that differ from what is expected or predicted. This leads to informational and energy efficiency.
A fascinating book all around!
2023/09/23 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Frida," by UK artist Jane Perkins who creates collage/mosaic artwork from found and upcycled material. [Center] Chuck Wendig's Gentle Writing Advice (see the last item below). [Right] Golestan Palace Museum, Tehran, Iran: Sample of the mosaics.
(2) Tonight, I watched the classic-rivalry soccer match between UCSB & Cal Poly SLO: This is mid-way through UCSB's 2023 season, with a record of 4-4-0. UCSB led 1-0 at halftime on a beautiful goal that involved 3 passes inside the box. In the second half, UCSB scored with a header on a corner kick to prevail 2-0. [Images]
(3) A capsule containing fragments of the Bennu asteroid, which has a 1 in 2700 chance of hitting Earth in 2182, will parachute onto a Utah bombing range on Sunday. The fragments may hold clues on life's origins.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez charged with taking signifcant bribes in cash and gold bars.
- Math puzzle: P, I, and E are three different non-zero digits. Find the value of PIE if sqrt(PI) + E = sqrt(PIE).
- Math puzzle: What is the 0th root of 4?
- Facebook memory from Sep. 23, 2020: Many who pretend to be Christians, know little about the bible.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 23, 2018: Playing on the word "eshgh" ("love") in Persian calligraphy.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 23, 2014: Replica of Babbage's Difference Engine (Computer History Museum).
(5) Book review: Wendig, Chuck, Gentle Writing Advice: How to Be a Writer Without Destroying Yourself, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Adam Verner, Penguin Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, which targets both novice writers and those who have made it, can be summarized as follows: There is no one-size-fits-all process for writing. I can tell you how I do it, but that may not work for you; or even for me, on the next project. Write every day? Fine if you can do it, but it's not necessary. Write a certain number of words per day or per week? Ditto! Start with an outline? Do it if it feels natural to you.
Despite a lack of concrete advice, the humorous prose makes the book an enjoyable read/listen. There are a lot of advice lists in this domain: Top-10 essentials, 15 tips, 20 things to do, 12 things to avoid, '500 Ways to Be a Better Writer' (Wendig's own earlier book), and so on.
As a writer, you spend a lot of time writing and rewriting, but you also need to spend much time reading. It is important to relax and proceed at your own pace. Writing can be hard on a person, in terms of sheer effort and fear of failure. Taking good care of yourself and treating yourself gently are important ingredients of a successful writing career.
Advice pieces such as "avoid adverbs" are nonsense. Do not avoid anything if it adds depth or clarity. Just make sure you do not overuse adverbs, or anything else, for that matter.
I end my review with a few interesting quotes from the book:
- [W]riting is a squiggly, fiddly, wiggly thing. It's not IKEA furniture.
- If you catch yourself staring at a blank page, remember that you're not alone. It happens to all writers.
- You don't have to finish everything you start, but make sure that you finish some work.
2023/09/21 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mullahs love rap music, but not all rappers: Amir Tataloo is allowed to leave Iran to give a concert in Germany. Meanwhile the popular rapper Toomaj Salehi has been in prison for nearly a year and reportedly may face the death penalty. [Top center] A picture is worth 1000 words: Iranian boy looking for food in a dumpster, finds a book instead. [Top right] Evidence unearthed that Stone-Age humans built wooden structures: According to a paper published in the journal Nature, wooden logs, bearing signs of intentional modification and believed to be nearly 0.5 million years old, have been found in the banks of a river in Zambia. [Bottom left & center] Another example of Iran's brain-drain: Tara Javidi, who achieved first rank among hundreds of thousands of participants in Iran's 1993 nationwide university entrance exams, is now a distinguished engineering professor at UCSD (image credit: Dr. Pamela Karimi). [Bottom right] Talangor Group talk by Dr. Nader Noori on remembering and forgetting in the human brain (see the next item below).
(2) Luiz Andre Barroso [1964-2023]: Google's inventor of the modern data center, and winner of ACM-IEEE's 2020 Eckert-Mauchly Award, dead at 59. His paper in IEEE Micro, entitled "A Brief History of Warehouse-Scale Computing," is a good overview of modern data centers and their origins. Cause of death is under investigation.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran spins the prisoner swap with the US for internal consumption: "The US was brought to its knees".
- Sloan Foundation funds research on the development of IEEE Standard 754 on floating-point arithmetic.
- The 12 biggest myths, perpetuated by the rich, about why taxing the rich will cause more harm than good.
- Love and hope are renewable resources: Use them generously!
- "Oppenheimer," the movie, was factually accurate, say physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson & author Kai Bird.
- Santa Barbara's Paseo Nuevo mall to be demolished and replaced with rental units, offices, & retail space.
(4) Giving a little girl a platform vs. brainwashing her: One seven-year-old girl is writing a novel and hopes to become rich; The other one prays that her father, her brother, and herself are martyred. [1-minute video]
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Nader Noori (VP, Stealth Neurotech) offered the second part of his presentation of last week entitled "From Pavlov's Dog to Marcel Proust: Various Forms of Memory and Their Workings" [my Facebook post of last week]. This week's title was "In Search of Memories: From Marcel Proust to ChatGPT." There were ~85 attendees.
Tonight's topics included forgetting (useful & harmful varieties), the role of cues in memory recall, impact of sleep on memory reinforcement, dreams & nightmares, language learning, musical memory, and deja vu.
2023/09/20 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk (see the next to the last item below). [Center] Farhang Foundation announces its top six Iranian short films: The in-person awards ceremony is scheduled for October 1, 2023. [Right] Socrates Think Tank talk on Persian poetry (see the last item below).
(2) Jury research: Trump attorneys are contacting potential jurors in the District of Columbia and asking them to fill out a questionnaire. This kind of "jury research" is apparently a thing for rich defendants. During this process, the defense team may come across sympathetic potential jurors, whom they will try to seat if presented as part of the jury pool. All they need is one such juror to mess up a unanimous guilty verdict. No such luxury is available to poor defendants, even if they are assigned a competent public defender. Talk about a two-tiered justice system!
(3) AI lifeguard: Cameras scan the water to detect anyone in trouble and a life-vest or raft is flown over by a drone. AI can be more-effective than a human lifeguard at both parts of this rescue operation.
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(4) Regenerative architecture: Brazilian architectural firm Estudio Guto Requena built a concept store for the Nescafe coffee brand in Sao Paulo using 3D printing with biodegradable materials and recycled plastic.
(5) Numerous Web sites are cashing in by selling Ozempic's main ingredient, semaglutide, on the cheap as a weight-loss drug: FDA has warned against advertising the off-brand use as FDA-approved.
(6) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Ryan Homafar spoke on "Aesthetics of Violence in Contemporary Persian Poetry" (in Persian; ~130 attendees). I will present just a very brief report on this talk, given that, due to overlap with another meeting I had committed to attending, I joined Dr. Homafar's talk 30 minutes late.
The kind of violence discussed in this talk is primarily of the magnanimous kind seen in idealistic and mystic poetry, with variations that include self-flagellation, torture by the beloved's love, sacrificing the body for spiritual gain, and cruel seduction. At the end of the talk, a few references were made to poetry of armed conflict, particularly works inspired by the Iran-Iraq war and sacrifices made by devoted Iranian fighters at the front. Throughout the talk, Dr. Homafar recited poems by classical and modern Persian poets in support of the points he wanted to make. A very enjoyable talk indeed!
It was announced by the program's host that Dr. Homafar will conduct a class on Persian poetry under the auspices of Socrates Think Tank and Talangor Group.
(8) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Brad Paden (Chief Scientist & Co-Founder of LaunchPoint Electric Propulsion Solutions; UCSB Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering) spoke under the title "Adventures in Mechatronics." There were 32 attendees.
The talk's focus was on the creativity and challenges associated with the invention and design of mechatronic devices. Example systems included a maglev transportation system, a guided-catheter system, an oxygen concentrator, maglev artificial hearts, high-speed switching mechanisms including an electronic engine valve, high-power-density motors, and an energy storage system, along with blue-sky ideas such as electromagnetic launch. While modeling, control and optimization are essential ingredients in mechatronic systems, the large design and application spaces of mechatronic systems compel us to place a high value on innovation at the level of system architectures. This point was illustrated throughout the talk.
2023/09/18 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Celebration of my latest academic promotion with the family, at my sister's. [Center] Math puzzles: Find the limit of the top expression as n tends to infinity and evaluate x in (0, pi/2) from the botton equation. [Right] Tara Kangarlou's The Heartbeat of Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Irony of ironies: Sanctioned Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, complicit in mass murders of political prisoners as a member of a death panel, arrives in New York on a plane belonging to a sanctioned Iranian airliner and will be protected by the US Secret Service while in the US.
(3) Iran's totalitarian regime uses a shiny object to distract: Concurrent with the anniversary of #MahsaAmini's murder by the morality police and the release of US hostages in return for freeing $6 billion in frozen assets, Cristiano Ronaldo visits Iran at the invitation of the mullah's regime. Apparently, Iranians are easily distracted!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Canadian PM Justin Trudeau accuses the government of India of killing a Sikh leader on Canadian soil.
- Let me show you what self-confidence looks like! [Video clip]
- Facebook memory from Sep. 18, 2020: My poetic tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg [1933-2020]
- Facebook memory from Sep. 18, 2016: Vietnam rice fields as nature's painting.
(5) Book review: Kangarlou, Tara, The Heartbeat of Iran: Real Voices of a Country and Its People, Ig Publishing, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The story of Iran tends to be told as the interaction between the oppressors and the oppressed, but ordinary Iranians lead lives that are predominantly occupied by family ties, love, career concerns, music, food, and many other human needs. Yes, oppression is a big part of the picture, but it isn't everything.
Iranian-American journalist Tara Kangarlou set out to portray ordinary Iranians, not those who govern them. Using stories from 24 individuals, chosen to represent Iran's diverse population in terms of ethnicity, religion, profession, gender identity, and more, Kangarlou succeeds in depicting Iranians as having the same hopes and aspirations as people in other countries and thus sharing a lot in common with those labeled as "enemies" by the ruling mullahs.
Of course, a country of 83 million cannot be profiled in only 24 lives, but even this limited profile presents a refreshingly different image of Iran than we see in books focusing primarily on the ruling class, religious fanatics, or the theocratic system. In the rest of this review, I discuss my impressions of four of the 24 chapters, two of them in some detail and two others rather briefly.
Chapter 5, Rabbi Harav Yehuda Gerami: The young leader of the Abrishami Synagogue appears cautious in his remarks. After all, unlike a few others on the list, his full name and position are spelled out in the book. He aspires "to keep alive a centuries-old religious tradition that allows Iranian Jews to practice their faith to its fullest within the borders of their homeland." It is because of statements such as the above that the author may have felt compelled to include a disclaimer at the end of the chapter, characterizing the young rabbi's musings as a story about one person and his family, adding that persecuting individuals based on their faith is an evil act that should always be condemned. Rabbi Gerami takes pride in being the only academically trained rabbi in Iran. His beliefs and aims are more contemporary than typical Jewish leaders who are hakhams (Torah scholars). He relates that he never felt any prejudice against his Jewish community or when he was a public-school student. He dismisses incidents of harassment to naughty children and kids-just-being-kids. He maintains that Iranian Jews are allowed to take the religious pilgrimage to Israel, apparently closing his eyes to the fact that numerous Jews have been tried as Israeli spies, simply because they had traveled to Israel. He cites the presence of 25,000 Jews in Iran as "a sign that Jewish people can live freely in the country," ignoring the damning number of 55,000 Jews estimated to have left Iran in the Revolution's wake.
Chapter 8, Mina: Being identified only by her first name is a sign that this woman's story is likely damaging to the Islamic Republic. At age 12, Mina was forced to marry a 30-year-old man, an event she considers tantamount to being killed. Mina wasn't allowed to go to school, even before she got married. At 14 and 18, she gave birth to two sons, and at 19, she lost her husband in a car accident. Getting remarried would have likely meant giving up her two sons, so, she decided to endure hardships to raise her sons and allow them to get educated. She eventually found a job at an army hospital, spending part of the Iran-Iraq War years working in hospitals near the front. Even with a permanent job, survival wasn't easy, because she paid up to 80% of her income for rent. Her two sons never went to college, as she had hoped, but she is happy that they are healthy and hold good jobs. For every Mina, who, through sheer determination and some luck, makes it through life as a child bride, there are numerous others who lead miserable lives. Imagine a woman, who has not experienced a normal childhood, trying to raise normal, healthy kids, without any safety net. Child marriages are not banned in Iran. They are in fact encouraged and enshrined in the country's laws. In the US, child marriages are frowned upon, but due to exceptions and local customs, a quarter-million children, some as young as 12, were married during the 2000s.
Chapter 17, Amir Saneei: A soldier/teacher, from a family with several generations of teachers, is paid the equivalent of $7.00 per month. As a kid, Amir was conflicted about chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," given his parents' lesson "To love all and not say bad things about anyone." Despite the measly compensation, Amir works with dedication, cultivating the confidence that he can help any student, regardless of the circumstances.
Chapter 24, Taraneh Aram: A transgender woman, born Amir, adopted her first and last names after sex-change surgery at 22. Amir's mother working as a nurse in a fancy private hospital allowed him to realize his plans. Somewhat surprisingly, Iran does provide support to transgender people, mainly because they are deemed sick. This advocate for the LGBTQ community is judged by both men and women as half-woman, because she can't give birth.
Inclusion of brief biographies of the 24 individuals, at the beginning of the chapters or as sidebars, would have been helpful in providing the reader with a roadmap and a sense of why a particular individual was chosen for inclusion. In the current format, one does not learn about the specifics of some individuals until several pages into the chapter.
2023/09/17 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A sculpture that will be completed in the year 3183: Currently, this work-in-progress in the German town of Wemding consists of four large concrete blocks. Titled "Time Pyramid," the sculpture, which will be 24 feet (7+ meters) tall upon completion, was started by Manfred Laber in 1993, with plans to add a new concrete block every decade. [Center] Our amazing nature: Rings in a tree stump resemble ridges in a fingerprint. [Right] US research enterprise and slave labor (see the last item below).
(2) The multi-tier justice system in the US: Yes, our justice system has many tiers, but not in the way that Donald Trump and his cronies claim (they maintain that Trump is treated more harshly than other criminal defendants). Any other defendant violating court orders on what he can and cannot do while out on bail would have been incarcerated by now. A petty criminal who passed off a fake $20 bill was essentially executed by a cop within minutes of committing his crime; no trial, no defense, no jury, nothing. The justice system keeps threatening Trump with consequences if he continues his foul talk about witnesses, jury members, prosecutors, and judges, in much the same way a parent might threaten a misbehaving child, without any intention of following through with the threats.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russia's invasion of Ukraine has produced half a million deaths, counting losses on both sides. [CBS News]
- Iran: A dozen policemen in full riot gear surround an unarmed woman protester sitting on the ground.
- Iran wants to erect a digital wall: Researchers increasingly isolated as Internet access becomes restricted.
- Songbird species that display complex vocal learning are better problem-solvers and have larger brains.
- Math puzzle: Find all solutions to x^y = y^x, where x is not equal to y. [Example: 2^4 = 4^2]
- I hate it that we are giving positions of power to very old people, but do compare 46 & 45 in these photos.
(4) The amazing Statue of Liberty: This 10-minute video shows design and construction details. I climbed all the way to the head of the Statue in the 1970s. Now, doing so requires making a reservation weeks or even months in advance. Most visitors climb to the top of the pedestal, where there is an observation deck.
(5) Slave labor at US research universities: This is a controversial topic, so please bear with me as I introduce the problem and leave details to future posts. One of the benefits of achieving the highest academic rank is that you can discuss controversial topics and offer harsh criticisms, without fear of reprisals.
Graduate students are used and abused in the research enterprise. Saying that they learn valuable skills that make them more-attractive to the academic and industrial job markets, while partially true, is akin to saying that slaves benefited from job-training & skills acquisition. The situation might have been tolerable if students were treated in a friendly, compassionate manner by professors, but, in many cases, professors with research funding pit students against each other in disbursing the relatively small number of fully-paid research positions. Increasingly, undergrads are also being used in unpaid research roles, essentially mimicking within the university the corporate abuse of unpaid internship positions.
Slave labor isn't limited to students but extends to less-prestigious academic ranks such as adjunct faculty positions. When the hours spent on lesson preparation and grading are factored in, many adjunct faculty members are paid close to minimum wage.
2023/09/16 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: First anniversary of Mahsa Amini's brutal murder (see the next two items below).
(2) Today is the first anniversary of #MahsaAmini's death while in the custody of Iran's morality police: Her death sparked an uprising, some would say a revolution, that frightened the mullahs into killing hundreds of protesters, arresting thousands, and blocking/throttling the Internet. Amini's parents have invited Iranians to join them in celebrating the life of "Iran's Daughter." The government has established a security perimeter, using armored vehicles, around her family home and the cemetery where she is buried. Widespread protests in Iran and cities around the world are planned. #WomanLifeFreedom
(3) "Woman, Life, Freedom: A Retrospective": This was the title of today's webinar with Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic novel Persepolis, and Abbas Milani, Director of Stanford University's Iranian Studies Program. The discussion was moderated by Sima Sabet. Satrapi talked about her new graphic history of Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom movement and the effort she led to offer free downloads of the Persian translation of the book, Femme, Vie, Liberte. Milani provided historical context for this latest movement of Iranian women that has earned the world's respect and support. [105-minute recording of the webinar]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The story of Iran's #MahsaAmini uprising, as told by its iconic images/videos. #WomanLifeFreedom
- Rana Mansour's touching rendition of the English version of Shervin Hajipour's Grammy-winning "Bara-ye."
- California sues Big Oil Companies, citing decades of deception on the subject of climate change.
- "May Iran Never Grieve": A musical performance featuring the voices of Mina Deris and Maliheh Moradi.
- Iranian scientist Paniez Peykari's 18-minute TED-style talk on the universe, its past, and its future.
- Baratunde Thurston's 17-minute TED talk: "How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time"
- A cemetery in Los Angeles, California, where many old-time Iranian singers are buried. [5-minute video]
- Furniture used to last generations. Now it barely survives a move. What happened?
- Family gathering in Ventura, California, for the second night of Rosh Hashanah. [Photos]
- Joke of the day: (Q) Are five followers a lot? (A) On social media, no; in a dark alley, yes!
(5) Quote of the day: "Make your daughter so capable that you don't have to worry about whether or not she gets married. Instead of saving money for her wedding day, spend it on her education and, most importantly, prepare her for herself, not for marriage. Teach her self-love and confidence." ~ Anonymous
(6) Little Scandinavia: South Carolina has an area with the tiny towns of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. These names did not arise from Scandinavian settlers moving there. It all started with Denmark, which was named in the 1800s to honor Captain Isadore Denmark, an official with one of the railroad companies working there. As the railroad line was extended up towards Columbia, communities were named in order to fit with the "Scandinavian" naming theme. The towns are too tiny to appear on regular maps. Now you know!
2023/09/15 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Happy Rosh Hashanah to all who celebrate the Jewish New-Year festival: The new Hebrew calendar year 5784 will start tomorrow and, like all Jewish holidays, is celebrated beginning with the night before. Observance of Rosh Hashanah involves eating several kinds of fruits and vegetables; apple dipped in honey represents sweetness and pomegranate signifies fruitfulness. [Right] Manhattan's new Perelman Performing Arts Center: Located next to One World Trade Center, the new NYC cultural site houses three theaters that can be rearranged in 60 different ways. Its translucent exterior glows amber in the evening, as chandeliers cast the silhouettes of theatergoers onto its surface.
(2) An interesting 63-minute interview (in Persian) with Dr. Narjess Afzaly, an outstanding computer scientist who left Iran and now lives in Australia, about her experiences in and connections with mathematics. To see many more such interviews, you can subscribe to Dr. Amir Asghari's YouTube channel.
(3) Quote of the day: "We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics." ~ African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Death toll of Libya's catastrophic flooding surpasses 11,000, with roughly the same number still missing.
- United Auto Workers starts strikes against all Big Three automakers for the first time in history.
- Say her name: #MahsaAmini, a vibrant swimming coach who wanted to become a doctor.
- NASA appoints a research director to lead a scientifically rigorous study of UFO reports.
(5) According to Republicans, Democrats are at fault for US budget deficits: But of our $30.9 trillion national debt, $7.8 trillion (one quarter) was amassed during Trump's presidency. So, the GOP wants us to feel guilty for the huge debt and agree to pay some of it back from cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Give me a break!
(6) The CIA spy Tony Mendez, the protagonist of the movie "Argo," was actually accompanied by a second spy, Ed Johnson, a linguist, whose identity had not been revealed until now.
(7) Quaternions: Numbers of the form a + ib + jc + kd, where a is the real component and b, c, d are the imaginary parts, were devised in 1843 by Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton as extensions of complex numbers a + ib. Quaternions are often used in graphics programming as compact representations of 3D rotations and offer some advantages over matrices. The article "Quaternions in Signal and Image Processing: A Comprehensive and Objective Overview," published in the September 2023 issue of IEEE Signal Processing magazine is a good starting point for learning about quaternions and their applications.
(8) Minimal prime numbers: If in the decimal representation of a prime number we can cross out some digits to form another prime number, then we call the original number a non-minimal prime. For example, 593 is a non-minimal prime, because crossing out the digit 9 yields the prime number 53. In a minimal prime, no shortened version of the number is a prime. Jeffrey Shallit showed in 2000 that there are exactly 26 minimal primes, the largest one being 66600049. Similarly, there are only 32 minimal composite numbers, with 731 being the largest, such that crossing out any digit of the number leaves a prime number.
2023/09/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Walking on a gloomy/windy Wed. afternoon around Goleta's Coal Oil Point Reserve. The Devereux Slough is nearly dry, a harbinger of the fire season being upon us (1-minute video). [Top center] Throwback Thursday: View of Ku Klux Klan parade on Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC, 1926. [Top right] Photos from my days at Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology (see the next item below). [Bottom row] Talangor Group talk by Dr. Nader Noori on memory and its workings (see the last item below).
(2) Me & math: An 89-minute interview, in Persian, on "People & Mathematics" site (run by Dr. Amir Asghari), with a focus on how my life & career have been intertwined with math. Because the interview occurred with little preparation and no rehearsals, a few inaccuracies slipped in. For example, I used the term "perfect graphs" where I meant "complete graphs." None of the errors is serious enough to affect the interview's overall authenticity.
(3) Throwback Thursday: The first photographs of Iran taken during 1848-1858 by Colonel Luigi Pesce, who was in charge of training Iran's new infantry troops up to the Italian standard. [24-minute slide show]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The 2024 US presidential race will be dominated by competing criminal trials of Donald Trump &Hunter Biden.
- Iran, the ammunitions highway during World War II (12-minute documentary film, narrated in Persian).
- Two physicists and a neuroscientist carry on an interesting discussion on free will. [10-minute video]
- Mr. Haloo recites his poem about a stolen donkey, with everyone blamed for the loss, except the thief!
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Nader Noori (VP, Stealth Neurotech) spoke under the title "From Pavlov's Dog to Marcel Proust: Various Forms of Memory and Their Workings." There were ~75 attendees.
The main talk was preceded by the short presentation "Is There a Superior Language?" in which Dr. Hossein Samei talked about the age-old human tendency to compare languages with regard to usefulness, completeness, and expressive power. Linguistically, there is no basis for rank-ordering different languages, and each language must be viewed as the best communication tool within the culture where it was developed. Unfortunately, nearly all claims of linguistic superiority are driven by vanity, xenophobia, and exploitation. Since short presentations do not come with a Q&A period, I posted the following comment on the meeting chat: "But we can say that a particular language is more developed or more expressive in a particular domain of discourse, such as science."
Pavlov's dog refers to a famous experiment on dogs, where a bell is rung before providing a dog with food. The dog then learns to associate the sound of the bell with food, thus starting to salivate after the bell rings and before actual food is supplied. According to the behaviorist theory, organisms are active in producing memory phenomena, rather than doing so passively. This contrasts with the now prevalent cognitive tradition of memory research in which the use of strategies is avoided, with an alternative approach that may incorporate internal structures.
Memory has two separate mechanisms for short durations and long durations. There are people with brain damage who do well in remembering in the short term but not in the long term. Other topics discussed by Dr. Noori are affective (emotional) memory, which plays a key role in our decision-making, motor memory, declarative memory, & face-recognition memory (with its dysfunction known as Prospognobsia). Interestingly, reading and writing rely on two different memory mechanisms (sensing vs. motor).
Learning and memory are broad and widely-studied topics with tons of research results. A second session is planned for continuing the discussion, when Dr. Noori will also deal with the important subject of forgetting.
2023/09/13 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] At the urging of other activists, Iranian political prisoner Bahareh Hedayat ends her hunger strike after hospitalization. [Center] UCLA's new Dean of Engineering is Ah-Hyung "Alissa" Park. [Right] The face and name of #MahsaAmini have become symbols of Iranian women's determination to claim their rights as well as the rights of Iranian men. Say her name! Display her face!
(2) Putin defends Trump and criticizes the "rotten" American state's legal system. Sure, the best system of Justice uses poisoning, pushing out of high-rise windows, and exploding airplanes to take care of business.
(3) Quote of the day: "We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics." ~ African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Casualties of catastrophic flooding in Libya have tripled to 6000: A further doubling is quite possible.
- Mitt Romney to retire: Another Republican exits the US Congress rather than fight the hijacking of his party.
- Hats off to the resilient Iranian youth who still dance on the streets and sing about love. [2-minute video]
- Fascinating GIF art by Frederic Vayssouze-Faure. He has a lot more on Tumblr.
- Stop hate. We need love and unity. [1-minute video]
- Victor De Martrin musical animation has a marble hitting xylophone bars to create the Mario Bros theme.
(5) The road turned, but Iran didn't: Fired university professors Mohammad Fazeli (sociologist), Arash Raisi-Nejad (international relations expert), and Farhad Nili (economist) give a 26-minute joint presentation, in Persian, about how Iran went from being a center of commerce along the Silk Road to a totally isolated country. It failed to adapt to changes, when overland trade routes were replaced by the much-cheaper sea lanes of the Indian & Atlantic Oceans.
(6) Quote of the day: "Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." ~ British philosopher Bertrand Russell
(7) On the tradition of a woman taking her husband's last name: Among women in opposite-sex marriages in the United States, four in five changed their names, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center. The practice is most-common among conservative Republican women (90%) and least-common among liberal Democrats and those with post-graduate degrees (about 2 in 3).
(8) Biden administration's R&D priorities for the 2025 budget request:
The 4-page document dated August 17, 2023, specifies seven broad categories.
*Advancing trustworthy artificial intelligence technology
*Leading the world in maintaining global security & stability
*Stepping up to the global challenge posed by the climate crisis
*Achieving better health outcomes for every person
*Reducing barriers and inequities
*Bolstering innovation to build economic competitiveness
*Strengthening & advancing America's unparalleled research
2023/09/12 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book introductions: The #MeToo Movement in Iran, edited by UNC's Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, surveys the Iranian MeToo activism and places it in the broader Middle East context. The relatively short book How Has the #MeToo Movement Changed Society? by Brynn Reinkens reflects on the MeToo movement in the US and how it has given rise to solidarity, awareness, and accountability in our society. [Center] Vacation for ordinary people vs. academics. [Right] In the lead-up to the anniversary of Mahsa Amini's murder, this sign carried by a protester says: "Kurdistan isn't alone, the entire Iran has its back."
(2) Disasters in North Africa: A total of 5000 are believed dead and thousands are still missing in catastrophic flooding in Libya which broke dams and in a 6.8-magnitude earthquake in Morocco.
(3) Exponential factorials: The notation n! represents the product n*(n – 1)* ... *2*1. Similarly, n$, the exponential factorial, stands for n^(n – 1)^ ... ^2^1, where by convention, the expression is evaluated from right to left. The exponential factorial n$ grows a whole lot faster than the product factorial n! (for example, 5! is 120, whereas 5$ is a number with 180,000 digits).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- House Speaker Kevin McCarthy orders impeachment inquiry into Biden amid pressure from hard-liners.
- Forced marriage in Pakistan: Watch and weep at the level of human brutality. [1-minute video]
- Two large wine reservoirs broke in Portugal, sending a river of red wine to the streets.
- Facebook memory from Sep. 12, 2017: One of the few times I responded to a Donald Trump tweet.
(5) Female college students widely outnumber men: Combined with the fact that men drop out of college at higher rates than women, the college-educated workforce will continue to be mostly female.
(6) Mathematicians find 12,000 solutions for the surprisingly-tough 3-body problem: The question of how 3 objects can form stable orbits around each other has troubled mathematicians for more than 300 years, but now researchers have found a record 12,000 orbital arrangements permitted by Newton's laws of motion.
(7) Global smartening more dangerous than global warming: We humans may be wiped out by the results of global warming in a century or so, but an even more-immediate danger is unanticipated consequences of smart devices and algorithms taking over our daily lives. Just as in global warming, we have, and should strive not to miss, a window of opportunity to prevent damage from an out-of-control global smartening process.
The risks of AI are well-known and calls for ethical-AI and responsible-AI are proliferating. What's unique about AI is that the calls for caution are coming from AI researchers and developers, not from social scientists. As in any other new technology, those who discuss the social aspects of AI systems fall into two categories.
AI optimists see opportunities for improving the human condition and removing a host of social ills, from poverty to educational challenges. AI pessimists see hazards such as alienation and the widening of opportunity & wealth gaps, stoking the fear that whoever controls the AI will control citizens and institutions, leading to authoritarian rule. Most participants fall between the extremes and are thus assuming a wait-and-see attitude.
While we may consider the pessimistic view an extreme position that will rob us of opportunities to reap the benefits of AI, we must consider that even a small chance of these fears materializing is enough for us to jump into action. Would you board a plane that has a 1-in-20 a-priori chance of crashing on the account that it is 19 times more probable for you to complete your flight and enjoy whatever you planned to do at the destination?
2023/09/11 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US: Remembering and honoring the victims of the brutal Al Qaeda terrorists remains important, particularly at this time of widespread conspiracy theories and denial of the role played by the government of Saudi Arabia in assisting the terrorists. [Center] Math oddity (see the next item below). [Right] William Lutz's Doublespeak (see the last item below).
(2) Ramanujan summation: The following proof that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... = –1/12 was found in one of the notebooks of the Indian math prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan.
c = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + ...
4c = 4 + 8 + 12 + ...
–3c = c – 4c = 1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 + ... = 1/(1 + 1)^2 = 1/4
c = –1/12
That something is wrong with the reasoning above became known much later, when more rigorous math was developed. Meanwhile, this absurd summation has found applications in physics, particularly in string theory.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Los Angeles Times op-ed by author Roya Hakakian about her immigrant father's reaction to 9/11.
- Another disaster in north Africa: Hundreds dead in Libya flooding, but officials fear it could be thousands.
- Hats off to Jon Stewart, who fought tirelessly to get 9/11 responders the benefits & respect they deserve.
- Bed Bath & Beyond is back from the dead: I've received 4 e-mails from the bankrupt company in 2 days.
(4) Book review: Lutz, William, Doublespeak—From Revenue Enhancement to Terminal Living: How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive Us, Ig Publishing, 2nd edition, 2015.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I really enjoyed reading this unique book on the subject of doublespeak and learned a great deal from it. At its worst, doublespeak, like George Orwell's "Newspeak" in 1984, is a language designed to limit thought. At its best, doublespeak is inflated language that gives importance to the mundane. Doublespeak isn't just an annoyance: It can be deadly. When defective cars are recalled, the language used may not convey adequately that the defect could be fatal and thus must be fixed promptly. Ford once announced that the rear axle bearings of Torino and Mercury Montago cars "can deteriorate" and that continued driving can "adversely affect vehicle control." It is quite possible that some recipients of this notice did not take their cars to be fixed, thinking that the problem was noncritical.
Lutz divides doublespeak into the four categories of euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook, and inflated language.
- Euphemism: An inoffensive or positive word or phrase used to avoid a harsh, unpleasant, or distasteful reality, such as the US State Dept.'s use of "unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life" in lieu of "killing." This kind of doublespeak should not be confused with tactfulness/sensitivity, such as when we use "passed away" for "died."
- Jargon: A verbal shorthand that when used properly can lead to precision and communication efficiency. But using "organoleptic analysis" for "smelling" reeks (pun intended) of doublespeak.
- Gobbledygook: Piling on words to confuse or overwhelm the audience. Here is an example from the then US Senator Dan Quayle: "Why wouldn't an enhanced deterrent, a more stable peace, a better prospect to denying the ones who enter conflict in the first place to have a reduction of offensive systems and an introduction to defensive capability?" Alan Greenspan is also masterful in creating such "word salads."
- Inflated language: Making the ordinary sound extraordinary. Examples include calling a car mechanic "automotive internist" and elevator operators "vertical transportation corps."
In the preface to the 2015 edition, Lutz notes a marked increase in the use of doublespeak: "Doublespeak that once prompted disbelief or in some cases outrage now passes unnoticed and without comment. Doublespeak has become part of the working vocabulary of public discourse.
Politicians are fond of doublespeak. Here's a striking example from US President Ronald Reagan: "I will not stand by and see those of you who are dependent on Social Security deprived of the benefits you've worked so hard to earn." This statement was interpreted by the public as Reagan being opposed to cuts in Social Security benefits. However, later clarification from the White House revealed that Reagan had chosen his words very carefully. He was reserving the rights to judge who was "dependent" on Social Security and who had "earned" the benefits.
Another major offender is the government. Thousands of people are killed in misdirected drone strikes. The countless children or entire wedding parties killed are referred to as "collateral damage." Similarly, we do not torture but use "enhanced interrogation techniques." Government support for religion is camouflaged as "faith-based initiatives" and helping the rich by reducing or eliminating estate taxes is sold to the public as reforming the deplorable "death tax."
The book is replete with examples of doublespeak in different domains, as evident from its chapter titles, listed below. Following the nine chapters, there are three appendices: "Quarterly Review of Doublespeak," "Recipients of Doublespeak Award," and "Recipients of the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language."
- Involuntary conversions, preemptive counterattacks, and incomplete successes: The world of doublespeak
- Therapeutic misadventures, the economically nonaffluent, and deep-chilled chicken: The doublespeak of everyday living
- Virgin vinyl, real counterfeit diamonds, & genuine imitation leather: With these words I can sell you anything
- Negative deficits and the elimination of redundancies in the human resources area: Business communication, sort of
- Protein spills, vehicle appearance specialists, and earth-engaging equipment: Doublespeak around the world
- Predawn vertical insertion and hexiform rotatable surface compression units: The Pentagon word machine grinds on
- Nothing in life is certain except negative patient care outcome and revenue enhancement: Your government at work
- Winnable nuclear wars and energetic disassemblies: Nuclear doublespeak
Everyone should read this book. You will learn a lot and either smile or cringe as you read some of the more-preposterous examples. Comedian George Carlin had a super-funny routine about words & phrases that help hide the truth, apparently taking many of his examples from this book.
2023/09/10 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Twin primes and Brun's Constant (~1.9022): The infinite sum of the reciprocals of twin primes (pairs of prime numbers that differ by 2), that is, 3 & 5, 5 & 7, 11 & 13, ... , is approximately 1.9022. Viggo Brun tried to use this summation as a way of showing that there are infinitely many twin primes and was surprised when the sum proved finite. Of course, this finiteness does not prove that there are only a finite number of twin primes. [Top center] Happy Grandparents' Day to all those who are blessed with grandkids: "The best baby-sitters, of course, are the baby's grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida." ~ Humorist Dave Barry [Top right] Etienne S. Benson's Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Saturday's stroll in Ventura Harbor Village to see a smallish street-painting festival and arts/crafts show.
(2) Maui fire death toll is ~180: This number results from adding the 66 individuals still missing (and who must be presumed dead) to the official death toll of 115.
(3) Iranian-American writer Roya Hakakian declines an invitation to participate in a meeting with Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, because such a meeting would legitimize a murderous Islamic Republic official and insult Iranian people who have undergone imprisonment, torture, rape, and even execution in their fight for freedom & democracy.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Magnitude-6.8 quake in a mountainous region of Morocco kills 2000+, with the death toll expected to rise.
- Le Monde publishes a hopeful victory message written by women political prisoners in Iran.
- Why are the laws of nature the way they are? A 12-minute presentation by Thomas Hertog.
- A brief introduction to epigenetics, by British biologist Nessa Carey. [7-minute video]
- Check out this amazing Boogie Woogie version of "The Swanee River," performed by Pianist Marius Labsch.
(5) Book review: Benson, Etienne S., Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms, Penguin Random House, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The notions of environment and environmentalism are relatively new. Today, when we think about environmentalism, we think of activists who want to return our Earth to its pristine state, that is, how it was before widespread human activity transformed it. This is rather unrealistic and reeks of hubris. Another view of environmentalism is learning to live responsibly on an Earth that has been transformed by human life and progress. In other words, those holding the latter view accept that we have entered a distinct geological period, the Anthropocene Epoch, variously considered to have begun with the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s or the Great Acceleration of the 1950s, with certain irreversible changes over earlier eras.
This is a book of history (of ideas, of science, and of technology) which challenges much of what we think we know about environments and environmentalism, making us reconsider the reasons for caring about it and approaches to protecting it.
2023/09/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The largest adobe mud-brick structure in the world: Bam Citadel in the city of Bam, southeastern Iran, has a 2500-year history. It was an important hub on the Silk Road in the Medieval Era. [Center] Unusual clouds in Goleta, CA. [Right] Vaclav Smil's Numbers Don't Lie (see the last item below).
(2) UK-based math educator Dr. Amir Asghari runs a Web site, with the title "People and Mathematics," devoted to "curious, honest, and candid conversations with individuals whose professional lives are intertwined with mathematics." The site currently contains three chapters, each introducing 12 men and women.
(3) Iranian operatives roam in the US as lobbyists and academic "scholars": Hossein Mousavian, who served on Iran's nuclear diplomacy team in negotiations with the EU and International Atomic Energy Agency, is a frequent guest on policy forums, urging Washington to engage with Tehran and not seek regime change.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hurricane Lee reaches the rare category-5 strength and may strengthen again as it heads toward the US.
- G-20 summit convenes in New Delhi, sans China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
- Sophisticated Iranian cyber-attack on Middle East Forum is thwarted by Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center.
- The US Internal Revenue Service is using AI technology to detect certain categories of tax fraud.
(5) The US really needs to be made great again: The party of "law & order" has degenerated into a '1984'-style thought-control and history-rewriting enterprise. [Tweet, with photos of Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy]
(6) With McConnel on the way out and Trump on the way to jail, US Republicans are poised to bring their young stars to the forefront: So, it is disheartening to see Biden (80) and Pelosi (83) seeking re-election.
(7) After being notified of a hefty premium increase for my car insurance policy and complaining to the company's chat "assistant," I researched on-line and found out that the phenomenon is nationwide and that my rate increase was actually not as bad as the average increase.
(8) Book review: Smil, Vaclav, Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Ben Prendergast, Penguin Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
While it is true that numbers don't lie, they can be exploited for dressing up lies as truths, as aptly demonstrated in Darrel Huff's How to Lie with Statistics and Michael Wheeler's Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, the latter taking its title from a saying popularized by Mark Twain, who attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.
Smil's book contains 71 largely-independent essays on interesting and often controversial topics having to do with numerical assessment and statistical inference. The essays, which average ~5 pages each (~5 minutes of audio), can be read straight through or in many sittings. Examples of the 71 hot-button topics discussed include vaccinations, malleability of unemployment stats, environmental impacts of cars & cell phones, nuclear electricity, electric-powered container ships, the inexcusable global food waste, why tall people enjoy so many benefits, and making sense of Brexit.
2023/09/07 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The number of abortions in the US has not gone down, despite Supreme Court's reversal of Roe-v.-Wade and passage of restrictive state laws (NYT chart). [Center] Throwback Thursday: Kakh-e Marmar (Marble Palace), Tehran, Iran, is a former royal residence, now a museum, built by Reza Shah during 1934-1937. [Right] Share of income earned by the top 1% in the US is on the rise again: It stands at 19% now, compared with ~11% five decades ago (NYT chart).
(2) Dictators can tolerate no dissent: Having ruined Iran's economy, Supreme Leader Khamenei and his gang of terror have shifted their attention to Iran's academic institutions, one of the country's few bright spots. They have started to install utterly unqualified gang members in academic positions. A couple of Iranian universities have had good showings on international rankings, though the positions have been in decline in recent years. Now, the decline and the resulting brain drain will accelerate, as the best students & faculty members abandon the compromised institutions. [Tweet, with image]
(3) Several former university presidents in Iran have criticized the firings of popular professors and the appointment of utterly unqualified faculty members: They seem to have forgotten that they are guilty of driving off many highly qualified faculty members because of following the motto "religious devotion before expertise"! They are pretending that Islamic Iran was flawless when they were in power and has deteriorated since. This is reminiscent of former PM Mir Hossein Mousavi referring to "the golden age of Imam [Khomeini]," despite its extrajudicial mass-executions and terror fatwas, and Abdolkarim Soroush, who oversaw the "cleansing" of Iranian universities under the banner of "Cultural Revolution," now criticizing the regime's higher-education policies from his perch in the United States!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- EU-official/hostage from Sweden has been in an Iranian prison for more than 500 days.
- The ugly US culture wars are in part the fault of colleges abandoning civics courses.
- The Great Wall of China is no match for the bulldozers of greedy contractors.
- A British diplomat in Iran answers a few questions in Persian. [1-monute video]
- Another viral musical hit in Iran: "Take off Your Headscarf" has become a new protest anthem.
- Mean tripping of a little kid: This soccer player was ejected by the referee, even before the game began.
(5) This Iranian cleric accuses Islamic Republic leaders of generating unrest, including burning of Qurans by their own agents, in order to crack down on dissent and consolidate their power. [6-minite video]
(6) Going in the opposite direction of its US counterparts, Mexican court expands abortion access, including as part of the national health system.
(7) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Reza Sarmast and Eng. Mitra Zaimi presented the second part of the talk "The Paradox of Plentiful Oil," which they began last week. The talk was accompanied by screening a documentary video on "Oil in Iran: From Discovery to Nationalization" to make up for the lack of coverage of Iran's case in the book. There were ~70 attendees.
Is there such a thing as the curse of oil? In last week's installment of the talk, the speakers showed that there is indeed a curse of oil for many countries with incapable governments, Venezuela being the poster child of such regimes. Tonight, the speakers focused on two notable exceptions to this rule, Indonesia & Norway, where capable governments have successfully avoided the curse of oil. A key to Norway's success was viewing the oil income as just one revenue stream, rather than the economy's main pillar. For Indonesia, sheer luck led to oil income being directed to repayment of foreign debt, thus sparing adverse effects of the economy.
2023/09/06 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meet the new Professor of literature at U. Tehran: Saeed Haddadian, a singer of religious hymns ("maddah"), has been appointed to a professorial chair as part of a program aimed at controlling Iranian universities by Supreme Leader Khamenei's hardline cronies (see also the next item below). [Top center] Time limit for kisses in the passenger-unloading area of an airport (excuse the awkward English). [Top right] Unraveling Turkey's geometrically-complex sequence of earthquakes: Science magazine's cover feature, issue of Sep. 1, revisits Turkey's magnitude-7.8 twin quakes of February 6, 2023, classified as one of the deadliest natural disasters in the area over the past millennium. [Bottom left & center] Islamists' obsession with women's looks: To me, the good looks of women like the late #MahsaAmini trigger awe and respect. Islamists, such as this theology professor, however, see nothing but temptation & seduction in women's looks. [Bottom right] Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Proud Boy leader will be in prison until he is a Proud Old Man. I hope his boss gets a similarly long term.
- The Biden administration cancels oil-drilling plans in Alaska's wildlife refuge.
- This 5-minute report on the follies of Iran's foreign policy led to the closure of Entekhab news site.
- The Rolling Stones unveil their first musical album in 18 years. It is entitled "Hackney Diamonds."
(3) John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History: Today's National Air & Space Museum's "Trailblazers in Conversation" program featured Astronauts Drs. Anna Fisher, Rhea Seddon, & Kathryn Sullivan, alongside NASA Deputy Administrator Pamela Melroy (in-person and on YouTube). The three women astronauts answered questions about becoming interested in working for NASA, discussed their training, and recalled their social & professional experiences as women techies. The program marked the 45th anniversary of NASA's historic 1978 astronaut candidate class, which included the first six women candidates amongst its 35 new guys.
(4) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Mehdi Khalaji (Senior Fellow, Washington Institute) spoke under the title "Do Iranians of the Digital Age Living Under a Totalitarian Regime Need to Read Poetry?" There were 100 attendees, with possibly many attendees left out due to the Zoom limit.
As I usually do before attending a lecture, I researched the speaker's background from on-line sources. I discovered that Khalaji had studied Islamic theology at Qom Seminary and philosophy at Tehran's Tarbiat Modarres (Teacher Training) University. After leaving Iran, he pursued additional studies in Paris and later worked for BBC Persian, Radio Farda, and Radio Free Europe. He has written in opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and, apparently, has tried to undermine international sanctions against Iran. According to Wikipedia, "In March 2019 Khalaji and his wife, Marjan Sheikholeslami Aleagha, were listed among the main suspects in the largest financial corruption case in Iranian history with a total amount of 6.7 billion euros. Khalaji and his wife are suspected that they made contracts with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps oil and gas company, Sepanir, and in order to bypass sanctions they used personal accounts which were used to embezzle money to United States and Canada."
Based on the profile above, I was hesitant to attend the talk, but in the final analysis, I decided to do so in light of the talk's connection with one of the titles on UCSB Reads 2024 Program's short list of books, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (I serve on the program's Advisory Committee). In the book, the authors Susan Magsaman and Ivy Ross discuss many practical benefits of the arts, besides the obvious aesthetic enjoyment. Pursuing and participating in art improves cognition, learning ability, memory, and focus, while reducing stress. Just one art experience per month can add 10 years to one's life. There are music-therapy and museum-therapy in the medical domain and I don't see why we can't make use of poetry-therapy! And you don't have to be good at it to reap these benefits. So, the answer of Your Brain on Art to the question posed in its subtitle is an emphatic "yes"!
Unfortunately, the talk was only marginally related to its advertised title and thus to the important topics I discussed above, that is, new neuroscientific research results on how arts affect us. It contained mostly political narratives and some general remarks on the potential harms of technology (social media, in particular). I believe that the speaker's dissing of social media is in part driven by the negative information about, and accusations against, him.
2023/09/04 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] 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 center] Turning a revolution into a business opportunity: Her royal highness is selling access with $450 VIP bundles. [Top right] Sep. 16, 2023, anniversary of the #WomanLifeFreedom movement: Iranians in the homeland and in diaspora will join forces to honor the memory of #MahsaAmini, whose death while in the custody of Iran's despised morality police sparked a revolution. [Bottom left] My approximation of Labor Day barbecue, with oven broiled chicken kabobs and veggies. Your place was empty! [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the green square in the middle. The green and blue squares have the same center. [Bottom right] The Beatles as children. I don't know if these photos are AI-generated or real.
(2) Dry water: Significantly heavier than regular water and coming to a boil at around 50 degrees Celsius, this undrinkable 3M product has found a number of niche applications, such as extinguishing fires at electronic installations (regular water would damage the electronics). It is an excellent insulator and can be used to cool circuitry by coming in direct contact with them. [15-minute video]
(3) Please sign this petition to secretaries of state in charge of ensuring that presidential candidates meet the qualifications set forth in the US Constitution (14th Amendment, in particular).
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Indian lunar rover, Pragyan (wisdom, in Sanskrit), begins its search for ice near the lunar south pole.
- Kim Jong Un to visit Putin: Russia plans to buy arms & ammunition from North Korea.
- The Burning Man Festival turned into The Drowning Man Festival due to severe flooding around Las Vegas.
- Does Vivek Ramaswamy know what white DJT supporters think of Latinos, Indians, & other brown people?
- The anatomy of a Ronaldo header into the goal. [1-minute video]
- Liberace demonstrates the boogie-woogie style of piano-playing and its variations. [4-minute video]
(5) Wreckage of 150-year-old ship found nearly intact in Lake Michigan: The dishes of grain ship Trinidad, which sank in 1881, are still nearly stacked in their cabinets.
(6) A water park in Mashhad, Iran, was closed by authorities due to women being improperly veiled. Which begs the question: "What constitutes proper veil in a water park?"
(7) Nomad high-schoolers in Iran learned English 50+ years ago, becoming proficient after a few months. Compare their language skills with those of current Islamic Republic ministers & diplomats! [2-minute video]
(8) The cost of being a student: Setting aside expenditures on tuition and housing, the two biggest expenses for students, there are other secondary costs that exert added financial pressure. Textbooks and supplies are examples of the latter. In this essay, a teaching assistant points out that some students can't afford the cost of buying and registering "clickers" and are thus penalized when such electronic devices are required for class participation. Faculty members and TAs should be mindful of the cost of supplies and devices, and explore alternatives, before specifying them as required.
2023/09/02 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Pottery shop in Yazd, Iran, prominently displaying the distinct color of Iranian ceramics, turquoise blue. [Top center] Consequences of hijabless appearance in space: Text-message warning, followed by locking up the ISS (Mana Neyestani cartoons). [Top right] Faster job growth (by more than 2.5x) leads to expanded middle class under US Democratic administrations. [Bottom left] Jasmine Moghbeli and her husband don their #WomanLifeFreedom T-shirts. The caption states that this woman would be in prison if she lived in Iran. [Bottom center] Memes of the day about today's Iran: Widespread arrests of activist, executions, an imprisoned young man dying in custody (likely due to torture), and a surprising rise in oil exports & income. [Bottom right] Thursday night's pizzas on half-pita-breads: Toppings include ground-beef, pineapple, & onion.
(2) Hijabless Iranian women are knocked to the ground by stick-wielding vigilantes: The women are restrained by grabbing their hair, kicked, handcuffed, and touched all over their bodies in violation of Islamic rules.
(3) A university president in Iran threatens dissident students with confinement to mental institutions: Political abuse of psychiatry to "tame" dissidents has a long, shameful history in Russia and other countries. It also harms those in genuine need of psychiatric help.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- German women reopen the debate about why they can't appear in public wearing only a bikini bottom.
- A living robofish built from human cardiac cells swims like a fish & could pave the way for artificial hearts.
- AI + Holograms = Virtual presence, anywhere, in any language (4-minute talk at a Microsoft event).
- Honoring those who lost their lives to keep the #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution alive. [3-minute video]
- Rock art: Reproducing a few classics and creating some amazing new images. [1-minute video]
- France has too much wine and is paying large sums to have the oversupply destroyed: Let's head to France!
(5) Iran news: Social-media influencers and humorists are having a field day with Iranian-American Astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli's travel to space, hijabless and without having to obtain the written consent of her husband.
(6) The Holocaust didn't appear out of the blue: It was preceded by years of segregation, clothing mandates, a slate of restrictive laws, and regional massacres in Germany and other Nazi-controlled areas.
(7) John B. Goodenough [1922-2023], pioneering material scientist dead at 100: He was a giant in the fields of solid-state chemistry and physics. "His revolutionary insights into the fundamental physical properties of materials helped enable the wireless and artificial intelligence revolutions and advanced the science needed to help reduce carbon emissions."
(8) A century ago, on September 1, 1923, a magnitude-7.9 earthquake devastated Tokyo: The killer quake was followed by 1000 aftershocks over 10 days. The quake's direct damage paled in comparison with the damage caused by ruptured gas lines that created more than 130 major fires. "In Tokyo, the fires merged into a firestorm so intense that it created its own wind system and set alight the city's many wooden buildings. Survivors rushed to seek safety. Bridges became choke points, and as those made of wood caught fire, people were trapped." The two-day burning left 140,000 dead people in its wake.
2023/08/31 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian-American astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli left the country (actually the Earth) without a need to obtain her husband's permission, as required by Iran's Islamic laws! In this 1-minute video, Moghbeli talks in Persian about embracing adventure as a child and reacting in disbelief when she was chosen to command a NASA mission taking astronauts to the International Space Station. [Center] Talangor Group's talk on the paradox of plentiful oil (see the last item below). [Right] A new wave of arrests, firings, and intimidations in Iran: The mullahs intensify their pressure and scare tactics against academics, journalists, artists, and celebrities a few weeks before the anniversary of #MahsaAmini's death while in the custody of Iran's despised morality police, because they fear widespread street protests in September.
(2) The great Persian poet Sa'adi has a section on the benefits of keeping quiet in his magnum opus, Golestan: The fifth tale in the section, with the message that a wise man would not argue with a fool, is reproduced in this Facebook post. Not long ago, I read and reviewed the book STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World, which offers the same advice in a convincing way.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fire in a multi-story rental building in South Africa kills at least 73 people.
- Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow's eloquent response to accusations from a MAGA lawmaker.
- UCSB Alpha Sigma Kappa: A sorority for women and non-binary students in technical studies.
- Well, here's affirmation from a fortune cookie: "Your effortless sense of humor will help someone in need."
(4) A lengthy discussion on the recent purges of faculty members at Iranian universities: Participants include purged faculty members and other higher-education experts. [5-hour audio file, in Persian]
(5) Why do US politicians cling to power long after they become ineffective due to old age? Examples include Mitch McConnel, Diane Feinstein, as well as Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
(6) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Reza Sarmast and Eng. Mitra Zaimi talked under the title "The Paradox of Plentiful Oil." There were ~75 attendees.
Is there such a thing as the curse of oil? In other words, does possession of oil reserves lead to underdevelopment? Based on Terry Lynn Karl's book, The Paradox of Plenty, the speakers presented some ideas in this domain, with the discussion to continue next week (Wednesday, September 7, 2023, 7:00 PM).
The book deals with both theoretical analysis and historical narrative, based on six case studies. Spain was a powerful country, given its vast gold stockpiles. Spain's gold-based power later gave way to black-gold power. Oil states faced problems similar to Spain's problems with gold. The paradox is that oil wealth, instead of bringing prosperity and comfort, leads to complicity and laziness, Venezuela being the prime example. There are only two exceptions: Indonesia and Norway.
In the 1970s, oil prices quadrupled, an event that constitutes the largest transfer of wealth without a war. "Dutch Disease," a term coined by the Economist magazine, afflicts oil-rich countries and other countries whose currency gains strength from discovery of valuable new resources. The term originates from the decline of manufacturing and agriculture when oil was discovered in northern Netherlands in 1959.
Capable governments can take advantage of oil income within a diversified economy, alongside appropriate taxation, thus reducing undesirable swings. Incapable governments rely exclusively on oil income, so they prosper when prices go up and struggle when they go down, making long-term planning impossible.
Venezuela is a poster child of incapable governments. When its oil income increased, half of it was taken by foreign oil companies and the other half was distributed to about 1/8 of the population. The development program was focused on industries that required heavy investment, used a lot of energy, and created few jobs. High-income government jobs stifled the private sector, leading to a rise in unemployment, out-of-control inflation, and low national satisfaction.
2023/08/30 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Diaspora Arts Connection presents the 7th annual "Let Her Sing" concert: UCLA's Schoenberg Hall, September 24, 2023. [Center] Jaqueline Rose's On Violence and on Violence Against Women (see the last item below). [Right] Socrates Think Tank talk on NICArt (see the next item below).
(2) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Niosha Nafei-Jamali spoke under the title "Introducing NICArt: Beyond Niosha Dance Academy." there were ~100 attendees.
I knew about Niosha Dance Academy through family members. This talk, punctuated with photos and video clips, taught me and impressed me a lot more. With the slogan "Engage-Educate-Entertain," NICArt (Niosha International Conservatory of Arts) extends the cultural reach of Niosha Dance Academy to diverse artistic and geographic domains. One of Niosha's visions is to make the musical show "The Story of Nowruz" a staple of spring and Nowruz, in much the same way that "The Nutcracker" is a staple of Christmas and winter. SoCal performances of the show are planned for Saturday-Sunday, March 9-10, 2024, in Orange County.
Niosha's brief bio on YouTube.
NICArt Facebook page.
NICArt on Instagram.
NICArt Web site.
Info and trailer, "The Story of Nowruz".
SF Chronicle story about Nowruz.
Niosha Dance Academy's Web site.
Niosha Dance Academy's NBA halftime show (2017).
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Arrival of four new astronauts at the International Space Station: It's getting crowded up there!
- Qatar's years-long disinformation program to manipulate the US justice system and public opinion.
- Santa Barbara experiences the electric-bike craze: City leaders are tackling the resulting safety issues.
- Today's fortune-cookie message: "Your desire to discover new frontiers will lead you far."
(4) Book review: Rose, Jaqueline, On Violence and on Violence Against Women, Faber & Faber, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Rose begins by observing that while everyone thinks they can recognize violence when they see it, "the most prevalent, insidious forms of violence are those that cannot be seen." She then goes on to cite cruel laws that impact disadvantaged groups as examples of unseen violence. A group of white men surrounding former US President Donald Trump as he signed a global gag order to cut American funding to any organization in the world offering abortion or abortion counseling were committing violence: They participated in an act that increased illegal abortions by thousands, leading to many deaths and countless injuries.
Consistent with its title, Rose's book has a sharp focus on violence against women, although she does discuss other categories of violence. Women are almost always victimized more gravely whenever there is a rise in violence. The COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant restrictions led to a general increase in violence, but had a greater impact on domestic violence against women.
I have previously read an introduction to violence from Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series (My review). The related notion of nonviolence (in pursuing personal goals and, more commonly, in collective combat against oppression) is discussed in The Forces of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (My review).
Rose covers her subject in nine chapters, bearing the following titles.
- I am a knife: Sexual harassment in close-up
- Trans voices: Who do you think you are?
- Trans and sexual harassment: The back-story
- Feminism and the abomination of violence
- Writing violence: From modernism to Eimear McBride
- The killing of Reeva Steenkamp, the trial of Oscar Pistorius: Sex and race in the courtroom
- Political protest and the denial of history: South Africa and the legacy of the future
- One long scream: Trauma and justice in South Africa
- At the border
In the afterword, Rose explains why the book cannot have a conclusion. "Violence is not a subject about which anyone can believe, other than in a state of delusion, that everything has been said and done." In addition to different external forms of violence, we must understand the inner force of violence, the deadly temptation to make violence always somebody else's problem. We need to keep listening to "those who show that reckoning with the violence of the heart and fighting violence in the world are inseparable."
2023/08/29 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] JWST discovers a question mark in space: Scientists believe it to be a couple of dust clouds in the process of forming two stars, but this won't stop conspiratorial (photoshop; alien graffiti) or humorous (information kiosk at Space Mall) explanations! [Center] Iran purges professors and plans to replace them with "revolutionary" faculty members (see the next item below). [Right] Philip Dwyer's Violence: A Very Short Introduction (see the last item below).
(2) Iran purges university professors: Their "crimes" range from having secular views to supporting dissident students and other protesters. President Raisi plans to add 15,000 "revolutionary" professors to the faculty ranks at Iranian universities. Having destroyed the country's economy, the mullahs are now bent on destroying what is left of its system of higher education.
(3) Zanan Collective conference at Cal State Long Beach, September 16-17, 2023: Bearing the title "The #WomanLifeFreedom Revolutionary Movement: Achievements and Challenges," the 2-day conference will feature panel discussions alongside art exhibits & performances.
(4) Book review: Dwyer, Philip, Violence: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I am a big fan of Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series, which now contains hundreds of titles. I have pursued quite a few of the titles to delve into new areas of knowledge or to freshen up on subjects I had previously studied. I was drawn to this particular title when I encountered it while searching for another book, On Violence, and on Violence Against Women, which is now on my to-read list.
Titles of the book's seven chapters provide a good representation of its scope.
Chapter 1: Violence Past and Present
Chapter 2: Intimate and Gendered Violence
Chapter 3: Interpersonal Violence
Chapter 4: The Sacred and the Secular
Chapter 5: Collective and Communal Violence
Chapter 6: Violence and the State
Chapter 7: The Changing Nature of Violence
The most-common definitions of violence include only intentional acts of harm to human beings. World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation. The modern view of violence also encompasses harming animals, the environment, and inanimate objects such as cultural sites.
Violence is rooted in our deep prehistoric past. Our aggressive impulses evolved from the need to acquire food & mates and to avoid predators. The nature-versus-nurture dichotomy also enters into the discussion here. Some cultures are more violent than others and within the same culture, some groups may be more violent. Inter-group violence (war) existed in nearly all prehistoric societies. Skeletal remains point to violent trauma throughout human history.
Violence against women is particularly widespread and troubling. WHO data from 80 countries indicate that 35% of women have experienced physical or sexual violence (the range is from 23% in high-income countries to as high as 38% in Southeast Asia). In India, a woman is raped on average every 20 minutes. In South Africa, it's every 36 seconds.
After 1800, homicide in the Western World ceased to be common. The United States, with homicide rates of 2.5 to 9 times that of other affluent countries, is an exception. School mass shootings and other forms of gun violence are off the charts in the US. In the area known as the Northern Triangle in Central America, homicide rates are worse than in the Europe of the Middle Ages.
The state monopolization of violence gained momentum beginning in the 1500s. Nearly all cultures are willing to inflict severe punishments, including death, on those who deviate from the rules. The enjoyment of pain and humiliation meted out to those thought to deserve it is also universal. Torture was quite common in Europe before the French Revolution.
The extent to which religion and violence go hand in hand is hotly debated. Prominent atheist intellectuals are convinced that the very nature of religion leads to violence. In a 2004 BBC audit which ranked 3500 wars from 0 (not religious at all) to 5 (very religious), most wars were ranked 0 or 1. Of course, religious violence can take other forms besides wars. Examples include human sacrifice, ceremonial cannibalism, and scalping in certain regions of the world.
In contrast to interpersonal or intimate violence, which involves encounters between a handful of people, collective and communal violence can involve crowds (mobs), often organized but sometimes spontaneous, as in subsistence-related unrest. Crowd or mob mentality is often blamed for the escalation of violence in such cases.
Some historians have argued that as states began to gain a monopoly over violence, taking charge of administering justice, levels of violence among ordinary people declined. This does not mean, however, that violence declined overall: Think of warfare, terrorism, political purges, concentration camps, and genocides.
In the final chapter on the changing nature of violence, the author notes that environmental disasters and mass extinctions are now viewed as "slow violence," causing harm incrementally rather than spectacularly. This slow violence can and does lead to more spectacular forms of violence, such as warfare. In other words, ecocide can be a precursor to genocide. Regardless of the form, underlying reasons, and scope (individual, community, or state), "haunting shadows cast by violence indelibly remain with us."
2023/08/28 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Today is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington: Marchers marked the occasion a couple of days ago in the nation's capital. The 1963 march was for "jobs and Freedom," but it is remembered best for MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. [Top center] Five book reviews (see the next item below) [Top right] Heads-up computing comes of age: The device-centered paradigm has outlived its usefulness and is giving way to anywhere/anytime computing with new generations of digital eyeglasses and displays. [Bottom left] Rebutting rebuttals in the assessment of confernece submissions (see the last item below). [Bottom center] Iranian-American Jasmin Moghbeli, front-center in the photo, commands a space mission with three other astronauts from different countries to the International Space Station. [Bottom right] Connections, a new game by New York Times: Create four groups of four, with each group representing a theme or recognizable category, such as colors or exclamations of joy. You have to be patient and not go with your first instinct. In this puzzle, there are six state names, so four of them may be identified as a group. But then, what do you do with the other two state names?
(2) Book reviews: UCSB Reads 2024 Advisory Committee met today to trim the short-list of 5 books to a rank-ordered list of 3 books, so as to proceed with negotiations with authors & publishers in priority order. UCSB will announce the final selection during the fall quarter. Here are the 5 books and my GoodReads reviews.
- Neely, Nick, Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot ... (2019). [My review]
- Yong, Ed, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (2022). [My review]
- Desmond, Matthew, Poverty, by America (2023). [My review]
- Taussig, Rebekah, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body (2020). [My review]
- Magsamen, Susan & Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (2023). [My review]
(3) You've heard about responsible AI, trustworthy AI, and explainable AI: Now comes the idea of humble AI! People don't like to be judged inaccurately and/or harshly. When this happens, users lose trust in AI. Humble AI calls for AI developers/deployers to appreciate & mitigate such harmful effects. Fascinating article!
(4) UCSB grades over the decade that started with the academic year 2012-2013: Proportion of A grades has generally increased (A+, A, and A– now account for 58% of all letter grades). [Source: UCSB Daily Nexus]
(5) Studying the impact of an author-rebuttal process in conference evaluations: Unlike journals, most technical conferences make an accept/reject decision on submitted manuscripts based on a single round of reviews. In an opinion piece entitled "Rebutting Rebuttals," published in the September 2023 issue of CACM, N. Dershowitz & R. M. Verma suggest that data point to the ineffectiveness of the rebuttal process. A key table in the paper, attributed to Gao et al., shows that reviewers mostly do not change their assessments following author rebuttals, and when they do, it is usually in the downward direction for highly-rated manuscripts and in the upward direction for lower-rated submissions (which could mean the acceptance of a worse collection of manuscripts). In the table, numbers 1-6 are reviewer rankings, pre-rebuttal in columns & post-rebuttal in rows. You can find a lot more analysis in the paper.
2023/08/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Three math puzzles: [Left] Evaluate this infinite product. [Center] Find the radius of the three identical blue circles at the bottom-left of the diagram. [Right] Find the area of the green square inside the 3:4:5 triangle.
(2) I am excited and honored to report that I have been promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, effective July 1, 2023.
Addendum: So, what is a Distinguished Professor? At most US academic institutions, professorial ranks are assistant, associate, and full professor. At University of California, there are two further ranks of Prof VI (past mid-range along the scale Prof-I-to-Prof-IX) and Distinguished Professor (which is also called Above Scale; the end of the line of academic advancement). The latter two ranks require surpassing certain performance thresholds in teaching/mentoring, research publications, international recognition, awards/honors, and professional & public service.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- CDC Says New COVID-19 subvariant may lead to more breakthrough infections in vaccinated people.
- Healthcare deserts in the US significantly overlap with regions having Internet connectivity problems.
- There have been several US mass-shootings over the past week: They no longer even make front-page news!
- Researchers at Indiana University, Bloomington, discover a botnet powered by ChatGPT operating on X.
- Human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi talks in Persian about the plight of the Baha'i community in Iran.
- In Britain, record numbers of women will start computing degree programs this year.
