professional profiling

According to a 2007 Oxford University publication by Gambetta and Hertog 78% of Jihadists are engineers ... I think it may be that the engineers are the dumb ones who get caught!

guess who?

If you guessed Sarah Palin then you're right! It's her Miss Wasilla 1984 head shot and one of the pictures for the Palin Calendar. The cover page is below and you can find all the pages here.

اوضاع و احوال

گفتم تفعلی بزنم؛

رایت سلطان گل پیدا شد از طرف چمن
مقدمش یارب مبارک باد بر سرو و سمن
...
مشورت با عقل کردم گفت حافظ باده نوش
ساقیا می ده بقول مستشار موتمن

و شاهدش

تو نازک طبعی و طاقت نداری
گرانیهای مشتی دلق پوشان
درین صوفی وشان دَردی ندیدم
که صافی باد عیش دُردنوشان

salaries

... with the current situation it seems 2008 will be the highest peak at least for some time ...

* source: IEEE Spectrum August 2008 and they got it from the US Department of Labor

greener clean

I've been trying out "greener" choices for cleaning supplies in the past few months. I've tested both brand name and drugstore labels. In my opinion the best dish washing liquids are [drum roll] Method by Method and Green Works by Clorox. Both claim to be naturally derived and biodegradable.
As for glass, bathroom and kitchen cleaners, once I got to the Green Works line of products I stopped checking because I was very please with what I had found and, well, I'm not a consumer product reviewer!
You might find the Greenzer website helpful if you're looking for a particular product, but keep your eyes open for the frauds ... maybe I should come up with a green-meter of some sort ...

اسلام و ایرانیان

اين مکر و ريا گشت به گوش همه ياران
اين حيله بشد باور يک ملت نادان

ای وای از اين قوم وازاين ملت بيمار
لعنت به سر گور امام زاده مکار

ايرانی که بود تاج سر دانش دنيا
اينک قمه بر سر زدنش خنده دنيا

زنجير به سرو سينه زدن در غم تازی
از شب به سحر در غم ودر گريه وزاری

شد سنت ايرانی پس از عمری شهامت
ای وای از آن قومی که شد خام ديانت
...
ايرانی بشد چاکر درگاه امامان
آن شيرزن خاک گهر پوش دلارا

شد زينب و زهرا و خديجه و سهيلا
از کوروش واز ايرج و کاوه و بابک

قربانعلی و غلامحسين آمده اينک
لعنت به من و ما که بيگانه ستائيم

پيشانی به سنگ در هر تازی بماليم
لعنت به من و ما که فرزند يلانيم

بيرونی بيگانه از اين خانه ندانيم
نفرين به چونين تيع که تيزش نتوانيم

لعنت به چونين دست که مشتش نتوانيم
اهريمن از اين خانه برون ما نتوانيم

اين ديو ستمکار از اين سفره نرانيم
لعنت به من و ما که خاموش نشستيم
که خاموش نشستيم

سیمین بهبهانی -

the Hamas point of view

Do you not find something very wrong with this sentence?

"We might forgive the Israeli's for murdering our innocent civilians but we will never forgive them for forcing us to kill their civilians."

- Sheikh Nayef (from Dreams and Shadows)

The later leaders were of course a lot more lenient.

Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, impose themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banish our people.
We shall never recognize the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognize the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.

- Khalid Mashal, 2006 (from Dreams and Shadows)

path to liberty

We are not expected to be transported from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

- Thomas Jefferson

Judge Alex

As I was eating lunch today, the TV was showing one of the many reality court shows. I never really warmed up to Judge Judy, who is apparently the highest paid TV personality, but some other ones I can take ... but I digress ... The case was about a lady whose car had been stolen and totaled by the next door neighbor's son, well actually they had a teenage boy visiting from out of town who had apparently driven the scenario. The conversation was something like:

• Judge: well how did they break into the car?
• lady: the door was not locked. where we live we don't even have keys to our front doors, all the doors are open.
  
• Judge [with a smile]: in Florida the only reason you would leave your doors unlocked is that you want to shoot the thief inside the car! well how did they start the car then?
• lady: they turned the keys and started the car.
• Judge: so you had left the keys in the ignition?
• lady: yes, everyone does that. even the police officer who took my statement said he leaves his keys in the ignition when his car is in the driveway.

The judge looked amazed and so did I. But she was telling the truth; the defendant confirmed what she said. He admitted that he had asked his son where his cell phone was and the son had told him what they had done with the car and said that he'd left the phone in the car. A little into the trial she starts crying and when the judge asks why she replies: "well if car theft is their first crime what is their second crime going to be? break into someone's house and put a gun to their head?"
What they described and how they reacted to everything was like a fairytale. So far from reality in my mind! I grew up being told not to forget to lock the second lock on the door. I had heard stories of how my grandparents never had to lock the door but that was by far my closest encounter. Just think how much more tolerable our lives would be if we could just go back and live as peacefully ... I hope these people and their little towns don't go extinct any time soon. Maybe we should preserve them as treasures ...

politics

Politics is about getting outside of yourself and your own problems for a little while and fully immersing yourself in the lies and deceit of others.

- Stephen Elliot

Zoroastrians

I have started reading the book Dreams and Shadows by Robin Wright and I am going to share parts of it with you in the next little while:

"I once visited a fire temple of the Zoroastrians, who worship light as the symbol of good and omnipotent God. Iran is the world center for the faith founded six centuries before Christianity. As the symbol of light, fires at the altars of their temples have burned continuously for centuries. Zoroastrians ideas about the devil, hell, a future savior, the struggle between good and evil ending with a day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and an afterlife had great impact on all monotheistic faiths, and even Buddhism.
The largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel is also in Iran, ...."