Nima Darabi’s English weblog
Jul 07 2010
… but don’t take me wrong. I still think that in our plural post-modern age all well-known modern alternatives of the current planet’s dominant economic system (capitalism) will fail functioning miserably. So, change our mode of thinking to what?
Jul 04 2010
Today a part of Mr. Fallon’s brain (let’s call it the researcher part) is externally aware of a disorder in another part (the killer part). Wouldn’t it then be possible that the researcher part had internally had some clues about the killer part and that’s actually what has driven him to study this? You know the brain is all wired! His brain then as a whole may have tried to reveal something about itself: “Jim! It’s all about yourself! You’re gonna research this.” It might still not be just a coincidence, I think.
Jun 06 2010
Akbar Ganji dreams of a Free Iran:
The misfortune of the people who live in the Middle East, the region from which I come, is that the international conditions have never been conducive to achieving democracy. Quite to the contrary, these conditions have always been to the benefit of the enemies of freedom.
[...]
People of the Middle East had been living under the tyranny of secular and corrupt governments, which were all supported by the United States and other Western countries. This context left them recourse to only one political alternative: religious fundamentalism. The United States and the Western world reaped the first fruit of their own deeds with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and today they face fully grown and powerful trees of violent fundamentalism.
What comes is something in agreement with Ganji that I’d written while ago – before I got to read this article – with few corrections in the terminology:
Here is the warning: As a reaction to secular dictatorship, I think we Iranians were the first nation in the contemporary middle east who actually went into a trap called religious fundamentalism as a political system. We’ve experienced it now for more than three decades and now as the counter-reaction we are about to survive. Sooner or later we’ll overcome a totalitarian religious form of a regime. What concerns me the most is actually about our neighbors: a possible dark future for some other middle eastern states. Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks, other potential nations should not remake our mistakes; democracy is still the only way to resolve. Or else, the failures of the Bush administration will remain in the middle east for a century.
Related @ Nim:
May 19 2010
First I wanted to stay neutral in this Everybody Draw Mohammed Day call for cartoon on May 20th. At the first glance as usual, it looked to me a bit immature to provoke people and to mess with their holy pictures. But now that it’s a real competition accompanied by so much of angry offensive Muslim reactions I eventually need to take “my” side and break the silence that exists among many people like me.
I join this page in Facebook not because I do not believe in Mohammad and his holy book, or not because it’s funny to mess with other people that I may not understand well. It’s not because it looks cool to stay calm when somebody is angry at you and it’s not because it’s easier to believe in freedom of speech while you have stuck to the beauty of wisdom rather than aggression of religion.
I join this campaign because I’ve lived my whole youth in Iran, after an Islamic revolution, where we were totally fed up with religion. There me and many of my friends came to believe that religion and particularly Islam has ruined our beautiful land and has wasted many of its great resources. It has not only been the reason behind death of millions of innocent people throughout the history, but also has kept up all this shit till the 21st century.
Yes, it’s true that even though I do not often insult others, in an unconscious level I enjoy all this blasphemy with its harsh contents. This sense of humor satires the truth and spices up the reality. And it thus makes me happy and turns me on.
I am aware of the fact that there are many Muslims (within my social network too) who have always stayed cool and have not given a damn to blasphemy. The fundamental minority has to learn it too. Nothing happens if someone draws a cartoon of their prophet. They please have to learn this lesson through this process: It’s just a picture! They can stay mature, calm down and by doing this they buy credit for their religion.
They won’t get offended or else somebody should insult them to that point to end up with peace. It’s true. Seriously, if I’ve learned one thing about fundamental Islam during the past three decades, it’s that there is absolutely no end to its demands. The more you step back the more they come further. The more you respect the more they are hurt by some bugs. Enough is enough and that’s it!
Yes, I think it’s my very right to post this and I then invite those who feel like drawing something to join this cause. Enjoy:
Prophet Muhammad's cartoon - May 19, 2010
May 09 2010
This video is the very first one of its kind that eventually made some sense to me; however, considering mainstream’s motivation behind sharing this, I strongly believe that the video can not be brought as an alibi for any of us men or women who don’t wanna dare to be rich, successful, and beautiful – by the dominant or any other given definition.
Within the human kind, to a great extent, beauty is absolute and objective, and our species has improved both statically and dynamically, which is good.
Wisdom can’t and should not overcome the instinct, which is the most real and concrete aspect of existence. Super-normal stimulus still makes sense, and it will. We just need to bring it to public, make it fair and reachable by everyone, and meanwhile indeed have our demands not to exceed the reality.
Frighteningly, In the mean time that we ideally make the mainstream look like the celebrities of the past generation, higher greedy standards grow and grow. And there will be imaginable but unreachable desires for the ever-unsatisfied majority.
World is greedy, unfair and unequal by nature. We can/should control it and make it less unfair like decreasing the entropy in a living organism by causing an entropy increase outside. The question is how far we can go with our limited resources?