- George Carlin's super-funny routine about words & phrases that help hide the truth. [9-minute video]
(4) An interesting ACM podcast: Rashmi Mohan hosts Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing at Caltech and Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA, where she leads a group developing next-generation AI algorithms. Her research has spanned healthcare, robotics, and climate change modeling. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NSF Career Award, and was most-recently named an ACM Fellow. Her work has been extensively covered on PBS, in Wired magazine, MIT Tech Review, YourStory, and Forbes.
In this 46-minute audio file, Anima talks about her journey, growing up in a house where computer science was a way of life, with family members who served as strong role models. She shares her path in education & research at IIT-Madras, the importance of a strong background in math in her computing work, and some of the breakthrough moments in her career, including work on using tensor algorithms to process large datasets. Anima discusses topic modeling and reinforcement learning, what drives her interests, the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the promise and challenges brought about by the age of generative AI.
(5) University professors are being fired in droves in Iran: The Islamic Republic has always had a problem with universities and accepted them reluctantly. Free thinking and theocracy are incompatible.
(6) Remember VCRs and DVD players? My daughter recently visited the world's last operational Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon.
(7) The many ways one can teach a robot: "The human brain is wired to be able to learn new things—and in all kinds of different ways, from imitating others to watching online explainer videos. What if robots could do the same thing? It is a question that ACM Prize recipient Pieter Abbeel, professor at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab, has spent his career researching. Here, we speak with Abbeel about his work and about the techniques he has developed to make it easier to teach robots."
2023/08/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/23 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/21 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/19 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/18 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/16 (Wednesday): Today, I offer three book reviews, which together with reviews of Alta California (posted on July 30, 2023) and An Immense World (posted on August 15, 2023) cover the short-list of "UCSB Reads 2024" program. The short-list will be rank ordered in a committee meeting on August 28, 2023.
2023/08/15 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/14 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/08 (Tuesday): A pictorial on the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
2023/08/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/06 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/04 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/02 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/08/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/31 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/30 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/25 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/22 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/19 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/17 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/16 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/15 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/12 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/10 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/09 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/08 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/07 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/04 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/02 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/07/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/26 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/24 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/22 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/21 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/20 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/18 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/16 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/14 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/13 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/09 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/07 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/05 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/03 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/06/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/31 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/30 (Tuesday): Reviews of three books about science, human psychology, and healthcare.
2023/05/29 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/28 (Sunday): Reviews of three books about climate change, mother-daughter bonds, and math.
2023/05/27 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/22 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/19 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/16 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/09 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/06 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/05/02 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/30 (Sunday): Today's focus is on Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival at Alameda Park, downtown.
2023/04/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/25 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/21 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/19 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/17 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/16 (Sunday): Photos & memories from the wedding of my niece Mina and nephew-in-law Babak.
2023/04/14 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/09 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/08 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/07 (Friday): Review of a book that's related to the book/movie "Argo" and a PBS documenmtary.
2023/04/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/03 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/04/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/31 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/30 (Thursday): Today's blog enteries are three book reviews on science & technology.
2023/03/29 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/28 (Tuesday): Today's blog enteries are three book reviews on politics, pscychology, & religion.
2023/03/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/26 (Sunday): Review of three books about Iran and the Azerbaijan-Georgia region.
2023/03/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/22 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/12 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/07 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/04 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/03 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/03/01 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/21 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/20 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/18 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/15 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/12 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/11 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
2023/02/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row & Bottom center] Thursday afternoon at Goleta's Coal Oil Point Beach, looking at the four main compass directions. [Bottom left] Trump Towers in Russia and Turkey didn't work out, so he is negotiating with prison officials to put his name on this guard tower. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Evaluate.
(2) Rebuilding Maui will take years, if not decades: Please continue to help through your favorite charity. Almost all major charities have established Maui Fire funds. [Photo]
(3) Temperature variations explained: The time-delay effect that causes mid-afternoon to be the hottest time of the day and August to be the hottest month of the year. [7-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general intere
- Where do pro-lifers stand on this? Guns killed 4752 children in the US during 2021 (+42% over 2018).
- US cinema buffs rejoice: You can see any movie on Cinema Day (Sunday, August 27, 2023), for only $4.00.
- GOP debate attack chart: Haley sparred with several others. Ramaswamy was attacked the most.
- In the United States, you are either Native American or immigrant. There is no other category.
- Math puzzle (Ramanujan Problem): Find integer solutions to sqrt(x) + y = 7 and x + sqrt(y) = 11.
- From the horse's mouth: Instagram founder explains pixels in this 6-minute video.
- Understand how Internet search works from this well-made 5-minute video.
- Understand how chatbots and large language models work from this 7-minute video.
(5) The smooch: Spanish soccer chief Luis Rubiales refuses to resign from his position following a week of criticism over placing an unwanted kiss on a star player of Spain's winning Women's World Cup team. [CNN]
(6) How the Shah caused his own downfall: The number of mosques in Iran increased from 200 to 55,000 during Shah's reign. He lavishly supported these mosques, religious schools, and the mullahs running them.
(7) The Elsevier journal Microprocessors and Microsystems retracts dozens of articles published in three of its Special Issues on <Embedded Processors / Signal Processing / Internet of People>: "Significant similarities were noticed post-publication between these special issue articles and other published sources. There is an indication that attempts have been made to disguise the copying using automated paraphrasing. Subsequent to acceptance of these special issue papers by the responsible guest editor
(8) Quote of the day: "Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
(9) Final thought for the day: Multiple TV channels & news Web sites are showing Trump's mug-shot, which is really scary, so I won't share it here at this late evening hour, shortly before you go to bed. You are welcome!
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (1): Historic photo showing Tehran of ~100 years ago, with Shemiran Gate in the background, in what is now a neighborhood of the north-central part of the mega-city. Qajar-era Tehran was surrounded by a moat and a wall with 114 planned towers and 8 gates allowing people to enter and leave the city. [Top center] Throwback Thursday (2): What was the supposedly modern and educated Shah of Iran thinking when he announced in 1975 that all Iranians should either join his single Rastakhiz Party or leave the country? [Top right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: How I spent my summer days. [Bottom left] I keep running into ads for clothing inspired by carpet designs and other Persian motifs (Source). [Bottom center] New Yorker cartoon of the day about overuse of green screens in today's cinema: "We'll add everything later." [Bottom right] Fake Hafez & Mowlavi/Rumi in English "translations" (see the last item below).
(2) Many women's dilemma, as told in "The Bridges of Madison County": Here is a Persian interpretation of a German film critic's review of the 1995 Clint Eastwood film, in which he and Meryl Streep played the main roles. My loose translation of some thoughts in the following essay: "If women aren't forced, as home-makers and mothers, to bury themselves between the kitchen and the bedroom, they won't become eternal losers in life. To emerge as heroes, instead of getting old after abandoning our true loves for security, respectability, and paradise under our feet, we must change the world and its power dynamics. In Iran, the Mahsa Revolution is showing us the way."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Near-misses on airport runways are on the rise. [New York Times report]
- An Egyptian woman created this 1-minute video clip from photos of #MahsaAmini.
- Math puzzle: Show that any two consecutive Fibonacci numbers are relatively prime.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2019: On the distinction between Judaism and Zionism.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2019: On Republicans lying that Democrats give free stuff to everyone.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 24, 2017: Slide show made by Google Photos from my shots in Seattle.
(4) Westerners who earn a living by emulating Hafez or Mowlavi/Rumi: Years ago, after numerous attempts to find original Persian poems from their purported English translations posted on social media, I gave up the practice, because I came to the conclusion that the translations were made-up or were so loose as to be entirely different poems. I remember taking keywords from purported translations and doing Google searches. Then, I would guess about Persian words in the original poem based on the English words and perform more Google searches. Not once did I succeed with this approach.
The example which is stuck in my mind is this supposed Hafez verse: "Even after all this time the sun never told the earth 'You owe me.' See what happens with a love like that? It lights the whole sky." The verse, which appears in cyberspace with quite a few minor variations, certainly holds a noble sentiment, which many may find beautiful or inspiring, but it's not something that Hafez said or wrote. Often, a popular original-fake is turned into many variant-fakes, which are then used to create memes & art, thereby gaining eternal life!
I recently discovered this 2020 article, in which Omid Safi (Duke U. Islamic Studies Center) proposes that such fake poems constitute "Western appropriation of Muslim spirituality."
By the way, musings of Buddha, Dalai Lama, Einstein, and Gandhi have been similarly appropriated!
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Chess puzzle: White to start and mate in two moves. [Center] My purely-technical Facebook post about the history and recent trends in floating-point arithmetic was removed on account of going "against our Community Standards on cybersecurity." Refer to the last entry in my blog post of September 21, 2022, to see if you can figure out what triggered FB-AI's wrath! [Right] Tuesday concert at La Patera Historic Ranch Park: Since I posted about the Ranch and Stowe House in detail last week, tonight I will just post three sample musical videos of the band Down Mountain Lights (Video 1; Video 2; Video 3).
(2) Widespread Internet outages are expected in Iran: As we approach the first anniversary of #MahsaAmini's death in the custody of Iran's Morality Police, the regime is preparing for possible street protests. Many students and other activists have already been arrested to induce fear in demonstrators. This Web site shares tools for dealing with expected Internet outage in Iran.
(3) Sepideh Qolian on trial in a civil suit in Iran: Her previous court session had been cancelled because Qolian did not agree to appear with a headscarf. The new court session was a closed one, because she again refused to wear the hijab. Qolian faced her accuser, the reporter/interrogator Ameneh-Sadat Zabihpour, a TV "reporter" involved in extracting forced confessions from accused dissidents and making fake "documentaries" about them. In court, the physically diminutive, mentally gargantuan Qolian praised a number of freedom-fighters and spat in the face of her despised accuser.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- There is a confirmed death toll of ~115 in the Maui fire, but 800+ are still missing.
- Plane crash near Moscow kills 10, possibly including Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary leader.
- Made-up quote: "If you go after me, I'm coming after you!" ~ V. Putin, on the plane crash near Moscow
- India becomes the first country to land a spacecraft on the southern polar region of the moon.
- Israeli academics turn on their government, because academia must be built on democratic foundations.
- Wouldn't it be nice if the GOP presidential candidates never mentioned the orange guy during the debate?
- I'm sorry about the $200,000 bond: We should all try to facilitate Trump's disappearance, not make it harder!
- Facebook memory from August 22, 2010: My daughter showing off her newly-pierced ears.
(5) Iranian filmmaker and literary figure Ebrahim Golestan [1922-2023] dead at 100: Much praise has been offered for his work and influence over the years, and now in eulogy. There are also contrary views criticizing Golestan as the embodiment of Iran's patriarchal culture. Here's one example.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Facebook memory: NASA's shot of the total solar eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017. [Top center] My latest entry in New Yorker cartoon caption contest (#863): "I said I want a 'stick-figure salary' not a 'a six- figure salary'." [Top right] Mathematician/Engineer Claude E. Shannon (see the last item below).
(2) A much-wanted championship & an unwanted kiss: An official of Spain's Soccer Federation kissed a player on the lips during World Cup medals ceremony, a grim reminder of sexism prevailing in sports and elsewhere.
(3) The ultimate in talent-show performance: The young woman performing here had advanced-stage cancer and died later. Meanwhile, she brought cheers and tears with her original song containing her life story.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hilary departs Southern California, leaving massive flooding, mudslides, and upheaval in its wake.
- A flying robot can float on gusts of wind like a bird: While floating, it uses 150 times less power.
- How a modern recycling facility recovers all useful elements from spent lithium batteries.
- Partying with classical music: "I'm a Barbie Girl," played in the style of six classical composer.
- Sample "cheesy" TV commercials from pre-Islamic-Revolution Iran (tea leaves & sandwich spread).
- Facebook memory from Aug. 21, 2017: The day when we watched a total solar eclipse in Salem, Oregon.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 21, 2014: All those awesome feelings over small things.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 21, 2010: "The blind and the Oppressor" (a Rahi Moayeri Persian poem).
(5) Stern competition between Iranian mullahs and the Taliban: Iran eliminates sculpture and cinema from art majors in a university admissions guide. Officials then claim an error, which will be corrected.
(6) You are probably over-sharing on Venmo: If you use Venmo, please review your privacy settings, because certain default settings expose all of your info to other users.
(7) Amazing instructional videos: This Web page contains short (~5-minute) videos about artificial intelligence and computers. Enjoy! I will post about some of the more-interesting videos in this collection separately.
(8) Mathematician/Engineer Claude Elwood Shannon [1916-2001]: Known as father of the information age, he made major contributions to the theoretical foundations of modern computing and digital communication.
- Information theory: He devised a theory of communication and the notions of entropy & channel capacity.
- Digital circuits: His MS thesis introduced circuits for logical operations, connecting them to Boolean algebra.
- Cryptanalysis: He laid the foundation for modern cryptography after working with Alan Turing during WW II.
- Sampling theory: He contributed to the Nyquist-Shannon theorem about signal reconstruction from samples.
- Data compression: His entropy concept paved the way for compression methods (e.g., Huffman coding).
- Reliable transmission: His noisy-channel coding theorem bounds the data rate, given an error probability.
- Maximum data rate: He contributed to the Shannon-Hartley theorem to bound a channel's data rate.
- Artificial intelligence: His maze-navigating mouse was an early demonstration of AI and machine learning.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Golestan Palace, Tehran, Iran. [Center] Hurricane Hilary has turned into a tropical storm as it approaches SoCal: Extensive rain is expected, but the impact may be less than previously feared. [Right] An important book about the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Magnitude-5.5 quake near Ojai, California, around 2.41 PM today: Aftershocks are being felt in the area.
- Spain squeaks by England 1-0 to claim its first women's soccer World Cup title. [4-minute highlights]
- An open and honest criticism of Islamic officials in Iran for being brutal, dishonest, and clueless.
- Regional Iranian music: A song from the western Luristan Province, with subtitles. [5-minute video]
(3) Book review: Bird, Kai and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, unabridged 27-hour audiobook, read by Jeff Cummings, Blackstone Audio, 2007.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I sought this book after watching Christopher Nolan's 2023 film "Oppenheimer" at an IMAX theater, so as to maximize the enjoyment of the film's brilliant cinematography. Cillian Murphy plays the title role, with Emily Blunt portraying his wife Kitty, Robert Downey Jr. as the devious Lewis Strauss, and Rami Malek as physicist David Hill. Matt Damon's portrayal of General Leslie Grove is less convincing. Given that a film, even one that is 3 hours long, cannot capture all the details of a complex life and filmmakers are prone to dramatization & exaggeration, perusing the book that inspired the movie became a must.
The initial "J." in J. Robert Oppenheimer, JRO [1904-1967], stands for "Julius," his father's first name (a common practice among some Jews). The title's Prometheus is a mythical figure "best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization. In some versions of the myth, he is also credited with the creation of humanity from clay" (Wikipedia).
A relatively shy boy, JRO wasn't into playing with boys his own age. At Harvard, he majored in chemistry, but he was really interested in physics, which he later pursued at University of Gottingen in Germany, a major center for theoretical physics. After doing research at several institutions, he became a professor of physics at UC Berkeley, later leading Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, 1947-1966, where the likes of Albert Einstein, Kurt Godel, and John von Neumann roamed.
JRO was an enigmatic scientist, brilliant but also mercurial, who led US's efforts to develop the atom bomb (The Manhattan Project) from 1941 until the end of World War II. He wasn't completely trusted because he befriended members of the US Communist Party, but his expertise was too valuable to the war effort to set aside. So, he was put in charge at Los Alamos Laboratory, while being under surveillance. He emerged as a hero, when the project successfully tested an atom bomb, with the US military dropping two bombs on Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly thereafter.
JRO enjoyed the limelight in the wake of Manhattan Project's success, while also harboring doubts about weapons of mass destruction and the potential for an arms race with the Soviet Union getting out of control. Having seen the devastation caused by the atom bombs dropped on Japan, he began opposing the development of the Super-bomb (H-bomb), an even more devastating weapon of mass destruction. In the end, he was heartbroken when his security clearance was revoked after a Joseph-McCarthy-style tribunal ruled that he could not be trusted.
JRO suffered from episodes of depression, homesickness, and other mental troubles throughout his life. He was a brilliant scientist but his naivete and detachment from worldly matters (he did not read newspapers or magazines) made him a victim of political manipulation in Washington, where people are thrown away like soiled toilet paper when they no longer serve the political ambitions of those pulling the strings. Much of this book is a manifesto in defense RJO and a criticism of the misguided policy of setting aside scientists for traits they tend to have as a matter of course (liberalism, favoring open discussions, thinking about the ethics of war, pursuing social justice).
One of RJO's sins was his defense of openness about technical advances, particularly the development of weapons of mass destruction. He believed that openness would curtail over-development of weapons by our enemies, that is, would dampen an arms race, and would keep the public informed about what an atomic war would mean. He advised his scientist colleagues that they had no more say in how the military used the results of their work than any other member of the public. He considered the wisdom of the masses critical in making major war-and-peace decisions at the national level.
President John F. Kennedy tried to make it up to RJO (and to compensate for his own failings in not standing up to Joseph McCarthy) by bestowing him with Atomic Energy Commission's highest honor, the Enrico Fermi Award. He was assassinated before he could do it and the task fell to Lyndon Johnson, who praised RJO profusely during his remarks. In accepting the award, RJO noted that Jefferson had often written of the brotherly spirit of science, a spirit that, unfortunately, hasn't always prevailed.
RJO died at age 62, having lost a lot of weight and nearly all of his mental sharpness. The urn containing his ashes was dropped at sea, as he had requested. Following his death, messages of sympathy and admiration arrived in large numbers.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Talk on "Mystical Origins of Persian Calligraphy" (see the next item below). [Top center] Simple math puzzle: Find the area of the blue quadrangle. [Top right] Geometric puzzles: Four seemingly underspecified problems from @gs_bangalore. [Bottom left] Walking in Ventura, before the arrival of Hurricane Hilary. [Bottom center] Course lectures on my YouTube channel (see the last item below).[Bottom right] The universe in pictures: A historical timeline since the Big Bang (the time scale is highly nonlinear) and comparing Hubble & James Webb images from the same region of our universe.
(2) Farhang Foundation's program on August 12, 2023: Kourosh Beigpour spoke under the title "Mystical Origins of Persian Calligraphy." I was very disappointed that I could not attend on that day. Fortunately, the link to the program's recording has just been released (36-minute video).
Award-winning graphic artist and type designer Kourosh Beigpour shares his profound insights into the captivating world of Persian calligraphy, delving deep into the mystical origins that have shaped this cherished art form. His relentless dedication to preserving the authenticity of this art while infusing it with his own contemporary expression has earned him accolades and admiration.
(3) One of my English language pet peeves: When one registers for an event such as a conference in advance, it is called "advance registration," not "advanced registration"!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Constitution prohibits Trump from ever being president again: Article in The Atlantic.
- Some of the prominent faces of dissent in Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution. [2-minute video]
- The funeral of old-time singer Parvin in Iran: No mullahs, just poetry and music. [3-minute video]
- Where would India be today had it not been colonized by the British? An interesting discussion.
(5) The 1988 Iranian prison massacre: Thousands of Iranian prisoners were executed by an extrajudicial process triggered by a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini. Of the panel involved in carrying out the fatwa, only Hamid Noury has been brought to justice by an international war-crimes tribunal in Sweden. Another prominent member of the panel, Ebrahim Raisi, is now Iran's president. Ayatollah Montazeri was the only official to object to the executions at the time, and he was promptly sidelined and confined to house arrest for the rest of his life. This article by Hamid Enayat, published in Middle East Quarterly, contains a detailed account of the extrajudicial executions and its criminal participants who remain at large.
(6) Complete on-line graduate-level course on fault-tolerant computing: I am learning to organize my YouTube videos and, as a first step, have set up a playlist composed of 16 lectures for my upcoming fall 2023 UCSB graduate course, ECE 257A. These lectures were recorded during the distance-learning of the COVID years and are made available here to the public.
Playlist name: Fault-Tolerant Computing Lectures (UCSB Graduate Course) [Playlist link]
Other info, including course textbook and lecture slides can be found on the UCSB ECE 257A Web page.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The intricate design and tiling scheme of the dome at Isfahan's Shah Mosque. [Center] On-line course on transitional justice (see the next item below). [Right] Meghan O'Gieblyn's God, Human, Animal, Machine (see the last item below).
(2) Iran Academia's course on "Transitional Justice": This 7-week on-line course, which I just finished, is organized as follows. Week one, titled "Foundational Aspects of Transitional Justice," covers the concept's development and basic principles. Week two, "Dealing with Past Atrocities," discusses truth and justice mechanisms that are not dependent on transition. The following weeks delve deeper into specific topics, including "The Right to Truth and Truth Commissions" (Week 3), "The Right to Justice and Criminal Prosecutions" (Week 4), "Reparations and Guarantees of Non-repetitions" (Week 5), "Mass Graves" (Week 6), and "Memory and Transitional Justice" (Week 7).
In very brief terms, transitional justice aims to soothe & heal the victims of oppression or war crimes, identify the culprits & punish them according to local or international laws, and, in cases where punishment isn't possible or the amnesty option is pursued, at least draw a solid line between the present and the past to ensure that heinous crimes are not forgotten or repeated. Agents who committed crimes against humanity are liable (having followed orders isn't a valid defense), as are those who planned the atrocities or issued the orders. Monuments & other memorials may be erected as part of the remembrance process and as a way of preventing repetition of the crimes. In the case of memorializing in the service of healing, art can play a significant role.
I took this course because I was curious about mechanism for bringing perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes to justice as part of a national healing process, when dictatorial regimes fall or when peace prevails after conflict. I was particularly interested in the pros and cons of pursuing justice versus granting general amnesty.
The various presentations and reading material for this free on-line course were uneven in terms of engaging the viewer/reader, comprehensibility, and logical organization. Visual aids were non-existent. It is difficult to learn from dry, monotonous, long-winded explanations. With regard to content, much of what was presented falls under common-sense provisions, that one can deduce without instruction. In particular, end-of-section questions were almost always answerable by analyzing the text of the answers, without a need to have listened to presentations or perused the reading material.
(3) Book review: O'Gieblyn, Meghan, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology. Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Rebecca Lowman, Random House Audio, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
[My pitch of this book to "UCSB Reads 2024" Committee was posted on June 14, 2023.]
We are bombarded daily with stories about ChatGPT and how AI is threatening the essence of our being as humans. Technology is speeding up our lives, leaving little time for reflection, yet the deep changes that are afoot demand that we devote enough time to think about the future of humanity and our challenges over centuries and millennia, not focus merely on today, this quarter, or the next political election. On the other hand, maybe we should just stop thinking and trust the judgement of algorithms!
In 304 pages (9 hours of audio), O'Gieblyn, an essayist, columnist, and thinker, who studied theology in college, paints a detailed picture of our struggles to reconcile spirituality with technical progress. The writing is that of an essayist, almost devoid of jargon, although, as a columnist for Wired magazine, O'Gieblyn can be legitimately called a tech writer.
We humans are constantly thinking of ways of controlling and overtaking nature. We outsource our intelligence to machines, as extensions of our minds, increasingly seeing ourselves as machinelike in the process. Descartes considered all animals essentially as clocks, that is, robots without any inner experience. He believed that humans were also machines, but with souls, a viewpoint that created problems for the clockwork universe.
This is more or less the starting place for O'Gieblyn's book, which is about how the success of the modern scientific worldview rests on mechanical metaphors, with the attendant discounting of individual human thought and agency. We put consciousness and free will to the side, as we try to describe the world as a mere machine. We did it with the clock metaphor, and that's what we're doing with the computer metaphor, with the computational theory of mind.
O'Gieblyn's book provides ample opportunities to ponder and discuss hot-button issues of the day. Increasingly, technology is being developed and sold with religion-like tropes. So, we might wonder whether we are on our way to a utopian digital heaven, offered to us by gods of technology, or a dystopian digital hell of our own making. Is academia threatened by ChatGPT and similar developments? Is our increasing reliance on technology helping or impairing our move toward equity and social justice?
In the final Chapter 13, entitled "Virality," a very important point is raised about our society's exclusive focus on form at the expense of content. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many "experts" with no training in epidemiology or even medicine began modeling the pandemic and how it spread. They argued that data tell us everything, so there is no need for domain expertise to analyze the data and produce diagnoses & recommendations.
That a former theologian generates a remarkable synthesis of key ideas addressed for centuries through faith, philosophy, science, and technology is a pleasant surprise.
O'Gieblyn's statement that "All the eternal questions have become engineering problems" is both jarring and enlightening. The modern world has transformed empirical scientists from bad guys, who undermined religion, to good guys, who may help open a portal to digital heaven for our digitized & uploaded souls.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: My younger son's yearbook photo from August 2003. [Top center] Definition of poetry by poet William Blake (1757-1827). [Top right] Art-deco typewriting desk. [Bottom left] Talk on acoustic filters (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Talk on what we are learning from modern telescopes (see item 3 below). [Bottom right] Talk on Persian carpets (see the last item below).
(2) Wednesday night's IEEE Central Coast Section talk: Dr. Gregory C. Dyer (Resonant, a Murata Company) spoke under the title "XBAR and the 5G Acoustic Filter." This hybrid event was held at Rusty's Pizza in Goleta and streamed on-line via WebEx.
Acoustic filters are foundational components of the radio frequency front end (RFFE) modules that enable today's compact, high performance, wide bandwidth mobile phones. These passive devices are composed of acoustic resonator networks that have a high selectivity, low-loss bandpass RF filter response. Additionally, state-of-the-art acoustic filters have footprints of less than 1 square millimeter while operating at input power levels on the order of 1 Watt. In this talk, Dr. Dyer surveyed the core acoustic filter technologies, with an emphasis on transversely excited bulk acoustic resonator (XBAR) filters. He discussed acoustic resonator and filter physics and highlighted the differentiating attributes that the XBAR technology provides for Fifth Generation (5G) telecommunications and beyond.
I had to leave the event early to make it to another meeting, so my report is based on speaker's abstract.
(3) Wednesday night's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Bahram Mobasher (UC Riverside) spoke under the title "Uncovering the Secrets of Our Universe and Life with Present and Future Telescopes" to 100+ attendees.
Beginning with a history of space observations via crude early telescopes (Kepler, Galileo), Dr. Mobasher discussed many other telescopes built and used through the centuries, up to and including modern space telescopes (Hubble, James Webb, Euclid).
[Dr. Bahram Mobasher's Google Scholar profile]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A weakened Hurricane Hilary to arrive in Southern California on Sunday. [Projected hurricane path]
- How language shapes the way we think: 14-minute TED talk by Lera Boroditsky.
- Michigan State University students unearth an observatory buried on campus since 1881.
- Stephen Pinker answers questions about language rules and good writing.
- Cartoon of the day: "Jason, I'd like to let you play, but soccer is a girls' game." [Image]
(5) Spain v. England in women's soccer World Cup final (Fox, Sun. 8/20, 3:00 AM PDT): Neither team has won a women's World Cup title before. In an exciting match that went scoreless for 80 minutes, Spain scored in minutes 81 & 90 to eliminate Sweden 2-1. In the other semifinal match, England breezed by Australia 3-1.
(6) Thursday night's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Touraj Jouleh spoke in Persian under the title "The Pathology of Iranian Carpets Over Time." Before the main talk, Mitra Zaimi shared a video clip about Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1905, whose 118th anniversary was on August 5. There were ~70 attendees.
Dr. Jouleh divided his discussion into four historical periods.
- The Safavid era (1501-1736 CE): Known as the golden age of arts in Iran, the Safavid era led to the flourishing of carpet-weaving. We have inherited many exquisite carpets from that period. Each Safavid king was fond of a different art form. The art form that was emphasized depended on the interests of the Director of the Royal Library, appointed by the king. Centralization of the management of arts was a misguided policy that also had adverse effects on carpet-weaving. The idea was to bring the best artists to the capital and use them in the service of royalty and their preferences. Only carpets from 4-5 centers/regions have survived from the Safavid era to the present day. Carpets and other art forms from Kurdistan, Turkmenistan, and many other rural regions must have been ignored, given that we do not have any samples from these areas. The art of weaving was a practical art, because many villagers and nomadic tribes depended on guelims, gabbehs, khorjins (saddlebags), and the like for survival. So, it is extremely unlikely that carpets and other forms of weaving were not pursued in area outside the few centers that we now know about.
Unfortunately, so much time was spent on the Safavid era and related Q&A that time ran out and the other three eras (Qajar, 1789-1925; Pahlavi, 1925-1979; Islamic Republic, 1979-now) were not discussed. There was just a casual reference to the problem of low-quality material and time-saving shortcuts in production over the past 5-6 decades that have doomed the art of carpet-weaving.
The meeting's organizer announced that the discussion will continue in another session (perhaps next week).
(1) Book review: Desmond, Matthew, Poverty, by America, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Dion Graham, Random House Audio, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I perused this book shortly after I finished Mark Robert Rank's The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity, giving it a 5-star review on GoodReads. The very existence of poverty in America, the world's wealthiest nation, is surprising. Rank's explanation is that the economic system in the US is set up like a game of musical chairs, played with 10 people and only 8 chairs, where the chairs represent opportunities in the form of decent-paying jobs. Desmond reaches essentially the same conclusion. It's not that the world's wealthiest nation cannot eliminate poverty. The existence of poverty is purposeful, because keeping some citizens poor serves the interests of many. Desmond dismisses those who blame poverty on systemic and structural causes, because such attributions allow us to skirt personal agency, that is, the fact that the poor are not exploited by a system but by people who are a rung or two above them on the economic ladder.
Poverty would not exist in the US, were it not for choices and actions of more-fortunate Americans. Examples of exploitative choices and actions abound: Paying undocumented workers less than the minimum wage or denying them overtime; Charging exorbitant bank overdraft fees; Setting a lower tax rate for capital gains compared with income earned through labor; Charging high rents to low-income tenants, who have few alternatives. According to Desmond, "Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that."
Affluent Americans defending exclusionary zoning that keeps low-income families away from their neighborhoods has the effect of curtailing upward mobility, thus essentially being a segregationist act. The wealthiest Americans not paying their fair share of taxes is another inhibitor of upward mobility, because of its negative impact on funding adequate safety nets; and the safety nets that are in place are rather difficult to access by the poor, due to bureaucratic red tape.
Desmond's previous book, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning best-seller, Evicted, offered a thorough and thoughtful study of the US rental housing system which, among other ills, perpetuates poverty. When a low-income family spends up to 3/4 of its income on rent and is constantly worried about making the payment and avoiding eviction, it is left with little time or emotional energy to better itself in order to escape poverty's vicious cycle.
Poverty isn't a problem affecting only the poor. It drags the entire society down by being ever-present in our news, visible to us as we walk in a park, depressing us and making us feel shame. It is thus imperative that we all carefully examine our lifestyles to identify all the ways in which we contribute to poverty.
(2) Book review: Taussig, Rebekah, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Body, HarperOne, 2020.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
At 14 months old, Taussig was diagnosed with a malignant cancer that attacked her spine. She became cancer-free after two years of intense treatment, but was left paralyzed from the waist down. In her memoir-cum-disability-justice-manifesto, Taussig, creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty, offers a nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most. "Taussig's explorations of the ways her own ordinary, resilient, disabled body interacts with a largely able-bodied world are complex, evading neatly tied conclusions and categories" (Rumpus literary & culture on-line magazine).
This is the first book about disability that I have perused, so I learned a great deal from it. For many of us, seeing a disabled person evokes a variety of feelings, including pity, mercy, and charity. The obviously-visible disability tends to blind us to the fact that there is a thinking, feeling, and, perhaps, brilliant person behind the abnormal physical appearance, with many of the same challenges and aspirations as the rest of us.
Our movies and literature depict disability as horrific, inspirational, or beatific. Growing up, Taussig yearned for stories depicting disability as both nuanced and ordinary. Contrary to popular views, a disabled person isn't looking for help, kindness, and charity, but connection and understanding. Looking down on or dismissing disabled persons are prime examples of ableism, a term that I understood only after reading this book.
Like racism, ableism, defined as discrimination based on disability, is often exhibited with little or no malicious intent. Ableism includes a wide spectrum of utterances and actions, from able-bodied individuals using facilities intended for disabled people to making assumptions about a disabled person's inability to perform or excel at certain tasks. We all need to challenge ableism in the same ways that we have learned to challenge racism and sexism.
Becoming familiar with a disabled person's fears, hopes, and ambitions goes a long way toward avoiding implicit ableism, instilled in us by our upbringing and social conditioning. This is an excellent book for giving us the requisite familiarity.
(3) Book review: Magsamen, Susan and Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, Random House, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
We have known for a long time that, far from being a luxury, art is essential to our well-being. Susan Magsamen (Johns Hopkins U.) & Ivy Ross (Google) present ample evidence from neuroscience research that engaging in art for as little as 45 minutes a day reduces the stress hormone cortisol, regardless of whether you are good at the activity. Just one art experience per month can add 10 years to one's life. The effect of playing music on building cognitive skills and improving learning is well-known, as is the health impact of listening to music. Doctors now routinely prescribe museum visits for a host of maladies, from loneliness to dementia.
Chapter 1, "The Anatomy of Arts," begins with a quote from dancer/choreographer Martha Graham: "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique." The chapter then proceeds with what the authors characterize as an arts anatomy cheat sheet, reviewing foundational science that illuminates the ways in which humans are wired for the arts.
The remaining six chapters are entitled "Cultivating Well-Being" (2), "Restoring Mental Health" (3), "Healing the Body" (4), "Amplifying Learning" (5), "Flourishing" (6), and "Creating Community" (7). The seven numbered chapters are preceded by an introduction entitled "The Language of Humanity" (including a self-assessment survey under "An Aesthetic Mindset") and a conclusion entitled "The Art of the Future."
Engagement with the arts affects both our physical & mental well-being and our learning capacity. Unfortunately, we have seen in recent decades reduced attention to art education in favor of science & math. A pioneering large-scale Brookings Institution study found that "a substantial increase in arts educational experiences has remarkable impacts on students' academic, social, and emotional outcomes. Relative to students assigned to the control group, treatment school students experienced a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others."
In addition to citing research results from a variety of disciplines, particularly neuroaesthetics, the book features conversations with artists such as David Byrne and Rene Fleming. The authors end with this final sentence: "The world, and its beauty, are there waiting for you."
This 59-minute conversation with the authors at Aspen Institute touches upon the key ideas from the book.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Camels in the Taklamakan Desert, northwest China. [Top center] A meme for book lovers facing a dearth of shelving. [Top right] Ed Yong's An Immense World (see the last item below). [Middle & Bottom rows] Tonight's concert at the La Patera Historic Ranch in Goleta (see the next item below).
(2) Tonight's concert at Goleta's La Patera Historic Ranch: Held on Tuesday nights, the concerts are similar in spirit to Santa Barbara's Concerts in the Park, which I could not attend this year, due to conflict with another standing commitment on Thursday nights. Tonight's band was Moneluv, which played original and cover songs.
[Sample music from the concert (2-minute videos): Video 1; Video 2; Video 3]
La Patera Historic Ranch is also home to South Coast Railroad Museum, where an old Goleta Depot was moved and restored. Besides Tuesday evening concerts, other events take place at the Ranch. There is also a museum store, a few ranch exhibits, and guided tours of the historic Stowe House. Goleta's Lake Los Carneros Park is one of my favorite walking spots: The historic Stowe House is at the upper left corner of the map.
(3) Book review: Yong, Ed, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Penguin Random House, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
We humans navigate and organize the world by our sense of sight. Our trichromat vision (eyes containing three distinct types of cones, each specialized in detecting a different range of wavelengths) is indeed powerful. Some animals, such as horses & dogs, as well as many "color-blind" people, have only two types of cones. There are animals with more than three kinds of cones, but they lack brain mechanisms to compare those colors, which is the primary method for us humans to construct a model of the world around us. Daphnia water fleas, for example, can detect ultraviolet light, but only as flashes that trigger the response of swimming away toward green & yellow wavelengths, which signal the presence of food; they are unable to see entire scenes.
Having established the primacy of vision (or the nearly equivalent echolocation ability of bats & dolphins) in constructing a world view, Yong moves on to discuss various senses in turn. Here is the book's table of contents. An interesting collection of photos, showing some of the animals discussed, follows Chapter 13.
Introduction: The Only True Voyage
Chapter 1: Leaking Sacks of Chemicals | Smells and Tastes
Chapter 2: Endless Ways of Seeing | Light
Chapter 3: Purple, Grurple, Yurple | Color
Chapter 4: The Unwanted Sense | Pain
Chapter 5: So Cool | Heat
Chapter 6: A Rough Sense | Contact and Flow
Chapter 7: The Rippling Ground | Surface Vibrations
Chapter 8: All Ears | Sound
Chapter 9: A Silent World Shouts Back | Echo
Chapter 10: Living Batteries | Electric Fields
Chapter 11: They Know the Way | Magnetic Fields
Chapter 12: Every Window at Once | Uniting the Senses
Chapter 13: Save the Quiet, Preserve the Dark | Threatened Sensescapes
Each animal's senses and corresponding sense organs have been shaped by evolution to best match its needs. A highly-developed sense may compensate for another weak sense. When we lose a sense (e.g., sight) or have it significantly weakened, other senses begin to pick up the slack so as to allow us to live almost normally.
Other than sensing capabilities, animals are different in many other ways. For example, some 350 species of fish can produce electricity for defensive, surveillance, and hunting purposes. Humans have been familiar with these features from thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew what electricity was. Electric eels constitute the ultimate in electro-efficiency, having most of their 7-foot-long bodies comprised of 5-10 thousand electrocytes, allowing them to discharge up to 860 volts. Magneto-reception capability, useful for localization and navigation, is another wonder of nature found in some animal species.
We humans also sense differently from one another, depending on our genetic make-up, training, profession, and possible illnesses & accidents affecting one or more of our senses. So, each of us has a somewhat different model of the world on which we base our actions and decisions. Our extraordinary capabilities as a species do not arise from superior sensing capabilities but from our ability to process and combine information from multiple sources.
We are capable of putting ourselves in the shoes of other species, so as to understand what they sense and how they "see" the world. "A bogong moth will never know what a zebra finch hears in its song ... and a dog will never understand what it is like to be a bat. We will never fully do any of these things either, but we are the only animal that can even come close." We must choose to use our gifts of curiosity and imagination to step into the worlds of other animals: To observe, to understand, and to expand our horizons.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Science magazine highlights Australia's environmental challenges (Issue of August 11, 2023): The special section features articles on wildfires, indigenous water science, loss of terrestrial biodiversity, approaches to conserving the marine ecosystem, and indigenous prescription for planetary health. [Center] A friendly suggestion to Iranian mullahs struggling to deal with women's hair. [Right] Iran is pregnant with more unrest (see the next item below).
(2) First Anniversary of Mahsa Uprising in Iran: The Islamic regime is preparing for September 16, 2023, which is one year after #MahsaAmini died while in custody of Iran's morality police, triggering street protests throughout Iran that became known as the Mahsa or #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution. While the regime's brutal reaction, including the killing of 500+ protesters and blinding of many others, has calmed things down for now, the anniversary is expected to bring people back to the streets. [Photo credit: Masih Alinejad tweet]
(3) To conservatives who whine that Trump poses a risk to their election chances: Well, you created this monster. Don't try to make us feel sorry for you. We will take full advantage of your vulnerability with Trump!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump and 18 of his allies charged in Georgia election-meddling criminal case.
- US shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy is happening faster than you think.
- Women's soccer World Cup has reached the semifinal stage: Spain v. Sweden & Australia v. England.
- The eBay stalking scandal: How a journalist couple became the target of harassment by eBay employees.
(5) Missing Iranian wrestler, who protested the execution of Navid Afkari, confirmed dead: Amin Bazrgar went missing in 2021 after making a series of Instagram posts. Security forces have told his family that several of his bones were discovered on a mountain in Shiraz.
(6) Scientists must begin to rehabilitate their image: Multiple high-profile cases of research misconduct and the resultant legal actions are not conducive to productivity and public trust. [Science magazine editorial]
(7) Want a cool $1 million reward? Try proving within two years Goldbach's conjecture that any integer greater than 5 can be written as the sum of three prime numbers. For example, 21 = 11 + 7 + 3.
(8) "Killing Christians takes us to paradise": Two Muslim boys, aged 15 & 16, were recently tried in Austria and sentenced to two years in prison each, because they wanted to kill Christians and restore the caliphate. They had planned to massacre as many people as possible during an attack at the 15-year-old's middle school.
(9) In Stuart Walker's book Design for Resilience, Chap. 24 is entitled "Design for Resilience" (pp. 311-339). Within Chap. 24, there is a section entitled "Design for resilience" (pp. 329-332). I kid you not!
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Meme of the day: "Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich." [Top center & right] My train/walk adventure (see the next item below). [Bottom left] The US version of the board game "Chutes and Ladders" turns 80: The game is based on the ancient Indian game "Moksha Patam" that was brought to the UK in the 1890s. [Bottom center] SI and binary prefixes (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Math puzzle: I have posted instances of such geometric puzzles before. In this one, areas of four smaller squares are given and the area of the large square is sought.
(2) My train trip to Anaheim: Yesterday, I took Amtrak's Train 770 from Goleta to Anaheim to visit with some family members. Luckily, my destination was only a 35-minute walk away from the Anaheim Transportation Center, so I left my car at home and made it a rail/walk adventure. Even though the train ride was 4+ hours each way, I spent 3/4 of that time doing useful work, such as reading books, writing, reading/answering e-mail, and checking social media. Also, I calculated that the cost of the train ticket was a bit less than what I would have paid for gas. So, it was a win-win situation: Less stress & time waste, plus lower cost.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- As the Maui wildfire death toll approaches 100 and the extent of devastation becomes clearer, please help.
- Hawaii officials were warned years ago about deadly fire danger in Lahaina.
- In the women's soccer World Cup, all the teams with previous championships have been eliminated.
- Roller-skaters inject some joy in Iran's joyless society created by the mullahs.
- Being a good citizen: This man's removal of rocks from the road surface may have saved lives.
(4) SI and binary prefixes: System International, French for International System (of Units), in use worldwide, has a recommended set of prefixes for multiples and fractions of units. Even in the US, which isn't yet on board with SI, we use some of the units and prefixes (such as calorie & kilocalorie, second, volt, milliliter, milligram, and so on). Here is a partial list of the SI prefixes for multiples. [The full list]
kilo (k, 10^3), as in kilogram = kg, kilometer = km
mega (M, 10^6), as in megatonne = Mt, megapixel = MP
giga (G, 10^9), as in gigawatt = GW, gigahertz = GHz
The next three in the series are tera (T, 10^12), peta (P, 10^15), and exa (E, 2^18). So far, so good. However, in computer science & engineering, kilobyte usually does not mean 1000 bytes, but 1024 bytes. This is because 1024 equals 2^10, and powers of 2 are more convenient for use as memory-capacity units. The same holds for megabyte (2^20 bytes), gigabyte (2^30 bytes), terabyte (2^40 bytes), petabyte (2^50 bytes), and exabyte (2^60 bytes). The powers of 2 just cited are:
2^10 = 1024
2^20 = 1,048,576
2^30 = 1,073,741,824
2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
The first four are fairly close to powers of 10, viz., one thousand, one million, and one billion. After that, the difference increases, until it reaches ~15% between 2^60 and 10^18. Because of the small differences, problems seldom arise from the ambiguity when we state, e.g., that a computer has a 1-TB SSD drive. However, science demands precision and it is best to have a unique interpretation for the value of each prefix.
Many proposals have been floated over the years, including the scheme of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The IEC prefixes were incorporated into the ISO/IEC 80000 standard alongside the decimal SI prefixes in 2008. A nice feature of the IEC scheme is its uniformity: Ki is binary-kilo, Mi is binary-mega, and so on. The only exception is that the lowercase k for kilo is replaced with the uppercase version in Ki. This is to remain consistent with the past usages of k and K for kilo and binary-kilo, respectively. [More details]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Fifty years of hip-hop (see the next item below). [Center] The fight over water at the Iran-Afghanistan border: The age-old conflict is intensifying due to drought. The photo shows the bone-dry Hamun Lake in eastern Iran. [Right] Poster about science in the Soviet Union (see the last item below).
(2) Hip-hop turns 50: On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc brought two turntables to his sister's Bronx party. He looped the funkiest snippets of songs. Music historians took note. "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang was the first mainstream hit in 1979. Run-DMC "kicked the door open" in the 1980s. Now, hip-hop is a worldwide phenomenon. [Source: Time magazine]
(3) Dissent in Iran: During this year's Muharram mourning rituals, Iranian mullahs got a slap on the face when mourners used chants criticizing their brutality, corruption, and anti-social ideas. [2-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completes upgrades to its supercomputer system.
- This stunning rainbow cloud spotted in China is caused by condensation from rapidly-rising air.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 11, 2019: When I met Donald Knuth at a TeX Users Group conference.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 11, 2015: Bride leads wedding guests in a spirited Indian dance routine.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 11, 2014: Beautiful recreation of the sounds of a thundershower.
(5) Repression of science in communist countries: During my August 10, 2023, presentation on Lagrange Points, I briefly cited the sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, in which he paints an interesting picture of physics research in China during Cultural Revolution, when speaking of the Big Bang theory and Einstein's special & general relativity were considered reactionary. Several questions arose during the Q&A session about why communism would oppose any science. I did some digging and present the results below.
First, ideology-based opposition to social sciences isn't surprising and is also observed in countries governed by Islamic theology. Statistics isn't a social science, but has many applications therein. Furthermore, the notion of randomness is at odds with the certainty & infinite wisdom claimed for central planning (or God's will in Islam).
Portions of physics were frowned upon by the Soviet Union. In the late 1940s, quantum mechanics and special & general relativity were criticized on grounds of "idealism." Soviet physicists developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism. This process did not go as far as defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging non-conforming scientists, because of the realization that it might cause harm to the Soviet nuclear program. After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, China reorganized its science establishment along Soviet lines, using bureaucratic rather than professional principle of organization (that is, using non-scientist leadership), separating research from production, establishing specialized research institutes, and giving high priority to applied science & technology, which includes military technology.
In biology, a similar disdain developed in the Soviet Union. In the mid-1930s, Stalin supported the agronomist Trofim Lysenko and his campaign against genetics, which was characterized as "bourgeoisie science" (due in part to its association with the priest Gregor Mendel). In a notorious "Pavlovian Session" of the 1950 joint meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, several prominent Soviet physiologists were accused of deviating from Pavlov's teaching. The result of promoting pseudo-science was forcing physiologists to accept a dogmatic ideology that damaged the quality of biological research in the Soviet Union and isolated it from the international scientific community. In China, "learning from the Soviet Union" was the official policy in biological research until 1956, when the Qingdao Symposium brought about major changes leading to open discussions and rejection of Lysenko's pseudo-science.
References:
- Wikipedia: Repression of science in the Soviet Union
- Wikipedia: Pavlovian session
- Wikipedia: History of Science and technology in the People's Republic of China
- "Genetics in China: The Qingdao Symposium of 1956" (PDF)
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman to earn a doctorate in computer science in the US, 1965. [Top center] Mathematics that amazes: This diagram is due to mathematician Diego Rattaggi. The number in/by each circle represents its radius and φ is the Golden Ratio. [Top right] Motifs found on objects dug up in Iran's Fars Province: Dated as far back as 500 BCE, these motifs offer ideas for artwork, interior decoration, and even tattoos. [Bottom left] A creative artist's depiction of the poor and the rich. [Bottom center & right] Technical talk on Lagrange Points (see the last item below).
(2) Oral History of Iranian Jews: Housed at UCLA Library's Special Collections.
Abstract: Record Series 779 contains oral history transcripts and audio recordings donated to UCLA's Center for Oral History Research, and interviews from the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, many of them in Persian.
I learned from this 86-minute video about Homa Sarshar being honored with the 13th Bita Prize that she has donated an extensive archive about Jews of Iran, along with her own personal papers, to Stanford University.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hawaii wildfires loss: 36 deaths, 1000s of evacuees, & total destruction of the historic town of Lahaina.
- Hawaii late-night update: Maui wildfire death toll has risen to 53 and is expected to rise even further.
- "Inside the Iranian Uprising": An informative & effective 53-minute episode of the PBS series "Frontline."
- Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks his mind on Barbie and the outrage over the new "Barbie" movie.
(4) Golriz Ghahraman, a young woman who fled Iran with her family when she was 9 and is now a member of parliament in New Zealand, challenges Iran's ambassador in front of a number of New Zealand MPs.
(5) Iran's hostage-taking is rewarded once again: I am happy for the five Americans who will be coming home, but they will soon be replaced by other Americans in Iranian jails. [NYT report]
(6) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Yours truly spoke in Persian under the title "Lagrange Points and Their Significance to Observation Satellites and Space Telescopes." There were ~65 attendees.
A brief presentation by Dr. Hossein Samei entitled "The Difference Between Script and Language" preceded the main talk. One interesting observation was that languages have been around for ~300,000 years, whereas scripts are fairly new (~5000 years). Some languages have no written form. Children learn their mother tongue way before they learn to read or write. Script is a technological phenomenon, not an integral part of a language. There exist thousands of languages but only two-dozen basic scripts.
Application of math to physics has given rise to the field of mathematical physics. Mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange [1736-1813] did pioneering work in this area. After reviewing a few concepts from physics about motion, equilibrium, and gravitational attraction, I introduced one problem in this domain, its solution, and a few notable applications to Earth observation, monitoring of the Sun, and space telescopes. The problem addressed is an instance of the three-body problem, which is super-difficult to solve in general. However, when one of the bodies is much smaller than the other two, so that its gravitational pull can be neglected (e.g., a satellite, compared with the Earth and the Moon), the problem becomes tractable. For each pair of heavy objects, with one rotating around the other, there are five special Lagrange Points in space. These points were introduced and related to the applications cited above.
[Top row] My day-trip to Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: Located at 6067 Wilshire Blvd., right next door to LACMA, the Museum is a treat for movie lovers. Movies occupy a special position at the intersection of arts and technology, so both artists and tech enthusiast will enjoy the extensive exhibits offered here.
[Second row] Every corner of the Academy Museum is filled with exhibits on cinema and film artists, including the entry lobby named in honor of pioneer and norm-breaking actor/director Sidney Poitier.
[Third row] Three early devices creating the illusion of motion (Praxinoscope, Mutoscope, Phenakistiscope).
[Fourth row] The Barbra Streisand bridge connects the Academy Museum of Motion Picture's main building to the Dolby Family Terrace, where one can relax while enjoying an expansive view of the surrounding areas.
[Fifth row] The 3-story exhibit entitled "Stories of Cinema" is augmented with a tour of cinema's pre-history in the exhibit "The Path to Cinema," which contains multiple early devices and a display on Magic Lanterns.
[Sixth row] The exhibit entitled "Back Drop: An Invisible Art" uses Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film "North by Northwest" to illustrate how much work goes into creating what you see behind the actors. Initially, backdrops were painted. Later, photographs were used. Now, digital displays do the job.
[Seventh row] Some of Academy Museum's displays on character creation.
[Eighth row] Some of the displays on the Oscars and make-believe locations (animated or live action).
[Bottom row] Among movies honored in exhibits are "Casablanca" and the works of Pedron Almadovar.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The widening US income gap: Income growth since 1980, after taxes & benefits, by income group (New York Times chart). [Center] JR-15, the fully-functional assault rifle for kids (JR = junior, get it?): Just what we needed, because we don't have enough school shootings & other forms of gun violence. [Right] The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl & Dana Mackenzie (see the last item below).
(2) US women's exit from the 2023 soccer World Cup: The penalty kick nearly saved by the US goalie actually crossed the goal line by millimeters, giving Sweden an advantage in the sudden-death stage of PKs. The Swedish goalie emerged as the game's hero, for saving multiple shots during the match.
(3) NASA reestablishes contact with Voyager 2: The spacecraft, which left Earth 46 years ago and is currently 12.3 billion miles away, stopped communicating in July, when controllers accidentally sent a command that shifted its antenna 2 degrees away from Earth. A special command, dubbed "interstellar shout," has led to the reorientation of the spacecraft's antenna and resumption of communications with Earth. Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to have flown by Neptune and Uranus is now outside the Solar System, in the interstellar space. It's twin, Voyager 1, is the most-distant spacecraft from Earth (around 15 billion miles away, or ~5 times further than Pluto).
(4) Book review: Pearl, Judea and Dana Mackenzie, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect, Hachette, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Computer scientist Judea Pearl (UCLA) and writer Dana Mackenzie introduce their target general audience to the subject of causality and causal inference from statistical and philosophical viewpoints. During my doctoral studies at UCLA in the early 1970s, I was fortunate to be a student in Judea Pearl's graduate course on computer memories, a topic outside his areas of expertise that he must have taught based on departmental need; yet, I learned a great deal from the course.
Early-20th-century statistical methods were inadequate for describing causal relationships between variables. A "Causal Revolution," which began in mid-20th-century, provided conceptual and mathematical tools for the task. Common statistical tools, such as correlation and regression, operate at the level of association (a crowing rooster is associated with a rising sun), without any implication that one event causes the other event.
Higher levels or rungs of the ladder of causation, intervention and counterfactuals, deal with these two questions: "How does intervention X affects the outcome Y?" and "What might have been under different circumstances?" Bayes' Theorem and Bayesian networks are introduced as tools related to causal diagrams. Ironically, it is rather difficult to show that cigarette-smoking causes cancer; it does, but no amount of discussion of correlation between smoking and cancer constitutes adequate proof.
Causal reasoning helps resolve a number of well-known paradoxes: The Monty Hall Problem, Simpson's Paradox, Berkson's Paradox, and Lord's Paradox. The authors end their presentation in Chapter 10 with a discussion of the use of causal reasoning in big-data and AI. Solving the tough philosophical problem of AI reflecting on its own actions requires the use of counterfactuals and, thus, causal reasoning.
The book's table of contents follows.
Introduction: Mind Over Data
Chapter 1: The Ladder of Causation
Chapter 2: From Buccaneers to Guinea Pigs: The Genesis of Causal Inference
Chapter 3: From Evidence to Causes: Reverend Bayes Meets Mr. Holmes
Chapter 4: Confounding and Deconfounding: Or, Slaying the Lurking Variable
Chapter 5: The Smoke-Filled Debate: Clearing the Air
Chapter 6: Paradoxes Galore!
Chapter 7: Beyond Adjustment: The Conquest of Mount Intervention
Chapter 8: Counterfactuals: Mining Worlds that Could Have Been
Chapter 9: Mediation: The Search for a Mechanism
Chapter 10: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and the Big Questions
Pearl & Mackenzie have an information page on the book, with much useful background, as well as links to many pertinent news reports and book reviews.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The ancient Roman Theater of Sabratha, Libya. [Top center & right] Today, on the last day of the 2023 Fiesta (Old Spanish Days), I visited Santa Barbara's waterfront, where an arts & crafts show was held along Cabrillo Blvd., various street musicians provided entertainment for the crowd, and a historic tall ship was open to visitors. "The Mission of San Salvador" replica tells part of Santa Barbara's origin story. It was in this ship that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed to establish the first contact between Europeans and native people of the west coast of North America at the beginnings of the modern world.
(2) Living like a billionaire, without being one: The latest revelation about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is that, besides taking billionaire-style vacations involving yachts and exotic locations, he owns a $267,230 RV, built from a 40-foot converted bus with someone else's money. [NYT report]
(3) Billionaire Wendy McCaw paid a fortune for Santa Barbara News Press: After 23 years of turmoil, she buried the corpse of the once-thriving newspaper. Here is an in-depth story from Washington Post.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Meeting in Saudi Arabia may be the first ever "peace talks" where only one side of the conflict is invited.
- US women's soccer team exits the 2023 World Cup after its 0-0 match (decided on PKs) against Sweden.
- In defense of LGBTQ rights: Impassioned speech by Los Angeles School Board President.
- Mahtab Ghorbani's speech about Iran's brutal Islamic regime during a Senate session in France.
- A woman plays music on a street in Tehran, while defying Iran's compulsory hijab laws.
- LinkedIn post by a friend: I'm happy to share that I'm starting a new position as Retired at None!
(5) On watching "Oppenheimer" at an IMAX theater: On Saturday, I drove to Camarillo's Edwards Cinemas, which is the nearest IMAX theater to me. I had read that watching Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," with its brilliant cinematography, on IMAX is well worth the extra cost (and in my case, 75 minutes of driving each way). I wasn't disappointed.
Robert Oppenheimer was an enigmatic scientist, brilliant but also mercurial, who led US's efforts to develop the atom bomb (The Manhattan Project) near the end of World War II. He wasn't completely trusted because he befriended a member of the US Communist Party, but his expertise was too valuable to the war effort to set aside. So, he was put in charge, while being under surveillance. He emerged as a hero, when the project successfully tested an atom bomb, with the US military dropping two bombs on Japanese cities shortly thereafter. The film shows Oppenheimer enjoying the limelight in the wake of the project's success, while also harboring doubts about weapons of mass destruction and the potential for an arms race with the Soviet Union getting out of control. In the end, he was heartbroken when his security clearance was revoked after a Joseph-McCarthy-style tribunal ruled that he could not be trusted.
Cillian Murphy is magnificent in the title role, as are Emily Blunt (playing his wife Kitty), Robert Downey Jr. (portraying the devious Lewis Strauss), and Rami Malek (as physicist David Hill). Matt Damon's performance as General Leslie Grove is less impressive. The film itself is well done, both cinematically and with regard to its message of political manipulation in Washington, where people are disposed like soiled toilet paper when they no longer serve the political ambitions of those pulling the strings.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Fiesta song-and-dance performance venue, the majestic Santa Barbara Courthouse (Video 1; Video 2). [Top center] Exhibition of photos at SB Public Library: Highlights from the Edson Smith Historical Photograph Collection, which contains over 3100 images of Santa Barbara from the 1870s to the 1950s (The Public Library Building over the years). [Top right] Art exhibit at SB Public Library: Teacher/Librarian Julia Laraway's fabric collage and art quilts made of cotton batik and silk fabrics featuring birds and animals of Santa Barbara's San Marcos Foothills. [Bottom row] Three more batches of photos from the historic photos exhibit, including images from the 1925 SB earthquake, scenes from Fiesta & the first train arrival in SB, and State Stree, oil drilling, fire department, & store.
(2) Dr. Nadia Nadim: She plays on the Danish women's national soccer team and has scored ~200 goals in her professional career. She fled Afghanistan at age 11 when her father was executed by the Taliban, speaks 11 languages, and plans to become a reconstructive surgeon when her playing days are over. [14-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The gunman who killed 11 people in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue was sentenced to death.
- UCLA Chancellor Gene Block to go back to academic work after 17 years of leading the campus.
- Like other organizations, universities are reconfiguring resources, as more employees seek remote work.
- Number of students from immigrant families at US colleges rose from 20% in 2000 to 33% in 2021.
- Trump, breaking into song: "I'm so indicted, I just can't hide it; I'm about to go to jail and I don't like it."
- Quote of the day: "It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting." ~ Tom Stoppard
- Concession speeches by US candidates: There was none in 2020 and there may be none in 2024.
- Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, are separating.
- World's oldest (known/recorded) kiss happened ~4500 years ago in the Middle East.
- Expertise is pattern recognition: How a master chess player's memory is different from ours.
- Fifteen scenes in famous movies that the actors later regretted agreeing to shoot. [18-minute video]
- Fcebook memory from Aug. 4, 2014: Verses from Sa'adi's Boustan, with an adage-like final verse.
- Fcebook memory from Aug. 4, 2010: Costco exploiting the passions of those addicted to booze and guns.
(4) Water-rights fight between Afghanistan and Iran: This 24-minute documentary, narrated in Persian, traces the long history of conflict over water from Hirmand (Helmand) river, which is vital for agriculture and ranching in both countries.
(5) Germany was eliminated from the 2023 Women's World Cup: A 1-1 draw against South Korea, along with Morocco's 1-0 defeat of Colombia led to Germany being sent home before the knock-out stage for the first time ever (5-minute highlights). Another surprise was the elimination of Brazil after a 0-0 draw with Jamaica.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cartoons of the day: Officials & clerics in charge of enforcing Iran's hijab laws have been exposed as having illicit sex with both men and women. Meanwhile, Florida rolls out its new vocational training program. [Center] Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies (see the last item below). [Right] The 18th-century equivalent of multiple open windows on your big-screen monitor.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The credit rating of United States was downgraded for the second time on Tuesday 8/01.
- Making sense of legal jargon: New York Times has annotated Donald Trump's latest indictment document.
- Room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconducting material claimed by a Korean research team.
- Florida moves to a different time zone (the 1800s): Cases of leprosy surge in Central Florida.
- Two Iranian journalists, imprisoned for exposing #MahsaAmini's death, earn a major international honor.
- Iran closes schools and other services due to 100-degrees-plus heat and shortage of electricity.
(3) Book review: Traister, Rebecca, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, Simon & Schuster, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The titles of this book's 10 chapters, sandwiched between an introduction and a conclusion, provide an apt summary of its big ideas.
Chapter 1: Watch Out for That Woman: The Political and Social Power of an Unmarried Nation
Chapter 2: Single Women Have Often Made History: Unmarried in America
Chapter 3: The Sex of the Cities: Urban Life and Female Independence
Chapter 4: Dangerous as Lucifer Matches: The Friendships of Women
Chapter 5: My Solitude, My Self: Single Women on Their Own
Chapter 6: For Richer: Work, Money, and Independence
Chapter 7: For Poorer: Single Women and Sexism, Racism, and Poverty
Chapter 8: Sex and the Single Girls: Virginity to Promiscuity and Beyond
Chapter 9: Horse and Carriage: Marrying—And Not Marrying—In the Time of Singlehood
Chapter 10: Then Comes What? And When? Independence and Parenthood
It used to be that almost all college girls/boys had boyfriends/girlfriends. The exceptions were few and far in between. That's no longer the case. The author writes that at 18, she had never even had a serious boyfriend, and neither had any of her closest friends. In lieu of dating, her generation hung out and hooked up. So, the median age of first marriage among American women, historically hovering around 21, has risen to ~27, with the fraction of married women dropping below 50%. The fraction of married Americans aged 18-29 has dropped from 60% in 1960 to ~20% today.
For modern women, the early adult years, which were spent in married life by their mothers, are spent developing careers & friendships, falling in & out of love, moving in & out of apartments, paying their own bills, and prospering & getting in financial trouble. The unmarried lifestyle has come to be accepted by society. A state that was viewed as a disorder not too long ago is now considered normal. This independence comes at a price, however. "Many single women are poor or struggling. Almost 50 percent of the 3.3 million Americans now earning minimum wage or below are unmarried women."
Whereas old-fashioned women waited for their real lives to start upon getting married, modern women are living their real lives without waiting. Singledom is to be celebrated, not because it is necessarily a better way of life but rather because it expands the set of options available to women (and men). "Single female life is not prescription, but its opposite: liberation." I highly recommend this book and urge you to familiarize yourself with the epoch of single women.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A beautiful mosque in Esfahan, Iran, reflected in a photographer's camera lens. [Top center] Challenging chess puzzle: White to start and mate in two moves. [Top right] Maria Ressa's How to Stand Up to a Dictator (see the last item below). [Bottom left] The evolution of medicine over the ages. [Bottom center] Forgive me Father, for I have sinned: I had some leftover Persian herbs-stew (ghormeh-sabzi) but no rice. So, I ate the stew with leftover pasta noodles. I have repented! [Bottom right] Ancient roads built by workers with no degrees lasted for an eternity. Then, the engineers arrived!
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Special Counsel Jack Smith reads a statement about Donald Trump's indictment for January 6 crimes.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Trump only a few indictments away from clinching GOP nomination.
- Iran politics: "Iran in a Transformative Process by Woman, Life, Freedom" (Article by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi).
- Rock-climbing couple say their wedding vows while climbing rocks near Tabriz, Iran. [1-minute video]
(3) Book review: Ressa, Maria, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author and Rebecca Mozo, Harper Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is an important memoir/manifesto, but it suffers from over-generalizations and undue simplifications. The Nobel Peace Laureate author, born in Manila and raised in the US from age 10, relates her first-hand experience, having made a name for herself as a CNN correspondent in Asia, where she brought many innovations to the live coverage of events through social media. Her first brush with dictatorship came when Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines, unleashed a murderous war on drugs, and harassed his on-line critics, which included Ressa and the Rappler news site she helped launch.
Ressa's critical journalism led to a sequence of 10 arrests over a period of only 2 years. The problem with social media is that while it is a great tool for citizen journalism, it is also a deadly weapon in the hands of a dictator and his/her cyber-army. Duterte unleashed vicious social-media attacks and abused the justice system to charge his critics with various crimes, such as tax evasion, securities violations, or cyber-libel.
Ressa isn't shy about blaming Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, whose greedy policies have led to uncontrolled spread of disinformation, benefiting primarily oppressors who have vast financial and human resources. She stresses the need for legislation to hold technology companies accountable, more international collaboration between news organizations in spreading facts and democratic ideals, and more spending on investigative journalism to help expose dictators' playbooks.
Standing up to a dictator isn't risk-free: Exposing the dictator's methods subjects you to on-line harassment, arrests & other judicial entanglements, and even imprisonment. At the extreme, you may be forcefully "disappeared" or physically eliminated. The global reach and instant spread of news helps mitigate the risks to some extent, but you may still have to wear a bullet-proof vest and watch your comings & goings.
A key element of social media's role in the spread of disinformation is recommendation algorithms. Mindlessly recommending a fake story or a conspiracy theory to someone who posts or reads similar stories creates a vicious cycle that leads to radicalization. The greed element comes into play because such recommendations are much cheaper to implement than ones that have humans in the loop. An algorithm to maximize ad revenues will invariably lead to compartmentalized groups of users, each of which is extremely biased and not open to alternative viewpoints.
Of course, even if the will for tighter control of the spread of disinformation emerges in the tech industry and the society as a whole, the technical aspects of the problem are ultra-complex. Once you put a group of individuals in charge of purging "undesirable" stories from social media, you need mechanisms to prevent the abuse of this censorship power. Such details are what distinguish a manifesto from a fully fleshed-out implementation plan.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sign posted at Rusty's Pizza on Storke Road in Goleta. [Center] An on-line book seller is being shuttered in Iran because of its employees posting a hijab-less photo. [Right] Santa Barbara's La Fiesta is coming (see the last item below).
