Sur les sommets de l’Iran

Ghazal mon cher,

Un réalisateur suisse, un alpiniste iranien et un randonneur australien traversent d’ouest en est les majestueuses chaînes volcaniques de la République islamique. Dans cette première partie, du mont Ararat aux faubourgs de Téhéran, rencontre avec des nomades, des tisseurs de tapis, une championne de ski, seul membre féminin et porte-drapeau de la délégation iranienne aux JO de Vancouver en 2010, ainsi qu’une alpiniste qui s’est photographiée sans voile à huit mille mètres d’altitude dans l’Himalaya.

Skilled Angels Hand

Ghazal Dear,

I guess that must be your handwriting, that I found on a plastic envelope containing EtBr stained agarose-gels. I asked a friend at the Avicenna Bookstore here in Munich, to translate it into Persian, and she proposed that “24 wells” is ” 24 خوب “.

If the date is right, than they were lying in the cool-room since two and half years. I thought to give them a trial electrophoresis with some fresh DNA samples we had for sequencing. And what a miracle: they are still giving excellent DNA patters. It must be your angel fingers while casting the gels that made them last forever.

Take Care my Dear
Michael

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Hello Michael,
Yes this is my handwriting! So the gels are still there?

Your friends translation was a bit misleading. She obviously just used a dictonary.
“well” is “khob – خوب” yes its correct. but in english well is good and also what we use it in gels (like a slot or a hole. so “khob” means “good”, but not “hole”.
And “24″ in persian would be ۲۴
Don’t forget, Persia was once leading in Mathematics, with men such as Al-Khwarizmi or Omar Khayyam.
If you want to practise more, you can go here.
So far, Take Care.
Ghazal

Iranian Nose Jobs and the Value of Genetics

Dear Michael,

It is no secret that many Iranian woman do not value their impressive, arian noses very high. In contrast, they tend to follow a very questionable beauty picture that more and more seems to be coined by the Japanese manga figures. For them, a nose is merely anything more than a small ridge to hide the nostrils.
The historical form of Iranian noses, however, is impressive, and if an ancient myth is true that the nose is the main site of human character, than Iranians must have a lot of it (which I believe many of them will agree).

The more I regret that low self-esteem of Iranians when it comes to the shape of their facial “center of gravity”. Iranian woman try to raise their competetiveness in hunting for a good match on the vanity fair, and the men, beeing either the driving force behind this or the obidient donkey, quickly got trapped by this.

Here I will explaine to you (based on what I feel as a young woman and what I learned as a young geneticist) the short and the long term consequences of this:

1) In the short term, there will be a constant drop of beauty among Iranian woman, because more and more of them afford a “Nose Job”. So very soon, you will see less and less Iranian ladies whom their strong and proud character is clearly located in an equally strong, sharp and expressive nose. We might be confused soon, that Iranians with strong self-esteem decline to western beauty standard, have their face irreversibly damaged only to fill the pockets of those medics, who as all their colleagues from other disciplines agree, are the least qualified ones to distinguish between health and disease, let alone to cure any real sick patient.

The Iranian woman who had this attribute of an ancient, devine beauty surgically removed, will in fact increase her chances to catch a husband and have more children. That is what we know from natural selection of the fittest, which if we like it or not, becomes the natural selection for the most attractive in the human population.

But, thanks to genetic laws, there is not only hope in sight, as I will explaine in the following, but in the long term these “Iranian Nose Jobs” even have the potential to rescue the Iranian Nose from becomming extinct by natural selection.

2)  Because on the long term,  of course, no plastic surgery can change the genetic code, which over hundreds of generations turned Iranians, considered to represent the original Arians, as representatives of the niceest, sharp, impressive noses. No ordinary medic, let alone the half-educted plastic surgeons, have any clue where in the Iranian genome the key for nose shape is hidden, or how this could be manipulated. So with the current genetic knowledge and the status-quo of molecular technologies, the real treasure of the Iranian nose is still hidden and safely deposited deep in our genome.  So even if all Iranians have their “noses done”, the next and all following generations still carry the fertile seeds to grow proper Iranian noses again.

But this is only half of the truths, the real excitement comes here:  Without plastic surgery, large Iranian noses could in fact become extinct due to genetic admixture from (Iranian x Non-Iranian) partnerships (introgressing the Small-Nose-Gene-Variant from East-Asian or US or Latin-Americans) followed by preferential marriages between the descendents inheriting the Small-Nose-Genes (and consequently growing these dwarf nose variants reminiscent of a Hobbit face). Over just a few generations, there would indeed take place a natural selection for the Small-Nose-Gene-Variants, resulting in irreversible loss of the Iranian Large Noses.  But this, in fact, does not happen, thanks to the plastic surgeons and their messing up with the natural link between beauty, genes, and attractiveness, thus interfering with genetic evolution.  By virtually “hiding” the real (heritable) Iranian Nose variant behind a fake, non-heritable small nose, natural selection is fooled. Therefore, nose jobs to Iranian woman will guarantee that in the long term the precious Iranian nose shape with its distinct and impressive sharpness will always comes back in every new generation.