Apr 23 2010
A victorious variation of Rossini’s barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) [I think] in the middle eastern Homayoon scale played by hot chicks two centuries later! kitschy, but still delightful:
My auditory processing unit or whatever it’s called seems to be simply way too melody-oriented. Styles, accompaniments and orchestration, and even the lyrics are usually filtered out. A brilliant sequence of notes can’t be kitschy anyhow. And seriously, don’t look at me like this. That’s not really kitsch compared to what I might listen, in my saddest and deepest moments of life.
Apr 11 2010
It just happened; So clear and beautiful!
For the first time in my life I can swear that I got to see it. 
Mar 22 2010
I just got my shoulder relocated after two hours of suffer and torture. I was just waving hand for this legendary dude at Stanford’s Coffee House (aka coho) and this simple move completely popped out my left arm! So weird.
It could have occured in three different ways and happened to be a posterior type (backwards) which is one of the rarest and indeed the worst type of shoulder dislocation! Now it has been two weeks that Morphy rules my life and honestly I am not used to that.
Since I was a child this left arm knew how to pop itself back in (may be forward dislocation) till once that it was dislocated (perhaps backwards) during a seizure and since then relocation has never been trivial. I’ve had to go to a hospital any of a few times it took place ever since.
Back to the campus scene, as I was shouting out loud after waving hand, students were laughing at me like it’s a joke. As they realized something is seriously going on, many disappeared. The rest stepped back. I dunno why almost no one dared to approach when I asked them to make a phone call for me. Could involvement bring responsibility? The ambulance came finally and took me to a closed hospital (not necessarily a close one) and then to a seemingly expensive open one. On the way the nurse was holding my arm in a safe position and upon her request I was dropping numbers like 0, 1, 3 to inform her about my pain level out of ten. A loud 9 on each speed bump of course. She asked why not 10? I said you know I’m humble.
In the hospital they asked me if I let them inject different random stuff into my veins and I asked them not to do it please. They injected all those things either way. They gave me a shot to relax my muscles plus some others to kill the pain in general and some pain-relievers locally. I don’t remember but I think they injected swine flu vaccine too, since they told me something about it and I didn’t get how it could help relocating a shoulder. If that’s the case, I guess I know what caused my fever and the consequent sickness. I think my blood pressure was taken hundred times and my fingerprint a couple more. And yeah, eventually after I answered a series of basic health questions for the fifteenth time, the doctor decided to pop it back in. They tried three times and it worked the last time. I said I love him. He said he is straight!
I might have been able to fix it on my own, to avoid a hell of severe pain and an expensive bill. But, even if successful, it would have had its own risks. I know I should be thankful for the nurses, doctors, etc.
Feb 14 2010
I just attended the Masters of Persian Music performing at University of California, Berkeley.
I have no more doubt about their performing skills, that is awesome. As of the concert during the second half I was bored by Grammy award nominees (for the best traditional world music)! That might be due to their monophonic and repetitive use of the very same melody patterns in Shur scale back and forth (dastgāh-e-Shur is a scale close to medieval Phrygian mode). Once they eventually modulated to minor and I noticed that it suddenly attracted every one’s attention around me. Just to know, my seat was in between of two groups of Americans and Iranians.
Their performance was consistent, harmonic, homogeneous, and professional, but there were really no innovation and creativity going on; no more ways of brain tickling. That was just in a way it used to be in one, two, or even three decades ago.
When it comes to traditional Persian music, my taste seems to be developing. Facing recent innovations in poetry, melody and rhythm as well as new approaches of correlating form and content in Persian music has moved it towards a more complicated and challenging scope. I am not talking about updating instruments, changing the orchestration, hiring polyphony or choice of the scales. These innovations can be accomplished within the exact same set of ensembles.
p.s. Their albums Faryad and Without You is available at Amazon.
Nim at Berkeley last year
Feb 11 2010
The pic shows today’s huge pro-government protest during the rush hour around Azadi square, Tehran to mark the 31st of Anniversary of Iran’s Revolution.
The information that is not shown on the picture is the fact that attendees around the square are partly opposition demonstrators who didn’t dare or were not allowed to carry green symbols because of the governmental high security control. I talked to two of them on the phone today and they so regretted having the role of two additional grains of rice to the supreme leader’s dinner party dish tonight!
As a result of new executions and having anticipated vast number of security forces and militia men, the green movement this time employed a highly compromising “Trojan Horse” strategy: the opposition supporters were to dress and act as pro-government demonstrators to safely join the crowd and later on turn it into a protest; however, unlike the former clear hijacks they seem to fail accomplishing it but adding more pixels to the image.
I wish this service was launched/working or we were somehow aware of that on June 15, 2009 when the opposition took the streets of Tehran and many of us mentioned the need for a grain-counting method, which could metaphorically be such a huge pot of delicious food for lovers of democracy and peace everywhere.
p.s. Helaleh Farahbakhs adds:
The whole key to Trojan Horse tactic was the fact that the enemy did NOT know about it! I mean Hellooooooo! There is no publicized-on-the-internet Trojan. If only the outsiders could let the insiders strategize and the old let the young lead! Sigh.