(2) Apocalypse/Apocalyptic numbers: These numbers have 666 digits, where 666 is the beast number. The 3184th Fibonacci number is apocalyptic and its first 6 digits are 116724, which suggest the existence of three other apocalyptic Fibonacci numbers. Apocalyptic primes are of the form 10^665 + n, where n = 123, 1837, 6409, 7329, 8569, 9663, ... (Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, A115983).
(3) How to deal with an unreasonable reviewer asking to cite irrelevant references: Attempt by reviewers to pad their own citations or those of their collaborators is a serious problem in our current peer-review process. Some reviewers want to have their publications or those of associates cited, even if the works are irrelevant or marginally relevant to the item under review. Unfortunately, many authors hesitate to fight such requests and opt for including the suggested references, just to gain the approval of the unreasonable reviewer and thus have their work accepted for publication. This article suggests ways of resolving the issue by appealing to the publication's editor-in-chief at the earliest opportunity, arguing why the suggested references are irrelevant and asking for a replacement reviewer.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- ChatGPT is characterized as open-source, but it scores quite low on an openness scale.
- Many of us have experienced jet-lag: Astronauts' rocket-lag is significantly broader and more intense.
- The widely-spoken Mandarin rated as the world's hardest-to-learn language.
- Persian music: An anti-hijab, pro-joy anthem. [3-minute video]
(5) Made-up quote of the day: "Stop worrying mom, we are fine." ~ Spirit of a girl appearing to her mom, who is on trial for murdering her son & daughter and who claims her children are happy where they are
(6) How scientists work to correct errors in a published paper: Prompted by Stanford University President's high-profile case of scientific misconduct, the issue of correcting scientific errors has come to the forefront.
(7) Santa Barbara 2023 Old Spanish Days (La Fiesta): Programming for the 5-day event includes the following, plus multi-day El Mercados (Mexican Markets) at De La Guerra Plaza and SBCC's La Playa Stadium.
8/02: La Fiesta Pequena (Little Fiesta) at the Old Mission, 8:00-10:00 PM
8/03: Las Noches de Ronda (Nights of Gaiety) at SB Courthouse Sunken Garden, 8:00 PM (through Saturday)
8/04: The Historical Parade, featuring floats and horses, along Cabrillo Blvd., plus Flor y Canto (Courthouse)
8/05: Fiesta Arts & Crafts Show, all day, Cabrillo Blvd. (through Sunday), plus Tarde de Ronda (Courthouse)
8/06: Tours of a historical replica of the 1542 Galleon San Salvador (Santa Barbara Harbor, Sat.-Sun.)
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Windcatchers in the hot city of Yazd were ancient architects' solution for cooling buildings: They were sometimes combined with underground aqueducts known as qanats for more-effective cooling. [Center] IranWire cartoon: In Iran, journalists who report on police violence or corruption of officials are treated more harshly than the perpetrators. [Right] Nick Neely's Alta California (see the last item below).
(2) Slab City, California: This lawless community of 150-4000 seasonal residents in a desert near San Diego takes its name from concrete slabs that were left behind when a US Marine Corps training camp in the area was torn down after World War II, with the land later conveyed to the State of California. [4-minute video]
(3) A wide gap between state-sanctioned and people's religion: Iranians use Muharram mourning ceremonies to speak up against the government's oppression and corruption. #WomanLifeFreedom [Tweet, with video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Blast at a political rally in Pakistan kills at least 44, with the death toll expected to rise.
- Swaths of Iraq, once part of the "Fertile Crescent," are drying out due to scarce water & high temperatures.
- Attention, Trader Joe's shoppers: Some cookies & falafel are recalled, because they may contain rocks.
- Challenges of conducting a music class in the presence of children! [Tweet, with video]
- Fine examples of rock art. [1-minute video]
- Happy Sunday: Get up and dance, even if only for a short break from sit-down work.
- Facebook memory from July 30, 2017: The day I visited the Freedom Sculpture on Santa Monica Blvd.
(5) The bright side of turning 50: This 7-minute Persian song appears to be a response to a humorous song that expounds upon all the health problems one faces after turning 50.
(6) Book review: Neely, Nick, Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State, unabridged 19-hour audiobook, read by Tristan Wright, Dreamscape Media, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book GoodReads]
This is a combo book for hikers, naturalists, and history buffs. Neely sets out from San Diego and walks 650 miles northward over 12 weeks, carrying only a backpack & a tent and crossing the counties of San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Mateo. He describes the 9 counties in 9 chapters of varying lengths. Santa Barbara and Monterey get the lion's share at ~60 pages or ~160 minutes each.
Neely traces the route of the first overland Spanish expedition, led by Gaspar de Portola in 1769. He describes the landscape, plants, and wildlife he encounters. History enters the picture when he passes interesting spots, such as where the Chumash Indians thrived, oil-drilling operations near the Carpinteria coast, or the Old Santa Barbara Mission. California's challenges in the domain of water, agriculture, oil & gas, immigration, and development come up from time to time.
In listening to the audiobook, I was naturally more interested in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties, that is, where I live and the counties to its south and north, but I did learn a great deal about the other six counties covered. Neely's narrative becomes drawn-out at times, but he does manage to keep the reader's interest overall.
For me, learning the origins of city, neighborhood, ranch, and road names was a major treat. For example, the name of Goleta, my hometown, means "schooner." Among multiple possible explanations for this choice is that the first-ever American ship was built in the slough in 1828. As I read about historical developments along the route, I couldn't help but wonder how much nicer our state would be today, had efforts to preserve wetlands and delineate nature preserves started a century earlier than they did. Neely's story also motivated me to try to walk along parts of the route he describes, perhaps limiting myself to what can be done in a single day, preferably without trespassing in this age of widespread gun ownership!
Alta California quickly became a national best-seller in the US. Interestingly, exploration of California by sea (1840, Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast), on horseback (1913, J. Smeaton Chase, California Coast Trails), and on foot (2012, Cheryl Strayed, Wild) have also resulted in best-selling books.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian currency, with embroidery by @minaembroidery. [Center] Optical illusion: At first glance, you don't realize that there is just one person in this photo. [Right] Impact of social media on elections (see the last item below).
(2) Public opinion about what NASA should prioritize: Searching for asteroids that could hit Earth (60%); Monitoring Earth's climate (50%); Returning astronauts to the Moon (12%). [Source: Pew Research Center]
(3) The power of language in deceiving and controlling people: "The pen is mightier than the sword" isn't just a saying. Dictators use words more than guns to maintain power. In the commercial domain, doublespeak is used to sell you "sugar-free" products that contain many different kinds of sugars and fresh "deep-chilled" chicken that's really frozen chicken. [6-minute video of interview with author William Lutz]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- About half of the US population, from California to Maine, is under heat alert.
- Biden administration unveiled new safety measures to protect outdoors workers vulnerable to heat.
- A microscopic worm, frozen for 46,000 years, was revived and started having babies.
- Facebook memory from July 28, 2017: Our challenges are power density, circuit degradation, & reliability.
(5) Valley Marketplace in Valencia: I stopped there on Thursday, on the way back from Pine Mountain Club to Goleta, and found it to be an excellent Persian supermarket. It has an extensive meat section, a produce section with Persian goodies, a full-service deli (where you take a number to be served), and a bakery that prepares fresh barbari bread daily.
[Tweet, with photos]
(6) De Bruijn sequences: Consider the set of all 3-bit binary sequences, that is, 000, 001, 010, ... , 111. The circular 8-bit sequence 00010111 contains all of the preceding 3-bit sequences as substrings. The 8-bit string is thus B(2, 3), a de Bruijn sequence with all possible 3-symbol subsequences over a 2-symbol alphabet.
B(2, 4) example: 0000100110101111
B(2, 5) example: 00000100011001010011101011011111
From the examples above, it's not difficult to guess the length of a B(2, n) sequence, but can you prove it? What about B(k, n)?
(7) The killer mullahs of Iran go to Europe for medical care: Knowing that they may be pursued or even arrested, they use deception to hide their treatment. Instead of getting a German visa, for example, they go to Italy or France (where they are less likely to be exposed), traveling from there to the hospital of their choice. Dr. Majid Samii, who runs a medical center in Hanover is complicit in facilitating their travels and, at least in one case, helping them escape the wrath of Iranians in diaspora. He is close to several top mullahs and has been showered with praise as well as funding to set up medical facilities in Iran.
[Facebook post, with photos]
(8) Interesting fact: Almost half of the world's population speaks a language of the Indo-European language family, encompassing more than 400 languages. [Source: Science magazine]
(9) Social Media and Elections: This is the theme of a special section of Science magazine, issue of July 28, 2023, which comprises the following three research articles, an editorial, a news story, and a podcast.
- Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook
- How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
- Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Good morning, at the start of a super-hot day! As I prepare to head back to Goleta, after spending a day in Pine Mountain Club, here's the weather that awaits me over the next few days. [Top center] AESS lecture on science & practice of accurate tracking of space objects (see the next item below). [Top right & Bottom row] Prenote talk about the US CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (see the last item below).
(2) Information and resource management for accurate tracking of resident space objects: This was the title of Wednesday's webinar by Dr. Puneet Singla (Penn State U.), offered via Zoom under the auspices of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society.
Space situation awareness (SSA) is the ability to detect, track, and characterize passive & active space objects. In light of the large number of resident space objects (RSOs), and the generally-accepted notion that our knowledge about the number and nature of most of the objects is severely limited, accurate tracking and characterization of RSOs is a must.
For RSO tracking, the core information needed is the orbit parameters and their associated uncertainties specified at a given epoch. This allows for accurate forward prediction but owing to both the nonlinearity of the orbital dynamics and measurement sparsity/unevenness, the uncertainty associated with RSOs orbit increases in time. The fact that none of the prior accidental collision between tracked objects was observed in real time as they occurred underscores the need for SSA.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Second Trump aid charged in the case of mishandling classified/snesitive documents.
- Yuval Noah Harari explains consequences of removing the only check on the power of Israel's government.
- July 2023 is on track to become the hottest month on record.
- Women's soccer World Cup: USA and Netherlands play to a 1-1 tie, each ending up with 4 points.
- Facebook memory from July 27, 2020: Report on fake degrees in Iran (in Persian).
(4) "When the Government Makes Big Bets on Science and Technology: The CHIPS Act": This was the title of a prenote (new term, I guess, referring to a distinguished conference-related talk delivered before a conference) for IEEE 2023 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems. The CHIPS-related talk was given by NIST Director Dr. Laurie Lacascio.
Manhattan Project, Man on the Moon Project, and Human Genome Project are perhaps the best-known examples of big bets by the US government. The $52-billion CHIPS & Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS Act, for short), is the latest example. Funding under the CHIPS Act began in February 2023 and is ongoing.
Dr. Lacascio discussed various aspects of the CHIPS Act and its potential impacts on US leadership and self-sufficiency in the targeted areas, as evident from the sample slides included in the images. The talk's recording as well as the slides used will likely be made available through MWSCAS 2023 Web site.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] RoboCup turns 25 (see the next item below). [Top center] Not your father's lenses (see item 3 below). [Top right] Uses of drones in offensive & defensive warfare (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Robert Oppenheimer on Time magazine covers (see item 4 below). [Bottom center] The service formerly known as Twitter (shades of Prince). [Bottom right] Today is my 6th X (Twitter) anniversary: By and large, I have enjoyed the medium, but must confess that the quality of comments and other interactions often disappoint me. Will I survive another year? Will Twitter survive to the next anniversary? We will see!
(2) RoboCup at 25: The RoboCup dream is to build robots capable of playing soccer at the World Cup level, that is, do for soccer what DeepMind and AlphaZero did for chess. That dream is still far from realization, but significant progress has been made over the past 25 years. Currently, robots compete annually in multiple leagues: Small-size; Middle-size; Humanoid; Standard-platform (identical robots are provided to all contestants, who must design winning algorithms and software for them). [From: IEEE Spectrum, July 2023]
(3) The Incredible Shrinking Lens: This is the title of a cover feature in IEEE magazine (July 2023). A metalens is a flat glass surface, topped with a semiconductor layer on which is etched an array of pillars less than a micrometer high that can manipulate light waves with a degree of control not possible with traditional lenses.
(4) Physicist Robert Oppenheimer appeared on the cover of Time magazine twice: Once as a hero, after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and another time as a traitor, after he voiced opposition to nuclear arms race and was exposed as having had a love affair with a member of the US Communist Party while leading the Manhattan Project. [11-minute video]
(5) Imagining what Fox News anchors might say about Trump if they held him to the same standards as Obama: This 4-minute montage is rather old, but it is worth re-sharing.
(6) Math puzzle: Find all possible arrangements of four points on the XY plane so that the distance between any two points is one of only two values. For example, if the four points are the vertices of a unit-square, then the two distances are 1 and sqrt(2).
(7) Drones are transforming offensive and defensive warfare: Offensive drones, of the kind used by Russia to strike Ukrainian cities, have dominated the news lately. Less conspicuous are inexpensive defensive drones used to patrol the skies. China's DJI Mavic 3, used by both Russia and Ukraine for surveillance, costs $2000, which means you can buy 55,000 of them for the price of a single F-35 stealth jet. Recently, a $3200 Ukrainian grenade-equipped drone destroyed a $4 million Russian T-90 tank. [From: IEEE Spectrum, July 2023]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Fleshing out the genetic basis of the human skeletal form: New research validates specific genetic variants that affect human skeletal form and ties a major evolutionary facet of human anatomical change to pathogenesis. [Top right] Bernie Sanders' It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (see the last item below). [Bottom left] "Love Affairs and Differential Equations": Title of an entertaining paper by Harvard University's Steven H. Strogatz. [Bottom center] Brave journalists #ElahehMohammadi and #NiloofarHamedi have been in prison since September 2022 for reporting on the death of #MahsaAmini (#WomanLifeFreedom). [Bottom right] Children of the super-rich are more than twice as likely to be admitted to elite colleges: The upper middle-class gets the short end of the stick (NYT chart).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The service formerly known as Twitter: Musk ditches the iconic bird logo, as he rebrands his company "X."
- Protests in Israel against Netanyahu's "reform" of the judiciary broaden to include members of the military.
- Netanyahu's government has declared a war on women: A new bill will roll back women's rights.
- Felons can't vote, presumably because they lack proper judgement, but they can run for US presidency!
- Top tech firms sign White House pledge to flag AI-generated images.
(3) Book review: Sanders, Bernie and John Nichols, It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by the first author, Random House Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Sanders opens with the assertion that uber-capitalism, currently prevalent in the US, is characterized by unfettered greed and environmental destruction. It isn't merely unjust, but grossly immoral. While the middle and lower classes struggle, the oligarchs are doing extremely well and they own the democracy in which we take pride. The oligarchs also reign over information outlets, thus also owning our freedom of speech. The good news is that we are beginning to see cracks in the oligarchy's hold over levers of power.
Sanders then quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose vision of America has unfortunately not been realized. Advocating a second Bill of Rights, Roosevelt said in his speech of eight decades ago: "We have come to clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." Economic rights are indeed human rights. Our country cannot prosper while 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and 60,000 die annually because they cannot get the medical care they need (85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured).
The numbers cited by Sanders about the extent of inequality in the US are staggering. Some 90% of our wealth is owned by 0.1% (one-tenth of 1%) of the population; the wealth of 725 US billionaires rose 70% during the pandemic, to more than $5 trillion; BlackRock, Vanguard, & State Street, major shareholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies, now control assets of $20 trillion. And these individuals and corporations spend lavishly to stifle any effort to raise taxes, citing the potential disincentives high tax rates can create. Never mind that America thrived under Eisenhower, when the top tax rate was around 92% and the richest 20% of Americans controlled less than 43% of the wealth.
Sanders, a master of facts and figures, provides a great deal more data in support of his economic proposals. I think every American should read this book and ask himself/herself questions of the following nature: Why are we paying twice as much per-capita as French and German citizens for healthcare, achieving poorer results and leaving millions of people uninsured, while big pharma is rolling in money (their profits rose by 90% in 2021)?
In the final chapter 10, "This Is a Class War—It's Time to Fight Back," Sanders reiterates the main ideas, recommending that "We must stop being afraid to call out capitalism and demand fundamental change to a corrupt and rigged system." Democracies thrive and get stronger from criticisms and suggestions for improvement. Only dictatorial systems claim that all is perfect and show distaste for critical viewpoints.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] IranWire cartoon of the day: Enforcement of compulsory hijab laws is again front-and-center for Iran's Islamic regime. [Top center] "Barbenheimer": Name given to two new movies, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," if you happen to see them on the same day. [Top right] Santa Barbara News Press files for bankruptcy: The Chapter-7 filing ends more than 150 years of history. [Bottom left] Bee-line distance vs. driving distance: The community of Pine Mountain Club is on the other side of the mountains from Santa Barbara, at a bee-line distance of about 42 miles. Driving distance is nearly 3 times as long (123 miles; 130 minutes under normal traffic). [Bottom center & right] Our Sunday night dinner, courtesy of my son: Miso soup and sushi (with crab meat, beef rib meat, and other ingredients). Your place was empty.
(2) How good a physicist was Oppenheimer, the A-bomb's architect? According to Historian David C. Cassidy, he was no Einstein, but he did Nobel-level work on black holes.
(3) Topsy-turvy US history: Florida middle-schoolers will be taught about the benefits of slavery, including skill-building for blacks. Apparently, those who worked to free the slaves interrupted these benefits!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Today's headline: "Nobody did anything about anything that you wanted them to do something about."
- Iran finds itself under pressure from several European countries for its assistance in the killing of Ukrainians.
- I find the prospects of a Trump victory over the gutless DeSantis, Pence, Scott, and Haley creepily satisfying.
- An Iranian woman's car was confiscated for not wearing a hijab: She defiantly walked home sans a hijab.
(5) On the 1935 Goharshad Mosque rebellion & massacre in Mashhad: Iran's Islamic regime is exaggerating by up to 100-fold the number of deaths (~20 confirmed in burial records, plus a couple dozens of soldiers & officers) and falsely linking, for propaganda purposes, the event to opposition to Reza Shah's order to remove women's hijabs. [12-minute video]
(6) Let's guard the Persian language: Please, please, don't use the Arabic word "nesvaan" to refer to women: Don't even use "baanovaan," which is an okay word similar to "ladies." Use "zanaan," because it creates fear in mullahs and other misogynists. Also, never use "rejaal" for "mardaan" (men). [Persian version in a tweet]
(7) New York Times tribute: Tony Bennett's melodic clarity, embrace of the audience, and warm interpretations of musical standards won him generations of fans.
(8) The most wide-open women's soccer World Cup in history is now in progress: Team USA is still favored to go all the way, but other teams have improved significantly.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A wonderful Jason Mraz concert in Santa Barbara (see the next item below). [Center] Simple joys of childhood and the immense popularity of soccer around the world. [Right] Test your knowledge of physics: I first posted this image, purportedly showing the Sun setting at the North Pole and the Moon at its closest point to Earth. See if you can explain why this can't be an actual photograph.
(2) My daughter and I attended an enjoyable Jason Mraz concert at Santa Barbara Bowl on Friday night: My ticket to this concert was a Fathers' Day gift from the kids last month. Thank You! Mraz and his SuperBand of a dozen superb musicians performed his well-known songs such as "Lucky" and "I'm Yours," as well as selections from his newer albums "Look for the Good" (2020) and "Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride" (2023). A group of rowdy, anti-social drunkards sitting not too far from us spoiled part of the fun. Don't miss this mystical magical concert if it comes your way! [Setlist]
(3) Tony Bennett [1926-2023] dead at 96: He was a champion of the Great American Songbook and a likable guy who collaborated with many artists from multiple generations. RIP!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sepideh Qolian refused to wear a hijab for her court appearance in Iran, so the session was cancelled.
- Elite colleges have begun the process of eliminating legacy admissions.
- State abortion bans will soon be offset, at least in part, by medical advances and enlightened drug policies.
- On multitasking: For my age, I am good at multitasking: I can listen, ignore, and forget all at once.
- Quote of the day: "A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart." ~ Goethe
(5) One of the clearest explanations of the Enigma, the German message-coding machine used during World War II for secret communications. [16-minute video]
(6) Donald Trump does not know the meaning of love: He has no understanding of romantic love or of Christian love (love thy neighbor; love thy enemy). In fact, in a speech at a prayer-breakfast meeting, he criticized the idea of loving your enemy, apparently unaware that it came from Christ himself. He does not love. He does not pray. He does not ask for forgiveness. Exactly what about this charlatan is Christian?
(7) Let's guard the Persian language: The Arabic word "shahid" is often used to refer to someone who sacrificed his/her life for a noble cause. Let's use "jaavid-naam" instead. [Tweet, with the Persian version]
(8) The anatomy of a soundbite: Why it is important for scientists to create their own soundbites that provide the public with concise and fun explanations. [6-minute video]
(9) Women's World Cup Soccer: USA 3-0 Vietnam. Despite the win, this was a shaky start for team USA, as they had several other scoring opportunities. [5-minute highlights]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mothers of murdered/executed dissidents are on the front line of opposition to Iran's brutal Islamic regime. [Top center] US trillion-dollar companies, including newcomer to the club, NVIDIA, and their valuations over the past 5 years. [Top right] Iranian-American snacks: Lavashak-e anaar (dried pomegranates) and popcorn. [Bottom left] Memories from my UCLA Bilingual Lectures on Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Talangor Group talk (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Iran's ancient architecture from the Sassanid Period: Falak-ol-Aflak Castle in the city of Khorramabad, Lorestan Province.
(2) Memories from my UCLA Bilingual Lectures on Iran: On Nov. 19 & 20, 2017, I presented two lectures entitled "Computers and Challenges of Writing in Persian," as part of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran. One image shows family & friends at my Persian-language lecture of 11/19, another is from my English presentation of 11/20, and the third is from Farhang Foundation's 2017-2018 annual report.
[PDF slides]
[Lecture in Persian, 73-minute podcast]
[Lecture in English, 81-minute podcast]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Stanford President resigns for research misconduct, allegedly for not correcting mistakes in publications.
- Women's soccer World Cup begins with violence: Two people are killed by a gunman in New Zealand.
- Facebook memory from July 20, 2021: Some of what we'd see on Iranian currency if people had a say.
- Facebook memory from July 20, 2020: On why we don't need perfect tests to control the spread of diseases.
- Facebook memory from July 20, 2018: 50th-anniversary reunion of Fanni College's Class of '68 in Armenia.
- Facebook memory from July 20, 2017: Zardak, Iran, is halfway around the world from Chase Palm Park.
(4) Iraqis storm & torch the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad: Once again citizens of a backward Middle-Eastern country think that a Western Democracy can dictate to its citizens not to burn a holy book.
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Hossein Samei (Emory U.) talked in Persian under the title "The Persian Script and Its Challenges." There were ~60 attendees.
As Iranians, we are all aware of challenges of the Persian script in terms of teaching to children or foreign learners, and using it for precise, error-free communication. The problems include silent letters, multiple letters (up to 4) with the same sound, and minor variations between letters (e.g., use of 1-3 dots over or below the same base shape to form different letters). These difficulties are not unique to Persian and other languages/scripts suffer from them as well. For example, we have "s" & "c" and "ch" & "tu" in English that can sound the same, and we have numerous instances of silent letters, as in "knight" and "subtle." In fact, the English script is one of the most-irregular in the world.
One can try to fix the problems by changing the script (e.g., by using a Latin-based script for Persian, a solution pursued by multiple countries, such as Turkey) or by making improvements (e.g., by removing and/or adding letters). Most people are hesitant to make any changes, given the connection of the Persian script to a large volume of literary/poetic works and its cultural significance. Going back to ancient times, there were only a handful of different scripts. Other cultures and civilizations adopted one of these options to devise their own script, leading to possible mismatch between language needs and script capabilities. Change of script is often intertwined with a desire to change cultural direction and usually has some ideological and political undertones.
This two-part Nova series on writing and how it revolutionized the spread of information is quite interesting.
Here is a viewpoint that I could not discuss during the Q&A period, because the program was quite long and I had to leave: In the case of Persian, a significant obstacle to changing the script is its close relationship with the art of calligraphy. This link is quite dear to our hearts. Almost every Persian home has calligraphic art on display. Admiring elements of calligraphic art (color scheme, symmetry, overlap. etc.) and trying to decipher its textual content is a favorite pastime of mine and of many other Iranians.
This talk connects nicely with my 2017 talks, given at UCLA under the title "Computers and Challenges of Writing in Persian," which outlined efforts over five decades to produce computer-printed Persian script of reasonable quality (see item 2 above).
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A wonderful poster to empower women and girls. [Top center] An enhanced satellite image of Iran and parts of its neighboring countries. [Top right] A wonderful painting of #Mahsa_Amini by an unknown artist. [Middle row] Facebook memories: Glorious sunsets, from July 19, 2019; The tiny town of Persia, Iowa, from July 19, 2011; My portraits over the years. [Bottom left] The naming of my hometown, the city of Goleta (see the next item below). [Bottom center] A view of Santa Barbara's waterfront at sunset. [Bottom right] IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk by Dr. Ambuj Singh of UCSB (see the last item below).
(2) What's a Goleta? Inspired by Nick Neely's book, Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State, which contains many historical tidbits about the Golden State, I looked up the details of where the name of Goleta, my current hometown, comes from. The name means "schooner." Among multiple possible explanations for this choice is that the first-ever American ship was built in the slough in 1828. [Goleta history]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russia continues to strike Odesa with ballistic missiles & drones, after pulling out from grain deal.
- Sugar Lab, a digital bakery based in East Los Angles, 3D-prints sweets based on custom orders.
- The feeling is mutual: Iranian woman responds to city of Rasht's top mullah, who hates hijab-less women.
- Two amazing feats of engineering in dominoes chain-reaction. [1-minute video]
(4) Tonight's IEEE CCS tech talk: UCSB Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Dr. Ambuj Singh spoke under the title "From Brain to AI/ML and Back." There were ~25 in-person attendees and a few connecting via a trial Zoom set-up, with some limitations, being tried for the first time, in the hopes of making future events hybrid to allow broader participation of members in our vast geographic region.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) have been extremely successful in predicting, optimizing, and controlling the behavior of complex interacting systems. Robustness and explainability of existing AI/ML methods, however, remain big challenges, and clearly new approaches are needed. The human brain motivated the early development of the field of deep learning and neuroscientific concepts have contributed to the profound success of deep learning algorithms across many areas.
The next leap in AI/ML may again come from a deeper understanding of modularity, robustness, and adaptability of brain architectures. Some of the challenges along this goal are to analyze and integrate heterogeneous brain signals across modalities, tasks, and subjects; decipher brain organizational structures; engineer novel deep learning architectures; and apply the insights into platforms that can effectively interact, support, and collaborate with humans.
Dr. Singh discussed some recent methods that integrate multimodal brain data to infer brain subnetworks, understand heterogeneity, learn representations of dynamic brain signals, and reconstruct complex high-fidelity imagery from input brain signals. Dr. Singh's group used data from an experimental set-up that included many individuals being exposed to different images, with their brain activities monitored via fMRI. It was demonstrated that the process is reversible (that is, converting the signals to images) with surprisingly high fidelity. Details can be found in the paper cited and linked below.
Reference: Lin, S., T. Sprague, and A. K. Singh, "Mind Reader: Reconstructing Complex Images from Brain Activities," Proc. 36th Conf. on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2022. [PDF]
[IEEE CCS event page]
[Speaker's Web page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] Let's protect the Persian language: Often, perfectly acceptable Persian terms are available for what we lazily express in Arabic or other languages. [Top center] A polyhedron derived from the great rhombicosidodecahedron (animated version). [Bottom left] Science magazine's July 14, 2023, issue features a special section entitled "A Machine-Intelligent World": It contains an editorial on AI safety, an essay on art in the age of AI, several perspective articles, a policy forum, next-gen voices, two reviews, and a number of related items. [Bottom center] The Beautiful Santa Barbara, shot from Shoreline Park, with Harbor and Stearns Wharf visible at a distance. [Bottom right] Issa Ibrahim's memoir (see the last item below).
(2) Family values: The state with the lowest divorce rate is Massachusetts. Eight of the ten-highest divorce rates belong to red states. Red states also lead the pack in teen pregnancies. The only US presidents to have been divorced are Republican presidents. So, why is the GOP lecturing us on morality and family values?
(3) #Where_Is_Mahmonir? The mother of 9-year-old Kian Pirfalak, shot dead by Iran's security forces during street protests, has disappeared. She had been active in seeking justice for her son's death.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Israel's science-free schools for ultra-Orthodox Jews draw fire.
- In Iran, dozens of Kurdish lawyers were summoned to court for backing the family of #Mahsa_Amini.
- AI-based weather model forecasts as accurately, and 10,000 times faster, than the best system in use.
- Sleeping Beauty & a seemingly-simple question: A statistical challenge similar to "Monty Hall Problem."
- Last night's dinner, being prepared and being served: Your place was empty.
(5) Book review: Issa, Ibrahim, The Hospital Always Wins: A Memoir, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Kevin R. Free, Blackstone Audio, 2016. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In his early 20s, artist/musician/writer Issa Ibrahim became schizophrenic and killed his mother, whom he believed to be possessed. Ruled not guilty by reason of insanity, he was confined to a mental institution, whose violent, sexually-abusive, and bungling atmosphere made it much worse than a regular prison.
The book's relatively short chapters alternate between two parallel tales: Ibrahim's life before incarceration and his fight to regain his freedom afterwards. The two threads reach their respective climaxes near the end of the book, with the young Ibrahim killing his mother and the older Ibrahim set free, because his art, which kept him sane over the two decades in the mental hospital, and the sales of his work were viewed as signs of taking responsibility and the ability to lead a productive life.
Confinement to an ill-equipped, inadequately-staffed, and poorly-supervised mental institution is hardly any better than serving a regular prison term. Ibrahim states that at least in prison, there is a known release date, whereas at a mental hospital, the patient is at the mercy of a panel of experts, and so, may end up serving a life sentence.
Ibrahim's writing is alternately absorbing and mired by too much uninteresting details. I preserved in my listening, but must admit to having skipped a few sections of the latter kind. All in all, I consider this memoir a useful book for raising awareness of the sorry state of mental institutions, and mental healthcare more generally, in the US. Like the entirety of the US healthcare system, our handling of mental health is overdue for a serious overhaul.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The Island of Abu Musa (see the next item below). [Center] Did you know that if time-keeping through the use of sun-dials were invented by a civilization in the Southern Hemisphere, our clock hands would be moving counterclockwise? [Right] The Bering land bridge (see the last item below).
(2) The Island of Abu Musa: This obscure, tiny (12.8 sq. km) island in the Persian Gulf, just to the west of Strait of Hormuz, has been in the news lately, because of renewed tensions between Iran and UAE over its ownership. Iran has held on to the Island for decades, as part of its Hormozgan Province, after the British forces left the area in the early 1970s. As you see in the aerial photo, most of the island is undeveloped, which is quite strange, given its strategic location and potential for a vibrant tourism industry, of the kind enjoyed by tiny Arab sheikdoms on the south of the Persian Gulf.
(3) Iranian mullahs try to reciprocate: For years, Iranians have been bent on overthrowing the Islamic autocracy in favor of a democracy. In return, the regime is trying to replace the Iranian nation with citizens more to its liking. To this end, they are importing Iraqis to Iran's western region and Afghanis to the southeast. Their hope is to dilute the resistance of Kurds along the western border and Baluchis along the eastern border. The latest development is a reported mass admission of religiously-observant Iraqis into the prestigious University of Tehran, perhaps to gain control over unruly Iranian students.
[Map]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Twitter threatens lawsuit over Threads, Meta's "nice" version of the increasingly "toxic" Twitter.
- This is what I'd call a cheeseburger! From Burger King Thailand: A sesame bun with 20 slices of cheese.
- War for Euler's identity: 7-minute animation.
- Math humor: Proving that 1 + 2 = 3. [Tweet, with image] [Source: tinyurl.com/y7zbkgj6]
- Two very different most-anticipated films of the year open in the same week: "Oppenheimer" & "Barbie."
- Returning last night from Ventura to Santa Barbara: Photos snapped ~8:30 PM from the passenger seat.
- Super-funny comedy routine about thermometers, today and yesteryear.
(5) On recombination of humans who could have developed into different species: During the last Ice Age, water from the oceans turned into ice on land, lowering ocean levels. The lower water level caused the emergence of the Bering land bridge between Asia and North America, allowing humans to walk over from Asia and populate the Americas. When the Ice Age ended, the land bridge disappeared, isolating the two groups of humans, the ones in the Old World and those in the Americas. This separation went on for 10,000 years, until Columbus (or perhaps the Vikings before him) reconnected the two groups. Had the separation gone on for 100s of thousands of years, the two groups of humans could have diverged into different species, the way animals isolated on an island undergo significant changes. This is why astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson states in this 8-minute video that the reconnection of the Old World and the Americas was perhaps the single most-important event in human history. It is hard to imagine the two groups of people remaining separate. Had Columbus not come over, some other group of people would have done so, if not in the 1400s, then a few centuries later with the advent of modern technology. But it is interesting to think about the possibility of the two isolated groups of humans never reuniting.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book talk by Tara Kangarlou (see the next item below). [Center] The first-ever computer game was a chess machine built in 1912 that played a king-and-rook against a solo king (from: IEEE Spectrum, issue of July 2023). [Right] Five Hundred Mathematical Challenges (see the last item below).
(2) "Tara Kangarlou, in Conversation with Abdi Nazemian": Sponsored by Farhang Foundation, today's program featured the author of The Heartbeat of Iran: Real Voices of a Country and Its People.
Using stories from 24 individuals, chosen to represent Iran's diverse population, journalist/author Tara Kangarlou has aimed to represent ordinary Iranians, not those who govern them. Of course, a country of 83 million cannot be profiled in only 24 lives, but even this limited profile presents a refreshingly different image of Iran than books focusing primarily on the ruling class, religious fanatics, or the theocratic system. The stories represent different ethnicities, professions, gender identities, and more.
The story of Iran tends to be told as the interaction between the oppressors and the oppressed, but ordinary people lead lives that are predominantly occupied by family ties, love, career concerns, music, food, and many other human needs. Yes, oppression is a big part of the picture, but it isn't everything. Kangarlou noted that the average Iranian kid has a lot in common with a Western kid, ditto for young adults, and exposing their common hopes and aspirations will help correct many misconceptions about Iran. [Recording of the program (60-minute video)]
I look forward to reading The Heartbeat of Iran, for which I just placed a hold at my local library.
(3) Book review: Barbeau, Edward J., Murray S. Klamkin, and William O. J. Moser, Five Hundred Mathematical Challenges, Mathematical Association of America, 1995. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is a wonderful source of mathematical/logical puzzles and diverse challenges of various difficulty levels. Problem statements are generally succinct and the fact that full solutions are provided adds to the book's educational value. The problems appear on pp. 1-46 and solutions on pp. 47-210. Beginning on page 211, six tool chests are briefly reviewed: Combinatorics; Arithmetic; Algebra; Inequalities; Geometry & trigonometry; Analysis.
I include in my review five samples to show the nature and level of the problems. I have chosen only problems that do not include diagrams.
Problem 1: The length of the sides of a right triangle are three consecutive terms of an arithmetic progression. Prove that the lengths are in the ratio 3:4:5.
Problem 101: Prove that each of the numbers 10201, 10101, and 100011 is composite in any base.
Problem 238: Show that, for all real values of x (radians), cos(sin x) > sin(cos x).
Problem 327: Let three concentric circles be given such that the radius of the largest is less than the sum of the radii of the two smaller ones. Construct an equilateral triangle whose vertices lie one on each circle.
445: Prove that if the top 26 cards of an ordinary shuffled deck contain more red cards than there are black cards in the bottom 26, then there are in the deck at least three consecutive cards of the same color.
The following humorous poem (from p. 20), purportedly written by a student in the fly leaf of an algebra textbook, does not apply to this book!
If there should be another flood | Hither for refuge fly
Were the whole world to be submerged | This book would still be dry
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Throwback Thursday: My paternal grandmother, Sorahi, doing homework for her adult-education course, pencil drawing of my maternal grandfather, Sassoon, which I did as a teenager, and my just-completed "memorial wall" honoring several deceased family members. [Middle left] Calligraphic rendering of a Persian verse by Khayyam. [Middle center] Math puzzle: If the blue line segments BD & CF are equal, as are the red line segments AE & AF, what is the measure of the angle CHD? [Middle right & Bottom row] Talangor Group talk on "Nature's Scaling Laws" (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US FTC has opened an investigation into OpenAI over whether ChatGPT has harmed consumers.
- US Federal Drug Administration approves nation's first over-the-counter birth-control pill.
- Heat dome is expected to bring scorching record-high temperatures to southwestern US.
- Actors join writers on strike, potentially bringing Hollywood production to a grinding halt.
- World Health Organization agency declares Aspartame (artificial sweetener) as possible cause of cancer.
- Math puzzle: Prove the Markov equation m^2 + n^2 + p^2 = 3mnp has infinitely many integer solutions.
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Reza Toossi (CSU Long Beach, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering) spoke under the title "Nature's Scaling Laws." There were ~90 attendees.
Have you ever wondered why small and large animals have different shapes? Tiny insects such as ants & spiders have hair-like legs, whereas huge animals such as elephants & rhinos have thick legs in order to bear their much larger weights. This is because the weight grows as the cube of linear dimension, while the cross-section of legs/bones scales up as the square of linear dimension. This is known as Galileo's square-cube law.
Tiny animals have a larger surface-to-volume ratio compared with larger animals (mouse 4:1; elephant 1:1). This affects their mobility, need for food, and metabolism. Nature cannot create a horse that is 10 times larger; such a creature won't look like a horse due to scaling considerations.
During the lively Q&A period, I mentioned that the concept of scalability exists in technological creations as well. While the computational power of a supercomputer would grow 10000-fold if we increase the number of nodes (cores or processors) from 100 to 1 million, the communication requirements would grow super-linearly, requiring a completely different connectivity for efficient communication among the 1 million nodes. This is why in a supercomputer with millions of nodes, we must invest a great deal (perhaps 80% or 90% of hardware capabilities) in the interconnection network, as opposed to processing chips.
The speaker mentioned that he had been unable to find a suitable Persian equivalent for the world "scaling." Several suggestions were made involving various uses of the word "meghiaas" ("scale"). I mentioned that "meghiaas-paziri" has emerged as an acceptable equivalent for "scalability" in the context of high-performance computer architecture.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Drought-tolerant landscaping at UCSB West Campus Faculty Housing grounds. [Top right] Iran politics: Some bright mullah decided that washing huge pots and pans (of the kinds used to cook food for major religious gatherings) at the entrance to Iran's most-prestigious center of higher learning, University of Tehran, would send a message to those pesky intellectuals inside. [Bottom left] World's 25 most-powerful militaries (source: #worldofstatistics). [Bottom center] Meme of the day on a T-shirt: Vote. [Bottom right] Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain (see the last item below).
(2) Two novelists, both very popular in Iran, have died: The Czech-French writer Milan Kundera (94), best-known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and the prolific Iranian writer/journalist Rajabali Etemadi (89).
(3) Book review: Brizendine, Louann, The Female Brain, Harmony Books, 2006.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The 10th Anniversary 2017 Edition of the book, which I perused, begins with the following disclaimer: "This book is not intended to take the place of medical advice from a trained medical professional. ... Neither the publisher nor the author takes any responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment, action, or application of medicine, herb, or preparation to any person reading or following the information in this book." That such a disclaimer was deemed necessary may have resulted from the author's MD title and her characterization of the book as an "owner's manual" for women.
The book is composed of seven chapters, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue. There are also extensive notes and three highly informative appendices. The main text is preceded by a list of (female) brain parts/areas, "The Cast of Neuro-Hormone Characters" (a sort of glossary), and a table naming and describing the phases of a female's life: Fetal; Girlhood; Puberty; Sexual maturity; Pregnancy; Breast-feeding; Child-rearing; Perimenopause; Menopause; Postmenopause.
Introduction: What Makes Us Women
One: The Birth of the Female Brain
Two: Teen Girl Brain
Three: Love and Trust
Four: Sex: The Brain Below the Belt
Five: The Mommy Brain
Six: Emotion: The Feeling Brain
Seven: The Mature Female Brain
Epilogue: The Future of the Female Brain
Appendix One: The Female Brain and Hormone Therapy
Appendix Two: The Female Brain and Postpartum Depression
Appendix Three: The Female Brain and Sexual Orientation
At the beginning of the book's introduction, we learn that male brains are larger than female brains by about 9%, even when correcting for body size. But this size difference isn't a sign of women's lower mental capacity. The two brains have the same number of brain cells, with the cells packed more densely in women. Such myth-busting statements appear throughout the book, making it a must-read for both women and men.
Interestingly, even though female and male brains have the same capabilities, they use different brain regions/circuits and, perhaps, different algorithms to perform the same task. In the brain centers for language and hearing, women have 11% more neurons than men. Women's brain circuitry for observing emotions in others are also more developed. Men, on the other hand, have 2.5 times the brain space devoted to sexual drive, and also have larger brain centers for action and aggression.
Men and women have the same average level of intelligence and half of the highest IQs belong to women. "The fact that fewer women end up in science has nothing to do with female brain deficiencies in math and science." I could go on about commonalities and differences in how female and male brains function, but then I would be replicating a good chunk of Brizendine's book.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Optical illusion: The two circles in the image on the left appear like a spiral pattern. Changing every fourth element in the pattern removes the illusion. [Top right] Victor Prasolov's amazing book, Essays on Numbers and Figures (see the last item below). [Bottom left] UCSB's Harold Frank Hall (the former Engineering I) building gets new elevators: The ancient, failure-prone pair have been in use at least since 1988, when I arrived here. One of the two new units has already been installed, with the second unit going on-line in a few months. [Bottom center] Meme of the day: Poster for the Kiev, Ukraine, book fair. [Bottom right] Lovely thought for the day: A helping hand can be a ray of sunshine in a cloudy world.
(2) Me, as a large language model: I have noticed that, lately, when I sit down to write something, the words come out with much less effort than was the case, say, two decades ago. It seems that having read and reviewed hundreds of books and perused many thousands of articles (news stories, scientific papers, essays), my inner neural network has been adequately trained for effortless text generation. What I produce is often good enough to need little or no editing. Of course, editing by rearranging phrases and use of a thesaurus does improve the output quality.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Flooding closes roads and threatens towns through much of Vermont. [NYT]
- Phoenix suffers 110+ degree temperatures for 10 consecutive days: And the heat wave isn't over yet. [Axios]
- The next US president may be chosen by double-haters: It comes down to who's less-hated, Biden or Trump.
- Caltech's Ali Hajimiri: We'll be able to beam solar power from space in ~15 years. [6-minute video]
- Super-high tide this afternoon at UCSB West Campus Beach. [2-minute video]
- Math puzzle: Show that the sequence A(n) = (2 + sqrt(3))^n gets closer to integer values as n increases.
(4) Book review: Prasolov, Victor V., Essays on Numbers and Figures, American Mathematical Society, 2000.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the 16th title in AMS's "Mathematical World" series, whose other titles include Fixed Points (1991), Intuitive Topology (1995), and A Gentle Introduction to Game Theory (1999).
The 20 essays in this volume, ranging in length from 2 to 7 pages, are almost entirely independent, each covering "a brilliant mathematical statement with an interesting proof; or a simple, but effective method of problem solving; or an interesting property of polynomials; or it may refer to exceptional points of the triangle."
Here is an example problem from Chapter 1, "Conjugate Numbers": The terms of the sequence (2 + sqrt(3))^n get closer to integer values as n increases. In Chapter 2, "Rational Parmetrizations of the Circle," we encounter this gem: There are infinitely many points with rational x & y on the circle x^2 + y^2 = 1. Chapter 3, "The Markov Equation," reveals the structure of the integer solutions to the equation m^2 + n^2 + p^2 = 3mnp.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What is the radius r of the circle touching the quarter-circle and lines drawn from the middle of two sides of a unit square to vertex B? [Top center] This is today's Tehran: Very different from Tehran of 2 years ago; quite similar to Tehran of 50 years ago. [Top right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the circle is shaded blue? The diametral lines of the two semi-circles are parallel to each other. [Bottom left] Map of modern Iranian languages. [Bottom right] The Poverty Paradox (see the last item below).
(2) Rags to riches: Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai grew up in India. His family had to wait for 5 years to get a telephone line. Now, his company controls 90% of all Internet searches and 70% of all cell phones!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Math puzzle: Show that there are infinitely many points with rational x & y on the circle x^2 + y^2 = 1.
- Six-word short story, attributed to Ernest Hemingway: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."
- Enrico Macias wrote & performed "Solenzara": This 5-minute video also contains Viguen's Persian version.
- Persian music: A beautiful oldie song performed by an all-women ensemble. [3-minute video]
(4) Book review: Rank, Mark Robert, The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Barry Abrams, Kalorama, 2023.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The economic system in the US is set up like a game of musical chairs, played with 10 people and only 8 chairs, according to Rank's favorite analogy. When the music stops, two people are left without chairs, regardless of who is playing. We focus on who lost and the character flaws of the losers, rather than asking why there aren't enough chairs (good-paying jobs) to begin with.
Why is there poverty at all in the richest country in the world? More than one in 10 Americans are poor. Actually, given that some people experience poverty over a short period of time (when losing a job, e.g.), the real number is somewhat higher. The social safety net in America is quite weak and we lack universal healthcare, so a job loss or unexpected illness can put us at a real risk of falling into poverty.
Ironically, the diversity of population in America, sometimes cited as a source of our strength, is also a cause of poverty. Research has shown that homogeneous societies in terms of race and ethnicity have more generous welfare states. When people in need look more like me, I am more likely to be empathetic in giving a helping hand. Unfortunately, America's love affair with rugged individualism doesn't help. We think that everyone should take advantage of opportunities that exist.
Our supposed "land of plenty" actually offers fewer opportunities than other advanced industrial societies for people to move up the economic ladder. The American Dream has become an illusion, in the wake of very wide income and wealth gaps. The Republicans' advocacy of small government is highly selective: They want the government small where it can help people in need and large where it benefits top-one-percenters and big corporations.
The viewpoint that causes of poverty lie within people's attitudes and behaviors leads to the advocacy for tough-love, job-training, and skills development. Outright neglect is justified under the banner that government is the problem not the solution, and scapegoats are created for there not being enough opportunities. The blame is placed on other groups of people (blacks, immigrants), instead of the shortage of two chairs in the musical-chairs analogy.
The notable reduction in poverty levels during the COVID years, due to expanded child tax credit, stimulus checks, moratorium on evictions, greater food/housing assistance, and increased unemployment benefits showed us a glimpse of what might be possible with universal healthcare, better-paying jobs, and, perhaps, a universal basic income.
A final point is that poverty does not affect only the poor: It hurts the entire society by undermining democracy. We pay for illnesses in one way or another. Paying on the front end through universal healthcare tends to be cheaper than paying on the back end when urgent care is needed. So, cost is not a valid argument against universal health care. The same argument applies to good childcare and good education. "We need to shift our thinking about poverty from an issue of them to an issue of us."
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] As I was walking to my car from Santa Barbara Courthouse, after being relieved of jury duty on Wednesday afternoon, I shot these photos at the beautiful Alice Keck Memorial Gardens. [Bottom left] The next team of astronauts to travel to ISS will include Iranian-American test pilot Jasmin Moghbeli. [Bottom center] The undeniably-positive role of labor unions in reducing income inequality: When roughly one-third of US workers were unionized in mid-20th century, income inequality was at its lowest (NYT chart). [Bottom right] Sarah Jaquette Ray's A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety (see the last item below).
(2) Republicans are pro-birth: They don't care about children once they are born. Democrats are pro-life: They want children to be fed, housed, insured, & educated, and parents to earn enough to take care of them.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The US healthcare system sucks compared with other advanced countries: Rampant fraud makes it worse.
- In Iran, only the Majlis is empowered to legislate, but many centers of powers make up their own laws.
- Technology to help distinguish real images from AI-generated ones is coming of age.
- As we age, our sleep needs change: Nights when we're asleep more than we're up can become elusive.
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2019: A culture built on servitude & idol worship can't achieve greatness.
(4) Book review: Ray, Sarah Jaquette, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Sarah Sheckells, Tantor Audio, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is aimed primarily at the Climate Generation (late Millennials and Generation Z), but everyone can benefit from its encapsulation of the climate problem and its prescription for cultivating a mature, compassionate, and resilient mindset that will allow taking steps toward climate justice in a hopeful, emotionally-intelligent, and sustainable fashion. We must set aside fearful, guilt-ridden, and anxiety-inducing activism that harms our well-being more than it helps solve climate problems.
These two quotes from p. 7 and p. 126 capture Ray's philosophy:
- "Reframing environmentalism as a movement of abundance, connection, and well-being may help us rethink it as a politics of desire rather than a politics of individual sacrifice and consumer denial."
- "Find beauty, savor the small gifts of being alive, see everything you possibly can through the lens of being blessed rather than victimized, recalibrate your efforts toward the small and local, collect and create positive stories ... "
Here is a list of the book's chapters, each of which ends with a checklist that reiterates and highlights the chapter's main ideas.
Introduction: Embrace life in the Anthropocene (and develop a vision for Earth, as changed by humans)
Chapter 1: Get schooled on the role of emotions in climate-justice work (climate change & mental health)
Chapter 2: Cultivate climate wisdom (make use of research on mindfulness, grief/trauma, ecopsychology)
Chapter 3: Claim your calling and scale your actions (the myth that a single individual cannot do much)
Chapter 4: Hack the story (replacing stories of urgency & doom with stories of collective transformation)
Chapter 5: Be less right and more in relation (increasing opportunities of collaborating with other people)
Chapter 6: Move beyond hope, ditch guilt, and laugh more (resist misery; guilt is destructive & pointless)
Chapter 7: Resist burnout (not just a narcissistic urge, but essential to dismantling existing power relations)
Conclusion: Feed what you want to grow (set aside fear & rage, focus on climate justice for the long haul)
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Water's triple point: Whether water is solid, liquid, or gaseous depends on its temperature and pressure. Under the right conditions (viz. 0.01 C & 0.06 atm.), all three forms of water can coexist. These conditions can occur on Mars, for example. [Top center] Math puzzle: What is the limit of the nth term of the following sequence, as n tends to infinity? [Top right] Shahrzad Elghnayan's Titan of Tehran (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Brazil's women's national soccer team lands in Australia in a charter plane that pays tribute to Iranian protesters Mahsa Amini and Amir Nasr Azadani. Images of the two victims appear on the tail fin and "No woman should be killed for not covering her head" is one of several messages appearing on the fuselage. [Bottom center & right] A venue with precious memories for me: UCLA's majestic Royce Hall.
(2) Enthusiastic feminism in the Middle East: A new generation of feminists sees women's rights as part of a wider democratic struggle, beyond class and across religious-secular divides. [Le Monde: Persian, English]
(3) Quote of the day: "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." ~ American novelist Anne Lamott
(4) Book review: Elghanayan, Shahrzad, Titan of Tehran: From Jewish Ghetto to Corporate Colossus to Firing Squad—My Grandfather's Life, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Ashraf Shirazi, Tantor Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Habib Elghanian (or Elghanayan) [1912-1979], one of the richest and most-respected members of Iran's Jewish community, was executed on May 9, 1979 (at age 67), less than 3 months after the mullahs came to power by overthrowing the Shah. He was accused of financial crimes as well as spying for Israel, crimes commonly concocted in the early days of Iran's Islamic regime for rich people and those who had traveled to or invested in Israel. In this book, Elghanian's US-raised journalist granddaughter, Shahrzad, dutifully commemorates the life of a man she remembers only fleetingly.
Elghanian's claim to fame and source of wealth was Plasco, a plastics-manufacturing company that became Iran's largest and most-technologically-advanced plastics producer through the use of Western technology. In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Elghanian served as the leader of Tehran's Jewish community in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, many Jews fled Iran, because they considered the country unsafe for non-Muslims. Elghanian was advised by friends and acquaintances to leave Iran, but, thinking that he had done nothing wrong and feeling indebted to the workers of his factories, he decided to stay. Because of the atmosphere of fear in Iran, only a handful of individuals attended the self-made multi-millionaire's funeral.
International reaction to the execution of the first Jew and one of first civilians by the Islamic regime was swift. The US Senate passed a resolution to condemn Elghanian's execution as a violation of human rights, a trigger event for subsequent sanctions for similar violations. Elghanian's name again dominated Iran's news stories in Jan. 2017, when the Plasco Building, Tehran's tallest for its time, burned down and collapsed in a massive fire.
As is the case with many memoirs that are intermixed with political tensions and historical events, there are inaccuracies, omissions, and dramatizations regarding what happened in the society where the story unfolds. The revolutionaries needed scapegoats for all the things that went wrong following their coming to power. Even today, after 44 years, the mullahs are blaming the Shah and his regime, the West, and Zionists for whatever ails Iran, and each government blames the one before it for budget deficits and its inability to make the economy work. Just as today's political executions are meant to induce fear into would-be street protesters, some of the early revolutionary executions were meant as warnings to would-be dissenters and troublemakers.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Women protesting against misogynistic laws, days after Iran's Islamic Revolution (44 years ago, on Int'l Women's Day 1979). [Top center] The January Select-Committee Report (see the last item below). [Top right] Beautiful architecture: Samarkand, Uzbekistan. [Bottom left & center] July 4th observance: Tiny flag in front of my home; humongous flag in front of Santa Barbara Courthouse, where I participated in a jury selection process yesterday. Luckily, I am off the hook. [Bottom right] Impressive architectures: The 13th-century Palmyra Castle in Syria.
(2) I don't understand this logic: Selling a cake to a gay couple is participating in and approving of the marriage, but selling a gun to a mass shooter isn't participating in and approving of the murders?
(3) Generating electricity from the air: Nikola Tesla's speculation that electricity can be produced from the air is becoming true. Tesla was looking at the Earth and upper atmosphere as two ends of an enormous battery from which power can be drawn, what today is known as hygroelectricity. A team at U. Mass accidentally demonstrated that a small but continuous electric current can be generated from the humidity in the air, using an array of microwires. Sourcing raw materials, costing, assessing the environmental footprint, and scaling them up takes time, but this is true of any new technology.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Heat records broken worldwide: The past three days were among the hottest in Earth's modern history.
- Someone has offered to Iran's Khamenei, Jannati, & Raisi a free submarine ride to see the Titanic wreckage.
- Iranian MP: If people don't bear children in response to our gentle plea, we will impregnate them by force!
- Quote of the day: "Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change." ~ Frida Kahlo
(5) July 4th mass shootings across the US kill 15 and injure 94: Not even thoughts & prayers are being sent by GOP politicians anymore. [Tweet, with cartoons]
(6) Book review: The January 6th Committee, The January 6th Report, unabridged 24-hour audiobook, read by Ari Melber & Joe Knezevich, Harper Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Every American should read this spellbinding report, if not in its entirety, then at least its Executive Summary comprising about 15% of the 845-page report, not counting the Summary's 60 pages of endnotes.
The well-written report is available on-line for free on a US government Web site that also includes the following supporting material: Court documents; Documents on file with the Select Committee; Select Committee hearing videos; Transcribed interviews and depositions; Video exhibits; Web resources referenced by the Committee.
Here is the report's table of contents.
Executive summary
Chapter 1: The big lie
Chapter 2: "I Just want to find 11,780 votes"
Chapter 3: Fake electors and "The President of the Senate" strategy
Chapter 4: "Just call it corrupt and leave the rest to me"
Chapter 5: "A coup in search of a legal theory"
Chapter 6: "Be there, will be wild"
Chapter 7: 187 minutes of dereliction
Chapter 8: Analysis of the attack
Recommendations
Appendix 1: Government agency preparation and response to January 6th
Appendix 2: DC National Guard preparation for and response to January 6th
Appendix 3: The big rip-off: Follow the money
Appendix 4: Malign foreign influence
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Socrates Think Tank talk on quantum computers, preceded by a tribute to Dr. Firouz Naderi (see the next item below). [Center] Jeffrey Kluger's The Sibling Effect (see the last item below). [Right] I'll drink to that: "We'd rather see two men holding hands than two men holding guns."
(2) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank Talk: Dr. Payam Kiani spoke under the title "What Do You Know About Quantum Computers?" Before the main talk, I made a short presentation in honor of the late NASA scientist Dr. Firouz Naderi. Here is a link to a previous version of my presentation (14-minute video, in Persian).
Beginning with the notions of entanglement (dar-ham-tanidegui) and superposition (bar-ham-naheshti), Dr. Kiani described how a qubit can represent exponentially many different states at once, thus allowing the transformation of some NP-hard problems requiring worst-case exponential running times on classical computers into tractable polynomial-time problems for quantum computers. An example is Shor's quantum algorithm for factoring a number into its prime components.
Other topics discussed included implementation of quantum computers, the challenge of making them less error-prone, and using them in combination with classical computers for input/output and staging of computations. A brief mention was also made of quantum communication, which takes advantage of teleportation to realize highly-secure data transmission.
[Dr. Payam Kiani's YouTube Channel, containing a series of six 1-hour lessons on quantum computing.]
[Reading: "Is There a Moore's Law for Quantum Computing?" (ArXiv paper)]
[Reading: "Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2022" (Global Risk Intitute report)]
(3) Book review: Kluger, Jeffrey, The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Pete Larkin, Tantor Audio, 2011.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Kluger opens his book by telling the story of how he and two of his brothers put their youngest brother in a fuse cabinet, where he faced the danger of electrocution, in an effort to protect him from their father's rage. The four brothers had a difficult childhood, but they emerged from it with an appreciation of the bond they shared, feeling much stronger as a result.
In the animal kingdom, sibling rivalry may take a dark turn. Some birds take a look at multiple eggs, before discarding all but the one that appears healthiest. Shark siblings eat one another while in their mother's womb, until only one survives. Rivalry among human siblings, while not as extreme, is quite intense indeed. Each sibling tries mightily to impress the parents and others around them with his/her strongest selling point: The funny one; the smart one; the pretty one; the most-athletic. This is sometimes called "de-identification," pursuing a distinct interest where one gets 100% of the attention, instead of trying to excel in the same area as an older sibling, which gives one at most 50% of the attention.
Parents contaminate the de-identification process by making it clear, explicitly or implicitly, that some interests/skills are preferable. Favoritism is another way in which parents can create an unhealthy environment among siblings. Despite denials if asked, 70% of fathers and 65% of mothers exhibit (that is, they are not successful in hiding) a preference for at least one child. This is something that is wired in our brain by evolution; we simply can't help it. The most-common favorite for a father is the last-born daughter; for a mother, it's the first-born son.
Birth order plays a significant role in the relationship among siblings. Earlier-born children get more attention from their parents, so it's not surprising that they are vaccinated more reliably and exhibit an average advantage of a few IQ points over their younger siblings. The fact that older siblings get to take care of and mentor the younger ones also adds to their intelligence and self-confidence. Hence, the greater likelihood of first-borns becoming CEOs, Senators, or astronauts. Last-borns develop the skill to charm, as a protective mechanism, with the result that some of our greatest satirists are last-borns or near-last-borns.
Siblings fight with each other constantly, but they also teach each other about conflict avoidance and resolution. Sole-children have no sibling rivalry and for a long time were thought to be at a disadvantage with regard to developing social skills. New research has dispelled the latter myth by showing that sole-children make up for their sibling deficiency in a myriad of ways.
I really enjoyed Kluger's insightful book and recommend it highly. It is choke-full of interesting ideas and useful tips for siblings and parents alike.
Kluger's 21-minute TEDx talk on the hidden power of siblings aptly summarizes the book's main points.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy July 4th: This image is part of a gallery that shows how Popular Science has celebrated Independence Day over the years (see the next item below). [Center] On intelligent computing (see the last item below). [Right] World's top-1000 universities: According to World of Statistics, USA and UK have a quarter of the world's top universities. China's third position and several European countries' strong showings aren't surprising. Appearance of low-income India & Iran among the top 12 countries is unexpected. It would have been better to present data on per-capita basis to account for widely-varying populations.
(2) 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!
(3) Internet cable channels in Iran: To drive people away from foreign-based Internet content, Iranian mullahs decided to establish their own cable channels to offer more-entertaining content than what the state-TV airs. Now, it seems that movies and TV series produced by the government's own agents have become "too racy" for their taste, leading to infighting among the various agencies involved.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Greetings of the day: Happy 4th to everyone not pleading the 5th about the 6th!
- Two companies, Upside Foods & Good Meat, gain FDA approval to sell lab-grown chicken meat.
- Strait of Hormuz: A 30-mile-wide waterway through which 15% of world's energy supplies must pass.
- Like most people, I love to travel, but some the reasons for staying put cited in this essay resonate with me.
- Azeri music: A wonderful performance of "Sari Galin," with Azeri and Persian lyrics. [4-minute video]
(5) Bukhara, another Iran: In this 30-minute Persian video, we learn about Muslim & Jewish Iranians who call Bukhara home. A Jewish artist, Neshan Nasimi, performs the songs "Zahra-ye Harati" and "Yalda Yalda."
(6) Bukhara's pond, and Molla Nasreddin: In this 27-minute Persian video, we are introduced to Bukhara, an ancient Persian city in Uzbekistan, and its people. Bukhara was a major multicultural center of the 8th century.
(7) Not teaching evolution is an injustice: Science magazine editorial, print issue of June 30, 2023, chimes in about India's moving away from teaching evolution and the periodic table.
(8) Intelligent computing is different from AI: It does use AI but also relies on other components dealing with perception, cognition, and human-computer interfacing. Entrepreneur & Stanford Professor Andrew Ng asserted in 2017 that AI is the new electricity, by which he meant that the two technologies will have comparable impacts on society and technological progress.
[Article (2-minute read)]
[Lecture (98-minute video)]
Six years later, Zhu, Yu, Xu et al. review the latest advances in intelligent computing, auguring the fourth wave of human development that will take us from the current information society to a human-physics-information-integrated existence.
[Journal article (45 pp., with 367 references)]
For example, large language models, exemplified by chat-GPT, will become indispensable assistants for daily life and work, providing functions such as chatting, writing, translating, recommending, searching, and making decisions. Eventually, intelligent computing will collect human-body data directly through wearable devices to achieve seamless human-machine coordination, virtual reality, and mixed enhancement.
[Source: Science magazine "advertorial," issue of June 30, 2023]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Free e-book on algorithms, by Jeff Erickson, with numerous figures and exercises (Web page). [Center] Depiction of an Iranian rural breakfast tray: Unfortunately, very few can now afford all the items shown. [Right] Justin Gregg's If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal (see the last item below).
(2) Words of wisdom: Depicting gay characters in films does not force the homosexual lifestyle on viewers, any more than depicting Republican politicians forces a life of deceit and cowardice
(3) Book review: Gregg, Justin, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Little, Brown & Company, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
There is little doubt in many people's minds that humans are much more "intelligent" than other animals. But, are we defining "intelligence" correctly? And is more intelligence, thus defined, necessarily better? The author begins by asserting that German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] had a brilliant mind, but he wasn't a happy, "nice," or well-adjusted person and lived a miserable life, which ended in a mental asylum in Switzerland. He then invokes narwhal (aka narwhale), a medium-sized toothed whale that possesses a large "tusk" from a protruding canine tooth and lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia, as an example of "dumb" animals which have more intelligence than we give them credit for.
What is intelligence anyway, and why do we view it as an unconditionally positive attribute? Nietzsche reportedly envied cows in the field, because they didn't care about existential questions such as the meaning of life. Hence the author's wondering whether the world would have been a better place if the intelligence of Nietzsche and other human thinkers were reduced to that of a narwhal. Narwhals can't write symphonies or send a spacecraft to the moon, but they also cannot develop anti-Semitic sentiments or commit genocide.
Despite the misgivings above and other tongue-in-cheek statements, this book contains a serious discussion of human intellect and how it can be put to good and bad uses.
Every great idea we produce seems to find a way of being used to do evil deeds. Throughout history, we have used religion, philosophy, and (pseudo)science to justify horrible acts against other Earth denizens. For example, Nietzsche wasn't anti-Semitic but his anti-Semitic sister used his writings to justify Nazi atrocities.
It is well-known that we humans are "why" specialists. We look for causal connections and invent a connection where none exists. Our penchant for finding the cause of everything sometimes leads to amazing breakthroughs, but at other times it produces dumb conspiracy theories. Another aspect of human intellect and the resultant knowledge is that much of what we know is worthless (aka "dead facts").
Our superior intelligence has not only led us astray on many occasions, but has also deformed the Earth on which we rely for survival. We have used our intelligence to domesticate animals and invent new technologies, but not to prevent conditions that may lead to our extinction.
And now, let us take a look at the animal side. While it's true that bees do not commit genocide based on religious or philosophical views, they do let male drones die en mass, when they have served their purpose of mating with new queens. The drones' tongues are too short to allow them to extract nectar and they don't have protective stingers. They die a slow death (starve or freeze) if they are pushed out of the hive by female bees; "a tragic—but utterly normal—state of affairs."
The book's message can be summarized in three bullet points.
- The uniqueness of human cognition doesn't necessarily make it advantageous.
- Evolution improved our thinking but also produced many down sides.
- Our survival is threatened by our inability to consider long-term consequences.
So, in the end, are we willing to trade off our creature comforts and rich cultural existence for not having suffered World War II or the Holocaust? The answer isn't clear-cut!
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Family gathering to celebrate the birthday of my niece, whose birthday gifts included a pair of socks bearing photos of her newborn son. [Top center] Beauty, talent, and intelligence: Actor Anne Hathaway on loving LGBTQ+ people being a human experience, not a political statement. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded blue? [Bottom center] Math puzzle (the answer is not unique): What is the ninth shape in this series? [Bottom right] Richard Haass's Bill of Obligations (see the last item below).
(2) Do you know what AM and PM stand for? The letter "M" is for "meridiem," (Latin for midday), with "A" and "P" representing "ante" (before) and "post" (after).
(3) SCOTUS's conservative super-majority flexes its muscles: In the span of a single day, six justices strike down affirmative action programs in college admissions, declare Biden's student-loan forgiveness effort unconstitutional, and confirm that a designer of wedding Web sites can refuse to accept work from gay couples.
(4) Large language models and the issue of copyright: Is it legal to use in-copyright works as training data and producing outputs derived from copyrighted training data?