Ich bin ein Berliner (says Nofretete)

Hello, my name is Nofretete, and I was born in Luxor in Egypt.
1912 some archeologists recovered me from this dark grave in the earth and brought me back to light. I, who together with my beloved husband Echnaton were so much fascinated by the divine nature of the sun had to spend 3400 years in the dark. When I was recovered and brought to Berlin, this not only caused a real Egyptomania and Nofretete-cult amongst the ordinary people, but the sun itself started to shine brighter and stronger for happiness to have me back.

Nofretetes bust in the Berlin Neues Museum

The Egyptians were always afraid of my beauty. 3400 years ago they hated my preference of the sun against all the single, little minor gods they were worshipping. Thats why they banned my statue and burried me deep under ground. After the German archeologists under Ludwig Borchardt excavated me 100 years ago in the meter deep dust in Amarna, and brought me back to sunshine, the Egyption authorities several times attempted to get hold of me. They ordered reviews from French lawyers that should proof how the Germans had violated a contract with Egypt and insidiously betrayed them by highjacking me to Berlin. I have to admit, that my escape from Egypt to Berlin did not happened against my own will: Without exchanging words, both Borchardt and myself understood that the Berlin New Museum would provide a more adequate place for me than an Egyptian dust bin. We were afraid that in Egypt, they again would try to hide my beauty from the peoples eyes.
Now, 2012, 100 years after my rebirth, they introduce in Egypt the Sharia, ordering every woman to hide her face and her beauty. Returning to Egypt, wouldn’t they put me under a hijab or a burka, before showing me in the public ? Or will the Salafists who just occupied a couple of parlament seats and  governmental posts attack me altogether, destroy me as they did with other statues in Afghanistan and in Mali, because they fear that people will worship my beauty ?
In Berlin in the New Museum, people from all over the world come only to see me, and yes, they worship my beauty. They like me, and I like them, and therefore I will stay in Berlin forever. I am nobodies property, I belong to the entire mankind. But in Berlin they always took care of me, and I know they will do so forever. During the bombings of the 2. world war, when the entire city turned into a pile of debris, they found a safe shelter for me somewhere far away in a mountain village. They were so intrigued by Nofretete, that first  emperor Wilhelm II and later the East-German government (who lost me to West-Berlin) both ordered identical copies of my statue.
I am nobodies property, not the Germans and not the Egyptians. But I am and will stay a Berliner. The local people call me a “Berliner Göre”, and although this sounds turkish, it is their slang for “naughty little girl”. Although this of course is a (typical Berlin) understatement of my beauty, I can life with it.

Will Keira Knightly leaves the train trough the steam ?

Many times Tolstojs novel “Anna Karenina” was brought on the cinema screens, by not so famous film directors, but with actresses who after playing the leading character became movie stars (or were movie stars before already). Sophie Marceau, Jacqueline Bisset, Vivien Leigh and of course Greta Garbo. And now, we have the pleasure to enjoy a more modern Anna Karenina, using state-of-the-art 21st century cinematografic techniques. One of the most intriguing moments in the 1935 movie with Greta Garbo shows her arrival by train in Moscow, when she arises through a steam-cloud and leaves Wronski, who came to the train station only to meet his mother, breathless.

 

Before I consider to see the new movie (staring Keira Knightly as Anna and Jude Law as Mr. Karenin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Wronski), I first want to see how the train station scene has been set up. If this scene is weak, or a disappointment as compared to Greta Garbos one, I wont see the entire movie.

A fine gentleman …

Dear Ghazal,
If you ever heard Jimmy Hendrix giving an interview, you would not believe it is the same person as playing here “Hey Joe”, about coldblooded shooting down his Lady for adultery.
In the interviews, Jimmy Hendrix appears as the most careful, educated, polite person you can imagine, even showing some shyness. Unlike contemporary musicians, he alwas tried to be nice to the journalists and answer the questions with some sort of humor that everybody could understand and laugh about.

Enjoy, Michael

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Dear Michael, good song, but which interview were you referring to ? I got the feeling you posted this music video only because the brownish colour so well matches the design of your blog.
Take Care
/ghazal

Where has my blood gone ?

