It's amazing how history repeats itself.

Status

Living in Iran these days...

Darbareye Elly

Darbareye Elly (About Elly)
Very vivid image of a part of Iran's contemporary society. A must see movie.

Defiance

Mana Neyestani

The wonder of you

...
I'll guess I'll never know the reason why...
That's the wonder
The wonder of you...

Justice!

It was in the middle of post-election days in Iran that my supervisor put a paper on my desk which was news about Tariq Ramadan being fired from the university and it was because he ran a program in Press TV which is a channel funded by Iranian government. Apparently the program was not political or in support of the Iranian regime. My supervisor who's Dutch was against the university's decision. Later on, there was news on Maziar Bahari's case; an Iranian-Canadian journalist who works for Newsweek. He got arrested during the post-election days in Iran and spent months in Prison before being released. Working for a western media apparently was enough for him to be suspected of espionage!
Now, Tariq Ramadan left Holland to where he found open arms in Oxford university and Maziar Bahari is back to Newsweek.
The scale of troubles that the journalist went through is beyond my imagination but I cannot help but wonder how different the logic supporting each condemnation was in the first place. I don't expect the governments in Iran to be fair as unjustness is one of the very ugly angles they are defined with but from academia in a democratic country it was surprising to observe what I was observing.

Pink Brain Blue Brain

Sounds a fascinating book! Lise Eliot the author gave a talk on the book; quite fantastic I think.

On decision-making

A behavioral economist Dan Ariely talks on how irrelevant information can have an impact on our choices and how limited our cognitive abilities can be/get.
And here it comes the question of "free" will again.