(5) Book review: Haass, Richard N., The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by the author, Penguin Audio, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book contains a list of things that should happen but there is no law requiring them, and things that keep the author up at night. Haass states that the American democracy is most-decidedly worth keeping, but it has never been in greater peril than today. And this peril is a direct result of there being no Bill of Obligations to balance the Bill of Rights.
We Americans take our rights quite seriously and we scream if anyone infringes upon them. The Bill of Rights gives us rights in nine specific domains, defined in Amendments 1-9 to the US Constitution, along with an open-ended set of other rights, vaguely specified in Amendment 10. But there is no document that spells out our limitations and obligations vis-a-vis these rights.
In other words, we need something explicating that our freedom to swing our arm wildly stops at the nose of the person next to us. We also need to be told that our beloved democracy and individual rights will die if we don't educate ourselves on how to nurture them. We thus need strong civic education, something that is lacking in our schools and society.
Haass defines a 10-article Bill of Obligations, aka the ten habits of good citizens. We may not be able to turn these articles into Constitutional Amendments, because they deal primarily with moral imperatives aimed at shaping human behavior, not with legal concepts. nevertheless, it is important to impress these ten articles upon all citizens as part of their civic education.
1. Be informed
2. Get involved
3. Stay open to compromise
4. Remain civil
5. Reject violence
6. Value norms
7. Promote the common good
8. Respect government service
9. Support the teaching of civics
10. Put the country first
In other words, community and citizenship are fundamental to our democratic system, not optional niceties.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Remembering the late Iranian-American NASA scientist, Dr. Firouz Naderi (see the next item below). [Center] Tonight's Talangor Group talk (see the last item below).
(2) Dr. Firouz Naderi [1946-2023]: Tonight, I made a short presentation in Persian on the life of contributions of a prominent Iranian-American, who had a 36-year distinguished career at NASA and, of late, was a key contributor to discussions on Iran and Iranian-Americans. I ended my presentation with this viral quote from Dr. Naderi, which was his answer to a question about whether after living for 50 years in the US, he feels more American or Persian: "Being Persian is part of my history and being an American is part of my identity and the two are irretrievably intermixed—like an egg that once scrambled, you cannot separate the yolk from the white. America is my country, and Iran is my homeland. And how blessed I am to be rooted in ancient civilization with a rich culture, and at the same time a proud American living in this young nation that has lifted me on her shoulders, allowing me to reach for the stars." [Recording of the talk (14-minute video)]
You can get more information about Dr. Firouz Naderi from the following two programs:
"USA beh Farsi" interview with Dr. Naderi (after watching the 10-minute part 1, parts 2-4 will appear).
Iran International's 25-minute tribute to Dr. Naderi.
(3) Announcing a short list of 5 books for "UCSB Reads 2024" program: Narrowed down from an initial slate of 25 committee recommendations, the list will be reduced to 3 in August, before starting negotiations with authors and publishers. Stay tuned!
P.S.: Ocean Vuong's On Earth We Were Briefly Gorgeous has been removed from consideration (she isn't accepting speaking engagements until 2025) and replaced by Rebekah Taussig's Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Body, the next selection on our rank-ordered list.
(4) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Kamran Malek spoke on "Conducting an Orchestra." The main talk was preceded by yours truly's short presentation about the late Iranian-American NASA scientist, Dr. Firouz Naderi. I will write about the latter part in a separate post.
To a lay person, the role of an orchestra conductor is a mystery. After all, isn't every orchestra member provided with notes and wouldn't s/he be able to play without a conductor? This reminds me of a cartoon, showing a conductor standing in front of a stand on which appear his instructions: "Start flailing your arms as soon as you hear music; stop moving when the music stops; then, turn around and take a bow"!
Dr. Malek discussed the structure of a symphony orchestra, the placement of the various instruments, and how the conductor coordinates the various sections by his hand gestures and body language. S/He is in charge of maintaining the rhythm and ensuring that the various sections play softly or aloud, as the piece demands. S/He also often arranges the music for the orchestra at hand, providing notes for each player, with the requisite melody and silent segments. The score in front of the conductor is quite complex, usually having one line of music for each type of instrument. The piece of paper serves only as a reminder, because the conductor typically knows the entire piece by heart. Through standard gestures understood by musicians, the conductor invites a section to come in or fade out, so as to highlight other sections.
At the end of his talk, Dr. Malek played several video clips showing how passionate conductors (one women and one man) take charge of their orchestras and contribute to the quality and enjoyment of the musical performance.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: How many triangles are there in this diagram? [Center] Over 122 million Americans under air quality alerts due to Canadian wildfire smoke. [Right] Harvard Business Review's Crypto (see the last item below).
(2) Simple math puzzle: If x, y, and z are successive terms of a geometric progression, x + y + z = 12, and xyz = 27, what is the value of 1/x + 1/z?
(3) "Transitional Justice": This is the title of a free 7-week on-line course by Iran Academia, which started this week. Countries emerging from a period of conflict and/or repression, must set up trustworthy mechanisms to deal with widespread violations of human rights that the regular justice system may not be able to handle. It's not a matter of revenge, but of governments' obligations to victims and survivors of human-rights abuses according to international law. The four pillars of transitional justice are truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The trillion-gallon threat: California's dams may be a single heavy rainstorm away from failing.
- Biden administrations $42 billion investment in broadband affordability & access is a major step forward.
- "Golshifteh Frahani's existence is resistance": Article about the popular Iranian star's latest film role.
- Lionel Messi look-alike Reza Parastesh has been accused of fooling 23 women into sleeping with him.
(5) The new "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" may or may not be the last film in the blockbuster franchise, but composer John Williams indicates it will be his final movie before he retires.
(6) Book review: Harvard Business Review, Crypto: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review, unabridged 3-hour audiobook, read by Derek Dysart, Ascent Audio, 2023.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the latest entry into the Harvard Business Review "Insights Series," whose other titles include Strategic Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Monopolies & Tech Giants, Blockchain, Agile, Climate Change, and Customer Data & Privacy.
The cryptocurrency domain is filled with hype, misinformation, and disinformation. Lately, crypto advocates have been trying to scare institutional investors and ordinary citizens by predicting the demise of the US dollar, in an effort to generate new crypto purchases. As a crypto skeptic, I have been looking for an unbiased assessment of the current realities and future potentials of cryptocurrencies, for my own benefit and as a resource to recommend to others. This book isn't it. While some of the pitfalls of cryptocurrencies are discussed, the overall tone of the book is enthusiastic, implying that businesses that do not rush to crypto investing risk being left behind.
Along with cheerleading for cryptocurrencies, the book also hypes non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as investments of the future. In my view, NFTs are nothing but cryptocurrencies with an image or other art/keepsake attached. As such, NFTs suffer from the same dangers as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, including wild fluctuations in value and vulnerability to fraud.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What is the diameter of the large circle, if the four small circles have diameter 1? [Top center] Math puzzle: We have two isosceles triangles within the triangle ABC. What is the measure of the angle bearing a question mark? [Top right] Top-20 patent winners in 2022: IBM occupied the top spot in US patents for decades, 1993-2021. Samsung rose to the top in 2022. [Bottom left] Chess puzzle: White to start and mate in 2 moves. [Bottom center] Murder rate in the US shows a downward trend after a COVID surge (NYT chart). [Bottom right] Ulf Danielsson's The World Itself (see the last item below).
(2) FIFA Women's World Cup, July 20 to August 20, 2023: Hosted jointly by Australia & New Zealand, 32 teams will participate in this year's tournament, 8 of them for the first time. Team USA will include veterans Megan Rapinoe (37) and Alex Morgan (33), playing alongside new talent as young as 18. The US is grouped with Netherlands, Portugal, & Vietnam in the preliminary stage, with games on 7/21 (6:00 PM PDT), 7/26 (6:00 PM), and 8/1 (12:00 AM). Fox & FS1 will broadcast all matches for the US audience. Only four countries (Germany, Japan, Norway, USA) have ever won the Women's World Cup.
(3) A dictator's hired thugs will eventually rise against him. This is as true in Iran as it is in Russia. When the hired killers see that they are paid low wages, while the protected dictator and his buddies pocket billions, they will demand a larger share of the loot.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Throwback Thursday: New York City in the 1930s, as seen from aboard a ferry. [2-minute video]
- A January 2022 underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga caused the world's most-intense lightning storm.
- Actor Andie MacDowell, on double standards: "Why is my gray hair an issue and George Clooney's isn't?"
- Peru: A mysterious country with the world's driest deserts and lushest rainforests. [9-minute video]
- Hans Zimmer: The German movie-score composer who is taking over from the incredible John Williams.
- Humor: Don Quixote asking for directions.
[Image]
- PhD proposal vs. PhD thesis: Extendable to research funding proposal vs. actual research results. [Cartoon]
(5) Book review: Danielsson, Ulf, The World Itself: Consciousness and the Everything of Physics, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Pete Cross, Dreamscape Media, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Acclaimed theoretical physicist Ulf Danielson (Uppsala U., Sweden) tackles the age-old question of whether the world operates in the framework of mathematics or whether mathematics only provides tools for understanding the universe that is out there. He disagrees with the thesis of William Dunham's The Mathematical Universe, siding instead with the view that the universe exists independently of our consciousness and operates the way it does.
Mathematical models are processes in our brains that approximate the universe. They are useful tools for making predictions: Nothing more. We are extremely limited in our abilities and until we acknowledge and understand these limitations, there is no hope for understanding the large, complex universe. Using machine metaphors for life is silly. Likewise, the Church-Turing hypothesis is preposterous: Who are we to set limits on what the universe can or cannot do?
Danielsson's main message to his readers is not to mistake our evolving, trial-and-error descriptions of the world with the world itself. The title of the book seemingly pays homage to Francis Crick's Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, which posits that the origin of life on Earth is the most-fundamental question for life sciences.
Here is an interview with Danielsson about his book.
(1) Images of the [Top left] Summer Solstice Parade (see the next item below). [Top center] Lavender Festival (see item 3 below). [Top right] Next to Alameda Park, where the Summer Solstice Festival was held today, is the beautiful Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden, an oasis covering a large city block. [Bottom left & center] Facebook memories from June 24 of years past: A humorous Persian poem of mine and a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. [Bottom right] People vs. Donald Trump (see the last item below).
(2) Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Festival 2023: Featuring music, dancing, and, of course, food trucks, today's 49th annual event started with a noon parade from the intersection of Santa Barbara & Ortega streets, ending at Alameda Park, where festivities will continue today and tomorrow. Here's a narrated 8-minute video I shot, as I walked along the parade route. And here are three 1-minute videos showing music & dance performances along the parade route. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
(3) Santa Barbara Lavender Festival 2023: Inaugurated in 2004 as Ojai Lavender Festival, later becoming the Ojai Valley Lavender Festival, the Festival is now based in Santa Barbara. Held on the Historic Old Mission grounds, today's Festival featured lavender-based products of all kinds (including food items), a variety of other food offerings, arts & crafts, and music/dance performances. [Sample dance performance]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A section of I-95, which had closed due to a deadly collapse, reopens in a record time of under 2 weeks.
- Russia/Ukraine: Wagner Group chief heads to exile in Belarus after his rebellious march toward Moscow.
- Iran has five religious seminaries for every public university.
- Iranian regional music from Mazandaran Province on the Caspian shore, played with "pots" ("tasht").
(5) Book review: Pomerantz, Mark, People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I approached this book, yet another account of Donald Trump's crimes before, during, and after his presidency, with low expectations, but found it surprisingly well-written and informative. I emerged with a detailed understanding of Trump's business dealings, producing financial ruin for a large number of actors and stealing from American tax-payers, as Trump himself secured and improved his position on Forbes list of billionaires.
The book also reinforced my views on the US justice system being broken, punishing petty criminals severely and promptly, while letting rich and powerful criminals escape unscathed. George Floyd, who passed off a fake $20 bill, was "executed" within hours of his crime. Donald Trump's financial crimes, including money-laundering to hide the payment of hush money to a porn star, took years to prosecute, as the case was shelved and resurrected multiple times. The crime occurred in 2016; as of mid-2023, the case is still in progress, with no resolution in sight.
From his media appearances, I had developed a picture of Pomerantz as an opportunist and self-aggrandizer, particularly given that he took on the Trump case at SDNY gratis. He explains in the book that he was retired at the time and needed no additional income or the hassles of reporting it.
Pomerantz and other members of the SDNY team eventually developed a strong case against Trump and convinced Cyrus Vance, Manhattan District Attorney at the time, to indict him, but, because Vance did not seek reelection as his term ended, the case fell under the jurisdiction of his replacement, Alvin Bragg, who was not comfortable with pursuing an indictment. Part of the problem was that Trump's financial crimes had no obvious victims. Yes, banks were duped by Trump's false financial disclosures into giving him large loans with favorable terms, but no bank suffered a default.
Pomerantz resigned in protest and wrote this book to present his case to the "People." Bragg eventually reversed his decision, indicting Trump in April 2023, just as this book was released. The trial is set for March 2024, but there is a chance it will be delayed as a result of defense motions or upcoming indictments of Trump for federal crimes.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (Facebook memory from June 22, 2017): Photograph by Ray Collins, known for his masterful depiction of waves. [Top center] A spectacular double sculpture by an unknown 19th-century French artist: "The Double Statue of Mephistopheles and Margarita" depicts a happy, triumphant-looking man on the front side and a glum, subdued woman on the back side, visible through a large mirror. Wikipedia has an article about this unique work of art. [Top right] Lightning & Lady Liberty (BBC image). [Bottom left] According to The Economist, the American economy is still riding high, despite all contrary expectations. [Bottom center] Projected populations of some countries in 2100. [Bottom right] The great AI treasure hunt: In its June 2023 issue, IEEE Spectrum magazine has a cover feature on how AI is helping discover new material to replace hard-to-find critical metals for EV batteries.
(2) On fake conferences: A tell-tale sign of a fake conference is that its announcements and invitations are signed with incomplete or fake names. Generally, an organizer, manager, or other officer of a conference is proud to be part of an enterprise that contributes to the dissemination of science/technology information. Not so for fake conferences! The same applies to fake journals, whose managing editors usually refuse to sign their full names, perhaps because they lack the credentials required for the occupied positions. [E-mail image]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tourist submersible seems to have imploded near the Titanic wreckage, killing all five on board.
- US 13-year-olds show the lowest levels of math and reading scores in 2-3 decades.
- On open-source software projects, only 1 in 20 programmers are women.
- America's population is older than ever: The median age rose from 30.0 in 1980 to 38.9 in 2022.
(4) From Washington Post's neologism contest, in which common words are given hilarious new meanings.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
(5) How different is a Turing Machine (TM) from a von-Neumann-style computer in terms of computational power? Matthew Regan set out to discover the extent of difference for himself by simulating a simple, old 8-bit 6502 CPU on Pure Turing, a basic TM. Even though capabilities of the 6502 are dwarfed by those of modern, multi-billion-transistor CPUs, it proved vastly more powerful than TM. For example, a single instruction of the 6502 can take up to 3 million Pure Turing clock cycles to fetch. Now, imagine playing Pac-Man, a game originally developed for the 6502. You have to be really patient to play Pac-Man on Pure Turing: It takes ~7 hours just to draw one frame's worth of movement for the Pac-Man character and the pursuing enemy ghosts!
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The 4-km-wide Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which orbits the Sun once every 6.5 years and was chased down for 10 years by European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, compared to the city of Los Angeles (credit: The Planetary Society). [Center] Math puzzle: Find the radius of the circle. [Right] Socrates Think Tank talk on women in science and engineering (see the last item below).
(2) On the number of hours in a work week: During the 1930s & 1940s, the US was a leader in curtailing the number of work hours, initiating the 40-hour work week. Germans now work an average of 32 hours per week and other EU countries are considering even shorter work weeks, some as low of 20 or even 15 hours.
(3) "LLMs: A New Way to Teach Programming": This was the title of today's ACM webinar conducted by Professors Daniel Zingaro (U. Toronto) and Leo Porter (UCSD).
Learning to program is quite challenging to students, because they need to iteratively learn many skills, such as using correct syntax, tracing code, using common programming patterns, writing code, and testing/debugging the code. Struggling with any one of these tasks may mean that the student fails to solve the problem at hand.
Large Language Models (LLMs) like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT can shift the skills needed to succeed at programming and enable more students to become successful programmers. Remarkably, this shift, away from syntax and toward problem decomposition and testing, may also be exactly what many instructors prefer to focus on in CS 1.
The webinar was recorded and the recording will be made available in a few days on learning.acm.org.
(4) Plenary talk at ACM Federated Computing Research Conference: Turing-Award-winner Shafi Goldwasser (UC Berkeley) spoke on Wed., June 21, 2023, under the title "Constructing and Deconstructing Trust: Employing Cryptographic Recipe in the ML Domain."
She began with the observation that AI methods were not developed for an adversarial environment. Crypto, on the other hand, would not exist (be required) if there were no adversaries. Two main areas where an adversary can wreak havoc in ML is during data collection (data poisoning) and during training (breaching privacy).
*Data poisoning can be dealt with by viewing the data as coming from multiple sources, as opposed to from a single source. We already have tools and methods for dealing with data coming from different sources, a subset of which are corrupt.
*Privacy can benefit from cryptographic methods. In an ideal world, we can verify a complex, data-intensive computation with much less work & data. This has proven practical in the blockchain context. But in ML, data isn't fixed; it comes from a distribution.
(5) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Yours truly spoke in Persian under the title "Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries." [Recording of the talk] [PDF slides]
Here is a synopsis of the talk. 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. Based on data and narratives from the United States and Iran, I identified roadblocks to the engagement of women in STEM careers. Using the two countries, different as they are in many respects, 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. The talk concluded by discussing what each country can learn from the other one in removing roadblocks to women in science and engineering.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Summer is officially here for me, a day ahead of schedule: I have completed the evaluation of research papers for my graduate course on computer arithmetic, submitted course grades to the Registrar, and e-mailed feedback to each student, thus completing my teaching tasks for spring 2023. Then, I celebrated with snacks and a hearty soup. [Bottom left] Amazing nature photography by Ben Hall: Migrating flamingos in Chile. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the square. [Bottom right] Of the Law of Nature and Nations: Eight Books (see the last item below).
(2) Three ideas from ACM Federated Computing Research Conference plenary panel "Reflecting on 50 Years of Computing Research, and Future Outlook," held on Tuesday, June 20, 2023:
*In the past, we used a high-level programming language and had it automatically translated to a low-level machine language. In future, our high-level language will be natural language and our low-level language will be a large language model.
*In the late 1980s, there was much research on systolic processing units. Many people were skeptical about the practical relevance of systolic arrays. Today, systolic arrays are indispensable parts of tensor-processing units.
*The P-vs.-NP problem has become much less relevant. Today we have SAT-solvers that do a good job in solving the NP-complete problem known as satisfiability (SAT). Worst-case exponential complexity is no longer a hindrance to practicality.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- NASA awards grants to seven all-women colleges to help bridge the STEM gender gap.
- Excessive red-tape for US "talent helps other countries lure individuals with world's most in-demand skills.
- One in three Americans dies of Alzheimer's or another form of dementia. [PBS]
- In-n-Out Burger will be celebrating its 75th anniversary in October 2023. [Link to festivities]
- Valet parking the near future: Longer term, we'll all have self-parking cars tracked by our cell phones.
- Facebook memory from June 20, 2020: Reciting Sa'adi's poems is no substitute for genuine caring.
(4) Book review: Pufendorf, Samuel, Of the Law of Nature and Nations: Eight Books.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, originally published in 1672, is in the public domain, so the e-book reproduction of a 1729 edition, available on Archive, has no copyright or publishing details.
Samuel von Pufendorf [1632-1694] was a German political philosopher, statesman, and historian. He had originally intended to pursue a career in the church, but after studying theology at U. Leipzig, his interests shifted to politics, law, and philosophy. In 1658 Pufendorf became a tutor to a minister to King Charles X of Sweden, publishing this highly-influential book two years after beginning to teach at U. Lund.
Pufendorf criticized those in the state or the church who abused power. He proposed that international law should not be restricted to the Christian world and instead should respect the rights of all men. Pufendorf's grounding of political concepts in natural law appealed to future American leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
The e-book version has stayed true to the original, all the way to printing imperfections, library stamps, hand annotations, and so on. It is considered a key resource in the study of modern society and culture. The 1024-page tome is composed of 8 books and 74 chapters: Book I (9 chapters), Book II (6 chapters), Book III (9 chapters), Book IV (13 chapters), Book V (13 chapters), Book VI (3 chapters), Book VII (9 chapters), Book VIII (12 chapters).
Preceding the main e-book is an 88-page overview article with the rather long title "Historical and Critical Account of the Science of Morality, and the Progress It Has Made from the Earliest Times Down to the Publication of Pufendorf Of the Law of Nature and Nations," by Mr. Barbeyrac, Professor in Law.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Celebrating Freedom Day: Juneteenth, June 19th, commemorates the end of slavery in US confederate states. On this day in 1865, the Union Army established authority over Texas, setting free the slaves who still didn't know about the Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863. [Center] University students reject Iran's Islamic regime with an emphatic "No": They talk of a sea of blood separating them from the regime, making dialog impossible. [Right] Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction (see the last item below).
(2) ACM Federated Computing Research Conference: Held every four years, ACM FCRC brings together in one physical location dozens of conferences, workshops, and other technical events in all areas of computing, with the goal of achieving broader networking opportunities and scientific cross-fertilization. Today's FCRC plenary program included a talk by the 2023 Eckert-Mauchly Award recipient Kunle Olukotun (Stanford U.). He spoke under the title "Computing in the Foundation Model Era." Plenary talks continue every morning, 8:20 AM PDT, until Friday 6/23. A plenary panel, "Reflecting on 50 Years of Computing Research, and Future Outlook," will be streamed tomorrow at 1:15 PM PDT.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Submersible with 5 passengers exploring the wreckage of Titanic has been lost: Frantic search is on.
- Report: Inflation-adjusted faculty wages decline for the third year in a row.
- The dreaded phone call, when we are separated from our families. [Science essay]
- A final thought: Today's date is 4! – 3! + 2! – 1! For tomorrow, just add + 0! at the end.
(4) Book review: Mottier, Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Suzanne Toren, Tantor Audio, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is another valuable addition to Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series, which now contains hundreds of titles. I have pursued quite a few of the titles to delve into new areas of knowledge or to freshen up on subjects I had previously studied. I was drawn to this particular title when I saw a blurb on Ashkan Bahrani's Persian translation of the book (Nogam, 2023).
The classic world is considered a world before sexuality. Sexual culture was organized around male pleasure, with women and children occupying socially-subordinate positions as "minors." Sex was thus an act of dominating and controlling a submissive partner. Gender was deemed as fluid and under threat, with men risking feminization if they lost body heat (due to too much sex, say) and women being in danger of becoming more manly if their bodies heated up.
Men were supposed to want to penetrate, a sign of strength, whereas desire to be penetrated was an indicator of weakness, which was appropriate only for women, boys, foreigners, and slaves. The notion of heterosexuality and homosexuality came about much later, but men were advised that sex with a woman was only necessary for procreation and that loving a man was preferable. Sex between teachers and young students was usually considered pedagogic and erotic mentorship.
Rape was deemed a crime, not against the woman herself but against the husband, father, or other male guardian. Paying for sex was frowned upon, but it was a lesser digression than illegal sex with free women.
Christianity brought about a radically new sexual ethics, incorporating some of the ideas on self-mastery. Virginity and sexual abstinence were promoted. Early Christians saw families mainly as obstacles to religious devotion. Martin Luther thought God should have continued to shape humans out of clay, rather than produce them through sexual intercourse. Judaism, by contrast, disapproved of abstinence, because it went against God's directive to "be fruitful and multiply."
Learning about the history above makes us realize that what we consider natural in the domain of human sexual behavior has varied greatly in different historical and cultural contexts. In modern times, governments have shown interest in controlling human sexuality though public-health policies and sex-education. These efforts mostly target women and marginalized groups, leading naturally to political activism, particularly by women and LGBTQ+ communities.
The book consists of 5 chapters, preceded by "Introduction" and followed by "References & Further Reading."
Chapter 1: Before Sexuality
Chapter 2: The Invention of Sexuality
Chapter 3: Virgins or Whores? Feminist Critiques of Sexuality
Chapter 4: The State in the Bedroom
Chapter 5: The Future of Sex
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Happy Fathers' Day to old-timers in the club and newcomers to it. Hope you continue to experience the joys of fatherhood for many years to come. As we celebrate today, let us also remeber all the dads who are no longer with us. [Bottom left & center] Beautiful Saturday in Ventura, California: Walking with extended-family members, including all three of my sisters, and celebrating Fathers' Day, a day early. [Bottom right] The Saudi FM reportedly objected to and walked away from a room with a large photo of IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani, eventually holding the Iran-Saudi briefing in a different room.
(2) Humans arrived in Asia earlier than previously thought: The main migration of humans out of Africa occurred sometime between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. Scientists have dated skull and shin bones from a modern human, found in a cave in northern Laos, to between 68,000 and 86,000 years ago.
(3) Persian music: This song was composed by Babak Afshar and words were put to it by Touraj Negahban, especially for the ailing pop super-star Viguen, as his "Final Song." Viguen didn't last long enough to sing it, so Manouchehr Sakhaei had it modified and performed it as "Yad-e Viguen" ("In Memory of Viguen"). Ironically, the song turned out to be Manouchehr's final one.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- War crime: Evidence suggests that Russia blew up Ukraine's Kakhovka Dam from within.
- ABC/Ipsos poll on Trump's indictment: His support is slipping, but Republicans are still with him. [Chart]
- Among casualties of COVID-19 was a decline of confidence in science among US adults. [Survey results]
- Forty years ago, Iran's Islamic regime executed 10 Baha'i women: This 5-minute video tells their story.
- Earth's new-found (temporary) moon: The fantastic 30-year journey of Apollo 12's third-stage rocket.
- Fathers' Day humor: Dad is in charge! [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 18, 2018: Soccer, the beautiful sport with an ugly side.
- Facebook memory from June 18, 2015: The labor of love that used to go into books.
(5) Brains begin with complete models of the world and work backward to anticipate sensory data: In The Experience Machine, philosopher Andy Clark explains not only how predictive processing in the brain can account for accurate perception but also what happens when things go wrong.
(6) EU sets the groundwork for AI regulation: European Parliament votes to regulate the use of AI across the European Union, laying the groundwork for the passage of a historic AI Act. The proposed legislation is intended to both foster AI innovation and minimize AI threats to health and safety. AI systems would be categorized based on four risk levels, from minimal to unacceptable. Among other things, the law would take aim at "social scoring systems" that make judgments based on a person's behavior or appearance, applications that subliminally manipulate children and other vulnerable groups, and predictive policing tools.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The original Monopoly patent from 1935. [Top center] Goleta Public Library is celebrating 50 years at its Fairview Avenue location. [Top right] An extraordinary woman in 19th-century Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom left] US inflation rate: 2005-2023 (NYT chart). [Bottom center] Cartoon of the day: Lady Justice weighs the evidence. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Find the area of the shaded triangle.
(2) Persian poetry and music: Every time I re-read this poem by Tahirih Qurrat al-'Ayn [~1814-1852], a theologian and a brave feminist who was killed for her beliefs, I am filled with awe by its beautiful meaning and craftsmanship. Joseph Salimpour, a college buddy of mine, who plays first-chair violin in this 6-minute video, is part of a musical family, with his brother composing and his sister singing a piece based on Tahirih's poem.
(3) Daniel Ellsberg, economist & famed leaker of Pentagon secret documents on the Vietnam War, dead at 92. His 2003 memoir, Secrets, which I have reviewed on GoodReads, is a must-read for every American.
(4) On Rubik's cubes: We have all seen the 3 x 3 x 3 or the standard cube. There are many other variations, including 4 x 4 x 4 and 2 x 2 x 2 cubes. This 4-minute video shows the workings of the latter mini-cube.
(5) Unity vs. pluralism: There is an abundance of social-media posts about the need for those opposing Iran's Islamic regime to remain united, so as not to allow the mullahs to take advantage of numerous opposition groups advocating diverse approaches to combat the brutal Islamic regime. There is an alternative viewpoint that differences of opinion are necessary and healthy for democracy. Practicing democracy from the initial stages of the fight against tyranny, rather than postponing it to after the regime's fall, may be fruitful. The key is to avoid being dogmatic or inflexible in our different views. Instead of forcing everyone into one mold, let's acknowledge our differences and pledge to allow and respect all ideas, no matter how different they are from our own. Let us work hard to develop positive slogans and chants to replace "death to this" and "death to that."
(6) Final thought for the day: It's not just Trump's Republican primary rivals who are mum about his abhorrent behavior that led to a criminal indictment in the mishandling of classified-documents case. World leaders are also quiet, likely because they figure they may have to deal with him someday soon.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Celebrating Informatics Society of Iran's 45th anniversary celebration (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Persian calligraphy: A verse of Hafez, rendered by master Ahad Panahi. [Bottom center & right] Talk about Iran's central wastelands and deserts (see the last item below).
(2) Throwback Thursday: Founded 45 years ago, Informatics Society of Iran is celebrating its anniversary and the publication of 265 issues of Computer Report (Gozaresh-e Computer), its flagship technical magazine, on Friday, June 16, 2023 (Khordad 26, 1402). As part of the upcoming event, an extensive oral history of computers in Iran will be unveiled. ISI is also in the process of planning a major celebratory event in 2028 for its 50th anniversary and publication of the 300th issue of its magazine. My message on the occasion of Informatic Society of Iran's 33rd anniversary and publication of the 200th issue of Computer Report is also included in way of remembrance.
(3) We think we have come to know glass quite well over four millennia of use: Nothing can be further from the truth. We have only begun to understand the properties of glass and its many potential applications.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nobel-Prize-worthy discovery for curing all ailments: Passing under a camel! [Video clip]
- Swedish proverb: "Those who wish to sing always find a song."
- Facebook memory from June 15, 2017: A pencil drawing of mine from the 1960s.
- Facebook memory from June 15, 2015: USS Enterprise turned into a building.
- Facebook memory from June 15, 2014: Fathers' Day photo with Nikola Tesla doll.
- Facebook memory from June 15, 2013: 2 percent is fine for low-fat milk, but not for women in the senate.
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Geomorphologist Dr. Khalil Rashidian talked under the title "A Passage to Iran's Central Wastelands and Deserts." There were ~70 attendees.
Many seas and lakes were created in Iran after the last Ice Age, ~11,000 years ago. Climatic changes caused these lakes to lose water some 3000 years ago, leaving behind salt and clay. Iran's deserts, like those in many other world regions, are located between the latitudes of 15 and 45 degrees north, the few exceptions appearing around 30 degrees south (Australia, plus tips of South America & Africa).
Iran has two major desert areas, each with its own characteristics in terms of geology and animal/plant life.
*Dasht-e Kavir, or Kavir-e Markazi (central desert), where a large salt-water lake existed millions of years ago, spans parts of the Khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, Isfahan, and Yazd Provinces. It includes a protected ecological zone known as Kavir National Park. One of the most desolate parts of Dasht-e Kavir is Rig-e Jenn ("Dune of the Jinn"), so named because the strange noises heard in the area scared the locals and passing caravans, who believed it was inhabited by evil spirits.
*Dasht-e Lut ("Lut" meaning bare or empty in Persian), has flat salty areas as well as regions with some of the world's tallest dunes. Over millions of years, volcanic rock has been broken down into sand by extreme temperature variations, which can be 60+ degrees Celsius from day to night. Despite the extreme temperature variations, the area does have plant and animal life that have evolved to tolerate the harsh conditions.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Book introductions (see the last item below). [Top right] Historic Dolatabad Garden Pavilion, Yazd, Iran: A UNESCO World Heritage Site. [Bottom left & right] Tuesday's June gloom over Santa Barbara Channel (Pacific Ocean) and Goleta's Devereux Slough: Usually, the Sun comes out in the afternoon, but this year's gloom is an all-day affair. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: What time is it?
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UN-backed team scans historical sites in Ukraine for digital preservation in case of destruction by Russia.
- Surprising freshwater deposits under the seafloor can be tapped in drought-stricken areas.
- The municipality of Malayer in Iran is building many scale models of important landmarks around the world.
- Humor: Suggestions for those who plan to redecorate their bathrooms. [Images]
(3) Book introductions: Today, I pitched two books at a meeting of the committee that is in charge of picking a book for "UCSB Reads 2024" program. From today's pitches, a long list of about 10 books will emerge through voting, which will then be pared down to half-dozen or so for final consideration in a meeting in August.
I chose my two titles because they deal with important problems that are on everyone's mind these days: The threats to humanity from intelligent machines and from environmental deterioration. There are a multitude of opinions in both domains and both suffer from an abundance of misinformation and disinformation. Both threaten our essence as human beings and both require long-term thinking, rather than a focus on today, this quarter, or the next political election.
First pitch: O'Gieblyn, Meghan, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology. Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, Penguin Random House, 2022. [Paperback, 304 pp., $17.00]
We are bombarded daily with stories about Chat GPT and how AI is threatening the essence of our being as humans. Technology is speeding up our lives, leaving little time for reflection, yet the deep changes that are afoot demand that we devote enough time to think about the future of humanity and our challenges over centuries and millennia, not focus merely on today, this quarter, or the next political election.
In 304 pages, O'Gieblyn, an essayist, columnist, and thinker, who studied theology in college, paints a detailed picture of our struggles to reconcile spirituality with technical progress. The writing is that of an essayist, almost devoid of jargon, although, as a columnist for Wired magazine, O'Gieblyn has solid credentials as a tech writer.
We humans are constantly thinking of ways of controlling and overtaking nature. We outsource our intelligence to machines, as extensions of our minds, increasingly seeing ourselves as machinelike in the process. Descartes considered all animals essentially as clocks, that is, robots without any inner experience. He believed that humans were also machines, but with souls, a viewpoint that created problems for the clockwork universe.
This is more or less the starting place for O'Gieblyn's book. Much of the book is about how the success of the modern scientific worldview rests on mechanical metaphors, which necessarily put a bracket around individual human thought and agency. We put consciousness and free will to the side, as we try to describe the world as a mere machine. We did it with the clock metaphor, and that's what we're doing with the computer metaphor, with the computational theory of mind.
O'Gieblyn's book provides ample opportunities to discuss hot-button issues of the day, in classrooms and outside. Increasingly, technology is being developed and sold with religion-like tropes. So, we might wonder whether we are on our way to a digital heaven, offered to us by gods of technology. or a digital hell of our own making. Is academia threatened by Chat GPT and similar developments? Is our increasing reliance on technology helping or impairing our move toward equity and social justice?
Second pitch: Ray, Sarah Jaquette, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, UC Press, 2020. [Paperback, 216 pp., $16.95]
This book is aimed primarily at the Climate Generation (late Millennials and Generation Z), but everyone can benefit from its encapsulation of the climate problem and its prescription for cultivating a mature, compassionate, and resilient mindset that will allow taking steps toward climate justice in a hopeful, emotionally-intelligent, and sustainable fashion. We must set aside fearful, guilt-ridden, and anxiety-inducing activism that harms our well-being more than it helps solve climate problems.
The following two quotes capture Ray's philosophy.
From p. 7: "Reframing environmentalism as a movement of abundance, connection, and well-being may help us rethink it as a politics of desire rather than a politics of individual sacrifice and consumer denial."
From p. 126: "Find beauty, savor the small gifts of being alive, see everything you possibly can through the lens of being blessed rather than victimized, recalibrate your efforts toward the small and local, collect and create positive stories ... "
Extensive discussion on campus and outside are possible on climate issues encapsulated and about the research cited from psychology, mindfulness, and ecopsychology.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: See if you can decipher the message appearing on my T-shirt. [Top center] We had our Taco Tuesday on Sunday: Your place was empty! [Top right] RIP Fakhri Khorvash (1929-2023): The iconic Iranian theater/cinema actor passed away in Los Angeles at age 94. She was disowned by her family in Kermanshah, western Iran, when she started her acting career more than seven decades ago. [Bottom left] The original 1915 patent for adjustable wrench. (Update: Wikipedia attributes the invention of the "adjustable spanner" as well as a different kind of adjustable wrench known as "plumber wrench" to Johan Petter Johansson, ca. the late 1800s.) [Bottom center] The beautiful architecture of Yazd, southeastern Iran. [Bottom right] Math lesson: Illustrating the notions of set union and set intersection.
(2) Rewarding terrorists brings more terrorism: Two weeks after the exchange of a convicted Iranian terrorist with European hostages in Iran, a new terror attack in Paris is being blamed on Islamic Republic of Iran.
(3) Mathematical oddity: Torricelli's Trumpet is the surface of revolution obtained by rotating the graph of the function f(x) = 1/x on the interval [1, &inf;) around the x-axis. It has an infinite surface but a finite volume, which leads to a paradox: We can't paint its surface with a finite amount of paint, but can fill it up with a finite amount of paint, which would then also cover its entire surface!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- We have Florida: And we have Illinois, which just passed a law that bans book bans.
- Denver earns its first NBA championship by defeating Miami 94-89 in Game 5 of the finals series.
- Remembering Iranian-American NASA scientist Dr. Firouz Naderi and his contributions. [25-minute video]
- Top-ten most-expensive & some of the least-expensive one-bedroom apartments at world city centers.
- We have Florida: And we have Illinois, which just passed a law that bans book bans.
- Lost in translation: The Persian "Bekeshid" ("Pull") becomes "Kill" ("Bekoshid"). [Tweet, with photo]
- Persian music & dance, performed at the historic Karim Khan Castle in Shiraz. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 13, 2018: The four-season tree.
(5) US Senate considers two AI-related bills: One would require the US government to be transparent when using AI to interact with people and another would establish an office to determine if the United States is remaining competitive in the latest technologies.
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(1) Images of the day: [Top left] During COVID-19 lockdown, wild mammals hit the streets in large numbers. [Top center] One sheep to the other: "I like him; he tells it like it is." [Top right] Iranian singer/actor Hana Kamkar: "Until the prohibition against women's singing is lifted, I won't attend any male-centered concert." [Bottom left] Nothing is more un-American than banning books. [Bottom center & right] Science magazine's supplement on frontiers of medical research: Brain science (see the last item below).
(2) Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of Britain, resigns from Parliament, in the wake of the release of a House of Commons committee report on his partying during COVID-19 restrictions.
(3) Music by the Iranian pianist/composer Andre Arzoumanian, with backdrop of his funeral (6-minute video). Here are a couple more of his compositions: "Dard o Nefrin" ("Pain n Curse") and "Nasim" ("Breeze").
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Feds are investigating right-wing political contributions aimed at infiltrating progressive groups.
- Political humor: Trump wants to see Biden in jail, but Biden has no plans for visiting him there!
- The victims of #IranProtests2022: There are now 339 confirmed names, including at least 46 children.
- A most-critical question for travel to Mars: What would astronauts eat during the 3-year mission?
(5) "The Computational Brain": This is the title of a fascinating article in a special supplement to Science, issue of June 9, 2023. Selected passages follow. The accompanying diagram is a multiscale representation of neural processing to establish basic computational principles of normal and abnormal cognition.
The brain's hardware: "The human brain is populated by diverse cell types, unique in form and function, which have been programmed by millions of years of evolution to assemble into complex networks connected by trillions of synapses. Embedded in this hardware are countless pathways for routing signals from inside and outside the body, and from the resulting symphony emerges our thoughts, feelings, plans, and dreams. One of the most important human endeavors has been to understand how these pathways are organized, what their constituent parts do, and onto which components are imprinted the remnants of our experiences."
Delineating the brain's circuitry: "To pinpoint the origins of abnormal circuit activity, researchers must decipher how entire circuits are influenced by the functioning of their parts, which requires that neurons be differentiated based on their anatomy, gene expression, and stimulus-response properties. Fortunately, the field has seen an explosion of technological advances to meet this demand, work that brings the promise of circuit-based therapies squarely into the realm of possibility ... Innovation in electrode materials and design (e.g., silicon probes) has enabled electrophysiological monitoring of large neuronal populations at multiple brain sites in rodents and non-human primates, while genetically encoded sensors report neuronal firing and neurotransmitter release with exquisite cellular resolution."
How the brain computes: "From the perspective of a computational neuroscientist, the floodgates opened by this revolution could provide the raw materials needed to construct a biologically accurate model of the brain. Indeed, machine learning approaches have shown that computers trained on the activity of a large population of cells can reliably predict which stimuli were presented to an animal as well as the response that was executed, confirming that tantalizing insights are within our grasp. Elucidating how these patterns emerge from the integration of many neurons acting in concert is a far more challenging task, but one that will define the future. Toward this goal, new anatomical and electrophysiological approaches are revealing the wiring logic that supports the brain's most basic computational routines ... These elementary building blocks define the signal processing capabilities of discrete neural pathways and may be important determinants of how relatively subtle alterations in the intrinsic properties of collections of cells can tip the balance between normal and pathological brain function."
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] RIP Dr. Firouz Naderi (1946-2023): Iranian-American social-media influencer and former NASA scientist, dead at 77. In this 4-minute video, we hear him talk about charity and human compassion being more important than his work at NASA. [Top center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, with a large square and three smaller squares of area 9, find the area of the yellow region. [Top right] Classified docs were stored in a ballroom, in a bathroom, and in a shower at Mar-a-Lago. [Bottom left] Throwback (throw-out) Thursday: Believe it or not, I bought this pair of hiking boots in Iran ~1985. They are finally going in my donations pile! [Bottom center] Eco system vs. Ego system! [Bottom right] I have eturned to the project of organizing my books by subject: Hope to complete the work this summer.
(2) Yesterday, I attended a UCSB Computer Science Distinguished Lecture entitled "Induced Subgraphs and Tree Decompositions" by the widely-honored Dr. Maria Chudnovsky (Princeton). Just wanted to share with you one of the speaker's handwritten slides, which I had not seen since the days of Vugraphs!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- New York Times animation of smoke & haze entering the US from Canadian wildfires.
- Biden's CDC pick, Former NC Health Chief Mandy Cohen, who is also a Washington veteran, wins praise.
- In Hollywood contract talks with actors & writers, AI has emerged as a central issue.
- Will oral exams make a comeback to prevent AI-enabled cheating?
- Borowitz Report (humor): Pence endorsed by National Association of Ass-Kissers.
- Trump reveals that he has been charged in the Mar-a-Lago classified-documents case.
- Iranian women's voices cannot be deleted: Niloofar Mohebbi sings at Esfahan's Shah Mosque.
- Humor: On the Institute of Philosophy's directory map, "You are here" becomes "Why are you here?"
(4) Tonight, I watched an enjoyable John Williams concert (playing movie themes in Berlin) on PBS SoCal: He has been composing film music since 1959. His notable scores since 1975 include "Jaws," "Star Wars," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Indiana Jones," "Home Alone," "Jurassic Park," "Schindler's List," "Harry Potter," "Lincoln," and "The Post." A few related concerts:
[Live in Vienna, 2020 (128 minutes)]
[Star Wars Concert (149 minutes)]
[John Williams Across the Stars (100 minutes)]
[John Williams at 90 (141 minutes)]
(5) Why is it that claims of scientific advancements in Iran are always made by generals? The latest supposed breakthrough, a quantum computer, turns out to be available on Amazon.com!
(6) DeepMind AI uses the technology behind AlphaZero to build faster sorting algorithms: These algorithms, developed as part of what may be called an "instruction assembly game," are already part of standard C++ coding libraries, thus they are being used trillions of times per day by programmers around the world. Previously, faster matrix-multiplication algorithms had been discovered in a similar manner. [Nature article]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Possible relocation of the Oval Office in 2024. [Top center] Math joke: See if you can figure it out! [Top right] Personalized ads have gone too far: This one appeared on my Facebook timeline as a perfect Fathers'-Day gift. Oh, wait! Am I supposed to buy a gift for myself? [Bottom left] RIP Maryam Hakhamjani (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Iran executes activists after sham trials: In 2023, Iran has had the most executions in the world on a per-capita basis. The first activist in the recent batch was executed for "fighting against god." Domestic and international outrage led to the use of false murder & drug charges in subsequent executions. [Bottom right] On the joys of teaching: Card and gift from one of my graduating MS students, who has landed a job in Seattle.
(2) RIP Maryam Hakhamjani: Daughter of Jeyran and Nissan (my grandpa Mikaeel's & grandpa Sassoon's brother), aunt Maryam passed away in Israel on Monday, June 5, 2023. She was nearly 100 and transitioned in peace while asleep. She was a cousin of both of my parents and a lifelong friend of my mom, who was in touch with her regularly. Their kalaneh (Kurdish scallion bread) & shelkeneh, which they used to make together for Shavout, were stuff of legends. My sincere condolences to her children and the rest of our families.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Terrorism, war crime: A major hydroelectric dam in southern Ukraine has been blown.
- Multiple Canadian wildfires send smoke and haze to several US regions, including New York City.
- Former FBI Director James Comey: Trump could be wearing ankle bracelet at GOP convention.
- Will AI assist disadvantaged students in developing vital skills, or will it widen the education gap?
- Harvard turns to AI tools for grading student work in its CS50, world's most-popular on-line class.
- How magnetic-levitation (maglev) trains work and some of their advantages. [6-minute video]
- World's most-beautiful soccer field is located near a 1000-year-old village in Iran's Kurdistan Province.
(4) Persian music: Iranians are still hopeful and sing, after 44 years of their Islamic government outlawing joy and freedom of expression. Street performance of "Do Panjereh" in the city of Karaj. [3-minute video]
(5) Khamenei is toast: For decades, Iranian officials and former officials have stopped short of blaming Khamenei for Iran's problems, while he dissed every official but himself. Not anymore! Former FM Javad Zarif is the latest to put the blame for multiple setbacks directly on Khamenei and his Mafia-like network of insiders.
(6) BlueSky ranking of CS programs, based on consolidating multiple rankings: The top-10 schools are MIT, Stanford, CMU, UC Berkeley, Oxford, ETH Zurich, Nat'l U. Singapore, Tsinghua U., Nanyang Tech U., Harvard.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A couple of days ago, at UCSB's University Center: Preps for a party, likely graduation-related. Grads-to-be are everywhere in fancy outfits or regalia, shooting photos in front of campus landmarks.
[Center] They have ruined Heaven too: Banner in Bushehr, Iran, asserts that nymphs in Heaven have hijabs. [Right] Einstein's Ideas and Opinions (see the last item below).
(2) Members of Iran's Writers Association visited and pledged allegiance to Khomeini in 1979: Later, they all became banned writers or prisoners. This 14-minute video is made by royalists and is clearly anti-leftist, but it contains truths about the complicity of Iranian intellectuals in the Islamic Republic taking hold.
(3) The Instagram account "Neural Art Canvas" has posted this amazing 2-minute video for Shervin Hajipour's Grammy-winning song "Bara-ye." It is said to have been produced with AI assist. Enjoy!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran's FM: Syrian generals still receive guidance from General Qasem Soleimani, who died ~2.5 years ago.
- The many uses of pineapple scraps & leaves: From sneakers & bags to soap & disposable plates.
- Persian music: Iranian girls of 45 years ago, singing the hit song "Gol-e Sangam." [2-minute video]
- Persian dance: Iranian women cannot be restrained. [1-minute video]
- Harmful myths about virginity and their role in controlling women's sexuality. [4-minute TEDx talk]
(5) I just filled out a juror questionnaire. You are disqualified from serving on a jury if you have a felony conviction. Yet, it seems, one can become US president with multiple felony convictions!
(6) Book review: Einstein, Albert, Ideas and Opinions, Three Rivers Press, 1982.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
While this collection provides insights into the thoughts and opinions of Albert Einstein [1879-1955], the pieces are loosely-related and of varying quality, as one would expect of separate informal essays, written over a long period of time. This would have been a fatal flaw for the book, if Einstein weren't such an important person in the history of humanity; hence my 4-star rating.
Part I: Ideas and Opinions (General; About Freedom; About Religion; About Education; About Friends)
Part II: On Politics, Government, and Pacifism
Part III: On the Jewish People
Part IV: On Germany
Part V: Contributions to Science
Before this volume gathering in one place Einstein's general writings, there were three collections:
- The World as I See It (1934)
- Out of My Later Years (1950)
- Mein Weltbild (1953)
The publisher has tried to incorporate the most-important parts of the aforementioned collections (an obviously subjective selection), as well as material from other sources.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] "Feminist Critiques of Charters & Laws on Women's Rights" (see the last item below). [Top center & right, plus bottom row] UCSB Middle East Ensemble's Saturdy ninght concert: The diverse program included many songs from different countries, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Greece, Armenia, Turkey, and Sephardic, plus several dances. One of the two Persian songs, "Ham-Ava," composed and sung by Javid John, with lyrics by Mehrdad Namavari, was about the #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution, which is afoot in Iran. Unfortunately, the lyrics also included "Man Country Development," which is a diversionary slogan (apparently coined by supporters of Iran's Islamic regime) that dilutes and sidelines the Revolution's main message. (3-minute video). Here's a Turkish song that sounds familiar to speakers of Greek and several other languages (2-minute video). And here's Turkish-style belly dancing to a Persian song (2-minute video).
(2) Does nature have legal rights? Yes, there are laws to this effect in some countries. "The success or failure of these rights-of-nature laws can depend in large part on how scientific concepts and expertise have been used to develop, interpret, and implement them. Epstein et al. reviewed key scientific aspects of rights-of-nature laws and the use of science in court decisions that have interpreted them. They examined the 'right to evolve' to illustrate challenges in applying scientific concepts in rights-of-nature laws and identify possible solutions."
(3) Panel discussion, a program of Voices of Women for Change: On Saturday, June 3, 2023, panelists Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Professor, Cal State Northridge, @NTohidi), Mansoureh Shojaee (writer & women's-rights activist, @mansoureh5837), and Mahdieh Golroo (journalist & women's-rights activist, @mahdieh_golroo) offered "Feminist Critiques of Charters & Laws on Women's Rights." There were 56 attendees out of 125 registrants. The event was also live-streamed on YouTube.
*Dr. Nayereh Tohidi: The #WomanLifeFreedom revolution isn't just a political movement but also a cultural transformation. Charters that have emerged represent attempts to state in clear terms what the movement is about, what it aspires to, and what it opposes. The first such charter was the Mahsa Charter, which emerged from a meeting of several opposition figures at Georgetown University. This charter included women's-rights issues indirectly, through references to international laws. Subsequently, other charters emerged from opposition groups inside Iran and in diaspora. A common weakness of many of these charters is that, while paying lip service to #WomanLifeFreedom, they do not explicitly list women's demands. Dr. Tohidi then proceeded to offer a detailed critique of one such charter presented in March 2023 and known as "Manshoor-e Hamgaami" (Charter of Concordance).
*Mansoureh Shojaee: Despite the multiplicity of charters, they have not led to further rift among opposition groups. Most of these charters have common goals, but they differ in the methods used to achieve the goals. It is important to also agree on methods, as stressed in an article by Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani (linked below). Indeed, having a single charter is unnecessary. It may be desirable to produce multiple charters and use a democratic process to choose the most-favored one. The Georgetown charter has an excellent beginning by taking an anti-execution stance, but much of the rest of it focuses on diplomatic initiatives, which became the focus of subsequent discussions. All charters to date are based on masculine worldviews and need more of a feminine perspective. Women's movements aren't only about women's rights. They also include attention to peace, environmentalism, and a multitude of other sociopolitical issues.
*Mahdieh Golroo: We need the filter of feminism to view the various charters. Historically, women's issues have been pushed aside in favor of "urgent goals" that should be given priority: One example is the fate of the oil industry in 1951 vs. women's voting rights. Another example is fighting Imperialism in 1979 vs. hijab & women's rights. Sometimes, we see advocacy for giving women some limited rights (e.g., no hijab), but restricting their clothing nonetheless. Women's rights are not things to be given from above, such as token appointment of women, but to be earned from below. Often the excuse is given that Iran's society isn't ready for widespread reforms. Men, privileged under a religious regime, won't easily adjust to a completely free & equitable society. We need not limit ourselves to changes that are palatable to a patriarchal society. Countries that outlawed the death penalty did not wait until the entire society wanted change. So, we need to ask explicitly for secular marriage, reproductive rights, and divorce rights.
*A lively comment period ensued, with a few participants also including questions in their comments, which the panelists answered.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Lakes are shrinking worldwide: Satellite images reveal decline in global lake water storage. [Center & Right] Book talk on climate change (see the last item below).
(2) Sometimes taking a step back saves you and others: The original intention of this viral animation was to stress the importance of COVID social distancing, but it applies to many other social & professional contexts.
(3) Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps wants to take over the control of Internet in Iran, claiming that the Ministry of Communications isn't doing an adequate job of protecting Iran's cyber-borders. [6-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Train derailment in eastern India leaves 200+ dead, ~1000 injured.
- TikTok isn't just for teens: Retirement-home-based woman, 91, has 2 million followers on TikTok.
- Latest developments in the economic and cultural ties between Japan and Iran. [10-minute VOA report]
- New Jersey mystery: Who dumped hundreds of pounds of pasta on the side of a stream, and why?
(5) Book talk: Dr. Rebecca Solnit, in conversation with Dr. Leah Stokes (UCSB's Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics) and Ms. Nikayla Jefferson (PhD candidate).
Held last night at UCSB's Corwin Pavilion, the event, focusing on Dr. Solnit's new edited volume, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (my 4-stsr review), was well-attended. The format was for the three participants taking turns in asking questions of the other two.
Dr. Solnit expressed puzzlement over some people caring enough about the Earth's future, but then losing hope when they recognize the immense problems facing us is order to avoid a climate catastrophe. A prerequisite for not losing hope is being comfortable with uncertainty. Another important observation is that activists motivated by love get much better results than those driven by hate.
Our excesses in consumption, rampant in the 20th century, have done a lot of damage, primarily through using fossil fuels and plastics, the latter also fossil-fuel derivatives. Healing those damages should be our focus in the 21st century. Climate vs. jobs is a false dichotomy. There is no need to suffer: We can have many creature comforts and help save the planet too.
All three discussants practice Buddhism to various degrees and feel that the practice helps them stay positive and on message. In the final part of the discussion having to do with steps an individual can take to contribute to a climate solution, a sly, yet truthful answer is "stop being an individual and think collectively"! Another answer is "think about all the machines in your life that are powered by fossil fuels (car, stove, furnace, lawn mower, and the like) and how you can replace them with electric alternatives."
No time was allowed for audience questions, but if there were a Q&A period, I would have asked the following:
Q: US law now recognizes corporations as having rights, including right to free speech and, thus, spending unlimited sums on promoting their preferred political candidates. I just read about laws on Earth rights, including "Right to Evolve," enacted by several countries and being considered by a few others. Are such laws being pursued in the US? Wouldn't talking about the need for such laws be a better approach to bringing climate skeptics on board, instead of suggesting that we get rid of all fossil fuels? The two alternatives are really the same, differing only in the verbiage.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ojai Music Festival, June 8-11, 2023, will feature Kayhan Kalhor and a number of Iranian women composers (Nina Barzegar, Golfam Khayam, Nasim Khorassani, Niloufar NourBakhsh, Aida Shirazi, Niloufar Shiri), with support from Farhang Foundation (tickets; schedule of free livestreaming). [Top center] US Millennials are moving to the right: This NYT chart shows the percent voting Republican in 2020 vs. 2012. [Top right] Six-fingered sculptures found in Marlik, near Roudbar, Guilan Province, northern Iran: Marlik is the site of a royal cemetery, with artifacts dating back to 3000 years ago. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded if points K, L, and M are midpoints of the line segments on which they appear? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, the blue lines are tangent to the circle. Find the length x. [Bottom right] Simple math puzzle: The results of two weighing on a scale that shows the difference of weights on its two sides are shown. What result will be shown for the third weighing?
(2) Amazing advances in solving a super-hard problem: Propositional satisfiability (SAT) was the first problem proven NP-complete by Cook & Levin. Despite its theoretical hardness, SAT is being solved routinely within many application domains, including optimization, counting, and even problems involving quantifiers.
(3) The world's highest trash dump: Mount Everest is drowning in trash. If mountain-climbers don't care about our precious Earth, then we're doomed.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Senate approves the Biden-McCarthy debt-ceiling suspension bill 63-36, averting a US default.
- US-Europe summit in Sweden will try to craft a joint code of conduct for AI firms.
- Computer-related risks & remediation challenges: Nontechnical issues interwoven with computing tech.
- Stand-up comedy, while sitting down: Bob Newhart's classic driving instructor routine.
- Cartoon caption of the day: Cat to mouse pointing a pistol at her: "Six rounds, nine lives. You do the math."
- Facebook memory from June 1, 2018: Tea and photography is all these kids need for fun.
(5) Programming is like driving: It helps if the driver pays attention to detailed actions, while a navigator takes care of high-level planning for the trip. Pair-programming uses this analogy. GitHub's Copilot is an AI-powered code generator that allows the developer to focus on high-level requirements and code review. Copilot consists of a large language model using Codex, trained on source code (159 GB of Python code alone, as well as code from many other languages). The experience developers encounter is similar to the use of autocompletion, that has been in modern integrated development environments for years. The difference is that these suggestions may be longer, sometimes spanning multiple lines of code.
(6) A Columbia U. PhD student, whose parents were denied higher education during China's Cultural Revolution, shares her experience of, and pride closing the gap with her peers, who had privileged childhoods.
(7) The disappearing boundary between organism & machine: This is good news for many humans who suffer from various ailments and can benefit from smart artificial body parts and brain-computer interfaces.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Faster arithmetic algorithms discovered through machine learning (see the next item below). [Center] Please do not threaten your political opponents with hanging once Iran's Islamic regime has been toppled. You may not see eye to eye with these opponents, but democracy, if that's what you're after, requires respect, tolerance, and kindness. Strive to be different from the Islamists, who kill the country's youth and then demand that families pay the cost of the bullets used to kill them. [Right] Math puzzle: Each of the four identical "houses" within the semicircle in this diagram is composed of a square and an equilateral triangle. What is the area of each "house"?
(2) Data science's new focus is finding faster arithmetic algorithms: On October 5, 2022, a team from DeepMind, Alphabet Inc.'s UK-based subsidiary, reported in an article in the journal Nature a way of uncovering better algorithms through its AlphaTensor reinforcement learning framework. The results are still at a theoretical stage, but they show promise for developing faster practical matrix-multiplication algorithms, which are at the heart of computations for machine learning.
(3) Still, no NBA team has recovered from a 0-3 deficit in a 7-game series: Boston came close, by tying the series 3-3, after losing the first 3 games. But Miami Heat won 103-84 in Game 7 to thwart the rally. Miami advances to the finals against Denver Nuggets, in a series beginning June 1.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder, begins serving her 11-year jail sentence.
- Most top research universities in the US are now hiring women presidents.
- New challenges for gender equity efforts: Jobs replaced by AI are mostly held by women.
- Iranian officials caught with briefcases full of foreign currencies and gold coins. [Half-minute video]
- Evolution visualized: Why there was no first human. [4-minute video]
- Cartoon caption of the day: General, chiding Siri after nuclear launch: "No, Siri ... I said order LUNCH!"
(5) Iranians are totally ignoring the mullahs and their edicts: This viral 1-minute video, of a man proposing to his (hijabless) girlfriend at the Tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, has led to the arrest of the site's managers and the firing of Fars Province's Director of Cultural Heritage.
(6) The debt-ceiling suspension legislation passes the US House 314-117: More Democrats than Republicans voted for it. The bill is expected to pass the Senate, avoiding a US Treasury default.
(7) Prospects of war breaking out between Iran and Afghanistan: Border skirmishes over water rights have been escalating. On paper, the Taliban will likely not risk attacking the militarily-stronger Iran. But they don't act according to normal human logic and have little to lose in terms of infrastructure that can be targeted, while they can do significant damage to Iran's infrastructure. Such a war may have international cheerleaders, hoping to weaken Iran and destroy the advanced military equipment inherited by the Taliban when US forces left.
(1) Book review: Einstein, Albert (translated by Alan Harris), The World as I See It, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by Pete Cross, Dreamscape Media LLC, 2021 (originally published in 1935).
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Einstein's discovery of laws of nature that no one else could see before him is no doubt a result of how he saw the world. So, it might be instructive to learn about his view/model of the world.
Part I: The World, as I See It (pp. 1-41)
Part II: Politics and Pacifism (pp. 45-80)
Part III: Germany, 1933 (pp. 85-93)
Part IV: The Jews (pp. 97-119)
Part V: Scientific (pp. 125-214)
After the introductory Part I, with 28 short sections, beginning with "The Meaning of Life" and ending with "Reply to the Women of America," the rest of the book consists of fairly short Parts II-IV (26 pp., on average) and the 90-page Part V, where Einstein discusses his views on science.
This book is available for free from Internet Archives (PDF file).
(2) Book review: Ury, Logan, How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science that Will Help You Find Love, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This how-to book consists of three sections:
Section 1. Getting Ready (Chs. 1-7): Understanding challenges of modern dating, the three dating tendencies, attachment styles.
Section 2. Getting Out There (Chs. 8-12): Like everything else, dating needs practice, so go out and get your reps (as in exercise).
Section 3. Getting Serious (Chs. 13-18): How to make a relationship work, moving-in together, break-up plans, getting married.
The main take-away from Section 1 is finding out which dating tendencies you have and why each of the three main tendencies is associated with unrealistic expectations.
The romanticizer feels that love will come to him/her, meaning that the Prince Charming or Cinderella will appear in time. For the romanticizer, the process of finding the right person is the main event, and, as in Disney movies, they will live happily ever-after, with no plans or effort. The lack of realism here is about the relationship.
The maximizer views finding a romantic partner as an optimization problem, much like buying a vacuum cleaner; a little bit more Googling, and you'll locate a better model. By endless searching for a slightly-better partner, perfect becomes the enemy of great. This links back to economic research on the optimal amount of sampling before making a decision. The lack of realism here has to do with the partner.
The hesitator wants to postpone dating until s/he has become "a catch" through various transformations. Such a person does not consider herself/himself good enough for dating. The lack of realism here is about oneself.
Sections 2 and 3 aim to help the readers overcome their dating tendencies and the associated unrealistic expectations.
(3) Book review: Hartmann, Thom, The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by Sean Pratt, Koehler Publishers, 2021.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The book's subtitle says it all: The US healthcare system is designed not to keep you healthy but to generate maximum revenue for hospitals, insurance companies, big pharma, and their executives & shareholders. Each time a presidential administration tries to put in place a single-payer universal healthcare system, which is the norm in all other industrialized societies, one or more of the players named above or their paid stooges in Congress interfere to make the plan fail.
The book's four sections deal with:
- How bad things are in the US regarding healthcare
- Origins of our profit-based healthcare (or sickness) system
- Ongoing fight for healthcare as a human right
- How a real healthcare system can save lives
Here is one example of how we pay for inefficiencies in our healthcare system. US insurance companies typically spend $0.80 out of every dollar they charge on healthcare services. The rest goes to overhead, such as salaries, which include multi-million-dollar pay/benefit packages for their executives. The norm in other countries is $0.95-0.98/dollar. For-profit insurance companies try to reduce their healthcare costs via co-pays, deductibles, denial of coverage to sick people, and disapproval of expensive treatments. Hospitals typically have teams of employees just to do insurance billings and handle the back-and-forth needed to have treatments or charges approved.
The US spends 24% of its GDP on healthcare, whereas Taiwan, with much better health outcomes, spends 6% of its GDP. Taiwan's edge in health outcomes, which includes lower infant-mortality rate and longer life expectancy, was particularly notable during the COVID-19 pandemic. We encounter the same story in nearly all advanced countries, with the possible exception of Switzerland, which has opted for private health insurance within its national healthcare system.
Around 1915, Woodrow Wilson's administration tried to bring national health insurance to the US along the lines of the German model. Frederick Hoffmann of the Prudential Health Insurance killed the proposal by writing extensively about its weak spots, claiming that such a system would destroy the Daniel Boone spirit of individuality in America. Over the decades, the fear-mongering term "socialized medicine" has been used to scare away the public from reform.
Republicans stripped most of the provisions of JFK's proposed healthcare law by the time it passed Congress under LBJ. George W. Bush tried to privatize Medicare, but failed in the face of strong opposition. Nevertheless, he instituted the private Medicare Advantage program, which costs the government a great deal more than standard Medicare (in part, because of insurance companies making enrollees appear sicker than they really are, so that they can charge more), while providing lousy services & benefits.
Hartmann names many other names, including former Senator Joe Lieberman, who single-handedly killed the public option under Obamacare, a provision that could have served as a successful model for a later expansion to a national healthcare program. Hartman writes, half-jokingly, that the "i" in front of Liebermann's name didn't denote "independent" but "insurance"! Our healthcare system is replete with greed and inefficiencies, mostly because of major campaign contributions to politicians of both parties by healthcare organizations and big pharma.
I think every American should read this book to see how every effort to bring our healthcare system into the norm of every other industrialized country was defeated by self-serving institutions, including the American Medical Association, with bribed politicians as their accomplices. Just like gun-control measures, the lack of which continues to kill Americans, children in particular, the absence of an efficient, up-to-date healthcare system is killing and bankrupting Americans in large numbers.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] On this US 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. [Middle left & center] A verse in Quran and its English translation: An example of how religions say the simplest things in the most complicated way (and this feature isn't unique to Islam). Here, Quran apparently wants to tell you that "people are liars, so don't argue with them." [Middle right] Math puzzle: In this diagram, featuring a regular hexagon and a square, prove x > y. [Bottom row] I Madonnari Italian Street-Painting Festival, held this long weekend at Santa Barbara Mission (sample musical entertainment, 2-minute video; Festival overview, 4-minute video).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Each American owes ~$100,000 as his/her share of the US national debt.
- There are suggestions that the US should investigate financial corruption of Khamenei's family.
- An open letter to Reza Pahlavi about his out-of-control followers committing violence against Mr. Haloo.
- Iran's presidential computer system hacked and numerous secret/top-secret documents released.
- A man paralyzed from the hips down gains the ability to walk after cutting-edge surgery.
- Jeff Kluger, author of The Sibling Effect, presents a 21-minute TEDx talk on the hidden power of siblings.
- Tom Hanks delivers a passionate Harvard graduation speech in praise of the truth.
- Having confined women to their homes, the Taliban set their sights on getting rid of evil street musicians.
- A stroll in Tehran's Artists Park: Compulsory hijabs are giving way to music & dancing. [13-minute video]
- Facebook memory from May 29, 2020: The Swish Machine: A most-elaborate Rube Goldberg construction.
- Facebook memory from May 29, 2017: Photos from a memorable Parhami Family Reunion.