Ghazal my Dear,
Two month ago, in September 2012 Israel seemed to be the most relaxed and calm country one could imagine. Except for very rare security checks at the entrances of large shopping malls, concert halls or the Jad Vashem museum, there were hardly any signs of the immanent threat of violent attacks. As travelers we were more concerned about the possible failure of the air-conditioning in our flat, or about the trouble to release our car from the car-park that was suddenly locked on Sabbath.
In an attempt to dissociate myself as far as possible from the tourists (many of whom visit Israel for its christian heir or because they come on a cruise with a one-day break in Haifa) I was lurking around Lev Hamifratz Shopping Mall. There, a memorial plate told that during construction of the mall in 1991 it had been hit by a scud missile launched by the lunatic Saddam Hussein. Some years later an attempted car bombing attack by the Libanese Hisbollah was prevented by police that sapped the vehicle on the car-park outside the building. This suddenly reminded me of an ever-present, albeit latent danger for life or injury in Israel, and this might to a certain degree prompted me to decline to the invitation by the Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross) to donate blood right there at the shopping mall. I never donated blood before, except when it was recommended before a surgery in hospital. When I laid down on this rubber-covered bed I had some time to talk to the doctor and the nurse about the most likely occasion when my blood (of course processed and perhaps mixed with a lot of Israeli blood to dilute out the Goi-factors) was used for transfusion. Anything could happen in Israel like anywhere else: car accidents, surgical operations with sudden complications, caesarian sections. The prospect of a military conflict was rather unlikely, two month ago.

Now, after Israel started its counter-attack to protect its people from the Gaza-launched rockets, it appears that victims of air-strikes, bombs or rockets blowing living-houses will be more likely to be in need of blood-transfusions. If my blood finds a way out of the deep-freeze storage into the circulation system of a patient, it could be a civilian who’s house in Ashkelon or Ofakim or even in the suburbs of Tel Aviv were hit by Hamas rockets. It could be an IDF soldier who is about to enter Gaza in an attempt to neutralize the terrorists of Hamas. But most likely, it will be an innocent person living in Gaza, who has been misused by the terrorists as a living shield, who finally is be the most vulnerable and least cared-for victim. Israels IDF recently circulated a Twitter news promising that it will open the Gaza check points to permit delivery of emergency medical goods, maybe including my blood.

When I donated blood in September in Haifa, I had to fill in the form below, and of course without understand much hebrew I simply followed the suggestions of the Magen David Adom nurse and clicked any field she recommended to me. 

I did not asked her, if any of these fields to fill in were refering to the intended usage of my blood. Did it possibly exluded its use during military operations ?  Or for certain minorities ? Or could it even be that non-kosher blood from a Goi like me would only be used to rescue non-Jewish victims ?   Everything is possible, but I hope in the case of life emergency, people forget about race, nation, faith, and give the blood to those who need it most.

Deja vu

I’m wondering how everything would change,
if I could really see you every day,
like it was two years ago.
If we could go out for a walk through Pompej every night,
Or sit next to each other in every new movie that comes to the cinema.
If we could climb up to the TV tower not only once,
but do it every sunny day,
and watch the crazy world beneath our feets.
Would you still like the black bracelet,
if we would go to the little jewelery store in Vietri once every week ?
And would the bone-fire on the riverbank still warm our skin and my soul, if we would have it every fullmoon night,
and not only once in August 2010 ?
And if IKEA would see us as frequent customers,
not just once as passers by, would I still be this attentive student of the Swedish language there ?
And if we would drive to Carefours supermarket every day after sunset, would the elder Italian lady behind the counter ask us again and again, what we have to do with each other,
this enchanting young girl and the elder man?
This meteor that stood still for 3 seconds when we saw it,
it would not follow the same track again, even if we would go out to observe the Perseides each year.
The magic of the moments wont come again,
even if we try to repeat the same set-up,
hoping that we will experience again what was wunderful before,
we will find that the world cannot be copied and pasted.
The moments with you that turned my life into a rush,
and filled the air with the scent of eternity, wont come again.
But there will be countless more occasions filled with magic and excitement.
But because these moments will be rare, my Dear,
painfully separated by long periods of separation,
they will always give us this sensation of a never before and never again.

Pompeji – You only live twice

Hi Michael, Our walk through the ruins of Pompej during the Vietri-sul-Mare meeting, that finally had us loosing our way at night, and “being rescued” by this old Italian gentleman who gave us this very special guided tour with a torch-lamp, let me speculate if this glamourous roman population that lived there untill the year 79 ever had a second life after they all died and their house were buried in lava and ashes from the Vesuv volcano.

I found this video from the James Bond 007 film “You Only Live Twice”, and therein are scenes showing the flood of lava. Maybe we, two visitors of the 21st century on their lonely walk through Pompeji, exactly 1933 years after the big catastrophy, were reincarnations of two of the victims of the eruption.

Full Moon’s gender

Ghazal Dear,
the moon tried to hide tonight, just like you. It took me the whole night through to shift away the clouds, so it only became visible in the early morning.

I always find it strange, that the moon is neutrum in English. In German the Moon is a male word. In many latin and slavic languages, Moon is female. How is it in Swedish and in Persian ?

Take Care, my Dear.
Michael

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