- Facebook memory from May 29, 2012: My daughter being honored at her high school's Awards Assembly.
(3) Angelina Jolie and her role as a secret agent to steal and manipulate Iranians' genes: One of the many conspiracy theories advanced by Iran's Islamic leaders. [Video, narrated in Persian]
(4) Quote of the day: "There is ... no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal." ~ Toni Morrison
(5) Unprecedented: A number of Basijis, who are filtered in several stages, before being taken to meet Iran's Khamenei, complain to him about lack of transparency and ignoring people's voices. Khamenei's visitors are expected to remain quiet, except when chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" in approval.
(1) Book review: Solnit, Rebecca and Thelma Young Lutunatabua (editors), Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by multiple narrators, Blackstone Publishing, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The authors, along with diverse voices from the worldwide climate movement, advise us to do our share by setting aside fear and despair. The book's many short essays are successful in conveying that collectively, we can counteract institutional inertia, the fossil fuel industry's determined opposition, and political inflexibility, if we just avoid being frozen by obstacles and the immensity of the problem. This Web page contains a list of resources for those who want to get ideas about how they can make a difference.
I look forward to Rebecca Solnit's June 2, 2023, book talk at UCSB's Corwin Pavilion, in conversation with Dr. Leah Stokes, UCSB's Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics.
(2) Book review: Dern, Laura and Diane Ladd, Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life and Love (and Banana Pudding), unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by the authors, Hachette Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
An actor mother-and-daughter reveal their intimate conversations about life and love, when the mother (Diane Ladd; "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," "Ghosts of Mississippi," "Primary Colors," "Chinatown") was diagnosed with a serious illness and the daughter (Laura Dern; "Big Little Lies," "Little Women," "Twin Peaks," "Jurassic Park," "Inland Empire") decided that she should accompany her mother on doctor-prescribed walks.
Their revelatory heart-to-hearts broke down traditional barriers between mother & daughter and became the basis of this joint memoir, composed of alternating short chapters by the authors, accompanied by many photographs, family recipes, and other mementos. Reese Witherspoon, another of my favorite performers, wrote and reads the book's foreword.
Both actors are among my favorite performers, so I looked up their filmographies, which I share with you below. Among their accomplishments is both having been nominated for acting Academy Awards for the same film, "Rambling Rose," a first in Oscars' history.
Laura Dern's performances in 49 films/shows ranked.
Diane Ladd's 120+ film/TV roles catalogued.
Ladd & Dern do a lot of name-dropping, which may be quite satisfying for movies fans among their readers, but that's not the main message one takes away from this remarkable book. First is the influence of grandma Mary, who helped raise Dern when Ladd divorced Dern's father, the actor Bruce Dern. Ladd apparently felt unfairly burdened by having to support both her daughter and her mother. Dern often resented being left with her grandmother, as her mom went to work.
Raw emotions emerge when mother and daughter recall significant events in their lives somewhat differently, like the time when Ladd slapped Dern in the kitchen of their home or when Ladd took Dern's young son for a significant haircut without her permission. But, by far, the greatest pain revealed in this book is a loss Ladd experienced as a young mother, when her first child with Bruce Dern, a 1.5-year-old daughter, drowned and the marriage also fell apart as a result.
(3) Course review: Kung, David, Mind-Bending Math: Riddles and Paradoxes, 24 lectures in the "Great Courses" series, Course Number 1466, undated. [My 4-star review of this course on GoodReads]
In two-dozen lectures, averaging ~30 minutes each, Dr. David Kung (Professor, St. Mary's College of Maryland) presents a number of fascinating topics in mathematics, including some of the most-enduring riddles/puzzles and paradoxes:
The liar's paradox (in Lecture 1, "Everything in This Lecture Is False")
The Monty Hall Problem (in Lecture 3, "Probability Paradoxes")
Zeno's argument on the impossibility of motion (in Lecture 5)
The infinity conundrum, which wasn't resolved until the 1900s (in Lectures 6 & 7)
Godel's demonstration that mathematical consistency is a mirage (Lecture 10)
Arrow's Nobel-worthy theorem (in Lecture 11, "Voting Paradoxes")
The prisoner's dilemma (in Lecture 13, "Games with Strange Loops")
The disappearing shapes (in Lecture 17, "Bending Space and Time")
The amazing Banach-Tarski's 1 + 1 = 1 (Lecture 23)
The course aptly ends with Lecture 24, entitled "The Paradox of Paradoxes" entailing three key questions (copied here from the course's on-line description):
Why are we so obsessed with puzzles and paradoxes?
Why do we relish the mental dismay that comes with contemplating a paradox?
Why do we expend so much effort trying to solve conundrums and riddles?
Professor Kung shows that there is method to this madness!
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Isfahan-born model Mahlagha Jaberi wears a noose necklace to protest executions in Iran. [Center] Today's talk by Dr. Farzaneh Milani (see the next item below). [Right] Friday's talk at UCSB by an expert from OpenAI (see the last item below).
(2) "From Us or Them to Us and Them: Bahiyyih Nakhjavani at the Threshold": This was the title of today's fascinating talk by Dr. Farzaneh Milani (U. Virginia), presented under the auspices of Farhang Foundation and UCSB's Iranian Studies Initiative. Dr. Janet Afary introduced the speaker for this academic year's final event in the series.
The talk consisted of two interconnected sections.
- The definition and significance of thresholds in the poetic and Narratological architecture of Iranian women's literary tradition
- The life and work of Bahiyyih Nakhjavani—an epitome of threshold poetics
Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, was born in Iran, grew up in Uganda, and was educated at a boarding school in Wales and at U. Mass. She is a prolific author of fiction, non-fiction, and children's books and is active in many other social & literary projects. One of Nakhjavani's most-significant books, The Woman Who Read Too Much: A Novel, is inspired by the life of the brilliant feminist/poet Tahirih Qurrat al-Ayn, who was put to death on false accusations at age 46. Quite a few other Iranian feminist thinkers died or were killed at relatively young ages. In contrast, many prominent US leaders died in their late-80s, offering many years of support and service to women's causes.
In a Q&A comment, I thanked Dr. Milani for a fascinating talk and offered the hope that a feminist Iranian writer is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Such an honor is certainly overdue and will help immensely in the promotion of women's rights in Iran.
The full video recording of this talk will be forthcoming in a few days.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Islamic Center of England, effectively the UK office for Iran's Islamic regime, has been shut down.
- Remember "alternative facts"? Ron DeSantis is talking about "alternative accreditation" for school curricula!
- CheatGPT? There's an arms race on campus, and professors may be the losers.
- Tesla re-launches the "Long Range" version of its Model 3 with an official EPA range-rating of 333 miles.
(4) "Embeddings and Retrieval Augmented Generation": This was the title of yesterday's talk by Dr. Arvind Neelakantan (OpenAI Research Lead and Manager, deep learning for real-world applications) at UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency, delivered to a full auditorium. The event was sponsored by the Center for Responsible Machine Learning and the Mellichamp Initiative in Mind and Machine Intelligence.
An embedding is a relatively low-dimensional space into which one can translate high-dimensional vectors. Embeddings make it easier to do machine learning on large inputs like sparse vectors representing words. Ideally, an embedding captures some of the semantics of the input by placing semantically similar inputs close together in the embedding space. An embedding can be learned and reused across models.
After introductory remarks, a very brief history of embeddings in the last decade (task-specific, general-purpose text, code, image), Dr. Neelakantan discussed OpenAI's work on embeddings that are useful to perform natural language and code tasks like semantic search, clustering, topic modeling, and classification. In the latter part of his talk, Dr. Neelakantan dove deeper into the application of embeddings for retrieval-augmented generation with language models.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Talangor Group talk on Iran's underdevelopment (see the next to the last item below). [Center] My book recommendations to you, from Florida's list of banned books. [Right] Nuclear power and deep decarbonization (see the last item below).
(2) "Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly": This was the title of tonight's Cal Tech Watson lecture by Dr. Yaser Abu-Mostafa. ChatGPT has rocked the general public's perception and expectations of artificial intelligence (AI). In this 96-minute lecture, Dr. Abu-Mostafa explained the science of AI in plain language and explored how the scientific details illustrate the risks and benefits of AI. Between the extremes of "AI will kill us all" and "AI will solve all our problems," the science can help us identify what is realistic and what is speculative, and guide us in our planning, legislation, and investment in AI. [Recording: 96-minute video]
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Eng. Hamid Shirazi (social/political activist) talked about "Iran's Underdevelopment and Its Japan Envy." The main talk was preceded by a short presentation entitled "Lagrange Points and Their Role in Space Applications," in which Dr. Behrooz Parhami presented the main ideas and promised to elaborate in a regular presentation later. There were ~90 attendees.
Development (social, political, economic) has been a focus of discussions since the Constitutional Revolution, even though there seems to be no broadly-accepted, crisp definition of development. Political awareness among Iran's citizens rose in the wake of Russo-Iranian Wars, 1812-1828, resulting in Iran losing 260,000 km^2 of its soil (present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, & Igdir Province of the Russian Empire), and culminating in the humiliating Treaty of Turkmenchay. These wars also sharpened our senses of freedom and justice. Unfortunately, they also helped plant the idea of religious government.
Comparison with Japan is appropriate because the two countries entered modernity at about the same time. There is no secret that Iran and Japan took diverging paths toward development. Iranian leaders, from the Shah to today's ruling mullahs, struggled with Japan envy. A key difference between the two countries during the early years of this comparison is that the Shah was an absolute ruler, whereas Japan's Emperor was a ceremonial leader, emerging to speak in public only when Japan was surrendering at the end of World War II.
Following the Russo-Iranian Wars, Iranian intellectuals formulated various "return-to-self" philosophies, many of which viewed Western progress with loathing or suspicion, views that were often accompanied by conspiracy theories. Some of these intellectuals went too far in rejecting anything non-Iranian or non-Islamic. The lack of self-confidence in dealing with technologically-advanced countries on equal footing is one of causes of Iran remaining underdeveloped.
(4) "What Is the Role of Nuclear Power in Deep Decarbonization": This was the title of today's hybrid seminar by Dr. Jessica Renee Lovering (Co-Founder & Executive Director, Good Energy Collective) at UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency.
Uranium's energy density is off the charts (76,000,000 joules/kg, compared with 24 for coal and 46 for gasoline). This is why nuclear energy has always been an attractive option; in the 1970s, oil crisis and air pollution were among the main reasons, while today, climate change, grid stability, and Russian gas are front & center. Nuclear waste disposal, a key reason for opposition to nuclear power, is less of a problem today, due to changes in technology.
Older nuclear-power projects were vertically-integrated, state-owned infrastructures, whereas "advanced nuclear" offers commercial products. We still need a shift in the regulatory structure, from per-project licensing to bulk licenses issued based on evaluating the soundness of designs, much as we now have for aircraft. Broad categories of advanced nuclear technology include small modular (light-water) reactors, typically < 300 MW, microreactors the size of shipping containers and adequate for a hospital or university campus, typically < 10 MW, and non-LWRs based on different fuels and coolants, which are safer and produce less waste, typically 200-600 MW.
Today, many companies around the world are developing "new" reactors, in view of the renewed sense of urgency and bipartisan support: NuScale SMR (70 MW, but deployed in 6-packs or 12-packs); Terra Power Natrium (345-500 MW; higher-enriched fuel, liquid-metal-cooled); Okio Aurora (1.5 MW, needs no water); Kairos (145 MW, salt-cooled). Countries are reconsidering their previous policies of decommissioning nuclear power plants.
The following are Dr. Lovering's most-significant and most-recent publications.
- "Historical Construction Costs of Global Nuclear Power Reactors," Energy Policy, 2016.
- "A Techno-Economic Evaluation of Microreactors for Off-Grid and Microgrid Applications," Sustainable Cities & Society, 2023.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Socrates Think Tank talk by Dr. Mandana Zandian (see the last item below). [Center] Tina Turner, queen of rock & soul, dead at 83. RIP. [Right] I used a colorful patio table cover, bought for less than $10, and washed/refilled my little fountain to freshen up my courtyard as a nice place to relax or eat in late-spring & summer months.
(2) Evidence of Iran's money-laundering to circumvent sanctions through fake front-companies and their accounts in Chinese and other banks. [6-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Supreme Court limits EPA's authority to police water pollution in a ruling on the Clean Water Act.
- Life is unpredictable: Dr. Firouz Naderi hospitalized with a serious injury. Wishing him a quick recovery.
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2019: The problem with truncated headlines in news apps.
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2015: The 97-member-strong Fifth Annual Parhami Family Reunion.
- Facebook memory from May 25, 2011: Sources to enjoy the rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
(4) "Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly": This was the title of tonight's Cal Tech Watson lecture by Dr. Yaser Abu-Mostafa. ChatGPT has rocked the general public's perception and expectations of artificial intelligence (AI). In this 96-minute lecture, Dr. Abu-Mostafa explained the science of AI in plain language and explored how the scientific details illustrate the risks and benefits of AI. Between the extremes of "AI will kill us all" and "AI will solve all our problems," the science can help us identify what is realistic and what is speculative, and guide us in our planning, legislation, and investment in AI. [Recording: 96-minute video]
(5) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Mandana Zandian (author, poet) talked about her book, The Iranian Cedar and the Seedlings of Modernity: In Conversation with Dr. Abbas Milani (Sarv-e Irani va Javaaneh-haa-ye Tajaddod), published by Ketab Corporation. The book, presented in the form of a conversation, is Dr. Zandian's ode to her mentor Dr. Abbas Milani. There were 120 attendees.
Iranian cedar, with its long lifespan is a symbol of survival and resistance; there is now a cedar tree in the southeastern Yazd region that is 4500 years old. Boteh-jegheh (aka paisley) on fabric designs is inspired by the Iranian cedar. The book's cover image is adapted from a design at Persepolis.
Milani's writings are all centered explicitly or implicitly on the notion of modernity. Humanism, as reflected in the great Persian poet Sa'adi's writings, is another focal point. When speaking of modernity, most people focus on political modernity, whereas cultural modernity is an important prerequisite, as stated or implied by many thinkers, such as Aref Qazvini.
According to Milani, a text is like a triangle, with its three sides being the text itself, the writer (story-teller), and the reader. A "democratic text" builds citizens, because it allows each reader to interpret the narrative according to his/her personal experiences. A non-democratic text, on the other hand, conveys an inflexible meaning, as exemplified by religious or ideological writings. This is in part responsible for a reader experiencing a democratic text differently, when s/he reads it repeatedly at different ages and brings to it different mixes of knowledge and life experiences.
One idea that was new to me is Dr. Milani's preference for "kherad-e masnooee" rather than "hoosh-e masnooee" as the Persian term for "artificial intelligence." I don't quite understand why "kherad" (which has the English equivalent "wisdom") is the right term to use in this context.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: Find the area of the right-angled triangle. [Center] An abstract painting of the great Persian poet Ferdowsi. [Right] Discussion on big-tech TV (see the last item below).
(2) Santa Barbara's 37th Annual I Madonnari Italian Street-Painting Festival: Held each year during the Memorial-Day weekend, the Festival brings artists of all ages together for producing impressive chalk paintings on the pavement around the Old Mission.
(3) Miami Hotel/cabaret (history): Located in north Tehran, the joint was a hub of music and other entertainment shows, first by invited international artists, and later by top Iranian performers, such as Googoosh, Dariush, and Haideh in pre-Islamic-Revolution Iran. [11-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Illinois report asserts that 1900+ were sexually assaulted by the Catholic ministry over seven decades.
- Two children were swept away by raging water in a Central California river: One's dead, the other's missing.
- Santa Barbara man dies in single-truck wreck at the Fairview Ave. US 101 on-ramp in Goleta.
- Persian music: Old-time singer Parvin, 84, honored by friends at a private ceremony. [1-minute video]
- Persian music: Many years ago, "Morning Greetings" began Tehran Radio's morning programming.
- Facebook memory from May 23, 2015: Today is the 9th anniversary of the mass shooting in Isla Vista.
- Facebook memory from May 23, 2010: A verse from a wonderful Persian love poem.
(5) The notion of time in tech systems: "Just as the digital world has played a pivotal role in how we perceive the passage of time, ... the concept of time has a direct bearing on the design of digital things. This manifests itself in modern software and data systems where instantaneous state changes are commonplace. There are, however, some significant developments that greatly enhance software time management."
(6) Cinema Under the Stars: This year's "Summer Cinema" screenings at Santa Barbara Courthouse Sunken Garden (Fridays, 8:30 PM; no screening on Aug. 4, due to Fiesta) bears the theme "Out of This World."
July 07, Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
July 14, Alien;
July 21, Mars Attacks!;
July 28, The Fifth Element;
Aug. 11, Star Trek;
Aug. 18, Guardians of the Galaxy;
Aug. 25, Nope
(7) "Big Tech TV and the Politics of Gender, Race, and Class in Silicon Valley": This was the title of tonight's discussion at UCSB's Pollock Theater, in which Dr. France Winddance Twine (Sociology, UCSB) and Dr. Lisa Parks (Film and Media, UCSB), in conversation with Marc Francis (Assistant Editor, Film Quarterly), examined the ways big-tech TV shows such as "WeCrashed" (starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway) and "Super Pumped" (starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Uma Thurman) represent power dynamics in Silicon Valley workplaces.
Presented in collaboration with UC Press journal Film Quarterly, this timely event built upon an article that Parks and Twine published in the spring 2023 issue of the journal.
Tonight's discussion topics included structural inequalities in the workplace, the myth of corporate self-regulation, and the culture of CEO worship in Silicon Valley. Trailers and opening sequences of several episodes of the two series were screened. They showed that whereas women do get in on occasion, they are quickly pushed out by the toxically masculine cultures of such workplaces. Women are advised to keep quiet, which they often do, especially when an IPO and the opportunity to cash out is imminent.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Shushtar: With its historic aqueducts and canals, the city in Iran's southwestern Khuzestan Province has 13 UNESCO World Heritage Sites to its name. [Top center] Iran's modern history: Newspaper article, reporting on a planned film project of Marshall Erwin Rommel's private photographer, covering Iran's oil challenges, from the D'Arcy Concession to Mossadeq's efforts. [Top right] The Rational Animal (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Beautiful architectures.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- G7 leaders call for international standards to govern the development of generative AI.
- A German MP considers EU's Iran policy in the face of 220 executions this year "shameful."
- The "pro-life" former US President. [4-minute video]
- I got to choose my fortune a few days ago, when I dined with my son, but he didn't want his fortune cookie.
(3) Book review: Kenrick, Douglas T. and Vladas Griskevicius, The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter than We Think, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Tim Andres Pabon, Gildan Media, 2013.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5532937049]
Many books in the realm of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics have discussed human decision-making. The old assumption in the field of economics that humans are rational actors has fallen out of favor, having been replaced with the more-nuanced choice theory. Here are three books whose subject matters overlap with the current book, along with links to my reviews of them.
Algorithms to Live By (Christian & Griffiths): My review
Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely): My review
The Upside of Irrationality (Dan Ariely): My review
Unlike the last two books, which try to explain why we may act irrationally, the current book redefines rational decision-making in terms of evolutionary wisdom, even when the outcomes seem erratic.
Kenrick, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, and Griskevicius, Professor of Marketing at University of Minnesota, present a compelling account of our decision-making as a rational process, driven by sometimes-conflicting evolutionary forces, even though the result may at times appear irrational. Kenrick & Griskevicius explain that even though our choices aren't always consistent, we now understand that we follow quite rational criteria wired into our brains by evolution.
Sandwiched between introduction (Cadillacs, Communists, & Pink Bubble Gums) and conclusion (Mementos from Our Tour) are the following nine chapters that elaborate upon our sub-selves, defined in Chapter 2.
Chapter 1. Rationality, Irrationality, and the Dead Kennedys
Chapter 2. The Seven Sub-Selves
Chapter 3. Home Economics vs. Wall Street Economics
Chapter 4. Smoke Detectors in the Mind
Chapter 5. Modern Cavemen
Chapter 6. Living Fast and Dying Young
Chapter 7. Gold Porsches and Green Peacocks
Chapter 8. Sexual Economics: His and Hers
Chapter 9. Deep Rationality Parasites
The heart of the book is Chapter 2, listing and briefly describing our seven sub-selves. We are told, for example, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. suffered from multiple-personality disorder; we all do. We make different choices, depending on which of our seven selves is running the show at any particular moment. The assumption that we have stable preferences (thus businesses marketing to our perceived profile) is misguided. Each of us is an amalgam of multiple selves, with different behaviors. A restaurant may emphasize its uniqueness or its popularity in different ads. If you watch a scary film, the ad focusing on popularity tends to be more effective. You want to go with the crowd, rather than stand out, in this context.
Our seven sub-selves are in charge of managing the seven goals wired into us by evolution:
*Self-protection sub-self (personal or national defense)
*Disease-avoidance sub-self (a source of xenophobia)
*Affiliation sub-self (forming friendships and alliances)
*Status sub-self (our inner go-getter)
*Mate-acquisition sub-self (our inner swinging single)
*Mate-retention sub-self (getting along, to raise our kids)
*Kin-care sub-self (caring for family and humankind)
(1) Saturday at California Strawberry Festival, Ventura County Fairgrounds, followed by walking along Main Street: I arrived at Festival gates about an hour before its opening time, given the train schedule from Goleta. Before going to the Festival, I walked along the beach, watching hordes of surfers and joggers. Parts of the bike path at this Ventura beach have been washed away (Photos). I placed a memorial rock for my mom at Haole's Memorial Rock Garden (more photos). A most-interesting art exhibit at the Festival contained a number of wonderful celebrity portraits by the Thousand-Oaks-based artist Gary Saderup. Strolling along Main Street after a late lunch, I took some photos in front of a number of intereting shops and at the Heart of Ventura, near City Hall (more photos). I also snapped photos of the Ventura Mission and its Gift Shop.
(2) UC Berkeley to open a College of Computing, Data Science, and Society: The new College will provide a free curriculum to expand data science to institutions everywhere.
(3) Natural stupidity (NS) adds to concerns about AI: A Texas professor accused his students of cheating and withheld their grades just before graduation, because ChatGPT claimed it wrote the work they had submitted.
(4) Diophantine equations, Part 2: One of the marvels of math, these are equations with multiple non-zero, positive, integer-valued variables. The most famous one is x^n + y^n = z^n, which is known to have no solution, except for n < 3 (Fermat's Last Theorem). Here is another fascinating Diophantine equation, purportedly posed by Douglas Hofstadter at an informal meeting of a group of mathematicians: a/(b + c) + b/(c + a) + c/(a + b) = 4. Be warned that the smallest solutions are 80-digit numbers. If you replace 4 with 178, the smallest solution will have ~400M digits. [Read more]
(5) The Microarchitecture of DOJO, Tesla's Exa-Scale Computer: Designed by Tesla for its internal workloads, the architecture can be used for any machine-learning workload, all the way to the exa-scale level.
[Article]
(6) Las Cafeteras at Marjorie Luke Theater (SBJH Campus): Tonight's enjoyable concert, sponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, featured Afro-Mexican rhythms, electronic beats, and powerful rhymes that document community stories.
[Video 1 (a love song)]
[Video 2]
[Video 3]
[Video 4]
[Video 5 ("La Bamba")]
(7) Composer/Conductor Arash Fouladvand, Paris-South Symphony Orchestra, and Bahar Choir perform "Aan Yaar Mi-Aayad," based on a Mowlav/Rumi poem. [8-minute video]
(8) Risks of not getting enough sleep: Being awake for 17 hours is comparable to having a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, not far from the impaired level of 0.08% in the US. Going without sleep for 24 hours is similar to a blood alcohol level of 0.10%.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Retirement party for a long-time UCSB colleague: Val De Veyra is retiring after 36 years at UCSB (last 25 with the ECE Department). Her encyclopedic knowledge of university regulations and her problem-solving skills will be hard to replace. She managed ECE's Student Affairs Office at the time of retirement. [Center] Today's panel discussion on CharGPT (see the next item below). [Right] Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men (see the last item below).
(2) "Unraveling the Secrets of ChatGPT": This was the title of today's "Panel for Scholars and Educators" held at UCSB's Henley Hall, Room 1010.
Executive Vice Chancellor David Marshall made brief welcoming remarks. He began with an observation that the metaphor often used for the current situation in AI research and its attendant potential dangers is "arms race," which invokes the panic we experienced during the US-Soviet nuclear arms race. He stressed the need for an academic-based response, appealing to academic integrity and pedagogy, rather than a fear-based reaction.
Next, Dr. William Wang, Mellichamp Professor of AI and Co-Director of UCSB's NLP Group, provided some background about ChatGPT, introduced by the company Open AI, and similar systems from other tech companies. He discussed both the strengths and weaknesses of the technology, emphasizing that any /ML system, including those based on large language models, is as good as the data used on its training. He suggested that we should deal with any such technology responsibly and ethically. Discussion in this important area will continue with an in-person lecture by Open AI's tech lead & manager next Friday at noon.
The next part of the program was a panel discussion, with the following participants:
- Dr. Lei Li, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director of UCSB's NLP Group
- Dr. Lisa Berry, Senior Instructional Consultant with UCSB's Office of Instructional Development
- Dr. Rita Raley, UCSB Professor of English
- Dr. Norah Dunbar, UCSB Professor of Communication
- Dr. Joe Walther, Director of UCSB Center for Information Technology & Society
A Q&A session ended the event, which was live-streamed (4:52 mark of this 111-minute video).
(3) German-Iranian journalist Golineh Atai honored with major award for her book Freedom in Iran is Female. [News story, in English] [4-minute video, narrated in Persian]
(4) Book review: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (translated by Ian Johnston), Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Neville Jason, Naxos AudioBooks, 2015. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Author/philosopher/composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-1778] was an influential figure in Europe during the Enlightenment. Rousseau's works have been translated into English and published under various titles such as Basic Political Writings (1987), Collected Writings (13 vols., 1990-2010), The Confessions (2000), On the Origins of Language (1986), 'The Social Contract' and Other Later Political Writings (1997), and Rousseau on Women, Love, and Family (2009).
In this book, a powerful critique of modernity, Rousseau sets out to demonstrate how the spread of civilization upends man's natural happiness and curtails his freedom by creating artificial inequalities in wealth, power, and social privilege. Human beings were more equal in primitive societies. As societies grew in sophistication, someone who was stronger and more-intelligent gained an advantage over weaker individuals. Thus, inequality arising from moral or political causes is significantly greater and more-dangerous than inequality due to natural or physical differences.
Rousseau's social and political arguments in this Discourse were revolutionary and quite influential in his time. He observed that laws aiming to rectify these imbalances in power and privilege tend to perpetuate them. Rousseau opines that the birth of private property was the "beginning of evil." Later, he wrote The Social Contract, famous for the phrase "man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains," to study how freedom may be possible in civil society. His writings got him in trouble with religious and ruling authorities, making him a fugitive in later stages of his life.
This is Rousseau's second discourse, the first one having addressed the arts and sciences. Both discourses were produced for submission to writing competitions. The first one did well, received the top prize, and is in part responsible for Rousseau's rise to fame. The second one didn't fare so well, but it is viewed as an important book that lays out the foundations of social sciences.
I have seen other readers complain about the translation quality, but I found it more than acceptable. Perhaps, such an important book should be read in the original French language, but this luxury wasn't available to me. Rousseau's own notes appear at the end of the volume; he recommends that the readers should ignore those notes in a first reading. Translator's notes appear as footnotes.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Reveling in the extreme beauty of wildflowers, sunsets, and nature of our precious Earth. [Bottom row] Talk on the German Foreign Office's Iran Archive (see the last item below).
(2) Diophantine equations: One of the marvels of math, these are equations with multiple non-zero, positive, integer-valued variables. The most famous one is x^n + y^n = z^n, which is known to have no solution, except for n < 3 (Fermat's Last Theorem). Here is another fascinating Diophantine equation, an instance of Pell's Equation: x^2 – 61 y^2 = 1. Don't try to solve it without computational help, as the smallest set of answers are 10- and 9-digit numbers!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Disney cancels $1 billion development in Florida as a result of its feud with Gov. DeSantis.
- Iran executes three more street protesters, despite broad international calls to stop the executions.
- College graduates are leaving large coastal cities in droves, mainly because of unaffordable housing.
- Iranian cuisine: Street kabobs in the Caspian-Sea region.
(4) "Presence and Silence: The Iran Archives in the German Foreign Office": This was the title of a fascinating talk by Dr. Jennifer Jenkins (U. Toronto), as part of the U. Toronto series, "Rethinking History: Returning to Archives and Documents." Much of what was discussed today will appear in Dr. Jankins' forthcoming book, The Persian Question: Germany, Iran and the Near East in the Age of Empire, 1857-1914. The meeting with ~100 attendees was convened by Arezou Azad & Mohamad Tavakoli.
The German Foreign Office in Berlin possesses an enormous archive on Iran, which can help shed light on modern Iranian history. Dr. Jenkins came across these archives when she began working many years ago on German orientalism. Years of research and several grants later, an 85-page, single-spaced index of the enormous archive was generated. The archive came as a surprise, given the relative dearth of information about the German-Persia relations in the secondary historical literature. This voluminous archive makes the point that Germany can no longer be left out from the histories of Iran's modern transformation.
Dr. Jenkins introduced this archive (its size, scope, and the many topics it covers), speaking to how Iran's modern history can be rethought in the light of these documents. We see in the archive's documents that German officials criticized the workings of the British in Iran as well as the Russian influence-peddling in the northern part of the country. These inter-imperial tensions is a key reason why the archive is so massive.
Germany's relationship to Iran, forged during the Constitutional Revolution and the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, played forward into the period of the First World War and Reza Shah's modernization of Iran. The documents show that Germany positioned itself as a suitable partner for Iranian nationalists and modernizers, transforming regional power relationships in the process. Germans deemed the nationalist's agenda as part of a legitimate sociopolitical movement, in contrast to the British view of it as anarchy. As for Russia, it was viewed by German diplomats as "the enemy of liberty."
German officials looked at Iran as a major unexplored opportunity and put a lot of emphasis on solutions to poverty & corruption and the need for modernization. Strong ties were forged between Germans and Iranian nationalists during the Constitutional Revolution of the early 1900s. German involvement was particularly broad in the efforts to establish a modern financial system and a national bank to replace the imperial bank, key demands of the nationalists.
The talk's recording will be posted on the Elahe Omidyar Institute's Web site within a couple of weeks.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] IEEE CCS tech talk by Dr. Behrooz Parhami (see the next item below). [Bottom left] The Mueller Report (see the last item below). [Bottom center & right] My attempt to replicate a dish my mom used to make from chicken livers/hearts and potatoes. I did not quite know which spices to add, so I improvised and got a decent result. The other photo is from my cooking night over the past weekend.
(2) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Behrooz Parhami (ECE, UCSB) spoke under the title "Lagrange Points and Their Significance to Space Applications."
Dr. Parhami began by stressing that the talk's subject matter is outside his areas of expertise. Having learned about Lagrange Points from a video clip by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, he decided to pursue the topic and to share what he discovered with others.
Application of math to physics has given rise to the field of mathematical physics. Dr. Parhami introduced one problem in this domain, its solution, and a few notable applications to Earth observation, monitoring of the Sun, and space telescopes.
The problem addressed is an instance of the three-body problem, which is super-difficult to solve in general. However, when one of the bodies is much smaller than the other two, so that its gravitational pull can be neglected (e.g., a satellite, compared with the Earth and the Moon), the problem becomes tractable. For each pair of heavy objects, with one rotating around the other, there are five special Lagrange Points in space. These points were introduced and related to the applications cited above.
[Speaker's UCSB ECE page]
[IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
(3) Book review: Mueller, Robert, et al. (introduction and commentary by reporters Rosalind S. Helderman and Matt Zapotosky), The Mueller Report, unabridged 19-hour audiobook, read by Matt Zapotosky, Rosalind S. Helderman, Marc Fisher, Sari Horwitz, Dennis Boutsikaris, Cassandra Campbell, Gibson Frazier, Robin Miles, Fred Sanders, Jayme Mattler, Vikas Adam, Joy Osmanski, Cynthia Farrell, Samantha Desz, Prentice Onayemi, and Jackie Sanders, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I don't know why I postponed reading this important report, with implications to the future of democracy in our country, for so long. Anyway, I am glad I finally got to the report's eye-opening findings, which had previously been lost to cries of "hoax" from one side and soundbite media coverage that glided over important details and implications from the other.
A vast majority of Americans (97% by one estimate), including members of congress and other top-level politicians, haven't read the full report, although they do not hesitate to express opinions about its conclusions at every opportunity. I think every American should read the full report, rather than rely on snippets fed to us by the media. As a matter of fact, citizens of other countries can also benefit from reading the report, given that Russia and a few other actors continue to try to influence elections and national debates around the world.
The massive report is presented in two volumes, both of which are contained in the Washington Post edition. Volume I is about Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the interactions and encouragements of Trump people regarding the interference. Volume II discusses the various ways Donald Trump tried to thwart the investigation into Russian interference as well as the many ways he tried to shield himself from investigation.
Many of the details, such as footnotes, supporting documents, timeline of events, and biographical appendices, are not read out in the audio version but are included in accompanying PDF files. There are also quite a few deleted parts, which are flagged as "redacted," followed by one of four reasons for the redaction: Secret Grand-Jury material, possible harm to ongoing matter, revealing private info on third-party individuals, or revelation of investigative methods.
Trump supporters repeatedly claim that their vote was not influenced by Russia. This is likely because they are unaware that, just on Facebook, IRA (Internet Research Agency; a cyber-arm of the Russian government) controlled hundreds of accounts, pretending to be owned by real Americans or US interest-groups, making tens of thousands of posts and reaching an estimated 100+ million Americans. The fake group names spanned the entire range of American politics and included "United Muslims of America," "Don't Shoot Us," "Being Patriotic," and "Secured Borders."
Mueller could have easily suggested, based on overwhelming evidence, that Trump committed crimes that could not be pursued while he was president but that he should be held accountable after the end of his term. Instead, he used very soft language that left room for the "no collusion, no obstruction" interpretations by Attorney General William Barr and other Trump cronies. Whereas the case for collusion with Russia might be deemed hard-to-prove, given that Trump and his campaign people may have inadvertently retweeted or otherwise spread fake IRA posts, the list of Trump actions to impede Mueller's investigation and even to have him fired leave no doubt that he was guilty of obstruction of justice.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Brides put on sale by Iranian match-making firms (see the next item below). [Center] Iran's Islamic regime is executing dissidents at an alarming rate: Let's put some pressure on the butchers (rally locations). [Right] A fish story (see item 3 below). [Right] Outdated poster (see item 3 below).
(2) Iran's campaign for women getting married earlier and bearing more children has gone too far: There are now government-sanctioned private match-making firms that advertise with large street banners bearing taglines such as, "We have apples, we have pomegranates, we have dignified brides." The only missing info is the bride's price per kilogram!
(3) My fish (and chips) story: I went into a local pub/restaurant and ordered fish-and-chips. The charge was $8.00. I pointed to a poster on the outside window, advertising $5.99 fish-and-chips. Shrugging it off, the server said that the sign was out of date. No apologies, no offer to honor the advertised price. Nothing. I was too hungry to make a fuss about it, so I ate my food and left. A couple of days later, I noticed that they have blanked out the price on their poster.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Like NRA's "good guy with a gun" argument, Bill Gates claims an AI pause will only stop the good guys.
- Inspired by the success of "All in the Family," Bob Hope made "All in the West," starring John Wayne.
- Persian music: A private performance by Anoushiravan Rohani, his son Reza, & old-time singer Martik.
- Facebook memory from May 16, 2014: The world has its ups and downs, don't worry (Persian verse).
(5) UCSB's Mahsa Amini Graduate Fellowship: The Fellowship's fund has reached the $20,000 level, with the goal being $50,000. Please consider contributing to help us reach the goal and start using the funds on worthy doctoral candidates in non-STEM disciplines who have earned bachelor's degrees in Iran.
(6) "Journey to Yazdegerd Castle": A documentary film about remarkable discoveries of Dr. Edward Keall, a British-Canadian archaeologist, during visits to an ancient castle in Iran's Kermanshah Province.
(7) Do we still need universities? This question has been posed and discussed widely, ever since we emerged from the social restrictions of COVID-19. Can't we just move everything on-line, so that everyone benefits from the best and most-knowledgeable teachers and cut costs in the process? The fact that we did not do so well in meeting student needs during the pandemic should not be viewed as confirmation that on-line instruction doesn't work. We were thrown into a new situation unexpectedly and unprepared. With the experience of COVID years under our belt, we should be able to do better.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Mothers' Day: This is the first Mothers' Day for me without my mom, who passed away in November 2022. So, I have collected some of my previous Mothers' Day greetings and photos in this image. Miss you, mom! [Top center] This voluminous book may be an exaggeration: However, I'm sure you can find at least one thing your mom was right about and tell it to her face, if you are lucky enough to still have her around. It would make an excellent Mothers' Day gift. [Top right] Rebecca Goldstein's Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel (see the last item below). [Bottom row] My Saturday stroll at Ventura Harbor Village, before a family gathering (Video of a street musician).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A committee of the EU Parliament has approved a first-of-its-kind artificial-intelligence regulation bill.
- Our changing world: There is a place in our universe; it contains life; it contains us. [2-minute video]
- A look back at "Seinfeld," the show that ended 25 years ago (in May 1998), after redefining adulthood.
- What a way to spread Jesus's teachings of love and tolerance: You can't be a Christian and a Democrat!
- Tiredness in the afternoon: The post-lunch dip is real, but there are ways to combat midday sleepiness.
- Hidden-camera clip, 1965: Girls & boys react to an attractive teacher asking them to be in his/her class!
(3) Book review: Goldstein, Rebecca, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Modern science stands on three legs: Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Godel's incompleteness theorem. The latter refers to one of two theorems:
*Godel's First Theorem: In any formal system adequate for number theory there exists an undecidable formula, that is, a formula that is not provable and whose negation is not provable.
*Godel's Second Theorem (a corollary to the First Theorem): The consistency of a formal system adequate for number theory is not provable within the system.
It comes as a shock that even mathematics, this most-precise of the sciences, can never be formalized in any complete system. One remarkable feature of Godel's Theorems is that they are mathematical results that speak and have implications to outside mathematics. Philosopher Goldstein paints Godel as an enigma, compared with his contemporaries such as Einstein, Wittgenstein, Russell, and Oppenheimer.
The four parts of the book are preceded by Epigraph & Introduction and followed by Suggested Reading.
I. A Platonist among the Positivists
II. Hilbert and the Formalists
III. The Proof of Incompleteness
IV. Godel's Incompleteness
The action begins at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where giants have gathered to tackle the world's toughest problems while feeding off each other's knowledge and enthusiasm. Both Godel and Einstein shared the conviction that truly good science keeps the larger philosophical questions in view. So, it's not surprising that the two dissimilar scientists, separated in age by nearly three decades, talked to each other regularly during walks that made others wonder what these two scientists had so much to tell one another. In his later stages of life, Einstein had said that his own work no longer meant much and that he continued to come to the Institute for the privilege of walking home with Godel.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Selected verses from a beautiful ghazal by Hafez (#265 on ganjoor.net). [Center] Having your cake & eating it too: Mistakes by 17-year-old boys shouldn't ruin their lives, but it's okay if they ruin the lives of 17-year-old girls. [Right] Perils of raw data without analysis (see the next item below).
(2) The slippery slope with statistics: A New York Times chart shows that the number of apprehended migrants on the southwestern border of the US has risen significantly during the first two years of the Biden administration compared with the Trump years. Here is my question: Does more apprehensions mean a greater number of border crossers or better enforcement of immigration laws (that is, low apprehension rate means that a lot of migrants slip through)?
(3) CNN's big mistake: It gave Donald Trump 1+ hour of free air time to spread his election lies, lie on other issues dozens of times, insult the host, make misogynistic statements, to which the MAGA audience laughed, and evade all serious policy-related questions. And all of these abuses of air time were totally predictable!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Anti-compulsory-hijab activism is intensifying in Iran: Here is the recitation of a Persian protest poem.
- William Shatner talks about "Star Trek," acting in space roles, & the future of our Earth. [13-minute video]
- AI continues to become more scary: Robotic soldier, developed for the US Army.
- California State Parks: Some of their must-see places.
- Iranians avoid stepping on the US flag placed at the entrance of what appears to be a shopping mall.
- Mr. Internet: Vint Cerf reflects on 50 years of progress since he first sketched the idea in 1973.
(5) The island of Socotra: Located 150 miles off the coast of Somalia and 220 miles off the coast of Yemen in the Indian Ocean, Socotra is home to unique plant and animal species.
(6) Voice of dissent from the Qom Seminary: This video, in which a prominent Iranian cleric disses the idea of governing based on edicts from 1400 years ago, has surfaced after 12 years. [4-minute video]
(7) Political humor: Scientists are working on a polygraph (lie-detector) machine that can be used on Donald Trump and George Santos, without catching fire due to overheating!
(8) GPUs & FPGAs are the engines that allow AI & machine learning to advance by leaps & bounds: Yet, these workhorses of the hottest fields of research are in the shadows and their designers don't get proper credit. As a case in point, a single NVIDIA A100 GPU has been shown to outperform a hypothetical quantum-computing system with 10,000 error-correcting qubits, a system that is nowhere close to being realizable at this time.
(9) There is a new argument that Biden can raise the debt ceiling by himself, if the Congress does not cooperate: Here is how the argument goes. As US President, Biden has sworn to uphold the laws of the land. Spending bills passed by congress are some of those laws he must uphold. If there are no funds to uphold all laws (pay all government obligations), his authority does not include selectively upholding the laws: it's either all laws or none of them. He can't pay the military but withhold payment from retirees, say. He could presumably pay 80% of the obligations, say, and issue IOUs for the remaining 20%. He can't cut the payments unilaterally. But IOUs are also debts and issuing them constitutes raising the debt ceiling.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Optical illusion: It's amazing how adding little squares distorts our perception of the checkerboard pattern, making it appear to bulge out. [Center] Iran's Islamic regime now quotes Victor Hugo & Leo Tolstoy, instead of the Prophet & Imams, on the importance of modesty and chastity for women! [Right] Venky Narayamurti's talk at UCSB, yesterday (see the last item below).
(2) Fareed Zakaria, on King Charles III's coronation: Zakaria's Sunday commentary included interesting tidbits, such as a king who banned his wife from attending his coronation because she ate raw onions, and Charles III's dilemma regarding how to include his brother Andrew and his son Harry (who headed straight to the airport afterwards) in the coronation ceremony.
(3) AI guru Geoffrey Hinton discusses his fears about the future of AI: "I think it's quite conceivable that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence." [8-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- May 12, Fields-Medalist Maryam Mirzakhani's birthday, is the International Women in Mathematics Day.
- It turns out that today isn't just International Women in Mathematics Day but also International Nurses' Day!
- A conversation with Google administrators & scientists on the future of AI. [27-minute CBS News report]
- Title of an ACM tech talk: "All I Needed to Know about Project Management, I Learned Planning a Wedding"
- Facebook memory from May 12, 2017: On "toman" or "toomaan," Iran's currency unit.
(5) An advisory panel has suggested that all women should start getting regular mammograms at age 40: The panel cites an increase in breast cancer diagnoses among younger women and persistently high death rates among Black women. The previous recommendation was to begin at age 50.
(6) Trump, as you have never seen him before: During his deposition in the E. Jean Carroll rape case, he seems mousy at the start but becomes combative near the end with the female questioner. [48-minute video]
(7) Seeing what a mouse sees: Scientists at Lausanne's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have developed the CEBRA machine learning algorithm, which they say is capable of predicting information like what mice see when they watch a movie. CEBRA can anticipate unseen movie frames directly from neural signals after an initial training session mapping brain signals and movie characteristics. The algorithm functions well with less than 1% of neurons in the visual cortex, given that region in mice encompasses 0.5 million neurons.
(8) Rachel Maddow's take on the parallel or perhaps intersecting extremism & anti-Semitism in mainstream Republican politics and White-Nationalist mass shootings. [40-minute video]
(9) A former dean of engineering visited UCSB yesterday: Venky Narayanmurti, who was at the helm of our College of Engineering from 1992 to 1998 (before departing for Harvard), gave a talk entitled "Rethinking the Nature and Nurture of Discovery Research: Implications for Science and Technology Policy." The talk was based on Narayanamurti's 2021 book, The Genesis of Technoscientific Revolutions (co-authored by Jeffrey Y. Tsao).
Alarm signals that the US was in trouble with regard to leadership in science & technology innovation were raised in at least three books:
- Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (2005)
- Rising Above the Gathering Storm Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 (2010)
- The Perils of Complacency: America at a Tipping Point in Science & Engineering (2020)
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2023, a major accomplishment of the Biden administration, is a good start, but other countries are responding with their own programs of supporting microchips manufacturing.
It is imperative that we view science & technology, or research & development, as parts of a whole that cannot be divided, what was accomplished by the Bell Labs, which was nicknamed "The Idea Factory" in its heyday.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The Mayans, the Incas, and the Aztecs all mastered hydraulic engineering to provide running water, irrigation, and sewage centuries before the Europeans did. [Center] Facebook memory from May 11, 2021: Persian love couplets by Ghaa'aani (top) and Haatef Esfahaani. [Right] Tonight's Talangor Group talk on the Persian language (see the last item below).
(2) Telecom relay service: The 711 number is now available free of charge in all 50 US states, DC, Puerto Rico, and US territories to assist hearing- or speech-impaired callers with placing text-based phone calls.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump on CNN town hall (better described as a campaign rally): January 6 "was a beautiful day."
- You don't let a con-man spread lies and then scramble to fact-check him. All of Trump's lies were predictable.
- Why a car cannot accelerate from 0 to 60 MPH in less than 3 s if its movement forward relies on friction.
- Facebook memory from May 11, 2019: Celebration of my daughter's 25th birthday.
(4) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Hossein Samei (Emory U.) spoke under the title "The Persian Language in History." The main talk was preceded by Dr. Kamiar Alaei's short presentation entitled "MAHSA: Medical Alliance for Health Services Abroad," introducing an organization that is trying to document the violence of Iran's security forces and has successfully assisted victims of such violence, including a large number of young men and women who lost one or both eyes to pellet guns targeting street protesters. There were ~70 attendees.
During the 5th & 6th centuries CE, Pahlavi and Persian languages co-existed, with the former being the language of government/bureaucracy/religion and Persian being the conversational language of the people of the Sassanid era. Zoroastrian religious texts were written in Avestan, but it wasn't used by ordinary people.
With the Arab invasion, Arabic took the place of Pahlavi for official/religious/scientific communications during the 7th-9th centuries CE, but Persian continued its life as people's colloquial language. Because of the need to record communications, the already familiar Arabic script was adopted to create a written form for Persian.
Around the same time, Jews had created a Hebrew form of writing for Persian, but with the official adoption of Arabic script, the Hebrew version fell out of favor. Ironically, the adoption of Arabic script saved the Persian language. allowing poetry & literature. as well as translations of Quran, to flourish.
Persian became established, spreading to India, Anatolia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan between the 9th and 19th centuries. In other words, it was transformed from a colloquial language to a written language used in government, bureaucracy, commerce, literature, and even religious texts. In this new role, Persian began interacting with regional languages, borrowing and supplying words from/to these languages. As a result, Persian was referred to as an imperial language without an empire.
Beginning with the 19th century, Persian gradually lost its influence, as the Ottoman Empire used Turkish, India converted to English as the official language, Central Asia fell under the influence of Russia, and Pashtu prevailed in Afghanistan.
With the 20th century neo-nationalism, in which language played a key role, three different forms of Persian emerged: Modern Persian (with elements of European languages) in Iran, Dari in Afghanistan, and Tajiki in Tajikistan. Dari is essentially Persian, but is given a different name for nationalistic reasons. Tajiki is also the same as Persian, with a different script. The spread of literacy transformed Persian and gave it more diverse, local flavors.
What will become of Persian is anyone's guess. As one of the world's six classic languages and a language possessing a vast treasure of poetry as well as literary & philosophical writings, Persian has a strong position.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UCSB Reads 2023 Program lecture (see the next item below). [Center] The end of programming? (see the last item below). [Right] Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk by Dr. Rasoul Sorkhabi, entitled "Oil: Black Gold or Black Calamity? Has Oil Hampered Democracy and Progress in Iran?" I did not attend this interesting talk due to conflict with another talk. here's a full recording of the talk.
(2) Tonight's UCSB Reads 2023 talk at Campbell Hall: Award-winning author/journalist Charles Montgomery talked about his book Happy City. The talk was one of the most-enjoyable I have ever attended, intermixing serious ideas about city planning, personal stories, and humorous references. A lively Q&A period and a book-signing event ensued.
In Happy City, Montgomery looks at the intersection between urban design and the emerging field of "happiness studies." The book draws on the work of behavioral economists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and city planners to explore how city planning and personal decisions can have profound implications for social equity, sustainability, and our overall well-being. The book asks us to explore the question: "What kind of living environment makes us happy?"
Emphasizing the importance of living a "connected life" and feeling connected to others is especially relevant as we return from the isolation of the pandemic. Montgomery's references to the positive and negative aspects of life in Santa Barbara and Isla Vista (as well as a sneak mention of Munger Hall) were refreshing, because they showed that he had studied the community in which he was delivering his talk.
Connectedness requires having compact cities, with most of our needs within walking or biking distance, which is the polar opposite of the suburban sprawl afflicting American cities. It doesn't make sense to have to take a 20-minute car ride for shopping, visiting the library, watching a movie, or attending a social function. Suburban sprawl also increases the cost of building/maintaining roads, snow-plowing in cold climates, and utility and transportation networks. [My 4-star review of Happy City]
(3) "Large Language Models and the End of Programming": This was the title of Tuesday's ACM professional-development webinar by Matt Welsh (Founder & CEO of Fixie.ai). There were ~1700 attendees.
A large language model can be viewed as a virtual machine that is programmed in English. The core of computer science is translating ideas to run on a machine. Humans actually suck at this task; fifty years of programming-language research has done little to ease the programming effort. We still write buggy, inefficient programs.
We are close to having AI produce code for us. We already have the CoPilot AI-powered coding assistant; anyone not using it is likely 30-40% less productive. CoPilot reads your mind; you just start typing and it finishes the job. The next wave of AI-powered programming tools will be 10x better. AI-powered coding is the next logical step in the historical progression from hand-coding in assembly language, through writing code in high-level languages, to AI-assisted high-level-language programming.
In the near future, humans will teach AI models how to solve problems directly; we become teachers, not programmers. An estimated 30 million people in the world know how to write programs; AI can bring this skill to everyone else. Writing code sucks, so maybe we should leave it to AI.
[A previous version of the same talk: 64-minute video]
(1) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Dr. Mehrdad Amanat (trained as a civil engineer and later earning a PhD in history from UCLA) presented a hybrid talk (in-person, at UCLA's Dodd Hall 121, and via Zoom, with poor audio/video quality) on Sunday under the title "A Historical Perspective on Violence and Urban Unrest in Modern Iran." The lecture series is directed by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge), who introduced the speaker and moderated the ensuing Q&A. [Recording of the talk (110-minute video)]
The following report is derived from expanding the author's abstract.
During the Qajar era, urban riots were often popular uprisings rooted in social grievances such as famines and grain hoardings. Women responsible for feeding the family were often at the forefront of bread riots. In many other cases, riots were instigated by the powerful who used their lutis for dominance of the urban scene.
According to Encyclopedia Iranica, the term "luti" was first mentioned by the tenth-century poet Kesa'i, who equated the lutis with catamites. For Jalal-al-Din Rumi (13th century) and Obayd Zakani (14th century), lutis were pederasts, and the related word lavati (sodomy) is still used as such. Not every text offers this negative sexual connotation.
Colloquially, the word "luti" has been used in a positive sense to mean "generous" or "selfless" (exemplified by the popular wrestler Gholamreza Takhti) and in a negative sense to mean "thug" or "ruffian" (a prime example being Sha'ban Jafari, who played a role in reinstating Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in the CIA-directed coup of 1953.
Chivalry has a long history in Iran, and in the pre-modern era, lutis played a role in defending cities against foreign invaders. In this role, lutis were selfless men with a strict code of honor to serve and protect or to carry out divine justice. However, during the Qajar period, this social group underwent a decline and often became an instrument for oppression and tyranny.
Provincial governors, who mostly bought their positions from the central government for economic gain, appointed lutis as their agents and often for extortion. As private militias at the service of rival Shi'i clerics, the lutis fought for control of neighborhoods and mosques or harassed and looted dissidents. Landowners often settled disputes over water and property in the urban scene with the help of lutis. The main victims were the urban poor, women and children, non-Muslims, and nonconformists.
Under Iran's Islamic government, lutis have undergone a transformation into basijis and other paramilitary and extrajudicial oppressors and enforcers of the clerics' wishes, whenever such aims cannot be achieved through lawful means.
Dr. Amanat aimed to draw the boundaries between popular riots and those manipulated by the powerful, both rulers and religious leaders, to protect their interests.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Former populist Prime Minister Imran Khan arrested in Pakistan.
- Sal Khan's 16-minute TED talk on how AI can transform education.
- Cartoon of the day: Hollywood writers on strike! [Image]
- Baran Nikrah speaks and recites a Persian poem about the importance of self-reliance and solitude.
(3) Why Iran's economy is in tatters: Iran's Islamic government is sabotaging the worth on the country's national currency by selling assets & instituting misguided foreign exchange policies. [Interview in Persian]
(4) Useful info for readers who are AAA members: Trying to watch one of my favorite Sunday morning news programs, I chanced upon a AAA infomercial; has the writers' strike affected news shows as well? I learned from the infomercial that: (1) The AAA phone app helps you summon roadside assistance and then track the location of the service vehicle sent to help you. (2) AAA covers you, not just your car, so you can receive service while driving a different car or even as a passenger in a friend's car.
(5) #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution art-projection: This 3-minute video is from the projection show at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. The projection was done tonight at UCSB, but unfortunately, I could not attend.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] MIT's Mohammad Alizadeh honored by ACM as the recipient of the 2022 Grace Murray Hopper Award. [Center] Iran's college campuses aren't open to the public (see the next item below). [Right] Samuel Johnson's A Grammar of the English Tongue (see the last item below).
(2) College campuses as public squares: We take it for granted in the US that anyone can go to a college campus to use the library, attend lectures, or participate in cultural/sporting events. In Iran, college campuses are surrounded by high walls/fences and can be entered through gates guarded by security officers. Only those bearing appropriate ID cards are allowed to enter. Recently, Sharif University of Technology Alumni Association announced with glee that members of that association can enter the university's main campus by presenting their membership cards. In the same announcement, members are warned to obey university regulations to avoid the imposition of future restrictions.
(3) More on Teachers' Day in Iran: Iran's Islamic regime confiscated May 2, originally honoring teacher Abulhassan Khan'ali, who was shot to death in front of the parliament building on May 2, 1961, to honor Islamic cleric Morteza Motahhari, who was assassinated on the evening of May 1, 1979. Despite its original secular intent, Iran's Teachers' Day is now officially a religion-specific observance day, which I refuse to honor. World Teachers' Day on October 5 commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO recommendation concerning the status of teachers, which 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.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At summit of tech leaders with Biden administration, the White House signals support for AI regulations.
- Writer Roya Hakakian responds to a tweet accusing her of being a hired agent of Iran's Islamic regime.
- Actor Richard Dreyfuss laments over the lack of governance knowledge among American youth.
- Thirteen-year-old autistic magician dazzles on "Britain's Got Talent." [8-minute video]
- Frank Crane: "You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you'll live in torment if you don't trust enough."
- Facebook memory from May 7, 2021: A deserted UCSB campus under COVID-19. [3-minute video]
(5) I like CNN's Kaitlan Collins: I have watched with delight her rise over the past few years, from a reporter to a popular anchor on the network. Then came her decision to sit down with Donald Trump in a forthcoming CNN Town Hall. Collins was banned from attending an open White House press event, after she asked a couple of tough questions earlier that day. And she was insulted by Trump, like many other female reporters.
(6) Book review: Johnson, Samuel, A Grammar of the English Tongue, unabridged 2-hour audiobook, read by Matt Montanez, Authors Republic, 2018. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Grammar, defined as the art of using words properly, comprises four parts:
*Orthography, or the conventional spelling system of a language; the forms & sounds of letters
*Etymology, or the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed over time (articles; nouns; adjectives; pronouns; regular & irregular verbs; derivation of new words)
*Syntax, or rules for arranging words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language
*Prosody, which comprises orthoepy, rules of pronunciation, and orthometry, laws of versification
This compact grammar of the English language is difficult to take in with just one reading or listening. So, I have bookmarked the volume on Project Gutenberg (free, in multiple formats) for future reference.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Hair slide in the shape of Iran map, worn by some Iranian women protesting compulsory hijab laws. [Center] Iran-related news memes from IranWire. [Right] Expressive book spines.
(2) As Seditionist-in-Chief walks free and even aspires to become US President again, four of his Proud-Boys January 6 foot soldiers are convicted of seditious conspiracy, which carries decades of jail time.
(3) We just had the eight warmest years on record, even though we had a cooling La Nina for the past 3 years: With El Nino on the way, even warmer years are ahead of us.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Despite threats by authorities & security forces, Iranian women continue to defy compulsory hijab laws.
- Mass-shooting at a Texas outlet mall leads to fatalities and nine people sent to area hospitals.
- Quotable: "Student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up." ~ Albert Einstein
- Facebook memory from May 6, 2019: Coronation hype vs. "royal baby" arrival of 4 years ago.
- Facebook memory from May 6, 2018: Family picnic in the park, the day after the wedding.
- Facebook memory from May 6, 2015: A super-funny joke, in English and Persian.
(5) "The Environmental Footprint of Global Food Production": This was the title of Thursday's hybrid (in-person/Zoom) webinar at UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency by Dr. Benjamin S. Halpern, who is a faculty member at UCSB's Bren School and also directs UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
While Dr. Halpern's focus was on the environmental impacts of food production, there are also other considerations such as animal welfare, nutrition, social justice, and impact on local communities. We can all help mitigate these environmental impacts by taking small steps such as eating less farmed meat, eat more mussels/oysters/clams, or eating invasive species where possible.
Here is the same talk, given in mid-March 2023 at UBC (57-minute video).
(6) I recently learned of Google's Quantum AI Campus in Santa Barbara: The SB operation is centered on hardware and architecture, with software operations being in Los Angeles. [Virtual tour]
(7) Apologists for Iran's brutal Islamic regime infiltrate US academic institutions: Mohammad Jafar Mahalati, former mullah and UN Ambassador of Iran's Islamic regime, is now a professor of Middle East and North African Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. He is being accused by families of victims of mass executions of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 of helping to cover up the Islamists' human-rights abuses and crimes against humanity. A petition to be sent to Oberlin College's President on behalf of academics around the world asks that Mahalati's role in Islamic Republic of Iran's crimes be the subject of a robust and transparent third-party investigation.
[Petition for signature by academics]
(8) Execution spree in Iran: Over the last 10 days, 42 people, including 22 Baluchi minorities have been executed. Many of these were accused of drug smuggling, but Iran's Islamic regime is known for manufacturing drug-related charges to get rid of dissidents.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday cartoon, carried over from yesterday: Early acupuncture. [Top center & right] Talangor Group talk (see the next item below). [Bottom left] A talk on the joy of math (see item 3 below). [Bottom center] Late-night talk shows go dark as a result of the first Writers Guild of America strike since 2007. [Bottom right] John L. Hennessy's interview at Cal Tech (see the last item below).
(2) Thursday night's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Hashem Etminan (retired senior researcher, Geoscience Australia) spoke under the title "A Tale of Two Mines: From Sarcheshmeh to Sungun." There were ~75 attendees.
Copper was instrumental in starting human civilizations as the first metal. In Iran, copper objects of age 5000-7000 years have been found. With increased use of electricity, particularly from renewable sources, copper is assuming greater importance. Iran became a major player on the world stage with the discovery of Sarcheshmeh copper mine in the 1960s.
Sarcheshmeh in the southeastern Kerman Province and Sungun (aka Songon) in the northeastern East Azerbaijan Province are Iran's most-important copper mines. Deposits in each of these two mines are estimated to be 1-2 billion tons of ore, of purity grade 0.6-0.7 percent. Both of these major copper mines are located along the Zagros Mountain Chain, which includes many other copper mines as well.
Dr. Etminan described the above two major copper mines in Iran and his personal involvement in exploration and extraction operations at the two sites. As large as Sarcheshmeh and Sungun are, the Chuquicamata mine in northern Chile is 10 times larger. The latter is now the second-largest open-pit copper mine in the world, after the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah. [Speaker's Facebook page]
(3) "Mathematics for Human Flourishing": This was the title of the 11th Annual SciTrek Lecture at UCSB by Dr. Francis Su (Harvey Mudd College). SciTrek promotes the synergies between science inquiry, language arts, and the Next Generation Science Standards.
According to Dr. Su, math is more than just a way to describe the world, a theme promoted in his book by the same title as today's talk. Math is a deeply human enterprise that fulfills basic human longings, and when properly engaged, it builds virtues like persistence and creativity. Reframing math around these virtues offers a way to see math as an intrinsic part of life, and to teach it in a more inclusive way. An incarcerated friend has helped Dr. Su see this more clearly.
(4) A Conversation with John L. Hennessy, Chairman of Alphabet, parent company of Google: An ACM Turing Award winner & former President of Stanford University, Hennessy talked this afternoon with physicist & Cal Tech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum.
After a brief introduction to Hennessy's illustrious career in academia and industry, including effortless moving back and forth between education and technical leadership, Hennessy was asked questions about his efforts on behalf of the RISC architectural concept, which included founding of MIPS to commercialize the ideas and to quiet the nay-sayers.
Hennessy also opined on the ongoing research on generative AI, which he characterized as a fast-growing technology, even overshadowing microprocessors, personal computers, the Internet, and the Web. The technology has far exceeded what we thought it should be able to do, which has necessitated reflection on whether or not we should continue the current development pace.
Another topic was the importance of ethics in educating our next-generation leaders in science, technology, health care, and politics. The most-challenging ethical problems are on slippery slopes. Few people do something that is obviously unethical. The industry is highly competitive today, so any pause in research must be done in the framework of "trust but verify."
Hennessy is an avid reader, often going back to door-stoppers such as Les Miserables. He said that one tends to appreciate great books more as one gets older. We read many books as high-schoolers, but they don't resonate with us at that age. Hennessy has written the following book, which I look forward to reading.
Hennessy, John L., Leading Matters: Lessons from My Journey, Stanford Business Books, 2018.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday cartoon: The dinosaurs' last supper. [Center] Equity for Women in Science (see the next item below). [Right] Cover image of Science (see the last item below).
(2) An analysis of research papers finds differences in article production and recognition for women scientists: Compared with men, women are underrepresented in authorship lists. On average, women publish about one fewer article per year than men. When women appear in authorship lists, they tend to be underrepresented in first-author (primary writer) and last-author (senior conceptualizer and resource provider) positions. Articles with women in dominant authorship positions (first, last, or solo author) receive fewer citations than do articles with men in analogous roles. [Harvard University Press, 2023, 272 pp.]
(3) Here comes the expected push-back against the suggestion that we should pause AI development for six months: Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer says AI development must be accelerated, not paused.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Science magazine editorial: Judicial interference with mifepristone (or anti-science activism gone too far).
- Science magazine opinion piece: Research universities hurt students by undervaluing teaching & service.
- A ceremonial winery for Rome's nobility featured wine fountains & private rooms, perhaps for dining.
- Words of wisdom: It is better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right.
(5) Science magazine's special section on the Zoonomia project: "Mammals are one of the most diverse classes of animals, ranging both in size, across many orders of magnitude, and in shape ... Understanding when, how, and under what selective pressures this variation has developed has been of interest since the dawn of science." The special section's table of contents within the issue of April 28, 2023, follows.
- Genomics expands the mammalverse
- Seeing humans through an evolutionary lens
- Mammalian evolution of human cisregulatory elements and transcription factor binding sites
- Comparative genomics of Balto, a famous historic dog, captures lost diversity of 1920s sled dogs
- Relating enhancer genetic variation across mammals to complex phenotypes using machine learning
- A genomic timescale for placental mammal evolution
- Evolutionary constraint and innovation across hundreds of placental mammals
- Leveraging base-pair mammalian constraint to understand genetic variation and human disease
- Integrating gene annotation with orthology inference at scale
- The functional and evolutionary impacts of human-specific deletions in conserved elements
- Three-dimensional genome rewiring in loci with human accelerated regions
- Insights into mammalian TE diversity through the curation of 248 mammalian genome assemblies
- The contribution of historical processes to contemporary extinction risk in placental mammals
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Teachers Day in Iran (see the next item below). [Top center] US bank failures over the past two decades (NYT chart): Are we headed for a repeat of 2008 and its ensuing Great Recession? [Top right] Last light at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, Woodburn, Oregon (Andrew Martin Photography). [Bottom left] A lagoon island in western Greece: Aitoliko is a small, densely-populated island which is connected to the mainland by two 19th-century stone-arch bridges. [Bottom center & right] A California dry lake is coming back to life: Tulare Lake, once four times the size of Lake Tahoe, had several ports and a ferry before it was converted to farmland decades ago. Now floodwaters are rushing back to fill it.
(2) International Teachers' Day is on Oct. 5: In Iran, Teachers' Day is 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 today, but choosing religion-specific dates for such honors is against my beliefs. I observe secular, international occasions.
As Iran's Islamic regime pays lip service to the high stature of teachers, Iranian educators are protesting their low pays and repression of both staff & students at schools, not to mention mass poisonings at girls' schools.
(3) Worldwide Web turns 30: When Turing-Award winner Tim Berners-Lee persuaded Switzerland's CERN to release the Web idea into public domain, a revolutionary communication tool was born which is being used today by 2/3 of the global population to visit many millions of sites daily.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Turing-Award winner Geoffrey Hinton, "a godfather of AI," quits Google to speak freely about the risks of AI.
- May Day and Teachers Day in Iran see widespread labor strikes and protests against economic hardships.
- Facebook memory from May 2, 2015: Rene Descartes on the need for scientists to build up from scratch.
- Facebook memory from May 2, 2014: Beautiful instrumental tar-and-tombak Persian music.
(5) How fast does electricity travel in a wire? Electricity travels at nearly the speed of light, which is 300,000 km/s or about 1 billion km/hr. However, if the question refers to the speed of electrons moving along a conductor (drift speed), that speed is significantly less and depends on the conducting material. A typical drift speed is about 0.01 cm/s or roughly 0.4 m/hr. When you connect a light bulb to battery terminals using 0.4 m wires, it doesn't take the bulb an hour to light up. Rather, it lights up almost instantaneously (after about 1 ns).
(6) Explaining some of the buzzwords of AI: It's hard to follow the day's news without hearing or reading something about GPT 4, the latest version of a Generative Pre-trained Transformer, designed by the private research laboratory Open AI. Google's version of the same concept is named "Bard." A transformer in AI speak is a deep-learning model that adopts the mechanism of self-attention, differentially weighting the significance of each part of the input data. Introduced in 2017 by a team at Google Brain, transformers are becoming favored for natural-language-processing (NLP) problems.
[Introduction] Coming back from San Diego, I took the train from Van Nuys, arriving in my hometown around noon, with plans to attend Santa Barbara's Earth Day Festival in Alameda Park, downtown. Just before arriving in SB, I shot this 2-minute video from the train's window.
[Top left] Sponsored by Commuity Environmental Council, the 2023 SB Earth Day was back at Alameda Park, with its usual diverse programs, activities, and, of course, food offerings.
[Top center] The two-day program included performances and ceremonies on two different stages.
[Top right] One exhibit that caught my eyes featured a company marketing beehives and local natural honey.
[Bottom left] Many different kinds of e-bikes were on display, both recreational & transportation models.
[Bottom center] A large variety of electric cars were on display, including severl Teslas. The exhibits included a couple of the earliest models, that were ahead of their times.
[Bottom right] Besides electric cars, an electric bulldozer and an unusual personal vehicle were included.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] This afternoon at Carlsbad Flower Field. [Top center] Finally, a new emoji for parents! [Top right] Photos from my niece's birthday party at Sadaf Restaurant in Encino. [Bottom left] Parking area for FedEx planes in Victorville, California. [Bottom center] Explaining the debt ceiling: In about a month, the US government will run out of cash to pay its bills. To raise money, it must sell new treasury securities beyond the current debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion, which it's not authorized to do. [Bottom right] Yours truly, in front of wall art at Sadaf Restaurant in Encino.
(2) Iran's corrupt economy: Companies under direct supervision of Supreme Leader Khamenei are making a fortune by selling communications services to Iranian citizens, as the government bans or restricts access.
(3) Crocodile tears: Sergey Lavrov, the hypocritical foreign minister of a country that makes journalists disappear or sends them to chill out in Siberia, doesn't like Fox's firing of Tucker Carlson, a media darling in Russia, famous for his pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine rants.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Neighborly Texan: A man killed 5 neighbors & injured 3, when he was asked to stop firing a gun in his yard.
- Colorado, Washington State, and Maryland are poised to enact major gun-control laws.
- The climate crisis may resurrect sailing ships: Today's cargo ships are some of the dirtiest vehicles around.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 29, 2021: Anoushka Shankar's Zoom webinar.
(5) Royalist & Islamist cults: Many Reza Pahlavi followers call him King Reza II, despite his repeated claims that he does not want to become king of Iran. The claims are obviously insincere, or he would have disowned such followers. Meanwhile, anti-democratic Islamist forces are talking openly about Khamenei's son, Mojtaba (Khamenei II?), as the next black-turbaned. Supreme Leader. A few mention the clueless President Raisi as Khamenei's successor. Neither option will improve democracy, transparency, or human rights in Iran, currently near the bottom of world's nations, according to published indices. [Images]
(6) No laughing matter: The White House Correspondents Dinner was filled with jokes, including Biden making fun of his own age, but he also raised the serious matters that the press is a pillar of democracy, not people's enemy, and that he is working hard to earn the release of Americans wrongfully detained abroad.
(7) Zoonomia Project: A collaboration of more than 100 scientists has yielded insights into evolution and other processes by analyzing the genomes of 240 mammals. The findings can reveal how long-ago populations diversified. The data may also predict extinctions to come. Even a single organism's genome contains traces of its species' past population size; that information can be used to assess which animals are at risk today.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Kayaking at San Diego's Shelter Island Marina. [Center & Right] Hiking this afternoon at San Diego's Torrey Pines State Nature Reserve.
(2) The horrors of war & earthquake in Syria: Earthquake-damaged regions came under artillery fire 4 days after the devastating quake. [13-minute CBS News video]
(3) The AI Dilemma: Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of Center for Humane Technology, update their earlier warnings about dangers of social media, presented in the documentary "The Social Dilemma," extending them to AI. This important presentation was given on March 9, 2023, shortly before the launch of GPT-4.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Abortion-ban legislation fails to pass in Republican-dominated South Carolina and Nebraska legislatures.
- Grid-connected energy storage systems: State-of-the-art and emerging technologies (Proc. IEEE article).
- Persian music: A wonderful rendition of the song "Darya, Darya." [3-minute video]
- Math puzzle: What is the limit of f(n) = (1 – 1/2^2) (1 – 1/3^2) ... (1 – 1/n^2) as n tends to infinity?
(5) Social Processes of Online Hate: This is the subject of a full-day conference at UCSB's Mosher Alumni House on May 11, 2023, under the auspices of Center for Information Technology & Society and the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Media. [PDF program]
(6) Solar power stations in space: On January 3, 2023, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a small experimental satellite into a polar orbit, where the spacecraft is always in sunlight. Funded by California real-estate developer Donald Bren & built by Cal Tech, the spacecraft will demonstrate the feasibility of collecting solar power in space and beaming it to Earth. A part of the spacecraft's assembly contains samples of 32 types of photovoltaic cells intended to determine which one is most-efficient and robust. The emergence of cheaper and more-efficient photovoltaic cells and the reduced cost of space launches make the scheme competitive for the first time.
(7) Company builds facility that lifts 24-ton bricks to store energy: Switzerland-based start-up Energy Vault has broken ground on two facilities in Texas and China (near Shanghai) to test whether we can store energy by raising hundreds of 24-ton bricks made of compressed dirt and releasing energy by lowering them. This type of mechanical energy storage isn't new, but Energy Vault is convinced it can make the scheme work.
(8) A rare unanimity: There's no conservative-liberal divide on the US Supreme Court when it comes to opposing calls for a new, enforceable ethics code.
(9) Humanity at its most-important fork in the road: This 168-minute conversation between MIT physicist/AI-researcher Max Tegmark and Lex Fridman is both depressing and exhilarating. Tegmark is one of the initiators of a letter that urges tech leaders to pause the training of AI models larger than GPT 4 for six months to give us a chance to think about ways to avoid possible negative consequences of super-intelligent AI that worry many researchers. [My review of Tegmark's Life 3.0]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: The popular Shemshak Ski Resort near Tehran, Iran, 1971. [Center] Best-preserved 17th-century ship: The Swedish warship Vasa sank in 1628 less than a mile into its maiden voyage and was recovered from the sea floor nearly intact after 333 years. [Right] Wednesday night's talk on Charles Darwin (see the last item below).
(2) Margo Seltzer of UBC named 2023-2024 ACM Athena Lecturer: Initiated in 2006, the Award, with a $25,000 honorarium, celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. Seltzer is recognized for foundational research in file and storage systems, pioneering research in data provenance, impactful software contributions in Berkeley DB, and tireless dedication to service and mentoring.
(3) RIP Harry Belafonte [1927-2023]: The legendary folk singer, actor, and civil-rights activist died at 96 of congestive heart failure. [13-minute CBS News interview/bio from 1997]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A partial listing of financial corruption cases in Iran's Islamic government. [5-minute video]
- We need plans to allow people to enjoy our super-blooms, without destroying them.
- Forget about opioid addiction: The stealth campaign to get kids addicted to chess seems to be working!
- Quote of the day: "Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of mind." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
(5) A comprehensive report on why a Concorde supersonic passenger plane crashed in 2000, after 30 years of spotless safety record, killing 109 on board and 4 at the hotel which it hit on the ground. [30-minute video]
(6) Socrates Think Tank Talk: Last night, Dr. Hessam Nowzari, DDS, talked about "Charles Darwin." Dr. Nowzari is a highly-sought-after speaker, with numerous talks and other material on his YouTube channel. There were ~115 attendees.
Much has been said and written about Darwin, arguably one of the most-influential scientists of all time. His scientific contributions are well-known, but Dr. Nowzari placed greater emphasis on his humanity, kindness, generosity, and meticulousness.
Darwin's 10-year-old daughter suffered greatly before dying from illness, which affected him greatly and made him wonder about the purpose of life, famously saying that there is no justice, no morals, and no logic in nature. He was raised in an enlightened family, a fact that contributed to his world view: His grandmother encouraged everyone to pursue education and his grandfather declared that there are no differences among individuals.
Darwin was only 22 when he embarked on a 5-year journey of discovery. At the time, the world was believed to be only ~4000 years old. When he saw the diversity of existing life, noticed the large number of extinct species, and found evidence of marine life atop mountains, he concluded that at least millions of years would have been needed to go through so much change. Millions of years proved to be too conservative, but it was a major improvement over thousands of years!
Darwin noticed similarities among a multitude of species, coming to believe that all beings have a common root. The term "evolution" predates Darwin, but he formulated the notion of "natural selection" after Alfred Wallace got in touch with him in the late 1850s. The two began exchanging ideas and Darwin later wrote On the Origin of Species, one of the world's most-important and most-read books. It is noteworthy that genetics did not yet exist at the time.
Darwin philosophized that he wanted to be taught how to think not be fed information. He disputed the existence of distinct races and believed that all forms of life are connected. His last book was about the "lowly" earthworm, which he praised and basked in its magnificence. Darwin was universally loved for his work and personality, so much so that upon his death, a large number of individuals from all walks of life wanted to offer fawning eulogies.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Hall-of-Famer James Taylor is back on the road for his 2023 US Summer Tour! [Center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Suggested use for Bed Bath & Beyond discount coupons, now that the chain is closing due to bankruptcy. [Right] Talk on "Iran Earthquakes" (see the last item below).
(2) Leave the science to politicians: "Leaders take the bull by the horns and make decisions for themselves. They don't subcontract out their leadership to health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci." ~ Gov. Ron DeSantis
(3) Feminist Assessment of Charters and Women's-Rights Bills Put Forward After the #WomanLifeFreedom Panel discussion, featuring Mahdieh Golroo, Nayereh Tohidi, & Mansoureh Shojaee. June 3, 2023, 11:00 AM.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The five Lagrange points & their relationship to where James Webb Space Telescope is positioned in space.
- Soccer fans in Tehran praise Reza Shah and curse the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
- An explanation of why Airbus A380 was a flop: In part, because the hub/spokes model ceased to work.
- English for Persian speakers: Some common and useful English idioms. [16-minute video]
(5) "Privacy, The Backstory": This was the title of a UCSB informational webinar, held this morning, with instructors Becky Steiger (Campus Privacy Officer) and Sara Cook.
Privacy isn't just about data, it's a human right, whose roots can be traced back to ancient philosophers. It is mentioned both in the US Constitution (9th and 14th Amendments, in particular) and in California's Constitution. [The Periodic Table of Amendments]
First, some history. Roe-v.-Wade (1973) confirmed the right to privacy implied in the 14th Amendment. Five decades later, Dobbs-v.-Jackson (2022) reversed some of the earlier interpretations of "unenumerated rights" and redefined the scope of privacy protection under the 14th Amendment. A 1927 Virginia law allowed psychiatric patients to be sterilized, which served as a model for Nazi Germany's eugenics laws.
A common question regarding privacy is: If I have nothing to hide, why would I care about data collected on me? This is the wrong question. One should ask if s/he would be comfortable with the most intimate aspects of his/her life being monitored and logged. Location data, in particular, is sensitive data and its is highly prized by commercial entities. FTC-v.-Kochava dealt with the sale of geolocation data.
Another set of sensitive data appears in educational records. FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974) is the most-commonly applied to UC. It covers educational records, including secret dossiers, invisible to students and parents, assembled by some schools. These include secret admissions files, which schools tend to destroy nowadays, rather than risk having them being requested by students and parents. Any school that receives funding through the US government is required to comply with FERPA.
Here are some of the other applicable laws/procedures:
IPA (Information Practices Act of 1977)
ECP (Electronic Communications Policy), which arose from faculty concerns that their e-mails were monitored
PISI Report of 2013 (UC Privacy and Information Security Initiative)
GDPR & other international regulations (commonly apply to EAP and to a lesser extent admissions)
(6) Socrates Think Tank talk of April 5, 2023: I was unable to attend the talk of three weeks ago by Dr. Manuel Berberian entitled "Iran's Earthquakes," so I asked for and got a link to the 205-minute recording, based on which I prepared this brief report.
Dr. Berberian began with the question of why Iran's quakes are so destructive and lead to massive casualties. He then wondered about the vulnerability of key installations (atomic power generation facilities and the like) to earthquakes, given that they all happen to be on fault lines.
Earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, with quakes occurring at the plate boundaries. Weather forecasting and prediction of volcanic eruptions, difficult as they are, can be done today with some precision. Earthquake prediction is still in its infancy. A quake's first shock wave travels at 6 km/s. The second shock wave travels at 4 km/s. The difference of shock-wave arrival times allows scientists to figure out the quake's epi-center and also be able to issue early warnings in some cases.
The behavior of a fault line is like a rechargeable battery. The fault line is charged, and after pressure is built up, it releases part of the stored energy. Three well-known historic quakes are: 1906 in San Francisco (7.9); 1923 in Japan (est. 7.9-8.2), with an accompanying tsunami; 1925 in Santa Barbara (6.5-6.8). The first building regulations to ensure strength and safety appeared 3773 years ago as part of Hammurabi's code. It envisaged penalties, up to and including death sentence, for an inadequately built structure causing deaths. In 1927, the US developed the first modern building code for quake safety.
Mass casualties in recent Turkey/Syria twin 7.8-magnitude quakes in an area with ~15 million residents make us wonder about the fate of the city of Tehran with about the same population in a much smaller area. Based on extrapolation from past major quakes near Tehran, the next major one is overdue. No one knows how the numerous residential towers and other high-rises built in Tehran over the past few decades will fare in a magnitude-8.0 quake.
In Turkey, too, based on a major quake in 1822, such a strong quake in the same region was fully expected. Corruption and favoritism led to building codes not being enforced, which produced the catastrophic results. Specialists from many world countries are at work in Turkey to assist the survivors and to study the quakes with regard to lessons for the future, given that 52,000 died, tens-of-thousands were injured or displaced, and 100,000+ structures were destroyed. In a comparative assessment, Turkey fares better than Iran with respect to several indicators, including GDP, corruption index, year of enacting the first seismic code, and number of revisions to the code.
Over the past four decades, Iran's rulers have not learned any lessons from quake destructions and have not developed an understanding of how to deal with such disasters. Crisis management skills are totally lacking. Destruction caused by minor and medium quakes indicate that building codes have not been followed. Iran continues to build structures on fault lines, despite recommendations to the contrary.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This example of Persian Sassanid art in Kermanshah, Iran, has endured ~1700 years of wind and rain. [Center] Fort of the Narin Castle in Meybod, Iran, built between 2000 and 6000 year ago. [Right] Stone carving depicting the triumph of Shapur I in 260 CE, Naqshe Rostam, Iran.
(2) Major shake-ups in network news media: Fox News fires Tucker Carlson, its host with the most viewers. Don Lemon is ousted at CNN after 17 years.
(3) Math aversion in the US: In some countries, elevator control panels use the numbers –1, –2, etc. for floors below the ground floor, which is floor 0. The notation is unambiguous and makes perfect sense. In the US, we use vague designations such as B (basement), BB, B1, B2, P (parking), P1, P2, G (garage), and similarly uninformative or confusing labels, because we are afraid of negative numbers. So afraid, in fact, that in B1 & B2 or P1 & P2, we have essentially replaced the minus sign with the letter B or P. We also have floor 13 missing in many high-rises, but that's a different story.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- China reverses earlier statement and accepts that ex-Soviet states are sovereign nations.
- Late-night talk-show hosts have a field day with the firing of Tucker Carlson at Fox and Don Lemon at CNN.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 24, 2020: These women will never have to take another group photo!
- Facebook memory from Apr. 24, 2017: Today is Holocaust and Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 24, 2016: Google's automatic photo-indexing capabilities are scary.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 24, 2015: Elizabeth Warren's journey from a janitor's daughter to Senator.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 24, 2012: The state of a quantum-computer prototyping project (humor).
- Facebook memory from Apr. 24, 2009: Parhami Family whitewater adventure, August 2007.
(5) Is Mount Everest really the world's highest point? It depends on how you define "highest point." Our common measure is "relative to sea level," but sea level is not the same around the world; it is higher (more distant from Earth's center) at the equator and lower at the poles. If we use "relative to Earth's center," then Mount Everest will rank 10th, with 8 of the 9 taller mountains being in South America and one in Africa.
(6) Iran lobbies in the US: This article and its embedded 31-minute video are about a year old, but they provide an excellent overview of Iran's lobbying arms in the US. Unfortunately, these lobbies have been quite popular in the US media, academia, and think tanks.
(7) Final thought for the day: This year's changes in baseball are expected to make it competitive with other sports and a host of entertainment alternatives. Because of the introduction of a pitch clock, which limits the time available to the pitcher between pitches, the average game duration, which had been growing from 2:35 hr in 1980 to 3:08 hr in 2022, is down to 2:39 hr. A host of other changes has increased the batting average from 0.231 to 0.247, making the games more entertaining. [NYT]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Intricate paper sculpture by @juliaibbini. [Top center] We should all send checks in the amount of "thoughts and prayers" to politicians who ask for campaign donations, but do zilch to enact common-sense gun laws. [Top right] Before computerized traffic control: This photo from the 1970s shows a street in Chernivtsi, Soviet Ukraine, where a person sitting in a traffic booth controlled the traffic lights. [Bottom left] Cover feature of CACM (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Vehicles driving/parking on UCSB campus walkways (see item 3 below). [Bottom right] Tonight's wonderful performance by Artemis jazz group: Comprised of pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, clarinetist Anat Cohen, tenor-saxophonist Melissa Aldana, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller, and vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, the acclaimed jazz group performed at UCSB's Campbell Hall tonight (8-minute video).
(2) Protecting autonomous cars from phantom attacks: This cover feature of CACM, issue of April 2023, asserts that distinguishing between real and projected/perceived objects is a limitation of AI models, particularly object detectors. This limitation can be exploited by attackers to mislead object detectors embedded in commercial driver assistance systems to induce an undesired/dangerous reaction from an autonomous vehicle.
(3) Vehicles abusing UCSB campus walkways: I used to document on my "Pet Peeves" Web page abuses of UCSB campus walkways by vehicles of all kinds (courier services, vendors, campus vehicles, and faculty/staff/students parking near buildings, when authorized parking spots were all taken). I essentially gave up on reporting these violations, when they led to little action on the part of the campus administration. I photographed this car on the sidewalk between UCen and Music Building, on Friday, April 14, 2023.
(4) [Notes from UCSB ECE Summit 2023] Technology and healthcare:
Nearly 22 years ago, on September 7, 2001, a momentous transition occurred in the application of technology to health care. Using Computer Motion's Zeus robot, a team of surgeons in New York removed a 68-year-old woman's gall-bladder as she lay thousands of miles away in Strasbourg, France. Dr. Yulun Wang, a founder of World Telehealth Initiative
and a serial-entrepreneur who earned a PhD from UCSB, was an active participant in pulling off this first robotic surgery. He gave a keynote talk at the 2023 ECE Summit under the title "An Entrepreneur's Perspective on the Convergence of Surgical Robotics & Telemedicine," painting a rosy picture of the outcomes.
I share in the view that such a convergence is indeed inevitable, technically feasible, and socially desirable. I am, however, quite pessimistic about the role of humans in the loop. Experience from electronic health records in use today indicates that the most-advanced technology cannot compensate for disengaged, impassive, or poorly-trained healthcare workers. Currently, a patient must remind his/her doctor or nurse about medications, history of illnesses, allergies, and other personal details that are all recorded in the healthcare provider's database and can be accessed with a few clicks.
Part of the problem may be the poorly-designed interfaces in use, which complicate access. Text-based data entry into healthcare records is also at fault. Technophobia possibly plays a role as well, although this latter problem is fixable by standard, friendly interfaces whose features are taught in medical/nursing schools.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Was Fox News dumb to settle Dominion's lawsuit? (see the next item below) [Top center] Letter from Islamic Republic of Iran's Revolutionary Court, dated March 5, 1980, summoning ten music stars to Evin Prison for questioning (credit: Dr. Farzaneh Hemmasi). [Top right] Useful gadget: I bought this set of coasters & jack as tools for moving furniture and other heavy items. [Bottom left] Built around 1459, Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur Rajasthan is one of India's largest forts. [Bottom center] Iran art & architecture: Golestan Palace in Tehran. [Bottom right] Another beautiful California super-bloom (photo by Ryan Resatka).
(2) Pundits opine that Fox News was stupid to agree to pay Dominion $787 million to settle the latter's defamation lawsuit: I'm not so sure that the settlement was dumb. Remember that Fox News resorted to lying because it was afraid of losing its audience to Newsmax and OAN. Well, Dominion has pending lawsuits against the latter two, who, unlike Fox, do not have deep pockets to settle and will likely go bankrupt as a result of damages they will have to pay. So, in a single action, Fox settled its own lawsuit without apologizing or admitting guilt and buried its main competition!
(3) US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse discloses Justice Clarence Thomas's financial entanglements with Republican billionaire mega-donor Harlan Crow, without appropriate, legally-required disclosures.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Congressman Salud Carbajal responds to my request for support of Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom uprising.
- Oxygen gives us life, but there's a lot more to know about this vital gas.
- Spectacular snow flow: Bijan Pass on Dena Mountain, Iran. [2-minute video]
- Math puzzle: What is the maximum number of regions formed by 6 straight lines on a plane?
(5) "Safari Dar Pish Ast": This is the title of a 120-minute documentary film about the funeral of the Iranian singing superstar Hayedeh on January 28, 1990. This film was mentioned by Dr. Farzaneh Hemmasi in her ethnomusicology talk at UCSB on Wednesday, April 19, 2023.
And here is a holographic re-creation of the late Hayedeh for a Manoto TV Nowruz program.
(6) Book bans are on the rise in the US: According to new research, there was a 28% increase in banned books over the second half of the 2022-2023 school year compared with the first half.
(7) India will overtake China as the most-populous country by mid-2023, according to UN data: India has a wide gender gap and a significantly lower per-capita GDP, so the role-reversal in population may not reduce China's power or influence on the world stage.
(8) Jericho is the world's oldest walled city: Currently situated in Palestine, Jericho contains evidence of stone fortifications that are ~9000 years old as well as 11-millenia-old traces of habitation.
(9) The wide-bandgap wars: Whichever candidate technology, gallium-nitride or silicon-carbide, prevails, the winner will cut greenhouse gases by billions of tons per year.
(1) Tonight's Talangor Group Talk: Dr. Saeed Paivandi talked under the title "The Failure of Iran's Educational System." There were ~80 attendees. The main talk was preceded by a brief presentation by Saeed Ghaffari, introducing the Yaran Group, which has members in the US & Iran and is active in social/educational NGO projects in Iran (yaranculture.org).
I heard Dr. Paivandi speak on this topic as part of UCLA's Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran (my report of January 8, 2023). Another previous talk by Dr. Paivandi was in the context of Iran Academia's MOOC on Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality (my report of August 30, 2021).
Dr. Paivandi observed that Islamization efforts began soon after the 1979 Revolution, but they weren't successful at all, as admitted by many of the regime officials, including the Supreme Leader himself. Internationally, education has the triple goals of transfer of cultural/scientific traditions, participation in societal order/institutions, and preparing the youth for entering the job market. In Iran, these goals take a back seat to Islamic indoctrination, with the aim of training obedient citizens.
Even before the Islamic Revolution, there were actors who criticized secular education, which they viewed as spreading the Western influence. Iran's new educational system was born in the 19th century, in direct conflict with traditional religious schools, leading to strong opposition from the clergy. Compromises were made to appease the clergy, but modernization continued unabated.
Closed governments such as Iran's view their educational systems as tools for controlling and brainwashing the next generation to be loyal to the regime. Their systems infuse the goals and curricula from above. Keywords and key-phrases in the discussion of Islamization of education include Islamic society, Islamic culture, religious morals, countering the Western influence, preventing deviance resulting from the Western culture, establishing religious norms (e.g., hijab, prayer rites, and textbook revisions).
The so-called "Cultural Revolution" of 1980 brought with it only superficial changes in clothing and behavior. Ideological revisions based on a new law passed in 1987 prioritized religious devotion over knowledge acquisition. A fundamental-changes document issued in 2012 enumerated all that the regime aspired to implement in the country's educational system.
As a remedy to the admitted defeat, the regime introduced a new course and textbook entitled "Islamic Lifestyle." School textbooks in Iran do not promote peace, but encourage conflict and fighting. Almost every textbook contains omissions and misinformation. For example, some heroes of the Constitutional Revolution are painted as villains or dismissed as "Westoxified." Textbooks and curricula are regressive, emphasizing old history and Islamic personalities, with the clergy emerging as heroes.
Currently, there are two schools of thought about what to do. Conservatives believe that Islamization has not gone far enough and that more Islamic content must be added. Moderate forces assert that too much pressure on the youth can backfire and more subtle forms of Islamic education are called for.
The latter group cites resistance by students, particularly girls, who want to get rid of restrictions on clothing (style & colors). The emergence of open international communication, facilitated by technology, is bound to deal the Islamic regime's Islamization plans for education additional blows in the coming years.
Related book: Women, Islam, and Education in Iran, Routledge, 2019.
Related article: "Seven Questions on the Meaning of Islamizing Social Sciences in Iran," 2015, in Persian.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Gun violence: Man shoots little girl & her parents after he got mad that a basketball rolled into his yard.
- This 4-minute video clip showing fissure among Iran's ruling class is 2 years old, but it's still relevant.
- An interesting discussion on free will: Is it real or an illusion we humans invented? [10-minute video]
- The secret of life in just six words: Before middle age, do not fear; after middle age, do not regret.
- English lesson for Persian speakers: Five English words, explained in a fun way. [15-minute video]
(3) Imagine knocking on the wrong house door and getting shot in the head: This self-defense obsession has gone too far. Sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl went to pick up his younger siblings, but knocked on the wrong door. The house's owner shot him in the head through a locked glass door, claiming that he did it in self-defense.
(4) Not giving exams saves lives (humor): The Grandmother Syndrome refers to the fact that grandparents are 10 times more likely to die (actually, to be reported dead) the week of their grandchild's midterms and 19 times more likely to die during finals! It is interesting that when exams are imminent, grandmothers are 24 time as likely to die as grandfathers. There is also a correlation with the student's grade. Grandmothers of F students die at 25 times the rate of those of A students.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The city of Erbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, is at least 8000 years old. [Top center] Americans are losing confidence in their institutions (NYT chart): The Supreme Court fares poorly, with its approval rating halving, from 50% to 25%, over the two decades 2002-2022. The presidency and Congress have done even worse. [Top right] eBook published by IEEE Spectrum: Charette, Robert N., The EV Transition Explained, 49 pp., 2023. [Bottom left] Ethnomusicology talk at UCSB (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Silly photos we took at the wedding ceremony of my niece on Sunday 4/16. [Bottom right] IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk by Dr. Nina Miolane of UCSB (see the last item below).
(2) Ethnomusicology Forum: In today's UCSB Music Dept. forum, Dr. Farzaneh Hemmasi (U. Toronto) spoke under the title "Live, Die, Repeat: Burying and Resurrecting Iranian Pop Stars in Southern California."
After Iran's Islamic Revolution, most women and quite a few men pop singers left the country, many of them settling in the Los Angeles area, where a Persian music industry flourished. As famous pop singers of the Pahlavi era started new careers in the West without any hope of someday returning home, they remained as celebrated as ever, although the quality of their music suffered due to lack of resources comparable to what was available to them in pre-Revolution Iran.
Dr. Hemmasi examined a series of diasporic cultural productions involving deceased Iranian pop musicians of the Pahlavi era to explore how practices of memorialization and performance and media-enabled resurrection are used to counteract the finality of death and embed national heritage in California. These practices are entangled with expatriate business & settlement in exile, diaspora politics, and pervasive, productive nostalgia.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the "Tehrangeles" Iranian pop music and media industries, Dr. Hemmasi examined practices and sites including celebrity impersonators, a hologram of Hayedeh, and Southern Californian Iranian gravesites (Hayedeh's in Westwood being a most-popular shrine, with many visitors) as creative responses to open-ended separation.
A lively and informative Q&A session followed the talk.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fox News settles Dominion's defamation lawsuit by paying $787.5 million, right before the start of trial.
- NYC parking garage collapses: Amazingly, only one person is dead. The garage had years of code violations.
- Historic rainfalls bring super-blooms to California and other parts of the southern and western US.
- Be careful where you recharge your phone: Dangers lurk in public juice-jackers.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 19, 2018: Remembering a friend, Fakhteh Borhan, 10 years after her passing.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 19, 2013: Iranian parents not showing affection at home hurts their children.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 19, 2010: The Persian "Putting watermelon under one's armpit" taken literally.
(4) IEEE Central Coast Section technical talk: Dr. Nina Miolane (ECE, UCSB) spoke tonight under the title "Geometric Learning for Shape Analysis from Bioimaging Data."
Advances in bioimaging techniques have enabled us to access the 3D shapes of a variety of structures: organs, cells, proteins. Since biological shapes are related to physiological functions, statistical analyses in biomedical research are poised to incorporate more shape data. This leads to the question: How do we define quantitative descriptions of shape variability from images?
Mathematically, landmarks' shapes, curve shapes, surface shapes, or shapes of objects in images are data that belong to non-Euclidean spaces, for example to Lie groups or quotient spaces. In this context, Dr. Miolane has introduced "Geometric statistics," a statistical theory on non-Euclidean spaces. In tonight's talk, she presented studies showing the theory and applications of Geometric Statistics to the analysis of biomedical shape data.
Other aspects of Dr. Miolane's research, which she discussed, include using data that is less costly to obtain (e.g., characteristics of a person's gait) for predicting the onset of Alzheimer's and other diseases in future.
[Speaker's UCSB page]
[Speaker's personal page]
[IEEE CCS event page &
Technical Talks page]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Young Kurdish woman with traditional clothes. [Top center] UCSB Library's excellent idea of showing the availability of study space on various floors and in different areas. [Top right] Poetry, art, and fashion: A formidable combination! [Bottom left] Every one of the Islamic Republic officials lied to the Iranian people by assuring them that hijab won't become mandatory. [Bottom center] Iranian women & girls: Government propaganda vs. reality. [Bottom right] An unusual shot of Tehran's Azadi Tower.
(2) Oklahoma governor wants a rural county's top officials to resign: They were recorded talking about beating, killing, & burying local reporters and lamenting that they could no longer lynch Blacks.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Arab Winter: Fight between rival military groups in Sudan leaves scores dead and hundreds injured.
- Iran copying the Taliban's playbook: A 2015 story about chemical attacks at girls' schools in Afghanistan.
- FBI arrests two men for setting up and operating a Chinese police outpost in New York City.
- The longest-running show in history, "Phantom of the closes after 35 years and 13,981 performances.
- A middle-school named after author George Dawson banned parts of his book, Life Is So Good, last year!
- Persian poetry: A wonderful verse from Pejman Bakhtiari (old spirit in a young body & vice versa). [Image]
(4) [Notes from Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit 2023] Why we are easily fooled by fake videos: Two mechanisms are at work. First, we are evolutionarily programmed to attach great weight to realistic images. We put too much trust in our eyes relative to other senses, hence the saying "seeing is believing." Second, we're disadvantaged by positive machine stereotypes. For decades we've been told that machines are both accurate and impartial. Research results showing that algorithms can be biased and way off-base are fairly recent and have not yet propagated to the society at large.
(5) [Notes from Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit 2023] Not only race, but other aspects of a person's physical appearance affect how s/he is treated and opportunities presented to him/her. Here is a striking example. In the US, 14.5% of people are 6 feet or taller. Of Fortune 500 CEOs, 58% are 6 feet or taller.
(6) [Notes from Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit 2023] Indian WhatsApp lynchings: We talk & write a lot about potential dangers of misinformation & disinformation on social media. Few people know that some of these doomsday scenarios have already materialized. Two-dozen people died in India, when false rumors about child-abduction & organ-harvesting were attached to real videos, with the goal of stirring violence to settle old scores. For example, one video, which had been made as a public-service announcement to warn about possible child abductions, was used under the pretense that it depicted a real child abduction.
(7) The world's most-beautiful calendar: Between its covers are 206 sheets of fine calfskin, profusely illustrated by the Flemish Limbourg brothers, Herman, Johan, and Paul. [NYT pictorial]
[Top row] Arriving at the wedding venue, with my children and grand-nephews. The wedding ceremony and reception were held at Spanish Hills Club in Camarillo, Southern California.
[Middle row] My well wishes for the bride & groom, Mina and Babak, and selected verses from a Mowlavi/Rumi poem, which I read during the marriage ceremony. [Recitation of the poem in a 3-minute video]
[Bottom row] The bride with her bridesmaids and the exchange of vows, memorial table bearing a photo of my mom who did not live long enough to attend this highly-anticipated event, and ceremonial first dances.
[Photos from rehearsal day] The wedding venue; My daughter's cupcakes; dinner at Sadaf Restaurant
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Four generations of Iranian women rising. [Center] Mountain retreat in New Zealand. [Right] Cartoon of the day: "Hi, we're here from the place with the God-given right to guns."
(2) A puzzling question: How did we let a bunch of mullahs transform the Iranian culture, which is filled with festivals, music, poetry, and celebration of nature, into an Islamic culture based on mourning, coersion, banning of joy, and destruction of nature?
(3) Sharp rise in executions in Iran: Several watchdog agencies report that the number of executions by Iran's Islamic regime has risen by 75% over the last year and by even more compared with two years ago, concluding that Iran is using executions to scare protesters. Officially, only 4 protesters have been executed, but scores of others have already been sentenced to death or are at risk of being executed. The number of executions for drug offenses shows a sharp increase, raising fears that dissidents are being executed under false drug charges, a less-costly action for the mullahs, following international outrage.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kettle talks to teapot: Iranian authorities meet with the Taliban in a love fest!
- Women are turned away or forced to wear a headscarf at the entrance to a Tehran Metro station. [Tweet]
- PBS & NPR quit Twitter, after being labeled by the platform as state-backed media.
- How DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and sheer grit cracked a 75-year-old cold case.
- Give or Take? I was inundated with a flood of e-mails yesterday, urging me to donate to various entities.
- The new normal: Panel discussion at today's MMI Summit, with one remote & two local panelists.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 13, 2016: Now that Justice Thomas is in the spotlight, here's a film about him.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 14, 2016: If pregnancy is God's will, then so is erectile dysfunction!
(5) Music is the soundtrack of our lives: Voice of America interview with Sweden-based Iranian musician Rostam Mirlashari, who composes/performs Baluchi and other regional Iranian music. [45-minute video]
(6) Thursday & Friday, 4/13-14, at UCSB: Two major series of events overlapped, forcing me to go back and forth between the two and missing some interesting talks.
- Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit
- Advisory Board Meeting & ECE Summit
I will report on these events and some neat technical ideas in separate posts over the next few days.
[My Facebook post on MMI Summit] [My Facebook post on ECE Summit and its poster session]
(7) Final thought for the day: There's much talk about leaks of classified documents. Here's my recommendation on how to stop leaks. Eliminate the secret and top-secret classifications altogether. Biden and other US officials have indicated that the recent leaks are no big deal. If so, why were the documents classified to begin with? Imagine a world with no such classifications! An no religion too!
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge during construction (colorized photo from 1934). [Top center] Wednesday's Plous Award Lecture at UCSB (see the last item below). [Top right] Santa Barbara Fiesta 2023 poster design revealed. [Bottom left] Lempel & Ziv of the LZ algorithm fame passed away (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzles: In the top diagram with 4 unit squares, the 3 red line segments have the same length. Show that the blue and red paths leading from the lower-left corner to the upper-right corner have the same length. Now, delete the part about the red line segments being of equal length and find out, in connection for the bottom diagram, what values of a and b would make the blue and red paths of equal length? [Bottom right] Geniuses all around (see item 3 below).
(2) Israeli computer scientists Jacob Ziv and Abraham Lempel dead at 91 & 86, within a month of each other: The duo developed the Lempel-Ziv (LZ) data compression algorithm, which set the stage for TIFF, PNG, ZIP, & GIF compression technologies and played a major role in developing PDF & MP3 formats. The elegant ideas presented by Lempel & Ziv are still resonant in the research community and many researchers are working on their expansion & development. RIP!
(3) Iranian super-geniuses: When know-nothing individuals are in power and surround themselves with others of their kind, charlatans and opportunists thrive. The image contains flyers/posters for two Iranians with multiple advanced degrees and many other specialties/skills. The language used makes it clear that much of the information is fake. A similar "expert" recently claimed that the Python language will solve all of Iran's problems, from curing cancer to offering accurate political and economic forecasts! These words were uttered in a symposium of "Top 1% Experts," in which President Raisi was present and took notes.
(4) UCSB Plous Award Lecture: The prestigious Harold J. Plous Award is given annually to "an assistant professor or instructor in the humanities, social sciences or natural sciences who has demonstrated outstanding performance or promise of performance as measured by intellectual and creative contributions to the college community." For his research in the framework of his Computational Mate-Choice Lab, Professor Dan Conroy-Beam (UCSB Psychological & Brain Sciences) is the honoree for 2022-2023.
His public lecture on Wednesday was entitled "The Most Important Decision You'll Ever Make," which refers to choosing a mate. Mating is at the center of our universe. Whom we fall in love with affects every corner of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous. Moreover, over deep time, mate choice has been one of the most potent forces responsible for shaping who we are as a species. Yet our understanding of how we choose our mating partners and how these choices reverberate out through our lives is shockingly imprecise. Professor Conroy-Beam illustrated how computer simulations of human mating markets can help us model the complex decision processes guiding our love lives. Describing two schemes, the Gale-Shapley Algorithm & Resource Allocation Model, Professor Conroy-Beam illustrated the surprising effectiveness of the models in predicting relationship success. These simulations shed light on how people choose their romantic partners and how they could be harnessed to help people form happier relationships. The models can be applied in other contexts outside romantic relationships, including friendships.
This paper contains scientific and experimental details, including other models not discussed in today's talk:
D. Conroy-Beam, K. V. Walter, and K. Duarte, "What Is a Mate Preference? Probing the Computational Format of Mate Preferences Using Couple Simulation," Evolution and Human Behavior, in press.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] At Santa Barbara Cemetery, early this afternoon. [Right] Freedom is near! #WomanLifeFreedom (photo credit: @oonparande).
(2) Iran's Islamic regime experiences growing fissures & poor morale internally: A recently-leaked document, if genuine, indicates substantial internal skepticism toward the handling of the current domestic crisis, and perhaps even pressure for limited reforms.
(3) Chemical-gas attacks continue at Iranian girl schools: The regime which boasts about its network of monitoring cameras and makes good use of them to identify and arrest hijab-less women and street protesters has not yet made a single arrest or named any culprit in the widespread chemical attacks targeting girls' schools over several months.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Voice of America Persian interview with Dr. Carina Jahani about Baluchi languages in southeastern Iran.
- Brave Iranian woman dancing at the tomb of Hafez in Shiraz.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 10, 2021: The power of exponential growth in viral infections.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 10, 2021: Photos of my three sisters, on this National Siblings Day.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 10, 2020: Image from a FaceTime chat with my late friend Farhad Mavaddat.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 10, 2013: Elite colleges admit gladiators and turn down qualified applicants.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 11, 2018: Presidential vocab by grade level, from 4.6 to 11.3.
(5) Silly business terms: Nowadays, when you call for service, you get the privilege of an extended wait for talking with a "customer service representative," which is a fancy term for an inexperienced phone/computer operator at a call center, often overseas. Today, I called to make a medical appointment and was asked to wait for a "patient navigator."
(6) Iranian women continue to give the middle finger to Khamenei and his cronies who have issued fresh threats of fines & imprisonment to women who ditch their headscarves.
(7) Rabbi David Wolpe's farewell address at Passover: He advises Persian Jews to be tolerant of different political views and to focus less on money and peer pressure.
(8) Islam does not like open-plan kitchens: According to this Islamic Republic of Iran official, open-plan kitchens should be avoided, because they expose the woman working in the kitchen to guests!
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math and literature (see the next item below). [Center] Iranian women continue to defy compulsory hijab laws despite dire warnings from Khamenei and security officials; Photo taken at Al-Zahra University, Tehran. [Right] UCLA panel discussion on Iran's foreign policy (see the last item below).
(2) Mathematics and literature: We are conditioned from childhood to think that one is either good at math/science or good with literature/humanities. There is little basis for this dichotomy, which is a fairly recent assertion. According to Sarah Hart, "For most of recorded history, mathematics was part of every educated person's cultural awareness."
The 11th-century Persian scholar Omar Khayyam, known for his exquisite poems, was also a mathematician. So was Lewis Carroll. Other famous authors, such as Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Michael Crichton, and Arthur Conan Doyle have used mathematical metaphors in their writings.
Mathematician G. H. Hardy wrote that "a mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. ... The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."
I count myself among those with interests in both math/science and poetry/writing. I take delight in a beautiful sentence that twists and turns, before coming to its conclusion several lines later. In composing poems, I tend to view them as puzzles to be assembled.
(3) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Today's installment of the lecture series featured a panel discussion, in Persian, entitled "Turning to the East: Changes and Continuities in the Islamic Republic's Foreign Policy." Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State U. Northridge) introduced the panelists and moderated the Q&A session at the end.
*Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi (Vice Provost and Dean of College of Arts, Sciences, & Education at Missouri U. of Science & Technology).
Title: "Main Tenants of Post-Revolutionary Iran's Foreign Policy"
Revolutionary regimes are ambivalent about international order. They want to ignore or undermine it on the one hand and they seek international approval on the other. Ideological dogma makes the resolution of this conflict even more difficult. Yet, in some cases, Iran has taken realistic (non-ideological) positions, such as in the India-Pakistan and Azerbaijan-Armenia conflicts, where Iran did not back the Islamic side. Iran considers itself the center of the universe, despite the fact that it controls less than 1% of world trade. Being obsessed with conspiracy theories and using foreign policy to settle internal fights among power factions is another weakness of Iran. The country's Islamic rulers are also delusional, thinking that the West and Israel are on the decline, bound to fall in short order. Any tactical retreat, in terms of reversal of positions or showing "heroic flexibility" on the part of Iran has been the result of failures in its initial ambition of "Exporting the Revolution."
*Dr. Kazem Alamdari (Cal State U. Northridge, Sociology; and prior affiliations with several other institutions).
Title: "Looking to the East and the New World Order"
Iran's "look to the East" is driven for the most part by its hatred of the West. It is also a direct result of the growing rift between the government and its people. Iran's realignment with the East is in part driven by Russia's delusion of returning to superpower status and China's hegemonic plans. The initial "Neither East nor West" slogan of the Islamic Republic gradually turned into "Leaning to the East," which is favored by hardline Islamists and opposed by reformists and pragmatists. It is consistent with the view that the West is on the decline, while the East is blooming. Currently, Khamenei and his main advisors view all anti-America governments as Iran's friends and a part of the Eastern coalition. They justify their alliance with godless regimes by claiming that Putin is highly spiritual and people of Russia are all church- or mosque-goers. These claims conflict with the fact that Russia has been the main cause of the failure of Iran's nuclear talks with the West. Exclusive alliance with the East will lead to Iran getting short shrift, if the East sees no possibility for Iran to do anything with the West. China has significant trade with the West and Arab counties and will not endanger its financial interests for the sake of Iran.
*Dr. Touraj Atabaki (Leiden U. & Senior Research Fellow, Int'l Institute of Social History, Amsterdam).
Title: "Turning to the East in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Both a Strategy and a Tactic?"
Iran's turning to the East began during Ahmadinejad's presidency, with tacit approval of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Qasem Soleimani, in particular). The thinking went that, along with the US, China, and the European Union, Russia will be one of the four world powers, economically and militarily. However, any strategic relationship requires that both parties formally commit to it. In Syria, for example, the relationship between Iran and Russia is a temporary alliance and not a strategic one. There is a great deal of distrust among Iranians to the actions and plans of Russia. Turkey has much stronger and broader alliance with Russia. For example, in the domain of armaments, Russia is hesitant to give Iran the latest and most powerful military equipment. In short, the Iran-Russia ties are viewed as strategic only from Iran's side. Russia views Iran pretty much as a colony, not a strategic partner.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Native Art Extraordinaire: Digital artist Larry Carlson's "Starry Orange Tree." [Top center & right] Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi's talk on Iranian-Armenians in diaspora (see the next item below). [Bottom left] A belated Passover gathering with the family. [Bottom center] IranWire cartoon of the day: In Iran, it's a matter of time! [Bottom right] Artists dream of peace all the time: When will politicians follow suit?
(2) Book talk, presented by Farhang Foundation and UCSB Iranian Studies Initiative: Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi (UNC Chapel Hill) talked today via Zoom about her forthcoming book, under the title "Iranian Armenian Ancestral Flexibility, Adaptability, and Continuity." There were 71 attendees.
Armenians have migrated, voluntarily or forcefully, many times during their long history. Beginning in their ancestral homeland, spanning northwestern Iran & parts of the Caucasus, many Armenians were relocated to Iran and within Iran. Iranian-Armenians are viewed both as an ethnicity and a religious minority in Iran.
Today, Iranian Armenians are neither entirely a stateless diaspora nor a state-linked diaspora. Despite different origins and dispersal throughout the world, most Armenians see Armenia as their ancestral homeland, some even yearning to "return" there.
After her review of the history and culture of Iranian-Armenians, Dr. Yaghoobi presented a selection of Armenian literature and art, wistful stories & poems and a few paintings. I look forward to examining the book for more samples and analyses.
Farhang Foundation posts videos of the talks it sponsors, so I will provide a link here once it becomes available.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- All-out Israeli-Palestinian war a real possibility in the wake of Hamas rocket attacks & Israeli air strikes.
- Classified US government documents on Ukraine, Middle East, and China have been exposed on-line.
- Two Tennessee legislators expelled from State House for raising their voices during gun-reform debate.
- Right-wing judges are going nuts: A Texas judge suspends 2-decade-old FDA approval of an abortion pill.
- SoT Pete Buttigieg, as articulate as ever, discusses life in America and the general path of jurist prudence.
- Why is America in love with "Top Gun: Maverick," which is essentially a 2-hour ad for defense contractors?
(4) Open Mind Virtual Film Festival at UCLA: The Sunday, April 30, 2023, 2:00 PM PDT, festival features 10 short films on mental illness, chosen from among 130 submissions by high-school students.
(5) Justice served: California women, who was in touch with Iran's Revolutionary Guards and (unwittingly?) helped fund an assassination attempt against journalist Masih Alinejad sentenced to 4 years in prison.
(6) Ignoring hijab laws is a religious & political sin (haram), according to Khamenei: On the surface, this means harsher treatment of hijab-less women and those with "inadequate" hijab. However, there are examples of haram edicts that have been reversed for political expediency. Early after the Revolution, sturgeon fish was deemed haram according to Islamic edicts. Then, the Islamists realized that they are losing a lot of money from banning the fish & its caviar and, soon, Khomeini issued a fatwa that there is no prohibition against the fish. The game of chess underwent a similar transformation from a haram activity to a permitted, even supported, one. At one point, regime agents would climb high-rise buildings using ropes and other military gear to take down TV satellite dishes. Then, suddenly, the Supreme Leader had a change of heart and ordered his goons to leave people's home and private activities alone. The new edict about hijab will likely have the same fate.
Book review: Wright, Robert A., Our Man in Tehran: The True Story Behind the Secret Mission to Save Six Americans During the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Foreign Ambassador Who Worked with the CIA to Bring Them Home, unabridged 13-hour audiobook, read by Mike Chamberlain, Blackstone Audio, 2011.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is about the former Canadian Ambassador to Tehran, Ken Taylor, who played a leading role in helping six Americans escape Iran, as 53 other Americans were being held hostage at the US Embassy. Declassified documents have revealed that CIA, aided by Hollywood's magic, also played a major role, as told in the book/movie Argo (my review of the book).
While Argo was a sensationalized "good-guys, bad-guys" account (for example, the film version converted the relatively trouble-free departure of the six Americans holding fake Canadian passports via Tehran's Mehrabad Airport to a chase scene in which Revolutionary Guards, realizing they had been duped, pursue the plane on the runway, coming close to preventing it from taking off), Wright's book is a serious account that gives us deep insights into what made Iran's revolutionary cadres tick and how diplomatic missions in Iran operated in the uncertain environment of post-Islamic-Revolution Iran.
The book contains detailed accounts of how the six Americans, having eluded capture, ended up as houseguests of the Canadian Ambassador and Embassy staff, various plans for helping them leave Iran, interactions with Iranian authorities who knew about the six Americans but chose to help them hide from the "student" militants at the US Embassy, and the eventual choice of the exfiltration plan, which involved the Americans pretending to be a Canadian movie-studio crew scouting filming locations in Iran.
An interesting observation is that Iranian authorities were walking a tightrope. While they wanted to play the good guys, who were opposed to hostage-taking and other irrational behavior, their hands were tied, because the "student" militants were really not following their advice to let the hostages go. I have put "student" in quotation marks, because Wright makes it clear that at least some of the hostage-takers appeared to be well-trained in interrogation methods and paramilitary operations. After a while, when Khomeini himself blessed the hostage-taking action, Iranian officials gave up on their plans for a quick release of the hostages and went with the flow, claiming lack of authority and influence.
In what can be characterized as irony of ironies, the hostage-takers raised objections to and threatened Canada for ignoring international diplomatic norms by illegally moving the six Americans out of Iran! Equally interesting, is Iran's government officials, some of whom were aware of the six extra Americans and in fact helped them hide, parroting the same words out of fear of being labeled puppets of the West! One of these officials, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, was eventually executed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court. Another person, Iran's first President Abolhassan Banisadr, fled the country in drag after he was ordered removed from presidency by Ayatollah Khomeini, but before he could be captured and tried.
Wright's writing is quite engaging. Chamberlain reads the book's English narrative quite well, but he has no clue when it comes to pronouncing the many names of Iranian people and places appearing throughout the book.
Wright's book has been converted to the two-part PBS "Frontline" series, "Our Man in Tehran" [Part 1; Part 2; 115 minutes each], in which NYT correspondent Thomas Erdbrink does a great job of humanizing Iranians for Westerners, who think they have "horns and tails."
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (~45 years back): PBS News interview with Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris. [Top center & right] Humorous Persian poetry: I never thought I would write a poem about yogurt, but an Islamist's rage-induced emptying of a large container of yogurt on the heads of two young Iranian women who were shopping sans headscarves was an opportunity I could not pass by! The poem is entitled "The Benefits of Yogurt." The cartoon supports the poem. [Bottom left] Uprooting of a eucalyptus tree at the periphery of my housing complex: It fell outward onto the dirt parking shoulder of an adjacent street, crushing one car and damaging another one. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The tree fell due to a combination of high winds and softened soil as a result of recent heavy rains. [Bottom center] Spring has arrived in Tahoe: Street signs are starting to bloom! [Bottom right] In the US, NASA is looking for water on other planets. In Iran, NAJA (acronym for security forces) is looking for people with water bottles during the month of Ramadan!
(2) Iran's rapprochement with Saudi Arabia is puzzling: Supreme Leader Khamenei has said that Saudi Arabia is run by incompetent, corrupt rulers, while MBS has opined that Khamenei is "very much like Hitler"!
(3) I saw a TV ad for a drug that "is not for people with type-1 diabetes or children": They probably meant that children shouldn't take it, but the ad's statement really implies that people with children should not take it!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Greek authorities arrest Pakistani nationals with plans to carry out anti-Semitic attacks.
- If Trump's passport is confiscated, his only hope is escaping to Mexico: Luckily for him, the wall is unfinished!
- Borowitz Report (humor): Millions of Americans who have paid off porn stars feel under attack.
- Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife accepted gifts of luxury vacations from wealthy Republican donor.
- Iran's morality police uses 21st-century smartphones to enforce the 7th-century Bedouin social norms.
- Expelled Iranian professor who supported protesting university students now works at a pizzeria.
- Beautifying the community of Alhaurin de la Torre, Malaga, with art (crochet & knitting). #WomensArt
- Mark Twain: "All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."
- Ernest Hemingway: "It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet."
- Sage advice: No matter what you do, you're totally replaceable at work. You're not replaceable at home.
(5) At today's estate-planning workshop: The instructor was really hyped up & festive, sounding like a car-salesperson! Dial it down a bit, sir; we're trying to plan for my death, not a lavish vacation! The instructor also used many weird phrases, such as "What you need to do on a going-forward basis"!
(6) World's widest freeway: Located in Houston, Texas, the Katy Freeway is said to have 26 lanes, composed of 12 main lanes (6 on each side), 8 feeder lanes, and 6 managed lanes, used mostly by mass-transit vehicles. [P.S.: I count 40 lanes in this photo, which may be due to the photo having been snapped near toll booths.]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Tonight is the eve of Passover (See the next item below). [Top center] Iran's currency has lost 90% of its value over the past five years, bringing the country's economy to the verge of collapse. [Top right] Mar-a-Lago billboards are popping up everywhere to make it impossible for Trump to pretend he doesn't know that he is being propped up by greedy pants-on-fire liars who actually detest him. [Bottom left] Completed in 1971, Tehran's Azadi Tower (formerly Shahyad Monument) has become a symbol of Iran. [Bottom center] A new morality police is patrolling the streets of Tehran: The new force tells Islamists that morality demands respecting people's dignity, not equating free choice of clothing with spreading prostitution. [Bottom right] Mardavij Pigeon Tower, in Isfahan, Iran: Ancient way of collecting fertilizer.
(2) Happy Passover to my family and Jewish friends! And happy Easter to my Christian friends! This year, Easter Sunday arrives 3 days after Passover. The two holidays have common roots and similar traditions (in fact, there are also some commonalities with the Persian Nowruz). Passover and Easter can be separated by up to a month in some years. Passover, a spring Jewish festival, which begins tonight, on the eve of its first day, 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.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Michelangelo's David made an SNL appearance to complain about how he is treated in some US states.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 4, 2019: When Jake Shimabukuro performed at UCSB's Storke Plaza.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 4, 2014: Modern Persian dance at UCLA's Iranian Culture Show.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 4, 2012: "best way to counter [racists] involves not your fists but your mind."
- Facebook memory from Apr. 5, 2013: History of residue numbers in computers goes back 1500+ years.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 5, 2013: The whorehouse that believed in prayers and the church that didn't!
(4) Iranians celebrated the 13th day of the Persian New Year with joy: Men and women played music and danced in traditional nature outings. Iran's security forces attacked many such gatherings, trying to prevent "un-Islamic" behavior. They were pushed back by the people in most cases.
(5) The scaffolding analogy: During the construction of, or major repairs to, a building, we often use scaffolding to allow easy & safe access to its various points or to hold things up while construction material such as concrete gain strength. Building digital hardware or computer software can benefit from similar structures. We can erect the scaffolding first and then hang parts of the system from it. As a part "gains strength" and proves itself, some of the scaffolding can be removed, until, at the end, nothing is left of the scaffolding. However, there is a difference here compared to the building analogy. A building may not look great with the scaffolding in place, so we are motivated to remove the temporary structures. In the case of hardware or software, we may leave parts of the scaffolding in place as aids to testing or future modifications.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Graphic art: Mamoun Sakkal designed this poster in 1995 to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the opening of Saleh Al-Lago Restaurant in Seattle. Baba Ghannouch is featured on the poster in Sakkal's own typeface. [Top center] Traditional wedding garbs in southern Iran's Bakhtiari tribe: Notice the woman carrying the rifle (photos credit: Amin Nazari). [Top right] Semanggi highway interchange in Jakarta, Indonesia, at the junction of Gatot Subroto Road and Sudirman Road. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the value of x/y + x/z (credit: @Eduard16180). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Given the placement of seven identical squares inside a 17-by-26 rectangle, find the area of each square. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded?
(2) March Madness ends in April: On the women's side, LSU defeated Iowa 102-85 to earn its first national basketball title. On the men's side, U. Conn defeated San Diego State 76-59 to win its 5th title since 1999.
(3) Gender and religious apartheid: Samin Ehsani is an Imprisoned Iranian Baha'i woman charged with the crime of educating Afghan children, who could not enroll in regular schools because they lacked identity papers.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Richard Nixon famously said that he's not a crook: Donald Trump says that everyone else is a crook!
- Jews constitute 2.4% of the US population but they are targeted in 55% of all religious hate crimes.
- This Shi'i cleric says that trying to make Iran's economy "Islamic" was a mistake with dire consequences.
- The treatment of women in Iran & Afghanistan is increasingly characterized as Gender Apartheid. [Image]
- Saqqez, the village of my parents in western Iran, now a modern city, and some of its old neighborhoods.
- Three English words to avoid, particularly in writing: Very; Said; Thing. [6-minute video]
- A thought, without prayers: I choose protecting our 2nd-graders over protecting the 2nd Amendment!
- Santa Ynez High School administration wants to paint over rainbow-colored crosswalks at its entrance.
(5) Nowruz 1402 (2023) at Persepolis: Visitors continue to defy Iran's compulsory hijab law, as the mullahs call for stricter enforcement of the misogynistic law. #WomanLifeFreedom
(6) Iran's 1979 Revolution wasn't a mistake caused by disinformation: Iranians shouted on the streets that Khomeini was their soul. Deep down, a vast majority agreed with his patriarchal & misogynistic views. We may have changed, but back then we liked Khomeini's pronouncements.
(7) Iranian mullah Reza Akrami: "When a man sees a woman who is prettier than his wife, he loses his mind, and that's why we need hijabs." Translation: According to Islamists, men are stupid animals who lack morality or ability to think. A man's being is summarized in his sexual organ, which guides him like a GPS device.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & right] 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! [Top center] Persian poetry: My couplet welcoming spring, inspired by a superb ghazal of Hafez. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Given the placement of 7 identical squares inside a 17-by26 rectangle, as shown, find the area of each square. [Bottom center] My afternoon walk on April 1, 2023: Blue skies, warm temperatures, and wonderful views of a reborn nature. [Bottom right] Dan Lyons' book, STFU (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Happy April Fool's Day: The Guardian's compilation of the best April Fool's Day gags from its archives.
- Humor: April 1 is to be designated as Donald J. Trump Day!
- One trans mass-shooter, and suddenly scores of white-supremacist, xenophobe mass-shooters are forgotten!
- NCAA men's basketball championship game: San Diego State v. U. Conn, Monday 4/03, 6:20 PM PDT, on CBS.
- This year, California's Mammoth Mountain had the most snow ever recorded!
- New form of student housing: Three UCSB students trade their four walls for four wheels. [SB Independent]
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2019: An apt question, in the wake of Donald Trump's criminal indictment.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 1, 2017: The day my mom sent over a lof of tah-chin (a rice & chicken dish).
(3) Book review: Lyons, Dan, STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The main take-away from this book is that you can accomplish more, earn greater respect, and live a happier life if you just resist the temptation to chime in on every topic, offer analyses for every situation, and respond to every comment. And this message applies to non-verbal communication, such as social-media interactions and text-messaging, as well. Lyons advises us to take it easy, relax more, and, most of all, STFU.
Lyons began working on the book when he realized that he tended to talk too much. Most people who talk too much (talkaholics) know that they talk too much, but they simply can't help it. Talking for explanation and story-telling is an essential skill in today's world. It's not helpful for social acceptance or job advancement to be an under-talker. But there is definitely a limit to how much talking is appropriate. It is much easier to bring an under-talker out of his/her shell than to help an over-talker keep quiet.
Talking less is helpful in all situations, including work, romantic relationships, casual conversations, and social-media interactions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, men tend to be more talkative than women. In the context of first impressions, such as dating, talking too much is a definite no-no. You should try to ask more questions and chop-up long narratives into 30-second doses. Try not to speak more than 60% or less than 40% of the time. If the listener is attentive and explicitly asks for more, you can break the 30-second and 60-40 rules, but be super-careful.
One cause of over-talking is that, in our culture, silence or pause during conversation feels awkward. Quite the opposite: Pauses enable reflection, provide opportunities for questions, and enhance understanding. Our society has become increasingly wordy and loud. Japanese, Native-American, and many other cultures prefer quiet reflection and speaking softly. Author Ernest Hemingway said it best: "It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet."
In this 14-minute podcast, Lyons dispenses the following five nuggets of wisdom:
- How you speak is who you are.
- Someday we may use speech as a form of medicine.
- You should quit social media, or at least dial it way back.
- Most powerful and successful people are under-talkers.
- Listening is a superpower.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] One way of rendering Michelangelo's "David" okay for displaying in Florida. [Top center] In the wake of Iran's claim of discovering vast deposits of lithium: 25 years of lithium production in the world, 1995-2021. [Top right] Libraries & bookstores are pitching banned books to their patrons/customers. [Bottom left & center] Digital spring cleaning: As we clean up our physical surroundings for spring, let us not forget to clean up our digital life as well. Here's a checklist to help you along. [Bottom right] Circle of life.
(2) March 30 was National Doctors' Day: A belated congratulations! We are grateful to those who save lives every day, be they doctors or others involved in the delivery of health care. Our system of administering health care is broken, but we can count on health care professionals to help us overhaul the system.
(3) Saudi Arabia is building a water-transport "river" longer than the Nile: The project will use anti-corrosion pipes of diameter 2.25 m, laid out in a trench that is 4 m deep, 11 m wide, and 12,000 km long.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump has been indicted by Manhattan Grand Jury on 30+ counts related to business fraud.
- Evan Gershkovich, Wall Street Journal reporter, accused of espionage and imprisoned by Russia.
- Finland's request to join NATO is approved, distressing Russia & changing the world's balance of power.
- In what can be viewed as a reversal, tech execs call for a temporary moratorium on AI development.
- Anti-Semitism on college campuses in the US: Incidents of vandalism & harassment are on the rise.
- NCAA women's basketball championship game: Iowa State v. LSU, Sunday 4/02, 12:30 PM PDT, on ABC.
- Roboticists want to give you extra limbs: They can be controlled by unused bandwidth in neurons.
- Islamic lawlessness: A member of Iran's morality police pours yogurt on two women not wearing hijabs.
(5) Two imprisoned women journalists in Iran win the 2023 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism: Nilofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi were arrested and jailed for their reporting on the death of #MahsaAmini, the event that triggered Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom movement.
(6) To grade or not to grade: As a professor, grading is the least-favorite part of my activities. I prefer to focus on teaching strategies, course content, and learning outcomes, rather than spend time on evaluations, that are imprecise anyway. But I don't see any way of motivating students to learn without the fear of failing. So, I have mixed feelings about some colleges eliminating grades altogether to facilitate the transition of high-school students into higher education and to deal with growing concerns about student mental health.
(7) UN statement on academic freedom: Issued at a UN Human Rights Council session and approved by the US and 70 other nations, the statement says, "Academic freedom is key to human rights education but also essential for technical and scientific progress and for the development of the creative industries and the arts." It also calls for international cooperation towards strengthening the protection & promotion of academic freedom in the spirit of the Vienna Declaration.
(8) Plants emit sounds under stress: Barely audible at frequencies in the range 20-250 Hz, the sounds are distinctive and can be used to distinguish among different plants and different levels of stress.
(1) Book review: Dehaene, Stanislas, The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics, Oxford U. Press, revised & updated 2nd ed., 2011. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The original 1997 edition of this book, written some 15 years before the current edition, had three parts and nine chapters.
- Part One: Our Numerical Heritage (Chs. 1-3)
- Part Two: Beyond Approximation (Chs. 4-6)
- Part Three: Of Neurons and Numbers (Chs. 7-9)
The author has added Part Four, The Contemporary Science of Numbers and Brain, consisting of the single Ch. 10, to review the most-important developments in the field since the book's original publication. The book ends with two appendices and a bibliography. A most-exciting advance in the intervening 15 years is the discovery of single neurons that code for number in the monkey brain.
Numbers are all around us. It's not an exaggeration to say that we cannot live without them. Even poets must be able to count in order to follow the rules of various poetic forms! As early as 5 months after birth, a baby knows that 1 plus 1 makes 2. Animals possess a mental module called "accumulator" that can hold quantities, recognize small sets with a handful of elements, or approximately add two quantities. This accumulator mechanism isn't digital but analog; not dealing with discrete values, but with continuous ones.
The complexities of the various classes of numbers, and all of abstract mathematics, for that matter, arise from and are supported by a small set of features or capabilities in the human brain. Research on animals has revealed an age-old competence for handling approximate quantities, an ability that may be as old as life. Mathematician Richard Dedekind, however, was of the opinion that numbers are "free creations of the human mind."
We now understand that animals will never be able to do exact arithmetic or tell the difference between 49 and 50; such fine distinctions are made by humans, only because of our ability to devise and use symbols, which in turn enable precision and abstraction. One should not forget that the notation for dealing with multi-digit numbers, which seems like child's play now, took centuries to be devised and refined.
Aside from the approximate, analog accumulator that we share with rats and other animals, our brain does not seem to contain an "arithmetic unit" to allow us to perform multiplication and other mathematical tasks. The brain uses alternative circuits, that have evolved for other functions, to do math. The brains of gifted mathematicians are essentially the same as those of ordinary people; the difference is in one group's clever methods to get around the brain's limitations.
The Number Sense is perhaps the most-important book of its kind. Other books that contribute to our understanding of how the brain deals with numbers and mathematics include:
The Mathematical Brain (by B. Butterworth, 1999)
Where Mathematics Comes From (by G. Lakoff and R. Nunez, 2000)
The Handbook of Mathematical Cognition (ed. by J. I. D. Campbell, 2005)
(2) Book review: Kahn, David, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, Scribner, 2nd ed., 1996. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This second edition of Kahn's 1967 book about cryptology has a new preface and an added Chapter 27, entitled "Cryptography Goes Public," which deals with new developments over the three decades since its original publication. The rest of the book is composed of an introductory Chapter 1, followed by three uneven parts:
- The Pageant of Cryptology (Chs. 2-19)
- Sideshows (Chs. 20-24)
- Paracryptology (Chs. 25-26)
Much of our knowledge on coding and codebreaking activities during World War II have come from fairly-recent declassification of secret projects, even though Great Britain alone devoted 30,000 people to its war effort in this area. This lack of knowledge distorted the view of why things happened the way they did. This fact, along with remarkable advances in the field, made a revised edition of the book absolutely necessary.
Cryptology was introduced in Egypt some 3500 years ago, when hieroglyphic writings were modified, not to conceal the meanings, but to turn them into simple puzzles to challenge and delight the readers. This playful use of cryptology was nothing like its deadly-serious applications today. For 3000 years, the period covered in Chapter 2, the use of cryptology proliferated but the field did not enjoy significant advances.
China never showed any interest in cryptology, preferring instead memorization and oral delivery of messages carrying state secrets. India, by contrast, developed several forms of secret writing. One of the strangest forms of secret communication occurred in ancient Persia, where a secret message was written on a slave's scalp, who was then sent out to deliver the message when his hair had regrown. The Roman state used cryptology extensively. Two Caesars employed it routinely, so we have a category of substitution ciphers known as Caesar's Cipher.
Applications of cryptology grew with the spread of Western civilization. The pace of progress accelerated, fed in part by the increased contact with the Muslim world. In the 1500s, Venice has three secretaries dealing with ciphers. Subsequently, more staff positions and significant budgets were devoted to codebreaking. Invention and rapid spread of telegraphy made the need for codes more urgent for privacy and security. And, of course, the Internet revolution and cybersecurity concerns further broadened the use of secret codes, turning them into a most-important computing & communication concern.
This book's comprehensive history of cryptology, when combined with a modern introductory textbook on the topic (such as Nigel Smart's Cryptography, 3rd ed.), provides curious readers with an overview of the very important domain of secret communications.
(3) Book review: Pickover, Clifford, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them, Oxford U. Press, 2008. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Pickover, a prolific author, has produced many books in the popular-science genre. I have come across several of them, including The Math Book, The Physics Book, and A Passion for Mathematics. You can examine a complete list of Pickover's 50 books on his home page.
Fascination with physical laws, aka laws of nature, has been around for many centuries. Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy is one of the oldest, proposed around 250 BCE (the exact date is unknown). Newer examples include Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion. These law-producers, quite diverse and sometimes eccentric, oozed curiosity and, more often than not, were polymaths working in many different domains.
In this book, Pickover examines 40+ laws, explaining the science behind them along with biographies of the scientists who proposed them, cross-referencing and relating the laws to each other where appropriate. The book is organized in 4 parts covering the periods 250 BCE to 1700 CE, 1700 to 1800, 1800 to 1900, and 1900 & beyond.
Some of the other scientists one encounters in this book include Bernoulli, Curie, Faraday, Kirchhoff, Newton, Ohm, and Planck. Nearly all eponymous laws date back to the 19th century and earlier. There have been very few eponyms in science since the 20th century.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] I went on a tour & demo of classrooms in UCSB's just-completed Interactive Learning Pavilion this afternoon: My ILP 1203 classroom for ECE 1B during spring features three screens, tied to the same video source for now, but capable of showing three different images/videos by fall quarter 2023. [Top right] Longstanding open math problem solved: At issue was whether the plane can be tiled with tiles having a single non-periodic shape (triangles, squares, hexagons are easily seen to do the job). [Bottom left] Blattnerphone steel tape recorder, an early magnetic-recording technology developed in 1924. [Bottom center] Wonders of math: Palindromic prime tree, with infinite trunk consisting of the pattern 50505 (credit: Danesh Forouhari). [Bottom right] RIP Gordon E. Moore (1929-2023): Best known for Moore's Law, that predicts exponential circuit-density (and performance) growth for integrated circuits, Moore was a brilliant scientist, business leader, and philanthropist who played key roles in establishing two giants of the electronics industry: Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.
(2) All of Kentucky's problems are about to be solved, now that its legislators have passed an anti-trans law! The state ranks 36th in education, 40th in economy, 48th in fiscal stability, and 44th in health care.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fire at detention center in Mexico, used to house migrants turned back from the US, kills at least 40.
- Girl cousins: Daughters of my three sisters and me at a recent family gathering. [Photo]
- Final-4 teams for NCAA women's basketball (3/31, on ESPN): LSU v. Virginia Tech & Iowa v. S. Carolina.
- Final-4 teams for NCAA men's basketball (4/1, on CBS): FAU v. San Diego State & Miami v. U. Conn.
- Everyone is familiar with NYC's Central Park: SF's Golden Gate Park is 20% larger (~3 miles by ~0.5 mile).
- The 10 wonders of Australia: Unusual and horrifying discoveries down under. [23-minute video]
- Facial recognition tech put to good use: You're not allowed into this Danish supermarket unless you smile.
(4) The world has turned on Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations for 250 years: Now, wealth, or the invisible hand of the market, alone cannot solve all of our problems, given six new realities (ecological crisis; geopolitical changes; demographic changes; the rise of social democracies; disruption from technology; post-wealth era, when wealth increments no longer translate to improved well-being). We need a new book, The Well-Being of Nations. [36-minute talk by economist Jeffrey Sachs]
(5) Obamacare is more popular than ever: Just like Social Security and Medicare before it, Obamacare faced harsh criticism early on. And just like Social Security and Medicare, politicians of both parties are vowing to protect Obamacare. North Carolina has become the latest state to embrace Obamacare, along with its expansion of Medicaid, passing a bill 87-24 & 44-2 in its Republican-controlled House & Senate, respectively.
(1) Book review: Williams, Juan, What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? Trump's War on Civil Rights, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Dale E. Turner, Hachette Audio, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The title of this book comes from one of Donald Trump's statements at a 2016 campaign rally, where he claimed that no group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African-Americans, before asking for their votes on the grounds that they have nothing to lose, given the prevalence of crime, condition of their schools, abject poverty, and high unemployment.
I don't believe that Trump's hypocritical narrative produced any significant African-American votes for him, but the few who were moved by his rhetorical question must have been very surprised by his subsequent actions. Trump's twisting of history for personal gain from fomenting racial tensions and ignoring the sweat and blood of countless civil-rights activists was deplorable. Progress in this area didn't just halt under Trump; much of earlier gains were undone.
Overtly racist Trump cabinet members and advisors, such as Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, and Stephen Miller, along with his race-driven claims of voter fraud made progress in the areas of civil rights and race relations all but impossible. In an area where gains have been painfully small and slow, the prospects of losing those gains are very real and troubling. Ironically, we still see some African-Americans supporting Trump, thus a real need for Williams' eye-opening book.
The author's anti-Trump commentaries are devastating, because they are grounded in Trump administration's dismal record in areas connected to prior progress: The 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Retrogression in areas of school integration, racial justice, and voting rights threatened the basic freedoms of all marginalized groups, convincing them that they indeed had a lot to lose.
(2) Book review: Franco, Marisa G., Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In her best-selling book, Platonic, Dr. Franco (U. Maryland) discusses psychology research on how sustaining friendship is a process, not just of behaviors, but of fundamentally reconciling with how we view ourselves. I was fortunate to hear Dr. Franco talk about her book on January 17, 2023, in conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson (UCLA). Notes I took during that UCLA Semel Institute webinar have been incorporated into my review.
Let me begin by describing the book's structure. Sandwiched between introductory and concluding chapters are the following eight chapters, the first two of which are categorized as looking back and the other six as looking forward.
- How Friendship Transforms Our Lives (connecting with others makes us ourselves)
- How Our Past Relationships Affect Our Present (the power of attachment theory in friendship)
- Taking Initiative (how to turn strangers into friends)
- Expressing Vulnerability (how to trust friends without feeling weak)
- Pursuing Authenticity (how to deepen friendships by showing your true self)
- Harmonizing with Anger (how to take chaos out of conflict)
- Offering Generosity (how to give to your friends without losing yourself)
- Giving Affection (how to give and receive love)
Dr. Franco tackles how people's underlying psychological architecture sabotages or harmonizes with their ability to attract and keep friends. Our relationships with others fundamentally shape who we are. Attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant) are the same, whether a relationship is romantic or platonic. Lately, we have emphasized romantic relationships, to the detriment of platonic ones.
Loneliness (absence of friendships) kills. We pay a lot of attention to diet and exercise for staying healthy. But making sure we aren't lonely has a much greater impact on our health. Loneliness is a fairly new concept. Before the 1800s, we didn't even have a word for it. In those days, marriages were primarily unions of convenience. Intimate conversations, cuddling, holding hands occurred between friends of the same sex. Nowadays, a lot of people, especially men, have very few or no friends. One reason is the prevalence of homophobia. For most of us, friendship is about occasional happy hours, which makes us miss out on the opportunity of having friends as confidants or soulmates.
Technology, social media in particular, has intensified a trend that began with television, which made interactions with people too much of a burden, compared with lazily watching others. Although social media can be a valuable tool for connecting, its primary effect has been that of disconnection. During the pandemic, social media played a positive role in connecting us. People with disabilities or social anxiety also benefit from connective technologies.
There are proven practices for changing your attachment style. Using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship, you can improve the number and quality of your connections. We have an unconscious tendency to like people to whom we have had greater exposure. So, one way to find more friends is to increase your interactions and exposure to other people. Our brain has a negativity bias. When we interact with someone, we tend to underestimate how alike we are. We need to correct for this negativity bias, for example, by paying compliments. Take a positive view, always assuming that people like you. Shared activities, such as membership in groups, helps us in overcoming the negativity bias.
The book's most-important message is that we cannot survive on romantic love alone. Intimate same-sex friends play a big role in reducing our loneliness, whether or not we have a trusted romantic partner.
(3) Book review: Machen, J. Gresham, Christianity & Liberalism, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Ray Porter, Christian Audio, 2011. [My 2-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, regarded as a classic, was first published in 1923, with numerous editions having appeared since then. According to J. Gresham Machen [1881-1937], Christianity is about sins: Everyone is a sinner, except for Christ, who was a supernatural being. He believes that there is a war within Christianity and that Orthodox Christians, the only true Christians, should fight this war to the bitter end. The liberal Church has softened the rules, making them toothless.
What Machen criticizes isn't liberalism as a political philosophy, but Christian Liberalism, which has circumvented the cruel, inflexible laws of Christianity found in Orthodox interpretations of the New Testament. The Liberal Church maintains that God loves all his creations ("God is Love"), the redeemed and those with shaky beliefs. According to Machen, liberalized Christianity isn't Christianity at all, but a different religion altogether; a Satanic trick to corrupt the Church.
Along with dissing Liberal Christianity, Machen also knocks socialism, leftism, public schooling, and many other sins of the modern world. He even dismisses other religions, maintaining that the world should be controlled by Christian men: "[T]he true transformation of society will come by the influence of those who have themselves been redeemed." Machen no doubt thought that he had presented sound, logical arguments for his views, but I found nothing except assertions and circular thinking.
Checking the book's evaluations on Amazon, I was very surprised by its average 4.8 stars out of 5, based on 649 ratings. On GoodReads, the average rating is 4.3 stars based on 4876 ratings and 498 reviews. I expected to encounter many unfavorable reviews and ratings, given our modern world's preference for altruism and cooperation, over individuality and judgment.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] All 6000 residents of Suloszowa Village in Poland live on one street. [Center] The other source of energy consumption in automobiles (see the next item below). [Right] Susanne Pari's In the Time of Our History (see the last item below).
(2) The hidden energy consumption in our automobiles: The sophisticated control and entertainment systems in modern cars have a non-negligible energy footprint. The chart, from an article by Robert P. Dick et al. in the March 2023 issue of IEEE Computer magazine, shows that at low driving speeds typical of urban areas, energy usage for computing can be 50% or more of that used for propulsion, thus making low-power design of digital circuitry, already quite important in mobile devices and supercomputers, also vital for automotive computers.
(3) Comedian George Carlin believes that the list of Ten Commandments is highly inflated and shows how they can be reduced to the more manageable Two Commandments. [8-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Woman armed with assault rifles kills 3 children & 3 adults at a Nashville Christian school.
- Mass protests continue in Israel (over judicial-system changes) & in France (over increased retirement age).
- World's natural-history museums reveal their inventory of 1.1 B objects, from dinosaur bones to insects.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 27, 2016: People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 27, 2015: Poet Yaghma Golrouee's ode to Iranian women, entitled "Rahaee."
- Facebook memory from Mar. 27, 2013: A remarkable illusion of motion in a stationary image.
(5) Book review: Pari, Susanne, In the Time of Our History: A Novel, Kensington, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
As 52 American hostages were being greeted in Germany by the just-replaced President Jimmy Carter, after spending 444 days in captivity at the US Embassy in Tehran, Mitra Jahani lay in a New York hospital bed, recovering from a concealed operation to make herself barren and thus unmarriageable. This is the gripping start to Susanne Pari's historical novel about the trials and tribulations of an Iranian-American family, living on the US East Coast: The protagonist, Mitra, her younger sister Ana(hita), their parents, and a host of other characters.
Mitra had become engaged to the first available suitor, reluctantly, because Ana, who had fallen in love and wanted to tie the knot, wasn't allowed to marry before she did. Their father, who had just invited guests to his daughters' double-wedding, was livid when he found out about the operation, but he could not rescind his permission for Ana to get married. Mitra was disowned by her father and moved to the West Coast to pursue a life in which she could be as free as a boy in choosing her future. She did not see her parents until after the death of Ana many years later.
After this auspicious beginning, we read the rest of the story in three parts: Sisters (Chapters 1-11); Julian (Chapters 12-25); Brothers (Chapters 26-29). The numbered chapters are preceded by a prologue in Part 1 and followed by an epilogue in Part 3. Part 2's Julian is Mitra's supportive physician boyfriend. In part 3, we meet two half-brothers, one of them Mitra's father, who were shunned and neglected by their father's primary wife and teased by her sons. The book ends with "A Reading Group Guide" composed of ten discussion questions.
All families carry secrets, big and small. But such secrets, and the lies that accompany them, are wider-ranging and heftier when an inflexible and callous patriarch controls every aspect of the family's life and when women gain agency only by being manipulative. This is quite often the case for old-school Iranian and, to a lesser extent, Iranian-American families. So, even though Pari's novel can be viewed as a run-of-the-mill family saga, the social and cultural references are refreshingly new.
And, of course, the author's elaboration on gender roles is quite timely, in view of the ongoing feminist/youth uprising in Iran under the slogan #WomanLifeFreedom. Imagine a girl feeling so cornered that she sees no way out of the pressure to get married other than making herself unmarriageable (by her family's cultural standard). Other than the tragic lives of women under extreme patriarchy, the story holds other tragedies, again something many families face and try to overcome.
I struggle with stories that jump around in time, but do understand the attraction to authors of revealing the tale one puzzle-piece at a time and for readers to take delight in discovering the causes of some events many pages later. I have always wondered: Do such authors actually write a chronological narrative and then chop it up, or do they write directly in nonsequential order? If the latter, then the task of keeping things connected and consistent is quite immense. The chopping-up approach presents its own problems.
The titular "In the Time of Our History" refers to short introductions to the three parts and the epilogue, exemplified by the following narrative starting Part 1: "In the time of our history when the Songwriter Who Imagined was murdered in New York and the dictator Saddam invaded Iran, there was a girl ..."
(1) Book review: Afary, Janet and Kamran Afary, Molla Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster (1906-1911), Edinburgh U. Press, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book explores the birth and life history of an influential weekly published for five years, 1906-1911, by a group of Muslim Azerbaijani and Georgian artists & intellectuals of Tbilisi (modern Georgia). Their 8-to-12-page weekly, Molla Nasreddin, named after a well-known Middle Eastern trickster, offered progressive commentary and advocated for sociopolitical reforms. The publishers used folklore, visual art, and satire to promulgate their message in an entertaining and effective way.
The weekly, which was richly illustrated with color cartoons and other images, reached and impacted the thinking of tens of thousands of readers in the Muslim world. The book, itself richly illustrated with 300+ images, provides photos of key personalities of the time and numerous examples of the journal's contents. Molla Naserdin is still quite relevant and is referenced widely. Several publications in the region, including Iran's satirical & political weekly Towfiq [1923-1971], which I enjoyed during my youth, were influenced by it.
The book consists of nine chapters, organized in three parts, sandwiched between an introduction and an epilogue. The book ends with 14 pages of references and a 16-page index.
Part I: The World of the Journal (Chs. 1-3, pp. 19-160)
Part II: Reimagining the Folk Trickster and Rethinking Gender Norms (Chs. 4-6, pp. 161-280)
Part III: The Influence of European Graphic Arts (Chs. 7-8, pp. 281-360)
I was fortunate to attend Dr. Janet Afary's virtual book talk (Recording), sponsored jointly by UCSB's Iranian Studies Initiative and Farhang Foundation, on February 19, 2022. 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. Listening to the talk is a good way of getting a synopsis of the book and its many illustrations.
Let me end my review by quoting from the first page of the book's introduction and the last paragraph of its epilogue: "In 1906, a group of artists and intellectuals reinterpreted the tales of the Middle Eastern trickster, Molla Nasreddin, to construct a progressive anticolonial discourse with a strong emphasis on social, political and religious reform. The founder and editor of the new periodical, Molla Nasreddin, was Jalil Memedqolizadeh. Commonly known as Mirza Jalil, he was an Azerbaijani educator and playwright. His wife, Hamideh Khanum Javanshir, was an early Azerbaijani feminist and a philanthropist. ... Mirza Jalil and his colleagues initiated a radical discourse on gender reform and called attention to the plight of women and children. The periodical became a pioneering advocate of women's rights in the Muslim world as it exposed the ramifications of gender segregation, polygamy, easy divorce for men and pedophilia involving both boys and girls. For all these accomplishments, Molla Nasreddin will forever remain a true literary gem of the Azerbaijani-speaking people and the wider Muslim world."
(2) Book review: Sarshar, Homa, Sha'ban Ja'fari, Naab Publishers, 2002.
[ISBN 0-9661291-9-9] [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The widely-detested Sha'ban Ja'fari [1921-2006], a sports personality often referred to as "Sha'ban Bi-Mokh" ("Sha'ban the Brainless"), played a key role in reinstating the late Shah to power in the CIA-directed coup of 1953 against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Sarshar writes that she first met Ja'fari in 1986, when a party guest brought him along. Like many Iranians, she was ambivalent about talking to Jafari, but her journalistic instincts took over in deciding that what Jafari had to say was worth recording as part of Iran's history. She approached Jafari, who eventually agreed to talk to Sarshar in 1999, two decades after Iran's Islamic Revolution. Why he waited so long to tell his story is unclear.
Ja'fari ran a club for varzesh-e baastaani ("ancient sport"), a strength & physical-fitness regimen with followers among Iran's uneducated masses, exemplified by people who lived in the economically-disadvantaged South Tehran. To gain Ja'fari's trust, the author promised to truthfully report his views and to help spread information about his beloved varzesh-e baastaani. The book is entirely in the Q&A or interview format, illustrated with many photos from Ja'fari's private collection.
Bearing several photos of Ja'fari and his activities on its front & back covers, the book begins with a 12-page preface, followed by 16 un-numbered chapters (pp. 21-386), 22 short appendices with documents and photos (pp. 387-424), a glossary of varzesh-e baastaani & zoorkhaneh ("house of strength"), the club or gym where it is practiced (pp. 425-442), and a collection of photos related to the sport and its personalities (pp. 443-470).
I enjoyed reading about the life story of Sha'ban Ja'fari in Sarshar's book, which carries some elements of "people's history," the telling of history by ordinary people and how they experienced & lived through transformational events, instead of focusing only on what rulers, politicians, people in power, and intellectuals care to write or say. In the case of Ja'fari, his stories may be self-serving, as he tries to salvage his reputation in the latter stages of his life. Sarshar indicates that she tried to confirm Ja'fari's stories by consulting reference sources and talking to other individuals, but that some of Jafari's claims remain unverified.
Sarshar's Sha'ban Ja'fari is available to read on-line for free.
(3) Book review: Parsa, Asghar (with Ali Parsa), A Child of His Own Character: A Memoir of the National Front (Farzand-e Khesal-e Khishtan), in Persian, Ney Publications, Tehran, 2019, 207 pp. + 16-pp. supplement. [ISBN: 978-964-312-992-7] [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Asghar Parsa [1919-2007], a prominent member and spokesperson of Iran's National Front, was imprisoned after the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup for siding with Prime-Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Other than speakership of the National Front and participation in its reconstitution in the late 1970s, Parsa held positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Parliament's lower house (Majlis).
This 207-pp. book covers Parsa's life in 60 brief essays, mostly 1 to 4 pages long, with titles such as "Birth and Childhood," "Mission to China," "Lunch with the Shah," "National Front Congress," and "Meeting with Hoveyda." The narrative ends in the mid-1980s, when Parsa was arrested by the Islamic authorities, while living in hiding. The 16-pp. supplement, containing material that were disallowed in the original edition, covers his imprisonment and extends to a few years before his death in Tehran.
The book was produced by Asghar Parsa, with help from his son Ali, based on the transcripts of a series of oral interviews conducted by the National Library of Iran, transforming the conversational tone of the interviews to written language and adding material from other sources. The narrative is accompanied by illustrations consisting of personal & official photos and a few newspaper clippings.
Iran's history over the past 12 decades, since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, is quite complicated and an authoritative account is yet to emerge. This is particularly true for the last 4+ decades under Islamic rule. We can glean fragments of the history from books such as Parsa's, which narrate pieces of it from a personal perspective. Reconciling the partial, conflicting, and often self-serving accounts is a task awaiting to be tackled.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Tondo Footbridge, Brussels, Belgium. [Top center] Marvels of engineering: Kolli Hills Road in Tamil Nadu, India. [Top right] Former grain silo converted to student housing in Oslo, Norway (several other remarkable conversion projects). [Bottom left] Flight instruments have certainly changed! [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a rectangle and a circle, find the length of the dashed line. [Bottom right] Judith Butler's The Force of Nonviolence (see the last item below).
(2) The Byzantine Generals Problem revisited at 40: Introduced in 1982 by L. Lamport, R. Shostak, and M. Pease, the problem models failures and intrusions that affect computer systems in the worst possible way from the standpoint of making consistent decisions. Whereas with benign failures (f generals who may not act correctly, but do not try to mislead, as a traitor would do), f + 1 properly-acting generals are capable of reaching consistent decisions. On the other hand, having f traitor (Byzantine) generals requires 2f + 1 non-traitor generals to overcome their plots. In other words, correct functioning of a majority of nodes in a network of computers is sufficient under benign failures, but a 2/3+ supermajority is needed when failures are of the Byzantine kind, with bad nodes deliberately or accidentally acting to mislead the good ones.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Powerful tornado devastates Mississippi, killing at least 24 and injuring dozens more.
- Ellwood Beach in Goleta has lost a lot of sand from recent storms, exposing the bedrock underneath.
- Fearless Iranian woman dances on roller-blades along the shore of Lake Chitgar, Tehran.
- Borowitz Report (humor): Trump claims failure to arrest him is conspiracy to keep him from getting donations.
- Florida labels Michelangelo's "David" as pornography, 500+ years after it was publicly displayed in Florence.
- British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ends its Persian radio service after airing for 82 years.
(4) Book review: Butler, Judith, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Coleen Marlo, Tantor Audio, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The first difficulty in discussing violence and nonviolence is coming up with precise definitions of the words. For example, we have physical violence, which is recognized by most everyone. Ditto for sexual violence. But not everyone agrees that we also have verbal violence, emotional violence, psychological violence, cultural violence, legal violence, and institutional violence. Neglect and financial abuse are also occasionally classified as acts of violence.
Likewise, whether violence can ever be justified is in dispute. For example, should one be allowed to commit violence in self-defense or in defense of loved ones (family, tribe)? If so, where do we draw the line, given that it is possible that both sides in a violent confrontation think they are acting in self-defense? The 2022 Russia-Ukraine war is a good example, as Russia brazenly asserted that it acted in self-defense and Ukraine justifiably made the same claim.
So, in discussing violence and nonviolence, we are faced with a complex ethical and philosophical problem. The path out of the difficulties we face is to view violence as a collective problem instead of an individualistic one. Thinking of the society as a whole, prevents us from harming others in an effort to push harm away from us. An individualistic view makes violence inevitable, as we fight over limited resources or territory, categorizing some lives as less important than others in the process. A collective view pushes us in the direction of eradicating the social conditions that might lead to violence.
In the book's postscript, Butler asserts that defining vulnerable groups to be protected isn't the answer to violence prevention, as "the discourse of 'vulnerable groups' reproduces paternalistic power and gives authority to regulatory agencies with interests and constraints of their own. ... The task, I would suggest, is not to rally as vulnerable creatures or to create a class of persons who identify primarily with vulnerability."
Iran Academia's Persian edition of this book (translated by Mahsa Assadollahnejad) is available on-line for free.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ternary Tower in Shanghai, China. [Top center] A sure sign of spring and one of its many gifts. [Top right] Fort Bard in the Aosta Valley region of Italy. [Bottom left] Portrait of astronomer Christiaan Huygens at a science museum in Leiden, seen through original lenses he designed for his telescopes. [Bottom center] The puzzle of climate change. [Bottom right] Sumela Monastery in Turkey's Trabzon Province.
(2) Pioneering computer scientist William A. Wulf dead at 83: From the days when the field barely existed, Wulf made a career in computing, first in academic research, next as an entrepreneur, then as a policymaker. He later led efforts to reshape and inspire thinking about the conduct, progress, and ethics of engineering.
(3) Lock her up: Republicans saw nothing wrong with this message, repeated endlessly at Trump's campaign rallies. But now that Trump himself faces the prospects of being locked up, we are suddenly a banana republic!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Iran claims to have discovered 8.5 million tons of lithium, the world's 2nd-largest deposit.
- I am a proud liberal, progressive, and woke voter: Positive attributes twisted by the far right into illnesses!
- Oxymoronic observation of the day: The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe.
- Irish blessing: May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 24, 2018: Santa Barbara's March for Our Lives. [2-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 24, 2016: Statements on women by Presidents Obama & Trump, side by side.
(5) Prostate cancer is minimally responsive to most immunotherapy approaches, because of the poor tumor infiltration of lymphocytes: A just-published article in Science Immunology suggests ways of mediating these suppressive effects. [From a report in Science magazine]
(6) Relations between Iran & Azerbaijan are rocky: One point of contention is each nation claiming the 12th-century romantic epic poet Nizami Ganjavi [ca. 1141-1209] as its own. Nizami wrote his poetry predominantly in Persian, but his birthplace, Ganja, is now part of Azerbaijan. In Nizami's days, Ganja was densely populated with Iranians and a small minority of Christians, according to the Armenian historian Kirakos Gandzaketsi [ca. 1200-1271]. Wikipedia characterizes Nizami as a "Persian Sunni Muslim" poet.
(7) Sex-trafficking in the digital age: Back in the old days, parents taught their children not to accept candy from strangers. Today, a stranger need not get close to our children to offer "digital candy," gifts & favors which aren't even detectable by parents. An electronic bus ticket, for example, can enter your home and go directly to your child, without the visible snail-mail envelope that used to serve as a warning. For some data and tips about on-line dangers and countermeasures, see McAfee's "The Secret Online Lives of Teens."
(8) Tasteless joke: In Persian, the same word ("guereftand") can mean "arrested" or "married," depending on the context. On Iran's state TV, two men are talking. One says "khaharam ro guereftand." The other one shows concern for the man's sister having been arrested, before discovering that the other man meant someone married his sister. Not at all funny for hundreds of Iranian women killed, blinded, kidnapped, beaten up, or arrested during recent street protests! [Tweet, in Persian]
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] I have updated the Web pages for courses I'll be teaching over spring 2023: ECE 252B (grad course on computer arithmetic) and ECE 1B (freshman seminar for computer engineering). [Bottom left] Photo by Stefano Perego: See-through church, aka "Reading between the lines," by architects Pieterjan Gijs & Arnout Van Vaerenbergh, 2011, Borgloon, Belgium. [Bottom center] US temperature/elevation sign (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Digital art, on a massive scale: Mahanakhon Tower, Bangkok.
(2) Maintaining US's weird system of measurements is costly: The world communicates in meters, kilograms, and degrees Celsius. We have to use two numbers, one for local communication and another for global compatibility. This sign in California's Death Valley provides a good example. [Image credit: New York Times]
(3) Math's 2023 Abel Prize: The highly prestigious honor has been bestowed on UT Austin Argentinian mathematician Luis Caffarelli "for his seminal contributions to regularity theory for nonlinear partial differential equations, including free-boundary problems and the Monge-Ampere equation."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Drones equipped with metal-detectors can find landmines autonomously and safely.
- Colleges are in a full-blown rebellion against ranking systems, after decades of concerns not being heard.
- Women majoring in STEM fields experience higher rates of sexual violence than their non-STEM peers.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 23, 2016: A surprising laundry-detergent commercial from Pakistan!
- Facebook memory from Mar. 23, 2015: Right to own guns vs. right to be safe from gun violence.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 23, 2012: Wonderful depiction of Washington gridlock, a la M. C. Escher!
(5) A black man steals a pair of sunglasses from a mall in Virginia: He is pursued and shot to death. A white man is still walking free after many years of swindling, fomenting violence, and other illegal acts.
(6) Same old murderous regime in the new Persian calendar year: Islamic Republic of Iran's Revolutionary Guards kill 19-year-old Kurdish man.
(7) Percentage of women in tech leadership positions has fallen from its 33% peak to 28%: The COVID-19 pandemic and the insular nature of the industry have been cited as the main culprits.
(8) The divider: Stanford professor wants to have math taught in California schools in a more inclusive way, but she is a divisive figure and has her critics. Leading math-education expert Jo Boaler, who is helping draft California's latest non-binding math framework, suggests that math shouldn't be only for "math people" and that real-world problem-solving skills should replace memorizing multiplication tables.
(9) Seeing is not believing: You see your child's face and conclude that s/he is happy. But do you see the face as happy or do you collect information about facial features, from which your brain deduces the mood of your child? The Border Between Seeing and Thinking (title of a new book by Philosopher Ned Block) is murky!
(1) Images of the day: [Left] ACM announces the winner of its 2022 Turing Award (see the next item below). [Center] The transformational slogan #WomanLifeFreedom is showing up everywhere, including on fruits! [Right] Jacqueline Saper's memoir, From Miniskirt to Hijab (see the last item below).
(2) Association for Computing Machinery's 2022 Alan M. Turing Award: The highest honor in computing for 2022, along with its $1 million cash prize, has gone to Robert M. (Bob) Metcalf, Emeritus Professor of ECE at University of Texas, Austin, for the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet, a dominant local-networking technology.
Not long ago, Turing Awards used to go predominantly to software and theory people. I am pleased to see engineering/technology contributors also recognized recently. After all, even though the computing discipline is often referred to as "computer science," it is at heart an engineering discipline, which, like all engineering disciplines, does have underlying theories, but, in the end, what matters most is providing the society with functional, reliable, and impactful products & processes.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Math puzzle: See if you can quickly solve x^3 = 303^3 + 404^3 + 505^3.
- Persian-jazz fusion music: Sibarg Ensemble performs "Faryaad." [10-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2021: Street music & dancing under very difficult conditions in Tehran.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2019: On virtues of symmetry in network design and applications.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2019: "The Linda Problem," a test that exposes our hidden prejudices.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 22, 2014: On trees being tempted out of their winter dormancy.
(4) Book review: Saper, Jacqueline, From Miniskirt to Hijab: A Girl in Revolutionary Iran, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Vaneh Assadourian, Blackstone Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Jacqueline (Jaleh) Lavi Saper was born to an Iranian Mizrahi father, a chemical-engineering professor, and a British Ashkenazi mother, working for an airline company. Her parents named her after Jacqueline Kennedy. Saper's memoir, published in book form in 2019, tells her life story in five parts, bearing the titles "Hope," "Fear," "Adapt," "Veil," and "Resolve."
By now, dozens of memoirs and historical-fiction books covering how Iran's Islamic Revolution affected men's, women's, and families' lives have been published. They cover more or less the same key events on their timelines: Khomeini's pronouncements from exile in Najaf & Paris, his return to Iran after the Shah had left, the mullahs consolidating their power, mass executions, a yes/no referendum, held in an atmosphere of fear, for establishing an Islamic Republic, subjugation of women and ethnic/religious minorities, the devastating Iran-Iraq war, emergence of a police state, and rampant incompetence & corruption. In between these milestones, which serve to connect the narrative to history, are vastly different details of how each person or family navigated Iran's transformed society and politics.
Saper covers her days as a Jewish schoolgirl in Tehran's Ettefagh School, while spending every summer with her mother's family in England, the pre- and post-Islamic-Revolution turmoil, her marriage, relocation to Shiraz, which the family considered relatively safer, and eventual emigration to the US. Landing in Houston, Texas, and settling in Chicago, Saper earned a business degree, attained the CPA designation, and became an adjunct faculty member, first teaching business courses, but later being asked to teach about Iran's history, culture, people, and government.
Writing her memoir after the death of her father was Saper's way of transferring to her children and grandchildren the family history and information about their ancestral homeland, along with the tragic irony that of the three parts of a popular pre- and post-revolutionary chant, "Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic," only the first half of the third part materialized. The book has won accolades, earning 4.6 stars on Amazon (based on 123 ratings) and 4.1 stars on GoodReads (376 ratings, 50 reviews).
The audiobook's reader, Vaneh Assadourian, does an excellent job of conveying the narrative's events and moods. As a Persian speaker, she pronounces names and the cultural/political slogans, written in both Persian & English, perfectly. She also reads some passages the way an Iranian would speak English, to show that the statements were either in Persian or were uttered by an Iranian with imperfect English. I recommend the audio version of the book over its print edition.
The author has a Web page and social-media presence on
Facebook,
Twitter, and
Instagram.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A statue in Mashhad, Iran: Its message is anyone's guess! [Center] This is why we have to champion the cause of women in STEM: We have made progress since Marie Curie was denied formal college education, but equity isn't at hand yet. [Right] Labor of love: Tricycle built by an Australian man to allow his disabled wife to enjoy bike rides.
(2) Have we learned anything from George Floyd's death? A handcuffed black man is pinned to the floor for 11 minutes at a Virginia psychiatric hospital by 7 deputies and several hospital staff, dying minutes later.
(3) A commentary, in Persian, on how Nowruz traditions have survived attacks by many enemies of the Persian history and culture: It remains a beloved tradition across Southwest Asia and North Africa, despite Stalin denouncing it (later retreating by allowing its celebration as Farmers or Nature Day), Ataturk demolishing Kurdish haft-seen spreads, the Taliban banning it, and Iran's ruling mullahs hijacking it as an Islamic tradition (complete with Arabic prayers), while ignoring or changing its main symbols. [3-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- University of Illinois scientists build an organic computer from ~80,000 repurposed mouse stem cells.
- Wiring diagram of the grain-of-salt-size fruit fly larva brain reveals incredible complexity.
- My Nowruz poem, originally posted on this page on Mar. 19, 2023, as reposted on Instagram. [Image]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2021: Nowruz greeting card from 102 years ago.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2020: Mullahs dissing Nowruz makes Iranians adamant to celebrate it.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2018: A prediction coming true (Khamenei & Trump toppled by women).
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2016: Actress Sally Field, chiming on love in your 60s and 70s.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 21, 2014: Love does not hurt; loneliness hurts, rejection hurts, envy hurts, ...
(5) The colors of North-American movies: University of Waterloo researchers analyzed 29,000 films released from 1960 to 2019 to discover dominant colors usage across different decades and in various genres.
(6) Art Projection at UCSB's Art, Design & Architecture Museum: The program, entitled #WomanLifeFreedom, features 30 digital artworks by anonymous international artists responding to systemic gender inequity and discrimination in Iran, projected on the Museum's facade from 8:00 to 11:00 PM on Tuesday, May 9, 2023.
(7) Sabotaging Jimmy Carter's re-election: New evidence confirms a secret deal between Ronald Reagan and Ayatollah Khomeini, brokered by Arab intermediaries, to delay the release of US hostages until after Reagan took office as president, when the US would offer Iran a better deal. Arms were shipped to Iran shortly after the hostages' release, and this was years before the Iran-Contra affair.
(8) Leaked transcripts of a meeting of Iran's Supreme Leader with IRGC commanders: Most of the 58 top- & mid-level generals and security officials present gave speeches over the course of 4 hours, warning Khamenei that forces under their command are demoralized, many refusing orders to shoot civilian protesters.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Counting down the hours to the start of the year 1402 in Persian Calendar at 2:24:28 PM PDT on Monday, March 20, 2023: Morning and evening views of my haft-seen spread and my Persian poem celebrating Nowruz & the Persian New Year (2-minute video recitation). [Bottom left] Today's Nowruz celebration in front of the historic Santa Barbara County Courthouse, with a haft-seen spread, music, dancing, tea, and sweets (2-minute video). [Bottom center] Iranian women's-rights activist Sepideh Qoliyan re-arrested after removing her headscarf and shouting slogans against Iran's Supreme Leader upon discharge. [Bottom right] Snow-capped mountains to the north of UCSB in mid-March, 2023 (credit: @zee.photogram).
(2) About my poem in celebration of Nowruz, spring, and the Persian New Year: 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. This year, the initial letters of the poem's verses spell its Persian title, "Nowruz." You can read my previous Nowruz poems and a few other pieces on my poetry page.
As was the case for the last three springs, bringing myself to be cheerful wasn't easy, given the continued fight by Iranians, women in particular, to claim their rights and the year-long senseless war in Ukraine. A rough English translation follows.
Justice and freedom descend on every borough Thanks to women, we have songs, life, and joy
A spring breeze blows from the cypress grove Bringing with it the story of ultimate affection
The beautiful and fragrant hyacinth has arrived The chirping nightingale is flying all around
Goodwill emanates from blossoms and fruits Hope is in the air, of every township and village
Do play the fiddle, harp, and bugle everywhere Reassure Shirin that a Farhad-like love is here
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Quote of the day: "Our character is more evident by our choices than by our abilities." ~ Rita Schiano
- Prominent Sunni Muslim cleric says Iran can't be ruled by one ethnic group or one religion.
- A grandmother, imprisoned in Iran for her Baha'i faith, starts her second decade in prison.
- Persian poetry: A humorous poem with political barbs against Iran's Islamic regime. [1-minute video]
- Resharing in honor of Nowruz a wonderful piece of Kurdish music from last month. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 19, 2021: "Nowruz Waltz," a piece of music from the Caspian-Sea region.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 19, 2016: My mom's haft-seen, remembered on this first Nowruz without her.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 19, 2010: Nowruz greetings in verse, from masters of Persian poetry.
(4) On International Women's Day, the police in Georgia (former Soviet Republic) greets women on the streets: Just like the police in Iran, but they are not holding guns or nightsticks! [2-minute video]
(5) South-Korean researchers demonstrate the proof-of-concept for a miniature surgical robot traveling autonomously through an artery to a treatment area and safely getting back.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Spring's is in the air: Jasmines. [Center] Socrates Think Tank talk (see the next item below). [Right] Nowruz get-together with a few UCSB colleagues at Santa Barbara's Zaytoon Restaurant.
(2) Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Hesam Abedini (Soka U. of America) talked on Wed., Mar. 15, 2023, under the title "Intercultural Music in Iran." Intercultural music is different from simple fusion music, as it incorporates and transfers to the listener more than mere sounds. I joined the Zoom talk near its end due to an IEEE meeting, but decided to offer this abbreviated post to introduce the speaker and some of his ideas for those who might be interested in pursuing them. [Speaker's home page]
Somewhat surprisingly, jazz and Persian-jazz fusion music thrived in Iran, after many other kinds of music were banned or restricted. Artists in this domain include Hamzeh Yeganeh, Mahan Mirarab, Golnar Shahyar, Hafez Modirzadeh, and the Sibarg Ensemble. One reason is that many jazz tunes do not have lyrics, so the issues of "troublesome" lyrics and singing by women do not arise. Another reason is Islamists viewing jazz as the music of oppressed Blacks in America, so the genre sits well with their anti-American sentiments.
[Sample music from Sibarg Ensemble (10-minute video)]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Int'l Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin of Russia for war crimes.
- Khamenei's dirty revenge: Restrictions are applied in Iran to defiant anti-regime artists & other celebrities.
- A 6-minute review of Iran's events in the Persian calendar year 1401, which will end on Monday, March 20.
- Special effects with babies! [2-minute video]
- Big orchestra comes to life with a wonderful piece of rhythmic music. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 18, 2018: The Supreme Leader's race against time (cartoon).
(4) The chickens have come home to roost: Economic and fiscal policies do not have immediate impacts, but may take years to affect the society. Trump-era deregulation and rollback of oversights are now showing their effects. Safety regulations for trains were rolled back and small-to-midsize banks were exempted from certain stress tests. The Biden administration is burdened with cleaning up the mess.
(5) The Nowruz anthem: This simple song is widely recognized by Iranians, because it is played every year, moments before the spring equinox, to welcome the Persian New Year. But few people know the song's history or its composer, Ali Akbar Mehdipour Dehkordi. He's seen in this 2-minute video playing the sorna instrument.
(6) For last-minute Nowruz shoppers: Sadaf Foods has teamed up with Ralphs stores to display haft-seen spreads and offer Nowruz-related supplies. [Announcement]
(7) Rainstorms cause UCSB's telephone system to "pocket-dial": In the early morning hours of March 16, 2023, I received six phone calls from UCSB numbers, beginning at 2:15 AM, which I did not answer. Upon getting out of bed, I inquired from our campus's Communications Services about possible hacking of the phone system. It turned out that water intrusion from heavy rains had damaged the phone system, causing spurious phone calls in some cases. In two of the six calls, long voice messages were left which consisted of white noise!
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (the Beatles): Knocked out by Muhammad Ali in 1964. [Top center] Throwback Thursday (the personal computer that was way ahead of its time): In 1975, Xerox's Alto was already using a graphical user interface, overlapping windows, menus, networking, and what-you-see-is-what-you-get displays, just like modern PCs (from IEEE Spectrum, March 2023). [Top right] Throwback Thursday (the secret history of women in coding): Computer programming had a much better gender balance in the 1950s than it does today (credit: The New York Times). [Bottom left & center] IEEE CCS tech talk (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Inflation in Iran: What used to buy you a new car 43 years ago is now barely enough for buying a plastic ewer for your bathroom.
(2) Farhang Foundation & Craft Contemporary have chosen the team of Roshanak Ghezelbash and Hoda Rahbarnik to curate "ART IRAN: Falling into Language" exhibition: It opens on Jan. 27 and will run through May 3, 2024. The artists presented will include Golnar Adili, Parastou Forouhar, Taraneh Hemami, Elnaz Javani, Maryam Palizgir, Hadieh Shafie, Shadi Yousefian, and the team of Neda Moridpour & Pouya Afshar.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Global stock markets tumble due to fear of bank failures: Bank stocks & bonds take a major beating.
- Women across Iran are defying compulsory hijab laws: 5-minute NPR report.
- Homa Sarshar, journalist & author, awarded Stanford University's 13th Bita Prize for Persian Arts. [Image]
- Iran's security forces target protesters' faces with pellet guns, blinding them in many instances.
- Iranian regional music and dance: "Termeh va Atlas" [2-minute video]
- Mickey Mouse explains Nowruz traditions and sends Persian New Year greetings. [2-minute video]
(4) CS Summit at UCSB's Corwin Pavilion: Held all afternoon on Wed., Mar. 15, 2023, the Summit featured capstone-project presentations, awards ceremony, lunch, evening reception, and a lecture by David Hinke (UCSB Class of 1978), entitled "Computer Science Learnings for 45 Years." Hinke had only two slides, which packed a lot of practical wisdom. This 54-minute lecture of his on YouTube covers many of the same points.
(5) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Kristen Sneddon, Santa Barbara City College Professor and Member of SB City Council, spoke tonight under the title "Sustainability and Resilience: Pedagogy to Policy." There were ~35 attendees.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientific evidence for warming of Earth's climate system is unequivocal. Faced with the evidence of a rapidly-changing world, it is natural to wonder what can we actually do. As a scientist and member of SB City Council, Dr. Sneddon is in a unique position to present both sides of the debate: the science and policies that can be implemented practically within the constraints on a city's budgetary and jurisdictional constraints.
The focus of the talk was on resilience and sustainability. Over the past five years, our region has experienced historic heat, drought, fire, debris flows, floods, and even snow. It was refreshing to hear about how the City of Santa Barbara is planning for a rapidly-changing climate in terms of energy choices, water management, sea-level rise, diversion of organics, carbon neutrality, climate action, resilience planning, and climate justice.
[Speaker's SBCC Web site]
[IEEE CCS event page]
[IEEE CCS Technical Talks page]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] 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). Here's an old Persian song for the occasion. [Center] Math puzzles: Fifteen geometric area-identities to prove or disprove. [Right] Happy pi day: March 14 (3/14).
(2) Math puzzle: Two 6-sided fair die are rolled until a sum of 7 or 8 appears. Let p/q be the fraction, in lowest terms, that 8 was rolled instead of 7. Find p + q.
(3) The double-whammy of inflation & bank failures: Normally, the feds would respond forcefully to stubborn inflationary pressures (6% annual rate, through February), but recent bank failures may limit their options.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US Justice Department to investigate the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank for possible illegal insider sales.
- Home cooking/heating/cooling & vehicles account for half the total energy consumed in the US. [Chart]
- Oldie Persian song "Yeki Yeh Pool-e Khorous": Javad Badizadeh, composer; Fereshteh Farmand, vocalist.
- Traditional Kurdish dance song, from Farhang Foundation's Persian New Year celebration in 2016.
(5) The Great Green Wall of China: Alarmed by Gobi Desert's southward expansion, which threatens China's relatively small amount of arable land, the country has been building a Great Green Wall, a vast forest of 100 billion trees, which is 2800 miles (4500 km) long and up to 900 miles (1500 km) wide, as a barrier. Assessments of the 7-decade project vary, some sources hailing it as a great success already and others deeming it a colossal failure. [Wikipedia article]
(6) Out-of-control capitalism: After decades of observation and many counter-examples, some people, including many in high political & economic positions, still believe that profit maximization will solve all societal problems, with no need for regulations or oversight. There are way more examples of socioeconomic disasters brought about by greedy businesses (e.g., 2008 US financial crisis and 50,000 deaths in the recent Turkey/Syria earthquakes) than there are success stories (e.g., smartphones and mRNA vaccines). Widespread applications and possible abuses of AI technology have raised the stakes, and we must act now!
(7) On challenges of electrifying homes: A smart, all-electric home uses a lot more electric power, requiring an upgrade of the wire connection to the utility company's distribution network from ~100 A to ~200 A. This is a costly conversion, which, in most cases, must be paid for by the homeowner. Smart electric panels are being designed and marketed which make this upgrade unnecessary. They rely on load management to keep the power drawn within safe limits. In addition, most homeowners need assistance in navigating the various options and analyzing the cost-benefits of electrification for their specific usage profile. Such services are being set up, as exemplified by Cool California's Household Energy Calculator.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] World population distribution & trends (see the next item below). [Center] Three-quarters of carbon emissions can be cut with existing technology (see item 3 below). [Right] The 2023 Academy Awards ceremony was held tonight (see the last item below).
(2) World population distribution & trends: In rough numbers, there are 1B people in each of three continents (the Americas, Europe, Africa), with the remaining 4B of the world's 7B people being in Asia. However, given that the Asian part of Russia is sparsely populated and accounting for southwestern Asia, the circle on this map holds a majority of the world's population. Alarmingly, it is projected that by the end of the current century, the circle will have 6B people and Africa will undergo two population doublings to 4B, while Europe and the Americas will remain at around 1B due to very low growth. Taking half of the Americas and half of Europe as constituting Western-style democracies, they will hold about 8% of the world's population by the end of this century, around half of the current fraction.
(3) On the future of clean energy: In very rough terms, about 3/4 of our carbon emissions can be cut through existing technology, that is, producing clean energy and electrifying transportation, homes, & industry, the latter partially, because some of it is a lot harder to do. This 95-minute lecture + Q&A by Dr. Leah Stokes, entitled "Our Clean Energy Future," contains a lot of useful information.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Seattle-based Iranian podcaster & her husband, both software engineers, killed at home by crazed stalker.
- Anatomy of a bank takeover by FDIC: What happens when a bank fails? [12-minute NPR podcast]
- Quotable: "Don't break someone's heart; they have only one. Break their bones; they have 206 of them."
- Facebook memory from Mar 12, 2020: A Western wedding tradition worth reconsidering.
- Facebook memory from Mar 12, 2017: Farhang Foundation's Nowruz celebration at UCLA.
- Facebook memory from Mar 12, 2014: When Sharif U. Tech. students re-created Ellen's Oscars-night selfie.
(5) A country which represses and kills Uyghur Muslims brokers a friendship accord between two Islamic countries, each of which claims to represent all Muslims and to have their best interests at heart!
[Tweet]
(6) Oscars 2023: The 95th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, was held at Dolby Theater in Los Angeles tonight. The film "Everything Everywhere All at Once" won in 7 of the 11 categories in which it was nominated. Here are the honorees in key categories.
- Best actress: Michelle Yeoh for "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
- Best supporting actress: Jamie Lee Curtis for "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
- Best actor: Brendan Fraser for "Whale"
- Best supporting actor: Ke Huy Quan for "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
- Best director: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert for "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
- Best motion picture: "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
- Best international feature film: "All Quiet on the Western Front" (Germany)
- Best documentary feature film: "Navalny"
- Best original screenplay: "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
- Best adapted screenplay: "Women Talking"
- Best original score: "All Quiet on the Western Front"
- Best original song: "Naatu Naatu" from "RRR"
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Special #WomensDay program (see the last item below). [Center & right] Tonight, I attended the spring concert of UCSB's Middle East Ensemble at Lotte Lehman Concert Hall. The program had much Iranian content due to the proximity of the Persian New Year (Nowruz), coming up on March 20, 2023. Due to ongoing events in Iran, the music wasn't as lively as in previous years. The following samples come with Persian lyrics and their English translations. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3] [Video 4] [Video 5]
(2) Today, I attended a screening of Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film "Spartacus" at UCSB's Pollock Theater: This event, which featured a 4K digital transfer of the 1991 restoration of the film, was accompanied by a critical and historical introduction by Carsey-Wolf Center Assistant Director Tyler Morgenstern. [Trailer]
(3) "Celebration of International Women's Day & #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution": This was the title of today's event, organized by Voices of Women for Change. There were ~70 Zoom attendees. The event was also livestreamed on YouTube, with the recording available for later viewing.
France-based sociologist Dr. Chahla Chafiq, author of several books, including Islam Politique, Sexe et Genre: A la Lumiere de l'Experience Iranienne (2015) and Le Rendez-Vous Iranien de Simone de Beauvoir (2019), presented an overview of Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom (WLF) Revolution.
Dr. Chafiq began by observing that the WLF revolution has affected and impressed women around the world. French women, in particular, are fully supportive of Iranian women's demands in their fight against patriarchy & misogyny. The WLF revolution is centered on women's demands, but it is not carried out by women alone.
Dr. Chafiq criticized Iranian intellectuals, including a number of women, for seeing women is almost the same way as Islamists do. They also did a disservice by reducing the West to imperialism, closing their eyes on all the cultural and political developments that have brought democracy and human rights to many parts of the world.
The ongoing WLF revolution is unique in that it brings together the fruits of many previous movements and uprisings that were never fully connected together. WLF is all-encompassing. It is carried out primarily by young women, while incorporating the efforts and experiences of all prior generations.
After the talk, five exceptional Iranians-in-diaspora were honored in an awards ceremony for their contributions to women's empowerment: Human/women's-rights activists Ladan Boroumand, Roya Boroumand, & Mahnaz Matine, author/scholar Farzaneh Milani, and singer/songwriter Golazin (Gola). Each honoree spoke briefly about her activities. Videos of Gola's performances of "Haghame" and "Betars az Man" were also shown.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The new, improved Lake Tahoe. [Center] Persian poetry: A wonderful couplet from humorist Hadi Khorsandi. [Right] Today's workshop on UCSB's 2035 Initiative (see the last item below).
(2) Court proceedings in a murder case, a la Fox News: The prosecution cherry-picked 2 minutes of security camera footage that showed my client stabbing the victim. I am in possession of hours of video showing my client going to work, attending meetings, having lunch, and playing catch with his son, all peacefully!
(3) Saudi Arabia's statement on 9/11, inspired by Fox News: The American media is biased against Saudi citizens. They repeatedly show planes hitting the Twin Towers and the resulting carnage. They never show footage of the planes taking off, passengers talking to each other & drinking beverages, ...
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- China brokers a deal for Iran and Saudi Arabia to resume diplomatic relations.
- Iran's five most-wanted criminals: Their crime? Dancing on the street on International Women's Day.
- Mar10 is designated as Mario Day, for the video-game character. Get it?
- Iranian regional music: A lively song from Mazandaran Province on the Caspian Coast. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 10, 2011: The day Japan was devastated by an 8.9 quake & 13-foot tsunami.
(5) US's West and East Coasts besieged by severe storms: California is seeing a significant amount of rain and snow, the latter posing major danger if it melts quickly under heavy rainfall. Thirteen snow-bound residents have died so far in San Bernardino, northeast of Los Angeles.
(6) Persian music from 4000 BCE: An anthropologist who was also a musician spent years to decode the markings on a clay tablet to reconstruct a piece of music that was played in the Ilam region ~6000 years ago.
(7) Today's UCSB ECE Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Urbashi Mitra (USC Gordon S. Marshall Professor in Engineering) spoke under the title "Digital Cousins: Ensemble Learning for Large-Scale Wireless Networks." Unknown or time-varying dynamics make it quite challenging to design optimized policies for large scale wireless networks. Modeling via Markov decision processes induces a large state space, which complicates policy optimization. Dr. Mitra's research deals with strategies exploiting graph signal processing for network optimization, including new representations for wireless network behavior. Her team has proposed a novel on-line/off-line Q-learning methodology based on the new graph representations, which allow for the efficient creation of synthetic Markov decision processes, or digital cousins, that accurately capture network behavior without the need for excessive trajectory sampling of the actual network. [Images]
(8) UCSB IEE Emerging Technologies Review: Launched in 2016, ETR is an annual program of UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency. This year's event, which is focused on UCSB's 2035 Initiative, kicked off yesterday with a special lecture by Dr. Jay Hakes outlining the long history of energy conservation efforts in the US.
The three panels, entitled "Beyond Efficiency to Electrification in California," spanned all morning, today.
- From Efficiency to Electrification: Ari Matusiak, David Hochschild, Sonia Aggarwal
- Cutting Edge Electrification Tech: Hannah Bascom, Samantha Ortega, Vince Romanin, D. R. Richardson
- Advancing Electrification Policy in California: Le-Quyen Nguyen, Merrian Borgeson, Leah Stokes
The meaning of "electrification" has changed over time. It used to mean, and still does in some developing regions of the world, providing electric power to villages and towns that don't have it. In the context of today's event, electrification means making home appliances (stoves, heaters), vehicles (trains, buses, private cars), and other energy-intensive systems fully electrical.
The entire event was recorded and the videos will be made available through UCSB IEE Web site.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: The first class of Iranian women to graduate from college (Tehran's Daanshsaraa-ye Aali, late 1930s; Wikipedia). [Top center] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a unit-diameter circle and two overlapping squares, find the green area of overlap. [Top right] A Tribute to the Brave Women of Iran: Panel discussion, organized by ALL 4 IRAN, with the following participants: Nazanin Afshin-Jam Mackay, Mehrak Hazaveh (moderator), Azam Jangravi, Jenna Sudds, Najmeh Tansaz, Anita Vandenbeld (126-minute recording). [Bottom left] Farhang Foundation reveals its Nowruz 2023 banner design in support of #WomanLifeFreedom, by illustrator Rashin Kheiriyeh. [Bottom center] Observance of the International Women's Day in front of UCSB Library included a large contingent of Iranians bringing attention to the plight of Iranian women (Video 1) (Video 2). [Bottom right] Special lecture by Dr. Jay Hakes at UCSB's Institute for Eneregy Efficiency (see the last item below).
(2) "Stranger at the Gate": An Oscar-nominate documentary short about a US Marine with PTSD who sets out to mass-murder Muslims at a mosque, but is transformed when he is received with warmth by his targets.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Orwell: "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations."
- Pop music: A beautiful solo-guitar rendition of "Hotel California."
- A multilingual rendition of an old song that was known as "Shaneh" in its Persian version. [3-minute video]
- A wonderful street act, with a marionette playing "The Sound of Silence" on cello.
(4) How good is the DBLP bibliographic database of computer science journals? This article, published in the March 2023 issue of IEEE Computer, concludes that, "DBLP provides decent coverage of CS and 'CS-adjacent' journals, at least when considering WOS [Web of Science], with the 'journals left out' presenting lower impact metrics compared to those selected for indexing by DBLP. At the same time, a significant portion of CS and CS-related literature from Scopus is not indexed by DBLP, and a nonnegligible portion of DBLP's indexed journals seem to have a weak relation (if any) to CS."
(5) "Historical Perspectives on Efficiency, Electrification, and Climate Change: What the Past Tells Us About the Future": This was the title of today's special lecture at UCSB's Institute for Energy Efficiency, as a prelude to tomorrow's workshop, featuring three panels, under the title "Emerging Technologies Review: Beyond Efficiency to Electrification in California."
Presidential & Energy Historian Dr. Jay Hakes, author of the 2008 book A Declaration of Energy Independence: How Freedom from Foreign Oil Can Improve National Security, Our Economy, and Our Environment, the 2021 book Energy Crises: Nixon, Ford, Cater, and Tough Choices in the 1970s, and a forthcoming book dealing with the origins of the climate-change debate in America, talked about his experiences as the Director of the US Energy Information Administration and in various posts under Presidents Carter and Obama. He highlighted the 1975 CAFE standards, enacted in response to the oil crisis of the early 1970s, as a big jump in energy efficiency. Hakes observed that California is on the forefront of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability policies. He also chimed in on climate change, asserting that whether or not the damage is reversible won't be known until 2030. Technology will play a key role in curbing emissions and in limiting the extent of warming.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Int'l Women's Day (see the next item below). [Center] On the occasion of #WomensDay, I dedicate this poem of mine to the fearless, adorable women of Iran (2-minute recitation). [Right] Socrates Think Tank lecture in honor of Women's Day (see the last item below).
(2) This 112th edition of #WomensDay, with the theme #EmbraceEquity, must be observed more vigorously, given forces in the East & West that are pushing to reverse much of the gains on gender equality and in view of women assuming an outsize role in social movements worldwide, particularly in Iran (#WomanLifeFreedom).
(3) "#WomanLifeFreedom Is a Universal Message": This was the title of tonight's Socrates Think Tank Zoom lecture in Persian by Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Cal State Northridge). There were ~120 attendees.
That we lack democracy in Iran's governance structure can be attributed, in no small part, to cultural factors. Democracy in society is linked to democracy in families. As long as women and children have no say within families, it would be misguided to expect democracy at the level of national government.
The #WomanLifeFreedom (WLF) movement is different from Iran's previous sociopolitical movements. The first part of the movement, which was like thunder and lightning, may have passed, but the movement's nurturing rain continues. Iranian women became very active ever since, shortly after the formation of the Islamic Republic, and a few days before the first Women's Day in the new regime, Khomeini declared that hijab would be mandatory for women, turning the celebratory event into an occasion for mourning and protest.
Mahsa Amini's death after she was roughed up and detained for showing some hair from under her headscarf was a spark, an event that awakened Iranians, much like Americans were awakened to racial injustice by the death of George Floyd. Mahsa, a young woman, a Kurd, and a Sunni Muslim, was an apt symbol of opposition to the iron-clad rule of old, patriarchal Shi'i clerics. This may be the first time in history that a major movement is sparked by women and in support of women's rights. Iran's previous uprisings were economic, trade/labor/union-related, or political in nature, but the current one is primarily cultural. It seeks to change social structures that enchain women and prohibit everyone from living a peaceful, happy life.
Islamists believe that they have to control every part of a woman's body and her entire life. According to mullahs, every part of a woman's body has the same arousing effect as her genitals. Whereas a man needs to cover only his midsection, with a swimming trunk, say, a woman should be covered from head to toe. Some more-liberal clerics allow a woman's face and hands to show, but no other parts. Over the years, Iranian women did not take these edicts seriously and gradually adjusted their clothing and headscarves to show more of their features, in rather stylish ways.
The cultural character of the WLF movement led to art and music playing major roles in motivating and guiding the protests. Shervin Hajipour's viral song "Baraa-ye" cleverly and artistically enumerated the people's demands: Freedom to dance, to laugh, to kiss, to display affection, to breathe clean air, to enjoy a healthy environment, and much more. These demands cannot be met within the framework of the oxymoronic Islamic Republic, in which people are viewed as incapable of making their own life decisions and must follow the guidance of a cleric, as if they were minors or mentally incompetent.
Over the years, many groups endeavored to change the situation by advocating for reforms within the framework of Islamic Republic's constitution, but all such efforts were dismissed by the Supreme Leader and his cronies, who imprisoned, exiled, or sidelined many of the reform advocates.
Finally, people had it with the absolute dictatorship of the Supreme Leader in collusion with Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Iran's Generation Z grew up with technology. Gen-Z youth were exposed to satellite TV, the Internet, and social media. They also lived in smaller families with 1-2 children, thus receiving more attention and resources.
Despite the presence of local and field leaders, the lack of visible leadership and organizational structure limits the scope of protests. Today, hierarchical/centralized leadership is frowned upon. People prefer distributed, diversified, inclusive leadership. Even though some people call the current movement a revolution, this view is rather simple-minded. Some cracks and discord have become evident in the regime's leadership, but the brutal security apparatus is still in control and able to quash much of the protests.
The regime has admitted to arresting many thousands of protesters (even more than observers had estimated). Many of those arrested have been "pardoned," even though they had not committed any crimes. But the regime's prisons are still full of activists, journalists, and members of intelligentsia.
Protests have calmed down for now, but there is definitely no going back to Islamic Republic's preferred status quo. People have been emboldened to overtly protest against compulsory hijab and other forms of oppression. Cutting of hairs, which is an ancient form of protest in Iran and other countries, became a highly visible and effective symbol of discontent. We also see many other innovations in the way protests are organized and carried out.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Let a beautiful spring-like day begin: The full moon over the western sky of Goleta, California, 5:45 AM, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. [Top center] AI-assisted artistic depiction of Iranian women's fight against tyranny. [Top right] The Romans had very strong concrete: Rome's Colosseum had a part of its outer structure destroyed in a 14th-century earthquake, but much of it has lasted for ~2000 years. Think about it! The expected lifespan of a modern NFL stadium is ~30 years. So, there is no chance that 41st-century tourists in the US will be visiting a 21st-century football stadium! [Bottom left] UCSB's brand-new classroom building: Called the Interactive Learning Pavilion, the new building will become available for use in spring, and I will be teaching a class in ILP 1203. ILP classrooms are supposed to have state-of-the-art facilities, and I can't wait to try them out! [Bottom center] Piet Oudolf's Valley, a 75000 square-meter mixed-use project, is located in Amsterdam's Zuidas business district. [Bottom right] Snow in Southern California!
(2) Math puzzle: In a quadrilateral, two opposite sides are of lengths 5 & 6, a third side is of length 7, and the two diameters are perpendicular to each other. What is the length of the fourth side?
(3) Stand-up comedy: This Finnish guy makes insightful and super-funny observations about the English language. Here are his takes on "ass" meaning more than just "butt" and on several words, including "no."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Similarities between Russia & Iran in conducting poison-gas attacks against political opponents are striking!
- The Grammar Nazi: Super-funny language humor. [3-minute video]
- A surprising variety of nested Russian dolls. [1-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 6, 2018: My remote lecture at Razi University of Kermanshah, Iran.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 6, 2017: "In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue."
- Facebook memory from Mar. 6, 2013: The electronics age has made lying a lot more difficult.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 7, 2018: Up-close and personal view of majestic birds in flight.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 7, 2012: How Iran's territory shrank over the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 7, 2010: A memorable conference trip to Guadalajara, Mexico.
(5) The growing influence of industry on AI research: After decades of coexistence in academia and industrial research centers, the balance of artificial intelligence activity & innovation is tilting toward industry.
(6) Presentation dos and don'ts: Armando Roca Suarez gives helpful tips on how to prepare presentation slides so that attendees with ADHD can process and understand them. Slides full of text are out. Diagrams and compelling stories are in. IMHO, these suggestions are useful for all attendees, not just those with ADHD.
(7) A breath of fresh air: This senior Shi'i cleric praises Reza Shah for a solidly-founded system of justice and chides Islamic Republic authorities for their nonsensical/inconsistent statements about mass-poisonings of Iranian schoolgirls. [12-minute video, in Persian] [See also my blog item 1 on Monday 2023/03/06]
(8) Getting ready for Nowruz: I am preparing to set up my haft-seen ahead of the arrival of the Persian New Year at 2:24:27 PM PDT on Monday, March 20, 2023. Nowruz traditions include setting up a spread with seven items whose Persian names begin with the sound "S" (the seven S's). US-based Sadaf food company sent me an ad to let me know that they carry all 7 items. I tend to use substitutes for hard-to-find items such as Samanu. Examples of substitutes include Sekkeh (coin), Sonbol (hyacinth), and Saa'at (watch/clock).
(1) Conspiracy theories: Iran's mullahs and their official mouthpieces (state TV, newspapers, other media) are promoting different conspiracy theories about the poisoning of schoolgirls across the country. They don't even try to be consistent in their pronouncements, blaming foreign enemies, Great Britain, teachers, and the #WomanLifeFreedom movement for the evil deeds. Some sources claim that there is no poisoning at all, offering the explanation that impressionable young girls have succumbed to mass hysteria! Meanwhile, schoolgirls and their moms are arrested when they gather to protest or demand action. (#Poisonings)
(2) Science at Sundance: This is the title of a 9-page special feature in the March 2, 2023, issue of Science magazine discussing science-themed films at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
- Poacher: Wildlife crime fighters expose the largest ivory ring in Indian history
- Deep Rising: Warns about dangers of mining metallic nodules from the abyssal plains of the Pacific Ocean
- The Longest Goodbye: Plans for, and challenges of, human travel to Mars
- The Pod Generation: Envisions a believable future of AI-mediated comforts
- Fantastic Machine: Sprawling history of camera technology and image-making
- Is There Anybody Out There? Pushes back against the notion that disabilities are problems to be solved
- The Eternal Memory: Poignant & intimate portrait of a couple facing the challenges of Alzheimer's disease
(3) Fights over patents and technical credit: Ever since the "invention" of the stored-program digital computer, people have argued over who deserves credit for which innovation in the world of digital technology. Inventors file for patents to reserve a spot in the "Hall of Credits" and to benefit financially, should an idea move to the industrial stage and appear in actual products. Of course, being issued a patent is no guarantee for either fame or fortune. Patents are routinely challenged in courts and, more often than not, are deemed faulty/invalid, because the inventor or patent filer missed or failed to cite "prior art," knowledge that already existed at the time the patent application was made.
The "invention" of the digital computer itself led to significant fights over who should get credit. I have used "invention" in quotation marks, because ideas from many different people over several decades, refined and combined, led to the stored-program computer, what we mean by "computer" today. However, according to the 2003 book Who Invented the Computer: The Legal Battle that Changed Computing History (by Alice Rowe Burks), a legal battle in the early 1970s established the little-known physics/math professor John Vincent Atanasoff as the "inventor."
A similar battle played out over the notion of RISC (reduced instruction-set computer) in the 1980s. IBM did much work in this area in connection with its 801 system and acquired at least 11 patents, 6 on hardware and 5 on software topics. Later, a computer science professor at UC Berkeley, David Patterson, made formal presentations on the benefits of RISC architectures, in terms of design simplicity & performance benefits, and published many papers on the subject, attaching his name indelibly to the RISC idea. In this 1988 piece, "RISCy Patents," Patterson reviews the fights over RISC patents and claims of credit.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The leaning twin towers of Paris: The V-shaped Tours Duo skyscrapers, designed by Jean Nouvel. [Center] Four of the many artistic memes honoring Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom movement. [Right] I love my LED lamp, with multiple lighting modes (candle, blinking, and more) and a remote control.
(2) "The Feminist Test We Keep Failing": A 22-minute podcast in the "Lost Women of Science" series that discusses "the Finkbeiner Test," a checklist of what to avoid in writing the profile of a successful women in the media. It includes not mentioning the husband's job, her childcare arrangements, or how she was the first women to do or be 'X.'
I tend to agree with one of the discussants that we should not over-emphasize a scientist's gender and gender-related issues. However, rather than avoiding certain aspects of a woman scientist's life, we should make an effort to discuss those aspects for male scientists as well. In other words, we should present scientists of both sexes as human beings, whose profiles include scientific expertise & contributions, along with personal interests & relationships. This is already being done in other domains. An athlete's or actor's profile, for example, usually includes not just his/her career, but also personal interests & social connections.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Finland joined NATO to deter a Russian invasion, a repeat of Stalin's annexation of a part of its territory.
- A capsul history of Africa: Of Africa's 55 sovereign states, only Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized.
- IEEE Buenaventura Section talk: "An Overview of California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA)." [57-minute video]
- Ukrainians cope with horrors of war by taking refuge in music, says a conductor who is now a refugee.
- Pop music: Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean": Four players, one guitar.
- Pop music: A cappella performance of "Stand by Me": The Buzztones from London.
- Math puzzle: Show that there are only 3 integer values n that make both 9n + 16 & 16n + 9 perfect squares.
(4) [Iran's Islamic Republic is following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, Part 1] Eliminating the troublesome middle class: Lenin famously said that the middle class should be squeezed out by the double-pressure of overt taxes and covert taxes (aka inflation), so that it has no opportunity to cause mischief with its learned manners of reading, traveling, learning, and teaching. [Note: That Lenin actually said so has been disputed, but he and other economists & politicians have agreed with its essence.] Once the middle class is gone, the upper class becomes more conservative out of fear, taking refuge behind tradition and religion. In this 2-minute video (in Persian), a Cambridge University professor explains the strategy.
(5) [Iran's Islamic Republic is following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, Part 2] Poisoning of schoolgirls: Iran was very slow in admitting that many school girls have been poisoned with nerve gas and has yet to arrest anyone or even name the culprits, raising valid suspicions that the regime's security apparatus has carried out these vile attacks to discourage girls from going to school. The Chechnya region of Russia, home to separatist movements, suffered from a similar wave of poisonings in 2005, which affected mainly school children and produced identical symptoms. Russia & Putin are seemingly in love with poisoning their opponents. [Map of Iran, showing the geographic distribution of school poisoning sites]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The Paratethys Sea: Once the largest lake on Earth, its remaining fragments form the Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas. Europe looked a lot different 12 million years ago! [Top center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "It's a nice change of pace from being on fire." [Top right and all of center row] Farhang Foundation lecture about Iran (see the last item below). [Bottom row] UCSB's Art, Design & Architecture Museum (see the next item below).
(2) Visiting UCSB's Art, Design & Architecture Museum: On Friday, March 3, 2023, I took advantage of a guided tour of a part of AD&A Museum's architecture & design collection, offered in connection with the UCSB Reads 2023 Program. The Genius Loci exhibit shows 10 single-family home projects, with samples from desert, hillside, and beachfront residences. A common theme in the 10 designs on display is harmony with the environment and surrounding nature.
Many famous architects have built in Southern California, primarily residences, many of them for their personal use. I photographed a few examples: A desert home, a hillside home, and a private bomb shelter, which became the rage immediately after World War II. Ideas about bomb towns for communities were also floated.
UCSB's AD&A museum owns an impressive collection of architectural drawings, scale models, and other documents in its collection, some stored within on-campus archives and others kept externally. The photos show parts of the on-campus archives and a classic guide to SoCal architecture.
(3) "Banning and Belonging: Iranians of the Southern Persian Gulf Coast": This was the title of today's fascinating talk by Dr. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet (U. Pennsylvania) under the auspices of Farhang Foundation.
We know much about Iran's influence in Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe, brought about by when the Persian Empires extended far and wide. As far as I know, points to the south of the Persian Gulf were never officially part of the various Persian Empires, yet Iranians have a significant presence there and have influenced that region, sometimes referred to as the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf. Driven by foreign powers pursuing their economic and political interests, the Persian Gulf itself has been called "the Arabian Gulf," "the Islamic Gulf," "the Basra Gulf," or simply "the Gulf," a cop-out and non-descriptive term.
Expanding from India, Britain exerted influence over the Persian-Gulf, considering that area of strategic value to its naval and economic supremacy. British sources referred to the Persian Gulf as "the British Lake." At the time, Iran had no naval presence to speak of, and no strong central government to challenge Britain's domination. British accounts of the region's history are biased toward the Arab countries, because those countries were viewed as weaker and thus more prone to manipulation to preserve Britain's interests. As a result, part of the British policy was to restrict the Iranian presence in the south of the Persian Gulf.
Despite reference to the south Persian Gulf as predominantly Arabian, the real story is different. The region's population has been migratory, with significant presence by South Asians, Africans, and Iranians. Europeans imposed the binary Arab/Persian (or Arab/Ajam, where Ajam, applied primarily to Persians, is a derogatory term) on the region, the way they did in Europe, where they preferred to view countries as mono-ethnic and mono-lingual. This did not fit the reality in the Middle East. For example, there was a significant Iranian minority in Iraq that enjoyed rights under the Ottomans, but not later.
Unfortunately, Iran gradually lost the culture war and the Middle East became identified with Arabs in the 20th century. Iranians themselves contributed to the dichotomy and hateful dialog (e.g., Ferdowsi, Ibn Khaldun). The modern Iranian identity, developed in the 20th century, recognized the diversity of the population, in a way that the Persian identity did not. Racism and violence are inevitable consequences of identity erasure/denial. So, the arbitrary drawing of national boundaries of the Middle East by the British contributed to the permanent state of conflict in the region.
Many of Iran's engagements with world powers entailed loss of territory. Boundaries with Iraq and in the Persian Gulf were redrawn by the British, leaving Iran rather vulnerable in both regions. The current geopolitical reality is that Iran is encircled by hostile or unfriendly states. As a result, Iran cannot secure itself merely by arming. Diplomacy and international relations must play a role. It is imperative that Iran rejoin the family of nations and establish friendly ties, both regionally and worldwide. [84-minute recording of the talk]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] IEEE Computer magazine's February cover feature on trustworthy AI (see the next item below). [Center] Special issue on asteroid samples: The February 24, 2023 issue of Science magazine discusses what analyzing more than 70,000 meteorites in existence on Earth can teach us about their origins and our universe. [Right] Persian poetry: A loaded political-protest poem by Iraj Mirza (1874-1926).
(2) Cover feature of IEEE Computer magazine, February 2023: First installment of extensive discussions on trustworthy AI. The theme articles in this issue are as follows. The second part will be published in May.
- Wasabi: A Conceptual Model for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, by A. M. Singh and M. P. Singh
- Trustworthy AI Requirements in the Autonomous Driving Domain, by D. Fernandex-Liorca & E. Gomez
- Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Through Verifiability, by M. R. Mousavi et al.
- AI Maintenance: A Robustness Perspective, by P.-Y. Chen & P. Das
- A Survey on Deep Learning Resilience Assessment Methodologies, by A. Ruospo et al.
- Explaining the Walking Through of a Team of Algorithms, by A. Martinez et al.
- Detecting Systematic Deviations in Data and Models, by S. Speakman et al.
- Three Levels of AI Transparency, by K. Haresamudram, S. Larsson, & F. Heintz
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Turkey's February 6 earthquake created a valley whose depth equals the height of a 13-story building.
- California declares emergencies in counties buried by snow, as the latest storm moves east.
- Anti-Semitism in the US: FBI arrests heavily-armed man who planned to kill Jewish officials in Michigan.
- Conservatives intensify their efforts to remove material from libraries & to defund these "arms of Satan."
- "Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-1982": Los Angeles County Museum of Art, till July 2, 2023.
- Inflation: The annual $7 Burger Week in Santa Barbara is now $10 Burger Week! [Tweet, with image]
(4) On conservative US politicians: They like annual tax forgiveness for billionaires but hate one-time student loan forgiveness for struggling college graduates.
(5) Stages of life & the number of bits in the binary representation of age: One bit, 0-1, infant; Two bits, 2-3, toddler; Three bits, 4-7, child; Four bits, 8-15, adolescent; Five bits, 16-31, adult; Six bits, 32-63, middle age; Seven bits, 64-127, senior citizen; The next stage is empty for now, as the record age stands at 122.
(6) Iran's foreign minister sits for a rare interview with Christiane Amanpour: Speaking in Persian (likely due to having been ridiculed for his miserable English language skills), he repeats the mullahs' bald-faced lies about security forces not shooting or mistreating peaceful protesters. He also claims that Iran respects human rights and that Iranian women enjoy a high stature. Amanpour challenges him on several key points, but he seems to be oblivious to fact-checking.
(7) Iran is in the process of acquiring technology for locating Starlink Internet antennas: Specially-equipped drones canvassing the skies can locate radio-frequency transmitters, but the cost is high and countermeasures are available to users. [5-minute video, narrated in Persian]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: Kentucky Fried Chicken store in Tehran, Iran, 1976. [Center & Right] Talangor Group talk on women's rights (see the last item below).
(2) Mass-poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran: Despite state-of-the-art lab facilities in Tehran and numerous security cameras in and around girls' schools, the government was slow in releasing information about the kind of poison gas used and is yet to arrest anyone for the crimes. If a group of people had gone to girls' schools and played music for them, the entire group and their families would have been under interrogation or in prison by now! The fingerprints of Khamenei's goons are all over these gas-poisoning incidents. [Tweet, with video]
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: "The #WomanLifeFreedom Movement as a Milestone in the History of Iran's Social Movements" was the topic of a timely and informative presentation, in Persian, by Elahe Amani (UN Commission on Women activist and women's movements researcher). There were ~100 attendees.
The program began with "#WomanLifeFreedom, Seen Through Images," a short presentation by Middle-East Image Foundation, about which I wrote in a previous post. You can donate money to this worthy organization by visiting its Web site.
Amani's talk was occasioned by International Women's Day, coming up on March 8. She indicated that she is hopeful for the future of the ongoing uprising in Iran, although she has some fears as well. In the last few months, 800 schoolgirls have been chemically poisoned to discourage them and their families from engaging in education. A regime that is swift in executing street protesters has so far not arrested a single person in connection with the mass poisoning attacks.
Women have been at the forefront of the fight against the oppressive and misogynistic Islamic regime. Early slogans of 40+ years ago in opposition to compulsory hijab included: "We did not revolt to turn back." Currently, the Iranian society is experiencing a renaissance, whose reach far exceeds regime change in Iran.
Recent social movements in Iran include the "Green Movement" of 2009 and the 2006 campaign to collect one million signatures against gender-discriminatory laws. The murder of Mahsa Amini triggered an all-out revolution. This explosion wasn't unexpected, given the pressure that had been building up for many years. In the Arab Spring, too, the death of a single street vendor in Tunisia led to broad and all-encompassing social movements.
Iranian authorities have known for some time that the youth, with their connections to the world through the Internet, have become widely separated from the older generations and are socially quite active. Iran's Generations Alpha and Z brought about the #WomanLifeFreedom movement, which challenges not just the political power network but also patriarchal social structures. Why is this movement a new milestone in the history of Iran's social movements? The Iranian society is very young: 86% of the population, forming three generations, was born after the 1979 Revolution.
The rise of social media deeply affects modern social movements. Today, information is no longer under the control of power centers, although the powerful can still make mischief through the spread of misinformation and disinformation. One of our aims should be educating the Iranian people about how to separate facts from lies on social media.
A few decades ago, Iranian women were socially active but they were not on the front lines of political movements or in leadership positions. The brutality and misogyny of the Islamic regime has led to women becoming significantly more active, to the extent that today's young Iranian women are leading many movements against oppressive laws, against the death penalty, against environmental abuse & mismanagement, and many other initiatives.
We must bear in mind that regime change is easier than a change in culture. The former can be accomplished in short order, while the latter can take decades. It is unclear that Iranian men truly understand the implications of #WomanLifeFreedom movement. In other words, one wonders whether those who seemingly support the Mahsa movement, will approve of the freedoms sought by this movement for their own daughters and wives. As a case in point, South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions with respect to women's rights, yet the country is third in the world with regard to violence against women.
Two trends in the world mirror Iran's 4+ decades of marching backward: Religious fundamentalism and political populism. Even the United States has not been immune to these regressive trends. There is some hope that Iran's progressive social movement will not only liberate Iran but will also help spread the message of #WomanLifeFreedom to other countries.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] March is Women's History Month: Life-size 3D-printed statues of 120 women in STEMM, created & displayed by the Smithsonian Institution in March 2022. [Top right] Women's History Month subjects on ABC's "Good Morning America." [Bottom left & center] On our musical tastes (see the next to the last item below). [Bottom right] Iranian mullahs have finally found a way to control the alarming rise in the price of US dollar, which has doubled in 6 months, causing a record inflation rate.
(2) UCSB alumni and former staff members establish the Mahsa Amini Graduate Fellowship for Iranian women in non-STEM fields. If you want to support this fellowship, here's the donation site.
(3) The Oscars are here: Yale CS professor Theodore Kim & collaborators at Pixar Studios received a Technical Achievement Academy Award for developing the Fizt2 system that models elastic materials in animation.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Collision of passenger and freight trains in Greece kills at least 36.
- Data science is one of the most popular majors, but the future of the data scientist is still unclear.
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) celebrates 175 years. [Science editorial]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 1, 2015: Don't trust media stories that include the ugliest possible pictures.
(5) Iran's Taliban-like Islamic regime poisons schoolgirls to drive them away from education: Then, its goons rough-up and drag a peacefully protesting mother into an unmarked car. Shame on the nonchalant onlookers and on the international community for continuing to court this murderous regime. #WomanLifeFreedom
(6) "What the Music You Love Says About You": This was the title of a UCLA Semel Institute webinar by Dr. Susan Rogers (Berklee College of Music), a record-producer-turned-brain-scientist who worked with Prince as his staff engineer, in conversation with Dr. Mark Jude Tramo (MD, PhD). The talk and the book on which it is based attempt to answer the question of why you fall in love with some music and not with other music.
Why do your favorite songs move you? Rogers explained that we each possess a unique "listener profile" based on our brain's natural response to the seven key dimensions of a song. Four of these dimensions apply to the music: melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre, or the sound itself. The other three dimensions apply to mediums like operas, movies, TV, and novels: authenticity, novelty-vs.-familiarity, and realism.
Are you someone who prefers lyrics or melody? Do you like music "above the neck" (intellectually stimulating), or "below the neck" (instinctual and rhythmic)? Like most of us, Rogers is not a musician, but demonstrates how all of us can be musical simply by being active, passionate listeners.
Here is a 60-minute recording of the same book talk at the Commonwealth Club of California.
(7) 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, and said: 'I'm McCarty et al.'" ~ NASA branch chief and scientist Dr. Jessica McCarty, on sexism and mansplaining
(1) Images of the day: [Left] With aunt Victoria in LA, Sunday afternoon, 2/26. [Center] Poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran (see the next item below). [Right] Long lines form at foreign exchange dealerships in Iran to buy US dollars at the all-time-high rate of 60,000 tomans.
(2) The usual pattern for Iranian mullahs: First deny the whole thing. Then, admit that it happened, but claim it was no big deal. Next, say that it was serious, but our enemies did it. Then, admit that it was an internal action whose perpetrators will be punished. Finally, do nothing about it.
Schoolgirls in Qom and other Iranian cities were poisoned by Islamists who are against education for girls.
(3) Autonomous drones operated by US Air Force will get face-recognition technology: The AI capabilities are said to be for intelligence gathering, but one cannot discount the possibility of unethical uses in warfare.
(4) "Students and Postdocs Deserve More": This is the title of Science magazine's editorial, issue of February 10, 2023, addressing the low pay, lack of benefits, and sometimes toxic research environments for today's indispensable research and teaching workforce and tomorrow's scientific leaders.
(5) You are free to say what you want, but you have to accept the consequences (people with opposite views also have the right to free speech): In a shocking rant on YouTube, Scott Adams, creator of the "Dilbert" comic strip, called Black Americans a "hate group" and suggested that White people should "get the hell away" from them. The USA Today Network, which operates hundreds of newspapers, has pulled the plug on Adams' long-running comic strip. What makes a successful artist sabotage his profitable production line is beyond me!
(6) Aftermath of the 6-week UAW strike at University of California: Council of UC Faculty Associations objects to UC administration pushing the costs of newly-negotiated contracts with graduate students and other academic workers to faculty investigators and departments, whose budgets are already quite strained.
(7) "Why Are There So Few Women in Computer Systems Research?": This is the title of an article by A. Richter, J. Yamamoto, and E. Frachtenberg, published in the February 2023 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. The authors set out to discover which of the 10 common hypotheses offered for under-representation of women in computer science research apply even more to researchers in computer systems.
(8) The rise of impostor syndrome: Ironically, when you feel that you are faking it, but others don't think so, you tend to agree with your own supposedly incompetent opinion rather than with other people's assessment.
(9) Final thought for the day: "We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects." ~ William Hazlitt
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Last night's family gathering to celebrate the latest addition to our clan! [Bottom left] Mercedes-Benz, in partnership with Google, will use a supercomputer in every one of its cars to process data from sensors, navigate & reroute, operate an entertainment center, and feed a cockpit-wide hyper-screen. [Bottom center] A technology-center building in China. [Bottom right] Meme of the day: "One can see the inextinguishable flame that illuminates our hearts, even with closed eyes." ~ Kimia Zand, one of the many Iranian protesters who lost an eye, when security forces sprayed pellets onto their faces
(2) Quote of the day: "Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity." ~ John F. Kennedy
(3) Words of wisdom: "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Women scientists who fought sexism at MIT: An inspiring story, told in Kate Zernike's The Exceptions.
- Impact of Technology on Society: CACM talks with Dr. Moshe Vardi about technology & social responsibility.
- Idea for a new TV show: Tonight, live from Washington, it's "America's Funniest Conspiracy Theories"!
- Fibonacci soup: You make it by adding leftovers from soups you made yesterday and two days ago.
- English tip: I before E, unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.
- The French spy who brought Khomeini to Iran and was handsomely rewarded. [18-minute video, in Persian]
- Cryptic quote: "TYJ BTTS HFVYB ZLTGH NGMVE, OFJY VH FVHM WTG, WTG UJJX YT DZVY." ~ LTL NZQXJW
- Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman's love letter to his wife: "I love my wife. My wife is dead."
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2015: Polanyi Paradox, and its importance to machine-learning research.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2013: On the days when receiving an e-mail message was a joyous event!
(5) Engineering faculty members at US universities: Full professors 14,328 (14.2% women); Associate professors 7852 (21.4% women); Assistant professors 7706 (26.5% women); Non-tenure-track 5020; Part-time 4261. [Source: American Society for Engineering Education, based on 2021 data]
(6) US engineering degrees awarded to women: From a low of 15.4% (computer engineering) to the third-highest 39.1% (biological & agricultural engineering), with the top-two percentages being 51.5% (biomedical engineering) and 57.8% (environmental engineering). [Source: ASEE, based on 2021 data]
(7) Engineering enrollments at US universities: Texas A&M and Arizona State had the top and second-highest undergraduate engineering enrollments at 15K+. Mechanical engineering had the highest enrollment of 124K, followed by computer science (within engineering) at 103K. Enrollment in every other engineering field was less than 50K. For MS degrees awarded, computer science (within engineering) led by a wide margin at 13K, with mechanical engineering trailing at 8K. When one adds CS programs outside engineering colleges, computer science is by far the most-popular tech field. [Source: ASEE, based on 2021 data]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] CACM's March cover feature (see the next item below). [Center] Mathematician Leonhard Euler was the first to produce a magic square containing squared numbers: As in other magic squares, the rows, columns, and diagonals of his 4-by-4 square have the same sum. Larger magic squares of squared numbers have since been produced, but no one has come up with a 3-by-3 magic square of squared numbers yet, nor has anyone been able to prove that such a square does not exist. [Right] The world's oldest underground station, Baker Street, England: 157 years ago and today.
(2) Communications of the ACM's cover feature for March 2023 discusses "Ethics and Neurotechnology: Learning from AI Ethics to Address an Expanded Ethics Landscape." Here is a list of issues, along with AI capabilities & methodologies that give rise to them.
AI needs data: Data privacy; Data governance
AI is often a black box: Explainability; Transparency
AI can make or recommend decisions: Fairness; Value alignment
AI is based on statistics, thus having inevitable errors: Accountability
AI can profile people and shape preferences: Human & moral agency
AI is pervasive and dynamic: Misuse impacts; Jobs transformation
AI can be used for good or bad: Weapons; Surveillance; Sustainability
(3) On politics and religion: How interesting that any political or religious group, no matter how limited in its world view, eventually subdivides into sects that can't see eye to eye!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This year, California's draught gave way to heavy rains and, now, to snow. [NYT story]
- Comparing the English-language skills of Iran's Foreign Minister & an Abadani fish seller. [Tweet, with videos]
- Persian poetry recitation: They said things, but the truth was different. [2-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 24, 2011: "Gorg" ("Wolf"), a Persian poem by Fereidoon Moshiri.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 25, 2022: Different crime scenes, same criminal.
(5) Some silly-sounding federally funded research projects actually produce important results: Listen to this 47-minute Public Radio "Golden Goose" podcast about awards that constitute scientists' response to public ridicule of useful but comically-sounding research projects.
(6) Giving a new meaning to "pro-life": Alaska Republican politician observes that abusing children to death comes with economic benefits, because dead children don't need government services.
(7) Transparency needed in reviewing and punishing ethical violations: Professional societies have codes of conduct and codes of ethics. Unfortunately, after complaints are made, the issue often sinks into a black hole and no one ever hears about the review outcome and actions taken. Association for Computing Machinery is trying to do something about this with a new "ACM Policy on Complaint Process Disclosure."
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] The Persian day of women, Earth, & love (see the next item below). [Top right] The war in Ukraine is one year old today (see item 3 below). [Bottom left] Random walks (see the next to the last item below). [Bottom center] Talangor Group talk about Iran's Mahsa Revolution (see the last item below). [Bottom right] The seven deadly sins of mathematics, involving zero and infinity.
(2) Happy Sepandarmazgan, the ancient Iranian day of women with Zoroastrian roots, dating back to the Achaemenid Empire: Sepanta Armaiti (Avestan for 'Holy Devotion', Spandarmad in Middle Persian), after whom the day is named, was Earth's guardian angel. She showed kindness to the mountains, to the birds, and to the people. She hated war among men, gave the herds green fields to graze, dug paths for rivers, and took care of the Earth and its inhabitants. In short, Sepandarmazgan is the day of women, Earth, and love.
This Sepandarmazgan weekend, my three children will be at home and the extended family will get together to welcome my middle sister's grandson.
(3) February 24 is the first anniversary of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine: The West expected Russia to overtake Ukraine in short order, because of the large sums it spends on its military. It turns out that due to corruption, much of Russia's "military spending" goes to buying villas and yachts in Europe. The military is poorly equipped and inadequately trained, as evidenced by its large human and war-machinery losses. Sending love to the brave people of Ukraine and to the oppressed people of Russia!
(4) On random walks: Imagine a drunk on a narrow sidewalk (1D space) near a lamp-post. Every second, he takes a random rightward or leftward step. Intuitively, he won't go very far after 15 minutes (900 time-steps). He will likely remain close to the lamp-post, although he can also be 100 or 500 steps away from it, albeit with a diminishingly small probability. I have been fascinated with random walks, ever since I learned about them in a probability theory course.
The example above is 1D random walk. We can also have random walks in 2D, 3D, ... , nD space. Additionally, we can have random walks on graphs, defined in the natural way.
Much work has been done on random walks. MathSciNet shows ~7500 papers with "random walk" in the title. Surprisingly, there are still fairly simple problems in this domain that remain unexplored, as indicated by Prof. David Aldous (UC Berkeley), who gave an introductory talk at UCSB this afternoon.
(5) Talangor Group talk: "The Role of Iran's Cyber-Army in Creating Discord Among Opposition Groups" was discussed by Mojtaba Vahedi (journalist & political analyst) on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. Vahedi was an ardent supporter of Iran's Islamic Revolution, but later became disillusioned with the Islamic regime, becoming its active critic, most recently as a supporter of Reza Pahlavi. There were ~105 attendees.
The program began with "The Mahsa Revolution, as Seen Through the Camera's Lens," a short presentation by Hossein Fatemi (news photographer & documentary-maker). He pointed out that Iranian photographers' lives are in serious danger. Unlike other countries, where journalists wear special outfits that make them immune, in Iran, they are even more targeted than others on the street. He introduced the Middle East Images Foundation, a US-registered charity that works to present Middle Eastern photography by accomplished local artists. You can donate money to this worthy organization by visiting MEIF's Web site.
Iran is one of the top offenders with regard to cyberattacks against other countries and opposition groups. Iran's cyber-army has a broad presence on social media, spreading lies and sounding sour notes. Of course, not everyone who sows the seeds of discord is a member of Iran's cyber-army. Some engage in baseless criticism and character assassination out of ignorance, unaware that they are helping Iran's Islamic regime and spreading its narratives. We should distinguish between criticism, which is necessary, and malicious behavior, which is destructive.
In the ongoing Mahsa Revolution, Iran's cyber-army remains active, but it hasn't been as effective in its evil plans, even though its trolls try to sow discord by taking the side of one opposition figure or group and bad-mouthing others. Today's Iranian youth are quite alert and sophisticated, so they side-step the cyber-army's schemes. The new revolutionaries realize the difference between regime collapse, which may lead to chaos, and regime change, brought about by deliberate plans. The current Islamic regime voluntarily agreeing to major structural changes or a referendum is quite unlikely.
It is quite unfortunate that some of the most-capable citizens residing in Iran are in prison, making it necessary for those abroad to assume a greater role in bringing about regime change. We have no shortage of leaders for post-Islamic Iran. Tehran's Evin Prison alone holds several capable cabinets. Unity is the key. Despite significant differences, Reza Pahlavi and Mir-Hossein Moussavi agree on broad principles of Iran's future form of government (secular democracy), but they haven't yet begun a direct dialogue. At this point, everyone is waiting for a unifying charter to be issued by opposition forces, before taking further steps.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: A scene from "Race for Life 2," a 1913 British short film. [Center] Arthur Cayley introduced the notion of matrix transposition in 1858. [Right] Wednesday's UCSB World Music Series noon concert was moved indoors due to the super-cold weather: The Salt Martians (bluegrass band) performed quite a few tunes, from Bill Monroe to the Byrds (Video 1; Video 2; Video 3; Video 4).
(2) Iranian officials are in denial regarding the annihilation of the country's currency: Ever since one US dollar sold for 1680 tomans about a decade ago, until today's 30-fold rate of 50,000 tomans, they continue to insist that the rate is an unrealistic bubble created by our "enemies."
(3) Yesterday, I heeded the advice of a Panda Express fortune cookie: "Go for a long walk to clear your mind." I really needed the long walk, having worked on and just finished my 2022 taxes!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Start of a wave? Germany expels two Islamic Republic diplomats to protest an execution in Iran.
- US annualized inflation rate since the start of the COVID pandemic. [Tweet, with chart]
- Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 16 years for sex crimes in Los Angeles County. [#MeToo]
- California will see snow blizzards from the coming storm, even in SoCal.
- While Iranian women are rejecting the compulsory hijab law, Swiss Ambassador to Iran does not complain.
- Simone Weil: "A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves."
- Facebook memory from Feb. 22, 2019: Do we write differently on a screen than on paper?
- Facebook memory from Feb. 23, 2015: On Beverly Sills wanting to put her voice to bed with quiet & dignity.
(5) Accusations of scientific misconduct against Stanford U. President: Marc Tessier-Lavigne denies that a 2009 Nature paper on which he was lead author contained falsified data. The fact that he kept the results of an internal investigation of the matter from becoming public indicates otherwise. The paper was published when he was an executive at Genentech, a biotechnology company.
(6) Retractions are necessary for science to work: Encouragements, positive reviews, and awards do wonders for scientific advances, but so do retractions, which occur for both malicious scientific misconduct and honest mistakes. In this essay, Dr. Jaivime Evaristo writes about the hard lessons he learned from his retracted Nature paper due to errors in the data sets he used and the possibility of recovering from the blow to one's academic reputation caused by a retraction.
(7) Parents of one of the 149 victims of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks are suing tech companies: At issue is Google's algorithmic recommendations to YouTube users, and similar actions by other tech companies, which include pushing violent & radicalizing ISIS videos. The "Section 230" case is now at the US Supreme Court.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Most- & least-educated states in the US: DC tops the list; WV is at the bottom. [Center & Right] The historic Shemshak Boutique Hotel in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Fox News has been caught lying and will likely pay over $1 billion to Dominion (voting-machines company) in damages & fines: Where's the federal government in all of this? If an advertiser claims false features or benefits for a product, the feds will go knocking. Why is lying in an even more-critical domain not pursued?
(3) SCOTUS is hearing a case with potentially significant effect on the trillion-dollar tech industry: So far, big-tech has been shielded from liability for harmful content by a law known as Section 230. That can change!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Putin suspends participation in New START nuclear-arms control treaty: Let the nuclear-arms race resume!
- Harrowing scenes of buildings collapsing like houses of cards in Turkey's Feb. 6 quakes. [1-minute video]
- I just finished reading a book that is typeset in Trump Medieval: It's such a satisfying name for a font!
- Bridges and other structures or sites that test your fear of heights! [4-minute video]
- Dynamic art: Created with colored liquids and falling objects. [1-minute video]
- Quotable: "Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf." ~ Native American proverb
- Best-friendship, the expectation that a human needs one closest friend, is a surprisingly recent notion.
(5) Sha'ban Ja'fari: This is the title of a book in Persian by Homa Sarshar, about a widely-hated character, often referred to as "Shaban Bi-Mokh" ("Shaban the Brainless"), who played a key role in reinstating the late Shah to power in the CIA-directed coup of 1953. [Read on-line for free]
(6) How relevant is academic research to innovations in computer architecture? Analysis of citations in patent applications to papers in top computer architecture venues (ISCA, MICRO, HPCA, ASPLOS) shows that the impact is insignificant. Fewer than 2% of computer architecture patents cite papers presented in these top architecture conferences, which were used in the study as proxies for academic research.
(7) The historic Shemshak Boutique Hotel: Shemshak is a popular Iranian ski resort located about 25 miles north of Tehran. Despite the fairly short straight-line distance from Tajrish (north Tehran), the driving distance is somewhat longer. When I lived in Iran (until the mid-1980s), we traveled to Shemshak by first driving to the city of Karaj, then taking the Chaloos Road, which connected Karaj to the Caspian shore, by way of the Karaj Dam reservoir, a popular resort area in itself. Now, there is a shorter route (see map). Shemshak Boutique Hotel, the first of its kind in Iran, was built by Germans as a dormitory mansion and power-generation station for German workers operating the local coal mines. With changes in technology, the coal mines and thus the mansion & its power plant were soon shut down, until the Germans returned in the 1960s and built a 3-story hotel on top of it. The hotel was closed after the Islamic Revolution. In the late 2010s, a private company restored the hotel to its current state, using the original material, furniture, and decorations. [Tourism ad]
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy US Presidents' Day: Yes, we have had a few presidents of whom we are not proud, but, by and large, they are embodiments of the following quote from our 6th president, John Quincy Adams: "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader." [Top center] Meme of the day: Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to keep your mouth shut. [Top right] Iranians protesting against the brutal Islamic regime on February 20, 2023, in Dusseldorf display a statue showing a mullah entrapped in a woman's hair. [Bottom left] Before and after the heavy January 2023 rains (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Asian countries are aging rapidly: Around 40-45% of the populations of Japan, China, and South Korea will be 65 or older by the year 2100, vs. ~30% for the US and ~25% for the world as a whole. [Bottom right] The Great Wall of India: The world's 2nd-longest continuous wall, with a length of 38 km and width of 15 m, surrounds the fort of Kumbhalgarh containing 360 temples.
(2) During and after the drought: A couple of years ago, I posted before-and-after photos showing the impact of an extended drought on California's water reservoirs. This post goes in reverse, showing that Lake Orville is now at 115% of its historical level, compared with 61% in February 2021 and 77% in 2022. You can move the bar in the middle of the side-by-side photos to compare.
(3) Please consider asking your representative to support the MAHSA Act: Introduced by Rep. Jim Banks with 33 co-sponsors, H.R.9203 "requires the President to impose property- and visa-blocking sanctions on certain persons (individuals and entities) affiliated with Iran." [Read more] [One-click sending of a letter]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- On the occasion of US President's Day, here are Dan Szymborski's AI-generated cartoon US presidents.
- US investigation confirms that Russia committed numerous war crimes in Ukraine.
- Magnitude-6.3 hits Turkey, scaring the survivors of stronger quakes of February 6, which killed 46,000.
- Iran International closes its London offices due to escalation of terror threats from Iran's operatives.
- Iranian currency sinks to record low: One US dollar now sells for 50,000 tomans on the open market.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 20, 2018: Female graduates of Iran's Sharif U. Tech. rule.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 20, 2015: When a mullah argued against and a woman for mandatory hijab!
(5) The Syrian government is impeding assistance to quake victims: Bashar Assad's regime insists that all aid go to Damascus, and not directly to victims via the Turkish border, but the victims, who are mostly anti-Assad, have not received much assistance from Damascus thus far.
(6) The wrong-way driver who thought everyone else is driving the wrong way: Iran's government-run daily Kayhan claims that by not inviting Iran to the Munich Security Conference, Europe has isolated itself!
(7) Mr. Haloo flees to Europe: Iranian poet/activist Mohammad Reza Ali-Payam (aka Mr. Haloo) talks about fleeing Iran because of a 16-year prison sentence, which was confirmed on appeal. Before going to London, he covertly lived in Turkey for more than a year, changing his residence and cell phone many times in order to elude Iranian agents, who were looking for him and had offered rewards for information about his whereabouts.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A few of the hundreds of Iranians murdered by Iran's brutal Islamic regime during the recent uprising: Live but don't forget. [Top center & right] Misogyny, the royal and Islamist forms: The late Shah divorced his second wife, Soraya, for not giving birth to a child; his first wife, Fawzia, had given birth to a girl, Shahnaz. The Shah reportedly loved Soraya, who fell out of favor when she suggested that he abdicate in favor of his half-brother. The Shah countered with the suggestion of taking a second wife, which Soraya rejected. His third wife, Farah, always boasted that her first-born was a boy. And the Islamist form? We see numerous examples every day! [Bottom left] Postage stamps from various countries honoring women scientists. [Bottom center] We once honored scientists, instead of demonizing and threatening to kill them! (See also item 2 below) [Bottom right] Get ready for the new US reality show "Parliament Fights": Many Third-World countries and the United Kingdom have them on a regular basis, often taking the form of fistfights, throwing chairs or other objects, and, occasionally, gunfights. Judging from how things are going in the US Congress, we should get ready for our version of parliament fights, shown on A&E! (Image credit: Bill Mahr)
(2) Explainer extraordinaire Richard Feynman: He was a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist known for his extreme curiosity, ability to explain difficult topics in simple terms, and a broad range of interests in science & art.
(3) The battle of Constitutional rights: The Proud Boys are asking that Trump be subpoenaed to appear as a witness in their Jan. 6 trial. They have a Constitutional right to do so, according to the 6th Amendment. Trump, on the other hand, has a constitutional right to plead the 5th Amendment and not testify. Let the match begin!
(4) Celebration of Int'l Women's Day & #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution: A Zoom program by Voices of Women for Change, on Sat., Mar. 11, 2023, 11:00 AM PST. Sociologist/author Chahla Chafiq will speak & protest-singer GOLA will provide musical entertainment. Four other women, Ladan Boroumand, Roya Boroumand, Mahnaz Matine, and Farzaneh Milani will be honored for their activism on behalf of women's rights. [Register]
(5) Fox Network's public and private faces: E-mails and text messages disclosed in the Dominion (voting-machines company) $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News reveal that its management and top anchors all knew that Trump's voting-fraud claim was a lie and said so in private, yet on their programs, they vociferously promoted the lies and invited guests who would repeat the lie, because they feared that telling the truth would lead to loss of viewers and revenues. One anchor even asked that an employee who fact-checked Trump's claims be fired immediately!
(6) Amnesia in politics: GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley has completely removed from her speeches the stories she used to tell about the discrimination & racism she faced as a little girl, because these stories would not endear her to "the base." She says it is because she hates identity politics, but she is quick to point out that she is a woman and daughter of an immigrant whenever these identities are to her benefit.
(6) Final thought for the day: Golshifteh Farahani's speech at the Berlin Film Festival contains an indirect jab at the insulting comments by Islamist Abdolkarim Soroush (she quotes from Mowlavi/Rumi).
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A new book by my former Sharif University of Technology (Iran) colleague, Dr. Mohammad Ghodsi: He kindly sent me a copy of the new 343-page textbook, Foundations of Design and Analysis of Algorithms (ISBN: 978-964-208-282-7), published in 2022. [Center] Every two years, the Grand Palace Square in Brussels is covered with flowers, arranged into a carpet design. [Right] Math puzzles: Try these four problems, the last one of which asks you to determine the ratio of the blue area to the red area.
(2) Women's rights: Iranian woman engineer protests being disqualified from becoming an officer of a professional organization because of not wearing a headscarf. Only one man on stage applauds her protest, but the audience is more supportive. [Tweet, with video]
(3) Ali Ghamsari plays the tar in a refreshingly new way, with skill & passion: His YouTube channel is filled with musical gems. In this 102-minute Sound of Peace Concert, Ghamsari plays with a group of incredible musicians in Arbil, Iraq. I particularly liked his rendition of a Kurdish song beginning at the 1:08:10 mark.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Death toll in Turkey's twin quakes and their aftershocks has surpassed 43,000 and may continue to rise.
- Black man, wrongfully convicted of murder, is released from prison after 28 years.
- Will AI have a bigger impact on warfare than nuclear weapons? Former Google CEO thinks so.
- Increasingly, college applicants are being denied admission for their social-media posts.
(5) UCSB ECE Department Distinguished Lecture: Dr. John Martinis (UCSB Physics Department) spoke this afternoon under the title "My Trek from Fundamental to Industrial Research: Quantum Systems Engineering." The theme of his talk was that when one transitions from academia to industry, one's mindset much change dramatically. He learned much in this area when he worked at Google during 2014-2020 to build a useful quantum computer. He recommended two books as good references to use for understanding the system engineering mindset in contrast to the academic research mindset:
- Peter Theil's Zero to One (see my review on GoodReads)
- Charles Wasson's System Engineering Analysis, Design, and Development
Martinis discussed the academia-to-industry transition problem in general and for the specific area of quantum computing, which he considers to have entered the systems era. Theoretical discoveries are still being made and papers continue to be published in quantum computing, but the main challenge is converting the ideas to actual working systems, which would require us to consider the entire system stack and the interactions between its layers. One key challenge is building practical quantum computers is overcoming the reliability problems for qubits, without an excessive level of redundancy. Another key consideration for researchers is to overcome the temptation to tweak things to make minor improvements after the start of the development process. In other words, as engineers, we have to learn to live with the good-enough in order to make progress toward a system or product. [Tweet, with photo]
Here is a 77-minute video of a similar lecture, delivered last year at Cornell University.
x (1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Throwback Thursday: Family photo from the 1970s, minus my oldest sister, plus cousin Eli, and a couple of group photos from mid-1967, showing many members of the class of 1968, College of Engineering's Electromechanical Division, University of Tehran. [Right] The 8-story Bugshan Palace in Yemen, covering 800 square meters of land, was built of mud in 1798 CE.
(2) Electrochemical RAM (ECRAM): Drawing inspiration from batteries, ECRAM is quickly moving ahead of traditional transistor-based circuits in developing the perfect artificial synapse.
[Article]
(3) Math puzzle: A square pizza box can hold five round pies of diameter d, without the pies overlapping. What is the smallest possible size for the box?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Math puzzle: Evaluate the expression (1 + i)^(1 + i).
- Robotic falcon acts as the scarecrow of the skies: It helps keep birds away from flight paths near airports.
- An Iranian member of the LGBTQ+ community, who has been sentenced to death, tells her story.
- Elon Musk's strange sense of humor! [Tweet, with image]
(5) The mullahs are scared: Apologists for Iran's Islamic regime, including Abdolkarim Soroush who was responsible for the 3-year closure of Iranian universities under the banner of "Cultural Revolution," are running scared from the emerging cooperation among opposition groups, fiercely attacking the recent show of unity at Georgetown University, while at the same time dismissing it as an insignificant event. [25-minute video]
(6) Old-time Iranian actor Behrouz Vossoughi tells the story of being interrogated by Parviz Sabeti: Sabeti, a high-ranking official in the late Shah's secret police (SAVAK), has recently emerged from 40+ years of hiding and was photographed attending an anti-Islamic-regime rally in the United States.
(7) The Transparent Society: This is the title of a 1998 book by David Brin, who argues that despite the risks of surveillance technologies, the very existence of such technologies is in itself a safeguard against abuse, because everyone has the ability to keep an eye on individual and institutional behavior. Digital-rights activists are thus enabled to watch those who are watching us. Of course, there is, and there will always be, a trade-off between security and privacy, and we need laws & oversight mechanisms to create the appropriate balance between the two concerns. [38-minute video]
(8) Nikki Haley is running for US presidency: As a feminist and immigrant, I am conflicted about her effort. I know misogynists & xenophobes, including the former Misogynist-in-Chief & Xenophobe-in-Chief, will launch vicious attacks against her, which is regrettable. But I also see plenty of legit criticisms of this opportunist and flip-flopper. She has been an ardent supporter of Trump, but has also said that Trump is everything we teach our kindergarteners not to be. She appeased Trump by saying she won't run if he does. Yet, here we are, with her as the first person to challenge Trump. Ironically, Haley's candidacy is good for Democrats. She will help expose GOP's misogyny and xenophobia, while exposing herself for the fraud that she is.
(1) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Sriram Krishnamoorthy (UCSB, Materials) spoke on "Gallium Oxide: Emerging Semiconductor Material for Power Electronics." There were 17 attendees.
Beta-Gallium Oxide is an emerging ultra-wide band gap semiconductor with a predicted critical breakdown field much higher than the commercial wide band gap semiconductors such as Gallium Nitride and Silicon Carbide. The key attractive feature is the availability of single crystal large area bulk substrates. Dr. Krishnamoorthy's talk began with the motivation for pursuing research on ultra-wide band gap semiconductors for applications in power electronics. Key results in epitaxial growth and device performance were highlighted. The main theme of the talk was to highlight and discuss the interrelationship between material properties, material processing, and device performance. The future outlook for Gallium Oxide in achieving its theoretical potential, as well as the key challenges & limitations, were also discussed.
[Speaker's Web site]
(2) Today is the 34th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence for author Salman Rushdie: Iran's current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, later indicated that the fatwa was just and must be carried out.
(3) Syrian village submerged after collapse of quake-damaged dam: In the Turkey-Syria border region where two earthquakes hit recently, there are dozens of dams, including Turkey's largest, the Ataturk Dam, which is reportedly cracked. Further devastation from broken dams is a real possibility.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Worrisome details emerge from the derailment of a train carrying highly-toxic cargo in East Palestine, Ohio.
- Is Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, sending money abroad in preparation for fleeing Iran?
- President Raisi receives honorary professorship from Beijing U. for safeguarding China's interests in Iran.
- Persian music: An all-women ensemble performs one of Shajarian's songs to honor his memory.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 15, 2020: Long ago, there was a noble word, liberal.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 15, 2012: Before talking, connect tongue to brain (from life's users' manual).
(5) Reza Khandan, Iranian civic-rights activist and husband of Nasrin Sotoudeh (whose book, Prison Letters, I recently reviewed), has been summoned to begin serving a 6-year prison term, handed down 3 years ago.
(6) To those who are trying to whitewash the past actions of hardline-Islamist Abdolkarim Soroush: Please note his misogynistic comments about Golshifteh Farahani, one of the eight participants in Georgetown U.'s panel discussion on a democratic Iran. He once did irreparable damage to Iranian universities under the banner of Islamicizing their curricula. Don't let him betray the #WomanLifeFreedom movement by insulting women!
(7) Dozens of school girls in Qom, a city in Iran, have been hospitalized due to poisoning: Signs of Taliban-like discouragement of girls from attending school? Iranian officials are saying that the problem is overblown.
(8) Iran's officials are liars or delusional: One had said that women are better off in Iran than in Western countries. This one says Iran will attract many international students over the next few years, becoming a prime destination for higher education. Yes, particularly for women students!
(9) Jazz under blue skies at UCSB's Music Bowl:The Webb Tarafella Nathan Jazz Trio, composed of tenor saxophonist Doug Webb, bassist Santino Tarafella, and UCSB Jazz Ensembles director Jon Nathan playing drumset, performed a number of jazz standards at noon today. [3-minute video]
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Valentine's Day: I hope that your day, week, month, year, and life are filled with love! [Center] Park Central 9 is a high-rise residential complex in Chengdu, the capital city of China's Sichuan Province. [Right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Little Free Library, Florida style!
(2) The artificial-intelligence arms race: In this 57-minute Times podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott discuss AI plans by their companies and other competitors.
(3) Yet another mass-shooting: Three people are dead and several are injured, some critically, in a mass shooting at Michigan State University. The suspect got away, but he later took his own life.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nerdy Valentine's Day message for those in academia: I accept you with minor revisions.
- Valentine's Day Persian song for singles! [1-minute video]
- Dear chocolate lovers: Tomorrow is your day. Enjoy the discounts!
- Of the 100 most-watched TV programs in 2022, 82 were NFL games. NFL had 28 out of the top 30.
- The hottest new programming language is English, opines computer scientist Andrej Karpathy. [Tweet]
- Quotable: "All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own." ~ Goethe
- Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains the golden age of Islam, and why it ended. [8-minute video]
- Colombian teen fixes three Rubik's Cubes in 4.5 minutes while juggling them. [5-minute video]
- A sampling of Iranian mullahs' views on women: From Khomeini to his followers. [2-minute video]
- Architecture: Some of the most-impressive skyscrapers around the world.
- Thank you, Panda Express, for the kind and encouraging fortune-cookie message! [Photo]
- A beautiful song and its performance on SNL: Brandi Carlile sings "The Story." [5-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 14, 2019: My mom's Valentine's Day message to her grandkids.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 14, 2012: Clever ad of saloon/eatery, calling itself "Husband Day Care Center."
(5) Turkey is investigating construction companies tied to numerous collapsed buildings in the recent quakes: The government is probably trying to shift the blame from its officials, who approved the building permits and are thus directly responsible for the immense loss of life, to private contractors.
(6) Sculptor Paula B. Slater has created busts of Neda Agha Soltan and Mahsa Amini, who were killed by Iran's Islamic regime. She hopes to someday donate her work for display in a free Iran. [3-minute video]
(7) Robotic chef in a Croatian restaurant offers a selection of seventy 1-pot dishes: Fresh ingredients are loaded into storage bins by humans. The robotic chef then chooses the appropriate amount of each ingredient, adds oil & seasoning, and cooks the dish to perfection.
(8) Behind the scenes of the special effects for a war movie: This 3-minute video shows some of artful and ingenious ways the film "All Quiet on the Western Front" was shot for maximum impact. This is a new film shot in German, the novel's original language. Hollywood made an Oscar-winning English version of the film in 1930.
(9) There are speculations that the great tech layoffs are motivated by a reset in salaries and other perks: Tech companies not only over-hired in the wake of the "Great Resignation," but they also paid too much compared to the market rates, leading to bloated payrolls that they can no longer afford.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Super Bowl 57 is finally over: In an exciting game, Kansas City Chiefs prevailed over Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. [Center] Invasion of flying objects: US shoots down a fourth flying object in eight days, this one over Lake Huron. [Right] Nasrin Sotoudeh's Prison Letters (see the last item below).
(2) Football is still a unifying force in the US: Americans, of both major parties, love the NFL; 29 out of 30 most-watched tv programs of all time were Super Bowl games. The other one was the finale of "M*A*S*H," a comedy-drama TV series (1972-1983) about the Korean War.
(3) Quote of the day, on Fox's Super Bowl coverage: "It's so much more fun to watch Fox when it's someone else being blitzed & sacked!" ~ Hillary Clinton, 2014 tweet
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Humor: Super Bowl is played in Arizona this year, so don't be surprised if Arizonans don't accept the result.
- Let's not forget the plight of Afghan women amid bad news from many other regions of the world.
- The US lags behind scientifically: Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes his case in this 10-minute talk.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 12, 2021: When to use "setup," "set up," and "set-up."
- Facebook memory from Feb. 12, 2021: Misogyny in Iran has deep roots. Women are beaten on the streets.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 12, 2016: Heart-shaped mini-pizzas for Valentine's Day.
(5) Book review: Sotoudeh, Nasrin, Prison Letters (in Persian), Aasoo Books, 2023.
[Available on-line for free, to read or download: Link]
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Nasrin Sotoudeh is an attorney and human rights activist who was imprisoned twice in her home country of Iran for doing her job of defending clients: The first time, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison (reduced to 6 years on appeal), serving 3 years before being released; the second conviction led to a 38.5-year sentence (reduced to 27 years, with no appeal on the part of Sotoudeh, who is now on medical leave, having served 3.5 years of her long sentence). This book is based on letters she wrote from prison to family members and, occasionally, to government officials, human-rights supporters, and others. It also includes many letters written to her while she was in prison.
Iran's Islamic regime oppresses not only women but also religious minorities (even Sunni Muslims), ethnic minorities, gender-nonconforming individuals, musicians, communists, and any other group that does not fit in its extremely narrow world view. Sotoudeh's sins include defending clients from some of these groups. Writing the letters was Sotoudeh's way of avoiding indifference and being drained of love, for her children, her supportive husband, and humanity.
Some of the letters were written on napkins and smuggled out of the prison. Others were written on available pieces of paper and sent out through official channels, after inspection, occasionally being returned as unacceptable. The latter kind tend to be repetitive and dull, given restrictions on the topics that could be addressed. Sotoudeh writes that she has tried to reconstruct, to the extent that her memory permitted, a few letters that were lost during an inter-prison transfer.
In letters addressed to her children, Sotoudeh expresses appreciation for their understanding and writes of the fear that they would think she did something to deserve her imprisonment, which would make her an inconsiderate mother for separating herself from her children and affecting how their classmates viewed them. She indicates that her defense of abused children in court was motivated by her love for her own son & daughter and that she hopes all children would benefit from her efforts.
In letters addressed to her husband Reza Khandan, Sotoudeh expresses much love and affection, sentiments that are reciprocated in his letters. Some of the letters contain lists of items that she needs. Others discuss strategies for releasing information (timing, tone of communication). For example, there is some back-and-forth about how to accept an international honor and whether or not she should dedicate the award to a person or group she cared about. The possibility of Reza being arrested and their children having neither parent around to take care of them weighs heavily on the couple's decisions to keep silent, rather than speak up in some cases, although Khandan did get arrested, and he served time.
As I write this review, I am trying to imagine a mother's mindset, while she sits in a prison cell, trying to remain emotionally connected to her loved ones, occupied with what she can make for her child's upcoming birthday, and determined to avoid being consumed with hate for her tormenters.
I end my review with this short passage in a letter from Sotoudeh to her husband Reza, written on Friday, November 9, 2018: "I miss our family's Fridays together. We would wake up late and have fried eggs, tea, and bread & cheese for breakfast. Do you remember there were four kinds of cheese on the table and we each had a different kind? Do you still eat the 'Laughing Cow' cheese? How are your games? I miss you, your cheeses, and your games, a lot ..."
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Tonight's family gathering at my sister's, with a colleague's family. [Top right] Aftermath of the Turkey quakes (see the last item below). [Bottom left] The bridges of Wisdom, Hope, Love, Help, Faith, & Friendship in Venice, Italy. [Bottom center] Two systems of laws: You'll be harassed by Iran's morality police, enforcing hijab laws, only if you're an opposition member. But if you march with regime's supporters, they won't bother you. [Bottom right] World's longest train route, and a math joke!
(2) In honor of the Black History Month (February): Overlooked black inventors who shaped our lives.
- Norbert Rillieux [1806-1894]: Revolutionized sugar processing by using steam and thermodynamics.
- Sarah (Marshall) Boone [1832-1904]: Patented a new ironing board similar to the ones we use today.
- James West [1931- ]: Invented a miniaturized microphone that needed no battery for its operation.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The downed Chinese balloon had equipment for spying, including collection of communication signals.
- ChatGPT scores C+ on University of Minnesota Law School exam: Get ready for Dr. ChatGPT!
- Composer Burt Bacharach dead at 94: Here's one of his hit songs, "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head."
- Religion vs. Science: An informative & entertaining 20-minute talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
(4) Junk fees: President Biden devoted a section of his State-of-the-Union speech to sneaky fees charged by hotels, banks, airlines, ticket agencies, and others. Hotels that no one consider to be resorts charge resort fees on top of their advertised rates. Ticket agencies get you started with a concert ticket's list price, but by the time you check out, you have paid 50% more due to various add-on fees. Some airlines charge you extra to assign adjacent seats to you and your spouse. And don't get me started on banks and credit-card companies. Consumer protection is an important part of a government's job, and I am glad the Biden administration is paying attention to practices that can't be considered anything but fraud.
(5) Tens of thousands of people dead in Turkey's earthquakes is just the beginning of a sad story: Rebuilding the infrastructure so that the survivors can lead normal lives will take many years. Roads and bridges were damaged, but not in the large numbers we see for residential high-rises. The lopsided damage points to construction defects and lack, or circumvention, of building codes. NYT reports that 100 people have been arrested in the wake of the earthquakes for shoddy construction. Perhaps safer buildings will be erected during the reconstruction, but this means even higher costs and longer delays.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] February 11 is designated by the United Nations as International Day of Women and Girls in Science (Info). [Top center & right] Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries (see the next item below). [Bottom row] Panel on the future of Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Talangor Group talk: I spoke on Thursday night, in Persian, under the title "Women in Science and Engineering: A Tale of Two Countries" (Persian title below). There were ~90 attendees.
Here is a synopsis of the talk. 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. Based on data and narratives from the United States and Iran, I identified roadblocks to the engagement of women in STEM careers. Using the two countries, different as they are in many respects, 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. The talk concluded by discussing what each country can learn from the other one in removing roadblocks to women in science and engineering. [Link to PDF slides] [Link to the talk's recording]
(3) Georgetown University event on "The Future of Iran's Democracy Movement": Eight Iranian activists/leaders participated in this discussion, held in-person for the most part and broadcast on Facebook Livestream (Recording). The panel discussion was moderated by Karim Sadjadpour (Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University).
Before summarizing the panelists' views, in the order they were presented (four on video clips and four in-person), I want to indicate my disappointment with comments made on the Facebook Livestream page. Many of the comments were aggressive, uncivil, and misogynistic. Royalist followers of Reza Pahlavi were particularly loud and disrespectful of others.
- Dr. Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Laureate, Lawyer, and Author (via video)
The question isn't what will happen if this regime falls. The question is what will happen if it remains in place. We have allowed this brutal regime to oppress us by not being united. Please put aside your differences and arguments for when we vote later. Our present focus should be on how to get rid of this oppressive regime.
- Abdullah Mohtadi, Secretary-General of Komala Party, Iranian Kurdistan (via video)
For decades, the Islamic regime had built a fictitious story about Kurdistan, killing Kurds on various pretenses. The current uprising exposed those lies. Kurdistan is with the rest of Iran and won't be silenced. Our common enemy is the Islamic Republic. We all want friendship, equality, and freedom. Our arrows must all point toward the Islamic Republic.
- Golshifteh Farahani, Actress, Human Rights Activist (via video, also representing Ali Karimi, Former Captain of Iran's National Soccer Team, Bayern Munich, Human Rights Activist, 2004 Asian Footballer of the Year)
Today belongs to the Iranian people, who have been held hostage for 44 years. We must all act to overthrow the brutal Islamic regime, by focusing on our common goals and not on our personal beliefs. The Islamic regime has tried to sow the seeds of discord among us. The keywords for our actions should be unity, self-sacrifice, and democracy. We are your voice, not your leaders. In a democratic Iran, we won't fight over our differences, but will celebrate them.
- Masih Alinejad, Author, Journalist, Women's Rights Activist, Founder of "My Stealthy Freedom" Movement
The murder of Mahsa Amini united Iranians, regardless of traits such as religion or ethnicity, against the brutal Islamic regime. The revolution aims to establish a society that is united, diverse, and respectful of differences of opinion. We must build a new structure, based on a charter that will be published by the end of February. The fall of Islamic regime not only means the rise of a secular democracy in Iran, but will also bring peace and stability to the region. A democratic Iran will have a pro-women government and will send the message of peace to the world.
- Dr. Hamed Esmaeilion, President and Spokesman of the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims
Key elements for the future of Iran are freedom, equity, social justice, and environmental justice. In its 44 years, the brutal Islamic regime has hurt many individuals and groups, filling the country's landscape with grieving victims. These victims have not given up hope but are in fact full of life. They sing & dance, get together, and love all the joys the world has to offer. In a democratic Iran, we won't be consumed by vengeance, but will insist that all crimes of the Islamic regime be investigated, allowing our decades-long wounds to heal.
- Nazanin Boniadi, Human Rights Activist, Actress, and Amnesty International UK Ambassador
We are sitting here as friends, setting aside our differences and working toward a common goal. The common charter we are working on will form the basis of sustainable and substantive changes in our homeland. The essence of the ongoing movement is inside Iran, but we do seek support from Western democracies and endeavor to educate governments and politicians about Iranian people's demands, while addressing their fears about possible instability in the region should the Islamic regime fall.
- Reza Pahlavi, Advocate for Secular Democratic Iran
Differences of opinion should not mean enmity. Rather than focus on our differences, we should think about the essence of our goal, which is to free our homeland. In the new system we build, everyone should be treated equally and according to law. Institutions are important, but for democracy to survive, we need to build a culture of diversity and tolerance. The same culture should encourage citizens to be watchful participants in gaining and protecting their rights. Rights will not be handed to us; we should claim them. Let's set aside slogans, roll up our sleeves, and begin our work.
*After the introductory presentations outlined above, the moderator began with some questions for the four present panelists and then opened up the floor to the journalists who were in the room.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] World Music Series noon concert at UCSB's Music Bowl: Mariachi Las Olas De Santa Barbara performed at noon today under the beautiful blue skies of a 70-degree day
(Video 1;
Video 2). [Center] Math puzzle: Given the areas of the small triangular regions, find the area of the outer rectangle. [Right] Peanut butter selection in Tehran: Prices range from 100,000 to 250,000 tomans ($2.50-$6.00) per jar.
(2) Turkey's twin earthquakes: Before & after images show the extent of destruction. Search & rescue teams from many countries have converged on the affected region near the Turkey-Syria border. The death toll of this natural disaster stands at 15,000 and is still rising. Please help!
(3) Odds of finding additional quake survivors in Turkey and Syria rapidly diminishing: Passage of time, many multi-story buildings completely collapsing, and freezing temperatures reduce the chances of survival.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Quotable: "We adore chaos because we love to produce order." ~ M. C. Escher
- Do you know what happens after your funeral? This 2-minute video should affect how you live your life.
- Kurdish music: An instrumental piece, performed by students of a music academy. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 7, 2016: Kayaking with my daughter in LA's Marina del Rey.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 8, 2011: Is advanced technology taking us back to Stone Age?
(5) US National Basketball Association has a new scoring champion: LeBron James surpasses the previous record of 38,387; and he is still far from done! He will continue to establish a new record with every point.
(6) Christiane Amanpour shares Iranian human-rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh's first TV interview: Sotoudeh's book 'Prison Letters' is out. I will post my review of the book soon. [17-minute video]
(7) An implant that turns brain waves into words: It deciphers commands intended for the vocal tract, helping a man who has not spoken for more than 15 years (due to a stroke) speak.
(8) The most earthquake-prone countries over the past 3+ decades (1990-2022): China tops the list with 182 quakes. Indonesia and Iran come next, with 161 and 108 quakes, respectively. Turkey is sixth with 58 quakes.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Author Salman Rushdie today: A living monument to the utter stupidity of religious rule. Never again! [Center] A page from US junior-high world history text (see the next item below). [Right] US State Department retires Times New Roman in favor of Calibri to improve document readability.
(2) Iran's Maragheh Observatory in US textbooks: "Science, Technology, and Society" is one of the 10 modules in US junior-high-school textbooks on world history, which includes a page on the ancient observatory. This is more than what Iranian high-school students learn about the UNESCO World Heritage site in the northeastern city of Maragheh, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran. [Credit: Dr. Tofigh Heidarzadeh]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Our loss is their gain: Germany is happily hiring Silicon Valley's fired tech workers.
- Colleges are having doubts about accuracy & usefulness of national rankings of educational institutions.
- A couple of memes celebrating Shervin Hajipour's Grammy Award win last night. [Tweet, with images]
- Our loss is their gain: Germany is happily hiring Silicon Valley's fired tech workers.
- Two male-chauvinist Islamic Republic throw sexual insults at women on Iran's state TV.
- Women face sexual harassment everywhere: So, is it really a surprise that it happens at the gym too?
- Quotable: "What is love? Love is the absence of judgment." ~ Dalai Lama
- Facebook memory from Feb. 6, 2019: Don't equate digital with modern and analog with old-fashioned.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 6, 2017: The soldier mindset vs. the scout mindset. [12-minute TEDx talk]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 6, 2014: Cartoon illustrating the electrical units volt, ohm, and ampere.
(4) Swimming in the air: This floater, mimicking the motion of a stingray in water, can fly in the air, thanks to its super-lightweight construction and use of helium gas. [Tweet, with video]
(5) Republicans: Of course we believe in Social Security, Medicare, affordable healthcare, work for the unemployed, and more. Just turn these over to us and we'll do a much better job of managing and protecting them, in a way that you won't have to pay a dime! FDR warned us about this scam in 1936!
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The main Armenian religious center in Tehran, the Saint Sarkis Cathedral, was completed in 1970. [Top center] Math puzzle: Find the length x in this diagram featuring a circle and two chords. [Top right] History keeps repeating itself: When dictators are accused of brutality and heartlessness, they try to project a kind/gentle image by appearing next to children.
(2) Shervin Hajipour's Persian protest anthem "Bara-ye" wins a Grammy Award in the new category of "Best Song for Social Change": The inaugural award was presented by US First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.
(3) Former supporters are abandoning the ship of Iran's Islamic regime one by one: Ex-PM Mir Hossein Mousavi has said that reforms within the current constitution no longer make sense, so we have to start from scratch with a referendum. Ex-President Mohammad Khatami is more equivocal, still wanting to reform the regime in the framework of the existing constitution, which gives unlimited powers to the cleric who is appointed Supreme Leader for life. Meanwhile, polls indicate that the regime's approval rating is a dismal 15%, with 81% favoring a different form of government. [Tweet, with images]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US lowest-temperature record: Minus-108 F wind-chill recorded at the summit of Mt. Washington, NH.
- Pervez Musharraf, former military ruler of Pakistan and a crucial US ally after the 9/11 attacks, dead at 79.
- An Iranian soldier gets 5+ years in prison by refusing to shoot his fellow countrymen. [Tweet]
- People's motion on this spiral walkway of a soccer stadium in Milan, Italy, creates the illusion of rotation.
- American cyclist rides a path tracing the name of Iranian political prisoner Farhad Meysami in San Francisco.
- Beyonce now has the most Grammy wins in history: On Sunday, she added 4 awards to her previous 28.
- Khalil Gibran: "A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle."
(5) More than 300 deaths already reported from a strong 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Turkey: The death toll is expected to rise due to many buildings collapsing in Turkey and Syria.
(6) Book review: Apt, Krzysztof R. and Tony Hoare (eds.), Edsger Wybe Dijkstra: His Life, Work, and Legacy, ACM Press, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra [1930-2002] made fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of computing. In this book, computer scientists, including Dijkstra himself, friends, mentors, and colleagues, provide both biographical and technical narratives on the influential computer scientist (the book's table of contents).
Dijkstra won the Turing Award in 1972 "for fundamental contributions to programming as a high, intellectual challenge; for eloquent insistence and practical demonstration that programs should be composed correctly, not just debugged into correctness; for illuminating perception of problems at the foundations of program design."
He advocated for the development of programs in concert with their correctness proofs. He also developed important ideas in fault-tolerant computing and in the domain of developing and presenting mathematical proofs of computer programs. Dijkstra remains one of the most quotable and most-quoted computer scientists. Here are three of his statements that are my favorites:
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